Category: Corruption

As Strange as this Sounds, This Makes Me Feel Good

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So, we have two stories from Wall Street where it appears that the principals are just plain crooks.

It makes me feel good, because, unlike what people are saying about the rest of that lot, willful blindness in pursuit of an obscene payday is not grounds for some sort of criminal investigation, this is clearly criminal, and the people involved are likely to go to jail.

In a real way, it reflects far more poorly on me than it does on them.

First we have Bernard L. Madoff arrested for operating a Ponzi scheme that appears to exceed $50 billion dollars.

This guy is a big name, as he is, “a past chairman of the board of directors of the Nasdaq Stock Market as well as a member of the board of governors of the National Association of Securities Dealers,” which makes him a member of what could be described as the nobility of the financial system.

And then we have Mark Dryer, a high flying Wall Street lawyer accused of cheating his clients by selling false promissory notes, also arrested.

Some additional Schadenfreude comes from the fact that Henry Blodget, the smarmiest of the snake oil salesmen during the dotcom boom, got a haircut on this too.

AIG Again

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Well, it looks as if the largest welfare sponge, AIG is now dawdling on its asset sales to return to viability:

The CEO of U.S. insurer American Insurance Group, which is looking to shed assets around the globe as part of a $152 billion U.S. government rescue package, said that difficult markets may delay the sale plans, though certain units have attracted heavy interest.

The translation here is: as long as we can rely on our sugar daddy at the US treasury, we won’t sell until prices go up, and if we run short on cash, we’ll hit up the taxpayer for some more.

And they will need more taxpayer money, because they are selling insurance at rates that are clearly below cost, so as to rebuild their market share.

They don’t care that they lose money on each sale, Uncle Sugar will bail them out…Again…and Again…and Again…and Again…

Cover-Up Much?

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It appears that Michael Mukasey and His Evil Minions™ are refusing to provide documents to the Obama transition team.

It appears that they are unwilling to supply the torture and snooping memos drafted by the Office of Legal Counsel for the CIA and the NSA:

The opinions, some of which have been released to Congress in redacted form, contain the legal rationale of the NSA’s warrantless spying program and the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies, among other intelligence initiatives.

The claim is that the spy agencies have, “own equity or interest in the information.”

Un-dirty-word-believable.

Chuck Colson

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So, George W. Bush just gave the Presidential Citizens Medal to Charles W. “Chuck” Colson.

Charles Colson, notwithstanding his “finding God” in the stir, is a nasty piece of work, and arguably the single person most responsible for bringing down Richard Nixon.

When Nixon vented about shooting someone, Colson would buy a gun, and it was largely covering up for Colsons excesses that got the scandals flowing.

Of all the rat-f&^%ers in the Nixon administration (their term) he was the worst, and now as head of the Prison Fellowship, he has repeatedly engaged in efforts to use the prison system to force conversion of inmates.

I don’t mean outreach, I mean the creation of special programs with special privileges to coerce prisoners into being “born again.”

I hope that Gary Sinise, who also got the award, felt embarrassed to share a stage with Colson, but since he’s a wingnut too, I would think any feeling of discomfort or shame unlikely.

Is Cerberus Pulling a Scam on the Congress With Chrysler?

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I think that the most detailed analysis of this is by Dan Gerstein, who is a a political communications consultant, and was, “Communications director to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and as a senior adviser on his vice presidential and presidential campaigns,” so we know that he’s a professional liar (that’s what a political communications consultant is), and that he associates with people with no sense of decency (Lieberman), so it should be read with that caveat, but his explanation of just how Cerberus is taking the taxpayer to the cleaners is the clearest and most concise explanation. (I’ll have alternate links below)

The issues:

  • Cerberus is chock full of Republican Party apparachicks, including Former Bush Secretary of the Treasury John Snow, who personally lobbied Hank Paulson to, “Salvage Cerberus’s investments in Detroit,” additional politically connected lobbyiests and corporate officers include:
    • Bush I VP Dan Quayle
    • Former Sen. John Breaux (a Dem, but very much a DINO)
    • Former Bush legislative liaison David Hobbs
    • Uber-Lobbyist Billy J. Cooper
    • Arnold I. Havens, a former general counsel of the Treasury Department
    • Christopher A. Smith, former chief of staff in the Treasury
  • Conservative estimates are the Cerberus manages somewhere around $30 billion, so they have the wherewithal to float a loan to Chrysler.
  • I think that the likely truth is that they don’t want to back Chrysler. They bought it from Mercedes Benz in the hopes of a quick sale to GM, classic flip and flee. Certainly the reports that they are trying for a quick sale to a Chinese auto manufacturer supports this.
  • A number of Congressmen, most notably Senator Grassley of Iowa, are demanding detailed information on the financial status of Cerberus, equity warrants being sort of like stock, but are not stock, since Chrysler is private.
  • They also have 51% ownership of GMAC, the auto lending firm spun off from GM, which means that they are getting taxpayer money twice.

On the bright side, what just passed requires Cerberus to put up equity warrants in exchange for the loans, equity warrants are kind of like stocks, but only for private firms, which have no stock.

Your Daily Dose of Corruption

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Well, it now appears that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is ‘Senate Candidate No. 5’ in l’affaire Blagojevich, which means that either someone on his staff was freelancing, or he is looking at prosecution too.

