Immunity for business bandits.

Politicians have usually been immune to prosecution for the crimes they commit but now business chiefs have been added to the list. The sub prime crisis was caused by large banks selling toxic mortgages to gullible people while secretly hedging against them. When the market collapsed banks were rescued by governments because " they were too big to fail " and the managers continued to receive massive bonuses. One of the reasons that the economy in Europe continues to ail is because banks are using the money given to them by governments to clear their own books instead of lending to businesses. In May JP Morgan Chase announced a loss of $2 billion on trades in its London branch where a trader, Bruno Iksil, known as The Whale, had been taking huge positions on corporate credit default swaps. He and the head of the chief investment office, Ina Drew have resigned but JP Morgan Chief Jamie Dimon just shrugged off the loss saying that the bank will still make a profit. He did, however, announce that he will forego his pension for this year. What a sacrifice! Indeed he has quite brazenly continued to argue for reduced regulations on banks since then. Today we learn that the loss could be anything between $6-9 billion. However, trading losses are for shareholders to worry about but in the last couple of days Barclays Bank in Britain has been fined 290 million pounds for fixing the London Inter Bank Offered Rate or LIBOR which is the rate at which banks lend to each other. This is also used to calculate mortgage costs for ordinary people and for companies to borrow from banks. Criminal investigations are going on against 20 banks in various countries but Barclays CEO, Bob Diamond has refused to resign. In 2001, the European Commission fined 8 drug companies a total of 855.2 million Euros for fixing the price of vitamins with Hoffman-La Roche fined 462 million and BASF 296 million. In 2008, LG Display Co, Chungwha Picture Tubes and Sharp Corp agreed to pay $585 million for fixing the price of liquid display panels in the US. In 2004, 4 executives of German chip maker, Infineon received reduced sentences of 4-6 months in prison in the US and were fined $250,000 each after agreeing to cooperate with authorities. Recently we saw Rupert Murdoch and his son James suffer a complete loss of memory in front of the Leveson inquiry into the phone hacking scandal which has been making headlines in Britain. Previous editor of the News of the World, Rebekah Brooks was visibly angry when arrested for perverting the course of justice. Seems that the immunity of politicians has been passed on to business chiefs probably because they pay for election expenses and effectively buy politicians. Perhaps a complete collapse will focus minds and get the crooks into jail.