Posts Tagged financial terrorists
Harry Markopolos’ $50 Billion Dollar Failure
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Business and Money, Capitalism, Congress, Crime & Punishment, Economics, Financial Crisis, Financial Terrorists, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Legal & Justice, Politics, Sarah Palin, Show Them the $$$, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, economy, financial industry on March 2nd, 2010
![dumb and dumber [2]](http://screwedus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dumb-and-dumber-23.jpg "dumb and dumber [2]")
S.E.C. LAWYERS’ GRADUATION CLASSES: 1999-2008
If you hired a security guard to watch your house, and it kept getting burglarized – even after someone told him countless times who the thief was – would you let him keep his job?
Stupid question, you say? Really?
So why do we keep the same morons on our government payroll to watch the financial markets? Now that is a good question. And there really is a simple answer. The foxes make sure to instruct their under-lords to have those dumb sharecropper farmers whom they pay beggars wages to for working their land, to keep that same old deaf and blind dog guarding the chicken coop. This metaphor should not be lost on anyone.
Bernie Madoff may be a household word – and one of Time magazines 2009 Top 100 people who affected the world. But Harry Markopolus is just another quiet hero in a global financial market run by pimps and whores. Markopolus has a new book coming out today called, “No One Would Listen“. The book chronicles the story of how Markopolus doggedly pursued a fraud case against Bernie Madoff from 1999 through 2008 by trying to get the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawyers to investigate Madoff’s House of Cards. All to no avail.
WTF you might ask? At least that’s what I have been saying since this story first broke in early 2009 when Markopolus testified before Congress (you can read his testimony right here), and then was interviewed by CBS’s 60 Minutes.
This is beyond a comedy of errors. This is Dumb and Dumber, The Three Stooges, and Beevis and Butthead all working in concert to unwittingly thwart one another while the criminals continued to steal from us with unbridled impunity. Now is that not a terrifying image? Meet your S.E.C., America. Wall Street owns these guys.
Starting in 1999, Markopolus made several attempts to give the most fundamental proof of Madoff’s fraud to numerous investigators at the S.E.C. - all of which was either willfully or woefully ignored (Markopolus calls them “idiots” – that is too kind, don’t you think, Sarah Palin? I would have called them retards). By 2007, he was fed up with their wanton stupidity, and decided to document it by submitting a nineteen (19) page memorandum to the S.E.C. outlining the basis for his claim. That too, was ignored.
View the complete 60 Minutes interview with Markopolos - or just watch the real BOMBSHELL from minute 7:25 to 8:18 of the interview. That brief one minute segment is incomprehensible. And you wonder why so many investors were “Madoffed” by Bernie?
So after all this, has anything changed?
Hell no!
Harry Markopolus is still trying to settle his first big whistle-blower case, he has spent years living in fear, and yet he remains undeterred in his dogged pursuit of financial racketeers and corporate fraudsters. Of course, his new book should help keep his wife and young boys fed until payday comes. Ironically, Markopolus refers to himself as a “$50 Billion dollar failure”- because he could not get the S.E.C. to listen. One might conclude that he is being flippant, since he all but beat them over the head with his evidence. However, he is serious about characterizing this as his “failure” - he honestly takes it very personally that all these people were hurt by Madoff’s fraud in the face of the S.E.C.’s utter incompetence.
You just have to love this man. After all this, the crooks and the “police” shirk responsibility, and the hero feels guilty? And you wonder why it seems the world has started spinning in the other direction?
Meanwhile, back at the S.E.C., they are still re-disorganizing the deck chairs on the U.S.S. Financial Titanic, and there should be smooth sailing on the calm seas of Neo-Capitalism all the way back to port. No need to worry. They have their securities regulation minions fast asleep on night watch while the next massive financial iceberg awaits in the darkness. And brace yourself, because this next one’s really going to be a doozy folks.
In the meantime, bring them some Dom Perignon, the exquisite pate’, and that rare Russian escargot they just had imported, all paid for with your financial bailouts. And don’t forget to put that on a silver platter.
Oh, they almost forgot to mention it. You can ignore the water rising on the Italian marble dining room floor. That’s just from the watered-down financial regulation reform we are about to get from Wall Street’s wholly-owned public subsidiary, Congress. They have the S.E.C working on that minor leak down in the hull right now.
