Friday, June 10, 2011

The Long List of Corporate Crimes by CRIMINAL BANKSTERS AT BANK of AMERICA

What’s funny about the article below is how quick the feds jumped on this person stealing $10K!

When have you heard the FEDs do anything about the rape and pillage perpetrated by BANK of AMERICA, or crime partner WELLS FARGO?

When these banks commit crimes, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE FORCED TO MATCH FUNDS!

One of my favorite crime waves of BANK OF AMERICA was when they used their municipal bonds rackets on Bay Area cities charging for services they never rendered or double-triple charging for service they did. THIS NETTED THE CRIME BANK 1.5 billion in dirty profits. Yes, they got caught and paid back a few pennies on the dollars, BUT NOT ONE FUCKING BANKSTER WENT TO PRISON!

Now these two crime waves of BANK of AMERICA and WELLS FARGO have caused a global meltdown. Their mortgage scams have destroyed home values and foreclosures all over the fucking corporate united states, but NOT ONE FUCKING BANKER WENT TO PRISON!

It pays to buy a good whore like DIANNE FEINSTEIN! When these bankers realized that planet earth had been pillaged until there was nothing left, these fucking banks bought whore Feinstein (opensecrets.org) and told the rancid old money licker to front for their “BANKERS’ BANKRUPTCY REFORM” so that bankers’ victims could not undue the scam mortgages in bankruptcy court. This is why we’re in the depression we’re in! And paying out BANKERS’ WELFARE on top of it. RIGHT NEXT to whore Feinstein sat her bankers’ sluts BOXER, CLINTON, PELOSI and BIDEN!

Not a word comes out of OBAMA’S HAREM OF BANKERS WHORES about foreclosure! While jokesters Obama said he would restore the bankruptcy provision, it was just one more lie from this excellent and eloquent actor. THE BANKERS SAID NO, AND WE KNOW HOW MUCH MONEY OBAMA HAS TAKEN FROM BIG BANKS!

LA RAZA DONORS WELLS FARGO and BANK OF AMERICA made so much money off illegally opening bank accounts for illegals, and exploiting illegals for mortgages that they’ve told this same harem of whores, that they want OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY, NO WALL, AND MUCHO MAS ILLITERATE ILLEGALS TO FUCK OVER.

OBAMA, FEINSTEIN, BOXER, PELOSI, and Joe the Joke all say Si, Si! Reconquista today!

