Should Wells Fargo’s CEO Resign or Face Criminal Investigation?

Elizabeth Warren and John G. Stumpf (Photos – David Shankbone, en.wikipedia.org and Justin Ruckman, flickr).

Wells Fargo’s CEO, John G. Stumpf, apologized to a Senate panel on Tuesday about his bank’s deceptive sales practices, stating that the bank is committed to fixing what went wrong.

By Marguerite Kribs

Senator Elizabeth Warren did not let him get away with it. Here’s an excerpt of what she had to say:

Mr. Stump. If one of your tellers took a handful of twenty dollar bills out of the cash drawer, they’d probably be looking at criminal charges for theft. They could end up in prison. But you squeezed your employees to the breaking point so they would cheat customers and you could drive up the value of your stock and put hundreds of millions of dollars in your own pocket. And when it all blew up, you kept your job, you kept your multi-million dollar bonuses, and you went on television to blame thousands of twelve dollar an hour employees who were just trying to make cross-sell quotas that made you rich. This is about accountability. You should resign; you should give back the money that you took while this scam was going on; and you should be criminally investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This just isn’t right. A cashier who steals a handful of twenties is held accountable, but Wall Street executives who almost never hold themselves accountable. Not now, and not in 2008, when they crushed the world-wide economy. The only way that Wall Street will change is if executives face jail time when they preside over massive frauds. We need tough new laws to hold corporate executives personally accountable and we need tough prosecutors who have the courage to go after people at the top. Until then, it will business as usual, and at giant banks like Wells Fargo that seems to mean cheating as many customers, investors, and employees as they possibly can…

What do you think should happen to Wells Fargo’s CEO, John G. Stumpf?

Elizabeth Warren, Vote Caricature (Photos – DonkeyHotey, flickr, Alan Cleaver, flickr).

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