Zephyr Teachout, who teaches law at Fordham University, has identified anti-corruption as part of the US Constitution. THE ANTI-CORRUPTION PRINCIPLE She is expanding her arguments in a book to be published by the Harvard University Press. An article by Lawrence Lessig traces Senator John McCain’s positions on this matter. Definition of Corruption in the US
The Supreme Court case can be found on the SCOTUS blog. http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/mccutcheon-v-federal-election-commission/
W-T-W.org will present a series of articles, audios and videos on this subject for the next two months. This short piece gives a quick overview of the difference between the two main websites currently devoted to crowdfunding. Next week, we will present a discussion with two professors at the Jerusalem School of Business who had access to the records of 20,000 successful Kickstarter campaigns. Kickstarter versus Indiegogo
Our correspondent Andreas Frank (frank-cs.org) writes:
The Royal Bank of Scotland is paying $100 million in fines to New York and federal banking regulators to settle civil investigations into accusations that some of its former employees helped conceal transactions involving customers from Iran, Sudan and other nations subject to international sanctions for about a decade.
Bank regulators in New York contend the former RBS employees used a variety of techniques to conceal about 3,500 transactions involving the transfer of $523 million through New York banks.
“We have a vital responsibility to combat misconduct at banks and continue strengthening the long-term integrity of the financial system,” said Governor Cuomo. “In New York, we will continue our aggressive work rooting out global money laundering that puts our national security at risk.”
Benjamin M. Lawsky, Superintendent of Financial Services, said, “Our continued objective is to create higher standards for ethics and accountability at large banks. That will not happen overnight, but through a sustained effort – including strong enforcement of our anti-money laundering laws – we will work toward that critical goal. RBS took an important step by terminating a number of individual employees who engaged in misconduct. If we truly want to deter future wrongdoing, we should move increasingly toward exposing individual misconduct and holding individuals accountable.”
The joint action announced by the New York State Department of Financial Services, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is part of a continuing crackdown on banks that violate American laws against money laundering, specifically banks that enable transactions with countries that are subject to international sanctions.
A person briefed on the matter said bank regulators were working on settlements with about a half-dozen banks over similar violations and those cases could be resolved in the coming months.
The bank regulators gave RBS credit in the settlement for beginning its own internal investigation into the matter in 2010 and dismissing the employees involved in the unlawful money transfers. Most of those employees were dismissed in 2012, said a person briefed on the matter.
“RBS took an important step by terminating a number of individual employees who engaged in misconduct,” Benjamin M. Lawsky, the New York superintendent of financial services, said in a statement. “If we want to deter future wrongdoing, we should move increasingly toward exposing individual misconduct and holding individuals accountable.”
In the settlement, R.B.S. will pay a $50 million penalty to New York bank regulators and a $50 million penalty to the Federal Reserve, of which $33 million will go to the Treasury Department. The British bank has fired four employees and clawed back bonuses from eight more employees. It also agreed to enact measures to stiffen its compliance with anti-money-laundering laws.
RBS said in a statement that the bank “deeply regrets” its failings.
The bank also said related criminal investigations by the Justice Department and the Manhattan district attorney’s office were concluded without those agencies taking any further action against RBS.
The four employees dismissed by R.B.S. included the bank’s former head of global banking services for Asia, the Middle East and Africa and the head of the money laundering prevention unit for corporate markets.
The bank regulators said the former employees helped customers and companies with ties to countries under sanctions strip out identifying data from payment messages. New York bank regulators found that some within RBS operated from written instructions “containing a step-by-step guide” on how to keep United States dollar payments from being detected.
The settlement with RBS is considerably smaller than the $1.92 billion HSBC paid to settle money-laundering accusations last year over transactions the bank processed for Latin American drug cartels and for violating sanctions policies against Iran and Sudan. The London-based HSBC settled with American prosecutors as part of a deferred-prosecution agreement.
