Wells Fargo has been trying their hardest not to punish the top group of executives and board members over the past year, as they’ve had to pay out large sums of money over numerous charges that they’ve perpetrated an extraordinary amount of fraud on the American people and the U.S. government. Senator Elizabeth Warren has been pretty consistent in her analysis of the greed-filled atmosphere over at the banking and lending giant. You are either too big to manage, or you have criminally managed your big company. It is either you are criminally guilty of fraud or you are criminally guilty of incompetence. Monday, Sen. Warren sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen telling explaining that Wells Fargo’s management must go.
"The fake accounts scandal cost Wells Fargo customers millions of dollars in unauthorized fees and damaged many of their credit scores," the senator wrote. "The scandal also revealed severe problems with the bank's risk management practices — problems that justify the Federal Reserve's removal of all responsible Board members."
Wells Fargo did not respond to a request for comment. Wells Fargo shares gained about 1.1 percent in early trading, about in line with the sector.
Warren did not limit her criticism to Wells — she also said the Fed "has done nothing to date" to punish the bank "despite its ample statutory authority."
Sen. Warren knows as we all do that this game has been rigged and the FED has not been particularly impressive when it comes to meting out significant punishment.
“I urge you to exercise your legal authority to remove the holdover Wells Fargo board members,” Warren wrote. “The board did nothing to stop rampant misconduct” that led to “more than 5,000 bank employees creating more than two million fake accounts over four years,” between 2011 and 2015, Warren added.
Eric Kollig, a Fed spokesman, said, “We have received the letter and plan to respond.”
There has been a steady stream of evidence pointing to a top-down problem at Wells Fargo, an atmosphere of high expectations and a by any means necessary attitude—all for bottom line bragging rights. They should all be behind bars. With the Republican Party hell bent on deregulating our banking system in order to make big profits in the short term, we need all of the Elizabeth Warrens we can get.
Here’s four minutes of Sen. Warren dissecting then Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf last year.