The Nightmare Financial Regulatory Scheme
• The International LibertarianSenator Dodd (D- CT) revealed his plan for financial reform. It is nothing but a plan for a regulatory dictatorship.
Contents Pages by Subject
Crony Capitalism
With profits, Goldman Sachs adjusts pay
• UPINew York financial firm Goldman Sachs says it earned $4.95 billion September through December and will set aside $16.2 billion for staff for the year.
Top Secret Banker Manual
• godlikeproductions.comTop Secret Banker Manual in it there are examples of court filings that could be used to force the hands of bankers. It is in PDF and quite an interesting read.
RED LIGHT: ATS Future Uncertain in Florida
• CameraFRAUD…And they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those meddling... laws. Of course, Breaking the law while pretending to enforce it (for profit) is business as usual for American Traffic Solutions. The headlines say it all. Miami Herald: “Legal challenges mount for Florida’s red-light cameras.” Daytona Beach News-Journal: “Red-light camera lawsuit looms.” Naples News: “[Suit claims] red-light cameras are unconstitutional.”
Was Goldman Sachs Tipped Off About the Unemployment Number in Advance?
• Economic Policy JournalJohn Crudele is justifiably suspicious. He writes: Another curious thing happened before the employment report was made public. Sometime before late afternoon Thursday, Goldman Sachs suddenly broke with the Wall Street pack that was predicting a loss of 320,000 or so jobs in July.
Wonder of Wonders: Greenberg and Spitzer Agree on Goldman Sachs
• bNetTalk about the best interview since “Frost-Nixon.” How about Blodget-Spitzer? Henry Blodget interviewed former New York Attorney General and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who ran Blodget out of Wall Street. Both are bloggers/columnists, both have suffered disgrace and both are looking for redemption. And wonder of wonders, during the interview Spitzer was in agreement with yet another of his former targets, the peripatetic Hank Greenberg. The former CEO of American International Group is another in a long line of bosses who lost their jobs to Spitzer’s tough investigative tactics. Spitzer probably wouldn’t want to admit that he essentially repeated what Greenberg said last December, and which BNET Finance ran: that the real villain in the AIG bailout wasn’t Greenberg or Spitzer; it was Goldman Sachs, the investment bank whose tentacles reached into the highest levels of government.
Judge: Redflex Contract Illegal
• CameraFRAUDBeleaguered photo radar and red light camera provider Redflex Traffc Solutions was dealt a blow last week when a Superior Court judge in Orange County, CA. found their contract with the City of Santa Ana to be illegal: "…Orange County Superior Court Commissioner Kenneth Schwartz declared the city’s program void because it had ignored several provisions of state law."
DAMNIT, STOP THE LOOTING NOW!
• The Market TickerPut the kids away before reading. If this does not make your blood boil..... Herein lies the problem. The FHA’s standard insurance program today is notoriously lax. It backs low downpayment loans, to buyers who often have below-average to poor credit ratings, and with almost no oversight to protect against fraud. Sound familiar? This is called subprime lending—the same financial roulette that busted Fannie, Freddie and large mortgage houses like Countrywide Financial. The article goes on to note that as of the end of this year FHA and Ginnie will have issued and hold one trillion dollars of mortgages, that the current default rate is now 7%, and the delinquent rate is running some 13%. Why? Because the same crooks, swindlers and thieves that infested the housing market in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 in "subprime" and "ALT-A" have now moved into the FHA product. There is only ONE way to guarantee safety and soundness in mortgage lending. ONE!
