NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS WORKED HARDER FOR CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS THAN BARACK OBAMA!
WHEN ASKED IN
AN INTERVIEW AT THE WHITE HOUSE ABOUT THE PUBLIC'S ANGER NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE
ABOUT HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS, OBAMA REPLIED WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THAT
THIS WAS BECAUSE HIS DEPT. OF JUSTICE HAD DONE NOTHING!
THE SAME DEPT
OF JUSTICE THAT HIS HIGHLY PROACTIVE IN PUSHING OBAMA'S LA RAZA AGENDA OF
AMNESTY, DREAM ACTS, NO E-VERIFY, NO I.D. REQUIRED OF ILLEGALS VOTING, AND HAS
SUED FOUR AMERICAN STATES TO PUSH HIS LA RAZA SUPREMACY AGENDA!!!
THE ONLY TRUTH THAT HAS EVER ESCAPED OBAMA'S MOUTH IS:
"I'm not here to punish banks!" FLOOR of the SENATE -
IN THE FACE of the AMERICAN (LEGALS) FACE, STATE of the UNION MESSAGE.
Regulators collude in lawbreaking by
Wall Street banks
By Barry Grey
7 February 2012
7 February 2012
The US
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the main federal regulator of banks
and financial firms, routinely grants major Wall Street banks waivers from
legal penalties as part of cash settlements in securities fraud cases, the New
York Times reported February 3.
In its own
study of SEC records over the past decade, the newspaper said it uncovered
nearly 350 instances in which the regulatory body exempted banks such as
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs from legal
provisions stripping firms that violate securities laws of privileges worth
billions of dollars in profits.
The article
provides a glimpse of the corrupt relationship between Wall Street and the
government that enables the financial elite to engage in fraud and swindling,
knowing that it can count on the protection of the agencies that supposedly
exist to police it. The Times report, which spans both the Bush and
Obama administrations, points to the complicity of the entire political
establishment in the orgy of speculation and criminality that led to the
financial crash of 2008 and the devastating slump that followed.
The big Wall
Street firms, as is clear from the article, wantonly and repeatedly break the
law and factor in the cost of cash settlements with the SEC and other bodies as
part of the cost of doing business.
Banks and
executives who have been caught red-handed lying about the securities they
market or other aspects of their business are not only shielded from criminal
prosecution or civil trials, they are given waivers so they can continue to
enjoy lucrative advantages in the sale and underwriting of stocks and bonds,
the management of mutual funds and the raising of funds for small companies,
while retaining immunity from shareholder lawsuits.
The Times quotes
David S. Ruder, a former SEC chairman, as saying, “The ramifications of losing
those exemptions are enormous to these firms.” Without the waivers, agreeing to
settle charges of securities fraud “might have vast repercussions affecting the
ability of a firm to continue to stay in business.”
The newspaper
says it found 49 cases since 2005 where firms that settled fraud cases were
granted waivers allowing them to fast-track stock or bond offerings, and only
11 instances where companies lost that privilege. There were 91 waivers since
2000 granting immunity from lawsuits and 204 related to raising money for small
companies and managing mutual funds.
“Close to half
of the waivers,” the Times explains, “went to repeat offenders—Wall
Street firms that had settled previous fraud charges by agreeing never again to
violate the very laws that the SEC was now saying that they had broken.”
It quotes
Meredith B. Cross, the SEC’s corporation finance director, as saying, “The
purpose of taking away this simplified path to capital [the fast-track
privilege] is to protect investors, not to punish a company.” She fails to
explain how giving a pass to companies that defraud investors and the public
“protects” them.
JPMorgan
Chase, the largest US bank by assets, has settled six securities fraud cases in
13 years. Nevertheless, it has been given at least 22 waivers since 2003, with
most of the SEC settlements involving two or more exemptions. Last July, the
bank agreed to pay $228 million (out of $2.9 trillion in total assets) to
settle civil and criminal charges that it defrauded cities and towns by rigging
bids with other Wall Street companies. It received three waivers as part of the
deal.
