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Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

This is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Don't let anyone get by confusing the two.
And don't count us out.

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

WTF Bunny!!!!!....is there any @&%$#% good news out there...anywhere ??????

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Stryker, there is no "good news " out there and that is done intentionally. Lets think for a minute.. Should we all believe that the USA is now the laughing stock of the world because of its greed? That regulators and goverment officials sat by idly while the system was raped and pillaged? That Warnings from Patrick Byrne (very visable) Peter Schiff (very visable) our own prestigious bunnyman, Bud Burrell, David Patch et al was unnoticed and went unheeded? No folks it could not be that simple, this was not the intention of the powers that be. It attracted too much attention and these guys like to operate in the "dark". Something has happened to disrupt their gameplan. Global eyes are onto this rigged, corrupt system and there will be hell to pay. I say we just sit back and watch the "Perp walks" and fireworks, because they are coming and coming soon!!!

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Thanks bunny and all...sorry I asked....now I really feel like shit...think I'll move to Somalia....

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Have you read this?

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom

I would say unbeleivable but I've been reading here for too long. So what part of the America that we love survives? My daughter is going to Univ of Wisc to be an engineer. I hope that is a good thing.

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Is it me or is it talking a long time to announce the next SEC chairman. They've announced almost everyone in the cabinet so far. I would think this would be a huge bone for the investing class!!!

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

How about this for a suggestion?

This came to me in an email from a good friend this morning. not sure where he got it...but it is a GREAT idea!!! Seems very logical and I can't see any reason it can't be done. Do you think Obama will sign on to this? He should...but, I don't think so.
Anyway, what do you all think...


When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen are they reduce their staff and workers. The remaining workers need to find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well. Wall street, and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of "tough decision", and his board of directors gives him a big bonus.

I feel our government should not be immune from similar risks. I therefore am recommending the following cuts to be implemented by the next president elect.

Reduce the House of Representatives from the current 435 members to 218 members and Senate members from 100 to 50. Also reduce remaining staff by 25%. Accomplish this over the next 8 years. (two steps / two elections)

Some yearly monetary gains include:

$44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for congress. (267 members X $165,200 pay / member / yr.)

$97,175,000 for elimination of the above people's staff. (estimate $1.3 Mil in staff per each member of the House, and $3 Mil in staff per each member of the Senate every year)

$240,294 for the reduction in remaining staff by 25%.

$7,500,000 reduction in pork barrel ear-marks each year. (those members who's jobs are gone. Current estimates for total government pork earmarks are at $15 Billion / yr)

The remaining representatives would need to work smarter and would need to improve efficiencies. It might even be in their best interests to work together for the good of our country?

We may also expect that smaller committees might lead to a more efficient resolution of issues as well. It might even be easier to keep track of what your representative is doing.

Congress has more tools available to do their jobs than it had back in 1911 when the current number of representatives was established. (telephone, computers, cell phones to name a few)

Note: Congress did not hesitate to jump on a train for home this week when it was a holiday, when the nation needed a real fix to the economic problems. Also, we have 3 senators that have not been doing their jobs for the past 18+ months (on the campaign trail) and still they all have been accepting full pay. These facts alone support a reduction in senators & congress.

Summary of opportunity:

$ 44,108,400 reduction of congress members.

$282,100,000 for elimination of the reduced house member staff.

$150,000,000 for elimination of reduced senate member staff.

$ 59,675,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining house members.

$ 37,500,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining senate members.

$ 7,500,000,000 reduction in pork added to bills by the reduction of congress members.

$ 8,073,383,400 per year, estimated total savings.

Big business does these types of cuts all the time.IF you are happy with how our government is right now, just delete this message.

IF you are not happy, I assume you know what to do.

