Tag: Carl Levin

DOJ Ignoring Grand Theft Wall Street

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Former New York governor and attorney general general, now CNN talk show host Eliot Spitzer appeared on Anderson Cooper’s “360” with “Rolling Stone” editor and blogger, Matt Taibbi discussing the two year investigation of the financial institutions that “plunged the U.S. economy into a painful recession”. The Senate subcommittee’s 650 page report that was released on April 13th is a scathing indictment of cover-ups,  lies, the conflict of interest of regulators and the cozy relationship with ratings agencies. During the discussion, Spitzer challenged Attorney General Eric Holder to either prosecute Goldman Sachs or resign:

SPITZER: Senator, I’m going to take a leap. I’m going to say it out loud. Very directly.

   Goldman Sachs, you lied to the public. You lied to your clients. You’ve got a problem. You come on the show. Sue me. I don’t care. You lied to the public, you should be prosecuted.

   I’m going to say it right now. And I hope they are.

It isn’t surprising that the “powers that be” went after Spitzer because this is the man who should be the US Attorney General.

Goldman Sachs and Criminal Fraud

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Oh, wouldn’t this be lovely? Now lets see if Timmy and Bill can convince Eric that there is nothing to see here.

Goldman Sachs Misled Congress After Duping Clients, Levin Says

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) misled clients and Congress about the firm’s bets on securities tied to the housing market, the chairman of the U.S. Senate panel that investigated the causes of the financial crisis said.

Senator Carl Levin, releasing the findings of a two-year inquiry yesterday, said he wants the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to examine whether Goldman Sachs violated the law by misleading clients who bought the complex securities known as collateralized debt obligations without knowing the firm would benefit if they fell in value.

The Michigan Democrat also said federal prosecutors should review whether to bring perjury charges against Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and other current and former employees who testified in Congress last year. Levin said they denied under oath that Goldman Sachs took a financial position against the mortgage market solely for its own profit, statements the senator said were untrue.

Goldman criticised in US Senate report

By Tom Braithwaite in Washington and Francesco Guerrera and Justin Baer in New York,

Financial Times

April 14 2011 00:15 | Last updated: April 14 2011 00:15

US Senate investigators probing the financial crisis will refer evidence about Wall Street institutions including Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank to the justice department for possible criminal investigations, officials said on Wednesday.

Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the powerful Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations, said a two-year probe found that banks mis-sold mortgage-backed securities and misled investors and lawmakers.

“We will be referring this matter to the justice department and to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission),” he said. “In my judgment, Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled Congress.”

Last year, Goldman paid $550m to settle SEC allegations that it defrauded investors in Abacus, a complex security linked to subprime mortgages.

Naming Culprits in the Financial Crisis

By Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story

New York Times

A voluminous report on the financial crisis by the United States Senate – citing internal documents and private communications of bank executives, regulators, credit ratings agencies and investors – describes business practices that were rife with conflicts during the mortgage mania and reckless activities that were ignored inside the banks and among their federal regulators.  

The 650-page report, “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse,” was released Wednesday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations…

…The result of two years’ work, the report focuses on an array of institutions with central roles in the mortgage crisis: Washington Mutual, an aggressive mortgage lender that collapsed in 2008; the Office of Thrift Supervision, a regulator; the credit ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service; and the investment banks Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

“The report pulls back the curtain on shoddy, risky, deceptive practices on the part of a lot of major financial institutions,” Mr. Levin said in an interview. “The overwhelming evidence is that those institutions deceived their clients and deceived the public, and they were aided and abetted by deferential regulators and credit ratings agencies who had conflicts of interest.”

Monday: Welcome Back From Your Trip, Mr. President of the Republican Party

President Obama is back from his Pan Pacific – Asian debt sales trip, and the Lame Duck session of Congress is now officially underway.

Dan Choi,Lt Dan Choi,Get Equal,White House Protest,DADT

Lt. Dan Choi and 12 other Get Equal civil rights activists handcuff themselves to the White House fence on Monday, Nov 15, 2010, to protest the military’s discriminatory policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” (photo of murky screenshot from video was highlighted. )

DREAM Now Letters to Barack Obama: Stop Ivan Nikolov’s Deportation

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

In May, my mother and I were picked up in an immigration raid in our home. I was told that in 2002, when I was just 12, I missed a court date at which I was ordered removed from this country. I’ve been in detention for three months, now, awaiting my deportation.  My mother was deported on Friday, August 6th, and I’m set to be deported any day now.

Clueless in Fantasyland

I didn’t know. It wasn’t me. I’ve never done that. It’s outside my scope. I didn’t do it. I had no idea. I was nowhere near the place. I don’t know how important it was. I never thought of it. I don’t know what drove the business.

I n-n-n-never… I didn’t. It wasn’t. I couldn’t. I wasn’t. It couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Nooooo….. pleeeeze. You must believe me. I only run the place, Senator. I was in the executive washroom counting money and punching the clown with the big red nose. What the fcuk do you expect from me?

Snicker. I’m an idiot, you fool.

