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Protest with #OWS Alternative Banking Group

I’m writing to invite you to a protest against mega-bank HSBC at noon on Valentine’s Day (Thursday) starting on the steps of the New York Public Library at 42nd and 5th. Details are here but it’s the big green box on the map on the Fifth Avenue side:

Why are we protesting?

Like you, I’m sure, I’d like nothing more than to stop worrying about shit that goes on in our country’s banks.

We have better things to do with out time than to get annoyed over enormous bonuses being given to idiots for their repeated failures. We’re frankly exhausted from the outrage.

I mean, the average person doesn’t have a job where they get an $11 million bonus instead of a $22 million dollar bonus when they royally screw up. Outside the surreal realm of international banking, the normal response to screw-ups on that level is to get fired.

You might expect a company that has been caught criminally screwing minorities out of fair contracts might be at risk of being closed down, but in this day and age you’d know that big banks, or TIBACO (too interconnected, big, and complex to oversee) institutions, as we in Alt Banking like to call them, are immune to such action.

There’s a clear evolving standard of treatment in the banking sector when it comes to criminal activity:

• the powers that be (SEC, DOJ, etc.) make a huge production over the severity of the fine,
• which is large in dollar amounts but
• usually represents about 10% of the overall profit the given banks made during their exploit.
• Nobody ever goes to jail, and
• the shareholders pay the fine, not the perpetrators.
• The perps get somewhat diminished bonuses. At worst.

The bottomline: we have an entire class of citizens that are immune to the laws because they are considered too important to our financial stability.

But why HSBC?

HSBC is a perfect example of this. An outrageous example.

HSBC didn’t get a bailout in 2008 like many other banks, even though they were ranked #2 in subprime mortgage lending. But that’s not because they didn’t lose money – in fact they lost $6 billion but somehow kept afloat.

And now we know why.

Namely, they were money-laundering, earning asstons by  facilitating drugs and terrorism. This was blood money, make no mistake, and it went directly into the pockets of HSBC bankers in the form of bonuses.

When this years-long criminal mafia activity was discovered, nothing much happened beyond a fine, as per usual. Well, to be honest, they were fined $1.9 billion dollars, which is a lot of money, but is only 5 weeks of earnings for the mammoth institution – depending on the way you look at it, HSBC is the 2nd largest bank in the world.

Too big to jail

And that’s when “Too big to fail” became “Too big to jail.” Even the New York Times was outraged. From their editorial page:

Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system. They also have not charged any top HSBC banker in the case, though it boggles the mind that a bank could launder money as HSBC did without anyone in a position of authority making culpable decisions.

Clearly, the government has bought into the notion that too big to fail is too big to jail. When prosecutors choose not to prosecute to the full extent of the law in a case as egregious as this, the law itself is diminished. The deterrence that comes from the threat of criminal prosecution is weakened, if not lost.

National Threat

You may recall that there was an extensive FBI investigation of OWS before Zuccotti Park was even occupied.

Ironic? As the Village Voice said, “apparently non-violent demonstration against corrupt banking is subject to more criminal scrutiny than actual corrupt banking.”

Question for you: which is the bigger national security threat, OWS or HSBC?

We demand

HSBC needs its license revoked, and there need to be prosecutions. Those who are guilty need to be punished or else we have an official invitation to criminal acts by bankers. We simply can’t live in a country which rewards this kind of behavior.

Mind you, this isn’t just about HSBC. This is about all the megabanks. Citi or BoA are exempt from prosecution, too. Our message needs to be “break up the megabanks”.

I’ll end with what Matt Taibbi had to say about the HSBC settlement:

On the other hand, if you are an important person, and you work for a big international bank, you won’t be prosecuted even if you launder nine billion dollars. Even if you actively collude with the people at the very top of the international narcotics trade, your punishment will be far smaller than that of the person at the very bottom of the world drug pyramid. You will be treated with more deference and sympathy than a junkie passing out on a subway car in Manhattan (using two seats of a subway car is a common prosecutable offense in this city). An international drug trafficker is a criminal and usually a murderer; the drug addict walking the street is one of his victims. But thanks to Breuer, we’re now in the business, officially, of jailing the victims and enabling the criminals.

Join us on Valentine’s Day at noon on the steps of the New York Public Library and help us Occupy HSBC. Please redistribute widely!