What exactly does it mean for a big Wall Street bank to plead guilty to a serious crime? Right now, practically nothing.

But it will if California’s Santa Cruz County has any say.

First, some background.

Five giant banks – including Wall Street behemoths JPMorgan Chase and Citicorp – recently pleaded guilty to criminal felony charges that they rigged the world’s foreign-currency market for their own profit.

This wasn’t a small heist. We’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions every day.

via Robert Reich (How to Punish Bank Felons).

Ed Kane, a professor of finance at Boston College and grantee at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, studies the dangerous risk-taking of giant banks. He sees the cultures of Wall Street and regulators coming together to turn taxpayers into victims of theft and great harm. Like extreme drunk drivers before MADD or smokers on airplanes prior to the 1980s ban, megabankers currently get away with endangering others with little fear of repercussions. Kane discusses how changes in corporate law and culture must make it legally and socially unacceptable for bankers to blow their toxic fumes at the rest of us.

Read on.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is privately urging New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to replace the head of the New York Department of Financial Services — Benjamin Lawsky, nicknamed the “Sheriff of Wall Street” for his tough enforcement approach — with Rohit Chopra, a top regulator at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

On Thursday, a coalition of consumer advocates and progressive groups also voiced their support for Chopra, saying in a release that he has “a strong record of uncovering and addressing predatory behavior” in the financial industry.

Chopra is currently the CFPB’s student loan ombudsman and assistant director. He has testified before Congress on the growing evidence for a negative “student debt domino effect” on the economy, caused by the country’s more than $1.2 trillion in outstanding loans. He has also investigated student loan servicing companies and is credited with aiding a…

From Richard Bowen website:

In May, Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, listed restoration of Glass-Stegall as a key Presidential candidacy criterion. Reich was in Iowa for the Raising Wages/Working Families Summit – the first of a national series – where he was the featured speaker.

The reinstatement of Glass–Steagall is steadily gathering public support. A bipartisan group of senators and congressman are proposing the “21st Century Glass-Steagall Act” in an effort to curb the power of big banks by reinstating a Depression-era rule that separated commercial and investment banking. Some believe that Glass-Steagall is the essential first step in dealing with the crises in employment, wages, and living standards in the United States.

Enacted during the Great Depression, the Glass-Steagall Act prevented commercial deposit banks, which are insured by taxpayer money through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), from engaging in insurance and risky investment activities.

The 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall, which…

Zerohedge:

Once more, an “insider” from The Fed exposes the reality of an academic ivory tower clueless of the real financial markets. Former adviser to Dallas Fed’s Dick Fisher, Danielle DiMartino Booth speaking in a CNBC interview slams The Fed for “allowing the [market] tail to wag the [monetary policy] dog,” warning that “The Fed’s credibility itself is at stake… they have backed themselves into a very tight corner… the tightest ever.” As she writes in her first Op-Ed, “The hope today is that the current era of easy monetary policy will have no deep economic ramifications. Such thinking, though, may prove to be naive… All retirees’ security is thus at risk when the massive overvaluation in fixed income and equity markets eventually rights itself.”

4Traders:
(Reuters) – Wal-Mart Stores Inc has built a network of 78 subsidiaries and branches in 15 offshore tax havens to minimize taxes on its operations outside the United States, said a report by tax reform advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness released on Wednesday.
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has assets worth at least $76 billion through shell companies domiciled in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the report said.

The report says Wal-Mart does not list these subsidiaries in its annual filings and called on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to require disclosure to make the tax practices transparent to investors.

California, as part of a consent order earlier this year, has named an auditor to assess whether Ocwen Financial Corp.’s mortgage servicing complies with state and federal laws.

If the review finds violations, the state Department of Business Oversight can seek repayment of funds for injured consumers as well as penalties against the Atlanta bill-collecting and foreclosure specialist, officials said Tuesday.

Read on.