SF GATE.com

More charges in scam implicating BofA worker

Sunday, July 12, 2009
(07-11) 06:39 PDT SAN FRANCISCO --
A second defendant has been charged in a conspiracy in which a Bank of America employee allegedly transferred tens of thousands of dollars in customers' accounts without their knowledge to accounts at other banks, court records show.
The employee, identified in court records only as N.B., a customer-service representative at the bank's call center in San Francisco, has not been charged in the case.
But federal prosecutors filed charges Thursday against Taylor Jones, saying Jones, N.B. and another co-conspirator, identified only as C.F., fraudulently obtained funds under Bank of America's control.
N.B. impersonated Bank of America account holders and transferred $10,003 from each account to other banks, prosecutors said.
C.F. "recruited individuals who would provide their bank account to C.F. and N.B. so that the fraudulent transfer of funds could occur," federal prosecutors wrote in court papers.
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February 10, 2007
U.S. Inquiry on Bonds at Big Bank
Bank of America said yesterday that it was cooperating with a Justice Department investigation into bidding practices in the municipal bond business in exchange for leniency.
The agreement with the bank may be a significant breakthrough for government investigators who have been looking at how the proceeds of bonds issued by cities, school districts and other municipal authorities are invested between the time the money is raised and when it is spent on projects like new water systems and school gymnasiums.
Investigators are examining whether there was collusion among some financial institutions in bidding to handle the bond revenue during those interim periods.
Last November, the Justice Department issued subpoenas and raided the offices of several firms that served as go-betweens for municipalities and large financial institutions.
The investigation is the biggest in municipal finance since the 1990s, when the Securities and Exchange Commission accused some Wall Street firms of “yield burning” — or profiting by overcharging state and local government agencies in debt refinancings. The current investigation is unusual because it appears to involve possible criminal charges.
Bank of America said the Justice Department had agreed not to bring criminal charges against the bank because it was the first institution to volunteer information before the subpoenas were issued. Furthermore, the agreement limits the civil penalties that prosecutors can pursue against the bank to actual damages, rather than the treble damages it can pursue against others.
The deal, which the bank said would not be available to other financial institutions, is contingent on continued cooperation by Bank of America.
“If a company has participated in industrywide practices, its cooperation can prove invaluable,” said Kathleen F. Brickey, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in white-collar crime. as prosecutors investigate other companies. “This will be unwelcome news for others” in the industry.
In a separate settlement with the Internal Revenue Service, Bank of America said yesterday that it would pay $14.7 million to the federal government for its role in the use of contracts that provided guaranteed investment returns on proceeds from bond pools issued by multiple municipalities. The I.R.S. has been examining whether such pools are being used to generate profits from tax-free municipal bonds.
“They are related only in that the two are happening at the same time and involve the municipal arena,” said Shirley Norton, a Bank of America spokeswoman.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department confirmed that it had reached an agreement with Bank of America but would not answer questions about the deal. A spokesman for the I.R.S. declined to comment.
Municipal bonds are a big business for Wall Street — about $385 billion of bonds were issued last year, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The bonds provide a steady source of fees and are a relatively safe, and tax-free, investment.
In recent years, several government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, have focused on how the proceeds of the bonds are handled in the months or years before they are spent. Because the money is tax-free, municipalities cannot generate a higher return on the money by investing it than what it costs to raise the money. If they do earn more, the balance is due to the United States Treasury.
To get around those limits, consultants to municipalities and major financial institutions like Bank of America have used guaranteed investment contracts that limit the return cities and other agencies can earn from their bond proceeds.
Investigators are looking into whether some financial institutions have colluded when bidding for those contracts, which are structured in a way that appeared to satisfy the I.R.S. rules but in reality provide excessive fees or returns to banks and advisers involved in the transactions.
“Municipal bond proceeds are supposed to be spent for tangible purposes, not to earn interest in arbitrage,” said Charles Anderson, a retired I.R.S. field inspector who now has a private consulting practice. “You want a transparent and above- board process of people getting investment contracts.”
In November, Bloomberg News reported that federal agents raided and seized documents from the offices of three brokers that specialized in municipal finance and Justice Department lawyers subpoenaed documents from two insurance companies and General Electric.
Shares of Bank of America slipped 33 cents, to $52.99.
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Financial Services
Bank Of America Snagged By SEC
Liz Moyer, 03.14.07, 5:30 PM ET
Four years after a $1.4 billion settlement with regulators forced Wall Street to draw clearer lines between its research staffs and its investment bankers, Bank of America is now the target of conflicts of interest charges.
The Charlotte, N.C., bank will pay $26 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission accusations that some of its traders improperly got access to research reports in advance of their publication and took proprietary positions in those securities prior to the release of the information.
Bank of America is also accused of issuing false equity research on Intel, E-Stamp and TelCom Semiconductor.
The settlement, announced Wednesday, ends a multiyear probe of Banc of America Securities, the bank's investment banking division. It also highlights regulators' growing concern about insider trading and leaks of material and nonpublic information.
"We are determined to plug the improper leak of information on Wall Street," said Linda Chatman Thomsen, the SEC's director of enforcement.
Bank of America had previously disclosed it received a Wells notice from the agency about the investigation, which is essentially a heads-up about what the charges would be. The bank paid $10 million to the SEC three years ago because it was accused of stalling on providing documents in the probe.
