James Rufus Koren writes:   Outraged senators castigated Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive John Stumpf this week for not seeking to take back some of the $100 million awarded to a retiring executive who oversaw the division at the heart of the company’s fake-accounts scandal.

But whenever Stumpf, 63, eventually departs from his post atop the San Francisco banking giant, he could walk away with far more — nearly $195 million in cash, stock and other compensation, a review of the bank’s regulatory filings show.

While it’s almost certain Stumpf will keep the vast majority of that sum given the bank’s compensation policy, both he and Carrie Tolstedt, the retiring executive who headed the bank’s retail operations, could lose tens of millions of dollars over the still-unfolding scandal.

The bank has agreed to pay $185 million to federal regulators and the Los Angeles city attorney’s office over the creation of as many as 2 million fake accounts, a practice regulators say was encouraged by a demanding and poorly supervised sales culture. But trouble for the bank has continued to grow since the settlement was announced.

Federal prosecutors are investigating the bank to see whether criminal charges should be filed, while senators have called for the Labor Department to investigate possible labor law violations. And there’s a growing chorus of investors, corporate governance experts and others calling for Wells Fargo to cut or cancel executives’ pay over the scandal.

At a Senate Banking Committee hearing last week, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said that the bank would be committing “malpractice from the standpoint of just public relations” if it does not dock executives’ pay. Analysts who follow the bank expect that means both Stumpf and Tolstedt will lose some compensation.

We wonder whether this relatively tame assessment can really inhibit bad bank behavior.  Despite Elizabeth Warrne’s wanrings to the Democratic Presidential nominee.  Should she win in November, it is unlikely that she will go after bankers who have supported hr campaign and also helped she and her husband accumulate $250 million of their own money.

When the LIbor scandal broke in 2008, Ina Drew of the London office of JPMorgan Chase was called into the office of the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon, according to reliable sources.   It is reliably reported that Dimon said he should take the fall, but could not.  She was going.  With 25 million dollars.

Now, as Wells Fargo faces fines for encouraging banking underlings to set up fake accounts for clients, another woman is taking the fall.  Fortune’s Stephen Gandel reported that Carrie Tolstedt, who led the community banking division where the fraudulent accounts were allegedly opened, was leaving the bank with 124.6 milliion dollars. While the bank called her departure a “personal decision to retire,” many have demanded a substantial “clawback” on Tolstedt’s back pay.

Two women walk with a lot of money, and without squealing.  Is this a woman’s job at the top of banking?

At this year’s analyst classes in the City of London last week, one thing stood out: the Italians. By our estimation around 14% of the analysts hired into investment banks this year come from Italy. One Goldman Sachs Managing Director, himself an Italian (admittedly), thinks he knows why.

He says Italians make good bankers for a variety of reasons but most of all because, they lack alternatives.  “The Italian economy has barely grown in the last 25 years,” he points out, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There’s no Italian tech industry and at the institutional level most finance activity happens out of London. At the same time, there are very few industrial opportunities, so top Italian talent gravitates to London.”

Together with the Indians and the Chinese, he argues that the Italians are the hardest working bankers in the City. Firstly, they’re motivated by the lack of alternatives (“People are very committed to perform once they get a job.”) Secondly, even moderate success in banking can deliver “transformational wealth” when it’s taken back home.

“Young Italians working in Italy are some of the worst paid in Europe,” he points out. “The average gross salary in Italy is €27.4k a year and when you graduate from university, your best bet as a starting salary in an Italian job is around €1.5k a month.”  By comparison, 25 year-olds in the City of London can expect to earn £100k (€119k) plus.

Motivation-by-fear isn’t the only thing driving young Italians to success in London though. The Goldman MD says it helps too that Italy’s government bond market is one of Europe’s largest: “Italians are usually very good in rates.” Italians are also naturally gregarious and commercial, which helps in sales. And then there’s Bocconi, which regularly ranks towards the top of the league tables for masters courses and universities that banks hire from.

Banks have been accused of doing a lot of nasty things, but what Wells Fargo was accused of Thursday is particularly offensive.

Federal regulators said Wells Fargo employees trying to hit sales targets and earn bonuses opened bank and credit card accounts in customers’ names without their consent, resulting in some customers being charged fees.

Employees opened more than 2 million accounts that may not have been authorized, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which fined the bank $100 million, the largest penalty it ever has levied.

Wells Fargo also will pay a $35 million fine to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million to the city and county of Los Angeles, which sued the bank last year.

How does the wealth accumulation of Hillary Clinton (and her husband) and Donald Trump help us understand this election in the US?

Mr. Trump is a businessman.  It is unclear how much he is worth.  He can always argue that was wealth he accumulated as a businessman was done in a businesslike fashion.  He is a political outsider, and this is why he causes the entrenched system so many problems.

