Tag: Wall Street

“You are evil thieving bastards, you have reaped ungodly profits in your behemoth casino scams, then lost, only to turn around and usurp the wealth of this great nation by the outright rape and pillage of middle class Americans’ whose sweat and toil built it. The biggest ripoff in the history of the world is padding your bonus checks with the Federal Government as your co-conspirators. Every last one of you should be rotting in prison.” – American Middle Class Representative

Yes, the big banks on Wall Street support the endless national discussion across the United States over health care reform because the longer such legislation is debated and delayed, the less chance any banking regulation will get through Congress and that’s great as far as Wall Street bankers are concerned.

For Wall Street, the longer it takes to get legislation passed the better. As stock market values and the economy improve, anger at banks is likely to subside.

So while most everyone is distracted, Bloomberg News reports that Wall Street’s “stealth lobby” is working “to protect one of its richest fiefdoms” and keep derivatives from being regulated.

Secrets Of The Federal Reserve

President Obama has re-nominated Ben Bernanke to sit as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for another four-year term, following glowing praises of Bernanke’s supposed financial genius in most of the media for his handling of the current economic crisis, while Obama himself has suggested that Bernanke helped save the US from another Great Depression.

Paul Amery commented the other day at Seeking Alpha that:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech to the Jackson Hole symposium, delivered on Friday, has already been dubbed a “we saved the world” declaration by some commentators.    

In fairness to Bernanke, nowhere in his remarks does he make such a grandiloquent claim, unlike British Prime Minister Brown, who did just that last December in the U.K. parliament.

However, underlying Bernanke’s narrative of events is the U.S. central bank’s conviction that the panic that hit global markets last fall was a kind of act of God, a phenomenon that was “collectively irrational”, and which the Fed contained by its policy of “lending freely against sound collateral.”

Is this fair, or does Bernanke’s speech signify that U.S. policymakers have understood nothing and learned nothing?

[snip]

Bernanke asserts in the final paragraph of his speech that “we have avoided the worst”. He may be right, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I’m more inclined to agree with Willem Buiter, who wrote recently in the Financial Times that “[t]he US Treasury, the Congress, the Fed and the other financial regulators have, through their behaviour since August 2007, confirmed and re-inforced the incentives for excessive risk taking by crossborder banks and any other financial institution deemed too systemically important to fail. The groundwork for the next financial boom and bust cycle, worse than what we are just emerging from, has been put in place.“

So exactly whose world has Bernanke “saved”, if anyones?

From Reuters today we read that bonuses paid out by banks exceeded total revenue.

What?! you say?.

Bonuses paid to executives at nine banks that received U.S. government bailout money in 2008 were greater than net income at some of the banks, the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday.

Usually they get away with …

Usually they trade their knowledge, for money or power, and no one notices —

But not always:

Insider-Trading Ring Bust May Fuel Hedge-Fund Concern

By David Scheer – March 2, 2007

March 2, (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government’s accusations that Morgan Stanley, UBS AG and Bear Stearns Cos. employees were central figures in an insider-trading ring illustrate why regulators and lawmakers are suspicious of Wall Street’s relationship with hedge funds.

Prosecutors in New York and Washington yesterday brought criminal charges against 13 people, claiming that an executive at UBS and a former compliance lawyer at Morgan Stanley tipped off hedge-fund traders and brokers to new analyst ratings and secret takeover talks. Bear Stearns was home to at least four professionals who traded on information leaked from inside the two firms, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

(emphasis added)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…

White Collar Crime, is not any less heinous, because they commit it with a Keyboard, instead of a Handgun.  Yet more often than not, in the Wild West of electronic casinos, these criminals can make “a killing”, without having to pull that trigger themselves … without ever having to worry about ever facing their “day in court” …