The company said it cooperated with the investigation, which focused on activities in its San Francisco equities trading operations from 1999 to 2001. It neither admitted nor denied the SEC's allegations. "We believe it is in the best interest of the corporation and our shareholders to settle this matter at this time."
Bank of America was one of the few big firms to avoid being named in the global research settlement announced by former New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer four years ago, but the accusations leveled against it by the SEC are reminiscent of the conflicts Spitzer said were rampant on Wall Street in the Internet bubble years of the 1990s.
The SEC said Bank of America had inadequate controls to stop the improper use of sensitive information generated within its investment banking operations. At least twice, the Commission said, proprietary traders got a hold of unpublished research reports and traded ahead of their distribution. Analyst upgrades and downgrades can frequently move a stock. The stocks in question were PLX Technology and Cree.
Until mid-1999, the bank didn't even keep an information wall to separate investment research from trading. Reports were available to traders prepublication; they were just supposed to keep the information confidential. That policy changed mid-1999, but the tightened rules weren't properly communicated or enforced, the SEC said.
The SEC also said Bank of America fostered a culture in which investment bankers inappropriately influenced analysts in the quest to keep banking clients happy or to woo new client business, resulting in research that didn't reflect the analysts' true opinion about the stock. This led to the false research on Intel, TelCom Semiconductor and E-Stamp.
Bank of America agreed to hire a consultant to review its policies and practices. It has already voluntarily adopted the practices outlined by Spitzer in the global research settlement.
The bank "failed to discharge vital compliance responsibilities," said SEC's associate enforcement director Antonia Chion. "Firm policies that are required by law cannot exist only on paper, they must be implemented and enforced."
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wsws.org
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
The looting of America
10 April 2009
The New York Times on Thursday published a front-page article that provides further insight into the economic and class interests that are being served by the Obama administration’s economic “recovery” policies.
Headlined “Small Investors May Be Enlisted in Bank Bailout,” the article outlines discussions between the administration and Wall Street investment firms on structuring the so-called “Public-Private Investment Program” announced last month in a manner that will allow people of modest means to invest in the scheme, whose purpose is to enable the banks to offload their toxic assets at public expense.
When the plan was announced March 23 by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, it sparked a wild rally on the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 497 points when it became clear that the government was offering to provide up to 95 percent of the capital, insure almost all potential losses and virtually guarantee large profits for hedge funds and other financial firms that agree to purchase the bad debts of the banks at inflated prices, with the taxpayers underwriting the windfall for Wall Street and assuming virtually all of the risk.
Thursday’s Times article indicates that opening the scheme up to small investors is seen as a way of providing a “democratic” gloss to what is, in reality, a brazen plan to plunder the public treasury for the benefit of the very bankers and speculators who are responsible for the financial crash. Evidently not seeing a contradiction, the article also makes clear that the bailout measures are being drawn up in the closest consultation with the Wall Street insiders who stand to profit from them.
“Some of the biggest investment managers in the United States,” the Times notes, “including BlackRock and PIMCO, have been consulting with the government on ways to rebuild the country’s broken financial markets.”
The article quotes Steven A. Baffico, an executive at BlackRock, as saying, “It’s giving the guy on Main Street an equal seat at the table next to the big guys.” This is true only in the sense that “Main Street” will be given the opportunity to absorb the bulk of any losses while the “big guys” cream off the best assets and pocket the profits.
There are political concerns behind this effort to create the appearance of offering the general public a cut in the winnings. Hedge fund managers are wary that when, as they anticipate, their partnership with the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) pays off with double-digit profits there will be a public outcry, similar to that which erupted over the AIG executive bonuses. This, they fear, might lead to limits on their compensation, higher taxes on their fortunes or similar intolerable infringements.
More important are definite commercial calculations. By opening up the scheme to the broad public, the private firms chosen by the Treasury to operate the plan stand to increase greatly their take from investor fees. As the Times puts it, “For the investment managers, the benefits are potentially large. These big firms can charge healthy fees to investors for taking part.”
There is one particularly remarkable passage in the Times account. “But the comparison one industry official uses to illustrate the mistake that America must avoid,” the newspaper writes, “is the large-scale privatization in Russia in the 1990s, which involved a transfer of entire industries to a few, well-connected oligarchs. That experience tarnished the idea of free-market capitalism in Russia and undermined its program to move toward a market economy.”
The many differences in political and historical circumstances aside, there is a very real parallel between the plundering of Soviet society by the former Stalinist bureaucrats and their domestic gangster and foreign imperialist allies and the current manner in which the economic crisis in the US is being seized upon by Wall Street and its political instrument, the Obama administration, to further enrich the American financial aristocracy. Indeed, the perpetrators are themselves quite conscious that they are engaged in a similar—although much bigger—looting operation.
The scale and character of the operation are further indicated by another New York Times article published this week. This one, authored by Times financial writer Andrew Ross Sorkin and published on Tuesday, concerns the role of the FDIC in the new bailout scheme.
The article begins by noting that the FDIC was established 76 years ago, in the depths of the Great Depression, to provide a government guarantee, initially up to $5,000 and now up to $250,000, on the bank deposits of small savers. It describes the transformation of the FDIC, under the toxic asset disposal plan of the Obama administration, as follows:
“It’s going to be insuring 85 percent of the debt, provided by the Treasury, that private investors will use to subsidize their acquisition of toxic assets.”
