$243 Billion is the total amount of fines that major banks have paid for criminal behaviour since the start of the 2008 crisis. That's more than the GDP of Portugal.



It’s important to note that the banks don’t just send a check for their fines to federal and state governments. Many times they get credit by making loans and supporting debt restructuring. For example, a Goldman Sachs GS, +1.09% commitment for $1.8 billion of loan forgiveness and financing for affordable housing was considered as part of a $5.1 billion “fine” the bank had to pay.

At least it was $243 Billion in February. The fines have continued up to this very week.



“Bank of America Merrill Lynch went to astonishing lengths to defraud its own institutional clients about who was seeing and filling their orders, who was trading in its dark pool, and the capabilities of its electronic trading services,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Friday.

RBS got fined $5 Billion just a month ago.

Back in 2015, five of these huge banks plead guilty to felony fraud. All of them have been hit with fines for fraud since then.

It's not all American banks doing it. European banks with branches in the U.S. do it as well.



The Dutch bank allowed hundreds of millions of dollars in "untraceable cash" to be deposited at its rural bank branches in California and then withdrawn via wire transfers, checks, and cash transactions, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a statement on Wednesday. The bank also pleaded guilty to obstructing the investigation in an attempt to avoid the repeat of sanctions it received in 2006 and 2008 for "nearly identical failures," the DOJ added. "When Rabobank learned that substantial numbers of its customers' transactions were indicative of international narcotics trafficking, organized crime, and money laundering activities, it chose to look the other way and to cover up deficiencies in its anti-money laundering program," Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan said. Rabobank CEO Wiebe Draijer said the "violations that took place are serious, regrettable and unacceptable."

So how does Wall Street feel about being caught red-handed engaging in fraud, theft, and general corruption over and over again.

Consider the jokes they tell.



However, to Souleles’ surprise, the single largest group of jokes focused on “class, position in society, wealth, power and the possibility for social action”. At one conference, the audience collapsed in laughter when a financier suggested that private equity funds were like pirates, preying on innocents. At another, they laughed when a participant asked: “How long will the IPO window stay open so that everybody in PE could get richer than they already are?”