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larsonstdoc
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« Reply #1 on: April 28, 2010, 04:20:25 PM » |
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Lists and lists of criminal scum. I can never figure out Greenspan--over 80, worth millions and doesn't retire and live in a gated community south of Washington DC? Say in the Carolinas or Georgia.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2010, 04:24:11 PM » |
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http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/01/john_paulson_aquires_an_alan_g.html John Paulson Acquires an Alan Greenspan - 1/15/08 at 12:45 PM For sub-prime sufferers who blame Alan Greenspan for setting off the collapse with his low-interest-rate policy, today's announcement that the former Federal Reserve chairman has joined up with John Paulson, the Queens native and hedge-fund manager who famously made billions of dollars betting against the mortgage market, must especially sting. Paulson & Company, which has assets of $28 billion, have hired Greenspan to be their own personal Nostradamus — they're the only hedge fund he will advise on the direction of the economy and for whom he will assess, according to the Financial Times, "the potential for and severity of a US recession," so that next time there's a giant bust (credit cards! Auto loans!), they can roll around in piles of filthy lucre while the rest of us rubes wail and tear our garments in the streets. Although not if we're canny. According to the Journal, Paulson, who recently gave a presentation titled "The Worst Is Yet to Come," has been known to tell investors "it's still not too late" to bet on economic troubles. http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003253.htmlApril 18, 2010Alan Greenspan: Still A Lying Sociopath After All These YearsMost people would rest on their laurels after creating the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. And the remaining few might figure that that, PLUS being an enthusiastic supporter of mass murder for oil, would be enough. But not Alan Greenspan. A few weeks ago Greenspan was interviewed on Bloomberg TV.GREENSPAN: Everybody missed it—academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators... HUNT: I’ve just been reading Michael Lewis’ book. There were people who saw it coming...Why were they so prescient and the people here in Washington were not? GREENSPAN: Now you have to ask yourself why would they make that judgment. The problem that you’re raising is a statistical illusion...In every crisis, you will always find a group of people after the fact who got it right... HUNT: So they were just lucky. It was a broken clock, right, price of day with them. GREENSPAN: Well, let me put it this way, I know most of the people who’ve done well here...they are a handful. People who can consistently call a turning point are very rare. The vast proportion of economists, myself included, have records which are average... But the problem here is that there’s a failure to understand what would happen, if you took 1,000 people and you split them into two and you had them toss coins against each other, when you get down to the last two guys, tell them that they don’t know how to toss coins. 1. Do you noticed what Alan Greenspan left out here? It's not just he "knows" most of the people who profited off this crisis. HE'S WORKING FOR THE RICHEST ONE. John Paulson made literally billions of dollars by betting against the housing bubble, and hired Greenspan in January, 2008 before everything completely collapsed. (And not just that: Paulson also took a fraction of his billions and endowed an Alan Greenspan Chair in Economics at NYU.)In other words, either Greenspan just called his boss a man who's not particularly insightful and just got lucky...or Greenspan (and Paulson) know this is the line of crap you have to peddle to the rubes. I'm going to guess it's the latter. 2. Greenspan is conflating two very different things. Yes, it's hard to call when a bubble will collapse, which is necessary to do in order to make lots of money. In fact, if Dean Baker—who'd been pointing out the bubble since 2002—had been a hedge fund manager, he might well have lost all his clients' money by betting that the bubble would collapse before it did. But it's not difficult to know if a bubble exists. And that's what matters for the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. EXTRA CREDIT: Alan Greenspan is also extremely worried that we won't have the political will to slash Social Security and Medicare. —Jonathan Schwarz
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« Reply #3 on: April 28, 2010, 04:49:34 PM » |
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lookie lookie lookie
nice info, spread it around
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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #4 on: April 28, 2010, 05:05:12 PM » |
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Prior to this Alan Greenspan (and maybe still?) works for Deutsche Bank AG that knowingly traded in NAZI concentration camp gold. http://www.db.com/presse/en/content/press_releases_2007_3606.htmPress Releases 2007 Alan Greeenspan to consult for Deutsche Bank Corporate and Investment Bank New York , August 13, 2007 Deutsche Bank today announced its retention of Dr. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, as a Senior Advisor to provide ongoing advice and insight to Deutsche Bank's investment banking team and its clients by sharing his perspective and opinions on a range of issues affecting markets. Dr. Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, said: "We at Deutsche Bank are delighted to be able to offer our investment banking clients access to Alan Greenspan's strategic insight. Dr. Greenspan's position as one of the architects of the modern financial system gives him a unique perspective from which to help our clients make critical risk management decisions." Dr. Alan Greenspan said: "Deutsche Bank has a world-leading investment banking franchise and is a major player in wholesale financial markets. I look forward to adding my perspectives on the world economy to its own and to helping the Bank advise its clients." About Deutsche Bank <NYSE: DB> is a leading global investment bank with a strong and profitable private clients franchise. A leader in Germany and Europe, the bank is continuously growing in North America, Asia and key emerging markets. With 75,140 employees in 75 countries, Deutsche Bank competes to be the leading global provider of financial solutions for demanding clients creating exceptional value for its shareholders and people. Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., member NYSE, NASD and SIPC, is the investment banking and securities arm of Deutsche Bank AG in the United States http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/01/news/01iht-gold.t.html?pagewanted=1Deutsche Bank Says It 'Regrets' Nazi DealsBy John Schmid Published: August 1, 1998FRANKFURT— Deutsche Bank AG, faced with new findings that it might have knowingly purchased gold taken from the victims of Nazi concentration camps, on Friday accepted "moral responsibility" for its dealings during the "darkest chapters in its history." The admission gave new hope to a group of Holocaust survivors and their heirs who filed an $18 billion class-action lawsuit in New York last month against Germany's two biggest commercial banks, alleging the banks knowingly accepted the cash, wedding rings, tooth fillings, spectacles and other property seized from Holocaust victims. "The report confirms that business was conducted with the stolen Nazi gold. It is a damning report," said Michael Witti, a Munich-based attorney and the German partner in the U.S. suit against Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank AG, the two banks named in the suit. The conclusions of an independent panel of historians, commissioned last year by Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest bank, to examine its activities during the Nazi years and released Friday, support the claims in the lawsuit, Mr. Witti told Reuters. The five commission members from Israel, the United States, Britain and Germany said that Deutsche Bank bought 4,446 kilograms of gold from the Reichsbank, the central bank of Nazi Germany. The gold was worth just over $5 million at the time. Of those purchases, the bank acquired at least 744 kilograms of "Melmer gold," taken from concentration camp victims and later recast into bullion bars under the direction of the SS officer Bruno Melmer. It was "probable" that some Deutsche Bank managers knew of the origins of the gold, the commission said, after a "painstaking" paper chase through the bank's war-era ledgers. But the panel also conceded that it found "no clear evidence" that the bankers definitively knew that the gold belonged to concentration camp victims. "The trade in gold was profitable," the commission found. "Although gold trading accounted for 0.15 percent of the bank's total profit and made little difference to its overall performance as a commercial enterprise, it had great importance in the Nazi war effort." Ignatz Bubis, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said Deutsche Bank belonged to a "conspiracy of silence" during and after the war. German banks must now make all their information public and must no longer resort to the excuse that they had no knowledge of their Nazi-era dealings, Mr. Bubis said. "I demand that the banks clearly recognize their responsibility for that period of time," Mr. Bubis said. "Of course, it is not the same persons, but it is the same institutions." In its statement, Deutsche Bank said that it "deeply regrets any injustices" and that it was "in contact with the World Jewish Congress in this matter." Both banks previously have rejected the complaint, saying historical research shows they did not know the origin of gold purchased during the Nazi era. On Friday, a spokesman at Deutsche Bank's headquarters in Frankfurt declined comment on the lawsuit, saying the findings by the commission were not directly related to it. Dresdner Bank also has commissioned an independent team of historians to comb its archives and write a report on its wartime activities. A high-level banker at a rival German bank, who asked not to be quoted by name, said he found Deutsche Bank's statement "astonishing" in its comparative openness on the Nazi gold issue. "In my view, this is something with great legal implications that might cost them money," the banker said. The commission report, posted Friday on the Internet and later to appear as a book, shifts the debate over Nazi gold to Germany from Switzerland. UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group, Switzerland's two largest banks, have been in talks with Jewish groups for months to settle claims that they hold stolen assets and covered up their Nazi past. Switzerland's central bank, which was sued last month by Holocaust survivors, said Friday it was carrying out its own study to shed more light on its gold dealings with Nazi Germany during World War II. New York City and New York state plan to start phasing in sanctions against Swiss commercial banks starting Sept. 1 if a settlement is not reached. California and other states are considering similar action. http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9811/21/holocaust.01/index.htmlNovember 21, 1998 ... Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, in a 70-page motion filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, denied the survivors' allegations that the institutions profited from property stripped away from death-camp inmates by Adolf Hitler's Nazi soldiers. The banks asked that the suit be thrown out for several reasons, including that most of the evidence and witnesses are in Germany and that the matter of the property was essentially resolved at the close of World War II. The five Holocaust survivors filed the suit in June on behalf of all death-camp survivors. In it, they charged that the banks worked with Nazis by accepting and selling personal property -- including gold teeth, jewelry and coins -- taken from inmates at German death camps. The survivors demanded that the banks disclose and identify all accounts established prior to 1946, the year after World War II ended. Banks argue: claims already settledIn their motion to dismiss, the German banks said they "were long ago required to turn over such property, first to the Nazi regime, and, to the extent such property remained at the banks after the war, to its rightful owners, Jewish successor organisations, or the Federal Republic of Germany." The banks said allegations by the plaintiffs were basically settled at the close of the war "in negotiations on reparation, restitution, and compensation among Germany, the allied powers, Israel and nongovernmental Jewish organisations." Charges that they worked with the Nazis and profited from the death camps "may not be reopened in this court on the basis of alleged civil claims," the banks argued. There was no indication when the court would make a decision on the motion to dismiss. The survivors' attorney, Edward Fagan, could not be reached for comment. http://www.innercitypress.org/dbbt.htmlUpdate of April 19, 2010: Large loans from Deutsche Bank AG helped to feed "the buildup of risk" in Iceland's banking system, which collapsed spectacularly in 2008, a comprehensive report from a parliamentary commission concluded.Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, an Icelandic mogul, received a €153 million ($208 million) loan from Landsbanki, in which he and his father had a 41% stake, to satisfy demands from Deutsche Bank. The report said the German bank lent him €800 million in July 2007 to finance the takeover of generic-drug company Actavis Group. Landsbanki's former chief executive described the deal in an interview with the commission: "Then it ends...with us lending Björgólfur Thor our own money so he can honor certain things in Actavis," an apparent reference to satisfying debt covenants. Such transactions between a bank and its major owners are out of step with banking rules elsewhere. "Here, we call it insider dealing," says Cornelius Hurley, director of the banking-law program at Boston University. Prof. Hurley notes that U.S. regulations put "Draconian" restrictions on the amount and terms of loans to insiders.A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman declined to comment. Update of March 8, 2010: The banks that helped conceal Greece's debt bomb included not only Goldman Sachs but also, on an arms deal no less, Deutsche Bank....
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« Reply #5 on: April 28, 2010, 05:28:49 PM » |
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Duetche Bank...
9/11 puts...
trail ends at Deutche
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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately
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citizenx
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« Reply #6 on: April 28, 2010, 05:39:53 PM » |
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Deutsche and DVD?
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #7 on: April 28, 2010, 05:41:41 PM » |
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Yes this is RICO on the international levelDuetche Bank... 9/11 puts...
trail ends at Deutche http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0522-07.htmPublished on Wednesday, May 22, 2002 by CommonDreams.org Follow the Money: Bush, 9/11, and Deep Threat by Fran Shor ?What did the President know and when did he know it?? This question, evocative of the Watergate investigation, is now being posed by politicians and pundits seeking to determine what information the Bush Administration had prior to the incidents of September 11, 2001. No amount of denial and back-pedaling by the Bush Administration can cover up the fact that Bush had advance knowledge of possible terror attacks on US targets by the followers of Osama bin Laden. While it?s clear that Bush was personally briefed on August 6, 2001 about the possibility of those attacks, it remains unclear about the nature and extent of precautions, if any, taken to prevent such attacks. ... [ Notice UDI was bought out from Carlucci (who OWNED UDI) to BAE
see: BAE Systems - bribes - Prince Bandar - 9/11 attacks - Carlucci/Carlyle BAE UDI Merger ] see also: Board Directors Business Connections - Carlyle Group If 9/11 was a tragedy to thousands of Americans and their families, Bush and his father?s Carlyle cronies hit the jackpot, especially with renewed contracts for Carlyle defense investments. In particular, Carlyle had invested heavily in United Defense, the primary manufacturer of the Crusader artillery system. Although the Crusader faced a skeptical Congress before 9/11, Carlucci and his lobbyists certainly managed to line-up his old college buddy, Donald Rumsfeld, behind promoting the outmoded Crusader. When Carlyle went public with United Defense stock offerings in the fall of 2001, Carlucci, Bush, Baker, and other investors in Carlyle made out like bandits. However, when a possible paper trail and conflict-of-interest against Rumsfeld surfaced recently, he announced his opposition to Crusader. Of course, millions had already been made and Rumsfeld had to cover his own backside in light of the calls for the resignation of the Secretary of the Army, a former Enron executive already awash in dubious conflicts-of-interest. ... The CIA and Other Deep Pockets In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 a number of news stories appeared concerning investments in ?put? options in United and American Airlines. Put options are shares that are bets on falling market prices for specific stocks. In the week before September 11 put options in United and American Airlines went through a furious and unprecedented spasm of investment. In addition put options for Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, two of the biggest occupants of the World Trade Center, also saw abnormal activity. Most of the investments in these put options originated in Germany through the Deutsche Bank. Deutshce Bank had earlier acquired Banker?s Trust, a investment banking firm whose Vice Chairman in charge of ?private client relations? in the late 1990?s was A. B. ?Buzzy? Krongard. In March of 2001, Krongard was appointed Executive Director of the CIA. BAE Systems - bribes - Prince Bandar - 9/11 attacks < http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=78572.msg442786 > ... Remember Beese Jr. and The Carlyle Group and Bankers Trust? Slush funds and more slush funds...... A key player in the Marcos gold would be Banker’s Trust, which was taken over by Alex Brown & Sons, after Banker’s Trust floundered financially on its Russian loans in the mid 1990s. These Russian loans were facilitated by Enron, starting in August of 1993, and very possibly were part of the Project Hammer takeover of Soviet industry. Alex Brown‘s involvement would bring to the forefront the names of three names of individuals who would play multiple roles in this mystery:· Buzz Krongard· Mayo Shattuck · J Carter Beese Jr.Buzz Krongard is reported as the mentor of Beese and Shattuck from their years together at Alex Brown. Additionally, he managed the merger between Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank Alex Brown. Bankers Trust, Zurich was a key Marcos gold holder. Krongard would move on to become Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust, and Executive Director of the CIA at the time of September 11. ... [ Beese went on to run RIGGS BANK After the RON BROWN plane crash took out a KEY Executive for Riggs .... ] There seems to be a CIA Financial Network: Really?JOHN CARTER BEESE, JR., a veteran of the Bush-connected Baltimore investment bank ALEXANDER BROWN & SONS over most of a 20-year span, was a pivotal figure in the founding of the merger-and-acquisition giant private equity fund, Carlyle Group.Beese's contacts with the Bush networks go back at least as far as 1980, when he was the financial co-chairman of George Herbert Walker Bush's failed Presidential bid. It was at that time that Beese is said to have met Bush's Texas friend JOE ALBRITTON, just when Allbritton was buying into Riggs Bank. Bush had previously become director of Allbritton's Houston Interstate Bank after leaving his post as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1976. Allbritton would eventually control 41% of Riggs' stock, and Beese would become a Riggs executive in 1998.Beese, who committed suicide earlier this year, began his career with ALEXANDER BROWN in 1978, directly after graduating from Rollins College in Florida, where he had befriended Dubya's brother Marvin. Beese evidently became the protege of Alexander Brown's chief executive A.B. "BUZZY" KRONGARD, and by 1987, at the age of 30, Beese had become a principal of the Brown firm. That same year, 1987, Beese became a founding director of the Carlyle Group, along with a small handful of people closely aligned with then-Vice President George H. W. Bush. Beese was central in arranging the funding for Carlyle, which likely ran through Alexander Brown, and, reportedly, Mellon networks.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._B._KrongardAlvin Bernard "Buzzy" Krongard[1] (more commonly "A. B.") was the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was appointed by George Tenet on March 16, 2001. The Executive Director is the third ranking position within the CIA and the incumbent functions essentially as the Chief Operating Officer of the Agency. For three years prior, Krongard had served as Counselor to the DCI. A longtime consultant to DCIs, Krongard joined the Agency full time in February 1998, following a 29-year business career. During his private sector career, he served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Alex. Brown & Sons, the nation’s oldest investment banking firm, A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker's Trust in 1997, and Vice Chairman of the Board of Bankers Trust. Krongard received an A.B. degree (1958) with honors from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor degree with honors from the University of Maryland School of Law. While at Princeton, Krongard played lacrosse. In 1980, he was inducted as a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.[2] He served three years of active duty as an infantry officer with the United States Marine Corps. Krongard resigned from the CIA shortly after the arrival of DCI Porter Goss in September 2004. While at the CIA, he was the connection between Erik Prince of Blackwater Security Consulting and the CIA. Through his influence, Blackwater was able to receive its first black contract.[citation needed] On March 18, 2005, Krongard was appointed as an outside US director to the Global Board of Directors organized to oversee and coordinate the worldwide operations of DLA Piper, one of the world’s leading law firms. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09_01_krongard.html SUPPRESSED DETAILS OF CRIMINAL INSIDER TRADING LEAD DIRECTLY INTO THE CIA's HIGHEST RANKS CIA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR "BUZZY" KRONGARD MANAGED FIRM THAT HANDLED "PUT" OPTIONS ON UAL by Michael C. Ruppert FTW, October 9, 2001 - Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the "put options" on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency. Until 1997 A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker's Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard's last position at Banker's Trust (BT) was to oversee "private client relations." In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money. Krongard (re?) joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.THE SCOPE OF KNOWN INSIDER TRADING Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades - in real time - as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades. It is necessary to understand only two key financial terms to understand the significance of these trades, "selling short" and "put options". "Selling Short" is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These contracts often have a window of as long as four months. "Put Options," are contracts giving the buyer the option to sell stocks at a later date. Purchased at nominal prices of, for example, $1.00 per share, they are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and immediately sell them for $100 - regardless of where the market then stands. A call option is the reverse of a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up. A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled "Black Tuesday: The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?" documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks: - Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options. Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these "insiders" would have profited by almost $5 million. - On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance; Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent "insiders," they would represent a gain of about $4 million. - [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.] - No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday. - Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley's share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million. - Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!]. When trading resumed, Merrill's shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by "insiders," their profit would have been about $5.5 million. - European regulators are examining trades in Germany's Munich Re, Switzerland's Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a "double whammy" for them.] On September 29, 2001 - in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media - the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data. "The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors - whose identities and nationalities have not been made public - had advance knowledge of the strikes." They don't dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking. "October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called "put" options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp." "The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options." This was the operation managed by Krongard until as recently as 1998. As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks. CIA, THE BANKS AND THE BROKERSUnderstanding the interrelationships between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical to grasping the already frightening implications of the above revelations. Let's look at the history of CIA, Wall Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players in CIA's history. Clark Clifford - The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s, as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker. John Foster and Allen Dulles - These two brothers "designed" the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during WW II. Allen Dulles was OSS station chief in Berne, Switzerland, where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful - to this day - Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell. Bill Casey - Ronald Reagan's CIA Director and OSS veteran who served as chief wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under President Richard Nixon, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker. David Doherty - The current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange for enforcement is the retired General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. George Herbert Walker Bush - President from 1989 to January 1993, also served as CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-7. He is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, which also shares joint investments with the bin Laden family. A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard - The current Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the former Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust. John Deutch - This retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration currently sits on the board at Citigroup, the nation's second largest bank, which has been repeatedly and overtly involved in the documented laundering of drug money. This includes Citigroup's 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex. Nora Slatkin - This retired CIA Executive Director also sits on Citibank's board.Maurice "Hank" Greenburg - The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world, was floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW exposed Greenberg's and AIG's long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG's stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks. To read that story, please go to http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/part_2.html. One wonders how much damning evidence is necessary to respond to what is now irrefutable proof that CIA knew about the attacks and did not stop them. Whatever our government is doing, whatever the CIA is doing, it is clearly NOT in the interests of the American people, especially those who died on September 11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayo_A._Shattuck_IIIMayo A. Shattuck III (b. 1954 in Massachusetts) is a notable American businessman, and currently Chairman and CEO of Baltimore-based Constellation Energy. ... In 1997, they helped engineer the company's sale to Bankers Trust for $1.7 billion; after Bankers Trust in turn was acquired by Deutsche Bank he served as Chairman of the Board of Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown and, also serving as heads of Investment Banking and Private Banking. Shattuck resigned on September 12, 2001 as head of the Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown.[1] By October 26, he was appointed President and CEO of Constellation Energy Group, and was elected Chairman of the Board in July 2002. In 1997, Mayo Shattuck was made trustee of the Seagram Company, Ltd.See: Warren Buffett's Takeover of Constellation Energy, Mayo Shattuck, the CIA and 9/11 Inside Trades - Alex Constantine Mayo's Resignation on September 12, 2001 "The New York Times reported that Shattuck had resigned on September 12, 'effective immediately', from a 3-year $30 million contract as head of the Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown.[1] Shattuck found a new job quickly: by October 26, he would be appointed President and CEO of Constellation Energy Group, and was elected Chairman of the Board in July 2002." www.nationmaster.comDeutsche Bank is also one of the four banks most used by the bin Laden family. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_EnergyAfter Constellation Energy was reported to have exposure to Lehman Brothers following that company's bankruptcy filing Constellation's stock went down 56% in the first day of trading having started at $67.87. The massive drop in stocks led to the New York Stock Exchange halting trade of Constellation. The next day as the stock plummeted as low as $13 a share the company announced it was hiring Morgan Stanley and UBS to advise it on "strategic alternatives" suggesting a buyout. While French power company Electricite de France, who already owned 9.5% of Constellation's shares, bid for the company,[5] Constellation ultimately agreed to a buyout by MidAmerican Energy, part of billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway company.[6][7][8] On December 17, 2008, Constellation Energy has canceled its merger with Berkshire Hathaway, instead opting to sell its nuclear energy assets to EDF.[1] In 1997, they [ Mayo A. Shattuck ] helped engineer the company's sale to Bankers Trust for $1.7 billion; after Bankers Trust in turn was acquired by Deutsche Bank he served as Chairman of the Board of Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown and, also serving as heads of Investment Banking and Private Banking.
