JUST ANOTHER THOUGHT - THE U.S. IS BEING TOUGH ON DEUTSCHEBANK, BUT AT WHAT COST. (Die US-zäh auf Deutsche Bank, aber zu welchem ​​Preis)?

As we watch the United States Government punishing Deutsche bank with crippling financial fines, it is a timely occasion to consider the 'justice' and rationale for governments to impose such fines on private and public companies.

I question the justice of these fines, on the basis that it is the share holders, employees, and customers of these companies and bodies who have to pay the fines.  And how do they pay these massive fines? Yes, by depleting their reserves, and/or increasing the cost of their products, thereby reducing their competitiveness, and, in the worst of cases, going to the wall. Resulting in jobs being lost or not being created, livelihoods being lost and dependant workers becoming unemployed and increased poverty in the the general community.

And what do these governments, such as the United States, do with the money they, effectively, extorted from these multi-national companies? Do they use it to create jobs or to alleviate the hardship which shareholders and the customers of these companies are exposed to, as a result of the action of the government? I rather doubt it. They probably just use the money for non related matters, seeing it as a bonus.

Yes, I thought Robin Hood was meant to steal from the rich and use it to alleviate the conditions of the poor, not to feather, in the case of governments, their own nests.  In today's society, we cannot make the presumption that the shareholders in Deutsche bank are all rich people, anymore than we could argue that to be the case with any other national or multi-national company. 

Shareholders are ordinary people, whose pensions are predicated on companies such such as Deutsche bank making a reasonable return on its investments. When governments pass crippling fines on them, they are not only fining the company, but the ordinary shareholder and employee, who livelihood could be dependent on the survival of a company which might have been mortally harmed by those fines.

So, does this mean that I am saying that companies such as Deutsche bank, when it commits a serious offence, as in the case of the Lehman Brothers, should not be fined?

No, what I am saying is that the fine should be proportionate and take account of its likely impact on shareholders, employees and the general economy. It should not determined solely or mostly on basis of retributive and deterrential justice, which is not really justice but extortion, where the government simply pockets the money.

Governments need to find a more enlightened and societally fairer way of dealing with offences by these public and private companies and organisations.

When governments, which are aware of the importance of confidence and stability within the financial markets, behave in a way which undermines that confidence, you have to ask yourself, what role is politics and economics are playing in such action; especially when the company is a foreign one?