Category: Corruption

Well, Here’s a Shocker

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It turns out that most of Timothy “I am not a Banker” Geitner’s friends that he has brought into the Treasury department have made millions working for the banks that wrecked out economy:

Some of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides, none of whom faced Senate confirmation, earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other Wall Street firms, according to financial disclosure forms.

When you have people overseeing the current system who personally profit from it, fundamental change is not in the offing.

Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Smoking gun

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So, Bank of America has agreed to turn over email records to NY AG Andrew Cuomo, because there is no court in the world that will allow them to use the “I was following my lawyer’s advice” defense without them actually turning over that advice, and we find a smoking gun:

“Unfortunately it’s screw the shareholders!!” Charles K. Gifford wrote to a fellow director in an e-mail exchange that took place during the call.

“No trail,” Thomas May, that director, reminded him, an apparent reference to the inadvisability of leaving an e-mail thread of their conversation.

(emphasis mine)

It’s called “putting lipstick on a pig,” and it is illegal.

Unfortunately for the senior management at BoA, while it was pretty tough to document, today, in the age of casual and conversational email, you can get caught pretty easily, as Mr. May remembered, but Mr. Gifford forgot, and so, in the words of everyone’s favorite robot, “We’re boned!”

Even without the whole, “going to jail” thing, there is a shareholder suit, and this will be used, so it’s not a pretty picture.

About the only defense that they have left is the “Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke made me do it defense,” and I rather expect to be hearing that soon.

Zimbabwe Update

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Well, it’s been about a month, so it’s time to review again how screwed things up are in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe.

On the bright side, we are seeing push-back from various institutions in Zimbabwe, which seem all to be tied to the knowledge that Robert Mugabe, who is 85, will not be around for much longer.

The most obvious sign is the struggle within the ZANU-PF over who the next Vice President should be. It’s clear that everyone out there feels that whoever has this post is likely to succeed Mugabe, particularly given the earlier reports of his ill health.

On a more significant note, we are now seeing that banks are no longer considering Mugabe’s land grab letters as sufficient collateral for loans:

Zanu (PF) officials, for long used to free agricultural implements and inputs from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe after taking over large-scale commercial farms, could be facing a gloomy year.

Not only is the government prioritising small-scale farmers this time around, but banks have resisted pressure to accept ‘offer letters’ and 99-year leases as collateral for loans.

President Robert Mugabe and Zanu (PF) have been lobbying banks to accept as collateral the ‘offer letters’, which purportedly authorise the holder to forcibly take over a farm.

However, at the weekend, the Bankers’ Association of Zimbabwe reiterated that banks required “asset-based security”.

Basically, the banks are seeing Mugabe as not being long for this earth, and so they don’t want to be left holding the bag.

The push back is getting severe enough that even the criminal courts are actually starting to apply the law in something resembling a non-corrupt manner, with the Zimbabwe Supreme Court dismissing terrorism charges against human rights Jestina Mukoko, and declaring that she was terrorized by the state security apparatus, and, perhaps more significantly, the Office of the Attorney General declining to represent government officials who have been sued by her.

These are little steps, however, and we are still seeing things like Roy Bennett, the MDC’s nominee for Deputy Agriculture Minister, being indicted and imprisoned on what are clearly trumped up charges of terrorism….Gee…there are a lot of terrorism charges flying about the Zim courts, huh?

In the economy, we are continuing to see improvements in the economy, with inflation continuing to moderate, but the looting by ZANU-PF apparatchiks continues.

Most notably, we have seen the seizure of Meikles Group, a hospitality and import/export firm, and has placed the firm under government control, which, if the earlier seizure of Shabanie Mashaba Mine Holdings, where looting has been so extensive that workers and utilities are not being paid.

We are also similar actions against Nestlé, where the firm has stopped buying its milk from Mugabe’s wife’s farm in order to comply with Swiss sanctions, and the government has frozen the firm’s bank accounts.