Bankers Trust were also involved in funding for ENRON (ie Enron's "banker"):http://www.gpo.gov/congress/joint/jcs-3-03/vol2/index.htmlREPORT OF INVESTIGATION OF ENRON CORPORATION AND RELATED ENTITIES REGARDING FEDERAL TAX AND COMPENSATION ISSUES, AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS VOLUME II: APPENDICES A & B - February 2003 August 1997: Letter Thomas Finley Managing Director - "Bankers Trust" to Davis Maxey Senior Director - Enron http://www.gpo.gov/congress/joint/jcs-3-03/vol2/b178.pdfFeb 2002: US Senate Finance Commitee "Troubling questions about Enron" http://www.gpo.gov/congress/joint/jcs-3-03/vol2/a002.pdfhttp://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2003-02-14-enron_x.htmEnron unit turned tax shelters into profit By Elliot Blair Smith, USA TODAY With his invitation aboard Bankers Trust's corporate jet for a four-day golf holiday in Boca Raton, Fla., in February 1998, Enron tax strategist Robert Davis Maxey finally was receiving his due. He would stay in an oceanfront cabana and rub shoulders with top bank executives at a "casino night" reception followed by three days of fishing, golf, tennis and a dinner cruise. "With all the fish we are going to catch," crowed Bankers Trust managing director Thomas Finley in his invitation letter to Maxey, "the decks could get slippery." At the time, Maxey and his boss, Robert Hermann, then managing director of Enron's tax department, were part of a new "profit center" at Enron as the Houston energy giant aggressively developed complex new tax shelters with advisers such as Bankers Trust, now part of Deutsche Bank. From 1997 through 2000, Enron earned $538.5 million in profit and $64.5 million in tax benefits through a half-dozen questionable tax shelters, according to confidential company documents the Senate Finance Committee released Thursday. Bankers Trust and its successor, Deutsche Bank, pocketed the bulk of $53 million in professional fees on the deals. The relationship also spawned a new moneymaking horizon for Enron, which already dabbled in investments ranging from fiber optics to fresh water: It would begin marketing tax shelters to its own clients. One of those clients was Bankers Trust itself. In a deal called "Project Renegade," investigators say Enron and Bankers Trust swapped $1.4 billion in IOUs in a complex transaction that enabled Enron to book a fee and Bankers Trust to claim a tax deduction for a deal that apparently had no economic value. "Project Renegade highlights the potential for abuse of tax-code provisions if taxpayers act in concert," congressional investigators say. As Enron's tax business became more entrepreneurial, its staff grew from 83 in 1996 to 253 in 2000. In an internal memo dated Oct. 2, 2000, one of Maxey's colleagues, Richard Causey, wrote that the tax department effectively had created a new business for Enron "that generates earnings and interacts with other entities." Deutsche Bank declined to comment. Maxey and Hermann, who no longer work for Enron and could not be reached for comment Thursday, cooperated in the congressional investigation. The executives' exuberance takes on a new light now that Enron's complicated tax deals are under scrutiny by Congress and the IRS, which is auditing the company's tax records from 1995 to 2001. At a Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday, panel Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, upbraided Enron as "the biggest corporate farce of this century."Grassley particularly took umbrage at one Bankers Trust-sponsored deal, called "Project Steele," which Enron promoted internally with an amateur illustration of money flying through the air and the boldface title, "Show me the Money!" That document outlines six years of anticipated pretax earnings from the deal, which congressional investigators say was structured to generate $130 million in profit for Enron while simultaneously producing income tax deductions for the company. "Project Steele" spawned at least five more deals with Bankers Trust. And in March 1998, the increasingly close relationship prompted the bank's then-chairman, Frank Newman, to write a glowing letter to then-Enron chairman and chief executive Kenneth Lay commending Enron tax executives Hermann and Maxey "for their fine work and exceptional abilities." The letter says the relationship provides "a solid platform for continuing to explore innovative solutions ... tailored to your needs." Even as Enron and Bankers Trust pursued those "innovative solutions," Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen, warned in a letter dated December 1997 that "there is a potential risk" the IRS would dispute the partnerships. "The IRS may argue that the product triggers the 'avoidance or evasion of tax,' " Arthur Andersen partner Robert Palmquist said in a letter copied to Enron tax chief Hermann. Palmquist urged Enron, in light of the possible IRS crackdown or congressional legislative action, "to utilize the technique now as its shelf life may be limited."
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #8 on: April 28, 2010, 05:53:59 PM » |
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Greenspan - Deutsche Bank and Bilderberg: So where did Hitler's War booty and Gold go? See: Bilderberger's in the Kennedy Administration McCloy, John J. - Advisor to John F. Kennedy - long association with the Rockefeller family
John J. McCloy the "unofficial chairman of the American establishment". http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmccloyJ.htmMcCloy continued to specialize in German cases and in 1936 Mccloy traveled to Berlin where he had a meeting with Rudolf Hess. This was followed by McCloy sharing a box with with Adolf Hitler and Herman Goering at the Berlin Olympics. Foundation / Inception of the Bilderberg Group - http://www.scribd.com/doc/17514348/The-Bilderberg-Group-Dr-JH-RetingerTHE BILDERBERG GROUP by DR J. H. RETINGER August 1956 Kai Bird’s excellent account in "The Chairman, John J. McCloy, The Making of the American Establishment", states: "In late 1952, Retinger went to America to try the idea out on his American contacts. Among others, he saw such old friends as Averell Harriman, David Rockefeller, and Bedel Smith, then director of the CIA. After Retinger explained his proposal, Smith said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you come to me in the first place?’ He quickly referred Retinger to C. D. Jackson, who was about to become Eisenhower’s special assistant for psychological warfare. It took a while for Jackson to organize the American wing of the group, but finally, in May 1954, the first conference was held in the Hotel de Bilderberg, a secluded hotel in Holland, near the German border. Prince Bernhard, and Retinger drew up the list of invitees from the European countries, while Jackson controlled the American list." Bilderberg 2008-2009:Bilderberg 2009 Attendee List Josef Ackermann (Swiss banker and CEO of Deutsche Bank*DEU Ackermann, Josef Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank AG Josef Ackermann Profile - Deutsche Bank AG - Siemens AG - Royal Dutch Shell plc ... Bilderberg 2009 - Robert Zoellick OK, now Robert Zoellick and staying with the Nazi connection theme... the Bormann WWII Nazi war booty...Also you cannot seperate Zoellick from the Bush family or Goldman Sachs Hummm.... Robert Zoellick served on the board of the German Marshall Fund... http://www.animalfarm.org/mb/8.shtmlThe overriding function of this German George C. Marshall Research Foundation is public relations, to cosmeticize the German industrialists and bankers whose corporations had worked so successfully for the Third Reich. In October 1978 the Marshall Foundation was utilized as a platform for Dr. Hermann J. Abs, now honorary president of Deutsche Bank A.G., as he addressed a meeting of businessmen and bankers and members of the Foreign Policy Association in New York City on the " Problems and Prospects of American-German Economic Cooperation." This luncheon meeting was chaired by his old friend, John J. McCloy, Wall Street banker and lawyer, who had worked closely with Dr. Abs when McCloy served as U.S. High Commissioner for Germany during those postwar reconstruction years. At that time, Hermann Abs, as chief executive of Deutsche Bank, was also directing the spending of America's Marshall Plan money in West Germany as the chairman of the Reconstruction Loan Corporation of the Federal Republic of Germany. Deutsche and DVD? http://letsrollforums.com/jesuit-quotes-citations-t14412p4.htmlhttp://angel.ap.teacup.com/gamenotatsujin/timg/middle_1215284741.jpg... • Deutsche Bank, the primary German bank/criminal enterprise working for DVD (Deutsche Verteidigungs Dienst, Dachau [see most preceding reports]), which in recent days has been identified as being in very severe trouble, with a huge ‘black hole’ in its falsified accounts. The reason for the huge ‘black hole’ is identified in this report. •FACT: Deutsche Bank finances the revolutionary mind-control operation which has severely subverted many strata of the official structures, the police, the banking sector, industry and local government cadres in the United Kingdom, calling itself Common Purpose. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/did-bond-save-bormann-publishers-prepare-to-be-shaken-but-not-stirred-1308090.htmlSunday, 4 August 1996 ... Bormann, far from dying in the Berlin bunker or escaping to South America as previous legends have suggested, was secretly brought to England in 1945 on the personal instructions of Winston Churchill to help release Nazi gold stored in Swiss banks.Not only that: the man in charge of the commando raid that captured him in Berlin on the last day of the war was none other than Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, according to the man telling the tale, John Ainsworth-Davis, a colourful and imaginative character who claims he was second-in-command.Far-fetched? The military author Charles Whiting certainly thinks so and, in a "spoiling" operation more common to rival newspapers than to publishing houses, he has written his own account of Bormann's end, which firmly puts him dead in the ruins of Berlin. His book is timed to hit the bookshops first. There is a lot to spoil. Simon & Schuster has paid a pounds 500,000 advance for Ainsworth-Davis's story, modestly titled Op J.B. - The Last Great Secret of The Second World War, which appears on 2 September, and the company is laying down a thunderous barrage of hype. See also: Hitler-was-a-British-Agent - Greg Hallett - Tavistock Connection
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citizenx
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« Reply #9 on: April 28, 2010, 06:02:24 PM » |
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Tahoe, read the two links. Thanks.
OK, Sane, what do you think Deutsche Bank leads to Deutsche Verteidigungs Dienst/DVD Dachau?
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #10 on: April 28, 2010, 07:06:15 PM » |
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John Paulson is associated with guess who's network? Michael Milkenhttp://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/54/richlist07_Michael-Milken_SSM6.htmlForbes 400 - 2007 #165 - Michael Milken - Net Worth $2.5 billion Financial genius joined what became Drexel Burnham Lambert 1969. Developed market for high-yield junk bonds, fueled 1980s leveraged buyout mania. Helped fund cash kings of The Forbes 400: Ted Turner, Carl Icahn, Ronald Perelman, Henry Kravis. Earned $550 million in salary and bonus in 1986. Ratted out by fellow arbitrager Ivan Boesky; plead guilty to 6 counts of securities fraud 1990. Paid $900 million settlement; sentenced to 10 years in prison, released after 22 months. Still actively trades. See: No Jail for Banksters? Remember Michael Milken - The Junk Bond King  http://www.deepcapture.com/goldman-sachs-john-paulson-and-the-hedge-funds-that-pumped-and-dumped-our-economy/Goldman Sachs, John Paulson, and the Hedge Funds that Pumped and Dumped Our EconomyPosted on 20 April 2010 by Mark Mitchell ... John Paulson, who launched his career with the assistance of a host of Milken cronies, including Jerome Kohlberg and Leon Levy, is one of the hedge fund managers in this network. He has been described as a genius by the media, and perhaps that is what he is, but we now know that he abides by the Milken code, which has it that there is virtue in a clever con well-orchestrated. And never in history has there been a more profitable con than Paulson’s. His bets against the CDO market – the market that he helped set up to collapse — earned him more than $3 billion over the course of just a few months in 2007. Another hedge fund in this network is Magnetar Capital, whose chairman and senior partner is Michael Gross, formerly a founding partner of Apollo Management, which is run by Milken’s closest crony Leon Black. Magnetar featured prominently in the Milken network’s attack on biotech company Dendreon (see “The Story of Dendreon” for details). This hedge fund is currently under SEC investigation for helping to manufacture and sell doomsday CDOs that it was simultaneously betting against with credit default swaps. Reporter Yves Smith, who has been working on this story from day one, reckons that Magnetar’s bogus CDOs accounted, incredibly, for between 35% and 60% of the total demand for subprime mortgages in 2006. Given that the economy was being set up for a collapse by hedge funds in this network, it is not surprising that it was Milken-affiliated hedge fund managers who were most prominently and vigorously shorting Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and other big investment banks that were on the receiving end of the fraudulent CDOs. These hedge fund managers include Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn (who launched his career with the former top partner of Milken crony Carl Icahn, and likely worked in cahoots with Milken to attack a company called Allied Capital); SAC Capital’s Steven Cohen (who was investigated by the SEC for trading on inside information provided by Milken’s shop at Drexel Burnham); and Third Point Capital’s Dan Loeb (who got his start dealing in Drexel Burnham paper alongside Milken’s former employees at Jeffries & Co.). It is also important to note that the pump-and-short CDO scam could not have happened without the help of American International Group’s financial products unit, which sold a lot of the credit default swaps that the hedge funds used to bet against the CDOs. That unit at AIG was run by Joseph Cassano, formerly one of Milken’s top lieutenants at Drexel Burnham. Did Cassano know that the CDOs were designed to implode? Perhaps not, but it is safe to assume that his relationships with the hedge funds creating the CDOs influenced his decision to insure them. Milken and the S&L failures:http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Big+Money+Crime:+Fraud+and+Politics+in+the+Savings+and+Loan+Crisis.-a019898079Big Money Crime: Fraud and Politics in the Savings and Loan Crisis.... When Ed Gray, Wall's predecessor as Bank Board chairman and a Reagan appointee, attempted to alert the nation to the fact that knaves and thieves were stealing haystacks of money, Chief of Staff Regan tried to have him arrested. None of this is in the book, although it should be. Nor do the authors know where a rather large amount of the money went. Michael Milken took it. Perhaps we should not be too harsh on Calavita and her colleagues for their lack of awareness in this concern; Mr. Milken is undergoing a wonderful rehabilitation by the members of the academy, and, as previously noted, the authors lean heavily on academic sources. It is true that Milken's junk bonds did not have a high default rate, but it is also beside the point. At Drexel Burnham Lambert , Milken was running arguably the largest known extortion ring in American -- and perhaps world -- history. In his -- dare we say? -- clutches, Milken had more than 140 S&Ls and their taxpayer-insured deposits. Some of these were allies (Charlie Keating's Lincoln; Silverado, where Vice President Bush's son Neil was a director) and some (most) were captives held in thrall by the fact that no one would recapitalize them but Drexel. The model worked something like this: Milken's allies and captives would begin by buying and selling a company's stock, vigorously but to all appearances senselessly, in cross-trades through Drexel. The clear objective was to flip the company into play, but there was a hidden agenda. As the company's chief financial officer watched the gyrations of his stock in horror, he was U* to receive a call from Jim Dahl, Milken's right hand man, or from another Milken lackey "We want to be your investment banker" this worthy would say. In other times and other places, more honorable men have put the matter more clearly: " Pay or die" . Once the company was in a cooperative frame of mind, it would issue junk bonds through Drexel. Milken's captive S & Ls would buy them. Of all this, the authors are ignorant. Alas, when they actually do buckle down to work, their data -- much of it obtained from the Resolution Trust -- is seriously flawed. Anyone undertaking a serious examination of the RTC will discover that something went badly wrong in there. Criminal referrals based on solid information went nowhere. Promising investigations were abruptly terminated. Whole officefuls of lawyers whose specialized skills were essential to recovering lost or stolen money were dismissed. Paper trails suddenly stop. The more flamboyant criminals, such as Keating, were brought to book, but other, perhaps more cunning, perhaps better connected, and certainly less conspicuous, slipped the net. And, as the authors themselves discovered, the RTC was a very nervous place. "Before the meeting had even started," they recount, "the senior official burst into the room. He proclaimed that he had ordered us not to pursue certain lines of inquiry with the data from his office and that we had disobeyed.... We soon learned that this official had contacted our funding agency to insist that we stop analyzing data that had led us to the `forbidden' lines of inquiry." To the academic investigators, this suggested nothing, except perhaps that the high official had experienced a difficult childhood; undaunted -- and, more to the point, incurious, they proceeded on their way. They counted beans. The beans were provided by a federal agency that remarkably few serious investigators trust any farther than they can throw it. Here is the fruit of their labors. The definitive book about the S&L crisis remains to be written.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #11 on: April 28, 2010, 08:23:20 PM » |
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Milken still seeks a "pardon" for all his good scams er "works" even after his pal GW Bush has left office:http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/03/business/fi-milken3Michael Milken is still seeking redemptionDisgraced junk bond king has raised millions for cancer research but a presidential pardon eludes him. February 03, 2009|Stuart Pfeifer and Tom Petruno In the 16 years since his release from prison, disgraced junk-bond king Michael Milken has beaten prostate cancer, raised hundreds of millions of dollars for medical research and reshaped an image tarnished by a 1990 conviction for securities fraud.One thing he's been unable to do is win a presidential pardon, despite the support of some of the country's most influential people.Before he left office Jan. 20, President Bush declined to grant Milken's pardon application, just as President Clinton had eight years earlier.One of those disappointed by Bush's decision was outgoing Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach, who said Milken's philanthropy had transformed medical research, raised awareness of prostate cancer and saved lives. "Forgiveness is something that's an important part of our culture," Von Eschenbach said. "Here's a man who is really serving society." To push his latest bid for a pardon, Milken retained Theodore B. Olson last summer. Olson, a partner in law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Washington, D.C., office, served as solicitor general under Bush and was his lawyer in the Supreme Court case that stopped the Florida recount, assuring his 2000 election.In the final months of Bush's term, "many prominent people from a wide range of fields in business, government, education and medical research" wrote letters supporting a pardon, Milken spokesman Geoffrey Moore said in an e-mail to The Times. Support for Milken's pardon was not universal, however, with resistance from some within the Justice Department and some on Wall Street. Bill Seidman, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Resolution Trust Corp., said it would be a mistake to minimize the economic damage that Milken wrought in the 1980s. Milken's junk bonds became favored holdings of some huge savings and loans that later failed, causing some to blame him for that crisis. It's a charge Milken and his supporters have denied. "If you add it all up, he cost the government more money than any person in the S&L debacle," said Seidman, now CNBC's chief commentator and publisher of Bank Director magazine. "The crimes for which he was convicted were one thing. But the cost to the government of his operations in the S&L industry was hundreds of millions of dollars."Although Seidman said he didn't campaign against the pardon, he said he wasn't convinced that philanthropy alone should win clemency for Milken, whose net worth is estimated at $2.5 billion.
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« Reply #12 on: April 29, 2010, 12:18:54 AM » |
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TahoeBlue...German authorities have been reading your posts...
Authorities raid Deutsche Bank and 50 other firms
Suspected tax evasion
Raids on Deutsche Bank and 50 other firms
http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2010/04/28/suspected-german-tax-evasion/authorities-raid-deutsche-bank-50-other-firms.html
28.04.2010 - 17:42 UHR
By Max Schneider and Stefan Ernst
Around 50 German firms have been raided by police investigating suspected large scale tax evasion.The chief public prosecutor’s office searched more than 230 business premises across Germany – including those of international giant Deutsche Bank – as well as the homes of accused individuals. More than 1,000 officials from the tax fraud investigation office, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and different police authorities took part in the raids. Searches also took place simultaneously in other EU member states. Around 150 people are under suspicion of VAT evasion over the trading of greenhouse gas emission permits. Wednesday morning at 8.20am in Frankfurt: A large contingent of police and other officials arrived at Deutsche Bank. They pulled out their ID at the entrance and entered the building on Theodor Heuss Allee. Shortly afterwards, a convoy of vehicles with investigators and specialists from the BKA turned up and pulled into the underground car park with blue lights flashing. In response to an enquiry from BILD.de, a spokesman from the bank said: “We can confirm that we are one of the 230 entities which were searched. We are co-operating with the public prosecutor’s office.” A spokesman for another major institution, Commerzbank, said it had not been involved in the raids. WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT? The trick is called VAT carousel or missing trader fraud, and according to BILD’s information the current suspected cases add up to a lost revenue of around €1 billion for the German government. HOW IT WORKS Dealers in different EU countries buy and sell permits which allow industrial enterprises to release a certain amount of greenhouse gases. On the sale from dealer A to dealer B across a state border, no VAT is due. Upon the resale of the permits by dealer B to dealer C within the same country (i.e. Germany), VAT does become owed which dealer C can then claim back from the tax office. Dealer B owes the authorities 19 per cent in VAT – it doesn’t pay, but pockets the 19 per cent and disappears off the market. The permit is passed along from dealer to dealer until it arrives back at dealer A, which starts a new chain or carousel. More news Oil is continuing to spill into the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana following the sinking of the rig. Now the Coast Guard could set fire to the slick. |
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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately
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citizenx
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« Reply #13 on: April 29, 2010, 12:23:50 AM » |
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Hopefully, they are merely using evidence they already had in order to uncover what this institution really has been up to.
