John Stumpf is the CEO of America’s most profitable megabank, Wells Fargo, which has 268,000 employees. His company has been operating in crisis mode ever since the federal Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hit the bank earlier this month with a $185 million fine, the largest penalty for consumer fraud the new agency has ever assessed. Yet the bank’s execs are walking out the door with multiple millions in bonuses. The exec most ‘accountable’ for Wells Fargo’s scam is exiting with $125 million.

What happened? Wells Fargo employees, CFPB investigators found, have over the past five years opened more than 2 million accounts that customers, as one press account puts it, “did not authorize, did not know they had, did not need, and clearly did not understand.” Some customers even ended up paying late fees on these bogus accounts.

Stumpf says he is going to “get things right” and “fully reimburse” any affected customers. But what he doesn’t admit is that the bank’s enormous annual earnings — and the enormous rewards these earnings have “earned” him personally — rest on a systematic “sandbagging” of the average Americans who walk into Wells Fargo branches.

This scam was totally planned and deliberate. If it had been perpetrated by the obscure and powerless (a.k.a African Americans) the executives would be serving life sentences at this very moment. But, of course, they were probably careful to contribute to the election expenses of numerous politicians. How long will Congress, and the political party that dominates it, put up with this Game of Thieves? Why do decent, taxpaying, law-abiding people have to stand there helpless while criminals walk away with multi-millions. Strumpf should be in handcuffs and a jail jumpsuit, his cronies likewise. They should all be made to repay every penny they have taken. So why is Strumpf out and about making inane speeches?

Ataraxia deserted me for a moment. Apologies!