A friend drew my attention to an article in Le Monde which reveals a large-scale scam organized by banks under the mortgage credit. Without going into details, the banks would have produced documents legally worthless as evidence of hypothèques.pour "soft sell to investors in tons of fraudulent mortgages (which contained false information about the borrower, or who do not meet certain basic conditions).
The author of the article adopts a tone of indignation, which is quite justified if the information is accurate. But he concludes his article with an assertion completely misses the point:
"Such incompetence, coupled with criminal intent, does not deserve one thing: we leave these banks to fail - in an orderly fashion - for good. That's what we should have done two years ago. "
This statement is what I would call now the" economic facilitation "by analogy with the belief that endows inanimate elements of a soul and a will. Here, the reasoning is simple: banks are evil, we must punish the banks. In the same way as we yell at our computers crash or when we hit our furniture when we 're knocking the toe, we should let these banks go bankrupt that we have done so much harm. In our Western rational world, "the banks" have no conscience. It is therefore impossible to punish. We can act only on individuals who are behind the scam.
Reminds me a comment very relevant Bernard Salanié saying "There is no tax on businesses, there is that taxes on individuals' . What he meant by that is that ultimately, it is never the companies that are taxed, but individuals: either shareholders will reduce their profits to pay tax or wages will be reduced or certain employees will be dismissed, either prices will rise, either suppliers will accept a lower price, etc.. The company itself is an abstract entity and inanimate, there are only individuals - consumers, employees, bosses ... - Who suffer the consequences of what happens in the company.
If we force the closure of a bank, it punishes both the shareholders, consumers, employees and many others who have nothing to do with the fraud exposed. The only thing to do is to identify the perpetrators of the scam and to sue.
