Why isn’t Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf under Federal indictment for fraud?

                    CEO Stumpf: he pocketed  a $200 million 

                    profit from the misfortunes of Wells Fargo

                     customers that his bank engineered

Some time time ago, over 5,000 employees of Wells Fargo Bank began opening accounts in their customers’ names that the customers hadn’t asked for. There were two million — yes, two million — of these fraudulent accounts, it came out during hearings of the Senate Banking Committee.

The account holders were charged various fees for these accounts  — accounts that they hadn’t asked for. 

The 5,300 Wells Fargo employees who helped commit this fraud were fired, it came out during the Senate hearings. So the guilty were punished, right?

Not so fast. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania noticed a slight, umm, flaw in the testimony of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf.

As American Banker reports it, Toomey said, “When thousands of people conduct the same kind of fraudulent activity, it’s a stretch to believe that every one of them independently conjured up this idea to commit this fraud. Doesn’t it defy comon sense to think there wasn’t some orchestration of this?”

And who might be leading the orchestra? Senator Elizabeth Warren had a clue. She said to Stumpf:

“While this scam was going on, you personally held an average of 6.5 million shares, and the share price went up by $30, which translate into more than $200 million in gains [for you].”

And make no mistake. The people in whose names those accounts had been fraudulently opened got hurt. The American Banker story reports:

Stumpf also appeared unready for questions about how customers' credit scores would be affected by the scandal. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said the impact on customers went beyond fees and fines because account openings could harm credit scores."What about the folks that may have got a house through Chase and paid a higher interest rate because of that?" Tester asked. "The truth is there are real-world implications here on young families and old families that are going to be put in a poverty situation because of that."Stumpf did not respond how the bank would address the situation, saying "we have more work to do.”

Stumpf’s testimony waffled on and on, back and forth, while he seemed to be absolving himself from any obligation to repay the ripped off bank customers. He had found 5,300 little people to take the fall for him, which was no big deal, Stumpf appeared to be saying, because those 5,300 out of work suckers were only one percent of the bank’s employees.

Senator Warren at one point nearly went ballistic, and fired cannonballs of righteous rage at the evently crooked bank president.

“You should resign,” she said. “You should give back the money you took while this scam went on, and you should be invetigated by  the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

I beg to differ, Senator Warren. He should be indicted by the Justice Department. And if he is found guilty — and I have little  doubt that if competently prosecuted he will be found guilty — he should do some time behind bars. How much time?

Well, I wouldn’t want to subject him to the harshness of drug laws that have put some casual pot smokers in prison for decades or more for a single act of possessing or selling a few ounces of marijuana. No, I would not.

Instead, I think he should be prosecuted for each specific act of fraud. For each count on which he is found guilty, he should be sentenced to, oh, let’s be very lenient here — say one measly month in prison, sentences for each act of fraud to be served consecutively, of course. Now let me just, umm, tally this up….

Two million  victims means two million months — those months divided by the 12 months in a year equals 166,666 years. (Not at all harsh considering that if you’d been tried for personally defrauding the bank that many times, not to mention that many drug sales, you’d be in prison for eternity plus a half million years.)

Heck, with time off for good behavior, betcha Stumpf could be out of the clink in less than 80,000 years. I know that may not sound like enough to people who’ve had their credit ruined, who didn’t get jobs or saw their careers wrecked because they had lousy credit,who couldn’t get a house because they had lousy credit, or who may be homeless today as a consequence of the scheme that put $200 million in Stumpf’s personal pocket.

But as I said, I believe in leniency.

P.S. You can find a passel of outrages from the mouth of Stumpf , as well as other outrages, here.

Elaine Stritch: believing the words

Ordinarily, The New York Crank doesn’t review nightclub acts, but I’m making an exception for Elaine Stritch. If you don’t like this change of pace from the political, you can buzz off. So far as I’m concerned, the lady’s a piece of work and I’m taking notice.

But a bit of background first.

Years ago, I made my entire living telling fibs. Not outright lies. Just essentially harmless fibs, the kind that got people to buy dishwashing liquid in a white bottle instead of a green bottle, or to charge things with a green credit card instead of a blue credit card. In other words, I was in the advertising business.

And then one day, the business actually taught me something valuable—the kind of thing that offers a fresh insight into how stuff works.

I was talking to the director of a TV spot, who was casting for a voice. I don’t remember what the line was that the voice would say. Probably some tame version of this incongruous thought, “Makes love to your hands while it beats the crap out of grease.”

“There are so many announcers with great voices out there,” I said to him. “So how come you’re auditioning only people from Broadway?”

“It’s simple,” the director replied. And then he said, with dramatic emphasis and pregnant pauses between each word, “Actors…believe…the…words.”

Which brings me back to Elaine Stritch.

Stritch is currently appearing at the Café Carlyle, a nightclub in a chichi New York hotel. It's the kind of hotel where movie stars, politicians, investment bank bigshots and diplomats routinely share the elevator.

Ostensibly she’s singing Stephen Sondheim’s songs. I say ostensibly because the lady’s been around the block a few times (her stage debut was in 1944), she’s had a few episodes with booze, and her voice bears the scars. While she miraculously brings off Sondheim's often murder-to-sing ballads, she generally seems to be croaking in tune rather than singing in tune.

But no matter. Stritch may or may not be a singer but she is one hell of an actress and anyone who believes Sondheim’s words can put on a powerful performance just by speaking them. That is essentially what she did. In fact, she spoke one number, entirely without music.

Stritch's delivery toyed with her audience’s emotions. She played it for humor when she sang “I feel pretty/oh so pretty” as if she was letting the audience in on her own ironic joke. She brought some to tears, when she delivered the lyrics to, Every Day a Little Death. And the thought, “damn right about that,” went through my head when she sang Ladies Who Lunch.

There’s another reason to go to the Café Carlyle and hear Stritch (she’s only there until January 30th, so hurry) assuming you’re willing to part with a horrendously thick wad of cash. It’s one of those rare performance venues where the entertainers must be sorely tempted to entertain themselves by watching the audience. And where the audience might be tempted to keep a close eye on one another.

I was sitting with my beautiful girlfriend next to a couple of evidently connected guys (Bonanno family I warrant, judging from some names dropped during their overheard conversation). One of them was accompanied by a much younger woman whose face was a figment of some plastic surgeon’s wildest flight of, umm, creativity—augmented by an equally fanciful makeup job. I won’t even try to describe it. You had to be there.

We had a celebrity in the audience too, the actress Kathleen Turner, who of course was raptly listening to the words. Plus the usual assortment of stock characters from central casting playing out their personal vignettes: The two older gay guys holding hands. The two younger gay guys holding hands. Two middle-aged lesbians who stood up to applaud, whoop and cheer after each number and who nearly swallowed Stritch alive during the performance. The clueless out-of-towner staying at the hotel who came down in his sneakers, jeans and sweatshirt and had to be brought a jacket by the maitre d’.
An incongruous priest in full clerical uniform. By now you probably get the scene.

The bill for the performance and a modest dinner for two—two salads, two plates of salmon, one martini, one glass of wine, one cup of coffee—cost more than my first term of private college tuition, back when Stritch was starring in the Goodyear Television Playhouse. Or to put it another way, I could have flown to Europe and back—this year. Well, money is toilet paper these days.

But Stritch is hard to beat, most especially if you’re one of those people who understands what it means to believe the words.