Of course, if Angela is the acting station chief for DVD/Stasi, one would assume this would all blow over.
Die schade.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #14 on: April 29, 2010, 11:54:24 AM » |
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Timothy F. Geithner - Trustee The RAND CorporationRand History see: Origins of RAND - Tuxedo Park - Alfred Lee Loomis http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=20499240United States Department of The Treasury http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=23970028Timothy F. Geithner BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEMBERSHIPS Former Director Bank For International Settlements Trustee The RAND CorporationDirector Vietnam Education Foundation Governer The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Governor Inter-American Development Bank http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/private/relationship.asp?personId=23970028BOARD MEMBERS AFFILIATED WITH Timothy F. Geithner * Robert D. Hormats Goldman, Sachs & Co. Board Affiliations The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Paul O'Neill The Blackstone Group Board Affiliations The RAND Corporation Harold Brown Center for Strategic and International Studies, Inc. Board Affiliations The RAND Corporation Richard J. Danzig Pegasus Capital Advisors, L.P. Board Affiliations The RAND Corporation Richard A. Gephardt Boeing Co. Board Affiliations The RAND Corporation Hillary Rodham Clinton The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Board Affiliations Vietnam Education Foundation Hector Ruiz DNAPrint Genomics, Inc. Board Affiliations The RAND Corporation http://www.rand.org/news/press/2006/03/28/index1.htmlMarch 28, 2006Timothy F. Geithner, Michael K. Powell and Marta Tienda Join RAND Corporation Board of TrusteesThe RAND Corporation has named Timothy F. Geithner, Michael K. Powell and Marta Tienda to its Board of Trustees, President and CEO James A. Thomson announced today. Geithner is the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also serves as the vice chairman and holds a permanent seat on the Federal Open Market Committee. Powell is a senior advisor at Providence Equity Capital and chairman of the MK Powell Group. He was appointed a member of the Federal Communications Commission in 1997 and served as FCC chairman from 2001 to 2005. Tienda is the Maurice P. During '22 Professor in Demographic Studies and a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. She served as the director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton from 1997 to 2002, and is a former board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. RAND is a nonprofit research organization based in Santa Monica, Calif., and has offices in the Washington, D.C. area and Pittsburgh, along with Europe and Qatar. “Tim, Michael and Marta are welcome additions to the RAND Board of Trustees and will help RAND build on our nearly 60 years of success in providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world,” Thomson said. Geithner previously served with the U.S. Department of Treasury for three administrations, holding the post of under secretary for international affairs from 1999 to 2001. After leaving the Treasury Department, he joined the International Monetary Fund as director of the policy development and review department until 2003. Geithner currently serves as chairman of the G-10’s Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems of the Bank for International Settlements. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and The Group of Thirty. Geithner received a bachelor’s degree in government and Asian studies from Dartmouth College and a master’s degree in international economics and East Asian studies from the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. Before joining the FCC, Powell was chief of staff of the antitrust division in the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to that, he was an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Powell earlier served as a policy advisor to the secretary of defense on matters involving the U.S.-Japan security relationship. His military service was as an armor officer in the United States Army. Powell is the vice rector of the Board of Visitors of the College of William and Mary, a trustee of the Disabled Veterans for Live Memorial and serves on the board of ObjectVideo. Powell graduated from the College of William and Mary with a B.A. in government in 1985 and earned his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1993. Tienda has held appointments at the University of Chicago, where she served as chair of sociology, and at the University of Wisconsin. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Tienda is also past president of the Population Association of America. She chaired the National Academy of Sciences Panel on the U.S. Hispanic Population and serves on the boards of the Sloan Foundation, TIAA, the Corporation of Brown University, and the Princeton Medical Center. Tienda received a M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. Governer The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development As the global economic crisis hits the EBRD region, the Bank is responding with scaled up investments and a wide range of initiativeshttp://www.ebrd.com/The EBRD is an international financial institution that supports projects in 29 countries from central Europe to central Asia. Investing primarily in private sector clients whose needs cannot be fully met by the market, the Bank promotes entrepreneurship and fosters transition towards open and democratic market economies. The EBRD is the largest single investor in the region and also mobilises significant foreign direct investment into its countries of operations. The Bank invests mainly in private enterprises, usually together with commercial partners. It provides project financing for the financial sector and the real economy, both new ventures and investments in existing companies. It also works with publicly-owned companies to support privatisation, restructuring of state-owned firms and improvement of municipal services. Owned by 61 countries and two intergovernmental institutions, the EBRD maintains a close political dialogue with governments, authorities and representatives of civil society to promote its goals. In all its operations the EBRD follows the highest standards of corporate governance and sustainable development. As a public institution the EBRD is committed to a rigorous public information policy. How the EBRD is funded With a subscribed capital totalling EUR 20 billion (EUR 5 billion paid-in and EUR 15 billion callable), the EBRD has a solid capital base. The strength of the Bank's capital and its prudent operational and financial policies are reflected in the EBRD's credit rating of AAA from Standard & Poor's, Aaa from Moody's and AAA from Fitch.Governer The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development http://www.iadb.org/?lang=enhttp://www.iadb.org/aboutus/About Us We support efforts by Latin America and the Caribbean countries to reduce poverty and inequality. We aim to bring about development in a sustainable, climate-friendly way. Established in 1959, we are the largest source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean, with a strong commitment to achieve measurable results, increased integrity, transparency and accountability. We have an evolving reform agenda that seeks to increase our development impact in the region. While we are a regular bank in many ways, we are also unique in some key respects. Besides loans, we also provide grants, technical assistance and do research. Our shareholders are 48 member countries, including 26 Latin American and Caribbean borrowing members, who have a majority ownership of the IDB.Better Bank - The IDB Reform AgendaFor the last five years, the Inter-American Development Bank has been transformed by an unprecedented period of reform and renovation, realigning its priorities and structure and renewing its ability to serve as an indispensible catalyst for development in Latin America and the Caribbean.This agenda of profound change is reshaping the Bank and has allowed the IDB to re-engage with its borrowers at a time when they most need the institution. The IDB has made major advances in its effectiveness, transparency and accountability. The IDB’s reform agenda has helped the Bank meet the needs of its member countries and fulfill its mission to reduce poverty and inequality, and bring sustainable development to Latin America and the Caribbean. Director Vietnam Education Foundationhttp://home.vef.gov/ [Notice .GOV ]The Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) is an independent federal agency created by the U.S. Congress and funded annually by the U.S. Government. Its mission is to strengthen the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral relationship through educational exchanges in science and technology. VEF is governed by a Board of Directors including U.S. Cabinet Members, U.S. Senators and Representatives and Presidential Appointees. VEF headquarters is located in the Washington D.C. area, with a representative office in Hanoi, Vietnam. VEF Mission Statement The mission of the Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) is to help Vietnam build excellence in science and technology (S&T), and by so doing, bring the United States and Vietnam closer together. Specifically, VEF aims to help Vietnam establish a science, engineering, medical, and technical community of people and institutions that can implement a strong teaching and research agenda, create economic growth, maintain scientific cooperation with the U.S., and enable Vietnam to gain from, and contribute to, scientific and technological advances globally. We carry out our mission by bringing the most able Vietnamese nationals to leading U.S. universities for graduate and post-graduate training in S&T, and helping Vietnam strengthen its internal S&T capacity and institutions. While VEF's funding is essential, an important value of VEF is our ability to leverage resources and mobilize the American scientific and educational community to help Vietnam. Our strategy, therefore, calls for us to be a catalyst, to focus on high-quality activities, and to expand Vietnam’s existing S&T strengths. Member - The Group of Thirtyhttp://www.group30.org/Paul A. Volker - Chairman - Board of TrusteesThe Group of Thirty, established in 1978, is a private, nonprofit, international body composed of very senior representatives of the private and public sectors and academia
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #15 on: April 29, 2010, 12:15:03 PM » |
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Al Gore's Logan's Run - Carbon Trading - value-added tax (VAT) carousel   The fraud is believed to be widespread and according to Europol report released last year it cost European member states an estimated €5bn (£4.3bn) in lost tax revenue in the 18 months up to the end of 2009. The Good News:Derwent also warned that unless the EU found away to stamp out the fraud it could become harder to convince other countries such as the US to adopt carbon trading schemes. TahoeBlue...German authorities have been reading your posts...
Authorities raid Deutsche Bank and 50 other firms
Suspected tax evasion
Raids on Deutsche Bank and 50 other firms
http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2010/04/28/suspected-german-tax-evasion/authorities-raid-deutsche-bank-50-other-firms.html
28.04.2010 - 17:42 UHR
By Max Schneider and Stefan Ernst
Around 50 German firms have been raided by police investigating suspected large scale tax evasion.The chief public prosecutor’s office searched more than 230 business premises across Germany – including those of international giant Deutsche Bank – as well as the homes of accused individuals. More than 1,000 officials from the tax fraud investigation office, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and different police authorities took part in the raids. Searches also took place simultaneously in other EU member states. Around 150 people are under suspicion of VAT evasion over the trading of greenhouse gas emission permits. Wednesday morning at 8.20am in Frankfurt: A large contingent of police and other officials arrived at Deutsche Bank. They pulled out their ID at the entrance and entered the building on Theodor Heuss Allee. Shortly afterwards, a convoy of vehicles with investigators and specialists from the BKA turned up and pulled into the underground car park with blue lights flashing. In response to an enquiry from BILD.de, a spokesman from the bank said: “We can confirm that we are one of the 230 entities which were searched. We are co-operating with the public prosecutor’s office.” A spokesman for another major institution, Commerzbank, said it had not been involved in the raids. Thursday, April 29, 2010 Public prosecutors in Hessen have launched around 230 investigations into offices and homes throughout Germany on suspicion of tax evasion in emissions trading. Searches have also taken place at Germany’s largest bank , Deutsche Bank.Investigators are believed to be investigating alleged cases where a value-added tax (VAT) carousel or “Umsatzsteuerkarussell” is being operated, in the trade of emissions rights for greenhouse gases, resulting in losses for the state estimated at around EUR180m. According to the public prosecutors in Frankfurt, current investigations concern around 50 businesses and 150 individuals, and have involved over 1,000 officials in the nationwide action. The UK, France, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands are among other countries that have been affected by the illegal carbon trade. For a year and a half now investigators have been watching suspicious movements on the European climate exchange, where businesses trade in certificates for carbon dioxide emission rights. http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2262253/german-authorities-raid-firmsGerman authorities raid 50 firms in carbon fraud crackdownThe pan-European crackdown on suspected fraud in the carbon market stepped up a notch yesterday when German authorities raided 230 offices and homes in connection with an alleged €180m tax fraud. ... The fraud is believed to be widespread and according to Europol report released last year it cost European member states an estimated €5bn (£4.3bn) in lost tax revenue in the 18 months up to the end of 2009. ... "There is not much we can say about this specific case at this time, but we want to see the appropriate authorities effectively pursuing a fraud that has quite unfairly damaged the perception of the European emissions trading scheme and potentially carbon trading as a whole," he said. Derwent also warned that unless the EU found away to stamp out the fraud it could become harder to convince other countries such as the US to adopt carbon trading schemes. "It is difficult to explain that this is a fraud to do with the absence of harmonised VAT rules and not something that is intrinsically linked to carbon trading," he said. The EU recently agreed new rules designed to tackle carousel fraud in the carbon market, by requiring purchasers of carbon allowances rather than traders to pay VAT on any carbon credits. In the meantime further investigations are already underway, and a spokesman for Europol told news agency Bloomberg that the European police agency was supporting similar investigations in other EU states. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/01/Value-Added-Tax-No-Easy-Fix-for-the-DeficitValue-Added Tax: No Easy Fix for the DeficitPublished on January 21, 2010 by Curtis Dubay ... Fraud Rampant VATs are common in other countries, especially in the European Union (EU).[2] Despite the perception that VATs are difficult to evade, data show that fraud to avoid the VAT is widespread in the EU. In fact, the fraud is causing revenue shortfalls large enough that many EU countries are scrambling to prevent the abuse.[3] Under the most common form of the VAT—the credit-invoice method—businesses pay the tax on their purchases and collect it on their sales. After deducting the taxes they paid on purchases from the amounts they collected on sales, businesses remit the difference to the government. This system is supposed to ensure that every business in the supply chain pays the correct amount of tax. For instance, if a business undercharges the VAT to the next company in the production chain, the second company has to pay a higher VAT to the government. The total amount of tax collected by the government remains the same regardless of which company pays it. Therefore, each business has an incentive to make sure the other businesses it deals with are in compliance so they do not pay a bigger share of the tax than required. Fraud persists with the VAT despite the theoretical advantages, mostly in four forms.1. False Claims of Taxes Paid. Businesses create false invoices for the purchase of inputs they never bought and get bigger deductions for taxes paid than they are entitled to. 2. Credit Claimed for Non-Creditable Purchases. Typically, VATs have a variety of rates and exemptions. For example, basic needs such as food, medicine, and clothing often receive preferential VAT rates or outright exemptions from the tax, as do certain industries considered economically vital or politically sensitive. Businesses that sell both VAT-exempt and non-exempt items have an incentive to allocate the purchase of supplies they use to produce exempt items toward the production of non-exempt items. This improper shifting increases the business’s tax refund because it allows them to claim deductions on their tax returns for the taxes paid on inputs where there should be none. This fraud is common because it is difficult for authorities to prove which supplies the business used to produce the different products. 3. Bogus Traders. Businesses are set up exclusively to produce VAT invoices so other businesses can claim refunds on taxes they never paid. 4. Hidden Sales. Professional service providers, such as doctors and lawyers, often engage in this kind of fraud. They offer relatively high-value services, but their purchases from other businesses are relatively low cost. They charge their unknowing customers full price and collect the proper amount of VAT on the sale. But to the authorities, they show that they charged a lower price. The service provider forwards to the government less tax than it collected from its customers and pockets the difference. It is always hard for tax authorities to determine the actual sales of an intangible good like a service. Many state and local governments in the United States often forego levying sales tax on most services because of this difficulty. Moreover, service providers and individuals can circumvent the tax by agreeing to use cash or barter transactions. This avoids a paper trail altogether and makes it nearly impossible for authorities to prove abuse.[4] A recent study estimates that VAT fraud in the EU creates annual revenue shortfalls as high as 30 percent of potential tax collections in some countries. Shortfalls average 12 percent for all countries in the EU.[5] In comparison, the U.S. Department of Treasury estimated the net tax gap for all taxes in 2005 (the latest available data) stood just under 12 percent of potential receipts.[6]
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« Reply #16 on: April 29, 2010, 12:58:01 PM » |
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I am sorry, but the work that TahoeBlue has done is simply incredible. There are at least 20 different ways to successfully prosecute RICO violations in this one fricking thread! FBI, are youguys watching porn with the SEC? Get off your assess, low hanging fruit, this will make your whole career, you can just retire on some beach.
[FBI guys looking at each other "What a dork, Rockefeller tells us when to jump. He doesn't even read his own posts on this forum."]