Freddie Mac Using the Goldman Sachs Business (Casino) Model
• Goldman Sachs 666You gotta love the recent report on Freddie Mac's performance. The headline was a profit BUT only if they didn't include the dividend on its senior preferred stock. So they lost money, again. But that's not what is being reported. Moreover, no one is talking about the fact that Freddie Mac made more than $4B on their derivative portfolio. I just don't get it. First, we loan Goldman Sachs and the Banksters money that they are supposed to put to work in the economy . . . but instead they just trade stocks and bonds - casino style. Now we have Freddie Mac admitting in the fine print that they would have actually lost almost $5 billion if they did not throw the dice on the derivatives markets. I guess my question is this. Who is going to cover their losses when they lose? Same thing for the big banks. Who is going to cover their losses when they lose? A
Warren Buffet BO's "WELFARE QUEEN"
• BlueLoriBlogSpotWe have all heard plenty about Government Sachs but very little about BO supporter Warren Buffet. Since this WELFARE QUEEN just made another Fortune I thought you should see this. As a side note remember when Durbin said "Frankly the banks own the place?" He should know a thing or two about that on a personal level! The Omaha, Neb., conglomerate run by Warren Buffett posted net income of $3.3 billion, or $2,123 per Class A share in the quarter
More Inside Trading? (AIG)
• The Market TickerGee, was this just a "simple" short squeeze, or was AIG's surprise profit announcement this morning leaked? Hmmmm..... Not that it would be anything new, of course. We know from past experience that only rumors (or leaked facts!) that make stocks go down are ever investigated by the SEC, and then only when the persons doing the leaking (or rumoring) are not big broker/dealers and their crony hedge funds. This sort of nonsense is nothing new; it is in fact as old as the stock market. But the blatant level of inside baseball during this crisis (and now the rally) has gotten entirely out of hand.
Key Lawmaker Received Countrywide Loans Democratic Panel Chief Resists Move to Subpoena 'VIP
• WSJA powerful House Democrat who has turned down a Republican's call to subpoena records of a mortgage program at Countrywide Financial Corp. received two home loans from the lender. Some information in the lawmaker's mortgage documents raises the possibility they were made through the program, which provided loans to public figures and other favored borrowers often at lower interest rates or with lower origination fees than were available to the general public. The loans were made to Rep. Edolphus Towns of New York, who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform committee. The panel's ranking Republican, California Rep. Darrell Issa, has been pushing to have the committee subpoena mortgage records showing who received loans through Countrywide's VIP program -- operated under former Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo and known within the company as "Friends of Angelo."
Break Out The Pitchforks! Barney Frank's misguided movement afoot to let shareholders have a dir
• Forbeslol I doubt it is "misguided" I believe he knows full well how to spin the propaganda! A group known as ShareOwners.org, which supports such "say on pay" legislation finds that most of the investing public wants such provisions. The group says that after conducting a national survey it found that 83% of U.S. investors feel that shareholders should be permitted active involvement in CEO pay. With such strong backing behind it you would expect top execs to be quaking in their loafers. But they're probably not, and there's one big reason why: The legislation is non-binding, and in no way can it ever overrule what a firm's board decides to actually pay its executives. So, in effect, we have, once again, a great amount of sound and fury--and Barney Frank is among the most furious--amounting to very little.
Stocks Fall, but AIG Still Climbing
• WSJMakes sense with all those Government give aways of your tax dollars with the residents "AIG Breakup Is Fee Bonanza" Wall Street banks and lawyers could collect nearly $1 billion in fees from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and American International Group Inc. to help manage and break apart the insurer, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. That would represent one of Wall Street's biggest paydays -- four times the fees paid to break up AT&T Corp. in 1996, and nearly double those paid for Visa USA's 2008 initial public offering, the largest U.S. IPO ever. They know they will make a killing off of YOU! The stock maket edged lower on Thursday but some major financial names remained as bright spots, limiting the declines in major indexes. American International Group, whose shares surged 60% Wednesday, was up by another 11.8%.
Schumer: SEC to ban flash trading Trades that flash in milliseconds provide an advantage to select
• Market WatchI will believe it when I see it... Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission plans to ban so-called "flash trading," where high-frequency traders can get information just before it becomes public. "We salute the SEC for moving forward with this ban that will restore integrity to the markets. The agency is absolutely making the right call by stepping up and ending this unfair practice," Schumer said. Flash orders are trades that flash in milliseconds to only a select group of market participants which can disadvantage other investors. Traders with access to the information because of super-fast computers can act on it quickly to trade ahead of other traders, influencing the pricing of stocks.
