How bad is corruption in China ? (Temprarily Closed)

bladerunner said:

So what you are implying is that the Fed should have let the whole thing crash in 2008. Have you figured out the cost of that?

I think you will still see at the very least a decade of stagnation, resulting in a lost generation of youth that will have a low income and the retired "boomers" having to put up with years of impoverishment.

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Nope, what I am saying is, they should not have give the bank everything they wanted on a platter without getting anything back or at least change the rules so they don't continue to F up the economy in the future.

At least they should put in immediately put in regulations that separate commercial banking and traditional banking, make them two different entities, so that if one goes down the other one will still be alive to service the public, and that public's money should NOT be put into the commercial side to play the market. You know... the Glass-Steagall Act which was put into effect as a direct response of the 1930 depression. Which was repelled slowly clause by clause from Reagan to Bush until the whole thing overturned.

What happen in 2008 was more than just a bailout out of good will from the government, it was more like the financial industry took the economy as hostage, they were saying if you don't help me out, I'm going to take down everything with me, because even if I F up big time, but I still holds the loans and cash flow that make the economy functioning, give me money or else.

What I would have done, and many people suggested this, (never mentioned in the traditional media of course) is that the government let them go bankrupt, and then take over all the out standing traditional contracts that the bank have with it is customers who actually PRODUCE things for the economy, and the government would temporary directly infuse fund into company that needs them. Then in a few week/month as situation stabilized they would appointed new managers to this new bank that the government now operates, and as times goes on the government then should auction it off the business to Private sector to continue their own operation.

This way the old paradisaical banking interest cartel would be destroyed, and we would have a fresh start in the financial industry that serves the need for the public, rather than their own short term profits.

But such out of the box thinking was never even consider at all, instead you are being spoon feed the line that "if we haven't done it, we would experience another 1930 depression" you know... this is EXACTLY what the banking interest told congress when they asked for the bailout in the first place aka they took the economy hostage.

And even today, the actions that resulted in the 2008 financial crisis are still NOT outlawed, the financial industry still are playing with the derivative market, the commodity market, the stock market all for short term profit.


Remember this? Happened in July this year, and yes, it was a derivative bet that gone wrong.

jackliu said:

What happen in 2008 was more than just a bailout out of good will from the government, it was more like the financial industry took the economy as hostage, they were saying if you don't help me out, I'm going to take down everything with me, because even if I F up big time, but I still holds the loans and cash flow that make the economy functioning, give me money or else.

What I would have done, and many people suggested this, (never mentioned in the traditional media of course) is that the government let them go bankrupt, and then take over all the out standing traditional contracts that the bank have with it is customers who actually PRODUCE things for the economy, and the government would temporary directly infuse fund into company that needs them. Then in a few week/month as situation stabilized they would appointed new managers to this new bank that the government now operates, and as times goes on the government then should auction it off the business to Private sector to continue their own operation.

T

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While I'm inclined to agree with you here in that the money should be directed at the real economy,as I recall Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, after accepting Fed help, chose to give up their investment bank status and become commercial, thus subjecting themselves to tighter control and would'nt you think that the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act a little of what was lost with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act?

Remember this? Happened in July this year, and yes, it was a derivative bet that gone wrong.

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Hmmm interesting, the only saving grace was the traders offer to return the undeserved bonus

bladerunner said:

While I'm inclined to agree with you here in that the money should be directed at the real economy,as I recall Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, after accepting Fed help, chose to give up their investment bank status and become commercial, thus subjecting themselves to tighter control and would'nt you think that the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act a little of what was lost with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act?



Hmmm interesting, the only saving grace was the traders offer to return the undeserved bonus

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NOPE, I am well aware of Dodd–Frank, it have a lot of good things, but biggest problem is Dodd–Frank never goes as far as Glass-Steagall did in separating commercial and investment banking, closest in it is the Volcker Rule, which does NOT separate commercial and investment banking completely like Glass-Steagall, all it does is a proposal to bans banks from risky speculative trading with federally-insured money and this is still being debated in congress.

Yes, that is right, Dodd Frank is far from final, the initial proposal was very bold, but as time goes on... it got weather down more and more from... yes courtesy of your friendly Wall street lobbyist at our government.

And yes... those friendly lobbyist will be there for a long time to come influencing the government. I call this corruption, but since it is legalized, so I'm going to bet you think it is all acceptable.


You may want to watch this, it is very informative... and no it is not communist PR.