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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #17 on: April 29, 2010, 01:53:05 PM » |
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Interesting connection to "former FedReserve" Paul A. Volker - another "Senior Advisor"
AND a Director of Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation See: Obama names "Private" Economic Advisory team to be lead by Paul Volcker Lord Rothschild has declared: "Obama legislation too hard on banks" [Bwaahaaha] - "Volcker rule" Paul Volcker Profile Paul Volcker Former Senior Advisor, Shinsei Bank Ltd. Paul A. Volcker served as Senior Advisor of Shinsei Bank Ltd. Mr. Volcker served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Wolfensohn & Co. Inc. Mr. Volcker worked in the Federal Government for almost 30 years, serving in high office under five presidents, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. He spent more than four years as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has been a Director of Still River Systems Inc. since March 2008. He has been a Director of Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation since 1996. He serves as a Director of Bankers Trust Company, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation. He serves as a Director of American Stock Exchange, Nestle SA, Prudential Insurance Company of America and UAL Corporation. Mr. Volcker served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Wolfensohn & Co. Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_WolfensohnJames_WolfensohnIn 1980, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States, after it was rumored that he was a candidate to succeed Robert McNamara as president of the World Bank. After he was unsuccessful in this pursuit, he established his own investment firm, James D. Wolfensohn, Inc., along with partners including Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Upon accepting his nomination to serve as president of the World Bank in 1995, Wolfensohn divested of his ownership interest in James D. Wolfensohn, Inc. The firm was later bought by Bankers Trust.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinsei_BankShinsei Bank is the successor of a trust bank, the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, which had a government monopoly on the issuance of many long-term debt securities. Following the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble in 1989, the bank was riddled with bad debts: the government nationalized it in 1998, and it was delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. After several proposed mergers with domestic banks, LTCB was sold to an international group led by US-based Ripplewood Holdings in March 2000 for ¥121 billion, the first time in history that a Japanese bank came under foreign control. Investor Christopher Flowers also played a major role in the buyout syndicate and remains a key shareholder of the company today. Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation - Profile... Company Overview Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation operates as commercial banks, which engages in trust business. Its non-banking activities include private placements, mergers and acquisitions, currency transactions, and securities underwriting. Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation was formerly known as Bankers Trust Corporation. The company was founded in 1903 and is based in New York City. [ BTC formes in 1903 in New York? sounds like the pre-formation of the Fed Reserve ] As of June 5, 1999, Bankers Trust Corporation operated as a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank AG. Now, Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation operates as a subsidiary of Taunus Corporation, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank AG. The Taunus Corp - holding company - The Black hole sun:http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=2320454Taunus CorporationTaunus Corporation operates as a bank holding company for Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. The company was founded in 1999 and is based in New York, New York. Taunus Corporation operates as a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank AG. No relationships!Name Board Relationships Title Age John Ross Chief Executive Officer http://www.dbs.com/dbsgroup/management/Pages/johnross.aspxDBS Group Holdings (DBS) is one of the largest financial services groups in Asia. Headquartered in Singapore, DBS is a well-capitalised bank with "AA-" and "Aa1" credit ratings that are among the highest in the Asia-Pacific region.  John Alan Ross Board Member DBS Group Holdings LtdRoss was the Corporate Chief Operating Officer for the Deutsche Bank Group until his retirement on March 31, 2002. Prior to that he held other senior executive positions at Deutsche Bank from 1992-2002; Chief Executive Officer for the Americas, Chief Executive Officer of the Asia-Pacific Region and Group Treasurer. Before joining Deutsche Bank, Ross had a 21-year career at The Bank of New York, where he held senior management positions in New York and London. At the time of his departure he was Executive Vice President, Head of Global Asset and Liability Management. Born in 1944, Ross attended Hobart College and was awarded an MBA in International Finance from The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania. He also served as 1st Lieutenant in the US Army. Ross is a board member of The Jewish Museum and the Metropolitan Opera Guild, as well as a member of Singapore Technologies' International Advisory Panel. http://www.commercialbanksguide.com/taunus+corporation/Taunus CorporationSince 1872, when Deutsche Bank opened a business in the United States of America, the bank has consolidated its positions as a reliable provider of premium financial services to state agencies, corporations, governments, private individuals and institutions in the Americas. Taunus Corporation was founded in 1999 as the North American subsidiary of Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG. The body is currently operating as a bank holding company for Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. The company is headquartered in New York City and is headed by Mr. John Ross, CEO. Taunus currently has 23,000 employees. Being part of the Deutsche Bank family, Taunus Corporation has developed retail banking, asset management, and corporate banking businesses. Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation was formerly known as Bankers Trust Corporation. The company was founded in 1903 and is based in New York City. So Deutsche Bank is now "America's Bank" ? http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/BANKERS-TRUST-NEW-YORK-CORPORATION-Company-History.htmlCompany History: Bankers Trust New York Corporation, a multibillion-dollar bank holding company, is one of the largest commercial banks in the United States. The nature of the company's business has changed repeatedly since it was founded in 1903. It was first a bankers trust company; by the end of the 1920s it was a wholesale financial-services provider; next it was a retail banking supermarket in the 1960s, with nearly disastrous results; and finally it became a wholesale banker again. Thanks to former Chairman Alfred Brittain III and his successor, Charles S. Sanford, Bankers Trust is now a strong international merchant bank, providing a variety of wholesale banking services to governments, institutions, corporations, and wealthy individuals in the United States and abroad. ... In 1903 a group of New York national banks decided to fight the trust companies on their own ground. The banks formed a trust company, Bankers Trust, to provide trust services to customers of state and national banks throughout the country. Banks could safely refer their fiduciary business to Bankers Trust because the new company would not compete with them for interest-bearing deposits as other trust companies did. Bankers Trust Company was incorporated on March 24, 1903, with an initial capital of $1.5 million. Legendary financier J. P. Morgan held a controlling interest, and Edmund C. Converse, a very successful steel manufacturer turned financier and then president of Liberty National Bank, was chosen to serve as Bankers Trust's first president. Bankers Trust opened its doors at 143 Liberty Street on March 30, 1903. Within three months it had deposits totalling $5.75 million; within four months it had outgrown its original premises and moved to Wall Street. ... Two years later, Bankers Trust made its first merger. Merger prospects were plentiful at the time because the New York State Assembly had recently enacted antitrust legislation requiring insurance companies to divest their banking and trust interests. In August, 1911 Bankers Trust acquired the Mercantile Trust Company, and in March, 1912 it acquired the Manhattan Trust Company. These mergers raised the company's capital to $20 million and its deposit base to over $134 million. Within nine years its deposits reached $168 million and its capital and surplus had increased to $25 million. In January, 1914 Converse resigned to become president of Astor Trust Company, another Morgan company. [ The following shows that the bankers were actively getting ready for the Federal Reserve Act which THEY WROTE. ]http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/reports/14Wall.pdf... As the Bankers Trust Building neared completion in 1912, Congress was preparing to launch an investigation into the growing number of mergers among New York banks
which had concentrated almost seventy-five percent of the nation's capital and credit in the hands of a small group of financiers and institutions. In hearings held by the House Sub-committee on Banking and Currency, it was revealed that Bankers Trust had become the second largest trust company in the country
with deposits in excess of $168,000,000 and that its powerful board held 113 interlocking directorships in fifty-five of the nation's largest banks, insurance, transportation, manufacturing, trading, and utility
companies.9 While no evidence was found that a banking trust existed as defined by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the hearings raised sufficient concerns about the banking system for Congress to adopt the Federal
Reserve Act in 1913.10 [ Astor Trust Company Merged with Bankers Trust in Jan 1917 ] Benjamin Strong Jr., Converse's son-in-law, succeeded him. Strong served as president for less than a year, leaving Bankers Trust to become the first governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York after helping to establish the Federal Reserve system. Seward Prosser was elected to succeed him. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article15967.htmlThe United States adopted its central bank, the Federal Reserve System, in 1913, backed by a consensus of Democrats and Republicans. This virtual nationalization of the banking system was unopposed by the big banks; in fact, Wall Street and the other large banks had actively sought such a central system for many years. The result was the cartelization of banking under federal control, with the government standing ready to bail out banks in trouble, and also ready to inflate money and credit to whatever extent the banks felt was necessary. Without a functioning Federal Reserve System available to inflate the money supply, the United States could not have financed its participation in World War I: that war was fueled by heavy government deficits and by the creation of new money to pay for swollen federal expenditures. One point is undisputed: the autocratic ruler of the Federal Reserve System, from its inception in 1914 to his death in 1928, was Benjamin Strong, a New York banker who had been named governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Strong consistently and repeatedly used his power to force an inflationary increase of money and bank credit in the American economy, thereby driving prices higher than they would have been and stimulating disastrous booms in the stock and real-estate markets. In 1927, Strong gaily told a French central banker that he was going to give "a little coup de whiskey to the stock market." What was the point? Why did Strong pursue a policy that now can seem only heedless, dangerous, and recklessly extravagant? Once the government has assumed absolute control of the money-creating machinery in society, it benefits — as would any other group — by using that power. Anyone would benefit, at least in the short run, by printing or creating new money for his own use or for the use of his economic or political allies.http://www.usagold.com/federalreserve.htmlWho Owns and Controls the Federal Reserve? by Dr. Edward Flaherty, University of Charleston ... Who Owns the Federal Reserve Bank of New York?Each of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks is organized into a corporation whose shares are sold to the commercial banks and thrifts operating within the Bank's district. Shareholders elect six of the nine the board of directors for their regional Federal Reserve Bank as well as its president. Mullins reported that the top eight stockholders of the New York Fed were, in order from largest to smallest as of 1983, Citibank, Chase Manhatten, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Bankers Trust Company, National Bank of North America, and the Bank of New York (Mullins, p. 179). Together, these banks owned about 63 percent of the New York Fed's outstanding stock. Mullins then showed that many of these banks are owned by about a dozen European banking organizations, mostly British, and most notably the Rothschild banking dynasty. Through their American agents they are able to select the board of directors for the New York Fed and to direct U.S. monetary policy. Mullins explained, Reference see also: Wealth Disparities in U.S. Approaching 1920's Levels[ Back to Ross: ]http://articles.baltimoresun.com/keyword/john-ross/featured/4Deutsche Bank says Ross will head U.S. operationsBy BLOOMBERG NEWS | May 27, 1999NEW YORK -- Deutsche Bank AG said yesterday that John A. Ross will become chief executive of its business in the Americas after its $10.1 billion purchase of Bankers Trust Corp. is completed next month.The announcement did not mention Bankers Trust Chief Executive Officer Frank Newman, who, according to his employment agreement, will be paid at least $55 million over the next five years to be chairman and chief executive of New York-based Bankers Trust and co-head of Deutsche Bank's global commercial and investment bank. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._B._KrongardAlvin Bernard "Buzzy" Krongard [1] (more commonly "A. B.") was the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was appointed by George Tenet on March 16, 2001. The Executive Director is the third ranking position within the CIA and the incumbent functions essentially as the Chief Operating Officer of the Agency. For three years prior, Krongard had served as Counselor to the DCI. A longtime consultant to DCIs, Krongard joined the Agency full time in February 1998, following a 29-year business career. During his private sector career, he served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Alex. Brown & Sons, the nation’s oldest investment banking firm, and Vice Chairman of the Board of Bankers Trust. John Alan Ross - Profile BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEMBERSHIPS 2003-Present Director, Chairman of Nominating Committee and Member of Board Risk Management Committee DBS Group Holdings, Ltd.2003-Present Director, Chairman of Nominating Committee and Member of Risk Management Committee DBS Bank Ltd.Director DBS Bank (China) LimitedTrustee German Marshall Fund of the United StatesJohn Alan Ross serves as the President and Regional Chief Executive Officer for the Americas division at Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation. Mr. Ross served as Corporate Chief Operating Officer for the Deutsche Bank Group until February 2002. He joined Deutsche Bank in 1992. He served for 21 years at The Bank of New York, where he served as Executive Vice President, Head of Global Asset and Liability Management. Mr. Ross has been Director of DBS Group Holdings Ltd., since February 6, 2003. He also has been Director of DBS Bank Ltd. since February 6, 2003, and serves as Director of DBS Bank (China) Limited. He serves as Trustee of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Jewish Museum, and the Metropolitan Opera Guild. He also serves as Member of the Singapore Technologies International Advisory Panel. Mr. Ross holds a Masters of Business Administration Degree from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Arts Degree from the Hobart College BOARD MEMBERS AFFILIATED WITH John Alan Ross * John Alan Ross President of America Division and Regional Chief Executive Officer of America Division Lim Huat Seah Sembcorp Industries Ltd. Board Affiliations DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. DBS Bank Ltd. Andrew Robert Fowell Buxton DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. Board Affiliations DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. DBS Bank Ltd. Yiu Kiang Goh Singapore Airlines Ltd. Board Affiliations DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. DBS Bank Ltd. Ang Kong Hua NSL Ltd. Board Affiliations DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. DBS Bank Ltd. Wai Chee Cheng USI Holdings Limited Board Affiliations DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. DBS Bank Ltd. Boon Hwee Koh Innovalues Limited Board Affiliations DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. DBS Bank Ltd. Bart Joseph Broadman DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. Board Affiliations DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. DBS Bank Ltd.Kwa Chong Seng DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. Board Affiliations DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. DBS Bank Ltd. Piyush Gupta DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. Board Affiliations DBS Bank Ltd. Ravi Menon DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. Board Affiliations DBS Group Holdings, Ltd. Steven G. Rothmeier Precision Castparts Corp. Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United StatesAmbat Ravi Shankar Menon DBS Bank Ltd. Board Affiliations DBS Bank Ltd. Robert M. Kimmitt American Television and Communications Corporation Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United StatesSuzanne H. Woolsey Fluor Corporation Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Guido Goldman First Spring Corporation Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Vin V. Weber ITT Educational Services Inc. Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States J. Thomas Presby First Solar, Inc. Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Jeffrey A. Goldstein Arch Capital Group Ltd. Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Robert M. Solow Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United StatesLee H. Hamilton Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States David Ignatius German Marshall Fund of the United States Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Marc Leland German Marshall Fund of the United States Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Scott Klug German Marshall Fund of the United States Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Craig Kennedy German Marshall Fund of the United States Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Richard Roberts German Marshall Fund of the United States Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Mara Liasson German Marshall Fund of the United States Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Amity Shlaes German Marshall Fund of the United States Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Barbara Shailor German Marshall Fund of the United States Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Teresa Lin DBS Bank (China) Limited Board Affiliations DBS Bank (China) Limited Jenonne Walker German Marshall Fund of the United States Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United States Jethro Lau DBS Bank (China) Limited Board Affiliations DBS Bank (China) Limited Xiongwen Lu 8D World, Inc. Board Affiliations DBS Bank (China) Limited Kwong Shing Wong China Mobile Media Technology, Inc. Board Affiliations DBS Bank (China) Limited Andy So DBS Bank (China) Limited Board Affiliations DBS Bank (China) Limited Robert M. Solow Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Board Affiliations German Marshall Fund of the United Stateshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._SolowRobert Solow - QuotationsEverything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers." "There is no evidence that God ever intended the United States of America to have a higher per capita income than the rest of the world for eternity."
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citizenx
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« Reply #18 on: April 29, 2010, 03:08:47 PM » |
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Yes, but the bad news is that the German authorities are only cleaing this mess up to make carbon credits more attractive for the U.S. I hope in the grand scehme that fails.
Talk about doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
All seems like a charade.
Nevertheless, Tahoe, this is very interesting. Thank you for these articles. Very enlightening.
Interesting to see Deutsche Bank (maybe) getting some karma right now, but I'm still very skeptical.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #19 on: April 29, 2010, 11:25:38 PM » |
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Yes, but the bad news is that the German authorities are only cleaing this mess up to make carbon credits more attractive for the U.S. I hope in the grand scehme that fails.
Talk about doing the right thing for the wrong reason. All seems like a charade.
Nevertheless, Tahoe, this is very interesting. Thank you for these articles. Very enlightening.
Interesting to see Deutsche Bank (maybe) getting some karma right now, but I'm still very skeptical. Exactly. They have been playing us for fools with these scams for over twenty years. They don't want to stop now.
They know that everyone is wise to them. I am sure they have planned on it. Just wait for the next shoe to drop.
I know I need to recap the characters involved, but I hope everyone can see that
the Paulson/Milken gang are working for Deutsche Bank and now our glorious former American FedRes Chairmans Volker and Greenspan now work for the "german" Deutsche Bank (true colors show now ) and
Greenspan also is "advising" Paulson/Milken.
Deutsche bank now owns Bankers Trust, so we see a handover from Rockefeller to Rothschild?. Bankers Trust is probably an "owner" in the FedRes NY bank and that is the reason for the "holding" company Taunus Corporation.
Oh and AIG had Milken's Joseph Cassano working his end,
Apollo Management had Milken's Leon Black,
Magnetar Capital had Michael Gross, Leon Black's partner.
Then there is Alvin Bernard "Buzzy" Krongard working at Bankers Trust but being moved to the CIA in March 2001,
So he was a CIA operative all those years at Bankers Trust? . And doesn't it stand to reason that the CIA keeps someone high up all the time at BT?
Then you have the WWII marshal plan appendix that seems to be for the benefit of Bilderberger's Deutsche bank, the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Didn't the CIA/OSS run Germany (and the Marshall Fund) after WWII?
They had the rating agencies rigged to rubber stamp everything "triple A" (they must of had two sets of books showing which of the AAA were sub-prime).
Then there is SEC "buyer beware, no fraud large enough to prosecute "Cris Cox and his porn watching associates.
Then there is the braindead FreddieMac/FannieMae rubber stamping loans.
Then you have Greenspan/BankersTrust/CIA/DeutscheBank and Ben Bernanke the zero interest wonder.
Then you have Goldman Sach's Treasury Sec "Hank" "give me a blank check or else Marshal Law" Paulson
Then you have our "forgot to pay his taxes" Treasury Sec Timothy F. Geithner as Trustee The RAND Corporation (with their plans for us).... No, no racketeering here! For example, lets review history: 1994 Orange County and "Bankers Trust" :http://www.erisk.com/learning/CaseStudies/OrangeCounty.aspOn December 6 1994, Orange County, a prosperous district in California, declared bankruptcy after suffering losses of around $1.6 billion from a wrong-way bet on interest rates in one of its principal investment pools. The pool was intended to be a conservative but profitable way of managing the countys cashflows, and those of 241 associated local government entities. Instead, it triggered the largest financial failure of a local government in US history. Robert Citron, the hitherto widely respected Orange County treasurer who controlled the $7.5 billion pool, had riskily invested the pools funds in a leveraged portfolio of mainly interest-linked securities. His strategy depended on short-term interest rates remaining relatively low when compared with medium-term interest rates. But from February 1994, the Federal Reserve Bank began to raise US interest rates, causing many securities in Orange Countys investment pool to fall in value. [ One MUST ask the question what was Citron's MOTIVATION? . Was he getting a "piece of the action"? or else he'd put all the money in Treasuries and CD's? ] During much of 1994, Citron ignored the shift in the interest rate environment and the mounting paper losses in his portfolio. But by the end of 1994, demands for billions of dollars of collateral from Citrons Wall Street counterparties, and the threat of a run on deposits from spooked local government investors, created a liquidity trap that he could not escape. Citron could not have undertaken such a risky investment strategy if his actions had been subject to informed and independent risk oversight, and detailed risk-averse investment guidelines. Following the debacle, Orange County revised many aspects of its control procedures and its financial governance, and established a stricter set of investment policies. Lessons Learnt: - Beware the unconstrained star performer, even when he or she has a long track record. Where theres excess reward, theres risk though it might take time to surface; - If the organisational structure, planning and risk oversight mechanisms of an institution are fractured, it is easy for powerful individuals to hide risk in the gaps; - Borrowing short and investing long means liquidity risk, as every bank knows; - Risk-averse investors must tie investment objectives to investment actions by means of a strict framework of investment policies, guidelines, risk reporting and independent and expert oversight; - Risk reporting should be complete, and easily comprehensible to independent professionals. Strategies that are not possible to explain to third parties should not be employed by the risk averse. The Aftermath: Restitution and Recovery Citron eventually pleaded guilty to six felony counts. However, the charges were largely to do with a misallocation of returns between the county and other municipal entities, and Citron does not seem to have been motivated by personal gain of any direct and obvious kind [Yeah RIGHT] . He paid a $100,000 fine and spent less than a year under house arrest. If that seems a lenient sentence, then Orange Countys recovery was also swifter than might have been expected. It had to cut back on spending and social service provision, and in 1995 and 1996 it took on massive additional debt in the form of special long-term recovery bonds to cover its losses. But thanks to increased tax revenues from a buoyant local economy, it was able to exit from bankruptcy in only 18 months. With new executives in charge, it instituted a series of governance structures and reforms. These included oversight committees, an internal auditor who reported directly to the supervisors, a commitment to long-range financial planning and a stricter written policy for investments. In December 1997, Moodys Investors Service rewarded the county with an investment grade rating for key borrowings. But thats not the whole story , they played the whole country on a interest rate derivatives scam:
(And of course they know when interest rates will go up because they ARE the fed (owners/members) ) http://articles.latimes.com/1994-12-06/business/fi-5557_1_bankers-trustBankers Trust to Revamp Derivatives
