How exactly does one jail a corporation? (I think I know some ways to punish the phantasm, but I'd love to hear other ideas...)

As I ponder this question of late, I've come to the conclusion that legal fictions (corps, llc, and governments) are all potentially extremely dangerous given the liability shield they provide. If there is no significant punishment (such as a corporate death penalty) applied even in the most egregious cases, they can (and probably will) morph into instruments of tyranny.

Same goes for the proto-corporation, the state, since it's every bit a legal fiction under our system: dreamt into existence by a piece of paper, and all the humans behind it have 'sovereign immunity' which is the ultimate liability shield. Killing with due process, but without conscience.

If you can't (or won't) terminate a legal fiction, it will metastasize into a malignant tumor.

You suspend (jail) or revoke (capital punishment) their charter.

I've heard of revocation, but not suspension. When was the last time either was done to a major corp in this country?

I suspect that such actions have become increasingly rare post-1913. Just a hunch...

If I was JP, being the acehole that I am, I would gather up a couple million documents (minus the incriminating stuff) submit it and let the bastards spend a year going through it trying to find what's missing...and during that year, I'd be sure my bribery bill is paid up in Congress...maybe even get a law passed that makes whatever I did legal.

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collapse in international trade

Doing my part...especially if it says "Made in China"...it goes back on the shelf unless I have no choice and absolutely need it.

The problem is the shareholders (the owners) are mutual funds and pension funds not individual investors. When everyone is an owner no one is an owner.

Indeed jail him but that will never happen because dimon is obama's favorite banker and $$$

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/200....


Report: Cronyism, political donations likely behind Obama, Holder failure to charge any bankers after 2008 financial meltdown

http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/07/report....

JPMorgan Employees Join Goldman Sachs Among Top Obama Donors

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-20....

Financial Sector Helps Barack Obama Score Big Money for Re-election Fight

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/07/....

The Democrats can't lecture Romney about firing people
Obama himself has never challenged the kind of rapacious capitalism he is desperate to associate with his opponent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/....

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Obama himself has never challenged the kind of rapacious capitalism he is desperate to associate with his opponent

Your political bias is screaming there...

"Desperate to associate"? Seriously...Obama is pointing out the truth...Romney "types" are not the solution; they are the problem.

That's not to say "Obama types" are the solution either (they're not), but at least Obama has a track record that I prefer by far to that of what Mittens is promising (tax cuts for the wealthy(Mittens and Buffet pay less than I do!).

Our 2012 choice is:

Mittens: Corporate America, the Military and the Wealthy First; everyone else will be pulled up by their increased wealth and prosperity.

Obama: Whatever Corporate America, the military and the wealthy tell him to do...lol

So why Obama? Well, I just can't stand Romney; way too annoyingly white. Untrustworthy as hell..

I'll tell you what will do Mittens in...His Religion..yep, no way in hell the Christians and Catholics are going to put a Moron in the White House...better to have a (half white) Christian Liberal than a Far Right, annoyingly white, Mormon...Especially since the only difference between the two is their campaign rhetoric...in action, you'll get basically the same results with either one.

"Your political bias is screaming there..."

No way you even bothered to read that if you had you wouldn't have made such a ridiculous claim that's a completely leftist article. Perhaps you are the one with the political bias - LEAVE BARACK ALONE just come right out and say it lol

Anyway on to other news I just saw this I can't say I'm shocked ...

Fed’s Rosengren Urges ‘Open-Ended’ Easing Program

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-07....

This one is also a real hoot

I hardly ever post but I have a question that has been tickling at the back of my brain for awhile now. Debt is a zero sum game. For every debtor there must be a creditor, for every borrower a lender, etc. If the U.S., The EU, and most other countries are in debt than who/or what is the creditor. I know the BRIC's answer a part of the question, however; I bet if you add all the debts versus the net creditor status of the BRICs there would still be another entity/entities who are owed the balance. In terms of how the world is run wouldn't it be a good idea to know who or what entity(ies) is/are actually pulling the creditor levers that may influence policy decisions on a national level. If anyone has any idea where to start in terms of tracking this type of data I would appreciate it.

Cheers,

Vert

bsfootprint wrote..

How exactly does one jail a corporation? (I think I know some ways to punish the phantasm, but I'd love to hear other ideas...)

