source: https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/wfc/financials?query=income-st...

The scams in themselves were not profitable. For the cross-selling, they made an extra 100 million or so over the course of many years, I don't recall the figures I read.

Wells didn’t get in trouble during the financial crisis because they stuck to conventional banking instead of investment banking, like their peers. Their reputation was unmatched.

Since the crisis WFC has floated low double digits percentage wise around their market cap, while all its peers have doubled and tripled in market cap. Wells holders have missed the boat they waited ten years for, and probably will live in purgatory for another 4 or 5 years because of this mess.

At this level of fine? Probably not. $1,000,000,000 is a substantial amount of cash but that would only be ~$37,000 a person if 100% of the fine went to the only the victims who lost their vehicles. Certainly enough to replace a lost car but far from adequate to cover damages from the effects of losing a vehicle and living with that repossession on your credit history.

And that doesn't even account for that 27,000 was only the number that suffered repossessions, not the number victimized by Wells Fargo.

Steal a candy bar? Go to jail. Knowingly ruin someone's life? No problem. The shareholders pay for it.

They will however pass brutal laws sentencing poor people to 35 years to life for possession, an other disgusting shit like that, but that's another story.

Look at 2007 / 2008. Wall Street nearly crash the world economy to the ground. Ecnomists estimated it cause deaths into the thousands. (30k or 300k come to mind but I can't find the reference atm.) The Obama admin for all intents and purposes pardoned Wall Street. Yet Obama is hailed as a liberal, a hero, and one of our greatest ever.

I have to believe Orwell is bewildered.

"Knowing that some people are responsible for _knowingly_ enriching themselves off of messing with the global economy leading to the global economic crisis of 2009 and, for example, hundreds of thousands to millions of excess deaths, would you support: (A) jail time and criminal accountability for all involved; or (B) a $700,000,000,000 bailout for, among other things, their next yacht fund?

If the majority answer is (A) then there's your evidence we live in a plutocracy.

- The Elites. In current parlance The 1%.

- Their enablers. They're the next 14%. We really don't have an acknowledgement of the existence of this group. Examples would be politicians, the majoriry of the media, etc.

- Everyone else. In 1984 this was The Proles.

The 1% v 99% lens is __all wrong__. Any discussion via that lens is all but pointless. It puts the 14% on the wrong side of the line.

To be elite is something to aspire to, to admire. To be truly elite includes concepts like benevolence, compassion, a larger awareness, and a long-term perspective. Being rich and/or educated alone isn't enough to be elite. Having power is definitely not part of being elite. A malevolent dictator is not an elite, they are just a powerful jerk.

This may be yelling to hold back the tide, but I think it's a bad idea to connect concepts of "good" with concepts of "asshole"

"In political and sociological theory, the elite (French élite, from Latin eligere) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a society."

In most countries jails are no good to prisoners. They are used to isolate people from society, not to help people to become a better person. And society is putting tones of money to support penitentiary system.

I believe for economical crimes people who took the decision should be fined a lot and banned from taking positions where they can do the same things again. No need to isolate them from society. At least for the first time. The same for other crimes where people do not hurt or threaten to hurt other people.

Isn't that the thing though? Don't these bankers actually hurt more people, and hurt them worse, than any violent criminal could? So the person who hurts one family gets jail but the one that hurts thousands "doesn't get to work in the industry" anymore? That sounds like hogwash to me.

Has everyone just forgotten about the principle of equality under the law?

The Lucas critique, or Campbell's law, both refer to the same concept. Any metric that becomes a target is no longer a sufficient metric.

The Constitution has been our metric for 250 years. I don't have a superior alternative, but it occurs to me that we've demanded it be a literal document, but when its our own skin on the line, we suddenly forget the inconvenient parts, and contort our minds to find absolution for something we are going to do anyways.

Banning people from an activity is also hard. They can just take a position where they advise others who will make such decisions, or other loopholes.

Jail time may not be the answer, and we clearly do a bad job of making these acts a financial risk (not to mention preventing recurrence), so your suggestion is undoubtedly an improvement over current day, but I don't think we can stop there. (Not that I have better ideas yet)

Not that I agree with the idea, but it seems to work in practice.

Fines dissuade from making exactly the same thing but that doesn't seem to prevent different kinds of scam.

Nothing pitchforks, molotovs, and sturdy rope wouldn't solve, but I guess we're just too comfortable to do anything but passively let them f*ck us in the butt.

Dissuade means something more like "reduce the chances of it happening".

If the OP had written "fines do not completely prevent forever the chances of a bad thing happening" everyone would have realised that was a nonsensical bar because even putting in jail doesn't do that.

Dissuade means something more like "reduce the chances of it happening".

When a bank cheats its customers, they should be prohibited from providing those services for several years. Shut down their mortgage division and force them to sell it off. That is the only real penalty that has teeth.

If you can simply fine it hard enough to make them stop cheating like that in future, that should be more than enough. Simple fines to make cheats unprofitable should do the thing.

Also the rule "to shutdown" the entire division might be misused on the wrong way or to blackmail the business. Once you shut down the division, it's much harder to reverse it, than simply to return a fine.

The larger issue is it's a minimal impact on the company and the people who actually commit ed the crimes.

I don't think this is about making them whole, it's just about fining them. I could be wrong, but I believe those victimized are still welcome to conduct a civil action against Wells Fargo.

I still don't fill my gas tank at BP stations...

There's an app called Getaround (https://www.getaround.com/) which works really well for this, if you live in a big city.