Investment: The unusual agreement with the Fed comes in the wake of clients' big losses.December 06, 1994WASHINGTON — Under fire for arranging investments that went sour, Bankers Trust New York Corp. agreed with the Federal Reserve Board to overhaul part of its derivatives business, the central bank said Monday. It was the first time the Fed has taken a bank under supervision in the area of derivatives, a Fed spokesman said. "A written agreement is a serious enforcement action, enforceable through the courts," he said. A written agreement is the second-most serious of three reprimands that regulators impose on banks and their units. The unusual agreement comes after Bankers Trust's clients, among them consumer products firm Procter & Gamble Co., revealed millions of dollars in losses from derivative investments arranged by the bank. Although derivatives--complex financial instruments based on an underlying security--are designed to hedge against risk, some of the investments lost enormous amounts of money when interest rates turned sharply upward last year. One of the biggest losses in the area--unrelated to Bankers Trust--was disclosed last week when Orange County said its investment fund had lost $1.5 billion in value, partly because of derivatives. The agreement between the Fed and Bankers Trust amounts to a huge housecleaning of the bank's derivatives business, one of the biggest of any bank. It calls for everything from new policies to greater management oversight--all under the supervision of the Fed. "This is a rap on the knuckles for Bankers Trust," PaineWebber Inc. analyst Lawrence Cohn said. "No matter how you slice it, Bankers Trust has agreed to change its conduct and has implicitly agreed that it was not acting properly in the past. There is no question that these were bad boys," Cohn said.Bankers Trust said disciplinary actions were taken against certain individuals as part of the agreement. It emphasized that the agreement with the Fed is limited to the company's leveraged derivatives transaction business, which accounted for less than 5% of its total revenue from Jan. 1, 1993, through the first three quarters of 1994. The agreement states that the policies must ensure the bank's derivatives business is "consistent with safe and sound banking practices." |
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #20 on: April 30, 2010, 01:03:27 PM » |
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Goldman Sachs - GS 145.00 / -15 / -9.5%
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #21 on: April 30, 2010, 03:29:48 PM » |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/business/26gret.htmlThey’re Shocked, Shocked, About the Mess By GRETCHEN MORGENSON Published: October 24, 2008 ... Then, on Thursday, my meter sputtered as Alan Greenspan, former “Maestro” of the Federal Reserve, testified before the same Congressional questioners. He defended years of regulatory inaction in the face of predatory lending and said he was “in a state of shocked disbelief” that financial institutions did not rein themselves in when there were billions to be made by relaxing their lending practices and trafficking in exotic derivatives. Mr. Greenspan was shocked, shocked to find that there was gambling going on in the casino.http://cdn.americanbanker.com/issues/165_55/-121930-1.htmlGreenspan Wades In On Predatory Lending, Joining Other RegulatorsAmerican Banker | Thursday, March 23, 2000 By Rob Garver WASHINGTON - Adding his voice to the growing chorus of regulators who have spoken out against predatory lending, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan on Wednesday announced that an interagency task force has been meeting to address the problem... http://www.innercitypress.org/dbbt.htmlDeutsche Bank Watch - Bankers Trust - Timeline... October 25, 1999 Hermann-Joseph Lamberti, of Deutsche Bank’s board of managing directors, spoke to reporters in New York on October 21. It was mostly puffing and “spin”: the merger’s going smashingly; Alex. Brown is excellent. Lamberti said DB has “no concern at all” about the defections, and that “there were no surprises,” including Frank Newman’s unprecedented golden parachute. Bloomberg’s first report (10/21, 14:22) quoted Lamberti that “[w]e had to show regulators the combination with Bankers Trust would be a ‘synergy merger’ that would be able to leverage mixing its businesses.” Three hours later, Bloomberg put out a “corrected” version, dropping any reference to having to show regulators anything. Meanwhile, in Italy, DB has signed an agreement to acquire 30 percent of Banca Popolare di Cividale, a cooperative bank with 31 branches. DB’s other Italian stakes include 20 percent of Cass de Risparnio di Alexandria, and 4.5 percent of Banca Commerciale Italiana SpA, which is being bought by Banca Intesa SpA to create Italy’s biggest bank. On the issue of Bankers Trust’s (and now DB’s) serving as trustee and custodian for mortgage-backed securities supported by predatory mortgage loans, including by Delta Funding, sued for discrimination by the N.Y. Attorney General, it’s worth noting that on October 18, New York State Banking Department Acting Superintendent Elizabeth McCaul, in a speech at the Interagency Bank Supervision Conference, said she wants to encourage bankers “to conduct necessary due diligence reviews,” with regard to subprime lenders’ MBS. BT and DB earlier this year claimed to the NYSBD and to the Fed that they had no due diligence duties whatsoever. Two cliches come to mind: “Live and learn” -- or, “Too little, too late.” October 11, 1999 On October 5, a class action lawsuit against Deutsche Bank was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging in detail that Deutsche Bank “conspired with the Nazis” and “concealed looted assets stolen by the Nazis and laundered the funds.” Reuters, October 5. Meanwhile, the long-promised compensation fund, which the German government had said it wanted to have finalized by September 1, has still not been agreed to. While acquiring Bankers Trust, Deutsche Bank made reference to this fund, saying it would address the issues raised. October 4, 1999 Last week at the IMF annual meeting in Washington, Deutsche Bank chairman Breuer put on a game face. “Without wanting to be overly hasty in assessing the integration process, I can say that at this state we have already achieved impressive results,” he said, adding that DB intends to “enhance” its presence in Mexico, Argentina and Chile. DB simultaneously announced that it is forming a private bank in Uruguay. Meanwhile, in New York, State Supreme Court Justice Edward Lehner refused to enforce a DB/Bankers Trust non-compete agreement against four investment bankers who left DB for Credit Suisse First Boston in June. BT had gotten the employees, and the global non-compete agreements, when it acquire Alex Brown. Once DB acquire BT, the employees left, and now the court will not enforce the non-compete, calling to too broad. Since the non-compete expires on December 31, 1999, the appeal being taken is in all probability futile. Also last week, Citigroup hired away DB’s chief of U.S. private banking, Peter Scaturro. BT’s top lobbyist, Douglas Kidd, was being considered for the same post at the new “Financial Services Roundtable, but reportedly didn’t want to move down to D.C.. And a feature on DB’s custody operations reported that “insiders confirm that integration of the two custody businesses is proving much tougher than anticipated. One of the big problems, says a source, is that ‘the Bankers Trust guys haven’t yet realized that we took them over. They swaggered in thinking it was a reverse takeover, and that they’d continue to run the show from New York. That isn’t how it works. Frankfurt is in charge.’” Yeah, but -- in charge of what? September 27, 1999 On September 26 in Washington, D.C., Deutsche Bank CEO Rolf Breuer shared the stage with New York Fed president William McDonough, at a panel discussion of the Bank for International Settlements’ Capital Adequacy Accord proposals. Breuer essentially called for less government regulation, saying that “market discipline” is faster and better. The high-powered pairing brought back the question: what role with the Federal Reserve System -- the New York Fed in particular -- play in brokering Deutsche Bank’s takeover of Bankers Trust? Numerous sources state that New York Fed senior officials bragged in late 1998, in business as well as social settings, that they had “set up” the DB’s acquisition of the weakened Bankers Trust. New York Fed president McDonough is, of course, considered a prime candidate to become Fed Chairman, if Mr. Greenspan is not re-appointed. Part of the qualification for become Fed Chairman is to be able to put deal like this together, quietly-but-not-too-quietly. For the sake of open government, the question should have been asked, and still should be... September 13, 1999 Last week, Deutsche Bank CEO Rolf Breuer cagily said that it was “possible” DB was “mis-used” as an intermediary for money laundering. On September 11, Der Spiegel magazine reported that DB has filed a report of suspicious transfers with the public prosecutor, and a Deutsche Bank spokesman later confirmed this, without giving any further details. Meanwhile, the exodus has continued, reaching a new peak last week. After a slew of defections from its $200 billion index-fund business, on September 10, DB’s head of that business, Kathleen Condon, left as well. Condon had started the business at Bankers Trust in the 1970s, and was transferred within DB to head it again in July, after the defections. Now she too is leaving. Beyond Georgia-Pacific’s pension fund, and New York City, the Los Angeles County Employees’ Retirement Association is looking to get out. The Association’s chief investment office said Condon’s role was vital in Deutsche Bank’s attempt to keep its index business intact. ... June 22, 1999 -- The New York State Attorney General has taken action on a predatory mortgage lending issue that the Federal Reserve Board refused to touch in connection with Deutsche Bank’s application to acquire Bankers Trust in the spring of 1999. On June 22, the A.G. announced that Delta Funding, a high interest rate lender that Bankers Trust enabled and did foreclosures for, had settled racial discrimination in lending charges. The Fed was directly confronted with BT’s involvement with Delta during its consideration of DB’s application, but refused to act. Now (this from BNA’s Banking Daily of June 24, 1999): ... March 8, 1999, Update On March 8, ICP filed opposition to Deutsche Bank’s applications to acquire Bankers Trust subsidiaries with the state banking departments in three states. For each state, ICP documented Bankers Trust’s involvement in predatory lending and foreclosures, including with deeds that list Bankers Trust as the “lender” -- undercutting BT’s argument that it is not responsible for these predatory loans. Also on March 8, ICP and the Delaware Community Reinvestment Action Council made a similar, 30-page filing with the Delaware Banking Commissioner, detailing Bankers Trust’s many foreclosures in Delaware, including in Wilmington and New Castle, and comparing these with the indirect CRA programs of Bankers Trust (Delaware). Preparations are being made for the Delaware Banking Department's public hearing, currently scheduled for March 25. Updates forthcoming... Meanwhile, late on March 5, the Federal Reserve Board faxed ICP a letter stating that improperly withheld information about the application, including internal Fed communications and the Pooling Agreements between Bankers Trust and the predatory lender Delta Funding, would not be released to ICP. The Fed’s letter states that the FRB Secretary has “reconsidered” the previous withholding, based on “additional facts” -- without explaining what those facts are. ICP is preparing a further submission to the Fed (including copies of deeds that list Bankers Trust as the mortgage lender), which submission, it seems clear based on the Fed’s own erroneous withholding of information, including the “Pooling Agreements” between Bankers Trust and Delta Funding, the Fed will have to consider. http://www.innercitypress.org/hotissue.html As the financial services industry becomes more complex -- and deregulated -- new issues of interest and concern to consumers and communities arise. These include the current proliferation of high interest rate, so-called subprime lending, including by large U.S. bank including Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo; the proper application of the Community Reinvestment Act to Internet banks; and continuing (though somewhat abated by the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999) dash by insurance and other companies to get savings bank charters, etc.. .... An even more troubling (and less scrutinized) issue is the involvement of investment banks, and even wholesale commercial banks like Bankers Trust, in the subprime market, and with predatory loans. This is an issue ICP raised to the Federal Reserve Board in connection with the Bankers Trust - Deutsche Bank merger, and regarding Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bancorp. Other ongoing campaigns include Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase.... When confronted last year with evidence of Bankers Trust’s (now Deutsche Bank’s) and Republic’s (now HSBC’s) involvement with predatory lenders, the Fed claimed it could do nothing. The American Banker, to its credit, captured some of this Johnny-Come-Lately (if Johnny comes at all) aspect to Greenspan’s speech, headlining its story, “Greenspan Wades In On Predatory Lending, Joining Other Regulators.” http://schakowsky.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2444&Itemid=17DECEMBER 11, 2000SCHAKOWSKY APPLAUDS LETTER SIGNED BY 200 ORGANIZATIONS CALLING ON CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN TO CURTAIL PREDATORY LENDING WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) today applauded the effort by more than 200 organizations calling on Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to use his authority to curtail predatory lending. "This is an impressive grassroots effort. I hope that Chairman Greenspan will take respond and act by sendng a loud message to predatory lenders that they will no longer be permitted to rob homeowners of their homes," Schakowsky said. Schakowsky is the author of the Anti-Predatory Lending Act and has also written Chairman Greenspan and other government officials urging them to use their regulatory powers to protect homeowners from predatory lenders. In Chicago, the soaring number of foreclosures is directly linked to the increasing number of predatory lenders operating the subprime market. Schakowsky's bill would place strict federal guidelines to drive predatory lenders out of business. Below is the letter to Chairman Greenspan. Chairman Alan Greenspan Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System 20th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20551 Re: Adding financed single-premium credit insurance to HOEPA points and fees Dear Chairman Greenspan: Homeownership not only supplies families with shelter, it also provides a way to build wealth and economic security. Unfortunately, too many American homeowners are losing their homes, as well as the wealth they spent a lifetime building, because of harmful home equity lending practices. To address this problem, we understand that the Federal Reserve Board is considering modifying the HOEPA regulations. We are writing to strongly urge you to do so immediately. We believe that it is absolutely essential that the Board modify the HOEPA regulations to curtail abusive lending by including financed single-premium credit insurance (along with functionally similar products like debt cancellation and debt suspension agreements) in the definition of "points and fees". Credit insurance may be useful when paid for on a monthly basis. In the single-premium case, the total premiums for generally a five-year period are added to the amount of the loan. The borrower then pays interest on this amount for the life of the loan and has not even begun reducing principal by the time the five-year period expires. When the borrower moves or refinances away from a subprime loan after five years, the up-front payment, which no longer protects the loan, is stripped directly out of the borrower's home equity. This is why Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S. Departments of Treasury and HUD, bills introduced in the U.S. Senate and House Banking Committees, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta and the North Carolina General Assembly have all condemned the practice for all home loans. Conventional loans almost never include, much less finance, credit insurance. In 1994, the Board stated that "The legislative history [of HOEPA] includes credit insurance premiums as an example of fees that could be included, if evidence showed that the premiums were being used to circumvent the statute." It has become clear that unscrupulous lenders have indeed used the exclusion of credit insurance from "points and fees" to circumvent the application of HOEPA to loans that really are "high cost".Financed credit insurance alone exceeds the HOEPA limits in many cases - up to 20% of the loan amount - yet the borrowers do not qualify for HOEPA protections. The Board should address this evasion by including these fees in the definition of "points and fees". Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, American Association of Retired People, organizational sign-on** ... **In many cases organizations have signed on, but as a rule it should be assumed that organizational names are included for identification purposes only. cc: Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., Vice Chairman Governor Edward M. Gramlich Governor Edward W. Kelley, Jr. Governor Laurence H. Meyer
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #22 on: May 03, 2010, 01:06:01 PM » |
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Key to the scam: Like Fantasy Football - Synthetic CDO's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_CDOJoe Nocera wrote in the New York Times that prior to the creation of CDS and synthetic CDO's, you could have only as much exposure as there were mortgage bonds in existence. At their peak, approximately $1 trillion in subprime and Alt-A mortgages were securitized by Wall Street. However, the introduction of the CDS and synthetic CDO changed that. Unlike a “normal” CDO, which contained the bonds themselves, the synthetic version contains CDS — derivatives that “referenced” a particular group of mortgage bonds. Once synthetic CDO’s became popular, Wall Street no longer needed to actually originate new subprime loans. It could make an infinite number of bets on the bonds that already existed, as long as investors agreed to take the other side of the bet. One of the reasons synthetic CDO became popular was that the subprime companies were starting to run out of risky borrowers to make bad loans to in 2006-2007. Synthetic CDO enabled investors to bet against (take a "short" position in) mortgage bonds and housing prices more generally.[4] The New York Times reported that from 2005 through 2007, at least $108 billion of synthetic CDO were issued, according to Dealogic, a financial data firm. The actual volume was much higher because synthetic CDO and other customized trades are unregulated and often not reported to any financial exchange or market.[5] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/out-of-thin-air-synthetic-cdos-pumped-bubble-2010-04-26'Out of thin air' Synthetic CDOs, at center of Goldman suit, inflated the credit bubbleApril 26, 2010, SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The securities at the crux of the Securities and Exchange Commission's case against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. inflated the credit bubble, leaving even more losses when it popped, structured-finance experts and investors said in the wake of the recent civil-fraud charge against the investment bank. Some called for the synthetic collateralized debt obligations -- which are baskets of derivatives known as credit-default swaps -- to be banned."Derivatives and synthetic securities have been used to create imaginary value out of thin air," George Soros, chairman of $27 billion hedge-fund firm Soros Fund Management, wrote in a column posted on his Web site last week. "More triple-A CDOs were created than there were underlying triple-A assets. This was done on a large scale in spite of the fact that all of the parties involved were sophisticated investors," he added. "The process went on for years, and culminated in a crash that caused wealth destruction amounting to trillions of dollars. It cannot be allowed to continue." "Synthetic CDOs should be abolished," Janet Tavakoli, a structured-finance specialist who wrote a book about CDOs in 2003, said in a recent interview. " They're too complex and provide no real benefit. They only existed to game the system or hide losses." The SEC alleged that Goldman Sachs /quotes/comstock/13*!gs/quotes/nls/gs (GS 150.20, +5.00, +3.44%) didn't tell investors in a synthetic CDO called Abacus 2007-AC1 that hedge-fund firm Paulson & Co. helped structure the deal, and also was betting against it. Goldman and Paulson have denied wrongdoing. Read about the charges. Because they weren't based on real assets, such investments were tricky to value. When the housing market collapsed, the existence of such hard-to-value securities in the financial system caused havoc as counterparties struggled to find out who had lost money. Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman banker named in the SEC's case, described such problems in a January 2007 email, just as the subprime-mortgage meltdown was gaining steam. "I'm trading a product which a month ago was worth $100 and which today is worth $93 and which on average is losing 25 cents a day," Tourre wrote, according to recent Goldman disclosures. "When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: 'Well, what if we created a 'thing', which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?') it sickens the heart to see it shot down in mid-flight," Tourre added in the email. Read about other emails from Goldman executive charged by regulators. Packaging Synthetic CDOs sat at the end of a long chain of boom-time transactions that began with the origination of mortgages and other loans. These assets were packaged up by investment banks and sold as asset-based securities, including residential mortgage-backed securities, or RMBS. CDOs were created by taking pieces of RMBS and other securities, packaging them up again and reselling them. Demand for such investments was so strong during the credit boom that there weren't enough underlying assets to build new ones. So Wall Street came up with a way of creating CDOs that didn't need actual assets. The result was synthetic CDOs. These are formed by writing credit-default swaps on bits of RMBS and other asset-backed securities. (These swaps pay out in the event of default.) Once enough of these derivatives contracts were written, investment banks bundled them up into new CDOs and sold them. http://www.shadowtraders.com/futuresblog/?p=2609The untold Magnetar story April 19th, 2010 Full story here from Janet Tavakoli. Magnetar was also very, um, generous to Rahm Emmanuel to the tune of $1 million. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/propublicas-and-ny-times_b_542441.htmlProPublica, Planet Money, and radio show This American Life recently carried stories about Magnetar, a hedge fund that profited from the housing crisis. Unfortunately, many thought it was a fresh revelation. Magnetar wasn’t a previously unknown hedge fund. Magnetar did not create the synthetic CDO structure, and the magnitude of Magnetar’s role in the subprime crisis has been overblown. The New York Times recently wrote that the synthetic CDO story has only begun to emerge in recent months, and referenced the ProPublica story. (“A Wall Street Invention Let the Crisis Mutate,” April 16, 2010. I was mentioned as an early critic of synthetic CDOs.) Yet, more than two years ago the Wall Street Journal featured Merrill Lynch, Magnetar, N.I.R. and others involved in a failed synthetic CDO called Norma in a PAGE ONE investigative report on December 27, 2007, and followed up with another article on Magnetar’s strategy. Even earlier, on December 17, 2007, WSJ had a front page article in its markets section reporting a potential legal battle involving MBIA, Wachovia, Deutsche and UBS for the cash of Sagittarius, a synthetic CDO (in which Magnetar had also invested) that had declared an event of default. The Wall Street Journal had done many investigative articles on value-destroying CDOs, some even earlier.*The Wall Street Journal did some brilliant investigative reporting in the fall of 2007, and Washington did nothing. The reports were early enough to plan for the worst, take corrective action, and minimize damage. The news appeared before Bear Stearns imploded in March 2008, and the financial crisis came to a head in September 2008. [I was quoted in all the WSJ articles referenced in this commentary, which is why the links were handy. WSJ also published many other synthetic CDO exposes as did other financial media. See also my endnote on Magnetar.] Classic and Massive Ponzi SchemeMy book on the financial crisis, Dear Mr. Buffett (Wiley 2009), explains how Wall Street banks were the key architects of the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the capital markets. Phony debt packages (RMBS, CDOs) supplied the money for unwise–often predatory and fraudulent–mortgage lending. Banks had close business relationships with (and often direct investments in) mortgage lenders and mortgage loan servicers. Wall Street banks stuffed bad loans and bad loan packages into even more complex packages–including synthetic CDOs–to disguise problems and continue to earn bonuses. As everything started to fall apart, banks accelerated the scheme. They produced the most complex value-destroying deals in the shortest period of time. These are the classic characteristics of a Ponzi scheme, which is illegal. Washington Ignored Pre-Crisis Media Reports Synthetic CDOs made the financial crisis worse. Many types of financial entities were involved, and the following media warnings are only two examples that should have spurred Washington and regulators to act. In May 2007, ten months before Bear Stearns imploded, Business Week’s cover story exposed value-destroying synthetic CDOs in Bear Stearns Asset Management’s hedge funds. (Bloomberg News also covered the story). The hedge funds imploded in June 2007, and Bear Stearns absorbed the hedge funds’ “assets.” In March 2008, JPMorgan Chase bought Bear Stearns to save it from collpase. Citigroup created synthetic CDOs with the failed Bear Stearns hedge funds. Cititroup also gave the hedge funds a $200 million loan, so it’s remarkable none of this came up in last week’s FCIC hearings. [See embedded articles here: "Congress's FCIC Nearly Nailed Citigroup Executives to the Wall--Then Blew It"] In a Wall Street Journal article in August 2007, I asserted AIG failed to write down losses for its credit derivatives linked to synthetic CDOs. In early October 2007, the Wall Street Journal wrote about a value-destroying synthetic CDO involving now-debased bond insurer MBIA. In the WSJ’s January 14, 2008 article on Magnetar’s strategy, Calyon was identified as the underwriter of a synthetic CDO called Cetus. Calyon was one of AIG’s trading partners involved with other CDOs (unrelated to Magnetar)–including some done jointly with Goldman Sachs–that were purchased in the AIG bailout. AIG should never have been bailed out without pre-conditions. (see “Goldman Sachs: Spinning Gold“) Officials did nothing while the banks damaged the economy, but they acted very quickly when they needed to save the banks. In the months preceding the crisis, officials said the problem could be contained, but main stream media articles already showed they needed to perform investigations and institute financial reform. The following video (C-Span April 2009) explains how cheap money, wide-spread bad (often predatory) lending, phony securities, credit derivatives, and Wall Street banks’ massive over-borrowing led to our current financial crisis. Yet there is still no meaningful reform. The Wall Street Journal’s Serena Ng and Carrick Mollenkamp wrote a front page about Merrill, Magnetar, and others involved in a CDO called Norma. “Wall Street Wizardry Amplified Credit Crisis,” December 27, 2010 – This was a PAGE ONE article. On January 14, 2008 the Wall Street Journal’s Serena Ng and Carrick Mollenkamp explained Magnetar’s strategy, “A Fund Behind Astronomical Losses.” The Wall Street Journal’s Aaron Lucchetti wrote about the complexity of the final payouts for a value-destroying synthetic CDO called Sagittarius (MBIA (LaCrosse Financial Products), Deutsche, Wachovia, UBS ended up in a dispute over the cash): “CDO Battles: Royal Pain Over Who Gets What” December 17, 2007. This article appeared on the front page of the Markets (C1) section. Susan Pulliam, Randall Smith, and Michael Siconolfi wrote a PAGE ONE article on serious CDO pricing issues including shenanigans such as trades with various hedge funds to inflate marks and gimmicks to temporarily disguise the risk (I was quoted in the article). This was before Lehman’s famous gimmick of REPO 105. “Investors Face an Age of Murky Pricing,” Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2007. End Note: Synthetic CDOs were well-known to professionals years before Magentar got involved. Another hedge fund in this network is Magnetar Capital, whose chairman and senior partner is Michael Gross, formerly a founding partner of Apollo Management, which is run by Milken’s closest crony Leon Black Synthetic collateralized debt obligations, which use credit derivatives technology, made the mortgage crisis worse by enabling the cover-up of losses. In 2003, I wrote a book on the dangers of synthetic CDOs, called “Collateralized Debt Obligations & Structured Finance.” It includes the structure used by Magnetar and other hedge funds in the recent mortgage debacle, but the example used corporate credit risk (Wiley, 2003, Chapter 6). I don’t know the first person to use that structure, but it wasn’t new. The second edition released in 2008 explains the role of structured finance in the subprime crisis in more detail. Synthetic CDOs and many other new structures were used. [I sent gratis copies of each edition to the head of every branch of the Federal Reserve system when they were first published. I also sent a copy to the Chairman (Greenspan and later Bernanke) and received an acknowledgement.] The first edition (2003) was written before subprime lending exploded. In subsequent years, I warned about new growing problems with subprime (ABS CDOs and synthetic CDOs) at CFA conferences, professional conferences, in numerous articles, in main stream media, and at the International Monetary Fund (April 2005). The 2008 edition consolidates some of those warnings and explains the deterioration in the financial markets due to many types of corrupt structured financial products. One of the key people at Magnetar, David Snyderman, was in the structured products group at Citadel in August 2004 (and joined Magnetar in mid 2005). At that time, the group he headed asked me to meet with them after reading my CDO book. They said my book gave them the idea to apply the structure to the other loan markets, but banks had already approached many hedge funds with this trade to get around post-Enron accounting issues (among other reasons). The documentation for mortgage loans had already been developed, albeit ISDA didn’t issue a template until June 2005; as usual it was behind market practitioners. As I recall, Snyderman did not attend his group’s meeting on that day. I declined to get involved, since my book was written as a warning, not a manual for mischief. To the best of my knowledge, the entire group left Citadel shortly thereafter and scattered to various shops. [In 1998, I wrote the first public book that explains problems with credit derivatives, Credit Derivatives (Wiley, 1998), before Long Term Capital Management blew up. Banks had a lot of risk to hedge funds using certain types of credit derivatives (total return swaps and esoteric credit derivatives), and I wrote that banks' exposure was too great, because hedge funds were overleveraged and could easily blow up. At the time, I sent gratis copies to the Fed heads.] |