They didn't have a bit of problem putting the guys who ran the S&L's in jail. The guy that ran the Republican Party here went to prison for laundering money, I think through a bank he owned, back in the 1980's. Don Dixon went to prison for Vernon, David McCall house arrest for Plano Savings and many more. Some of them were merely caught up in what was going on industry wide, some of which may have been normal course of business. I think Bill Black's outfit got over 1000 convictions. Funny thing is I was questioning these guys solvency in December 1984, 3 to 5 years before the hammer came down and I recall discussing it with someone in a bar who said he understood Vernon, Western and Sunbelt to be rotating bad loans between them to keep a step ahead of the regulators.

Looting other financial intermediaries isn't a normal course of business. Laundering money for outlaws isn't a normal course of business. Bundling and passing fraudulent paper onto other financial institutions shouldn't be a normal course of business. There are people in these corporations doing this and most of them aren't rogue traders on the bottom of the totem pole doing this without those on the top knowing something. There is supposed to be something called internal control in business or the audit is supposed to indicate fraud suspected.

John Xenakis claims this is a generational issue. The Xers that are doing the investigations in the Justice Department won't prosecute their school buddies. They will go after the older guys. That is merely one end of the hotdog.

When the S&L mess blew up, a lot of politicians got a lot of heat and some were forced out for their associations and acts done in regard to the various frauds running these institutions. We had the Keating 5. We had the S&L with Neil Bush involved. We had Jim Wright of Ft. Worth go down due to something he did in regard to Independent American Savings of Grand Prairie. The **** hit the fan.

What do we have today? $1 billion disappears from MF Global and Corzine moves on and raises money for the President. Romney should roll out the ads on this guy. In the meantime, the whole regulatory world plays stupid as to what happened to $1 billion that clearly went through the banking system. They could find a 25 cent tranaction to put one of us in prison if we did something. No elephant in the living room is there? Another Obama crony is and was Franklin Raines, who bankrolled much of his career. Got away with tens, if not hundreds of millions and the government paid for his defense. He intentionally ran FNM off the cliff and pretty much said he was going to do so in an address of the Mortgage Bankers Associations national convention in 2001. Of course, he was cheered on because his actions were going to make it easy for them to make a lot of money. Then we have Rubin at Citi. Obama's economic advisors in 2008 might as well have had their photos on the wall of the local post office.

The corporate front doesn't seem to hinder the prosecuters and regulators from putting people in jail in other businesses. What about the guy with Health South or Enron or WCOM? What about the officials in Jefferson County? No problem at all, but those that set up the crimes for them walked, many times without question.

Plan on it. From Obama and Bernanke on down, these guys are going to be covered. Why is the punishment against the shareholders? In fact, a good question is how do the shareholders sue their own company, one of the most absurd ideas that I can't wrap my hands around or my mind for that matter, while the management goes free? It isn't too hard to get around the corporate veil in other industries. It isn't hard for the Fed and the SEC to track our transactions. Why the mystery of the transactions of bankers and who did what, when and to whom? Politicians is the only answer I have.

jfrankwick wrote..

Debt is a zero sum game

That is the mistake in judgement. Debt isn't a zero sum game. For one, there is never any interest created to pay back with the principal to extinguish the debt. The central banks run world finance. US debt is the collateral for bank paper known as the dollar, which runs its thread through debt around the world. The international bankers have India, Russia and Brazil so upside down in debt, they would have to liquidate twice to get out. Most of the rest of the emerging markets are in the same position.

Who holds it? The bankers. They won't let us off the hook. Just watch who will pay in Europe.

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The problem is the shareholders (the owners) are mutual funds and pension funds not individual investors. When everyone is an owner no one is an owner.

That is the crux of the matter, any fines we levy are basically fines on ourselves.

The only real deterrent is to jail and fine the individuals who are breaking the law at the corporations.

Flap

The bankers create the "money" (read: debt) out of thin air, in response to government demand. Are they really creditors, if they have no actual skin in the game? How can this be "zero-sum" if they have given NOTHING as consideration for their half of the "bargain"?

JP Morgan and accountability don't exist...Incarceration (Multiples higher than China) is only for the simple folk that have no clue what is going on....

http://archive.org/stream/usmoneyvscorpo....

I am sure JPM has a significant stake in the enormous growth of privatized incarceration by the way...

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"Your political bias is screaming there..."

No way you even bothered to read that if you had you wouldn't have made such a ridiculous claim that's a completely leftist article. Perhaps you are the one with the political bias - LEAVE BARACK ALONE just come right out and say it lol

Oh, sorry, so you're a Democrat or maybe an Independent? Got it.

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Perhaps you are the one with the political bias

We're all biased. Mine flops from the lesser of the evils to the other.