Here is some quotes

This guy was one of the person in charge of the bail out, the TARP

So, for example, TARP was supposed to be used by the banks to restore lending, help pump that oxygen into the lifeblood of the economy, and it just didn’t happen. One of the reasons why it didn’t happen is the money went to the banks with no strings attached, no conditions, no incentives, just essentially piles of money given to them without any instructions whatsoever and sort of this hope that somehow or other they use the money to achieve the policy goals of the administration. Of course, that never happened and you just look at the malaise the economy has been in in the years ever since.

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On the Washington side, in addition to that, you have the problems of regulators who often have incentives not to be really good regulators. The curse there again is partly the revolving door. I was told point blank in 2010 that if I didn’t change the harshness of my tone on Wall Street, as well as on the administration, that I was going to be doing me and my family real harm because I wasn’t going to have this job forever. If I wanted to get a job on Wall Street or advance within the administration, I needed to soften my tone. I was told that if I did soften my tone, very good things could potentially [follow].

I obviously didn’t take that advice, as this book clearly demonstrates, but that’s the decision that’s facing a lot of our regulators. You either have people who made their millions on Wall Street and come into government … or you have folks who look at their bosses who made that money and want to be them. And the path to being like that is rarely by being a tough, effective regulator. It’s by rolling with the punches — rolling over, really, and pulling your punches and trying to get that big job. That’s not to say that all regulators do that but that’s our incentives and we need to change the incentive structure for regulators.

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She is one of the person in charge for the financial reform currently.

I guess that’s all to say I get so frustrated by some of these big financial institutions, and their hordes of lobbyists descend on Washington, spending all this energy on fighting reform, when I wish they were really focusing their efforts on managing the risk and trying to prepare and anticipate the risk that could come from a deteriorating situation in Europe or here with us not getting our own fiscal house in order. I wish they would focus more on that and less on fighting regulators all the time over common-sense regulation.

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And here is the latest progress of Dodd

The landmark legislation — which clocks in at more than 2,000 pages — was meant to rein in a financial system that brought the economy to the brink of collapse in 2008. But push-back from industry lobbyists and Republicans in Congress has kept key aspects of the law from taking effect.

To date, just 123 of the 398 total regulations established under Dodd-Frank have been implemented, according to a tally by the law firm Davis Polk (PDF). Moreover, regulators have missed more than half of the rulemaking deadlines set out for them in the law.

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bladerunner said:

Theres no double standard.and you are comparing apples with oranges.

In the West remuneration of senior employess of public companies are open to scrutiny by the board and shareholders.

Unfortunately for the likes of Wen,who is a man of modest background and means, and said to be earning a modest $US20,000 as Premier, and as reported in the NYT heads a family that reputedly controls assets worth $2.7billion, much of it in a less than transparent manner acquired during his term as Premier. While I do not know if that is true, the lack of transparency that surrounds their dealings certainly doesn't help.

As I recall Wen did offer to make his financial affairs public as part of his push to get his "Sunshine" policy requiring public officals to disclose their financial affairs, made into law. However I dont know how far he got.

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If the West all are open and shareholders knew everything, how can western financial system were shocked by scandals many times?
Admit it, there is something very very big that western people didn't know, the lehman scandal that shock wall street was only a tip of a floating ice, The FED gave 800 billion USD bailout to who, How? They refuse to answer.
And for Citibank or other US banks, did they tell you where their CEO place their money ? or di they tell you where they put their client's money?
Prime minister Wen called an investigation for his asset, did Pundit dare to do that?

China Punishes 249 'Lazy' Officials

Many officials preferred to "forestall" over major projects
to avoid being scrutinized by anti-graft officials.

BEIJING, Sept 29 (Reuters) - China has punished 249 officials for laziness, exemplified by failure to spend government funds, delays to projects and sitting on land earmarked for development, as the government wages war on graft, state news agency Xinhua said.

Spooked by China's biggest-ever crackdown on corruption, many officials have preferred in the past 18 months to dither over approvals for major projects, so as to avoid drawing the scrutiny of anti-graft officials.

That has annoyed Beijing, which has scolded procrastinating local governments for their laziness and repeatedly threatened to punish them by recalling their untouched budgets.

Xinhua said the 249 officials in 24 provinces, regions or cities had been sacked, or given administrative demotions or warnings after an investigation running from the end of May until the middle of June.