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Ah Bobo - Truth teller to the end. Bless you bunny man. Bless you. Yeah, nobody is going to jail, nobody is going to have to give back one dime of the money they stole. Its gone as in g-o-n-e gone and never to come back. I would love to see it shaken down and the crooks exposed to the light of day and all the bank accounts in far off places given back to the people. Not going to happen. Its the golden rule in full play. makes me sick. What we need to see here is some good ole fashioned frontier justice. Might actually see some of that when the bottom falls out of it even more than it has. Can't let the California Teachers Union know their retirement funds are gone. Can't let the UAW know their retirement funds are gone. Can't let the AFL.CIO know their retirement funds have been raped. Can't let the longshoremens union know their retirement funds are gone. Can't let the .......oh but I degress. Why do you think it was so very necessary to put massive amounts of money into the system like right now. Yeah go figure. Everyones waiting for "the chosen one" to take office and speak just a couple of words to the masses and the problem will like a Miracle just up and dissappear and everyone can continue to persue their me me me me me dream of living in a 4000 sq.ft. home they neither need nor can afford watching madona and idol while the idiot of a coke snorting husband goes to work to support his coke snorting plastic wife and spoiled whiny text messageing kids. Damn I'm sick of this shit. I'm leaving this damned country. Like they said in the movie. "They can all go to hell, I'm going to Texas".

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Bobo

This is from the article I referenced earlier.

I still can't get my arms around all of this..

Did all of the big investment houses need the shorts liquidity to keep the game going? It was never us that needed liquidity - we were raped by this liquidity

I'm still confused - but at least it took these guys a while to understand also..

By the spring of 2005, FrontPoint was fairly convinced that something was very screwed up not merely in a handful of companies but in the financial underpinnings of the entire U.S. mortgage market. In 2000, there had been $130 billion in subprime mortgage lending, with $55 billion of that repackaged as mortgage bonds. But in 2005, there was $625 billion in subprime mortgage loans, $507 billion of which found its way into mortgage bonds. Eisman couldn’t understand who was making all these loans or why. He had a from-the-ground-up understanding of both the U.S. housing market and Wall Street. But he’d spent his life in the stock market, and it was clear that the stock market was, in this story, largely irrelevant. “What most people don’t realize is that the fixed-income world dwarfs the equity world,” he says. “The equity world is like a fucking zit compared with the bond market.” He shorted companies that originated subprime loans, like New Century and Indy Mac, and companies that built the houses bought with the loans, such as Toll Brothers. Smart as these trades proved to be, they weren’t entirely satisfying. These companies paid high dividends, and their shares were often expensive to borrow; selling them short was a costly proposition.
Enter Greg Lippman, a mortgage-bond trader at Deutsche Bank. He arrived at FrontPoint bearing a 66-page presentation that described a better way for the fund to put its view of both Wall Street and the U.S. housing market into action. The smart trade, Lippman argued, was to sell short not New Century’s stock but its bonds that were backed by the subprime loans it had made. Eisman hadn’t known this was even possible—because until recently, it hadn’t been. But Lippman, along with traders at other Wall Street investment banks, had created a way to short the subprime bond market with precision.


Here’s where financial technology became suddenly, urgently relevant. The typical mortgage bond was still structured in much the same way it had been when I worked at Salomon Brothers. The loans went into a trust that was designed to pay off its investors not all at once but according to their rankings. The investors in the top tranche, rated AAA, received the first payment from the trust and, because their investment was the least risky, received the lowest interest rate on their money. The investors who held the trusts’ BBB tranche got the last payments—and bore the brunt of the first defaults. Because they were taking the most risk, they received the highest return. Eisman wanted to bet that some subprime borrowers would default, causing the trust to suffer losses. The way to express this view was to short the BBB tranche. The trouble was that the BBB tranche was only a tiny slice of the deal.
But the scarcity of truly crappy subprime-mortgage bonds no longer mattered. The big Wall Street firms had just made it possible to short even the tiniest and most obscure subprime-mortgage-backed bond by creating, in effect, a market of side bets. Instead of shorting the actual BBB bond, you could now enter into an agreement for a credit-default swap with Deutsche Bank or Goldman Sachs. It cost money to make this side bet, but nothing like what it cost to short the stocks, and the upside was far greater.

The arrangement bore the same relation to actual finance as fantasy football bears to the N.F.L. Eisman was perplexed in particular about why Wall Street firms would be coming to him and asking him to sell short. “What Lippman did, to his credit, was he came around several times to me and said, ‘Short this market,’ ” Eisman says. “In my entire life, I never saw a sell-side guy come in and say, ‘Short my market.’”

