December 18, 2008
The Ponzi Scheme case involving Bernie Madoff is only the latest example of scumbaggery on Wall Street. Madoff helped found the NASDAQ Exchange and established a reputation for himself as one of the captains of the financial world. Now we know that he pilfered over 50 billion dollars from sophisticated investors, colleges, charitable institutions, banks and plain-old, rich people. Worse yet, when he couldn’t get enough co-signers to back his ten-million dollar bail, he was placed under “house arrest” and confined to his $7,000,000 home. When a car thief can’t make bail, he sits in jail until his case is tried. Why is it that when someone is charged with stealing ten million times that much, he gets treated as though he was driving on an expired license? By the way: How does somebody hide fifty billion dollars? Is he going to claim that he lost it or that he blew it all on lottery tickets?
The knaves who held themselves out as financial magicians have made pimps and drug dealers seem like Red Cross volunteers, by comparison. Beyond that, the government institutions and officials charged with protecting the integrity of our financial system have been out to lunch for several years. Worse yet, these hacks continue to facilitate the theft of trillions of dollars of taxpayer money and, for this reason, I believe they all belong in prison. On second thought, they should be placed before a firing squad along with the swindlers whom they enabled. After the Enron treachery was exposed to the light of day, one would have thought that the Securities and Exchange Commission might have started doing its job. It didn’t. People have to start forcing our elected officials to find out why. I think I know the answer. I believe it’s because many of the people entrusted to regulate the financial system are crooks themselves.
On December 16, Brent Budowsky posted an important article on The Hill website concerning the bailout bungle. Mr. Budowsky is a gentleman who earned an LL.M. degree (that’s something you work on after graduating from law school) in International Financial Law from the London School of Economics. He was a former aide to Senator Lloyd Bentsen and Representative Bill Alexander. Mr. Budowsky pointed out that:
Government agencies have poured close to $8 trillion into banking bailouts. The Treasury secretary has promoted massive government support of troubled, failed and corrupted institutions.
This program is a 100 percent top-down exercise involving the largest amount of money in history.
Virtually none of this money directly helps average Americans. Virtually none of it trickles down to the people who suffer the most and pay for the program.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission is discredited. The Federal Reserve has failed in its duty as banking regulator. Congress has failed in its duty of oversight. The most wise and citizen-friendly regulator, Sheila Bair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is treated with contempt by the Treasury secretary.
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Today the Federal Reserve Board refuses to disclose information regarding some $2 trillion provided to financial institutions. Bloomberg business news has filed a historic freedom-of-information case seeking disclosure. Congress and the president-elect should support it.
Bailout money is not a private account that belongs to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Fed governors, the Treasury secretary or the banks. It is the people’s money. It should be used to benefit the people. It should be monitored through the checks and balances of the democratic process.
Secrecy is the enemy of equity, integrity and common sense. Secrecy is the friend of negligence, misjudgment and corruption. There are probably selected instances where the Fed should not disclose, but show me $2 trillion of secretly spent money and I will show you trouble.
Do you care to hazard a guess as to what the next Wall Street scandal might be? I have a pet theory concerning the almost-daily spate of “late-day rallies” in the equities markets. I’ve discussed it with some knowledgeable investors. I suspect that some of the bailout money squandered by Treasury Secretary Paulson has found its way into the hands of some miscreants who are using this money to manipulate the stock markets. I have a hunch that their plan is to run up stock prices at the end of the day before those numbers have a chance to settle back down to the level where the market would normally have them. The inflated “closing price” for the day is then perceived as the market value of the stock. This plan would be an effort to con investors into believing that the market has pulled out of its slump. Eventually the victims would find themselves hosed once again at the next “market correction”. I don’t believe that SEC Chairman Christopher Cox would likely uncover such a scam, given his track record. Perhaps we can thank him when “vigilante justice” comes to Wall Street.
Banking Lobby Tools In Senate Subvert Reform
May 20. 2010
The financial pseudo-reform bill is being exposed as a farce. Thanks to its tools in the Senate, the banking lobby is on the way toward defeating any significant financial reform. Although Democrats in the Senate (and the President himself) have been posing as reformers who stand up to those “fat cat bankers”, their actions are speaking much louder than their words. What follows is a list of the Senate Democrats who voted against both the Kaufman – Brown amendment (to prevent financial institutions from being “too big to fail”) as well as the amendment calling for more Federal Reserve transparency (sponsored by Republican David Vitter to comport with Congressman Ron Paul’s original “Audit the Fed” proposal – H.R. 1207 – which was replaced by the watered-down S. 3217 ):
Akaka (D-HI), Baucus (D-MT), Bayh (D-IN), Bennet (D-CO), Carper (D-DE), Conrad (D-ND), Dodd (D-CT), Feinstein (D-CA), Gillibrand (D-NY), Hagan (D-NC), Inouye (D-HI), Johnson (D-SD), Kerry (D-MA), Klobuchar (D-MN), Kohl (D-WI), Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Lieberman (ID-CT), McCaskill (D-MO), Menendez (D-NJ), Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE), Reed (D-RI), Schumer (D-NY), Shaheen (D-NH), Tester (D-MT), Udall (D-CO) and Mark Warner (D-VA).
I wasn’t surprised to see Senator Chuck Schumer on this list because, after all, Wall Street is located in his state. But how about Senator Claire McCaskill? Remember her performance at the April 27 hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations? She really went after those banksters – didn’t she? Why would she suddenly turn around and support the banks in opposing those two amendments? I suppose the securities and investment industry is entitled to a little payback, after having given her campaign committee $265,750.
I was quite disappointed to see Senator Amy Klobuchar on that list. Back on June 19, 2008, I included her in a piece entitled “Women to Watch”. Now, almost exactly two years later, we are watching her serve as a tool for the securities and investment industry, which has given her campaign committee $224,325. On the other hand, another female Senator whom I discussed in that same piece, Maria Cantwell of Washington, has been standing firm in opposing attempts to leave some giant loopholes in Senator Blanche Lincoln’s amendment concerning derivatives trading reform. The Huffington Post described how Harry Reid attempted to use cloture to push the financial reform bill to a vote before any further amendments could have been added to strengthen the bill. Notice how “the usual suspects” – Reid, Chuck Schumer and “Countrywide Chris” Dodd tried to close in on Cantwell and force her capitulation to the will of the kleptocracy:
Russ Feingold’s criticisms of the bill were consistent with those voiced by economist Nouriel Roubini (often referred to as “Doctor Doom” because he was one of the few economists to anticipate the scale of the financial crisis). Barbara Stcherbatcheff of CNBC began her report on Dr. Roubini’s May 18 speech with this statement:
The current mid-term primary battles have fueled a never-ending stream of commentary following the same narrative: The wrath of the anti-incumbency movement shall be felt in Washington. Nevertheless, Dylan Ratigan seems to be the only television commentator willing to include “opposition to financial reform” as a political liability for Congressional incumbents. Yves Smith raised the issue on her Naked Capitalism website with an interesting essay focused on this theme:
Her must-read analysis of the “head fakes” going on within the financial reform wrangling concludes with this thought:
As always, it’s up to the voting public with the short memory to unseat those tools of the banking lobby. Our only alternative is to prepare for the next financial crisis.