This article was written by Claire Bernish and originally published at The Free Thought Project.
Editor’s Comment: If this would ever take hold in the U.S., then maybe we could get somewhere. Even now, Europe remains on the verge of breaking down, and many of the worst vulnerabilities for Spain, Italy, Ireland, Greece and other nations at risk of default were created by the central bankers. Unwinding the ball of yarn will not be easy, and institutional excuses will likely be dished out like candy. Yet, putting a foot down and sending the message may remind bankers in countries everywhere to think twice before swindling their populations. Iceland did it, and much of their financial problems of entanglement and institutional risk were sorted out.
The signal at home in America remains: you are above the law, a god over the little people, and too smart and too well-connected to ever be held into account. That signal is long overdue for a change… from Goldman Sachs on down through every major megabank. Otherwise, we are playing with fire, and it can all too easily happen again.
Spain Sets Massive Precedent — Charges Its Central Bankers in Court
by Claire Bernish
First, Iceland, and now Spain has taken on the Big Bankers responsible for financial calamity, as the country’s highest national court charged the former head of Spain’s central bank, a market regulator, and five other banking officials over a failed bank leading to the loss of millions of euros for smaller investors.
This, of course, markedly departs from the mammoth taxpayer giveaway — commonly referred to as the bailout — approved by the U.S. government ostensibly to “save” the Big Banks and, albeit unstated, allow the enormous institutions to continue bilking customers without the slightest fear of penalty.
Errant bankers and financiers, it would seem, typically manage to either evade actually being charged, or escape hefty fines and time behind bars.
Spain’s Supreme Court last year ruled “serious inaccuracies” in information about the listing led investors to back Bankia in error, thus the bank has since paid out millions of euros in compensation.
But Spanish authorities could not abide the telling findings of a years-long investigation into the failed listing, as Wolf Street explains,
As part of the epic, multi-year criminal investigation into the doomed IPO of Spain’s frankenbank Bankia – which had been assembled from the festering corpses of seven already defunct saving banks – Spain’s national court called to testify six current and former directors of the Bank of Spain, including its former governor, Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, and its former deputy governor (and current head of the Bank of International Settlements’ Financial Stability Institute), Fernando Restoy. It also summoned for questioning Julio Segura, the former president of Spain’s financial markets regulator, the CNMV [National Securities Market Commission] (the Spanish equivalent of the SEC in the US).
The six central bankers and one financial regulator stand accused of authorizing the public launch of Bankia in 2011 despite repeated warnings from the Bank of Spain’s own team of inspectors that the banking group was ‘unviable.’
As AFP reports, “The National Court validated conclusions made by prosecutors who concluded that when ‘an unviable entity has been listed on the stock market, its administrators or auditor should not shoulder all the responsibility.’”
Specifics of the charges have not yet been made apparent, but as The Economist reports:
The court is questioning why they allowed Bankia to sell shares in an initial public offering in 2011, less than a year before Bankia’s portfolio of bad mortgage loans forced the government to seize control of it. It said there was evidence the regulators had ‘full and thorough knowledge’ of Bankia’s plight. After its nationalisation, it went on to report a €19.2bn ($24.7bn) loss for 2012, the largest in Spanish corporate history.
Internal emails and documents played a crucial role in ultimately bringing the central banking officials to task for the failure of Bankia — inspectors bringing issues to the attention of superiors were allegedly ignored. One email cited by The Economist came from an inspector who warned Bankia was “a money-losing machine,” for which an IPO would not solve.
Another report, deemed “devastating by the court,” saw an inspector advise Bankia to seek a private buyer rather than proceed with the listing.
An inquiry into “the participation of other players, such as officials in the central bank,” was also urged by the National Court.
As The Economist points out, Spanish judges are generally reluctant to sentence first-time financial criminals to prison; though five Novacaixagalicia executives had five-year suspended sentences — levied for embezzlement in 2015 — abruptly enforced in January.
Meanwhile, taxpayers in the United States have yet to see Big Bankers criminally responsible for the financial ruin of so many Americans brought to any semblance of justice for their wrongdoing.
This article was written by Claire Bernish and originally published at The Free Thought Project.
Meanwhile, taxpayers in the United States have yet to see Big Bankers criminally responsible for the financial ruin of so many Americans brought to any semblance of justice for their wrongdoing.
American Revolutionary Cry: “No Taxation without Representation!”
INDICT. CONVICT. EXECUTE !!! 🙂
AGREED 100%
You have all the representation you are going to get, though it’s very apparent that it’s worthless and actually works with those that are robbing you. And nothing is gong to change with the hundreds of seats that have been taken over by the new ‘representatives’, including the guy that just installed a company of thieves to surround himself with at the top.
I know, give him a chance. He’s such a shrewd businessman. I guess declaring bankruptcy is shrewd if you actually know that the people that you are protecting yourself from in that action will just turn around and give all the money that you want right afterward. I don’t think it works that way in the real world. You go bankrupt with other people’s money you go find a real job and work that gambling debt off.
I’m surprised they went after actual people to charge in Spain. The robbers surely didn’t think they would. But that’s what they should do here. Here they sit the criminals in front of the people that they have already paid off to ask them questions, accept their answers, the company takes blame and then the fine imposed is one tenth of what they can assume that stole. That’s what needs to be changed here along with everything else. I don’t see that happening in the next four years, eight years, or ten years. The little people are out of the loop, and the bills for their commercial free (lol) cable service will keep going up along with everything else that they consume.
so what if a few million people lose all their money……it WAS a victimless crime……right?…..nobody din do nuffin….you can’t very well INDICT the bankers, because indictments for CONgressmen would be right behind them, since they COLLUDED with eachother.
buttcrackofdoom,
SOLUTION= HANG-EM ALL !!
i have a feeling all you would have to hang is ONE…..then the rest fall in line….put a few hundred-thousand citizens guarding the body for a few weeks, and all our problems will be solved.