And short Eisman did—then he tried to get his mind around what he’d just done so he could do it better.
……

Later, when I sit down with Eisman, the very first thing he wants to explain is the importance of the mezzanine C.D.O. What you notice first about Eisman is his lips. He holds them pursed, waiting to speak. The second thing you notice is his short, light hair, cropped in a manner that suggests he cut it himself while thinking about something else. “You have to understand this,” he says. “This was the engine of doom.” Then he draws a picture of several towers of debt. The first tower is made of the original subprime loans that had been piled together. At the top of this tower is the AAA tranche, just below it the AA tranche, and so on down to the riskiest, the BBB tranche—the bonds Eisman had shorted. But Wall Street had used these BBB tranches—the worst of the worst—to build yet another tower of bonds: a “particularly egregious” C.D.O. The reason they did this was that the rating agencies, presented with the pile of bonds backed by dubious loans, would pronounce most of them AAA. These bonds could then be sold to investors—pension funds, insurance companies—who were allowed to invest only in highly rated securities. “I cannot fucking believe this is allowed—I must have said that a thousand times in the past two years,” Eisman says.

His dinner companion in Las Vegas ran a fund of about $15 billion and managed C.D.O.’s backed by the BBB tranche of a mortgage bond, or as Eisman puts it, “the equivalent of three levels of dog shit lower than the original bonds.”

FrontPoint had spent a lot of time digging around in the dog shit and knew that the default rates were already sufficient to wipe out this guy’s entire portfolio. “God, you must be having a hard time,” Eisman told his dinner companion.

“No,” the guy said, “I’ve sold everything out.”

After taking a fee, he passed them on to other investors. His job was to be the C.D.O. “expert,” but he actually didn’t spend any time at all thinking about what was in the C.D.O.’s. “He managed the C.D.O.’s,” says Eisman, “but managed what? I was just appalled. People would pay up to have someone manage their C.D.O.’s—as if this moron was helping you. I thought, You prick, you don’t give a fuck about the investors in this thing.”
Whatever rising anger Eisman felt was offset by the man’s genial disposition. Not only did he not mind that Eisman took a dim view of his C.D.O.’s; he saw it as a basis for friendship. “Then he said something that blew my mind,” Eisman tells me. “He says, ‘I love guys like you who short my market. Without you, I don’t have anything to buy.’ ”


That’s when Eisman finally got it. Here he’d been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them.

**********Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all. “They weren’t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn’t afford,” Eisman says. “They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that’s when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?” ***********

This particular dinner was hosted by Deutsche Bank, whose head trader, Greg Lippman, was the fellow who had introduced Eisman to the subprime bond market. Eisman went and found Lippman, pointed back to his own dinner companion, and said, “I want to short him.” Lippman thought he was joking; he wasn’t. “Greg, I want to short his paper,” Eisman repeated. “Sight unseen.”

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Goldman recieved a blessing at Thanksgiving. There was the mention of justice, heat and Hell.

It is inspiring to see the apparent foregiveness of the criminal behavior. While the largest ripoff of the American economy transpires before our eyes, zombie politicians cover their asses. Shelby lays claim to "I voted against the bailout." I recall Shelby on TV confusing counterfeiting of shares with an unhedged short position. Later he said he didn't understand the question. Shelby's former Chief of Staff ended up as a Commissioner at the SEC. According to her bio, she was involved in everything that has now gone sour.... http://sec.gov/about/commissioner/casey.htm

Mark Faulk did an article on Shelby. It is a must read to understand exactly the kind of people who are running the show. Shelby diddled for years and gave lip service only. Had he given naked shorting the attention it deserved back then, much of the criminal shorting in the securities, bond and CDS market could have been stopped. The implanted loopholes and the refusal to regulate the CDS market have a price that won't be paid by those who profitted from the corruption. Shelby... everyone should have one in his pocket. Oops... Shelby is in our pockets along with the rest of the lawmakers who got contributions from the crimiinals.

http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/Commentary/1062.html

Shelby did nothing to stop the bloodletting and his vote against the bailout doesn't relieve him of his malfeasance and the lies about watching the market.

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Do you know what learned helplessness? It's when the victims bend over and take it.

Don't be a victim. Usually, the victims aren't helpless. Like the battered wife that thinks she can't leave her husband, investors leave their assets at brokerages that betray custody agreements, they don't sue when they are scammed and they don't report crimes to the local police.

There's no reason why this time can't be different and people get arrested. We have the internet on our side and we can name names.

