http://usaheadlines.today/us-bank-t...=Feed:+usaheadlines/Home+(USA+News+Headlines) So who actually gets the fine...?
Meh. These fines don't mean that much to the banks. They can pay the fines and then some. We, the taxpayers, obviously aren't benefiting from these fines, although the federal government likely will. The banks do shady things all the time, and the 2008 financial crisis was caused by some bad banking. Bad banking will rear its ugly head again in the future from a different cause. Then again, the banks could repeat their exact actions down the road somehow.
Well it is nice that something is finally being done and all but it seems to be a bit of too little too late. This fine will do no real damage to the bank, and on top of that the people are not really gaining anything form it. The damage has already been and people are out of houses and out of work because of it. It is a real shame that nothing was done sooner but that is just the way things go no?
I'm glad this is resolved rather than just swept under the rug like a number of things. While it's true that this is a drop in the bucket compared to all the harm caused by it, we sadly have to take what we can get now otherwise it will be battled at lengths forever. Wish it wasn't a "take what you can get," but not much of a choice here.
The money doesn't mean jack because it doesn't deter any of the executives from doing the same thing again. I know some people think there should be prison sentences, but I'm not so sure there were really criminal activities. What the DOJ/SEC really need to do is to levy fines against the individuals. They would obviously be smaller fines, but the impact would be greater if personal wealth were at stake. These guys don't care one tenth as much when it's shareholders' money instead of theirs. Take money out of the pockets of the people who were bad actors. Then ban them from the industry (something the SEC used to do a lot more). That will be a much better deterrent than fining the banks themselves.
The bank's customers are not likely to see much if any of the money simply because the fines are no where close to what was lost. What happened was a harsh lesson for investors to learn but it is what it is. Chances are investors will be more careful but this kind of situation will likely happen again, remember the S&L crisis of the 1980's and 90's.
I'm just about as pro capitalism, free market as you can get. But I definitely think more people should have been punished for the collapse of the global economy that took place in 2008. There were definitely some corporatist, shady practices going on. And it's a shame so many people got away with ruining so many lives without paying the price for that. I don't agree with the Obama administration on much, but they may be in the right on this particular issue.
A fine is one thing, but it definitely doesn't send the same message to the executives as criminal charges against the people responsible for the illegal actions would. If the bank is willing to fork over $17,000,000,000, which happens to be a crap load of money, I think there are a few people who should be in jail.
The question is who are these fines going to. 17 billion dollars is a lot of money = $50 for every single person in the United States. I don't think that this money should go towards the government who will just waste it on something useless, instead I think that this money should go towards the people or the people who were scammed by this.
