Wow. Goldman Sachs has just been fined $50m over the criminal theft of confidential documents from its regulator.

Everyone knows there's a revolving door between the banking industry and its regulators. So when Rohit Bansal left the Federal Reserve Bank of New York -- Goldman's primary regulator -- to work for Goldman Sachs, nobody raised an eyebrow.

Then Bansal got caught milking his ex-colleagues for confidential information and passing it on straight to Goldman Sachs.

He now faces prison, and Goldman Sachs has been fined $50m for its part in the scandal. But the revolving door is still alive and well -- and unless we act to get rid of it, we'll never have the safe and transparent banking system we desperately need.

Tell Goldman Sachs: shut your revolving door!

As we learned in the financial crisis of 2008, the banking industry will do pretty much anything it thinks it can get away with for profit -- even if it has devastating effects on millions of ordinary people. We're talking about more than 8 million Americans who lost their jobs and more than 5 million who lost their homes in the last crisis, all caused by corporate greed.

This is what happen when regulators are under the selfish influence of the big banks.

Goldman Sachs is the worst offender -- it's made billions through destroying economies, manipulating markets and inflating bubbles. It even helped to destroy the economies of Greece, Libya, Ghana and Portugal, leaving a trail of human misery in its wake.

The banks desperately need effective regulating. But the revolving door means the lines between banks and the regulators have become blurred. This hugely benefits banks like Goldman Sachs, who get to know what the regulators are doing and planning -- and even how they're thinking.

Goldman hired Rohit Bansal specifically for his "regulatory experience and knowledge". But the revolving door goes right to the top -- the current president of the New York Fed is a former partner at Goldman Sachs.

The only way to get effective regulation of the banking industry is to stop the corruption where it starts -- shutting the revolving door. And, as a community of millions, we're uniquely placed to take on the powerful banking industry. Nearly 100,000 of us told Goldman to return the money it made from crashing the Greek economy to Greece. Now let's make sure Goldman hears us loud and clear.

Tell Goldman Sachs to slam shut its revolving door, now!

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More information:

Goldman pays $50M fine for Fed data leak, USA Today, 28 October 2015
Goldman to Pay $50 Million Penalty Over Leak From Fed, The New York Times, 28 October 2015
Goldman Banker and Fed Regulator Bonded Over Steak, Leaks, Bloomberg, 28 Octover 2015