Mrs. Clinton and her husband have accumulated around $250,000,000 since Mr. Clinton left office.  No other post-president in the history of the United States has accumulated this amount of wealth.  This accumulation has occurred on the back of the Presidency.  This money is completely tied to politics.  For this reason reporter Glenn Greenwald writes that examining the source of the wealth and what is expected in return is relevant to Mrs. Clinton’s run for the office of President.

Two small samples f favors given out are relevant.  Goldman Sachs’ head Llloyd Blankenfein, created a hedge fund for Mrs. Clinton’s son-in-law and supplied him with clients.  The son-in-law bet foolishly on Greek debt and lost a great deal of money.  Goldman Sachs does not appear to care, because they have an inside track to the woman who would be America’s next President.

Trump gave $5000 to Mrs. Clinton when she was an aspiring Senator from New York.  When asked why, he said he wanted her to come with her husband to his wedding.  DId he get what he wanted?  Yes.  The Clintons came to the wedding.

Should banks be treated as utilities?  Matt Levine comments:   “A lot of bankers think this is bad (Jamie Dimon: “There is nothing about banking that remotely resembles a utility”), while a lot of regulators and bank critics think it is good (Neel Kashkari: “Turn large banks into public utilities by forcing them to hold so much capital that they virtually can’t fail”). But what you see less of — not none — is calls for banks to be true utilities, meaning not only that they’re safe and boring and that their returns are capped, but also that their returns are more or less guaranteed. After all, the phrase “competitive utilities” is a bit of a paradox; the reason your gas company’s prices are capped is that it’s the only gas company in town, and if the rates weren’t regulated it could charge as much as it wanted.

Certainly a bank’s expectation that it can earn 25% on money held leads to Libor and other high risk and even illegal operations.

It may be difficult for people who are not in the US to understand how corrupt Hillary Clinton and her husband seem to the American people.  The latest frouhaha concerns almost 20 million dollars from an online University that Mrs. Clinton promoted at the State Department.

The guest list for a private State Department dinner on higher- education policy was taking shape when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a suggestion.

In addition to recommending invitations for leaders from a community college and a church-funded institution, Clinton wanted a representative from a for-profit college company called Laureate International Universities, which, she explained in an email to her chief of staff that was released last year, was “the fastest growing college network in the world.”

There was another reason Clinton favored setting a seat aside for Laureate at the August 2009 event: The company was started by a businessman, Doug Becker, “who Bill likes a lot,” the secretary wrote, referring to her husband, the former president.

Nine months later, Laureate signed Bill Clinton to a lucrative deal as a consultant and “honorary chancellor,” paying him $17.6 million over five years until the contract ended in 2015 as Hillary Clinton launched her campaign for president.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), there have been only seven new bank charters since 2010. By way of comparison, there were 175 new banks (or “de novos,” as they are called in the industry) in 2007 alone. Indeed, from 1997 to 2007, the United States averaged 159 new banks a year.

To be sure, the number of banks has been falling for decades. Before the late 1970s, banks were prohibited from operating branches in most states, which inflated the number of unique banks in the country. States gradually did away with these unit banking laws in the 1970s and 1980s, a process that culminated on a national level with the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994. The total number of banks has fallen by about 9,000 since the mid-1980s, as weaker banks merged with stronger ones. (See chart below.) But there was always a steady influx of new banks to replace some of those lost – until now..

In late 2013, the Bank of Bird-in-Hand opened its doors in Pennsylvania’s Amish country. Even in normal times, a bank featuring a drive-through window built for a horse and buggy would have drawn curious onlookers. But the Bank of Bird-in-Hand made headlines for another reason: It was the first newly chartered bank anywhere in the United States in three years.

The question is: should we restore the basic notion of a bank: keep people’s money safely, lend to the community and make a reasonable profit?

The G-20 meets in China. This is a uniquely high-profile occasion for China to illustrate that it is indispensable to an effective, progressive global governance system. In a letter posted online in December 2015, President Xi Jinping articulated his view of the 2016 summit’s themes and key agenda items, highlighting the need for “an action-oriented G20.” Managing the fallout from Brexit will inevitably consume a portion of leaders’ attention in Hangzhou. But there are several other important areas in which positive input and decisive actions from China could yield meaningful results. At the “broad” end of the spectrum is the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. China has emphasized its commitment to the 2030 Agenda, asserting that G-20 members should lead its implementation. In late May, Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged that development be given priority at the Hangzhou summit, echoing Xi’s earlier call for the G-20 to “take its unique advantage to provide a package of solutions to real problems.” The G-20’s agreement on an action plan for implementing the 2030 Agenda—especially one that emphasizes infrastructure investment—would be a big win for China, demonstrating its ability to marshal support for a long-term strategic plan. It would also help set the G-20’s direction for the next decade-and-a-half and ensure that China holds a spot at the helm.

There is no shortage of global challenges for which China can assume greater responsibility in driving consensus and progress. Other priority areas include global anti-corruption, tax evasion, cybersecurity, and the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe. Either through building support around a balanced multilateral strategy, offering singular commitments, or some combination of the two, China can further establish its role as a leader of the G-20 and a devoted member of the international community.