The bank’s
lawyers argued in letters to the SEC that the waivers should be granted because
of JPMorgan’s “strong record of compliance with the securities laws.”
Bank of
America and Merrill Lynch, which merged in 2009, have settled 15 fraud cases
and been given at least 39 waivers. In eleven years, Citigroup settled six
fraud cases and received 25 waivers.
All of these
banks, as well as other recipients of waivers in fraud settlements such as
Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, were handed billions of dollars
in taxpayer funds in the 2008 bailout and have received many multiples of those
sums in virtually free loans from the Federal Reserve and other government
subsidies.
Not a single
major bank or top echelon bank executive has been criminally charged for
violations of the law in connection with the frenzied speculation in and false
marketing of subprime mortgage-linked securities that precipitated the Wall
Street crash.
In 2010, the SEC agreed to cash settlements with Goldman Sachs and Countrywide
Financial ex-CEO Angelo Mozilo for fraud in connection with the housing bubble
rather than bringing their cases to trial.
Last April, US
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 639-page report
providing detailed evidence of rampant mortgage fraud by the bankrupt savings
and loan giant Washington Mutual and deceitful marketing of mortgage-backed
securities by Goldman Sachs. The report documented Goldman’s drive to sell off
its large holdings of mortgage-backed securities and home loans beginning in
2007 and generate profits by betting against the very mortgage securities it
was selling to investors.
The Senate
report also detailed the complicity of federal regulatory agencies in Wall
Street fraud and criminality and the role of the credit rating firms Moody’s
and Standard & Poor’s in giving inflated ratings to subprime mortage-backed
securities in order to boost their profits.
The Senate
report, barely reported by the media at the time of its release, has remained a
dead letter.
The author
also recommends:
Senate committee details Wall
Street criminality[15
April 2011]
OBAMA’S CRONY
CAPITALISM, A LOVE STORY BETWEEN THE ACTOR PRESIDENT, AND HIS BANKSTER DONORS!
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).
*
Obama's
Wall Street cabinet
6 April 2009
A series of
articles published over the weekend, based on financial disclosure reports
released by the Obama administration last Friday concerning top White House
officials, documents the extent to which the administration, in both its
personnel and policies, is a political instrument of Wall Street.
Policies that are
extraordinarily favorable to the financial elite that were put in place over
the past month by the Obama administration have fed a surge in share values on
Wall Street. These include the scheme to use hundreds of billions of dollars in
public funds to pay hedge funds to buy up the banks’ toxic assets at inflated
prices, the Auto Task Force’s rejection of the recovery plans of Chrysler and
General Motors and its demand for even more brutal layoffs, wage cuts and
attacks on workers’ health benefits and pensions, and the decision by the
Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to weaken
“mark-to-market”accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of their
toxic assets.
At the same time,
Obama has campaigned against restrictions on bonuses paid to executives at
insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other bailed-out firms,
and repeatedly assured Wall Street that he will slash social spending,
including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The new financial
disclosures reveal that top Obama advisors directly involved in setting these
policies have received millions from Wall Street firms, including those that
have received huge taxpayer bailouts.
The case of
Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council and Obama’s top
economic adviser, highlights the politically incestuous character of relations
between the Obama administration and the American financial elite.
Last year,
Summers pocketed $5 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the
biggest hedge funds in the world, and another $2.7 million for speeches
delivered to Wall Street firms that have received government bailout money.
This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and $67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase and
the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.
For a speech to
Goldman Sachs executives, Summers walked away with $135,000. This is
substantially more than double the earnings for an entire year of
high-seniority auto workers, who have been pilloried by the Obama
administration and the media for their supposedly exorbitant
and“unsustainable”wages.
Alluding
diplomatically to the flagrant conflict of interest revealed by these
disclosures, the New York Times noted on Saturday: “Mr. Summers, the
director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr.
Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms
from which he recently received payments.”
Summers was a
leading advocate of banking deregulation. As treasury secretary in the second
Clinton administration, he oversaw the lifting of basic financial regulations
dating from the 1930s. The Timesarticle notes that among his current
responsibilities is deciding“whether—and how—to tighten regulation of hedge
funds.”
Summers is not an
exception. He is rather typical of the Wall Street insiders who comprise a
cabinet and White House team that is filled with multi-millionaires, presided
over by a president who parlayed his own political career into a
multi-million-dollar fortune.
Michael Froman,
deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, worked for
Citigroup and received more than $7.4 million from the bank from January of 2008
until he entered the Obama administration this year. This included a $2.25
million year-end bonus handed him this past January, within weeks of his
joining the Obama administration.
Citigroup has
thus far been the beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion in
government guarantees of its bad debts.
David Axelrod,
the Obama campaign’s top strategist and now senior adviser to the president,
was paid $1.55 million last year from two consulting firms he controls. He has
agreed to buyouts that will garner him another $3 million over the next five
years. His disclosure claims personal assets of between $7 and $10 million.
Obama’s deputy
national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million by a
Washington law firm whose major clients include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and
the private equity firm Apollo Management.
Louis Caldera,
director of the White House Military Office, made $227,155 last year from
IndyMac Bancorp, the California bank that heavily promoted subprime mortgages.
It collapsed last summer and was placed under federal receivership.
The presence of
multi-millionaire Wall Street insiders extends to second- and third-tier
positions in the Obama administration as well. David Stevens, who has been
tapped by Obama to head the Federal Housing Administration, is the president
and chief operating officer of Long and Foster Cos., a real estate brokerage
firm. From 1999 to 2005, Stevens served as a top executive for Freddie Mac, the
federally-backed mortgage lending giant that was bailed out and seized by
federal regulators in September.
Neal Wolin,
Obama’s selection for deputy counsel to the president for economic policy, is a
top executive at the insurance giant Hartford Financial Services, where his
salary was $4.5 million.
Obama’s Auto Task
Force has as its top advisers two investment bankers with a long resume in
corporate downsizing and asset-stripping.
It is not new for
leading figures from finance to be named to high posts in a US administration.
However, there has traditionally been an effort to demonstrate a degree of
independence from Wall Street in the selection of cabinet officials and
high-ranking presidential aides, often through the appointment of figures from
academia or the public sector. In previous decades, moreover, representatives
of the corporate elite were more likely to come from industry than from
finance.
In the Obama
administration such considerations have largely been abandoned.
This will not come
as a surprise to those who critically followed Obama’s election campaign. While
he postured before the electorate as a critic of the war in Iraq and a
quasi-populist force for “change,” he was from the first heavily dependent on
the financial and political backing of powerful financiers in Chicago. Banks, hedge
funds and other financial firms lavishly backed his presidential bid, giving
him considerably more than they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John
McCain.
Alongside Wall
Street, the Obama cabinet is dominated by the military, including three recently
retired four-star military officers: former Marine General James Jones as
national security adviser; Admiral Dennis Blair as director of national
intelligence, and former Army Chief of Staff Erik Shinseki as secretary of
veterans’ affairs.
These are the
deeply reactionary political and class interests that are represented by the
Obama administration.
Friday’s financial disclosures further expose the bankruptcy
of American democracy. Elections have no real effect on government policy,
which is determined by the interests of the financial aristocracy that
dominates both political parties. The working class can fight for its own
interests—for jobs, decent living standards, health care, education, housing
and an end to war—only through a break with the two parties of American
capitalism and the development of a mass, independent socialist movement.
Tom Eley and
Barry Grey
*
Obama’s
Economic Advisers: International Socialists, Union Thugs, NBC Execs, Soros
Scholars, Subprime Lenders, Amnesty Shills, and
Campaign Cronies
Posted on
February 24, 2011 by Ben Johnson
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