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #23 on: May 03, 2010, 01:17:34 PM » |
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The Sharpies are thinking up new scams:Understand: Goldman Sachs was the "casino operator" . The "Private Equity firms" are the active scammers...http://www.milkeninstitute.org/events/events.taf?eventid=GC10&cat=GC&id=274&function=detailThe 2010 Milken Institute Global Conference was full of insight, inspiration and entertainment, with a diverse slate of speakers from Wesley Clark, T. Boone Pickens, Maria Shriver, Nouriel Roubini and Eli Broad, to Tim Pawlenty, Meredith Whitney, Biz Stone, Richard Beckman and Les Moonves. This year's discussions have started the process of moving policy toward realistic solutions. More than 3,000 attendees gathered in Los Angeles for this year's event, representing some 60 nations. As it does every year, the Global Conference provided a one-of-a-kind setting for attendees to meet informally, forge business ties, hear groundbreaking ideas and gain fresh perspectives from a diverse group of thought leaders. Our panel discussions spanned the world, from the future of the Eurozone and growth in China to investment opportunities in India, Brazil and Africa. Speakers tackled everything from rebalancing America's energy portfolio to nuclear non-proliferation, from financial regulation to the process of innovation. Follow the links below to read about the highlights in our "Global Dispatches" or watch videos of individual sessions. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/04/27/at-milken-conference-goldman-defended-and-cast-as-robin-hood-in-reverse/tab/article/April 27, 2010, 5:00 AM ET At Milken Conference, Goldman Defended and Cast as Robin Hood in ReverseBy Jon Hilsenrath Goldman Sachs is at the center of much discussion – and more than a few jokes – at this year’s Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles. On one panel, James McCaughan, chief executive of Principal Global Investors, likened Goldman to Robin Hood in reverse: It took from the poor and gave to the rich, he said. Vicente Fox, former president of Mexico trotted out a projection by Goldman that Mexico would be the world’s fifth largest economy by 2040.“Today, it is not much of an endorsement,” he noted to muffled laughter. For the most part, however, the titans of Wall Street and corporate America that congregate here are a sympathetic crowd, and a group worried about the broader populist backlash reverberating back to financial firms and corporate boardrooms. One endorsement for Goldman came from a customer, James Dinan, chief executive of the $12 billion hedge fund York Capital Management, which Goldman serviced as a primary dealer. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Goldman – which alleges it misled some customers about mortgage trades for the benefit of itself and others — has left observers wondering whether Goldman’s customers will flee. Don’t count Mr. Dinan among them. He said he valued Goldman’s market savvy during the crisis more than he worried about the profits it made on its own trades. “At the end of the day, you really want strong counterparties,” Mr. Dinan said. The firm’s strong financial position made him feel comfortable keeping his money there during the financial crisis, he said. He pulled his cash out of other big Wall Street firms at the time. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent Wall Street lawyers whose firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, represents Goldman, said the firm should be judged on “the facts as they emerge,” and not an “evil empire” mentality that is gripping the public.York’s Mr. Dinan and Sullivan’s Mr. Cohen, in a panel on the future of Wall Street, had sobering observations about how financial firms more broadly will adjust to new regulations brewing in Washington. Mr. Dinan said efforts to regulate pay at big Wall Street banks wouldn’t work because employees will hop to where the money is best. Traders today have no loyalty to their firms, he said. “They’re going to go where the best deal is.” If Goldman or Citi don’t pay its traders nice cash bonuses every year, “they will lose their people…the market is just going to move.” Kenneth Moelis, an investment banker who was also on the panel, drew an analogy between bank regulation and the 17-year-old New Jersey teen who was able to hack into Apple’s iPhone system despite the firm’s efforts to protect it. “You’re never going to get it right,” he said. “That 17-year old hacker is probably going to be a prop trader,” he said, referring to the bank traders who make bundles for their firms taking big risks. Mr. Cohen said tougher rules for banks could drive more business into the less-regulated shadow banking system. “Activity will flow to a point where it will face less restraint,” he said. He had this warning for bankers: Watch about for tough new bank capital rules being designed by regulators in Basel, Switzerland. They could prove “far more significant” than regulatory reform in Washington. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2010/04/leveraged-buyouts-are-back-milken-conference-panelists-say.htmlLeveraged buyouts are back, Milken conference panelists sayApril 28, 2010 | 5:25 am Unemployment is high and the housing market remains weak. But in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, private equity players could hardly be more upbeat. A panel of private equity fund managers at the Milken Institute's annual Global Conference celebrated the comeback of highly leveraged deals -- which had ground almost to a halt during the financial crisis. "What a difference a year makes," enthused Leon Black, head of Apollo Management in New York. Apollo Management, which is run by Milken’s closest crony Leon Black. Black and the other buyout honchos attributed the return of debt-financed acquisitions to the recovery in the credit markets and the overall economy. "The high-yield market is probably better today than it ever has been," said Scott Sperling, co-president of Thomas H. Lee Partners in Boston, referring to the junk bonds that finance many private equity transactions. A new problem faces private equity investors now: The prices of target companies have shot up faster than fund managers have been able to scoop up bargains. " A lot of the low-hanging fruit, frankly, is gone," Black said. "The snapback has been unbelievably dramatic." Not surprisingly, the managers bemoaned what Black termed the "populist wave" helping to fuel the Obama administration's effort to boost oversight of the financial industry. "You're seeing some wacky regulation, which makes running our business a lot more difficult," said Ted Virtue, chief executive of MidOcean Partners, which buys midsize companies. Still, the private equity business has largely escaped the scrutiny aimed at other areas of Wall Street. "I'm glad I'm not Goldman Sachs today," Black said with a wide smile. -- Walter Hamilton
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #24 on: May 03, 2010, 06:43:26 PM » |
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When will these people be put in jail? No they give them jobs at the SEC!http://www.forexyard.com/en/news/SEC-enforcement-chief-oversaw-Deutsche-CDOs-WSJ-2010-04-24T020219Z-USUS SEC enforcement chief oversaw Deutsche CDOs-WSJ Saturday April 24, 2010 07:02:02 PM GMT SEC/KHUZAMI-CDOS* Khuzami oversaw Deutsche Bank lawyers involved in CDOs* Khuzami resume a non-issue, SEC tells newspaperNEW YORK, April 23 (Reuters) - Robert Khuzami, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement chief, oversaw Deutsche Bank AG lawyers who were closely in volved in developing collateralized debt obligations, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. Such securities are at the heart of the SEC's fraud lawsuit filed on April 16 against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Before joining the SEC last year, Khuzami was general counsel for the Americas at Deutsche Bank.As part of that job, he worked with lawyers who advised on CDOs issued by the German bank and what to disclose about them, and also oversaw more than 100 lawyers who defended the bank against lawsuits, the newspaper said, citing the people. It is not clear whether Khuzami personally reviewed any structured-finance deal documents in his role at Deutsche Bank, and outside law firms were involved in CDO work, the newspaper said in its April 24 edition. The SEC and Deutsche Bank did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Deutsche Bank CDOs that were similar to the Abacus CDO that is the focus of the Goldman lawsuit did not rely on outside firms to help choose the underlying portfolios, and thus "eliminated the potential for deception with respect to the role of such a manager," spokesman Ted Meyer told the newspaper. An SEC spokesman said Khuzami has recused himself from matters related to Deutsche Bank, and SEC officials call Khuzami's resume a nonissue, the newspaper said. Deutsche Bank and others were sued in June 2008 by M&T Bank Corp <MTB.N>, which alleged it was deceived into investing in CDOs that had been fraudulently touted as "safe, secure and nearly risk-free." The Buffalo, New York-based lender sought to recover more than $82 million it said it lost. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Richard Chang) Hedge fund managers like Paulson typically wanted to bet against so-called synthetic CDOs that used derivatives contracts in place of actual securities. Those were less common. MORE LAWSUITS? The SEC's charges against Goldman are already stirring up investors who lost big on the CDOs, according to well-known plaintiffs lawyer Jake Zamansky. "I've been contacted by Goldman customers to bring lawsuits to recover their losses," Zamansky said. " It's going to go way beyond ABACUS. Regulators and plaintiffs' lawyers are going to be looking at other deals, to what kind of conflicts Goldman has." An investigation by the online site ProPublica into Chicago-based hedge fund Magnetar's 2007 bets against CDO-related debt also turned up allegations of conflicts of interest against Deutsche Bank, Merrill and JPMorgan Chase. Magnetar has denied any wrongdoing. Deutsche Bank declined to comment. Merrill and JPMorgan had no immediate comment.The Magnetar deals have spawned at least one lawsuit. Dutch bank Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank B.A., or Rabobank for short, filed suit in June against Merrill Lynch over Magnetar's involvement with a CDO called Norma. " Merrill Lynch teamed up with one of its most prized hedge fund clients -- an infamous short seller that had helped Merrill Lynch create four other CDOs -- to create Norma as a tailor-made way to bet against the mortgage-backed securities market," Rabobank said in its complaint filed on June 12 in the Supreme Court of New York. The two matters are unrelated and the claims today are not only unfounded but were not included in the Rabobank lawsuit filed nearly a year ago, said Merrill Lynch spokesman Bill Halldin. Rabobank was a lender, not an investor, he added. Regulators at the SEC and around the country said they would be investigating other deals beyond ABACUS. "We are looking very closely at these products and transactions," Robert Khuzami, head of the SEC's enforcement division, said. "We are moving across the entire spectrum in determining whether there was (fraud)." Meanwhile, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement his office had already begun a preliminary review of the Goldman case. "A key question is whether this case was an isolated incident or part of a pattern of investment banks colluding with hedge funds to purposely tank securities they created and sold to unwitting investors," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement.(Reporting by Aaron Pressman and Joseph Giannone. Additional reporting by Dan Wilchins and Rachelle Younglai, editing by Leslie Gevirtz) http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/20100417/748/tbs-analysis-goldman-cdo-case-could-be-t.htmlANALYSIS - Goldman CDO case could be tip of icebergThe case against Goldman Sachs Group Inc over a 2007 mortgage derivatives deal it set up for a hedge fund manager could be just the start of Wall Street's legal troubles stemming from the subprime meltdown. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman with fraud for failing to disclose to buyers of a collaterlized debt obligation known as ABACUS that hedge fund manager John Paulson helped select mortgage derivatives he was betting against for the deal. Goldman denied any wrongdoing. The practice of creating synthetic CDOs was not uncommon in 2006 and 2007. At the tail end of the real estate bubble, some savvy investors began to look for more ways to profit from the coming calamity using derivatives. Goldman shares plunged 13 percent on Friday and shares of other financial firms that created CDOs also fell. Shares of Deutsche Bank AG ended down 9 percent, Morgan Stanley 6 percent and Bank of America, which owns Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup each declined 5 percent. Merrill, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank were the top three underwriters of CDO transactions in 2006 and 2007, according to data from Thomson Reuters. But most of those deals included actual mortgage-backed securities, not related derivatives like the ABACUS deal. http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/580274-credit-lime/55903-winners-from-the-recent-run-up-in-greek-credit-default-swapsWinners from the recent run-up in Greek credit default swaps Feb 24, 2010 12:01 AM Yesterday Bloomberg identified Fort Worth, Texas-based Corriente Advisors and their European Divergence Master Fund LP as one of the smart traders who correctly bet and won on the deterioration of some European sovereign government debt - primarily by way of CDS. Today WSJ just put out a more detailed report on Corriente and its manager, Mark Hart III, which will likely draw the ire of at least some public officials. Whether such criticism is warranted or not does not detract from the fact that Mark Hart was one of the few publicized geniuses of the buy-side who apparently not only called Greece and the Euro debt crisis but the subprime and Iceland debt fiascos as well. Move over John Paulson and Kyle Bass, there's a new entrant to the ranks [ So who's 800 million was he playing with and who gave him the "tip"? http://www.gibidallas.com/speakers.htmMark L. Hart, III - Corriente Partners, LPMark L. Hart, III is Founder, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Corriente Advisors, L.L.C., an SEC-registered investment advisor in Fort Worth, Texas. Corriente has more than $800 million in net assets under management through various vehicles including Corriente Master Fund, L.P., a global macro hedge fund, European Divergence Fund, L.P. and Corriente Biotechnology Partners, L.P.. Mark is responsible for all investment decisions for the firm and is actively involved in the trading of its portfolios. Mark is also Co-Founder and Co-Manager, along with Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Partners, L.P., of Subprime Credit Strategies Fund, L.P., which was launched in September 2006. Mark's fifteen years of experience primarily encompass hedge fund management and securities analysis. Prior to forming Corriente Advisors in 2001, Mark was a founder, principal and managing director of Tarpon Advisors, Inc., a hedge fund manager in Dallas, Texas. Before he joined Tarpon Advisors, Inc., Mark was a managing director with Culmen Group, L.P., a Fort Worth, Texas investment firm. Prior to joining Culmen, Mark was an analyst and then an associate in New York and Beverly Hills with Bannon & Company, Inc., an investment banking firm founded by former Goldman, Sachs & Co. bankers. Mark earned a B.A. in the Plan II Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994. http://blog.creditlime.com/2010/02/24/greece-part-4/http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE60G0BK20100117Austria rail, Deutsche settle $884 mln CDO disputeSun Jan 17, 2010 VIENNA, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Austria's state-owned railway OeBB and Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) have settled a legal dispute over about 613 million euros ($884 million) worth of derivatives which had pushed OeBB into a near 1 billion euro loss last year. OeBB will pay 295 million euros to Deutsche Bank in return for terminating a collateralised debt obligation (CDO) under which OeBB had guaranteed for as much as 613 million euros of risk, the companies said in a joint statement over the weekend. Under the deal, OeBB will also stop pursuing a lawsuit against Deutsche in which it claimed the German bank had given misleading and incomplete investment advice. OeBB lost the case in an Austrian court last year but its appeal was pending. OeBB entered the CDO with Deutsche Bank in 2005. The assets underlying the CDO are asset-backed bonds and other CDOs, and the package expires by 2015, according to OeBB's annual report. The state railway operator had started booking charges for possible losses from the CDO in 2007 and wrote off the remaining value of 420 million euros in 2008. This charge contributed to OeBB's swing to a net loss of 966 million euros in 2008. OeBB and Deutsche said that the 295 million euro payment reflected "market prices". This will also allow OeBB to write back some of the charges it made, which will lead to a positive effect of 280 million euros for its 2009 result, it said.
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citizenx
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« Reply #25 on: May 04, 2010, 02:51:04 AM » |
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OTC Interest Rate Derivatives are going to make CDO's look like a walk in the park.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #26 on: May 04, 2010, 12:52:39 PM » |
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OTC Interest Rate Derivatives are going to make CDO's look like a walk in the park. Yes, It looks like they are going to go back to the playbook and bring back one of the older scams that have worked so well in the past. Derivatives as a method of counterfeiting and destruction of the currency:See also: SEC approves ICE credit-default swap clearing plan |
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #27 on: May 05, 2010, 12:10:30 AM » |
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This is a very good article on how the bankers were buying their own paper and calling it "Insatiable Investor Demand" Notice how many recent articles there are now compared to LAST year when they were actively blowing smoke on the scam. Now that it's cleared, we see it in it's naked glory. These bankers had to know the fix was in and that the word was the government with Hank Paulson's help (ie Fed Res) would bail them out and they'd be able to keep all the billions they'd earned for the last few years. Leyman Bros. were the fall guy and I think they were told that they were the containment vessel event and that they would be merged like the other banks/brokers. And look at the results, they've pulled billions (trillions?) out the the real economy and concentrated it into their hands. They completely control whatever recovery there will be and who will recover. They get their "Money for Nothing and Chick's for Free"Excerpts: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/04/tom-adams-the-myth-of-%E2%80%9Cinsatiable%E2%80%9D-investor-demand-for-cdos.htmlWednesday, April 14, 2010Tom Adams: The Myth of “Insatiable” Investor Demand for CDOsBy Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive One of the ongoing myths of the financial crisis is that investor demand was what motivated the creation of so many bad securities. Banks, journalists and academics have all described the period prior to the crisis as a period of “insatiable investor demand” for things like subprime mortgages and CDOs. According to the conventional wisdom as retold by Michael Lewis and countless others, this mania-level investor demand is what caused banks and lenders to bundle up mortgage loans and related bonds as fast as they could. As Yves Smith has noted on a number of occasions, the notion of “insatiable investor demand” is nonsense. Real cash investors were not the ones demanding more subprime loans and the bonds that they got packaged into. The demand was artificial and a form of Ponzi scheme. It came, overwhelmingly, from CDOs. ... In addition, an even bigger portion of the so-called insatiable investor demand came from the banks themselves who had been tasked with selling the bonds. In particular, banks such as UBS, other European banks, and Citigroup, devised a strategy to purchase for themselves the senior most AAA rated portions of the CDOs. They claim that this was an attractive investment strategy. It was also useful as a way of continuing to feed the machine with “buying” for more subprime mortgage bonds. ... Yesterday, Bloomberg provided further compelling evidence of where the “demand” for CDOs, came from: Citigroup’s liquidity puts. According to the Bloomberg story, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission may be making the case that Citigroup used $14 billion worth of liquidity puts to aid in the purchase of CDOs by Citigroup sponsored commercial paper programs. Basically, Citigroup “sold” the CDOs to investors in the commercial paper but, because investors likely balked at the risk in the CDOs, Citigroup provided liquidity puts to the investors. These puts allowed investors to “put” the bonds back to Citigroup if they declined substantially in value. Which they did, causing Citigroup to buy back about $25 billion of CDOs at about a third of their face value. Why did Citigroup provide these liquidity puts for the CDOs? To help get the bonds sold in a market that would have otherwise been saturated and unwilling to buy any more of the CDOs. Prior to 2006, AIG and the bond insurers provided guarantees on a large portion of the AAA rated CDO bonds backed by MBS. This insurance helped investors get comfortable with the credit risk in CDOs (we all know how that turned out for AIG and the other insurers). Based on calculations I’ve made from publicly available transaction data, over 65% of the mortgage related CDOs issued between 2003 and 2005 had insurance provided on the senior bonds by AIG and the bond insurers. By 2007, thanks to AIG’s pull back from the CDO market and the size limitations of the bond insurers, this percentage fell to approximately 25%. Citigroup’s liquidity puts were basically a form of bond insurance and thus a way to give investors comfort that they didn’t have to worry about credit. By “selling” the CDOs to the commercial paper programs, subject to a liquidity put, Citigroup completely fabricated demand for CDOs or, to put it another way, became the insurer in AIG’s absence. ... The reason Citigroup and others were so eager to keep the CDO machine going (and growing) was because the deals were so lucrative for the bank management and its employees. The fees in the CDO business were among the highest in banking and there were all sorts of additional ways of generating fees and income using the CDO technology and regulatory arbitrage. So the bankers were highly motivated to find creative ways to find new “buyers” for CDOs so they could reap huge personal rewards – even mid-level CDO bank staffers were lavished with seven figure compensation packages and the top brass made multiples of that. Of course, it’s easy to make money if you assume that the underlying deals have no credit risk. ... The CDO bankers at Citigroup (and the other banks) who pushed their deals into the commercial paper programs, while calling it a “sale”, the bank managers who misreported these risks to the regulators and accountants, and the government officials who fueled the reckless policies with low rates and a total absence of regulatory scrutiny should all be doing the perp walk ( http://www.observer.com/2010/wall-street/end-times-investor ). The entire mortgage related CDO business was a sham. However, it had a tremendously damaging impact on the economy by grossly distorting the mortgage market. In many ways, the CDO business came to resemble a Madoff like Ponzi scheme – new bonds were made to satisfy the “demand” of the CDS short sellers (i.e. Magnetar and company) and the CDO salesmen at the banks who had found the ultimate suckers to dump the bonds on – their own bank and, eventually, the taxpayers.  14 Wall Street - Bankers Trust BuildingNow look at the following and remember the SEC Enforcer worked for "Bankers Trust" on CDO's: Robert Khuzami, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement chief, oversaw Deutsche Bank AG lawyers who were closely involved in developing collateralized debt obligations, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?storyid=%7B3BAB7843-4775-486A-9C96-D928DD107736%7DDeutsche Bank pressured as Goldman case sparks worries Apr 19, 2010 LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Deutsche Bank shares dropped for a second straight session Monday as investors worried that it could become one of the banks embroiled in a probe into mortgage deals if regulators expand their investigations. Shares in Deutsche Bank DB fell 2.5% on Monday on the Xetra trading system in Frankfurt. The bank has now lost nearly 10% of its value since the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a civil case against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS on Friday. The allegations against Goldman center on a claim that the bank misled buyers by not telling them that hedge fund Paulson & Co. had a hand in selecting the mortgages that went into a collateralized debt obligation, while the fund also bet that those same investments would fail. See full story on the charges made against Goldman Sachs. Goldman was a major underwriter of CDOs, doing a little over $40 billion of deals between 2003 and 2007, according to data from Nomura.