One Final Note: please do not bother counting the number of lifeboats. Those seats have all been reserved.
Enjoy the cruise. 
P.S. They saved several seats in the lifeboats for the S.E.C. lawyers. You didn’t really think the Financial Terrorists were going to row those things themselves, did you?
President Obama: Yes! It’s The Economy, Stupid.
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Campaigns, Capitalism, Congress, Conservatives, Credit Card Industry, Dick Cheney, Economics, Financial Crisis, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Media & Communication, Politics, Sarah Palin, Senate, Show Them the $$$, Tea Party, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, financial industry on January 22nd, 2010
President Obama has been beyond a huge disappointment.
The reasons for his significant failure in the first year of his Presidency are varied, and yesterday I read a very insightful essay on MSN Money by Paul B. Farrell of the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch that hones in on a number of opportunities Obama could have seized upon as a result of the financial collapse that would have allowed him to increase the already significant political capital that he possessed on the day of his inauguration.
In the simplest parlance - he blew it!
This writer will have more to say on the specifics of those issues, but that is for another entry posted here on this blog. More importantly for purposes of today’s entry, I offer a humble mea culpa for my idealistic beliefs that this man was really different from all the others. I pride myself on being intellectually honest enough to admit that I was wrong about Obama’s willingness to effectuate any substantial change in this country with acumen and finesse. How stupid of me to believe that he would really first focus on the one issue that was at the forefront of every voter’s mind since November, 2007 - one year before the 2008 election – and has continuously been the leading issue for the past two years.
In the words of James Carville’s famous political mantra for the 1992 Clinton campaign, “It’s The Economy Stupid!”
Suddenly this week, the President finally has this incredible revelation that he needs to place the issue of the economy, as well as attend to financial system reform, at the top if his agenda? President Obama – how could you and all of these ostensibly intelligent people you surrounded yourself with have possibly missed that most salient and readily available information? Why did you not immediately address the failure of our economic system in it’s present form to serve the interests of its citizens, and redress the ongoing transgressions by the men who were responsible for single-handedly wrecking the underpinnings of American Capitalism? Why did you not implement substantial changes in how our economy is managed by imposing strict accountability, transparency and limitations on how the banking industry operated? Why did you trust that these financial terrorists would not not rob the national treasury for their own personal gain, instead turning a blind eye to their obvious avarice and indifference to the economic welfare of the country? Why did you not instruct Tim Geithner and the Treasury Department to direct the lending institutions to focus all of that available financial capital at shoring-up businesses and home values in order to preserve the essential assets so critical to the future of the American people, instead of bailing out these corrupt and incompetent financial giants? Why did you not utilize the available “bully pulpit” to chastise both your party and the Republicans for their unwillingness to use their legislative powers to immediately reign in these predatory financial giants, because of the “river of dirty money” (campaign contributions) running through Washington, D.C.?
Instead, you choose to ignore the over-arching importance of these matters, and wasted all of your hard-earned political capital by rubber-stamping the bailouts, and then embarking on an agenda of reforming an equally complex and failed health care system – a pathway that was historically fraught with political pitfalls and epic battles against powerful wealthy corporate interests. Anyone studying the history of American health care reform would know that simple fact.
Now, before any of you Conservatives start hooting and hollering in celebration of my criticism of the President, or my ”concession” regarding his obvious failures, let me inform you that your intellectual dishonesty for the past decade has been nothing short of shameful. Lest you think you are blameless, your willful ignorance of, as well as refusal to admit, the abysmal failure of your leaders, party, spokespersons, and Conservative media to improve the status of this country and its people - particularly Bush, Cheney, Palin, McCain, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News, etc. - is completely reprehensible, and gives you no standing to believe that you have something to crow about.
You don’t.
In fact, part and parcel of Obama’s inability to effectuate change has been due to the ”political noise” you either countenenced or participated in during the election campaign in the Fall of 2008 as a substitute for reasoned and measured dialogue about what was wrong with this country. Labeling him a Muslim – when nothing is further from the truth, and cheering on those who claimed that he was “palling around with terrorists“, willfully distracted the American public from what was really at stake for the future of our country. Many of you continued to increase the sound of that chorus to a deafening roar after he was elected with the most utter nonsense – first claiming he was not a citizen in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as well as charging that he is a Socialist, hellbent on destroying the foundations of this nation, when in fact his predecessors that you supported, as well as their corrupt political business cronies, had already virtually accomplished that objective.
