“The world needs more good listeners” -Dad

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" - Matthew 5:8

If you don't subscribe the The Commoner by @npub1guh5...6hjy you should. Subscribe here:

The Commoner: Money, Markets, Machines

Marty Bent's free weekday newsletter. Money, machines, and the people trying to control both: markets, AI, energy, and privacy. From TFTC since 2017.

Here's the first few paragraphs from his lead story today's newsletter: Marty's Bent The Cost of Doing Business Your Uncle Marty is pretty fired up this morning. Yesterday the Treasury Department announced more than $1.2 billion in penalties against Bank of America after the bank admitted that it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act. From the start of 2018 through the middle of 2025, the second largest bank in the country failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions to FinCEN on time, more than $1 billion of it tied to things like Chinese money laundering networks, fraud and trade-based laundering along the southwest border. The OCC says the bank failed to properly monitor trillions of dollars in transactions and knew about it for years. Treasury's own release says that as the problems piled up, Bank of America "prioritized its revenues and minimized the impact on its required compliance resources." Read that again. They knew, and they decided compliance was too expensive. So who's going to jail? Nobody. Not a single executive has been charged. Bank of America reported earnings this morning, booked the whole thing as a $1.2 billion "Regulatory Settlement Charge," and in the same quarter sent $8.3 billion back to shareholders, $6 billion of it through buybacks. Strip the fine out and the bank made $8.1 billion in three months. The fine is a line item. It's the cost of doing business. Now contrast that with how the government has treated the people building non-custodial, open source bitcoin tools. Roman Storm, the developer of Tornado Cash, was convicted in August of last year of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and is still waiting on a retrial, now set for April 2027, on the counts the jury hung on. Keonne Rodriguez and Bill Hill, the founders of Samourai Wallet, pleaded guilty to that same charge and were sentenced to five and four years in federal prison. They were thrown in a cage and made an example of, and they shouldn't even be in this position. Six months before charging Samourai, the Southern District of New York went to FinCEN, the agency responsible for deciding who has to register as a money transmitter, and asked whether Samourai was a money transmitting business. FinCEN said no. Samourai never took custody of anyone's money. SDNY charged them with it anyway. Is that really surprising though? We live during an era where the law is whatever a prosecutor needs it to be on any given day. #FreeSamourai

If you don't subscribe to The Informationist by @James Lavish , you're missing out.

If you can’t insider-trade stocks, why on earth would you want to be in Congress? To serve the people?!? LOL https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/6120528-senate-blocks-gop-stock-bill/

“Why Greed is Worse Greed is far harder to correct than wastefulness. Unlike wastefulness, which often fades with age or hardship, greed tends to grow stronger over time. As people age, they often cling to their wealth. This makes it harder for them to be generous. Furthermore, greed is far more common than wastefulness, making it a more widespread vice. There are two types of greedy people: 1 Stingy hoarders – They don’t try to take from others but refuse to share what they have. They fear losing money, so they hoard it. 2 Money-grabbers – They take whatever they can, even from bad sources. This includes gamblers, con artists, and those who inflate prices. They care more about money than their reputation.” -The Nichomachean Ethics - For Everyone, Aristotle, Kindle Edition, pg. 64-65