May 20, 2014

Banks should pay all fines by issuing voting shares.

Sir, I refer to Kara Scannells’and Stephen Foley’s “Credit Suisse to pay $2.6bn in tax case” May 20 and to all other reports about bank fines.

All these fines go against bank’s capital accounts, and will therefore, because of bank capital requirements, cut down on the credits a bank can give.

And that hurts mostly the innocent… those who will now not get a credit because the bank does not have the shareholders’ equity to back it up with.

The only way out of it is to force all bank fines to be paid by the issuance of bank voting shares, at their current market value, for an amount equivalent to the fine.

To do elsewise is, as I see it, only statist sadism.