Another British bank, Standard Chartered, paid a total of $667 million in fines to settle investigations into accusations that it too violated international sanctions against Iran. Standard Chartered also entered into a deferred prosecution deal with federal prosecutors in December 2012. The deal with federal prosecutors came several months after Mr. Lawsky broke with other regulators to bring his own action against Standard Chartered, which resulted in a settlement in September 2012. NYState Versus Royal Bank of Scotland
Nelson Mandela and Winnie came to New York soon after he was released from prison. Many of us lined the streets to seen this luminescent man who appeared to have no anger or resentment after his 27 year confinement. He went on to do what many thought was impossible in South Africa: without much bloodshed apartheid ended. RIP Mandela Lessons for Life
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, comments:
The president’s speech yesterday on inequality avoided the “R” word. No politician wants to mention “redistribution” because it conjures up images of worthy “makers” forced to hand over hard-earned income to undeserving “takers.”
But as low-wage work proliferates in America, so-called takers are working as hard if not harder than anyone else and often at more than one job.
Yet they’re still not making it because the twin forces of globalization and technological change have reduced their bargaining power and undermined their economic standing — while bestowing ever greater benefits on a comparative few with the right education and connections (and whose parents are often best able to secure these advantages for them).
Better education and training for those on the losing end is critically important, as are several of the other proposals the president listed. But they will only go so far.
The number of losers is growing so quickly and so much of the economies’ winnings are going to a small group at the top – since the recovery began, 95 percent of the gains have gone to the richest 1 percent — that some direct redistribution of the gains is necessary.
Without some redistribution, the losers are likely to react in ways that could hurt the economy. They’ll demand protection from global markets they believe are taking away good jobs and even from certain technological advances that threaten to displace them (rather than smash the machines, as did England’s 19th-century Luddites, they’ll seek regulations that preserve the old jobs).
Without some redistribution, our ever-increasing number of low-wage workers won’t have enough money to keep the economy going. (This is one reason why the current recovery has been so anemic.) And without some redistribution, America’s growing army of low-wage workers may fall prey to demagogues on the right or left who offer convenient scapegoats for their frustrations.
One way we already redistribute is through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a wage subsidy for the working poor, which, at about $60 billion a year, is the nation’s largest anti-poverty program. It’s like a reverse income tax — larger at the bottom of the wage scale (now around $3,000 for incomes around $20,000) and gradually tapering off as incomes rise (vanishing at around $35,000).
The EITC subsidy should be enlarged and extended further up the wage scale before tapering off. How to pay for this? By cutting subsidies and special tax breaks for the oil and gas industries, big agribusiness, military contractors, hedge-fund and private-equity partners and Wall Street banks. And by capping individual tax deductions (deductions are the economic equivalent of government subsidies) for gold-plated health care plans, lavish business junkets and interest on giant mortgages.
In other words, we can finance much of this redistribution to the working poor by ending unnecessary redistributions to the wealthy.
This can be a good sign. The world is international and we are one. Or a bad sign. The US is waning in the world. Nonetheless the list is fascinating. Iconic American Brands Foreign Owned
Our UK partner, Sarah Pavlou of International Women in Business, called our attention to new breaking news item: Chairman Reverend Flowers with a background in drugs and interest in porn is left in charge of one of the UK’s major banks, Cooperative. The bank is going bust. Questions are being asked why and how he got this position. There are suspicions that Labour and Reverand Flowers have been in some form of corrupt relationship. Former Co-op Bank chair Paul Flowers investigated for expenses claims and suspended from drug charity
It is a brutal management technique in which bosses grade their employees’ performance along a “vitality curve” and sack those who fall into the lowest category. Known as “ranking and yanking”, it had its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. In America its popularity faded somewhat after it was seen to have contributed to the fall of Enron. Now it is back in the headlines. Mayer: who’s for the chop next? Employee Atmosphere Yahoo Style
The investment banks, fearing that talented college seniors will shy away from them after their contributions to the financial meltdown, are telling prospects that they are in the business of doing social good. Goldman Sachs Now a Do Gooder Firm
A study published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) finds that eight of the 12 fastest-growing economies in Africa in recent years did not rely on natural resources. Together these economies grew more quickly even than the group of oil producers. The climate for private business is also much improved. Price controls and state-backed monopolies have been swept away. Rwanda stands out for its progress. Its coffee farmers once had little incentive to produce for export. The state set a single price for beans and took the lion’s share of any profits. But from the mid-1990s it granted private enterprise a bigger role. Now gourmet coffee from Rwanda is sold in posh grocery stores around the world. Free exchange
