Taking Stock: Why Bankers Still Aren't Chastened [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/why-recent-arrests-of-bankers-are-merely-publicity-coups-a-930356.html



Bankers have gone from being global elites to universally despised villains. Recent headlines suggest authorities are finally cracking down on illicit practices -- but the truth is very different.

Taking Stock: Why Bankers Still Aren't Chastened
By Martin Hesse and Anne Seith
October 31, 2013 – 01:12 PM

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But it is no coincidence that these kinds of penalties never seem to shake the foundations of the financial world: The banks can easily afford them. Deutsche Bank, for instance, has achieved an annual net profit of some €13.6 billion since 2009. "A criminal prosecution of the largest financial institutions to the point of revoking their banking licenses is impossible, because the banks involved are too economically important for their existence to be called into question," says Harald Hau, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Geneva.

The six largest US banks have also made fat profits since the outbreak of the financial crisis. Although they had to pay $103 billion to cover litigation cost, JPMorgan and the others have earned $234 billion since the crisis began. JPMorgan alone has made over $80 billion since its competitor, Lehman Brothers, went bankrupt in the fall of 2008.

Not surprisingly, JPMorgan chief Dimon was brimming with bravado when he recently put in an appearance at the annual conference of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the global association of financial institutions, in Washington, DC. The silver-haired banker sat with his feet planted wide apart during a panel discussion and gave his signature smug smile.

Are the scandals hurting his bank? "Our clients are very happy with us," Dimon said dryly. Isn't the financial world far too complicated? "Airplanes are complicated; computers are complicated," Dimon fired back, noting that even if an airplane crashes now and then, they had nevertheless done a great deal of good. "The perception that people hate banks, I can't stop that," he added. It sounded like indifference.