Banks: Paragons of Virtue

Far from it as we know. But it's even worse than I thought. Here are three examples.

• Simon Johnson reports on work done by two academics, Bhagat and Bolton. They studied the executive compensation of 14 TBTF institutions from 2000 to 2008. The results are not pretty. A key finding - “30 times more likely to be involved in a sell trade compared to an open market buy trade” of their own bank’s stock - demonstrates that these CEOs could care less about the long term investor or really about anything but their own greed.

• Louise Story reports on banks essentially stealing money through something called "early-payment default settlements". These settlements came about when banks recognized - or acknowledged - that some of the mortgages they packaged were bad from day 1. They then went back to the issuer who paid the banks a portion of the money they had originally received upon the sale of the mortgage. What did the bank do with this 'refund'? Kept it, of course. Should they have given some of the money to the people who might the mortgage bonds?

• The third example is not about a bank. It's from the Chamber of Commerce. ThinkProgress reports that the Chamber has embarked on a program whereby they create false situations which they try to use to smear their opponents. Here's what ThinkProgress gives as an example:
  

"According to one document prepared by Team Themis, the campaign included an entrapment project. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” to give to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then to subsequently expose the document as a fake to undermine the credibility of the Chamber’s opponents."