Finally, we have the fact that Central Bank governor Gideon Gono and Finance Minister Tendai Biti tusseling over the spending of the recent IMF loan, with Gono, a Mugabe Ally, basically wanting to shovel money to Mugabe cronies, and Biti wanting the money to things like roads, bridges, and healthcare. (here and here)

More Evidence that Rick Perry Didn’t Care that He Let an Innocent Man Die

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He might be a murderer, but he has such nice hair.
So did Ted Bundy.

So, we are now seeing evidence that Texas Governor Rick Perry allowed a man to be executed without consideration of his likely innocence.

It’s Texas, which means that a governor blithely signing off about putting a needle in someone’s arm with no more than a cursory examination, typically less than 15 minutes, of the record is the standard for Texas, and it is one that Perry’s two predecessors, George W. Bush and Ann Richards hewed to pretty closely.

What is different is that there is now an investigation of the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, where it is now pretty clear that there was no murder, the accusation was of murder by arson, because the fire was not arson.

This is the strongest case seen in some time for actual innocence of a man who has been executed, and the Texas Forensic Science Commission was looking into the case, when Rick Perry’s staff first pressured the panel chairman not to investigate this issue, and then fired half the commission to prevent public testimony by one of the foremost arson experts in the nation.

Meanwhile, it appears that the governor’s office is now in full stonewall mode, refusing to turn over documents showing what evidence he reviewed before denying clemency, and how long he reviewed it.

Let’s be clear, this is Texas. Rick Perry did not review the material in any serious way, because that is part of the social contract down there: You don’t let innocence get in the way of a good execution.

On a purely political note, Rick Perry is getting a serious primary challenge from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is criticizing him on his firing the panel, and his actions are stupid.

His real challenge is in the Republican primary, and the Texas Republican Party is about the most antediluvian Republican party in the nation.

From a purely political perspective, as immoral as it sounds, he should not be covering this up. He should be proclaiming from the high heavens that when a Texas jury wants a man dead, he will go to the wall to kill that man.

That would immediately make him the “it girl” of the Texas Republican party.

He already has the hair to be an “it girl”.

Here is a vid of Alison Stewart, who subbing on Rachel Maddow’s show, going over the basics.

Saab’s South Korea Offices Raided in Bribery Investigation

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It looks like its related to the ROK’s KF-X program, which is supposed to, at some point in the distant indeterminate future, yield a home grown fighter aircraft.

It appears that Saab was looking into partnerships on the program, and may, or may not, have paid off an official for technical data to help with a bid:

Saab acknowledged that its South Korean premises had been “inspected” last month but denied any wrongdoing and said it was co-operating with the investigation. SMI acknowledged their offices had been searched but declined to comment on the investigation.

Saab said the company had paid SKr120,000 to SMI to sponsor a seminar by its chief executive at a Swedish trade fair last March. But Saab had no ongoing relationship with SMI and had never paid the company for information on the KF-X, it added.

Not sure what’s going on, but I think that Saab is pretty desperate to get some revenue out of its investment in the Gripen.

BAE Bribery Investigation Back On

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It appears that elections make a difference, so a desperate Gordon Brown is allow investigations to proceed regarding potential bribery in, “Tanzania, South Africa, Romania and the Czech Republic,” but nothing involving Saudi Prince Bandar and the House of Saud, whose bribery levels are probably 10 times higher than the other 4 nations combined.

It would be nice if the west stopped coddling the House of Saud, which is a cesspool of corruption, greed, and terrorism.

When You Fire Someone, They Can Talk Freely

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We already know that there are widespread and credible allegations of vote fraud in Afghanistan, and Peter Galbraith, the UN’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan, just got fired for arguing that there needs to be a broader inquiry into this matter.

You know that old saying about rather having someone in the tent, pissing out, rather than being outside the tent, pissing in? Well, now that he’s been given the sack, Mr. Galbraith is arguing publicly what he had been arguing privately:

A former senior United Nations diplomat in Kabul has made a scathing attack on the UN’s handling of Afghanistan’s disputed elections, claiming that almost one in three of the votes cast for president Hamid Karzai were fraudulent.

