Jake's View | Public suffers most from big bank fines
US failure to prosecute banks for alleged crimes, but instead impose large fines, punishes the general public while failing to serve justice
JP Morgan Chase's record US$13 billion deal to end US probes of its mortgage bond sales would free America's largest bank from mounting civil disputes with the government while leaving a criminal inquiry unresolved.
Troubled publisher Conrad Black, mired in dubious American court proceedings, once famously railed against "frenzied prosecutors … and media tricoteuses, none of whom have any more interest in justice than a tomcat has in a marriage licence".
I think he has a point. Once again, a big question of law has been left unsettled in favour of a big sum of money, which the US Department of Justice will flaunt as a confession of criminal activity by a bank that has been convicted of nothing and may well be innocent of any crime. It is only the appearance of justice that these prosecutors want.
After endless legal harassment, the banks will give in and pay billions.
There was supposedly no waiver from criminal prosecution but we have this only from "a person familiar with the talks", which is weasel-speech for one of the prosecutors. They have been getting trouble from the media tricoteuses recently for never bringing a real prosecution and, as they always play up to the tricoteuses, this is their way of fending it off.