That’s what Alan Schwartz, who was head of Bear Stearns when it imploded is asking whether Goldman Sachs was aggressively shorting and talking down Bear Stearns to generate a quick profit.
I would not be surprised. The same was alleged regarding the collapse of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in the late 1990s.
Wall Street is a cesspool, and it needs to be drained.
Remember when I said that Pelosi has said that the Judiciary Committe might hold impeachment hearings?
No such luck. It appears that the committee will instead investigate the behavior of Bush and His Evil Minions™, and if they find something inappropriate, I’m sure that they will write a very strongly written letter, and perhaps hold a very upset press conference.
But as to impeachment, and a possible vote on impeachment, that’s just:
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
Wimps.
Stephen Payne, who was selling access to the Bush administration for contributions to the Bush Library (insert “which book” joke here), has now been asked to step down from his position on the Secure Borders and Open Doors Subcommittee of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
No big surprise there. They have him on tape reciting a price list of bribes.
Hopefully, he’ll see some jail time, and he’ll roll on higher-ups…..How many times have I thought that recently?
(See here for background)
Heinrich Kieber, a former bank clerk in Lichtenstein, downloaded the names and accounts of thousands of secret bank accounts, burned them to three CDs, and then sold them “tax authorities to 12 countries including Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States.”
Well, it now appears that a fair number of these rich pig tax dodgers people will be facing some serious scrutiny from the IRS.
It’s been a while since I had a Schadenfreude post.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has now released its report on the propaganda and misinformation on the Jessica Lynch rescue and the Pat Tillman death, and it basically comes down to Omertà, the Mafia code of silence:
“A near universal lack of recall” by Bush administration officials has thwarted a congressional investigation into whether the administration deliberately misrepresented the details of the friendly fire death of former NFL player Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture of Jessica Lynch in the first days of the Iraq invasion.
In a report released Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform expressed skepticism about the widespread lack of memory of the two events, which were the subject of widespread media coverage and can be counted among the best known incidents of the wars.
About Tillman’s death, “The committee interviewed several senior White House officials, including Communications Director Dan Bartlett, Press Secretary Scott McClellan and chief speech writer Michael Gerson,” the committee said. “Not a single person could recall when he heard about the fratricide or what he did in response.”
I hope that at some point someone there cuts a deal with prosecutors, because a bunch of these folks should be spending the next decade or so in prison.
Stephen Payne, a lobbyist with close ties to the GOP, is selling access to Bush, Cheney, and Rice for contributions to the Bush Presidential Library.
He sits on Bush’s Homeland Security Advisory Council.
Video at link of him soliciting bribes.
Interesting how what is supposed to be a independent non-profit organization is the recipient of large amounts of money from groups that have a fiduciary interest in one form of treatment.
Obviously, this is a legitimate reason to doubt the independence of the organization on issues related to the use of psychiatric drugs.
Cecelia Grimes, a lobbyist with very close ties to Curt Weldon, has been charged with destroying evidence related to the investigation of former Congressman Curt Weldon’s corruption. Among other things she:
And in her trash at home, she threw out:
Which the FBI recovered from her garbage.
If she doesn’t sing, she will be going to jail for a very long time….My guess is that she will sing, and Weldon will do time, but I’m an optimist.
Previous posts on Weldon’s slime here.
Here’s am interesting take on the financial health of Citigroup.
The new CEO says that shrinking its $2.2 trillion balance sheet is a priority. By this he means that he wants to minimize potential liabilities, but he neglects to mention an additional $1.1 trillion in entities that are off the balance sheet, in things like trusts, financing vehicles, and CDOs.
The US system needs a major clean up and some sunlight, but companies like Citi resemble vampires, or at least some suffering from severe porphyria.
Showing the light of day to these financial concerns will kill many of them.
The CDI has a good review of the process, which gained much of its currency in missile defense, and has spread like Athlete’s Foot to infect the US defense procurement process.
Basically, the project is never done, and never needs to meet requirements, because there is always a “spiral” upgrade that takes care of some short coming.
The full report is a PDF, though the summary linked to is not.
I encountered this worthless bullsh%$ while working FCS.
It turns out that the Alaska indictment that I mentioned last night was for State Senator John Cowdery, not Ted Stevens.
I don’t expect Stevens to be indicted until after the election, if at all.
In the 1960s I lived in Alaska, and my dad was on Governor Egan’s cabinet, so I follow Alaska politics, which seem to be remarkably corrupt.
They are investigating whether brokers misled investors on the nature of the securities, which appeared to be sold as being “like a money market account”, but are now illiquid, because the market has frozen up.
No report as to who has been indicted yet.
My guess is that it is neither Ted Stevens of Don Young, or it would have been leaked to the national media.
So, the Federal Reserve and the SEC have decided that unregulated markets are not all that they thought, so they are going to be more aggressive in regulations and making sure that financial dealings are more open.
The more interesting bit are the quotes from economist Barry Bosworth.
First he says that he thinks that the financial instruments are so complex that they may defy regulation (to which I say, “shut them down, then”):
“I think they are going to be forced openly to think about banning some of these instruments,” economist Bosworth said. He said that forcing banks to disclose some of their investments may simply lead them to pull out of certain markets.
