Tag: Oversight

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” …

Well it seems like there is more evidence that Speaker Pelosi for all her failings is not actually complicit in the Bush era State Sponsored Torture program. Zach Roth of the Talking Points Memo Muckraker section has found a former Intel official who points out that the Orwellian euphemism of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” was only coined in 2006 when the Bush administration started to get worried (sensibly) that their war crimes would come back to haunt them. You can find the whole article here.

(Cross posted at the GOS)

When, in the coming days, weeks and months, the right wingnut noise machine (predictably) starts cranking up the squeeze box and running around with their hair on fire, screaming that taxpayer’s money from the “stimulus” bill is being wasted on the Democrat’s long delayed pet projects,  it will behoove progressives to remind them that: the key measure in said bill designed to help expose that waste was quietly removed from the bill late last night — and, by one of their own, a senator who touts herself as a proponent of fiscal responsibility.

If there is any doubt as to how this financial mess came to be, there is no shortage of stories of folks who saw and/or knew of significant fraud but were unable to do much about it.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles



Still Guantanamo

Every day it just gets worse.  Today (h/t to Smintheus at dKos), Prof Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University Law School (with assistance from many others) released a report (pdf format) on interrogations at Gitmo.  It’s a shocker.  Among other things it says that there have been 24,000 “interrogations” at Gitmo and that all of them have been videotaped.

Join me inside the wire.