As late as May this year, a food recycling project in the northern province of Shanxi had yet to start construction, even though the government had released funds for it in 2012, Xinhua said late on Monday, listing some of the most telling examples.

"The aim of holding these people accountable is to promote work and manage the issue of laziness in government and doing nothing ...

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has repeatedly criticized officials for being slack and lazy in pushing through Beijing's policy directives, as they kept their heads down to avoid being targeted in the anti-graft campaign., ... ...

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Link:

Eradicating corruption in poor countries is always an uphill task regardless of the kind of government. China is very lucky to have a leader in Xi who squeezes corruption like a boss.

Well it doesn't just happens in China but here in Houston as well.

A Houston socialite is in jail caught up in a scandalous money laundering bust involving illegal gambling.

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GreenestGDP said:

China Punishes 249 'Lazy' Officials

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Those pictures really bring back memories of school and work.

I will not talk politics or countries. I will simply show you a few cases and you can decide who is corrupt. All that I ask is that you factor in the fact that China is a developing country, and every developing country had massive levels of corruption during its development (I will not link those posts because that offends moderators but if you search [country name] [corruption] industrialization] you'll find some stuff.

All the non-China examples faced no jail, no execution, and possibly, minor penalties (eg leaving big profits)

Let's start with Medical:

Zheng Xiaoyu, executed
Crime: Accepting bribes in exchange for granting approval for hundreds of medicines
Job title: Head of Food and Drug Administration

Chinese authorities claim Zheng received $850,000 in bribes for which he approved 137 drugs, including an antibiotic believed to have killed ten people. He was sentenced to death on May 29, 2007.

Zheng’s deputy, Cao Wenzhuang, received a death sentence for his role in the crime, which was reduced to a two-year reprieve. Zheng was executed on July 10, 2007

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(source: )

Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, executed
Crime: Selling over three million pounds combined in contaminated milk from 2007-2008
Job title: Dairy producers

On January 22, 2009, Chinese courts sentenced these two men to death for sales of tainted milk which killed at least six children and caused ailments for over 300,000

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(source: )




vs

hundreds of agency scientists had been pressured to approve a drug despite reservations about safety.

scientists at the agency are concerned that science no longer plays this crucial role in the FDA’s regulatory decisions.

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Survey: FDA Scientists (2006)






Here are a few more medical cases...

Monsanto, a half-century of health scandals | Featured |Axisoflogic.com


For decades of lying to federal safety agencies, lying to consumers, endangering public safety, poisoning the environment, inflicting horrific birth defects, suing innocent farmers into bankruptcy/suicide, and having its crops investigated for carcinogenicity, what does Monsanto get?

The Monsanto Protection Act.

How the Monsanto Protection Act snuck into law

In September 2004, Merck, one of America's largest pharmaceutical companies, issued a sudden recall of Vioxx. The recall came just days after Merck discovered that a top medical journal was about to publish a study by an FDA (Food and Drug Administration) investigator indicating that the drug in question greatly increased the risk of fatal heart attacks and strokes and had probably been responsible for at least 55,000 American deaths during the five years it had been on the market.

It soon turned out Merck had known of potential lethal side effects even before launching Vioxx in 1999, but had brushed all such disturbing tests under the rug.

The year after the scandal unfolded, Merck's long-time CEO resigned and was replaced by one of his top lieutenants. But he retained the $50 million in financial compensation he had received over the previous five years. Neither he nor any other Merck executives was charged with corporate malfeasance.

The inescapable conclusion is that in today's world and in the opinion of our own media, American (my note - I'm sorry, they wrote this racist and ideological sentence. Not me) lives are quite cheap, unlike those in China.

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When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed | News | The Week UK









Now for business:

Song Wendai, death sentence
Crime: Grafting and embezzling public properties and funds
Job title: Former CEO of Qiankun Gold and Silver Refinery Co Ltd

Song Wendai was sentenced to death for illegally obtaining shares of the company and embezzling 87 million yuan ($13.87 million) in public funds and assets

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(source: )



vs

Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people. The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted.

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Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?







War Crimes

(couldn't find anything for China)



vs


Dahr Jamail | Report Shows US Invasion, Occupation of Iraq Left 1 Million Dead


CIA’s final report: No WMD found in Iraq


To my knowledge, no one is in jail.





Conclusion:
It appears Chinese criminals are punished severley for much lesser crimes (tens of millions of dollars vs billions and single digit deaths vs mass deaths). It also seems no government official is above the law since even their equivalent of an FDA head was executed for corruption.