What would happen if states started arresting these people for crimes instead of waiting for civil penalties from the federal gov. and SEC?

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

http://www.hermes-press.com/capitalist_terrorism.htm

Cuban didn't understand fails... now fails to understand

Cuban is pointing back at the SEC and referencing his blog wherein is your futile attempt to enlighten him about naked shorting, even giving him evidence of FTD's. The discussion and his willful blindness show the mentality that would allow him to sell on inside information. A 600,000 share trade is a mosquito bite to some. Ignoring the risk is kinda dengue.

From his blog is a transcript of an interview and some of Cuban's comments.
It is pretty hard to construct a worthwhile defense for insider trading with this unless you have special mental capabilities or a paranoid personality disorder.

CHRISTOPHER CLARK :

1) Q- We spoke earlier about you were telling Mr. Cuban in words or substance : “I have confidential information for you”.

A- Right.

2) Q- Do you recall anything Mr. Cuban said in response or reply to that statement by you ?

A- No, I do not.

The SEC knows this-they have the transcript, yet they brought the case anyway. Why? Do they have a different statement from Mr. Faure ? " If Mr. Faure has another statement, your attorney can request that in discovery, Mark... unless you are defending yourself and you can request it.)

"Why did the SEC end their multi-year investigation of Mamma.com Inc. for alleged securities laws violations days before interviewing present and former Mamma.com Inc. executives about this matter? Was the timing a coincidence? We think not." (Is that the royal "we"?)

Maybe Mark should put up a timeline so that we can understand what he is alleging.

1. He learns of secondary and it is confidential.

2. Four hours later he sells his shares.

When did the SEC drop the investigation? They don't announce when they drop an investigation. When was the interview? Who gives a ....?

After a multi-year investigation, the SEC ends it. Do you suppose they found criminality and decided to let it go as incentive to get Faure to testify against Cuban? Rather than take responsibility for the violation, Cuban is launching a smear campaign against the SEC and others. That is a useful tactic. Very mature.

Cuban is ignoring the testimony that nails him.. and clinging to a statement where Faure doesn't remember what Cuban's response was. The important part is he had access to insider information and traded it on it. Will a jury not understand? Will Mark have to be restrained in court so he doesn't punch the judge?
He should disgorge his illegal profits, pay the fine and get on with his life. He is going to lose this and the longer he drags it out, the more it is going to cost. People have short memories and he will still have his fan base... or base fans.

Here a professional discusses the pr part of this:
http://www.thebettyfactor.com/2008/11/17/mark-cuban-dallas-mavericks-owner-and-billionaire-charged-with-insider-trading-by-the-sec/

Follow the links and you can see the spin from within:
http://www1.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=3532&mn=27717&pt=msg&mid=6203123

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Now, I would first like it to be discloseD. I am NOT a fan of Mark Cuban. I am being nice when I say this out of respect for this blog site. Now with that disclaimer read on and enjoy, because it does not get any better than this!1!

Recs: 5 Mark Cuban To The SEC: I’m Not The Insider Trader, You Are!

Mark Cuban To The SEC: I’m Not The Insider Trader, You Are!

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Sun 30th of Nov, 2008 03:35:43 PM

Remember when the SEC grabbed all the headlines after going after Mark Cuban with insider trading?
First, he responded with this post and this post.

Now…

Well, Cuban ain’t going down without a fight and it’s almost laughable how easy it is for this determined SOB to pick apart this joke of a government regulator:

In this post Cuban writes:

First the humorous side of the report, the SEC apparently has issues with Porn usage among employees.

Now the Serious.

It never crossed my mind that it would be legal for employees of the SEC to trade stocks. Not that they shouldn’t have rights to own whatever they want in a trust. They should. Trading individual stocks and bonds. Wow.

There is a SEC policy in place regarding trading and what employees can and can’t do according to this report, but if you know about actions of one company, even if you don’t trade that company, doesn’t that provide you insight into an entire industry ?

But wait there is more. According to this report,

” we have determined that the Commission’s current system in place to report the ownership and
trading of securities is insufficient to prevent and detect insider trading on the part of
Commission employees or violations of the Commission’s rules.