In other words, the function of the FDIC is being transformed from guaranteeing the bank deposits of small savers to guaranteeing the investments of multimillionaire investment fund managers. And, as the article notes, this is occurring without a vote by Congress.
The FDIC will be insuring more than $1 trillion in new obligations incurred as the government covers the bad debts of the banks. However, the FDIC’s charter limits the obligations it can take on to $30 billion. The Times article quotes one “prominent securities lawyers” as saying, “They may not be breaking the letter of the law, but they’re sure disregarding its spirit.”
What is the significance of this astonishing reasoning? Simply this: The Obama administration, in order to protect the wealth and power of the financial elite, is facilitating and directly perpetrating on a colossal scale the same type of accounting fraud and reckless leveraging that led to the economic catastrophe in the first place.
Who is to pay the price for this looting operation? The answer can be seen in the Obama Auto Task Force’s demands for the liquidation of much of the US auto industry and the brutal downsizing of what remains, combined with the imposition of poverty-level wages on those workers who remain in the surviving plants and the gutting of the pensions and health benefits of retirees. It can be further seen in the administration’s pledge to slash social programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The administration’s “recovery” plan is a barely disguised scheme to preserve the fortunes of the financial aristocracy, whose interests it represents, by imposing poverty and social misery on the working class.
Barry Grey
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April 1, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ
THE Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.
Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.
Let’s take a moment to remember what caused this mess in the first place. Banks got themselves, and our economy, into trouble by overleveraging — that is, using relatively little capital of their own, they borrowed heavily to buy extremely risky real estate assets. In the process, they used overly complex instruments like collateralized debt obligations.
The prospect of high compensation gave managers incentives to be shortsighted and undertake excessive risk, rather than lend money prudently. Banks made all these mistakes without anyone knowing, partly because so much of what they were doing was “off balance sheet” financing.
In theory, the administration’s plan is based on letting the market determine the prices of the banks’ “toxic assets” — including outstanding house loans and securities based on those loans. The reality, though, is that the market will not be pricing the toxic assets themselves, but options on those assets.
The two have little to do with each other. The government plan in effect involves insuring almost all losses. Since the private investors are spared most losses, then they primarily “value” their potential gains. This is exactly the same as being given an option.
Consider an asset that has a 50-50 chance of being worth either zero or $200 in a year’s time. The average “value” of the asset is $100. Ignoring interest, this is what the asset would sell for in a competitive market. It is what the asset is “worth.” Under the plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the government would provide about 92 percent of the money to buy the asset but would stand to receive only 50 percent of any gains, and would absorb almost all of the losses. Some partnership!
Assume that one of the public-private partnerships the Treasury has promised to create is willing to pay $150 for the asset. That’s 50 percent more than its true value, and the bank is more than happy to sell. So the private partner puts up $12, and the government supplies the rest — $12 in “equity” plus $126 in the form of a guaranteed loan.
If, in a year’s time, it turns out that the true value of the asset is zero, the private partner loses the $12, and the government loses $138. If the true value is $200, the government and the private partner split the $74 that’s left over after paying back the $126 loan. In that rosy scenario, the private partner more than triples his $12 investment. But the taxpayer, having risked $138, gains a mere $37.
Even in an imperfect market, one shouldn’t confuse the value of an asset with the value of the upside option on that asset.
But Americans are likely to lose even more than these calculations suggest, because of an effect called adverse selection. The banks get to choose the loans and securities that they want to sell. They will want to sell the worst assets, and especially the assets that they think the market overestimates (and thus is willing to pay too much for).
But the market is likely to recognize this, which will drive down the price that it is willing to pay. Only the government’s picking up enough of the losses overcomes this “adverse selection” effect. With the government absorbing the losses, the market doesn’t care if the banks are “cheating” them by selling their lousiest assets, because the government bears the cost.
The main problem is not a lack of liquidity. If it were, then a far simpler program would work: just provide the funds without loan guarantees. The real issue is that the banks made bad loans in a bubble and were highly leveraged. They have lost their capital, and this capital has to be replaced.
Paying fair market values for the assets will not work. Only by overpaying for the assets will the banks be adequately recapitalized. But overpaying for the assets simply shifts the losses to the government. In other words, the Geithner plan works only if and when the taxpayer loses big time.
Some Americans are afraid that the government might temporarily “nationalize” the banks, but that option would be preferable to the Geithner plan. After all, the F.D.I.C. has taken control of failing banks before, and done it well. It has even nationalized large institutions like Continental Illinois (taken over in 1984, back in private hands a few years later), and Washington Mutual (seized last September, and immediately resold).
What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.
So what is the appeal of a proposal like this? Perhaps it’s the kind of Rube Goldberg device that Wall Street loves — clever, complex and nontransparent, allowing huge transfers of wealth to the financial markets. It has allowed the administration to avoid going back to Congress to ask for the money needed to fix our banks, and it provided a way to avoid nationalization.
But we are already suffering from a crisis of confidence. When the high costs of the administration’s plan become apparent, confidence will be eroded further. At that point the task of recreating a vibrant financial sector, and resuscitating the economy, will be even harder.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1997, was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2001.
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Barack Obama has collected nearly twice as much money as John McCain

