Recently, the government found out about this big drug laundering enterprise. They’d laundered $9 billion over the last decade. So the feds got their paramilitary unit together, busted down the doors, and arrested everyone. Now they are all rotting in jail—for years. In fact, some of them will never get out.
I’m kidding, of course.
Did you see the figure: $9 billion? If they had laundered $9,000, then that probably would have happened. Even if it had been $9 million, it might have happened. But $9 billion? That’s real money! And therefore, that’s real power. And therefore: nothing.
The drug laundering company was British banking giant HSBC. And they weren’t just laundering for drug cartels; they were also laundering for terrorists. We know all of this because the Justice Department is very pleased with how they handled this case. Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer proudly announced that HSBC is going to pay a record (not adjusted for inflation) $1.92 billion dollars. For the record, this is equivalent to 5 weeks of profits for the firm. In other words: big fucking deal.
But there’s more. Lest you think that the HSBC executives are getting off scott free: no, no, no! For the next five years, these executives are going to have part of their bonuses held back. Not forfeited, mind you: deferred. It is not clear whether they will be paid interest on this money or not. My guess is that they will get the interest. Anything else would be unjust!
Matt Taibbi has a great article about all of this, Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke. In it, he compares the treatment of rich drug law breakers (HSBC executives) to poor drug law breakers (drug users). For example, in 2010, the government made almost as much from forfeiture (mostly drug or alleged drug cases) than they got in this HSBC settlement.
Taibbi is clearly angry as we all should be:
How about all of it? How about every last dollar the bank has made since it started its illegal activity? How about you dive into every bank account of every single executive involved in this mess and take every last bonus dollar they’ve ever earned? Then take their houses, their cars, the paintings they bought at Sotheby’s auctions, the clothes in their closets, the loose change in the jars on their kitchen counters, every last freaking thing. Take it all and don’t think twice. And then throw them in jail.
Sound harsh? It does, doesn’t it? The only problem is, that’s exactly what the government does just about every day to ordinary people involved in ordinary drug cases.
In case you haven’t been paying attention these last, I don’t know, 225 years of the United States of America, we don’t have “equal justice for all.” We have something akin to a two tier “justice” system: one for the wealthy were almost no amount of misbehavior is punished; and one for the poor where little or nothing is required for the harshest imaginable punishment.
And the la-hand of the Freeeeee!
And the hoooome, of thhhhhe, braaaave!
Afterword
Here is a bit from an interview of Matt Taibbi on Eliot Spitzer’s Viewpoint:
Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks is about as angry as I’ve ever seen him. Too big to jail:
Update (16 December 2012 11:16)
I fixed the amount of the settlement from $1.3 to $1.92 billion. I also fixed how this relates to forfeiture amounts.