The OIG investigation has found that the reports that employees are required to file when they buy, sell or own securities are not meaningfully reviewed or sufficiently checked for conflicts of interest. Moreover, there is currently no system in place for the Commission to detect if an employee who has traded or owns a security failed to properly report such transaction. “

Awesome, facts from internal memos are better than any rants I’ve ever written against Big Incompetent Brother (BIB).

From the related Washington Post article:

The Securities and Exchange Commission, the top U.S. cop for insider trading, is examining whether two of its employees broke agency rules or tapped nonpublic information while making a high volume of trades.

SEC Inspector General David Kotz said his office has reviewed more than two years of brokerage records to see if the investments were approved, properly reported and held for required amounts of time. The probe described in Kotz’s semi-annual report to Congress, posted yesterday on the SEC’s Web site, also examines whether trades were based on confidential information from casework, co-workers or agency resources.

So if we are to trust Cuban’s blog and THIS long SEC memo, the SEC are probly more at risk of insider trading than anyone else…typical BIB SEC hypocrisy.

http://timothysykes.com/2008/11/30/mark-cuban-to-the-sec-im-not-the-insider-trader-you-are/


Recs: 5 Mark Cuban To The SEC: I’m Not The Insider Trader, You Are!

Mark Cuban To The SEC: I’m Not The Insider Trader, You Are!

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Sun 30th of Nov, 2008 03:35:43 PM

Remember when the SEC grabbed all the headlines after going after Mark Cuban with insider trading?
First, he responded with this post and this post.

Now…

Well, Cuban ain’t going down without a fight and it’s almost laughable how easy it is for this determined SOB to pick apart this joke of a government regulator:

In this post Cuban writes:

First the humorous side of the report, the SEC apparently has issues with Porn usage among employees.

Now the Serious.

It never crossed my mind that it would be legal for employees of the SEC to trade stocks. Not that they shouldn’t have rights to own whatever they want in a trust. They should. Trading individual stocks and bonds. Wow.

There is a SEC policy in place regarding trading and what employees can and can’t do according to this report, but if you know about actions of one company, even if you don’t trade that company, doesn’t that provide you insight into an entire industry ?

But wait there is more. According to this report,

” we have determined that the Commission’s current system in place to report the ownership and
trading of securities is insufficient to prevent and detect insider trading on the part of
Commission employees or violations of the Commission’s rules.

The OIG investigation has found that the reports that employees are required to file when they buy, sell or own securities are not meaningfully reviewed or sufficiently checked for conflicts of interest. Moreover, there is currently no system in place for the Commission to detect if an employee who has traded or owns a security failed to properly report such transaction. “

Awesome, facts from internal memos are better than any rants I’ve ever written against Big Incompetent Brother (BIB).

From the related Washington Post article:

The Securities and Exchange Commission, the top U.S. cop for insider trading, is examining whether two of its employees broke agency rules or tapped nonpublic information while making a high volume of trades.

SEC Inspector General David Kotz said his office has reviewed more than two years of brokerage records to see if the investments were approved, properly reported and held for required amounts of time. The probe described in Kotz’s semi-annual report to Congress, posted yesterday on the SEC’s Web site, also examines whether trades were based on confidential information from casework, co-workers or agency resources.

So if we are to trust Cuban’s blog and THIS long SEC memo, the SEC are probly more at risk of insider trading than anyone else…typical BIB SEC hypocrisy.

http://timothysykes.com/2008/11/30/mark-cuban-to-the-sec-im-not-the-insider-trader-you-are/

Recs: 5 Mark Cuban To The SEC: I’m Not The Insider Trader, You Are!

Mark Cuban To The SEC: I’m Not The Insider Trader, You Are!

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Sun 30th of Nov, 2008 03:35:43 PM

Remember when the SEC grabbed all the headlines after going after Mark Cuban with insider trading?
First, he responded with this post and this post.

Now…

Well, Cuban ain’t going down without a fight and it’s almost laughable how easy it is for this determined SOB to pick apart this joke of a government regulator:

In this post Cuban writes:

First the humorous side of the report, the SEC apparently has issues with Porn usage among employees.

Now the Serious.

It never crossed my mind that it would be legal for employees of the SEC to trade stocks. Not that they shouldn’t have rights to own whatever they want in a trust. They should. Trading individual stocks and bonds. Wow.