BY DAVID SALTONSTALL

DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
July 1st 2008
Wall Street firms have chipped in more than $9 million to Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg
Wall Street is investing heavily in Barack Obama.

Although the Democratic presidential hopeful has vowed to raise capital gains and corporate taxes, financial industry bigs have contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to GOP rival John McCain, a Daily News analysis of campaign records shows.

"Wall Street wants change and wants a curtailment in spending. It wants someone who focuses on the domestic economy," said Jim Cramer, the boisterous host of CNBC's "Mad Money."

Cramer also does not discount nostalgia for the go-go 1990s, when Bill Clinton led the largest economic expansion in history.

"It wants a Clinton like in 1992, but not a Hillary Clinton," he said. "That's Barack Obama."

For both candidates, Wall Street's investment and banking sectors have become among their portliest cash cows, contributing $9.5 million to Obama and $5.3 million to McCain so far.

It's a haul that is already raising concerns that, as the nation's faltering economy has become issue No. 1, the two candidates may have a hard time playing tough on issues like market regulation or corporate-tax loopholes.

"No matter who wins in November, Wall Street will have a friend in the White House," said Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics, which crunched the data for The News.

Wall Street's generosity toward Obama, in particular, would seem to run counter to its self-interests.

In addition to calling for corporate and capital gains tax hikes, Obama has proposed raising income taxes on those earning more than $250,000.

But Wall Street is often motivated by something more than money - winning.

"In general, these are professional prognosticators," said Ritsch. "And they may be putting their money on the person they predict will win, not the candidate they hope will win."

Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

McCain's top five include Wall Street's Merrill Lynch ($230,310) and Citigroup ($219,551).

Obama's Wall Street haul is not the biggest ever. That distinction belongs to President Bush, who as an incumbent in 2004 raised $10,852,696 from Wall Street interests through April that year - about $1 million more than Obama.

Obama's aides dismiss any suggestion he might be beholden to Wall Street, noting that 93% of his donations are $200 or less and that he took his tough economic message straight to Wall Street in a 2007 speech at Nasdaq headquarters.

"Sen. Obama went to Wall Street to tell executives that our economy isn't working if they alone are prospering but people living on Main Street are not," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said.



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