Via Michael Roberts “Here we go again - the unending story of banking folk.” Australian bank Westpac has been fined A$1.3bn for money laundering the dubious money of 284 clients in 19m transactions worth A$11bn (yes, billion) - including clients engaged in child trafficking! But no arrests have been made of executives. Just a fine. "It’s huge, it’s the largest fine in history, it’s an eye watering number but it’s already pretty much been expected by the market" he said. "A few hundred mill difference in the scheme of a bank with a market cap of $60 billion that generates billions of profit annually, it doesn’t really have much of an impact with the valuation we put on the bank." Related Regulation does not work
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51