In so much as you have fostered and perpetuated these opinions by either expressed belief or passive silence as to the truth, you are partially responsible for the demise of this republic. Your behavior is utterly Un-American. It is an absolute certainty that history will be far less kind to you than it will be to President Obama.
Shame on you.
And if you happen to choke to death on your teabags, oh well . . .
Inside the Mind of An Unapologetic Wall Street Investment Banker
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Capitalism, Cultural Issues, Economics, Ethics, Financial Crisis, How and Why We Get Screwed, Morality, Politics, Show Them the $$$, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, financial industry on January 19th, 2010
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
– “Verbal” Kint, The Usual Suspects
Ok. So you may or may not have cared to see or read about the CEO’s of four Wall Street banks who testified this past week before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
However, wouldn’t you like to literally go inside the mind of a Wall Street investment banker and understand how they rationalize away any sense of responsibility for the untold consequences of the financial collapse? If you have a beating heart in your chest, and blood in your veins, these quotes from a Wall Street investment banker’s blog defending the apparent indifference by these men to the financial calamity that they were complicit in and primarily responsible for creating should send shivers up your spine:
Investment bankers “have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the whys and wherefores of the financial crisis, the proper size and role of banks and investment banks in the domestic economy, or the moral imperatives inherent in stewarding the financial plumbing under-girding the daily lives and livelihoods of six billion people . . . [i]nvestment bankers have almost no interest in why things are the way they are. Rather, they spend all their considerable intellectual and psychological resources on understanding how they can take advantage of the way things are.”
Moreover, “their obvious lack of intellectual curiosity about the sources of the crisis . . . [explains] their resistance to any major change in the way the industry or the markets are regulated . . . changing regulations will [not]necessarily make the industry less profitable . . . [since they] have well-justified confidence in their ability to turn new regulations to their advantage.”
He goes on to conclude, “Don’t look to investment bankers for answers on how we got here. We don’t know and we don’t care [emphasis added]. We take the world as we find it and try to make money.”
After reading this, there should not be a shadow of a doubt in any one’s mind - - they are Financial Terrorists.
These men simply have no souls.
Fighting both the Islamic Terrorists, as well as the Financial Terrorists with Terror
Posted by Lance Haley in 9/11, Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Capitalism, Credit Card Industry, Economics, Financial Crisis, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, National Security, Politics, United States, Wall Street, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, al Qaida, financial industry, foreign policy on January 15th, 2010
Al Qaida and Wall Street understand how to use terror!
First, you place American citizens in deep fear of some unimaginable catastrophe by destroying two very tall skyscrapers full of people, or by sending the global economy into an almost irreversible tailspin. Second, you continually remind them through repetitive conditioning (suicide bombers on planes or wide-spread bankruptcies and unemployment) that it could happen again tomorrow. Finally, you then reap the results of their irrational behavior from the resulting Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): 1) two debt-laden wars, with the associated horrific physical deaths and wounding of tens of thousands of innocent young soldiers; 2) financial system-breaking bailouts, with huge profits for a select group of well-connected banks, as well as obscene bonuses for the well-heeled financial terrorist executives who reside at the top of those businesses.
The answer to the problem?
Well on the first front, President Obama and his advisers seem to understand that General McChrystal’s “urge to surge” in Afghanistan was only an appeasement to military strategists, and simply moves more targets (soldiers) into closer proximity for the Islamic terrorists to attack. More importantly, Obama and company also understand that terrorizing the Islamic Terrorists is a far more effective and efficient use of resources.
This strategy was first articulated in Obama’s campaign for President, wherein he declared that he would not hesitate to send large numbers of drones into the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area to bring the fight to our enemies in their own backyard. Guess what? It is working.
As one resident of the region was recently quoted, “[w]e have become used to the drone attacks, but now people are scared as they are coming every night.” Israr Khan Dawar, a 17-year-old student in Mir Ali, a town in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan which is controlled by Islamic militants, said “more noise means they are flying lower, and that means an attack is more likely.” Sadly, these civilians are collateral damage in an unfortunate war that they have been drawn into as a result of the reckless behavior of those around them.
