We know it, you know it – not only is Wall Street and the City of London full of crooks but they never really even attempted to clean up their acts after the financial crisis of 2007/8.
This has now been confirmed by a well placed and highly respected Columbia University professor.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, a leading economist of international standing, said as much, and more, by video-link to to a distinguished gathering of stunned bankers and financial professionals in a meeting held earlier this month in the Philadelphia Federal Reserve building.
Sachs claimed that corruption, insider trading and criminal behavior are rampant on a vast scale on Wall Street today as financiers and politicians continue to play the same greedy games that brought us to the brink of global financial meltdown five years ago.
, twice named as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, holds “a docile president, a docile White House and a docile regulatory system” responsible for the excesses of the banksters.
The distinguished academic went on to claim that “what has been revealed, in my view, is prima facie criminal behavior”, “It’s financial fraud on a very large extent.”
Professor Sachs, an advisor to the World Bank and IMF added: “there’s also a tremendous amount of insider trading — you can even watch when you are living in New York how that works.”
Extending his scathing remarks to the world of politics Sacks confirmed what most astute people on both sides of “the pond” should already know, that “we have a corrupt politics to the core, I am afraid to say, and . . . both parties are up to their neck in this.”
The professor described an environment of Wall Street buying off politicians with their huge campaign contributions citing the 2012 election cycle, where political contributions by the securities and investment sector totaled some $271.5 million, compared with “just” $176 million in 2008.
Very much a case of he who pays the piper calling the tune!
Sachs referring to Wall Street banksters, financiers and their hired political “help” claimed that they are out to make billions of dollars, and believe nothing should stop them from doing that. “They have no responsibility to pay taxes; they have no responsibility to their clients; they have no responsibility to people, to counterparties in transactions,” he said. “They are tough, greedy, aggressive and feel absolutely out of control in a quite literal sense, and they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent.”
These being the same financial institutions that, amongst other nefarious acts, have engaged in product mis-selling, drug money laundering, interest rate rigging, commodity market manipulation and outright fraud – effectively crime syndicates.
Regular visitors to this site will know that the good professor’s comments are every bit as applicable to the corrupt City of London/Westminster as they are to Wall Street/Washington.
Professor Sach’s contribution may be heard here:
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Professor Sachs is of course correct that the banking industry has been taken over essentially by gangsters.
But this often leads to a false conclusion. That the concept of a banking system is in itself a fraud when without one economic development would never have taken place.
By way of making a parallel. Some car repairers are cheats but that does not mean that the concept of repairing a car is in itself a fraud. Cars can be repaired and often are.
What has gone wrong is that regulation by society of banking – applied albeit not perfectly to other areas of life – has simply broken down in that industry’s case because of the corrupt short-term interests of politicians.
Mike is absolutely right. Society needs banking although fractional reserve banking and the issue of who should be empowered to create money needs looking at. Yes things have got bad because those in charge – bankers, regulators and politicians are basically criminals. Banking cartels are crime syndicates.
Sp. “Sacks”.