ABSTRACT

The political investments made by bankers for the last three decades paid off after the crash, as they extracted quid pro quos from the state that were overbearingly costly for ordinary people in advanced economies. During the Great Depression, when the American government forced a split between investment and commercial banking and criminalised hitherto accepted financial practices, many wrote epitaphs to world-conquering bankers. But the post-War period saw an even more powerful, although perhaps less arrogant, period for Wall Street. Both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had investigated Man Financial (MF) Global and warned Corzine some time ago against exposure to toxic European debt. A new path-breaking expose by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) highlights the unimaginable size and murkiness of the contemporary 'offshore' banking services industry. The ICIJ has documented at great length how financial secrecy 'spread aggressively around the world' without serious checks.