Articles by Pat Garofalo

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Wall Street Executives Believe Employees Need to Engage in Illegal Behavior to Succeed
Pat Garofalo – Think Progress, 16 Jul 2012

In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful. Sixteen percent of respondents said they would commit insider trading if they could get away with it, and 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.

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Big Banks Keep Paying a Pittance to Settle Fraud Charges
Pat Garofalo – Nation of Change, 24 Oct 2011

This week, Citigroup announced that it had settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission over charges that the mega-bank misled investors in a derivatives deal and then bet against them. Under the terms of the settlement, Citi agreed to pay $285 million. Having to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars may seem like a lot, but it’s chump change to these banks. Citigroup, for instance, just announced profits of $3.8 billion for the last quarter alone, while JP Morgan made $4.2 billion. Goldman Sachs this week announced just the second losing quarter since the bank went public in 1999, but it paid its SEC settlement in 2010, a year in which the bank made $39.2 billion overall.

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