Watched Spain being invaded last night on a foreign news station. African Muslims were storming the border station and giving the jihadi sign, one finger pointed up to Allah. If you think they are screwed over there, I would like to remind you that historically 70% of them end up here. Once they get that EU passport it becomes much easier to travel.
not just spain invaded by savages (violent illegal immigrants), the whole europe is falling.
I blame tony blair who started it!
Angela Merkel still allowing it to continue
Greenspan now admits Ron Paul was right all along about the gold standard. So are we to just nod our heads about his tenure at the FED? Creation of the Federal Reserve Act was a step away from the Constitution, the play the bankers started in 2008 is a giant leap. It is plain now that the constraints inherent in sound money are what is needed. In that offensive banker wars, fought with credit making the future-born responsible, simply is not possible. It will take discipline that I fear will not be forthcoming until we taste what the elite bankers are promulgating for us, thus lessening our chances of maintaining freedom. Cashless with stolen pensions, homes and jobs. The useless eater they consider we are, because they forced us that way. Golden bars are too good for them, they only deserve iron bars or hemp. They grabbed our necks in Camelot, now they squeeze. We must now squeeze a few necks or loose full control. It is time for the reset button, first one to it, wins.
The best quote from Greenspan, in my opinion, was when I believe he was asked about Social Security, not that it matters, but he generally said the US would have no problem paying people all the dollars that they were promised to get, but he just couldn’t in the future guarantee what those dollars would be worth. What? That’s funny, I don’t care what you say.
Well they would always be worth something, if they just made them thinner and softer right. Not too much dye either.
i’m 62….and i aint laughing.
Same here.
Me neither
When Chews get punished for their sins against the not chews, chews pull some kind of a vengeful retaliation, like bringing in a herd of wild beasts from Africa to rape and pillage.
But it is ok cause they are God’s chosen, or maybe not. Even the very idea that God would choose this band of thieves, liars, and sexual perverts, as his special people, is rediculous. They are not God’s chosen. They are Satan’s. Wake up. Bankers are nothing but the same ethnic band of liars, Christ condemned because of their greed. They have not changed. The chews monopolize banking, and make obscene profits from compound interest, insider trading, and scams.
__
B, your ethnic hatred, aka racism, toward Jews is sinful.
Please don’t be that way.
You are better than that.
Free Slave, you will be not free until you throw off your indoctrination and brainwashing. It seems that you’re still just a regular slave at this point. If you figure that out, and figure out who your owners are, you know, the ones you are not allowed to criticize and who now Trump is telling you can never criticize, the ones he has surrounded himself with, then you will be closer to being actually free. In mind only though. B from CA is closer to the truth than most on this site. And he probably likes me for saying so right up until I say this. Trump is one of them. And I think in all ways. That’s why things are not going to change for the better under him no matter what he says that he is going to do make America great again. Another meaningless catch phrase.
Trump is a Presbyterian. Trump said: “Well, I do all the time. I think it’s terrible. I think it’s horrible. Whether it’s anti-Semitism or racism or any — anything you wanna think about having to do with the divide. Anti-Semitism is, likewise, it’s just terrible.:
I doubt that Trump is a Presbyterian. Whatever that is. Is that chewish? Just for how many times that he said that “He would do anything for Israel”, you would have to believe that he is one of them. I suppose his father was a Presbyterian too. His daughter isn’t.
If you want to be politically correct and keep the blinders on to all the tools that they use against you through Cultural Marxism and the teachings from the think tanks like the Frankfurt school then you will never be free. You will be a slave until you and everyone that looks like you is destroyed. You will be more like the women in Europe who are welcoming all the ‘rapeugees’ only to be raped and murdered because of their brainwashed unrealistic beliefs in equality. Those rapeugees will never be like them not matter how much that they think that they are. What’s the story of the snake that needed to cross the river. Yeah, it’s like that.
things are ALREADY changing for the better….THANKS to trump. don’t forget the trump rallies on the 26th…this saturday. he needs to see your support.
Yup Spain is in trouble, and incase you’ve been asleep for 10 years, so in most of Europe. These Islamic “shock troops” will eat away at Socialist Europe like termites until the social structure crumbles, then Russia will come in and “save the day”.
The fact that Generals like Mike Flynn say that it is Iran and Russia ultimately behind the Muzzie Immigrant invasion is being ignored.
“Bankers” isn’t that code for the Juice?
About time someone arrested gangster bankers!
A rope
A banker
A lamppost
Streetlight art. Some assembly required.
Good ONE !! LOL
Just make sure it isn’t an Intellistreet lamppost. It can take pictures and moniter conversations on the street. The inventors of all this privacy invasion can go f themselves.
Iceland took out some banker frauds and their economy turned around.
The last world leader that tried to defy the bankers was JFK with the treasury note. You can see what happened to him , his brother, his son, and his sons wife? The world leader who tried to defy the world bankers before JFK. Was Adolf Hitler. You can see what happened to him and his people. Dresden? Jesus was maybe the first that tried to whip them out of the temple. And we all know what happened to him . And all his followers. Charles Lindbergh tried to tell us , and his infant son was killed .But it’s all just a coincidence ? There couldn’t be a group of people that evil? It’s all a big lie.? John 8:44, Rev. 3:9, Rev. 2:9. Matthew 13:24. The next Mesiahs robe will be red with blood. The blood of the Tares .
O and Iceland and Spain has gone against the international bankers . And we will soon see them butchered?