Also, the House Ethics Committee is expanding its investigation of Rep Charles Rangel, basically influence peddling, and feeding web design jobs to his son.

On the Republican side, FBI is looking into allegations that a Norm Coleman friend, Nasser Kazeminy, laundered money into Coleman’s pockets.

Update on the Sitdown Strike

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It appears that the owner may have been planning to shut down the plant and skip town for some time. It appears that, “company managed by the wife of Republic Windows and Doors owner Richard Gillman recently purchased an Iowa plant that manufactures similar products.”

Echo Windows and Doors was created two weeks ago and lists Sharon Gillman as its manager, according copies of records obtained by the Daily News from the Iowa Secretary of the State. According to Cook County property tax records, Sharon Gillman is Richard Gillman’s wife.

The couple purchased a $2.6 million Oak Street condo together in 2007, according to property records.

The Gillimans could not be reached for comment today. But this afternoon, Richard Gillman released a statement confirming the creation of the new company.

Also, Amy Zimmerman, who has served as Republic’s marketing director, is now listed as the contact on the newly registered echowindows.com domain name. She refused comment today.

As much as it pains me to say this, it may very well be that Bank of America is blameless in all this. The Gillimans may have set up a second company to find cheap non-union plant in Iowa, and then screwed up their credit line with BoA on purpose, so they could get out from under things like COBRA, owed vacation time, and other benefits.

In the mean time it appears that Chase, which had a 40% stake in Republic, is actually doing the right thing: it has pledged $400,000 to the employees there.

Still, this is getting weird, and if this is a scam by the Gillimans, and it looks increasingly so, there may very well be a criminal fraud case against them.

Defective Even by the Standards of Taser International

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Taser, International has always maintained that their little toy that should be treated as a lethal weapon is safe.

They even have studies to prove it.

Only, it turns out that their products do not meet the company’s own dubious standarsa:

A new study has found that the type of Taser stun gun used most by police officers can fire more electricity than the company says is possible, which the study’s authors say raises the risk of cardiac arrest as much as 50 percent in some people.

So, not only is their own science dubious, but their manufacturing processes are too.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fitzmas

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Patrick Fitzgerald just arrested Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich arrested on on corruption charges.

Among the charges is that he tried to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

And, yes, he has a (D) after his name….What’s more he’s one of those DLC type moderates, just like “Dollar” Bill Jefferson in Louisiana.

You know, I’m glad that I come from a clean government state like Maryland.

**cchhgggg**

I think that I just hocked up a hairball, but relative to Illinois, it’s true. 3 of their last 5 governors have done jail tiem.

On January 20, Have Her Walked Out of Her Office By Security

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Well, it looks like political hack Mary Beth Buchanan will not be submitting her resignation to Barack Obama as US Attorney for Pittsburgh on January 20, as is customary.

I’ve document a few of her partisan abuses of power here.

This is a woman who literally made a 45¢ fax a federal case, because the person in question, Cyril Wecht, was a Democrat.

She also prosecuted comedian Tommy Chong for selling bongs, went after a California erotica company, and was hip deep in the US Attorney firings scandal.

Seriously, this woman is a clear and present danger to justice, and she should not be allowed in the building without an armed escort.

Fundamentally Corrupt

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Well, some good news for municipalities, Stnadard and Poors (S&P) has upgraded their debt significantly, which should lower their borrowing costs.

This is not a recognition of economic changes, after there is no one who is safer to loan to than they were a year ago, and the municipalities in question have seen the basic metric of credit worthiness, things like “unreserved general fund balance” and “debt per capita” have actually headed in the wrong direction.

What has happened is two things:

  • The monoliner insurance companies who used to rent their credit ratings to municipalities, at taxpayer expense, are effectively defunct.
  • People have noticed that government bonds have been routinely rated lower than commercial ones based on the same criteria, and are looking at investigations and/or regulations of the ratings agencies.

What has been going on for years is that the ratings agencies have systematically underrated state and municipal debt, because it’s how their buddies with the monoliner insurers got business.

It’s why I suggest that the current financial system may need to be amputated.

Well, at Least the New York Post Is Calling Rubin a Crook

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They are saying that Citi was at the center of a “Ponzi Scheme”, and yes, they are using the term “ponzi scheme” to describe the interlocking network impenetrably complex investment vehicles that has Citi in a government bailout:

Director Rubin and ousted CEO Prince – and their lieutenants over the past five years – are named in a federal lawsuit for an alleged complex cover-up of toxic securities that spread across the globe, wiping out trillions of dollars in their destructive paths.

I’m not sure how much of this is the Post’s predilection for hysterical screaming headlines, and how much is because Bob Rubin is a former senior Clintion official, but I agree with them: former Treasury Secretary Robert Ruben is a crook.*

The mainstream media is, of course, much too polite to say something like that about a titan of banking, though Jonathan Weil in the Bloomberg OP/ED that he is extremely concerned about the lack of transparency regarding what toxic investments that Citicorp is writing down.

At the center of this whole mess, at every stage, is Robert Rubin, either in the front, or in the room, and while some argue that the problem is systemic, so is poverty and deprivation breeding crime, this should not stop us from either imprisoning Robert Rubin or the guy who boosted your stereo.

*I would also note that current Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” Paulson is a bigger crook.