The entire economy is a house of cards waiting to tumble

by David Atkins

Yesterday Digby highlighted the outstanding piece by Matt Taibbi on HSBC executives avoiding even a second of jail time for engaging in blatant drug money laundering for major cartels.

The most shocking bit bears repeating:

Though this was not stated explicitly, the government's rationale in not pursuing criminal prosecutions against the bank was apparently rooted in concerns that putting executives from a "systemically important institution" in jail for drug laundering would threaten the stability of the financial system. The New York Times put it this way:

Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system.

Now, there are a lot of people who read that statement and say "Bull." It's widely assumed on the right that this is just another example of liberal crony capitalism, that all we need to do is let capitalism and the legal system take their course, watch those liberal Brits and New Yorkers flounder, and the free market will take care of everything. Liberals tend to think that campaign finance, big bank lobbying, neoliberal ethics and big business corruption in general leads the justice department to make excuses for the failure to see justice done.

But I would posit a far more shocking conclusion: that the authorities actually believe it when they say such things. And an even more shocking conclusion: that they may well be right.