Bank robbers out in the open
Uncanny similarities exist between the mafia and many of the most important American bankers of the past decade, according to a US law don
Who's robbing banks now?
Willie Sutton, infamous as a bank robber, gained fame for his supposed response when he was asked why he robbed banks: "Because that's where the money is." *
A law professor from Utah has now turned the question round and asks in these modern times: "What is a bank robber?" Christopher Peterson answers his own question by asserting: "There are some profound organisational similarities between organised crime and the behaviour of many of the most important American bankers in the past 10 years."
His short paper, "What is a bank robber?", has recently been published by the highly respected Kirwan Institute of Ohio State University.
Peterson notes that newspaper columnists and bloggers, as well as ordinary Americans, describe bankers responsible for the financial crisis as "crooks", "criminals" and "Wall Street gangsters". He disappoints by not mentioning my favourite word "banksters", coined in the 1930s by Catholic priest Charles Coughlin and resuscitated by Liaquat Ahamed in his 2009 book, The Lords of Finance.
The terms of abuse are not taken seriously in academic or mainstream political circles, he says. "Perhaps there is more to these claims than initially meets the eye," he says, clearly determined to make his name with unholy thoughts of banksters.
He presents Italian-American mafia families as prototypical US gangsters. "Mafia organisational structure relied on insulating leadership positions from government prosecution through the use of expendable soldiers. Soldiers were expected to suffer through periodic arrests, incarceration, and violence associated with the illegal acts on which these criminal enterprises depended. But because the compensation for soldiers was high relative to their other employment prospects, crime families could maintain adequate staffing in the soldier class."