Goldman Sachs and other banks pay out more in bonuses then they earn
• Goldman Sachs 666In this recent article, Some U.S. bank pay "unmoored" from performance: Cuomo By Grant McCool of Reuters, Jul 30, 2009 7:22pm the reporter makes the comment, ..."bonuses for Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co were "substantially greater" than the banks' net income." Goldman earned $2.3 billion, paid out $4.8 billion in bonuses and received $10 billion in TARP funding,... How is it any company can pay out more in bonuses then they earn? One way is to use taxpayer money. New York's AG, Cuomo is on the right path in this investigation but the outcome of his efforts are yet to be seen or heard. But Goldman Sachs is not alone in this. Yet it is very possible from reading Michael Lewis' book "Liars Poker" that they may have invented the concept of overpaying people and then found ways to justify it which in turn they possibly shared with the others in their "club". Is it a coincidence that Pa
PennyMac IPO brings back subprime memories Commentary: New era looks a lot like the old
• Market WatchCall it another sign that fear is out, greed is back, and we have entered the new post-crisis era. Subprime Stan is back on Wall Street, after less than three years away. Stanford "Stan" Kurland, the Countrywide Finance executive who pocketed more than $140 million at the expense of outside investors at the height of the subprime mania, has raised about $300 million from fresh investors for his latest venture -- trying to profit from the crisis. His PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust (PMT) made its stock-market debut last week The name of the game: Distressed mortgages, particularly the kind of troubled subprime loans that Countrywide used to make.
Geithner Vents as Overhaul Stumbles
• WSJI guess this kind of behavior it is to be expected from the do as I say not what I do no class trash in government. Smoke and mirrors anyway since the so called regulations of Obama's Economic Regulations Are Like a Law Which Makes Arson Illegal, But Exempts Convicted Arsonists. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner blasted top U.S. financial regulators in an expletive-laced critique last Friday as frustration grows over the Obama administration's faltering plan to overhaul U.S. financial regulation, according to people familiar with the meeting. The proposed regulatory revamp is one of President Barack Obama's top domestic priorities. But since it was unveiled in June, the plan has been criticized by the financial-services industry, as well as by financial regulators wary of encroachment on their turf.
Goldman's Brand Is Officially Trashed (GS) But shareholders keep laughing all the way to the ba
• The Business InsiderGoldman Sachs' reputation among both the general public and financially sophisticated Americans has been damaged by the events of the past year. Meanwhile, Goldman shares look set to open around $165 today, over 300% off their lows from the crisis. If this reputational hit mattered, nobody bothered to tell paid-up Goldman Sachs shareholders. The report doesn't quantify the decline, but we can surmise that it's significant. Want another shocker? Barack Obama has received more from one source–Goldman Sachs $542,252.00–than McCain has from all of the companies combined. Who the hell is more beholden to lobbyists? And why does a junior Senator from Illinois rate this kind of dough? http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/21/baracks-wall-street-problem-is-now-americas/
So This Is How You Make Huge Trading Profits...
• Economic Policy JournalWall Street banks are reaping outsized profits by trading with the Federal Reserve, raising questions about whether the central bank is driving hard enough bargains in its dealings with private sector counterparties, officials and industry executives say. The Fed has emerged as one of Wall Street’s biggest customers during the financial crisis, buying massive amounts of securities to help stabilise the markets. In some cases, such as the market for mortgage-backed securities, the Fed buys more bonds than any other party. However, the Fed is not a typical market player. In the interests of transparency, it often announces its intention to buy particular securities in advance. A former Fed official said this strategy enables banks to sell these securities to the Fed at an inflated price.
Obama's Economic Regulations Are Like a Law Which Makes Arson Illegal, But Exempts Convicted Ars
• Washington;s BlogObama's regulation of credit default swaps leave loopholes large enough to drive the biggest trucks through. Specifically, it forces over-the-counter credit default swap transactions to be traded through an exchange unless it is a non-standard cds. So all that the "financial innovators" who melted down the economy have to do is get a little creative in drafting their cds' - or just to tell regulators "oh no, that wasn't a standard contract", and they are excepted from the regulation. Similarly, the Obama administration has just passed a new set of regulations "getting tough" on the naked short selling of stocks, which independent economists say can manipulate stock prices and bring down otherwise healthy companies. But the regulation will exempt hedge funds, and allow them to continue hiding their shorts from regulators.