Deutsche Bank was close behind Goldman, and was the second-biggest European underwriter of CDOs. UBS UBS did even more deals, with cumulative CDO underwriting of over $50 billion, making it the most active of the European banks, while Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America BAC, was the biggest single player, underwriting more than $90 billion in the period, according to the data.Shares in UBS dropped 3.5% on the SIX Swiss Market and are down 6.2% since the SEC's announcement Friday. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the SEC is investigating whether other deals may have crossed the line into misleading investors. The newspaper said Deutsche Bank, UBS and Merrill were among the firms that created mortgage deals that soon went sour, but that it isn't know what deals the SEC is investigating. From 2005 through late 2006, the U.S. securities arm of Deutsche Bank [Bankers Trust] created several CDOs that sold credit protection on mortgage bonds that hedge-fund clients bet against, the Journal report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Deutsche Bank sold credit-default swaps to the hedge funds, allowing them to bet against the CDOs, and the bank itself then offset its risk by buying swaps that would pay off if the mortgages backing the CDOs weakened, the report said. Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Dirk Hoffmann-Becking said he believes Deutsche Bank is over-valued in general, but that the decline in the stock is excessive as a reaction to the SEC news. He added it's hard to predict anything about likely regulatory action just by looking at the volume of CDOs a bank underwrote or their performance. For example, CDOs underwritten by Goldman between 2005 and 2007 were overall about the best performers, he noted. European nations including the U.K. and Germany could also launch their own investigations, though the focus in those probe is likely to be Goldman Sachs. See story on U.K., German scrutiny of Goldman. Analysts at Nomura said the SEC allegations indicate "a more proactive regulatory environment," which will certainly impact investments banks more than commercial banks. However, the broker said that overall it believes regulators will put a priority on sustaining the economic recovery over forcing restructuring in the banking sector. "The details of the case and the bank's immediate and robust defense suggests to us that the market's reaction was out of proportion with the likely cost and breadth of the problem," Nomura said in a note to clients. |
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #28 on: May 05, 2010, 02:43:49 AM » |
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http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/would-some-big-banks-profit-from-a-greek-debt-default/19373089/Would some Big Banks profit from a Greek Debt Default?Greece is in financial trouble -- and that's creating winners and losers. The losers are the Greek people, who are suffering from the government's austerity measures so Greece can show a more balanced budget -- and perhaps get bailed out by wealthier EU members. Holders of Greek debt could also suffer if Greece defaults. That is, unless you happen to be a big bank or other institutional investor who has bought a credit default swap to offset any loss incurred should Greece actually default on its sovereign debt. But Goldman Sachs Group (GS) -- which has used such credit insurance to bet against Greek debt and earlier helped mask Greece's debt problems -- could come out as a winner. And that has caught the eye of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.To put this situation in perspective, at $300 billion, Greece's debt is about 2.5% of the U.S.'s $12 trillion debt. The three biggest holders of Greek debt are banks in France ($75.4 billion), Switzerland ($64 billion) and Germany ($43.2 billion), according to The New York Times.Rising Prices to Insure Against a Greek Default Here's where the credit default swap (CDS) -- comes into play. A CDS is an insurance-like contract that obligates the CDS seller to pay the CDS buyer a set amount upon a bond issuer's default. A CDS buyer is often a holder of the debt that the CDS "references," but not necessarily. A CDS buyer also can simply be betting that a particular bond issuer, like Greece, will default. If the issuer does default, the CDS holder reaps its payment from the CDS seller, whether it holds the actual bonds or not.And the Times reports that as Greece's financial situation has deteriorated, the amount of outstanding CDSs on Greek debt has skyrocketed by 124% from $38 billion a year ago to $85 billion this month. The increasing risks of Greece defaulting on its debt has pushed up the price to insure $10 million of Greek bonds 42%, from $282,000 in early January to more than $400,000 in February, according to the paper. The CDS market has proved profitable for many U.S. and European banks. For instance, when American International Group (AIG) failed in 2008, the U.S. government made good on billions of CDSs that AIG had written, to the tune of 100 cents on the dollar. Among the banks that got their CDS payments this way were Europe's Société Générale (which got $11.9 billion from the U.S. payout), Deutsche Bank (which got $11.8 billion), UBS ($5 billion) and BNP Paribas ($4.9 billion). Goldman Sachs ($12.9 billion) was among the U.S. beneficiaries of this backdoor bailout.Now, some of these same European banks could profit from a Greek bond default via CDS payouts. Switzerland's Credit Suisse and UBS, France's Société Générale and BNP Paribas and Germany's Deutsche Bank are said to be big CDS players -- although the The New York Times's anonymous sources didn't reveal whether these banks hold CDSs against a default in Greek bonds. A Downgrade Coming? With Moody's (MCO) now threatening a downgrade of Greek debt, the only things that could save Greek bondholders would be a credible plan to cut the Greek budget deficit by 4 percentage points to 8.7% in 2010, according to FT.com, or an EU bailout. However, the Greek austerity plan is unlikely to go through because it's politically toxic. Greek citizens are striking (pictured) and protesting the measures needed to achieve those budget targets, which FT.com says include increases in the country's value-added tax, fuel tax and duties on luxury goods, in addition to more cuts in civil servants' pay. Absent such cuts, Moody's could downgrade Greek debt two notches from A2 to A4. The whole situation raises questions about the role of CDSs here. For example, is Goldman Sachs helping make Greece's debt problem worse -- through its earlier efforts to obscure Greece's true indebtedness -- even as it's now prepared to profit from a Greek default through its CDS buys? And are the banks that hold Greece's debt really going to lose if it defaults, or do they hold CDSs on those bonds that will protect them, or even profit? The world deserves answers.
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citizenx
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« Reply #29 on: May 05, 2010, 02:46:50 AM » |
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Another down day here in Asia due to "Sovereign Debt Crisis" in Europe and the American markets response yesterday. I'll be curious to see how this day ends in Europe.
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EchelonMonitor
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« Reply #30 on: May 06, 2010, 06:42:41 AM » |
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Derivatives are nothing but a promise, and one that is easily broken, kind of like the Federal Reserve Note.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #31 on: May 06, 2010, 07:22:39 PM » |
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http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/new-york-stock-exchange/September 11, 2008, 4:03 pm Short-Sale ConspiraciesDeutsche Bank has been hit with a $575,000 fine, and a censure, over its failure to abide by short-sale rules a couple of years ago. The settlement, announced Wednesday by the New York Stock Exchange’s regulatory arm, has produced triumphant claims on the deepcapture.com blog. This proves, Mark Mitchell writes there, that “Deutsche Bank Securities sold massive amounts of phantom stock.” ... If regulators have any evidence that Deutsche Bank made illegal short sales on behalf of hedge funds, they have yet to disclose it. http://www.nyse.com/DiscAxn/discAxn_09_2008.htmlNYSE - Monthly Disciplinary Actions - September 2008 Case Summary Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc., of New York City, an equities trading permit holder, consented without admitting or denying guilt to findings of Regulation SHO and other violations. Between January 2005 through approximately October 2006 (the "Relevant Period"), Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. ("DBSI") with respect to at least five of its 19 proprietary trading desks (the "Five Desks"), failed to comply with certain NYSE Arca Equities Rules and Regulation SHO ("Reg SHO") requirements with respect to its execution and supervision of short sale orders described in the decision. Specifically, the Firm effected an unquantified but significant number of short sales on at least the Five Desks in securities that were not on the Firm's Easy-To-Borrow List without having borrowed the securities or entered into bona fide arrangements to borrow the securities, or having reasonable grounds to believe that the securities could be borrowed for delivery when due, and without the proper documentation of such.Further, at least two of such Desks did not properly adhere to the independent trading unit aggregation requirements and one trader on each of the two Desks did not correctly mark an unquantified but significant number of proprietary sell orders. As a result, certain short sales were incorrectly marked long, and some of those orders were improperly executed. The Firm also failed to adequately supervise certain traders on at least the Five Desks and failed to maintain and enforce written supervisory procedures concerning proprietary short sales in a manner reasonably designed to achieve compliance with the relevant provisions of Reg SHO and NYSE Arca Equities Rules. NYSE ARCA Equities imposed a penalty of a censure and $575,000 fine. Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. consented to the penalty.http://www.nyse.com/pdfs/08-AE-02.PDFhttp://news.hereisthecity.com/news/business_news/8212.cntns11 September 2008The news agency also reports that, according to a US Senate committee investigation, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, UBS and several other investment banks 'concocted derivatives and stock-loan deals to help offshore hedge funds dodge hundreds of millions of dollars in US taxes'. There have been calls in the US for legislators to make it harder for firms to structure swaps and stock loans for clients specifically to avoid the payment of tax.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #33 on: May 10, 2010, 09:03:05 AM » |
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Goldman Sachs - Short Sale violations: Dec. 9, 2008 to on or about Jan. 22, 2009 Slap on the wrist and sufficiently vague discription of the phantom stocks violations: http://www.nyse.com/DiscAxn/discAxnIndex.htmlhttp://www.nyse.com/DiscAxn/discAxn_05_2010.html#10-NYSE-11Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing, L.P. Disciplined by NYSE and SEC Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing, L.P. Hearing Board Decision: 10-NYSE-11 04 May 2010 An NYSE hearing officer found that from on or about Dec. 9, 2008 to on or about Jan. 22, 2009, Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing, L.P. ("GSEC") violated SEC Rule 204T of Regulation SHO on certain occasions by: failing on approximately 68 occasions to timely close out fail-to-deliver positions in equity securities; accepting on approximately 385 occasions customer short sale orders in certain equity securities for which it had an open fail-to-deliver position that had not been timely closed out in accordance with SEC Rule 204T of Regulation SHO without first borrowing the securities or entering into a bona fide arrangement to borrow the securities (also referred to as the “pre-borrow” requirement); and failing on approximately 68 occasions to timely notify certain customers that there was an open fail-to-deliver position in certain equity securities that had not been timely closed out in accordance with SEC Rule 204T(a) of Regulation SHO. In addition, during the period of Sept. 24, 2008 to Jan. 22, 2009, GSEC failed to reasonably supervise and implement adequate controls to achieve compliance with SEC Rule 204T of Regulation SHO, in violation of NYSE Rule 342. The NYSE imposed a penalty of a censure and a $450,000 fine. The amount to be paid to NYSE Regulation by the Firm shall be reduced by the amount paid by the Firm pursuant to an agreement to pay a civil monetary penalty of $225,000 to the United States Treasury in related proceedings instituted by the Securities and Exchange Commission today. GSEC consented to the penalty. This decision will become final on May 28, 2010. | ----- This is good - a Denial Of Service attack from Credit Suisse Securities :http://www.nyse.com/DiscAxn/discAxn_01_2010.html#09-NYSE-24... on Nov. 14, 2007, beginning at approximately 3:40 p.m., a Credit Suisse proprietary algorithm routed hundreds of thousands of cancel/replace requests to the New York Stock Exchange for orders that had been previously generated by the algorithm, but, due to an unforeseen programming issue, were never sent by the algorithm. The unusually large amount of cancel/replace messages contributed to the over-queuing of message traffic in all of the securities, approximately 975 in total, traded at five posts on the NYSE Trading Floor. Messages, including new orders, modifications of orders, and cancellation requests were frozen in queue and could not be immediately processed. These five posts could not be closed on time, ultimately closing between 4:10 p.m. and 4:27 p.m. The NYSE imposed a penalty of a censure and $150,000 fine. Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC consented to the penalty.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #34 on: May 11, 2010, 11:46:23 AM » |
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Performance that defies logic.... sound like Bernie Madoff?The trading operations of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase made money every single business day in the first quarter, a feat that was a first for the companies and underlines the boom in Wall Street’s investment banking revenues.Goldman’s [GS 143.83 --- UNCH (0) ] trading desk recorded a profit of at least $25 million (£16.8 million) on each of the quarter’s 63 working days, making more than $100 million a day on 35 occasions, according to a regulatory filing issued on Monday. The result, following a series of regulatory probes into Goldman’s trading activities, could fuel criticism of its business model and market behavior. However, JPMorgan [JPM 41.95 --- UNCH (0) ] also achieved a loss-free quarter in its trading unit — making an average of $118 million a day, nearly $5 million an hour — as it built on the gains made during the financial crisis when rivals faltered or failed. Goldman’s executives said the trading performance had been due to its robust risk management and booming markets. ... http://www.cnbc.com/id/37080244 Bilderberg Manipulated Stock Market Crash http://www.infowars.com/bilderberg-manipulated-stock-market-crash/NoWorldSystem May 9, 2010 Evidence that the financial oligarchs manufactured this market crash has been discovered from a 2009 Bilderberg pre-meeting booklet that was obtained by reporter Daniel Estulin. It warns that the Bilderberg is fostering a false sense of recovery of the economy, suckering investors to plunge back into the stock market to only unleash another massive downturn which will create “ massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead,” does this not sound like what occurred on Thursday? Here’s CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo calling the crash in the DOW a manipulated event. “That is ridiculous”, Bartiromo replied. “ I mean this really sounds like market manipulation to me. This is outrageous.” ... Mary Schapiro - Insider who couldn't find Bernie Madoff "looks" for the cause of trading fiasco....Obama Names CFR Member, Goldman Sachs Insider to Top Economic Posts... http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=70503.msg416934#msg416934She is also a member of the Boards of Directors of Duke Energy and Kraft Foods. Ms. Schapiro serves on the RAND Corporation's LRN-RAND Center of Corporate Ethics, Law and Governance Advisory Board. SEC Mary Schapiro - still searching for market plunge cause... Schapiro said regulators were still sifting through more than 17 million trades in listed equities in the hour beginning at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on May 6, and she cited the growth of trading in multiple markets over the past few years for the complexity of the probe. But in some preliminary observations, Schapiro sounded sceptical that a large erroneous trade, the so called "fat finger" scenario, had triggered the brief stock rout. She gave greater weight to theories that a confluence of events were responsible, but had come to no conclusion.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #35 on: May 18, 2010, 10:39:57 AM » |
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I missed this bit : John Paulson's "investment" in Bank Of America:John Paulson's Major investment in 2009 and now in 2010: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-18/paulson-among-funds-adding-to-bank-of-america-stakes-update1-.htmlPaulson Among Funds Adding to Bank of America Stakes (Update1)May 18, 2010, 10:32 AM EDT By Saijel Kishan and David Mildenberg May 18 (Bloomberg) -- John Paulson, the hedge-fund manager who amassed a fortune by betting against U.S. mortgage markets, was among more than 50 investment groups that added at least 5 million shares in Bank of America Corp. during the first quarter.Paulson & Co., based in New York, bought 16.8 million Bank of America shares and held 167.8 million as of March 31, according to a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The largest purchase came from Fidelity Investments, which picked up 42.3 million shares of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank and held 256.8 million as of March 31. Paulson’s reported holdings in financial companies grew 6.5 percent during the quarter. Bank of America remains Paulson’s second-biggest position, with a market value of $2.99 billion, according to the filing. Paulson had told clients in November that shares of the bank may rise to $29.81 by December 2011. Bank of America gained 18 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $16.53 at 10:27 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have gained 9.8 percent this year, compared with a 24 percent increase in the 24-member KBW Bank Index. Bank of America raised $19.3 billion in December selling securities at $15 a share in the biggest sale of stock or preferred shares by a U.S. company since at least 2000. The lender later in December repaid $45 billion of U.S. rescue funds. Paulson left unchanged his Citigroup Inc. stake of 506.7 million shares, according to the filing. The New York-based bank is Paulson’s third-largest reported holding. His biggest reported holding is SPDR Gold Trust, an exchange-traded fund backed by bullion. http://www.businessinsider.com/john-paulson-bank-of-america-is-a-double-from-here-2009-11#ixzz0oIcLp1RvNov. 18, 2009, 6:53 AM Paulson & Co told its clients that Bank of America (BAC) stock will double in the next two years. Paulson's bullish outlook follows the opposite move from SAC Capital, which just sold 90% of its BAC holdings. Bloomberg: “Banks will have passed the current writedown cycle and have visibility for growth in 2012,” the letter said. Bank of America dropped to $2.53 in February amid concern that the U.S. might seize banks that ran short on capital. While the bank “has risen from when we purchased the stock, we believe considerable upside remains,” the letter said. http://seekingalpha.com/article/155907-bank-of-america-is-john-paulson-s-second-largest-holding-after-goldBank of America Is John Paulson's Second Largest Holding after Gold Aug 13, 2009 Do you think anyone else got wind of hedge fund manager John Paulson's move into Bank of America (BAC)? Nah - surely the big boys knowing what the other big boys are doing had nothing to do with it. Paulson is now the 4th largest stakeholder in Bank of America. Considering we have 4 major financial oligarchs who dominate US financial commercial bank assets (plus BAC via their own operations + Countrywide shares an oligopoly in the mortgage market), as long we are sure the US will happily provide cover (which they have made it clear they will), I concur with these banks as long term "sure things". Even too bigger to fail, if you will. As some have said, you literally have Bernanke and Geithner lobbying for you on a daily basis. The balance sheet is still a black hole, but balance sheets don't seem to matter anymore because of the above-mentioned US taxpayer providing backstop on all future losses. So, much like some of my investments are plays on the government using taxpayers money to support certain industries or companies, Paulson is utilizing the same idea - in a much bigger way. Bank of America alone is a $2.7 Billion stake. With the stock up about 25% since the end of June, it appears he already made $500M on his $2.2 investment. Boo and Yah. Billionaire John Paulson’s hedge fund bought 168 million shares of Bank of America Corp. in the second quarter, a regulatory filing showed today, becoming the lender’s fourth-largest shareholder. It’s the fund’s second- biggest holding after SPDR Gold Trust. Paulson & Co.’s stake in the Charlotte, North Carolina- based bank was valued at $2.2 billion as of June 30, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The fund ranked behind State Street Corp., Barclays Global Investors and Vanguard Group Inc. among the bank’s biggest shareholders. Bank of America is the second-largest home lender, trailing Wells Fargo & Co., after acquiring Countrywide Financial Corp. in 2008. Interestingly Paulson also took a large stake in Regions Financial (RF) which was the one troubled regional bank we had attempted to make a play in for many months. (no recent activity of late) Might have to circle back since Paulson's team is hot, and I found things I liked there as well. (market disagreed with me) Paulson also bought 35 million shares of Regions Financial Corp., becoming the second-largest shareholder in the Birmingham, Alabama-based bank, according to the filing. Regions declined 8.4 percent during the quarter. Fifth Third (FITB) also got a lot of attention with 5M new shares bought Paulson reduced his stake in Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF, a fund that mirrors moves in the Amex Gold Miners Index, after selling 11 million shares. He owned a 5.3 percent stake in the fund in the second quarter valued at $227 million, down from 15 percent in the first three months of the year. If you are not familiar with Paulson (this is JOHN not HANK), he was one of the few investors to really nail the financial mess, and famously made buckets of money off of it. Based on that track record, his moves are now watched very closely by the investment public. Paulson’s Credit Opportunities Fund soared almost sixfold in 2007 on bets that subprime mortgages would plummet. Last year, his flagship fund returned 37 percent, compared with a loss of 19 percent for hedge funds on average. Gold and US government backstopped US financials - an interesting combination. He did reduce his stake in the gold MINERS etf (GDX) http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2009/07/wsj-latest-picks-and-pans-from-george.html
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #36 on: May 20, 2010, 07:25:19 AM » |
