It would seem a simple enough task for a company’s CEO to certify that his company is conducting business legally, without violating a specific law. It would seem fair that the CEO should be accountable if his company breaks that law. Banksters are saying the exact opposite.
Regulators are considering holding Wall Street chief executives legally liable if they allow certain types of proprietary trading on their watch.
Regulators due to reveal the Volcker rule proposal next week are expected to ask whether CEOs should have to certify, or "attest," that their bank has put in place the proper systems to make sure no proprietary trading is taking place.
The idea is that holding CEOs personally accountable will add a strong deterrent effect to the Volcker rule.
The rule, called for in last year’s Dodd-Frank financial oversight law, bans banks from trading for their own profit in securities, derivatives and some other financial instruments.
The bank industry is already balking at the legal burden and compliance headache that would come with a CEO certification… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Huffington Post>
There is only one valid reason for Banksters to oppose this law. They don’t want to get caught. There are two possibilities. First, the CEO does not know what is happening, because he is unable to control his firm. If that is the case, the bank needs to ne broken up, because it is too big to manage. Second, and most likely, the CEO knows damn well what’s going on. If that is the case, the bank needs to be broken up, because its executives consider themselves above the law.
I don’t have to tell you which party will support the banksters.
10 Responses to “Banksters balk at accountability”
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In every other business sector (manufacturing, ag, etc.) , the CEOs must certify the financial stmts and have had to for a number of years. Why should we exempt the financial sector? Just because they are sleazy assholes? Not a good enough reason.
Excellent point, Lisa!
Every other industry (manufacturing, ag, etc.) has had to do this for a number of years – certify or attest that the financial stmts are accurate (it’s actually an out that the Big 4 accounting firms put in there, but it has yet to be held up in court. 🙂 They put that in right after Enron – it’s part of Sarbanes). Why should we exclude the financial sector – because they are sleazy assholes? Not a good enough reason.
Still an excellent point, Lisa. 😉
They, the banksters, took the “p” outta GAAP. (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) GAA 👿
And they used it to P on all of us. 🙁
Seems like accountability is a no- brainer– We avoid being held accountable because we have something to hide—
I sure am a long way from top of the IQ charts – so it puzzles me why the financial folk are allowed to get away with it–why they want to seems simple- There is something – …a lot ?… to hide here
They may not be. The law that permits that regulation is already passed.
Huffington Post — “A CEO certification approach may be similar to 2002’s Sarbanes-Oxley law.
That law, put in place after major accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom, has the power to send executives to prison and make them pay multimillion-dollar fines for submitting false certifications on corporate disclosures.”
I remember this well as I was a Compliance Manager with a major Canadian bank that was tied to an American bank. I worked extensively on part of Sarbane Oxley and considered it a pain in the ass, but necessary.
Huffington Post — “Placing personal and legal responsibility directly with a corporation’s top executive is key to ensuring financial firms comply with the Volcker Rule and stop engaging in the risky activities that led to billion-dollar taxpayer bailouts,” Sen. Carl Levin said in a statement to Reuters.
Placing personal responsibility and accountability with the top executive is needed as an impetus to ‘stay clean’. I think substantial fines and prison time are both in line and which one (or both) would apply in any situation would depend on several factors — how many violations, the amount of the violations, were adequate policies and proceedures in place to prevent violations and audits done regularly, are violations systemic or human related. But it is only with this large club over the heads of CEOs that any action remedial will happen.
I can’t count, they’re so numerous, the times we were told to attest to certain regulations and if there was any cheating or duplicity, we would be joining the CEO in prison, before which we would be fired without doubt. Of course this is the Canadian banking system, but it did come off much better than the American banking system in this financial crisis.
Good point, Lynn.