September 28, 2014
By Noam Scheiber
WASHINGTON — TODAY is the start (click here) of the trial in Starr International Co. Inc. v. United States, the case alleging that the government’s 2008 bailout of A.I.G. amounted to an unconstitutional plunder of the company’s shareholders. Starr, a firm run by the former A.I.G. chief executive Maurice R. Greenberg, was the insurer’s largest single shareholder at the time. It saw the government grab almost 80 percent of its common stock amid the bailout (a proportion that eventually rose to 92 percent), and is asking for a cool $40 billion to make it whole....
I'll tell you what is unconstitutional and that is Wall Street running game on the USA people KNOWING they were running toward a cliff. Maurice belongs in prison along with the rest of them. Wall Street is STILL corrupt. They learned nothing. They learned they can be corrupt and get away with it.
August 1, 2014
By Susan Craig and Ben Protess
Updated, 10:03 p.m. | A former Goldman Sachs (click here) trader at the center of a toxic mortgage deal lost a closely watched legal battle on Thursday, giving Wall Street’s top regulator its first significant courtroom victory in a case stemming from the financial crisis.
A federal jury found the trader, Fabrice Tourre, liable on six counts of civil securities fraud after a three-week trial in Lower Manhattan. The case had given both sides — the government and Mr. Tourre — a chance to repair their reputations....
...Some critics have questioned why the agency chose to make Mr. Tourre — a midlevel employee who was stationed in the bowels of Goldman’s mortgage machine — the face of the crisis. Rather than aim at a high-flying executive, the agency pursued someone barely known on Wall Street....
One has to wonder how corrupt the federal system actually is when men die on the street for selling cigarettes to those that cannot afford to buy a pack while those importing tobacco illegally into the USA go without prosecution and midlevel devotees to greed are jailed for fraud.
I tell you what. If Congress can't bear to part with their corrupt money for campaign funding they should prosecute the Regulators for playing footsie with the banks. That might actually work.
September 26, 2014
By Michael Lewis
Probably most people would agree (click here) that the people paid by the U.S. government to regulate Wall Street have had their difficulties. Most people would probably also agree on two reasons those difficulties seem only to be growing: an ever-more complex financial system that regulators must have explained to them by the financiers who create it, and the ever-more common practice among regulators of leaving their government jobs for much higher paying jobs at the very banks they were once meant to regulate. Wall Street's regulators are people who are paid by Wall Street to accept Wall Street's explanations of itself, and who have little ability to defend themselves from those explanations....
Whoever the next president is, they need to make Michael Bloomberg Secretary of the Treasury and maybe the financial markets will finally be civil and worthwhile again.
2008 is due to happen again. The corruption is still there and quite possibly worse.
By Noam Scheiber
WASHINGTON — TODAY is the start (click here) of the trial in Starr International Co. Inc. v. United States, the case alleging that the government’s 2008 bailout of A.I.G. amounted to an unconstitutional plunder of the company’s shareholders. Starr, a firm run by the former A.I.G. chief executive Maurice R. Greenberg, was the insurer’s largest single shareholder at the time. It saw the government grab almost 80 percent of its common stock amid the bailout (a proportion that eventually rose to 92 percent), and is asking for a cool $40 billion to make it whole....
I'll tell you what is unconstitutional and that is Wall Street running game on the USA people KNOWING they were running toward a cliff. Maurice belongs in prison along with the rest of them. Wall Street is STILL corrupt. They learned nothing. They learned they can be corrupt and get away with it.
August 1, 2014
By Susan Craig and Ben Protess
Updated, 10:03 p.m. | A former Goldman Sachs (click here) trader at the center of a toxic mortgage deal lost a closely watched legal battle on Thursday, giving Wall Street’s top regulator its first significant courtroom victory in a case stemming from the financial crisis.
A federal jury found the trader, Fabrice Tourre, liable on six counts of civil securities fraud after a three-week trial in Lower Manhattan. The case had given both sides — the government and Mr. Tourre — a chance to repair their reputations....
...Some critics have questioned why the agency chose to make Mr. Tourre — a midlevel employee who was stationed in the bowels of Goldman’s mortgage machine — the face of the crisis. Rather than aim at a high-flying executive, the agency pursued someone barely known on Wall Street....
One has to wonder how corrupt the federal system actually is when men die on the street for selling cigarettes to those that cannot afford to buy a pack while those importing tobacco illegally into the USA go without prosecution and midlevel devotees to greed are jailed for fraud.
I tell you what. If Congress can't bear to part with their corrupt money for campaign funding they should prosecute the Regulators for playing footsie with the banks. That might actually work.
September 26, 2014
By Michael Lewis
Probably most people would agree (click here) that the people paid by the U.S. government to regulate Wall Street have had their difficulties. Most people would probably also agree on two reasons those difficulties seem only to be growing: an ever-more complex financial system that regulators must have explained to them by the financiers who create it, and the ever-more common practice among regulators of leaving their government jobs for much higher paying jobs at the very banks they were once meant to regulate. Wall Street's regulators are people who are paid by Wall Street to accept Wall Street's explanations of itself, and who have little ability to defend themselves from those explanations....
Whoever the next president is, they need to make Michael Bloomberg Secretary of the Treasury and maybe the financial markets will finally be civil and worthwhile again.
2008 is due to happen again. The corruption is still there and quite possibly worse.
