Why They Should Not Be Arrested - Pt.2

In Part 1, I told you about my attempt to arouse interest in a private prosecution of the "criminal bankers", and that it has so far "gone nowhere". The title of this series of posts gives a hint of the conclusion that I have reached as to why that has been so. I will now state it explicitly:

The Irish banking disaster was not caused by criminal behaviour

Indeed, it is not clear to me that the thing that above all caused the banking disaster can even be said to be a matter of straightforward immorality on the part of those who took the decisions which caused the damage.

None of this means that there was no criminal behaviour:there was. Nor does it mean that "immoral" conduct did not form part of the causal mixture:it did. Still less does it mean that no-one needs to be held accountable and possibly to suffer adverse consequences: they do (and some have, adequately or otherwise).

(What primarily caused it, in my opinion, was a loss of risk appreciation by all economic agents involved. Investors in bank shares - and, to a degree, in bonds - came to incorrectly believe that banking was pretty well risk-free. Unfortunately, bank management "bought-in" to this delusion, and behaved in a manner that tested the belief literally to destruction. Bad practices, poor regulation, hubris and other minor factors, including the so-called "bankers' bonuses" problem aggravated the rush over the precipice).

It does not really "give me a warm feeling" to arrive, however provisionally, at this view, notwithstanding that it does mean that people who have been friends and colleagues may not, therefore, be at hazard of being jailed. Like everyone else, my reflex response was to believe that disaster on such a scale had to have A BAD GUY behind it. It is as difficult for me as for everyone else - including, not so incidentally, many of the supposed culprits - to comprehend how so much damage could occur without someone acting in a really evil, criminal, manner.

There is a distinction between responsibility, moral culpability and criminal guilt. I do not think that it is novel or controversial to say that only if there is the latter do questions of "arrests","trial" or "jail" arise.

I would again add that, usually in response to calls for "immediate arrests" or the like, I have regularly posed, in public (on a series of internet fora) and in private, the question "which crime is it that they have committed ?", and have received only one even-halfway-satisfactory answer. I will reveal that answer in a later post in this series. Many plausible as well as some insanely paranoid answers will also be discussed.

My conclusion is not necessarily final: I am open to persuasion that I have got it wrong. And I repeat my offer: find me a way to prosecute privately a banker for something that caused the crash, and I will do it, or help others to do so.

The offence has to have caused the crash: something like a bank official "looting" a customer's deposit account for his own gain, or a bank over-charging a class of borrowers, is of no interest to me for this purpose. Such crimes have always occurred, and, human nature being what it is, can no more be totally eliminated than other crime.