As for the second front (the Financial Terrorists), we need a scorched-earth strategy like Colonel Kurtz employed in the movie Apocalypse Now, and not some lame federal “banking fee“. Obama should temporarily nationalize the ten largest U.S. banks, starting with Goldman Sachs, throw their management out, replacing them with people who will act without reckless abandon in search of profits and then make money the old-fashioned way – loaning it out at reasonable rates of interest.
Now THAT would sufficiently terrorize Wall Street.
Unfortunately, it is likely far too late. The time to have moved on this would have been one year ago, when they were at the mercy of the Feds. They won that war, and now we ARE screwed.
P.S. For all you “Capitalists” out there who would label such a drastic measure as “Socialism” – that’s what we have been doing for the past year - you better find a more cogent response. Besides, as Nouriel Roubini (”Dr. Doom”)suggested in the Wall Street Journal inteview, we would only ”nationalize” this sector of our financial system temporarily. It would seem prudent at that point to break up these banks into smaller entities, impose moderate regulations on them (especially with usury rates of 18% on credit cards), and spin off the trading and investment side of the firms - regulating them in move inventive ways. We would have then re-privatized them all within twelve months.
President Obama, that would have sufficiently vanquished the Financial Terrorists, and further given pause to Wall Street’s minions, forcing them to rethink how they are going to conduct business going forward.
Credit Card Issuers Game Now Patently Transparent
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Business and Money, Campaign Finance Reform, Campaigns, Capitalism, Economics, Financial Crisis, How and Why We Get Screwed, Lobbyists & Lobbying, Show Them the $$$, Uncategorized, Wall Street on December 11th, 2009
The brazenness of the largest American bankers is now so patently transparent that it is arguably criminal. Yet, when you own the local sheriff and prosecutor, it’s a sure bet there will never be any charges filed.
In a previous post I called out J.P. Morgan Chase’s commercial banking subsidiary for raising interest rates on their credit card holders in an effort to squeeze extraordinary profits out of their customers ahead of the reform coming out of Congress.
Now other banks are following suit and working at a frenzied pace in order to raise rates and fees to unheard of levels before the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act becomes law. These are the very banks that we bailed out – and now they have the audacity to screw us. Compounding the problem was the U.S. Senate’s refusal to accelerate the effective date of the reform measures from February 22, 2010 to December 1, 2009, defying the U.S. House of Representatives’ attempt to stop these financial terrorists from exploiting us.
Ever wonder what is in it for the Senators? If you watched PBS ’s Frontline on November 23, 2009, called The Card Game, the banking consultants, lobbyists, and their shameless political minions are interviewed for this remarkable story and it’s exploration of the banking industry’s credit card business. There are numerous instances of individuals defending their practices of charging outrageous rates of interest on a “loan” – I mean the kind of rates that would make a loan shark shudder.
What is most surprising is how craftily the politicians dance around the notion that giving these financial terrorists another couple of months to screw as many credit card holders as possible in order to maximize their profits for years to come will be long forgotten in the next election cycle. Let’s face some simple facts. The enormous amount of money these politicians receive from the financial industry in the form of campaign contributions - both Democrats and Republicans collectively took in almost $500 Million from the financial industry in the 2008 election cycle – goes virtually unnoticed by the general public.
Moreover, their political consultants know that in spite of their transparent complicity in allowing the credit card industry more time to run up interests rates prior to the new law going into effect, most of the politicians’ constituents will not even likely know about this transgression of monumental proportions. Furthermore, even if a very small minority of us do know – as is evidenced by this post – they are confident that this fact will be long forgotten in the endless cycle of the “politics of distraction” fomented by the partisan rancor that occurs every day and is then reported in the media.
They right . . . and we will re-elect the incumbant based on our fear of the other party’s candidate getting elected – whether it be Democrat or Republican. They rely on that fact – to our detriment. Both parties in the U.S. Senate.
And that’s how we continue to screw ourselves.
P.S. to the Banking Industry: I WILL NOT FORGET!!!
Fire, Aim, Ready, Reporting . . . Tiger Woods’ Accident Reveals All That is Wrong With US!
