Bankers have a justifiably awful reputation, particularly after the financial crisis. Although they completely raped the country, the general meme afterward was, “Yeah, gee, they got away with it, but we’ve learned our lesson as a society. Now we have the laws in place to harshly punish misbehavior on the part of bankers, and if they do anything naughty again, we’re going to throw the book at them. So………..sorry, society, but we’ve got your back now. Honest.”
Thus the Dodd-Frank law was seen as the “make good” for humanity letting Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, and all the rest of them not be strung up by their necks in 2008.
We got our first test of this recently when Carrie Tolstedt, whose 102,000 “team members” (ummm – clerks) were directed to execute one of the most massive frauds in financial history, was caught red-handed. Carrie was one of those featured in the “most powerful women in banking” cover stories that American Banker does regularly.
