[Shivetya]

but in the end you are not punishing the bank, it merely is an entity with no physical means of being punished. To punish it you need to throw their boards into jail.

Fines are paid by share holders if any, hence is the bank punished? Not unless depositors leave in droves. You cannot fine a bank for its holdings as those are the funds and properties of other people, the bank is merely managing money for others.

if you attempt to dissolve a bank, who takes over the loans, how do you get the depositor funds back. You cannot confiscate them in the names of the state, the distress to the economy would be drastic.

In the end its back to the people running the show, put them in jail, or force them out, or fine them, or all of the above. However like politicians there are so many levels here than they are nearly immune to their actions

TL;DR

Monetary fines are irrelevant, punishing the people who run it is the only means to correct future behavior

[salesforce_wha]

Working under the assumption that: 1. The banks only care about one thing -- profits. 2. Individuals at the bank primarily only care about their pay (talking about the ones responsible for massive fraud and have bonus structures that encourage it, not the tellers at your local branch).

If government took actions to pull all revenue (plus some) generated by these schemes it could go a long way in changing the culture. It appears to me, and probably many others, that the punishment imposed (fines) are simply a cost doing business as the banks appear to still be making profits, or at the very least keeping large portions of revenue, off of illegal activity.

There is no simple solution, and this might be the wrong one, but the current solution doesn't appear to be working.

[shit_parade]

>There is no simple solution,

How do you know, perhaps jail time for executives would work. The problem is there is no simple implementation and to expect a corrupt government to police a corrupt bank is laughable, these people are often colleagues, co-workers, even friends who take turns writing laws and giving each other pay checks.