There is a SEC policy in place regarding trading and what employees can and can’t do according to this report, but if you know about actions of one company, even if you don’t trade that company, doesn’t that provide you insight into an entire industry ?

But wait there is more. According to this report,

” we have determined that the Commission’s current system in place to report the ownership and
trading of securities is insufficient to prevent and detect insider trading on the part of
Commission employees or violations of the Commission’s rules.

The OIG investigation has found that the reports that employees are required to file when they buy, sell or own securities are not meaningfully reviewed or sufficiently checked for conflicts of interest. Moreover, there is currently no system in place for the Commission to detect if an employee who has traded or owns a security failed to properly report such transaction. “

Awesome, facts from internal memos are better than any rants I’ve ever written against Big Incompetent Brother (BIB).

From the related Washington Post article:

The Securities and Exchange Commission, the top U.S. cop for insider trading, is examining whether two of its employees broke agency rules or tapped nonpublic information while making a high volume of trades.

SEC Inspector General David Kotz said his office has reviewed more than two years of brokerage records to see if the investments were approved, properly reported and held for required amounts of time. The probe described in Kotz’s semi-annual report to Congress, posted yesterday on the SEC’s Web site, also examines whether trades were based on confidential information from casework, co-workers or agency resources.

So if we are to trust Cuban’s blog and THIS long SEC memo, the SEC are probly more at risk of insider trading than anyone else…typical BIB SEC hypocrisy.

http://timothysykes.com/2008/11/30/mark-cuban-to-the-sec-im-not-the-insider-trader-you-are/

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

CBC News report on Naked Shorting and the lack of action by Canadian Authorities.

Who is Guarding Your Money?

Canada doesn't have a single national watchdog to enforce the law on financial markets. Critics say that allows white-collar criminals who rip off Canadian investors to simply walk free. So how broken is the financial watchdog system?

http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/2008/11/112308_8.html

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Bobo,

Wanted you to know that your name was mentioned several times, of course, in a good light on the following broadcast.

http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Bobo,

I forgot to mention in my last comment (copy below) that you are mentioned about 1/4 of the way into the 3rd hour of this brooadcast in the interview with Robb MacDonald, Attorney, Adair Morse LLP. Jim Puplava and Robb talk of getting together with you. Jim and Robb both also reference the CBC news broadcast piece called "High Crimes & Lack of Punishment."
http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/2008/11/112308_8.html

Bobo,

Wanted you to know that your name was mentioned several times, of course, in a good light on the following broadcast.

http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Thy just have no fear or respect for the American Taxpayer and we just let them get away with it...

If you lose billions and have to borrow billions to survive, how can bonuses be?

Merrill Said to Cut Year-End Bonuses by 50% as Revenue Slumps




By Bradley Keoun

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Merrill Lynch & Co. plans to cut year- end bonuses in half after more than $20 billion of losses that forced the U.S. securities firm to sell itself to Bank of America Corp., two people with knowledge of the situation said.

The average bonus reduction will be about 50 percent at the New York-based company, and some traders and investment bankers will face steeper cuts, said the people, who declined to be identified because the plans aren’t public. While employees won’t find out their bonuses until later this month, division managers are being told now how much they’ll get to distribute.

Merrill’s revenue through September fell 96 percent from a year earlier, forcing Chief Executive Officer John Thain to slash compensation -- the firm’s biggest expense. Congressmen and regulators scrutinizing Wall Street pay have sought to ensure that economic-rescue funds from the U.S. government are used to stimulate lending and not to enrich executives.

The drop in bonuses at Merrill would be less severe than the 70 percent average cut for all Wall Street firms that compensation consultant Johnson Associates predicted last month. Bonuses make up the bulk of a year’s pay for most traders and investment bankers, and they usually fall when markets sour.

Merrill spokeswoman Selena Morris declined to comment.

A crisis of confidence sent Merrill shares plunging 36 percent in a single week during September, forcing the firm to sell itself to Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America. Shareholders of both companies are scheduled to vote on the deal this week, with the closing targeted for the end of December.

Loss May Widen

Merrill and Bank of America were allotted a combined $25 billion of government money in October, when the Treasury Department agreed to invest $125 billion in nine of the biggest U.S. banks to bolster their dwindling capital.

