Back To Work

The other day I read an article about a huge, international bank that settled with the US government. The bank was caught laundering money for drug cartels, terrorist-linked organizations, and companies in Iran. Basically, you could call it The Bank Of Anti-America. But the bank acted primarily for benevolent reasons — it wanted to help under-served populations gain access to banking services.

The bank paid a fine that represented less than six weeks of profit, and none of its executives went to jail. Which makes sense — the only way bank executives go to jail in America is if they get caught flashing people in a public park. And when you’re busy washing money for drug kingpins who make torture videos, you don’t have time for things like that.

But what’s most interesting is what the bank initially did to address the situation. It hired people to investigate suspicious transactions. And then, after a period of no training on how to detect money laundering, it paid them to do almost nothing. One guy told of how he’d come into work for two hours, take a four hour lunch, and then work two more hours. “Working” consisted of searching online to find out if a company receiving a wire transfer had a website. If a website was found, the employee said “okay, this looks legitimate.” And for this the guy got paid $55k, which by my rough calculations comes out to be $57 per hour.

Reading this, I started to get angry. I can never find these kinds of jobs. I try, but I always end up with those old-school jobs that pay crap money and require you to do real work. Life is so unfair.

I won’t despair, however, because this development offers a great way to put Americans back to work. Being American these days is a lot like living in Sicily – the banks are the mafia that the government is too scared of to take on, hence the wrist-slaps.

But what does the mob provide for everyday Sicilians? Lots of steady jobs which are immune from the threat of layoffs. Nobody tries to off-shore a mob-job. So, instead of paying a $2 billion fine and waiting for the next lawsuit to arrive, a guilty bank should be required to create “non-jobs” that pay $57 per hour.

Sure, that’s only 36 jobs at The Bank Of Anti-America. But add in the other big banks and all the inevitable repeat-offenses and the numbers start adding up.

It’s not pretty, but so is doing nothing to put people back to work.