Trillions in Financial Bailouts: After 2 years, the major Beneficiaries are Banks and Wall Street. W
• The War On YouBanks, take the blue pill. Public, please take the red pill. If I had to characterize the current economic environment, it would have to consist of two completely different sets of beliefs. On one hand, you have banks and Wall Street receiving massive bailouts from the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve, bailouts of the magnitude that would gear up for a Great Depression and imply that the banking system of our country is insolvent. Then on the other hand, you have Wall Street and the crony banks trying to convince the public that this is a minor recession and all will be well in Q3 and Q4 of 2009. The problem of course is that this is not your typical recession yet the public is being led to believe that all is well while bailouts are being dolled out by the truckload to the wrong locations. The actions we are taking keeps in place the banking oligarchy and sacrifices the public under the guise that this is good medicine for the general economy. Nothing proves this point bet
General Electric upgraded to buy at Goldman
• Market WatchFollow the Money! Goldman (Government Sachs) knows how to hold em and how to fold em! GE was nearly BROKE but with Govt. Sachs having huge interests in the bogus Crap and Tax and knowing that GE will make out $$$ well lookey here!
96% of Credit Derivative Risk Held by 5 Banks
• Washington;s BlogFitch's has found that JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley together hold 80% of the country's derivatives risk, and 96% of the exposure to credit derivatives: About 80% of the derivative assets and liabilities carried on the balance sheets of 100 companies reviewed by Fitch were held by five banks: JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. Those five banks also account for more than 96% of the companies' exposure to credit derivatives. Geithner's new rules would allow the over-the-counter market to boom again, orchestrated by global giants that will continue to be "too big to fail" (they may have to be rescued again someday, in other words). And most of it will still occur largely out of sight of regulated exchanges... The old culture is reasserting itself with a vengeance. All of which runs up against the advice now being dispensed by many of the experts who were most prescie
U.S. Turns Off News Billboard Atop Its Mission in Havana
• The New York Times07/27/2009MEXICO CITY — The Obama administration has pulled the plug on an electronic billboard outside the American diplomatic mission in Havana that was used to tweak the Cuban government with pro-democracy messages and became a symbol of the bad blood between the two countries.
The Great Lie and Destiny
• Buffalohair Gazette InternationalAs Barack Obama and henchman Rahm Emanuel makes another pitch for the tax payer dollar by convincing us all is well American’s continue to lose jobs and homes. Clearly the people to have benefited from these bail-outs and give-a-ways were members of the House of Representatives and Congress. Both sides of the isle were enriched and their retirement accounts secured regardless of the rhetoric the Dems and Reps spewed to the public. With the main stream media owned part and parcel by the very corporations pining for a One World Order we got a sugar frosted “crap sandwich” generations in the future will be paying off. Democracy has already past into history since the voice of the people has been placed on ignore as the Constitution becomes nothing more than a piece of paper. The one thing both the Democratic and Republican parties have done was systematically divide the people then conquer a nation from within. The reality of how deeply invested our so called politicians were in all t
Hillary Clinton Drinks Tea with Tyranny
• Buffalohair Gazette InternationalChina’s premier diplomat Hillary Clinton *likened North Korea to a child in need of attention in yet another sugar coated response to China’s ally. In spite of the fact North Korea threatened nuclear war, aimed rockets at sovereign US soil and holds hostage two American girls she continues to pussy foot and coddles anything China. It is more than obvious she has a second agenda with China and has no business being secretary of anything. It should have been more than clear she was useless and failed dismally in Indonesia when she could not muster a meeting with the leadership of the Muslim people, her primary mission. Her statement pitting the concerns for human rights in Asia on the ignore list while placing economics above all else should have been a red flag. Her diplomatic failures far outweigh her usefulness yet the media continues to promote her and anything Obama. Facts are marred with endless lines of rhetoric and bold faced lies proving ‘Big Brother’ and double speak prevail
ATS Financials Leaked by Accident
• CameraFRAUD.comThe city of Pembroke Pines, FL. appears to have accidentally leaked financial information for the private automated ticketing company American Traffic Solutions. (If they aren't doing anything wrong, what do they have to worry about, right?)
Establishment Paper Tentatively Admits Fed Reserve "Influenced" by Wall Street
• Washington PostIn a startling admission, the Washington Post says "Some fear NY Fed too heavily influenced by Wall Street." (I wonder who those "some people" would be?)
American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper
• By Stanislav Mishin, Pravda.RuIt must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
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