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LEAVE BARACK ALONE just come right out and say it

Hell no. I want to hold his feet to the fire big time. "Candidate Obama" has (a lot of) the right answers....It's President Obama that is the problem..

2008 Candidate Obama:

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"We can not and will not sustain deficits like these without end. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years, we can not simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration or the next generation. We are paying the price for these deficits right now. In 2008 alone we paid $250 billion in interest on our debt, that is more than three times what we spent on education that year, more than seven times what we spent on VA healthcare. So if we confront this crisis without also confronting the deficits that helped cause it, we risk sinking into another crisis down the road as our interest payments rise, our obligations come due, confidence in our economy erodes and our children and grandchildren are unable to pursue their dreams because they are saddled with our debts. That's why today I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy - it will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we have long neglected but i refuse to leave our children with a debt they can not repay. And that means taking responsibility right now in this administration, for getting our spending under contro/."

2012 President Obama: Record High Deficits - ZERO real cuts in spending...we do not need to "LEAVE BARACK ALONE"...we need to pile on big time; hopefully enough to get him to do what he so rightly promises.

I know he knows what needs to be done; and wants to do it...but he doesn't have a big enough set of nuts to carry it out...so we should first kick him in the nuts, stand him back up..and hopefully their new swollen size will be enough for him to get the job done.

Debtpie wrote..

Hell no. I want to hold his feet to the fire big time. "Candidate Obama" has (a lot of) the right answers....It's President Obama that is the problem.

I know he knows what needs to be done; and wants to do it...but he doesn't have a big enough set of nuts to carry it out...so we should first kick him in the nuts, stand him back up..and hopefully their new swollen size will be enough for him to get the job done.

You have to drink a lot of kool-aid to believe this. Just exactly how do you know this? Oh i guess its Hope and transference. And blind devotion to the political class.

Sounds like you have either chosen to voluntarily believe a liar - Or you choose to pin your hopes on a pussy. That is surely the way Forward (tm), Congrats !

Maybe one day your worship of politicians will bear fruit. Don't forget to pull the monkey lever in November !

OK,

Let me add to my post. I understand fractional reserve lending, and the fact that money is lent on multiples depending on your reserve ratio with infinity being possible if bank reserves are allowed to drop to zero, however; even with fractional reserve lending there is still an accounting of the banks assets (loans/accrued interest) and liabilities (deposits). Theoretically if there were only one customer and one bank in the world their balance sheets would be mirrors with deposits representing the customers assets and loans/accrued interest representing the customers liabilities. Hence in a world with only one bank and one customer debtor and creditor's combined balance sheet equal $0 equity.

If the answer is the banks are the net creditors than that is a starting point, however; the picture muddles from there. If banks are owned by their creditors/preferred shareholders/common shareholders than one must work back up the chain to actual people/families or the institutions and foundations that represent them to determine who actually has their hand(s) on the global levers.

As a side note I'm not arguing about the merits of fractional reserve lending and the equity/inequity or fairness of it. I'm merely trying to determine who or what has the ability to affect our national policy discussions such that the lack of criminal indictment for fraud is commonplace and policies such as TARP pass even against overwhelming public dissent.

Just trying to vet my thought patterns against a group that seems to have a bead on this whole ball of wax.

Cheers,

Vert

is THE JUDGE bought off or willl justice prevail?holding breath

Mannfm11 wrote..

They didn't have a bit of problem putting the guys who ran the S&L's in jail. The guy that ran the Republican Party here went to prison for laundering money, I think through a bank he owned, back in the 1980's. Don Dixon went to prison for Vernon, David McCall house arrest for Plano Savings and many more. Some of them were merely caught up in what was going on industry wide, some of which may have been normal course of business. I think Bill Black's outfit got over 1000 convictions. Funny thing is I was questioning these guys solvency in December 1984, 3 to 5 years before the hammer came down and I recall discussing it with someone in a bar who said he understood Vernon, Western and Sunbelt to be rotating bad loans between them to keep a step ahead of the regulators.

Ah, yes, but they are *not* the corporation, are they? On occasion, some of the players are punished with prison time, but the corps seem to get off with a fine. Piercing the corporate veil to put personal liability on some of the people behind the corp is all well and good if and when it's appropriate. But what about when the corporation itself is engaged in widespread criminal behavior?

Karl nailed it: suspension or dissolution are the correct corporate punishments when the corp itself (and I make no distinction between business and governmental corporate entities here) engages in criminal acts, and as far as I can see, it's just not done (here) any more.