So, some are so bad that they must be banned, and some are so toxic that they cannot stand up to public scrutiny.
Our financial system is a snake pit.
Well, we have found another American hero, Army Spc. Jeremy Hall, Atheist, who has experienced a systematic program of harassment and threats since choosing this path.
He has now filed suit, without any claim to financial damages, to stop this:
His sudden lack of faith, he said, cost him his military career and put his life at risk. Hall said his life was threatened by other troops and the military assigned a full-time bodyguard to protect him out of fear for his safety.
In March, Hall filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, among others. In the suit, Hall claims his rights to religious freedom under the First Amendment were violated and suggests that the United States military has become a Christian organization.
“I think it’s utterly and totally wrong. Unconstitutional,” Hall said.
Hall said there is a pattern of discrimination against non-Christians in the military.
Lets make this clear, the bigotry against him is contrary to the good discipline and order of the military, and should have consequences, but it won’t, because over the past 30 years, a number of organizations, such as the Christian Embassy and the Officers’ Christian Fellowship, have successfully infiltrated the military with the goal of creating an “Army of God” (Arabic translation: Hezbollah).
Honestly, I believe that many of the people doing this are laying the groundwork for an Evangelical Christian coup, and should removed from the military immediately.
Remember the toxic Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) that no one wants to buy anymore?
Well, investment banks are repackaging them and selling them as Re-Remics (REsecuritizations of Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits):
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and at least six other firms are repackaging unwanted mortgage bonds as sales of CDOs composed of asset-backed securities fall to less than $1 billion this year from $227 billion in 2007 because of the global credit crunch. Re-Remics contain parts that are structured to guard against higher losses on underlying loans than most CDOs, allowing holders to sell or retain other sections at lower prices that can translate to potential yields of more than 20 percent.
So this stuff is so toxic that sales have dropped by more than 99.6% year over year, and the solution is a new name and a new obscure mathematical model.
Of course, the banks will claim that Re-Remics are different, because they don’t have subprime loans, just Alt-A.
Of course, as I’ve noted repeatedly, those are swirling around the bowl on their way down too.
It should be noted that there is a discount, but it still sounds like another CDO shell game:
While CDOs are backed by more than a hundred bonds, Re- Remics typically combine fewer than a dozen, allowing holders to more easily analyze the debt.
…
A bond trading at 40 cents on the dollar could be split into a piece worth 80 cents and another piece that could then be sold cheaply enough to offer returns as high as 20 percent, Dachille said. Banks advised by First Principles bought lower-yielding senior pieces and some are also considering buying the bonds for their pension funds, he said. The firm is also starting a fund for pension clients that would invest in the debt, Dachille said.
If you are willing to take the investment houses’ word on this, you are too stupid to be trusted with any device more complex than a bowling ball.
Of course, the likely idiot customers would be pension funds, municipalities, and, of course, investment bankers.
It seems that it happens every month, and when I say, “That’s it there is no way it could get any worse,” and each time I am wrong.
Now, they are using the Cuba embargo and anti-Terror regulations to prevent the Guantánamo Bay defense attorneys from being paid or reimbursed for expenses.
Note that these guys are billing at $250/hour when their normal rate would be north of $500 an hour, but they aren’t even getting that:
When U.S. law groups announced in April that they were hiring the nation’s top criminal defense lawyers to defend alleged al Qaeda terrorists at the war court here, one executive called the lawyers “The A Team.”
Now, they’re the No-Pay Team.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has pledged to cover costs of civilian lawyers defending alleged arch-terrorists, is in a struggle with the U.S. Treasury Department over a permit to pay $250-an-hour fees and other expenses to attorneys who have been shuttling to this remote U.S. Navy base from as far as Boise, Idaho.
….
I can do nothing but look at the screen with an expression on my face resembling that of a cow that just stepped on its own udder.
They are saying that S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch do not manage conflicts of interest well, fail to follow internal procedure, business pressures to right highly, and so the ratings are generally a mess.
Of at least as much concern is the finding that the complex securities outstripped the agencies abilities to rate these instruments.
We literally have an economic system where no one, even the most tuned in and experienced operators, know what they are actually handling. It has gotten so far removed from real equities, and cut and diced and resold so many times, that only mathematical models which are unverifiable present any sort of model for value.
We aren’t even half way down the credit crunch slope. This is 1929 on crack.
Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, former Allegheny County coroner, who was harassed by a political hack US attorney over a few phone calls and faxes from his office.
Note that they did this after said US attorney sent goons to intimidate them after the hung jury (last link).
OK, now we have Obama “Puzzled” by blip flop charges, because he has completely reversed himself on FISA, and now he’s saying that in order for “mental distress” to be used to justify a late term abortion, it must be a formal psychiatric disorder out of the DSM IV.*
So, he’s selling the constitution out privacy, he’s reversed himself on free trade agreements, and now he is suggesting a heightened standard for late term abortion (while using the right wing’s language of “Partial Birth Abortion”).
John McCain can call him a flip flopper on the issues because Barack Obama is a flip flopper on the issues.
His only saving grace is the John Sidney McCain is a bigger flip flopper.
I guess that we’ll get the president we deserve.
*The 4th and most recent release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.