Peter Galbraith, the former deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, singled out his former chief, Kai Eide, for criticism, saying he had deliberately played down the level of cheating in an election where, in one region, “10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast”.
Jon Boone on claims of election fraud in Afghanistan Link to this audio

Galbraith was sacked last week, after his disagreements with Eide, a Norwegian diplomat in charge of the UN mission, about how to deal with electoral fraud became public. Galbraith said the extraordinary level of fraud in the August vote “has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners”.

You can read his OP/Ed in the Washington Post here.

This is moment is analogous to Kennedy and Johnson’s moment following the assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm in Vietnam.

When they both signed off on the deed, they sealed the fate of South Vietnam, and made subsequent governments little more than widely detested US puppets.

Well, Barack Obama now has his Diệm moment, and it appears that he will fall as Kennedy and Johnson did.

Court Strikes Down Berlusconi Immunity Law

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This is good news, and a the ruling by Italian Constitutional Court is a victory for the rule of law:

In 2003, Mr. Berlusconi first attempted to erect a legal shield for top officials including the sitting prime minister, the president and the heads of the lower and upper houses of Parliament, during their term in office. The law was swiftly struck down by the Constitutional Court, which argued that the law unfairly placed officials above the law. The new immunity law was introduced in the spring of 2008, but prosecutors quickly filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court.

And it has now been similarly been ruled unconstitutional.

This law was all about keeping Berlusconi out of jail, and the courts correctly ruled that it was an affront to justice.

Perhaps Obama and Holder should consider looking at the reasoning of the

Be Afraid, Be Very Very Afraid

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Something that it tossed off rather blithely in this article is the fact that under a tax and trade system*, will generate a market of more than $2 trillion, “within five years of trading (starting)”.

When you look at what trading has done to the price of oil, i.e. created increased transaction costs and increased price volatility, and you realize that the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is just $13 trillion a year, this looks like another Wall Street “Masters of the Universe” engineered disaster in the making.

I’m waiting for the CDS (Carbon Default Swap) market to blow up the markets, and I wonder how I hedge myself to profit from it when it happens.

*That is what it really is, after all. It’s taxes which are bought and sold to allow Goldman Sachs to generate fees for trading these permits. Cap and trade is used in order to make it sound like it isn’t a tax, but it’s a tax, only a lot of the proceeds go to Ivy League classmates of Ivy League politicians as sales commissions.

Republican Jesus Lives

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Just when you thought that the politicization of religion could not get any more despicable, we find that right wingers have decided to rewrite the bible in order to excise all those liberal bits:

  1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

  2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

  3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level

  4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.

  5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”; using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census

  6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

  7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

  8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

  9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

  10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

No, this is not a joke, it’s right from the Conservapedia page (no link, it only feeds the delusions)

It is not April Fools Day, nor is it Adar,* and it is not The Onion. This is real.

You know, I believe that it would appropriate at this time for some people to be struck by lightning, or at least to get some damn psychotropic medications, the really strong stuff, because this is nuts, in addition to being laughable, and, of course blasphemous.

I support the right to blaspheme, but I really think it’s a bad idea to call him a c%$#sucker, which is what this is.

I really can’t add anything to the General’s Republican Jesus, so just go to his site, and buy his stuff, but don’t read his site when you are drinking anything, or you will need a screen cleaner.

*The month of Adar in the Hebrew calendar. It is associated with Purim, and is the preferred time for practical jokes.

Well, I was Experience of Schadenfreude

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But Senator Ensign (R-NV, and many bedrooms) just keeps on delivering.

So, the New York Times has done some journalism, and discovered that, in addition to boinking his chief of staff’s wife, stalking her, and getting mommy and daddy to pay hush money, reporters Eric Lichtblau and Eric Lipton have now discovered that Senator Ensign arranged for Douglas Hampton to get a cushy lobbying job, and then had Hampton lobby one…Senator John Ensign, in a direct violation of Senate ethics rules and federal laws, which require a 1 year cooling off period:

Mr. Hampton said he and Mr. Ensign were aware of the lobbying restriction but chose to ignore it. He recounted how the senator helped him find clients and ticked off several steps Mr. Ensign took to assist them with their agendas in Washington, activities confirmed by federal officials and executives with the businesses.