Hit with mortgage-bond writedowns and plunging investment- banking fees, Merrill may report a loss this year of $13.3 billion, based on the average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That would be almost twice as wide as the $7.8 billion loss for 2007, then a record for the 94-year-old firm.

The company has dropped 78 percent this year in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and closed yesterday at $11.56.

Merrill’s costs for compensation and benefits this year through September totaled $11.2 billion, down 3 percent from a year earlier. Although bonuses aren’t paid until the end of the year, Wall Street firms usually estimate them in advance and account for a portion of the payout costs in each quarter.

$248,000 Average Pay

Even if Merrill set aside nothing for compensation in the fourth quarter, the firm’s 60,900 employees still would reap an average of $184,000 in compensation and benefits for the full year.

In 2007, Merrill paid out a total of $15.9 billion in compensation, or about $248,000 per employee.

Merrill’s revenue for the first nine months of this year totaled $834 million, or $13,695 per employee, compared with $19.4 billion in the 2007 period.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Wall Street’s most profitable firm, said last month Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and six deputies would forgo year-end bonuses. Executives at Frankfurt- based Deutsche Bank AG and UBS AG in Zurich also have agreed to waive pay.

Merrill officials have declined to comment on bonuses for top executives, saying the payouts hadn’t been set. Thain, 53, a former Goldman Sachs executive, received a $15 million bonus when he joined Merrill last December.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bradley Keoun in New York at bkeoun@bloomberg.net

Also read this about AIG giving out Cash Awards from the 152 billion we taxpayers loaned them..

http://www.opednews.com/articles/AIG-Pulls-Fast-One---Cas-by-Jonathan-Tasini-081128-318.html

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

Bobo and all, why have'nt a group of companies got together and sued the SEC/DTCC for all of these crimes perpitrated against them? Why have they gone about it individually? Would'nt there have been power in numbers and more cost effective? Just asking.

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

The big three.
The last big pool of stock to be plundered.
When the big three declare their stock null and void how many counterfiet /naked short shares will never have to be covered?
The world will never know.

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

What more do we need to know abuot Citi? Whi is'nt anyone in jail yet? I forgot, too much juice!!!

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12042008/business/ponzi_scheme_at_citi_14251...

Citi Ponzi scheme

A new Citigroup scandal is engulfing Robert Rubin and his former disciple Chuck Prince for their roles in an alleged Ponzi-style scheme that's now choking world banking.

Director Rubin and ousted CEO Prince - and their lieutenants over the past five years - are named in a federal lawsuit for an alleged complex cover-up of toxic securities that spread across the globe, wiping out trillions of dollars in their destructive paths.

Investor-plaintiffs in the suit accuse Citi management of overseeing the repackaging of unmarketable collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that no one wanted - and then reselling them to Citi and hiding the poisonous exposure off the books in shell entities.

The lawsuit said that when the bottom fell out of the shaky assets in the past year, Citi's stock collapsed, wiping out more than $122 billion of shareholder value.

However, Rubin and other top insiders were able to keep Citi shares afloat until they could cash out more than $150 million for themselves in "suspicious" stock sales "calculated to maximize the personal benefits from undisclosed inside information," the lawsuit said.

The latest troubles for Rubin, Prince and others emerged in a 500-page investigation by Citigroup investors represented by law firm Kirby McInerney.

The probe was used to amend and add new details to a blanket investor lawsuit filed against Citigroup a year ago. The amended suit called the actions of Citi leaders "a quasi-Ponzi scheme" to hide troubles - and keep Citi stock afloat while insiders unloaded about 3 million shares between Jan. 1, 2004 and Feb. 22, 2008 for huge profits.

In addition to Citigroup, Rubin and Prince, the complaint names Vice Chairman Lewis Kaden, ex-CFO Sallie Krawcheck and her successor CFO Gary Crittenden.

Rubin cleared $30.6 million on his stock sales, while Prince got $26.5 million, former COO Robert Druskin got nearly $32 million and former Global Wealth Management unit chief Todd Thomson got $25.7 million, the suit said.

Citi denied the allegations and said it "will defend against it vigorously."



http://www.nypost.com/seven/12042008/business/ponzi_scheme_at_citi_14251...

Re: The End Of The American Experiment - Of Fear, Greed, Stupidity, and Unprecedented Larceny...

The title for this one is fitting for the demise of one hedge fund.