Wanna talk “shitty deals?”

Senator Levin got testy with Goldman execs for peddling, in their own words, what they knew to be “shitty deals.”  Of course, when you collapse the global financial system, it stands to reason that more than a few “shitty deals” by more than one shitty organization were involved.  

When 93% or more of 2006 vintage AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities are now rated as junk, that’s an impressively high rate of “shitty deals going bad.”

Not to be out-done on crafting “shitty deals,” 99% of Goldman’s ABACUS deal CDOs are now junk.

At failures rates approaching 100%, the SEC and credit rating firms had to be cutting “some pretty shitty deals” themselves to fail to see the rising risk in mortgage products.  

There was and continues to be a “shitload” of collateral damage to the rest of us from “Wall Street’s shitty deals” which will be with us for a long time, as we have 103 months (8.6 years) to clear housing inventory at the current rate.  That’s a lot of “shitty deals hitting the fan” for “a long, shit-flinging time.”

Senate Subcommittee: The Role of Credit Rating Agencies

I saw Krugman on the TVeee over the Weekend. Something he said, made me think the Goldman Email Gate, was a big Mis-Direction.

So I decided to follow up on that hunch; I took to the Intertubes, and began to follow his trail of breadcrumbs …

Berating the Raters

By Paul Krugman, NYTimes — April 25, 2010

No, the e-mail messages you should be focusing on are the ones from employees at the credit rating agencies, which bestowed AAA ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of dubious assets, nearly all of which have since turned out to be toxic waste. And no, that’s not hyperbole: of AAA-rated subprime-mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006, 93 percent – 93 percent! – have now been downgraded to junk status.

What those e-mails reveal is a deeply corrupt system. And it’s a system that financial reform, as currently proposed, wouldn’t fix.

Mortgage Fraud — just another Scheme of the Shadow Bankers

Bill Gross, head of PIMCO, is credited with coining the term “Shadow Banking System”. A few years ago he warned about its reckless behavior and how they could wreck the Economy.

Bill Gross Calls it “Shadow Banking System”

Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning Australia — Jan 22, 2008

Banks recognize that not all their loans will be repaid. They operate on margins of safety, with reserves set aside for when things go wrong. But in the worlds of swaps, hedge funds and derivatives…slick operators can invest billions with no margins of safetyand no reserves. The result, Gross says, could be catastrophic.

Turns out this blunt-speaking Mutual Fund Manager — WAS Right!

Afghanistan and Steady Presidential Nerves

 

Quite possibly the best thing happening with Afghanistan right now is President Obama’s steady nerves and careful deliberation on what is the best and correct course of action for America to take.

Advocates of sending more troops to Afghanistan have been searching for a winning rationale to sell an escalation to the public. Despite public opinion polls saying support for the war is disappearing, more U.S. troops for Afghanistan seemed like a foregone conclusion.

Up until yesterday when five British troops were killed by an Afghan policeman, one of the more persuasive arguments has been that the West needs to train more Afghan soldiers so the Afghans can take charge of their country’s own security.

Now with five soldiers dead, The Guardian reports that commanders in Afghanistan fear Taliban infiltration as troops hunt for the assassin.

Live Blogging the Torture and Accountablity Panel Update Final Update

This is the panel the Dog has been waiting for! Torture and accountability. On the panel we have Vince Warren,. Rep. Jerry Nadler, Marcy Wheeler and Melisa Goodman. The Dog is going to try to live blog this for those playing our home game.  

Ray McGovern Speaks Out and Drops a few “Bombs!”

Ray McGovern, in a 2-Part video series, speaks with Jay Paul, Senior Editor of the Real News Network — Revisiting the Downing Street Memo.

While we have mainly focussed our efforts on the torture, McGovern gives us some play by play events and some in-depth observations as to our war of aggression against Iraq.  It is pretty jaw-dropping stuff!

Note this, as well:

With respect to waging a war of aggression-and that is a technical term defined by Nuremberg, the Nuremberg tribunal, which came after World War II. And what they said was that to institute a war of aggression is to commit the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only inasmuch as it contains the accumulated evil of the whole.  (emphasis mine)

A war of aggression is the worst crime of all, because “it contains the accumulated evil of the whole.”  Of course, that would include torture, and all the heinous crimes that we know were committed.

and, from the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950, No. 82

Principle Vl

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under; international law:

Crimes against peace:

1–Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in

    violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

2–Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the

    acts mentioned under (i).

Here is Part I:

In Part II, McGovern speaks about “The person that leaked the memo did an ‘incredible’ public service.”

Part II over the jump!

Weekly Torture Action Letter 19 – Investigate For The Sake Of Our Troops

Happy Monday and welcome to the Dog’s on going letter writing campaign for accountability and the rule of law for the apparent Bush Era torture programs. The premise of this campaign is the Dog will write a letter to one of the key decision makers (with carbon copies to others) and provide the links to reach these worthies. Your job, gentle reader, is to either use the letter as a jumping off point for your own letter, or just cut and paste the letter and send it off under your own signature.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

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