“The only way the clients could get what John was essentially promising them — which was access — was if I still had a way to work with his office,” Mr. Hampton said. “And John knew that.”

Gee….Who’d a thunk it?

Needless to say, the folks at Leno and The Daily Show are chortling about this, though David Letterman might be too busy boinking his staffers on his show.

How to Tell When Finance is Doing a Very Bad Thing

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When the Wall Street Journal Describes Finance With Cartoons, it Means that Someone will Get Boned, and it ain’t the “Bankers, Lawyers, and Other Advisers.”

When the Wall Street Journal talks about a new financial wonder weapon, like the resecuritization of real-estate mortgage investment conduits (re-remics), and they feel the need to use a cartoon to explain how it works.

Does that cartoon look complex to you? There are a couple of reasons for this:

  1. The bankers, lawyers, and other advisers are picking your pocket.
  2. In a perverse way, needless complexity is good for business, because it makes people feel like they are paying for meaningful services.
  3. It justifies the enormous fees collected by Wall Street, not just for brokerages, but also for the now discredited ratings agencies..

But the bottom line is this:

The net result is financial firms’ books look better and they need to hold less capital against those assets, even though they are the same assets they held before the transaction.

(emphasis mine)

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

It’s time to cue Freddie Dalton Thompson from The Hunt for Red October.

So, you have the same amount of risk, but by slicing and dicing securities into new “pools” (a year ago the word was “tranches”, but well, we know how that went.

This is not about managing risk, or understanding risk. This is about concealing risk from the unsophisticated investor and unsophisticated regulators.

This is a perfect example of why investments should be treated like drugs: Forbidden until proven safe and effective.

Financial innovation, my ass.

The Term is Pump and Dump

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Happy, happy, joy, joy, the ratio of insiders selling stock to insiders buying stock has
fallen to only 40.6:1 seller:buyer.

At the end of August, it was 61.8:1, but even with the improvement, a lot of folks are getting the f#$@ out of Dodge.

This is what happens when the Federal reserve’s prescription for a financial crisis is to print money for banks to buy stock, which drives the price up, and the insiders are selling stock just as fast as they can.

At the rate that this is going, the smart investment won’t be gold, it will be ammunition and canned goods.

Will No One Primary this Corrupt Son of a Bitch?

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I am referring to Representative Mike Ross, Democrat (hah!) of Arkansas’s 4th Congressional district.

We have always known that Mike Ross is a bit blue dog, and in the pocket of the health insurers the pharmaceutical industry, and now, thanks to ProPublica, we know why.

It turns out that he and his wife sold their pharmacy and related property to pharmacy chain USA Drug in 2007, and paid between $1 million and $1.67 million for the it, which is kind of surprising, when the county tax assessment listed it at $263,000, and an independent assessor retained by ProPublica valued it at $198,000.

This means that he was overpaid for his property, and for “the pharmacy’s assets”, and for a “non-compete” agreement from his wife, Holly Ross, something on the order of $1 million.

What’s more the owner of the pharmacy chain, Stephen L. LaFrance Sr., who has been quoted as saying that, “Universal health care will ruin our health care in America,” maxed out on his campaign contributions to Ross in 2007, the year of the sale.

It’s depressing. Mike Ross is bought and paid for by the medical industry, his biggest donor, and he routinely gets more than 70% in the general, and there is no one challenging him in the primary.

Please, someone run. I’ll through in a few bucks, and list the person on my Act blue page.

[On edit]
Ross issued a non denial denial.

Thank You Rod Blagojevich

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Really, I’m serious about this, because Roland Burris knows that he will not get another term, and he knows that his value as a Washington lobbyist is nil, he does not have to kowtow to the insurance lobby, so he has announced that he will not vote for a healthcare bill without a public option.

In creating the lamest of lame ducks, Burris won’t be able to work in DC at all once he is out of office, Blago has created a man who can do the right thing, because he has nothing to lose.