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This is big: The antitrust investigation alleged collusion in the $2.8 trillion municipal securities market that the government says delivered profits to Wall Street at taxpayers' expense. Major Kickback action IRS believes that CDR, Bank of America and others have colluded to fix pricing - 2 November 2009, http://www.sott.net/articles/show/208875-Conspiracy-of-Banks-Rigging-States-Came-With-CrashConspiracy of Banks Rigging States Came With Crash 18 May 2010 - Martin Z. Braun and William Selway ... " The whole investment process was rigged across the board," said Charlie Anderson, who retired in 2007 as head of field operations for the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt bond division. "It was so commonplace that people talked about it on the phones of their employers and ignored the fact that they were being recorded." Anderson said he referred scores of cases to the Justice Department when he was with the IRS. He estimates that bid rigging cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Anderson said prosecutors are lining up conspirators to plead guilty and name names. In exchange, the government promised in an amnesty agreement not to prosecute the bank. Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton in San Francisco said in an e-mail the firm is continuing to cooperate. ... CDR helped arrange deals in which financial firms took millions of dollars in profits from GICs, Bloomberg News reported in October 2006. Almost all of the deals were shams: As much as $7 billion in bond-issue proceeds were invested in GICs but never spent for the intended purpose of providing services to taxpayers. CDR signed off on interest-rate swaps to municipalities, as banks took hidden fees sometimes 10 times as much as they charged on fixed-rate bond deals, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. For the public, the swaps were fraught with risks. In the past decade, banks have peddled swaps the world over, from Jefferson County, Alabama -- which was forced to the brink of bankruptcy -- to the hill towns of the Umbria region of Italy. Many of these swaps soured when the credit crisis began in 2007. Getting Out Dozens of municipalities have paid banks billions to get out of swap contracts. The agency that oversees the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge said it spent $105 million to escape its deal in July 2009. "They were gouging the municipalities," said retired IRS investigator Anderson, 59. "Beside the excessive fees, some of the swap deals just didn't work. It was just awful. The same people were involved in the GIC end of the market." Bid rigging not only cheated cities and towns, it also illegally denied the IRS required taxes from GIC income, Anderson said. The evidence is clear in telephone recordings made on GIC desks, he said. "We could hear people talking about how everyone knew who was going to win the bid. You could tell it was just everyday business." ... The bid rigging in GIC contracts has reduced public funding for schools and housing across the U.S. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601015&sid=a5siC.rxVbVMPhony Auctions Fleecing Public Yield Ex-UBS Banker Guilty Plea By Martin Z. Braun and William Selway May 20 (Bloomberg) -- When Mark Zaino left a Beverly Hills financial advisory firm in 2001 for the U.S. municipal derivatives desk at UBS AG in New York, he didn’t leave his relationships behind. On Aug. 16, 2002, he got on the phone with former colleagues at CDR Financial Products Inc. Zaino agreed to funnel a $475,000 kickback to CDR on behalf of Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd., known as FSA. The payment was CDR’s reward for manipulating an auction that gave FSA a contract to manage money for Missouri schools, according to Zaino’s guilty plea to fraud and conspiracy charges yesterday and Justice Department records filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Zaino, 35, became the first Wall Street banker to admit to a role in a conspiracy to pay public agencies below-market returns on investment deals. The Missouri transaction was one of more than 200 that prosecutors say was rigged by banks including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Zurich-based UBS, according to court records. “Every time another guy pleads out, it’s just more evidence the government can use at trial; and if you’re his employer, it’s more evidence that it can directly be linked to you,” said Nathan Muyskens, a partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon in Washington and a former trial attorney with the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition. Antitrust Investigation The antitrust investigation centers on the auctions for so- called guaranteed investment contracts, known as GICs. Local governments purchased GICs with bond money to receive returns from the borrowed funds until the cash was needed for schools, roads and other public works. While a GIC is similar to a certificate of deposit, its rates aren’t advertised publicly. Instead, towns rely on advisory firms to solicit competing offers. The Justice Department’s more than three-year investigation is the broadest criminal probe ever of the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market. In October, a grand jury indicted CDR, founder David Rubin, its former chief financial officer and a vice president for taking kickbacks for running sham auctions for the investments. All three deny wrongdoing. In February and March, former CDR employees Douglas Goldberg, Daniel Naeh, and Matthew Rothman entered guilty pleas and agreed to cooperate in the investigation. The conspiracy stretched from California to Pennsylvania and involved about 160 state agencies, local governments and non-profits in at least 34 states, according to records filed in connection with the CDR case. ‘Institution A’ UBS was among the 16 banks that participated, according to a Justice Department list of co-conspirators that was filed in court on March 24 and later sealed. Court documents released yesterday don’t mention UBS by name, saying only that Zaino worked for “Financial Institution A.” That firm is identified as UBS on the Justice Department list. FSA, a unit of Brussels lender Dexia SA at the time of the alleged conspiracy, is also unnamed in the pleadings, which refer to “Provider A.” The list identifies FSA as “Provider A.” Zaino, who left UBS in 2006, didn’t respond to a message left on his mobile phone seeking comment. Doug Morris, a UBS spokesman, declined to comment. Thierry Martiny, a spokesman for Dexia who previously declined to comment, didn’t respond to an e-mail request for comment after business hours yesterday. At UBS, Zaino ran bogus auctions for investment deals on behalf of local government clients, delivering the contracts to preferred bidders in exchange for kickbacks, the government said yesterday. He also agreed to submit intentionally losing bids at auctions run by CDR, according to the charges against him. ‘Unearned Fees’ “Kickbacks in the form of inflated or unearned fees were paid to Zaino’s employer and its parent financial institution in exchange for assistance in controlling the bidding process,” the Justice Department said in a statement yesterday. Zaino also admitted to helping CDR use interest-rate swap trades to hide FSA’s kickbacks for fixing investment deals in FSA’s favor. The illicit payments to CDR were masked as fees for arranging those swaps, according to the government. On June 22, 2004 -- the day CDR handled the bidding for a $147 million investment by the West Virginia School Building Authority -- CDR fed an FSA banker information about a competitor’s bid, according to Rothman’s guilty plea and the Justice Department’s lists of co-conspirators and transactions involved. That helped FSA pick up the deal at a lower interest rate than it otherwise would have paid, according to Rothman’s guilty plea. Arranging Transaction Afterward, FSA entered into a swap with UBS to generate a $55,000 kickback for CDR, ostensibly for arranging the swap transaction, according to Rothman’s plea. UBS also received payments from Bank of America that were kickbacks, according to civil lawsuits filed by Baltimore and other municipalities who say they were victims of the conspiracy. Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been providing prosecutors with evidence since at least 2007, according to filings. The bank agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s antitrust division in return for a government promise not to prosecute. On June 28, 2002, Douglas Campbell, a former municipal derivatives salesman at Bank of America, wrote in an e-mail to his boss, then-managing director Phil Murphy, that he had paid $182,393 to banks and brokers not tied to any particular deals. Among them was UBS, which received $75,000. A copy of the e-mail was contained in a North Carolina lawsuit filed by Murphy against Bank of America in 2003. Campbell told Murphy that he was “trying to help Mark and Gary.” At UBS, Zaino worked with Gary Heinz, whom the government also lists as a co-conspirator in the CDR case. Heinz didn’t return calls seeking comment. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/205959-JPMorgan-Lehman-UBS-Named-in-Bid-Rigging-ConspiracyJPMorgan, Lehman, UBS Named in Bid-Rigging Conspiracy 26 Mar 2010 20:00 EDT JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department criminal antitrust case. A government list of previously unidentified "co- conspirators" contains more than two dozen bankers at firms also including Bank of America Corp., Bear Stearns Cos., Societe Generale, two of General Electric Co.'s financial businesses and Salomon Smith Barney, the former unit of Citigroup Inc., according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24. The papers were filed by attorneys for a former employee of CDR Financial Products Inc., an advisory firm indicted in October. The attorneys, as part of their legal filing, identified the roster as being provided by the government. The document is labeled "list of co-conspirators." None of the firms or individuals named on the list has been charged with wrongdoing. The court records mark the first time these companies have been identified as co-conspirators. They provide the broadest look yet at alleged collusion in the $2.8 trillion municipal securities market that the government says delivered profits to Wall Street at taxpayers' expense. 'Sufficient Evidence' "If the government is saying they are co-conspirators, the government believes they have sufficient evidence that they can show they were part of the conspiracy," said Richard Donovan, a partner at New York-based law firm Kelley Drye & Warren LLP and co-chair of its antitrust practice. Donovan isn't involved in the case. The government's case centers on investments known as guaranteed investment contracts that cities, states and school districts buy with the money they receive through municipal bond sales. Some $400 billion of municipal bonds are issued each year, and localities use the contracts to earn a return on some of the money until they need it for construction or other projects. The Internal Revenue Service sometimes collects earnings on those investments and requires that they be awarded by competitive bidding to ensure that governments receive a fair return. The government charges that CDR ran sham auctions that allowed the banks to pay below-market interest rates to local governments. CDR Fights Case CDR, a Los Angeles-based local-government adviser, was indicted in October along with David Rubin, Zevi Wolmark and Evan Zarefsky, three current or former executives. The company and the three men have denied wrongdoing. Since last month, three former CDR employees who weren't charged in the initial indictment have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department. More than a dozen financial firms are also facing civil suits filed by municipalities over the alleged conspiracy. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan refused to toss out a lawsuit brought by Mississippi and other bond issuers. Brian Marchiony, a spokesman for JPMorgan in New York; Doug Morris, a spokesman for UBS in New York; and Danielle Romero- Apsilos, a spokeswoman for Citigroup in New York, all declined to comment. A Societe Generale spokesman, Jim Galvin; Lehman spokeswoman Kimberly MacLeod, and GE Capital spokesman Ned Reynolds in Stamford, Connecticut, also declined to comment. Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton in San Francisco declined to comment. Bear Stearns was bought by JPMorgan in 2008, the same year Lehman Brothers collapsed. 'Absolute Disaster' Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington, declined to comment. Banks may choose to cooperate with prosecutors because in light of the government bailout funds they've received "a guilty plea would just be an absolute disaster for some of these companies," said Nathan Muyskens, a partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon in Washington and former trial attorney with the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition. "There have been antitrust investigations where there have been companies involved that were just never indicted," he said in a phone interview. At the same time, the government will probably focus on seeking to convict individual bankers, he said. "When someone goes to jail for five years, that resonates," he said. "When a company pays $200 million, it's simply a balance sheet issue. Jail time is what captures corporate America's attention." Lawyers' Filing In a court filing yesterday, defense lawyers said they "inadvertently" included the names of individual and company co-conspirators in a motion asking the court to compel the government to provide more specific evidence of the alleged misconduct. They asked the court to strike the entire exhibit in which the list appears. Judge Marrero granted the request. The government's probe became public in 2006 when federal investigators raided CDR and two competitors and issued subpoenas to more than a dozen firms. The "co-conspirators" on the list released in court this week also included Wachovia Corp., which was purchased by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. in 2008. Elise Wilkinson, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman in Charlotte, North Carolina, didn't return a call today seeking comment. October Indictments The indictments released in October didn't identify any of the sellers of the investment contracts involved in the alleged conspiracy. They were identified only as Provider A and Provider B. They paid kickbacks to CDR after winning investment deals brokered by the firm, according to the indictments. The firms did this by paying sham fees tied to financial transactions entered into with other companies, prosecutors said. Kickbacks were paid from 2001 to 2005, ranging from $4,500 to $475,000 each, according to the Justice Department. According to the list contained in the court filing this week, the investment contracts involved were created by units of GE and divisions of Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd., a bond insurer formerly part of Brussels-based lender Dexia SA. The kickbacks were paid out of fees generated by transactions entered into with two financial institutions that weren't identified in the October court filing. The March 24 list filed by the defense named the two firms as UBS and Royal Bank of Canada. Dexia Sale Dexia completed the sale of FSA's bond-insurance business in July to Assured Guaranty Ltd. of Hamilton, Bermuda, while retaining its outstanding investment contracts. Thierry Martiny, a spokesman for Dexia in Brussels, declined to comment. FSA, based in New York, was the biggest insurer of U.S. municipal bonds in 2007 and 2008. "We have no comment," said Betsy Castenir, a spokeswoman for Assured Guaranty in New York, in an e-mail response. "Dexia has responsibility for the liabilities of the Financial Products business." Royal Bank of Canada "has been fully cooperating with the government," Kevin Foster, a spokesman for the bank in New York, said in an e-mailed statement. "We have no knowledge or evidence of wrongdoing by any of our employees." The case is U.S. v. Rubin/Chambers, Dunhill Insurance Services Inc., 09-CR-01058, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). |
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agentbluescreen
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« Reply #37 on: May 20, 2010, 07:40:48 AM » |
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Seems like "Escape from New York" was somewhat prescient. But in this case all the criminals already live there. Just build a wall and hire some guards to keep them there.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #38 on: May 21, 2010, 11:30:01 AM » |
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I have yet to see a report of the MAGNATUDE of the NATIONWIDE conspiracy which ran from 1998 until at least November 2006 ! We must be talking BILLIONS of dollars diverted from the public in interest on the public funds! The money diverted to the banks and to PAC's (democrats!) as political pay-off's to cover for the scam.Notice that as of yet - Rubin who pled "Not Guilty" has yet to be "Found Guilty":http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/CDR-Financial--High-impact-company-has-vague-beginning-in-state Monday, January 05, 2009 ... Bloomberg quoted Rubin saying that CDR has advised clients on more than $158 billion in transactions since it was founded in 1986. The article said CDR has "advised local governments on more than $17 billion of derivatives since 2003." The company originally was called "Chambers, Dunhill, Rubin and Co." — even though there was nobody named Chambers or Dunhill involved with the firm. Rubin "picked those names because he liked the sound of them together," Bloomberg reported. Bloomberg reported Monday, "The IRS probed whether CDR and banks including Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp. and the former Bear Stearns Cos. of New York conspired to overcharge municipalities such as Atlanta; Fargo, North Dakota; and Johnson City, Tennessee, for contracts to invest bond proceeds and then split the profits." According to the Center for Responsive Politics in an article published Monday on its Web site, OpenSecrets.org, CDR and Rubin have contributed more than $279,000 to campaigns at the federal level since 1991. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100519-711607.htmlMAY 19, 2010,Three former CDR executives, including its founder David Rubin, were indicted in October on conspiracy and fraud charges. They have denied wrongdoing and are awaiting trial. As part of a bill of particulars in Rubin's case, prosecutors listed more than a dozen banks and investment firms as suspected co-conspirators. The list was inadvertantly filed in their court case in March and has since been removed from the electronic case docket. In October, a grand jury indicted CDR, founder David Rubin, its former chief financial officer and a vice president for taking kickbacks for running sham auctions for the investments. .
In February and March, former CDR employees Douglas Goldberg, Daniel Naeh, and Matthew Rothman entered guilty pleas and agreed to cooperate in the investigation http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Politics/story?id=6586275&page=1Funds Tie Obama to Richardson Probe FigureEmbattled Executive David Rubin Gave Thousands to CampaignBy JUSTIN ROOD - Jan. 6, 2009 President-elect Barack Obama took big money from a man at the center of a federal probe that has forced one of Obama's top Cabinet picks to withdraw. Financial records show the Obama campaign got more than $30,000 from California financier David Rubin, the target of an investigation into donations and possible "pay-to-play" deals involving New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Obama's pick for commerce secretary. Richardson removed himself from consideration for the post Sunday, saying the ongoing grand jury investigation threatened to hold up his confirmation. Richardson and Rubin have both denied any wrongdoing in the matter, which involved contributions and state business in 2003 and 2004. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=auHFr7xQK9lgSecret Bond Deal Led IRS to Middleman Financing in the Dark - Nov. 2 2009 (Bloomberg ... “IRS believes that CDR, Bank of America and possibly others may have colluded to fix pricing,” an unidentified Atlanta employee wrote in an undated internal memorandum after city authorities met with IRS investigators in September 2005. CDR-sponsored transactions from California to Florida diverted millions of dollars from local governments and the U.S. Treasury to banks and advisers, including more than $3 million in Fargo, North Dakota, alone, government records show. The firm is also alleged to have taken “kickbacks” of as much as $475,000 for brokering investment-management contracts, according to the criminal indictment. Bloomberg News obtained documents related to state and federal investigations in response to 30 public records requests and conducted more than 100 interviews. “This represents another in a long line of recent examples in which taxpayers end up the losers"http://www.bondbuyer.com/issues/118_215/cdr-fraud-trial-1003620-1.htmlRubin, 2 Others In Court - Plead Not Guilty, Say No Flight Risk - November 9, 2009He also suggested that a five-year statute of limitations will lead to the removal of some of the chargesA federal magistrate judge in Manhattan set bail for Rubin at far less than U.S. attorneys requested. Meiklejohn sought bail of about $25 million for Rubin, arguing that the government believes he owns far more than the $15 million to $20 million in assets his attorneys have reported, and that he is a flight risk. Meiklejohn told the judge that the government is “ignorant” of the full scope of Rubin’s assets. She warned that he may have multiple passports because he is a naturalized American citizen and noted that he often flies to Israel, as recently as last month, where he appears to own a house and visit a son. ... Ultimately, the judge set bail for Rubin at just $5 million, of which $250,000 had to be posted up front in cash and an additional portion tied to the equity in his California home. http://www.thepinkflamingoblog.com/2009/01/08/who-is-david-rubin-cdr-why-should-obama-be-very-afraid-part-iv/Who Is David Rubin & CDR & Why Should Obama Be Very Afraid? Part IV - January 8, 2009... New Mexico is another place that’s been lucrative for CDR. In October 2003, Rubin gave $25,000 to Moving America Forward Inc., a PAC formed by Governor Bill Richardson. Seven months later, CDR gave $75,000 to ¡Si Se Puede! Boston 2004 Inc., Spanish for Yes, We Can, another Richardson PAC. That PAC was formed to help pay expenses for his campaign staff at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. ... Between the timing of those contributions, CDR made $951,566 advising the New Mexico Finance Authority on $420 million of interest rate swaps. Jon Goldstein, a spokesman for Richardson, says the governor had no role in CDR’s selection. [ CONnection to Money "Bundling" : ]JPMorgan paid Michael Stratton, president of Denver-based Stratton & Associates, $269,000 in 2003 and 2004 to help win public finance business relating to “state, county, and local government and corporate entities” in New Mexico Stratton, 54, worked over the past two decades for Democrats who included former President Bill Clinton, former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and former Colorado Governor Roy Romer, according to the Stratton & Associates Web site. Stratton also was a so-called “bundler” for Richardson’s presidential runNo one has been charged with wrongdoing. Stratton declined to comment on the investigation, as did Tasha Pelio, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan in New York. Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the governor, didn’t return calls seeking comment. http://jta.org/news/article/2009/01/06/1002011/day-school-president-part-of-richardson-investigationJanuary 6, 2009 ... David Rubin, board chairman of the Orthodox Yavneh Hebrew Academy, is also the CEO of CDR Holdings, which is under federal grand jury investigation for an alleged "pay-to-play" deal to acquire a New Mexico government contract worth $1.48 million.[ Notice Daniel Naeh did his rigging from Israel: ]http://www.bondbuyer.com/news/-1012329-1.htmlFourth Market Participant Pleads Guilty in CDR Case - Wednesday, May 19, 2010... Three other former CDR employees have pleaded guilty to criminal charges and have agreed to cooperate with investigators. They are Matthew Adam Rothman and Douglas Alan Goldberg, former CDR vice presidents, and Daniel Naeh, who has not worked for the firm in years but was living in Israel and acting as a bidding agent on muni deals.http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/February/10-at-193.htmlWednesday, February 24, 2010 ... Daniel Moshe Naeh, also known as Dani Naeh, of Israel, engaged in separate bid-rigging and fraud conspiracies with companies that provide a type of contract, known as an investment agreement, to state, county and local governments and agencies throughout the United States. Naeh admitted that, as a part of the bid-rigging conspiracy, from as early as 1998 until at least November 2006, he and other co-conspirators designated in advance which co-conspirator providers would be the winning bidder for certain investment agreements and submitted or caused to be submitted to CDR intentionally losing bids. According to the court documents, kickbacks in the form of fees that were inflated or unearned were paid to CDR in exchange for assistance from Naeh and other CDR co-conspirators in controlling the bidding process and ensuring that certain co-conspirator providers won the bids they were allocated. Anyone with information concerning bid rigging and related offenses in any financial markets should contact the Antitrust Division’s New York Field Office at 212-264-0390 or visit http://www.justice.gov/atr/contact/newcase.htm, or the FBI at 212-384-5000. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601015&sid=aT0A8vQeMErwOct. 30 (Bloomberg) 2009 “This case is fundamentally about collusion, the illegal rigging of a purportedly competitive bidding process,”... The government alleges the conspiracy started in 1998 and continued until November 2006, the same month CDR was raided by the FBI. ... The allegations are reminiscent of the yield-burning scandal of the 1990s, when Wall Street banks overcharged local governments for Treasury bonds they purchased with bond proceeds. Securities firms agreed to pay more than $170 million to settle SEC allegations of yield burning. Continuing Investigation The Justice Department’s investigation into bid-rigging is continuing. Bank of America Corp. in 2007 agreed to cooperate with the department in exchange for leniency. Others, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS AG, have disclosed they may face charges by the Justice Department or the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the probe. The allegations of profiting at taxpayer expense come as local governments suffer from the fallout of the U.S. recession and the lingering impact of interest-rate derivative deals that firms such CDR advised them to enter. “In a climate of economic austerity, the conduct of the defendants and co-conspirators seems particularly predatory,” Demarest, the FBI official, said. A bid-rigging count against Rubin and the other employees carries a maximum 10-year prison term, prosecutors said. Other charges in the case include conspiracy, wire fraud, making false statements and a fraudulent bank transaction count. Not every defendant is accused of each crime. CDR faces a maximum fine of $100 million for bid-rigging.
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TahoeBlue
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« Reply #39 on: May 22, 2010, 02:30:01 PM » |
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Has anyone seen any TV story on CNBC(GE) , Bloomberg or CNN, Fox, ABC/CBS/NBC regarding the CDR - Rubin story? 60 minutes? I think not. One thing is clear - the "Housing / Derivatives scam" of this decade is just a continuation of the scams from last decade. The allegations are reminiscent of the yield-burning scandal of the 1990s, when Wall Street banks overcharged local governments for Treasury bonds they purchased with bond proceeds. Its complicated, see: http://www.phillipsandcohen.com/CM/Articles/Articles158.asp Wall Street’s Yield-burning Fraud - July 2000... “Yield burning” refers simply to the artificial lowering of a security’s yield by pricing it in excess of its fair market value. Yield and price have an inverse relationship: As the price of a security goes up, its yield goes down.... In the period between 1990 and 1995, Wall Street investment banks consistently overpriced Treasury securities purchased for municipal advance refunding escrows on a sole-source, noncompetitive basis.... In April of 1999, the majority of the yield burning cases were settled. Seventeen regional and national securities firms agreed to pay a total of $140 million to resolve the charges — bringing the total damages to date to nearly $180 million. The most recent defendants to settle are: Salomon Smith Barney, PaineWebber Inc.; Dain Rauscher Inc.; Warburg Dillon Read LLC; First Union Securities Inc.; Prudential Securities Inc.; Edwards & Sons Inc.; Goldman, Sachs & Co.; Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc.; Lehman Brothers Inc.; William R. Hough & Co.; Raymond James & Associates Inc., Morgan Stanley Co. Inc.; U.S. Bancorp; Piper Jaffray Inc.; Credit Suisse ; First Boston Corp.; J.C. Bradford & Co.; and Southwest Securities Inc. [ Similar scams of the 1990's: ] http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/dissent/documents/health/citissb.html... Bond Rigging scandal - Wall Street 1991There was a large Wall Street scandal involving collusion and price fixing at government bond auctions over a 10 year period. Salomon brothers, then an independent group were the ring leaders and were lucky to survive. They admitted the conduct and fired senior staff blaming them. Other groups including Citicorp were then investigated. ... Securities fraud, price fixing, collusion 1994-99Smith Barney was one of 31 banks involved in a large fraud scandal involving price fixing and other collusive practices. This was an ongoing and ever widening fraud investigation that started in 1994 "when an academic study claimed that patterns of trading suggested "tacit collusion" between market participants" The reports indicated 3 phases. A justice department settlement in 1996 which included regulatory changes, a US $1 billion civil settlement in 1997, and a SEC settlement in January 1999. There were complaints that the civil settlement was too low because so many millions of investors lost money
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