Posted by Lance Haley in Cultural Issues, How and Why We Get Screwed, Media & Communication, Sports, Uncategorized on December 1st, 2009
The day after Thanksgiving I was on the golf course when my buddy’s phone rang. The news was disturbing, to say the least.
Another friend of ours was calling to tell us that Tiger Woods was involved in a bad car accident, that he had suffered severe head injuries, and that he was in the hospital in serious condition. Ten minutes later I received a phone call from my mother telling me the same thing. My thoughts immediately turned to his wife, children, and mother – what a horrible ordeal they must be suffering through. As golfers, we were discussing the ramifications of whether or not Tiger would be considered the greatest golfer of all time were he not able to return and beat Jack Nicklaus’ record of winning eighteen majors.
As it turns out, none of those concerns were even close to what really matters now to our culture of celebrity worship regarding this incident. As the holiday weekend bore on, and the story slowly evolved, it was apparent that Tiger was not seriously hurt and would return to golf. What was less apparent was whether or not the most cloistered and private super-athlete in history would weather the media frenzy over rumors that spread like wild-fire regarding his ostensible marital infidelity, why he was a bad driver that night, and why his wife used his driver to break the windows in his SUV.
What is most disturbing now is not Tiger’s injuries, but rather the injurious nature of celebrity culture worship to our society. We are deeply enmeshed in two wars that are both going to drag on for years to come, our country is in serious financial condition, robber barons and financial terrorists have looted the national treasury to further enrich themselves at our expense . . . and we are obsessed with whether or not Tiger Woods slept with some alleged celebrity gold-digger, and pissed off his wife?
Innuendo, allegations, and “verified sources” are the stuff of modern day ambush tabloid journalism. Moreover, these tales grows bigger with each newly released “fact”. When truth becomes a subordinate goal of reporting a story, reality is whatever the spinmakers ordain it to become.
For instance: Obama is a Kenyan because he has not provided a certified birth certificate demonstrating his American citizenship to the satisfaction of the people who claim he was born in Kenya? After the certified birth certificate is released by the state agency in Hawaii, elements of the media and public still deny it’s authenticity. So how do you prove something that is undeniably true, if the listener engages in “don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up” rationale. After all, can’t you simply ignore those who will not believe that which is self-evident? Not in the age where truth is the first casualty of war.
If truth is so easily squandered away, how can we as a society expect to acheive greatness in the midst of an obsessive focus on the mundane and insignificant veiled under the guise of relevance and importance?
That should be what America is asking itself.
Bank Of America’s Criminal Deception of U.S. Treasury on Bailout
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Business and Money, Capitalism, Congress, Economics, Financial Crisis, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Politics, Show Them the $$$, Uncategorized, United States, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich on November 16th, 2009
Illustration from Deesillustration.com
The Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Congressman Edopholus Towns (D -Brooklyn, N.Y.) is leading the investigation into whether executives for Bank of America made misrepresentations based on false claims to the government in December 2008 regarding it’s agreed takeover of Merrill Lynch in order to receive significant taxpayer bailouts.
The committee has acquired thousands of documents that included handwritten notes from lawyers representing BoA in it’s takeover of Merrill Lynch that indicated the bank’s claim of a “Material Adverse Change” in circumstances regarding the takeover was unfounded. Nonetheless, it appears executives for the bank used this legal clause as a veiled threat to withdraw from the takeover in order to to persuade the U.S. Treasury and then Secretary Hank Paulson to give them more bailout money. If true, this would be tantamount to extortion – which is a criminal offense – let alone fraudulent misrepresentation.
BofA spokesman Larry Di Rita said that BoA’s actions “were based on our desire to make the best decision for our shareholders . . .”
This self-serving statement is utterly laughable in light of U.S. District Court Judge Jed A. Rakoff’s take on BoA’s behavior in the suit brought by the SEC against the bank. BoA screwed it’s shareholders by intentionally withholding information regarding the Merrill Lynch bonuses and then blaming their lawyers. Now we learn the high likelihood that these same executives ignored the advice of their lawyers and wilfully mislead the U.S. Treasury when they looked to the government for financial bailouts. Why BoA is allowed to perpetuate this ongoing charade defies logic and reason.
These men are financial terrorists!
When will they be made to answer for their crimes against the American people?