Just Us Prevails (Again)

Bloods.  Crips.  Eastside Thrillseekers.  Hell's Angels. Mongols.  Bandidos.  As diverse as these might appear, they all have one thing, if only one thing, in common:

They simply aren't big enough yet.

That's the only conclusion that can be reached.  It was curious enough that Forbes magazine published an opinion piece titled

"Is the Federal Reserve Using Money-Laundering Techniques To Cleanse Banks' Balance Sheets?" (http://www.forbes.com/sites/lawrencehunter/2012/10/29/are-federal-reserve-regulated-banks-laundering-dirty-money/

Granted, it wasn't Forbes' own, but a Forbes "contributor"'s opinion, that Forbes published.  But from a non-elite perspective, my observation was that one of "them" (see the subtitle of this blog) was "eating their own":

"Immediately after the 2008 financial meltdown, the Fed laundered more than $2 trillion in worthless assets held on the balance sheets of private banks. According to a watered-down 2011 audit of the Fed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), there have been $16 trillion in Fed bailouts to banks and corporations around the world since the financial meltdown in 2008. Since that report, Bloomberg has reported on an additional $9 trillion in secret, off-balance-sheet Fed transactions that the central bank refuses to discuss. Now, Ben Bernanke is ginning up assembly-line washing machines at the Fed with QE∞ to spin an opened-ended, $40-billion-monthly cleansing campaign to purchase worthless mortgage backed securities from banks at face value, which could run to an additional $1.3 trillion loan laundering accompanied by downscale resales."

But, in case you were wondering what "THE FED" has to do with the groups mentioned above, I bring you:

HSBC pays $1.9 billion to settle US probe

By James O'Toole and Charles Riley @CNNMoneyDecember 11, 2012: 2:25 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Global banking giant HSBC will pay $1.92 billion in a record settlement with U.S. regulators to resolve money-laundering allegations.

The Department of Justice and U.S. Treasury said Tuesday that HSBC allowed the most notorious international drug cartels to launder billions of dollars across borders. In addition, the government said HSBC violated U.S. sanctions for years by illegally conducting transactions on behalf of customers in Iran, Libya, Cuba, Sudan and Burma.                                           

(fair use claimed under 17 U.S.C. § 107)

After a five-year investigation, involving 9,000,000 documents, and the outright admission (confession) of money laundering, there will be exactly 0 indictments. 

Oh, yes, HSBC will "pay" a LOT of counterfeit "money".  But not one bankster will see the insid of a courtroom, let alone a cell.

Which is where the bankster cartel differs from the groups named above .