Free Republic

"In my own business, securities regulations have prohibited me from hiring brokers for more than three years. I was even fined fifteen thousand dollar expressly for hiring too many brokers in 2008. In the process I incurred more than $500,000 in legal bills to mitigate a more severe regulatory outcome as a result of hiring too many workers. I have also been prohibited from opening up additional offices. I had a major expansion plan that would have resulted in my creating hundreds of additional jobs. Regulations have forced me to put those jobs on hold. In addition, the added cost...

The global accounting powerhouse, Deloitte, is sitting between a bullet and a target in a global battle over the future of free enterprise. In May, Deloitte China received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission demanding records related to possible accounting fraud at the Hong Kong-based Chinese financial software company, Longtop Financial Technologies.

Regulators are nearing a settlement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over whether the mortgage finance giants adequately disclosed their exposure to risky subprime loans, bringing to a close a three-year investigation. The proposed agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, under the terms being discussed, would include no monetary penalty or admission of fraud, according to several people briefed on the case. But a settlement would represent the most significant acknowledgement

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his family have made presidential campaign trips aboard a jet owned by a wealthy contributor who is under investigation for possible securities fraud by Texas regulators and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Perry, who has emerged in just weeks as the new frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, flew last weekend aboard Brian D. Pardo's Cessna Citation X jet from a remote Texas airport to various campaign events in Iowa, according to a Perry campaign aide and flight records obtained via Flightwise.com. Read more:

President Obama has enlarged and shaped the missions of agencies across the federal government to his own purposes, in pursuit of the "fundamental change" he promised voters. The resulting agency creep is creeping me out. Totalitarians have a history of recasting representative governments into reflections of their own personal madness. Whether in the case of Communists, Fascists, or modern liberals, day-to-day government is retooled into an incarnation of their dear leader's obsessions and justified by a vain and unsupportable assertion of higher intelligence. This time is no different, as is demonstrated by the multiple cases of agency creep we are...

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced an asset freeze against a Chicago-area money manager and his hedge fund advisory firm that the SEC charged with lying to prospective investors in their startup quantitative hedge fund. A federal court today entered a preliminary injunction order in the case, which was unsealed earlier this week. The SEC alleges that Belal K. Faruki of Aurora, Ill., and his advisory firm Neural Markets LLC solicited highly sophisticated individuals to invest in the "Evolution Quantitative 1X Fund," a hedge fund they managed that supposedly used a proprietary algorithm to carry out an arbitrage strategy...

Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein has hired Reid Weingarten, a high-profile Washington defense attorney whose past clients include a former Enron accounting officer, according to a government source familiar with the matter. Blankfein, 56, is in his sixth year at the helm of the largest U.S. investment bank, which has spent two years dodging accusations of conflicts of interest and fraud. The move to retain Weingarten comes as investigations of Goldman and its role in the 2007-2009 financial crisis continue. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission scored a $550 million settlement against the bank in a fraud lawsuit in...

A US senator said Wednesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission may have destroyed thousands of documents related to probes into possible violations by major banks and hedge funds. Senior Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said that "an agency whistle-blower" sent him a letter that described the SEC's allegedly unlawful destruction of records related to more than 9,000 informal investigations. The documents included cases arising from the 2008-2009 financial crisis, including Goldman Sachs, AIG, and the Bernard Madoff pyramid fund, according to the whistle-blower, Grassley said. The whistle-blower, 13-year SEC lawyer Darcy Flynn, said the destroyed records related to "matters under...

Today I am going to do something different, openly praise blatant incompetence. I will list my reasons later but first let me sing the praises of sheer incompetence at Moody's, Fitch, and the S&P (the big 3 rating agencies). Downgrade of U.S. Debt Long Overdue Many are in shock that the S&P downgraded debt of the US from AAA. Not me. It was long overdue. However, the S&P proved it was incompetent in the way it made the downgrade. Pray tell how can a rating agency make a $2 trillion error? The answer is obvious: sheer incompetence. The irony is...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Securities and Exchange Commission may have destroyed documents and compromised enforcement cases involving activity at large banks and hedge funds during the height of the financial crisis, according to allegations made by a lawmaker on Wednesday.

Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, says SEC may have destroyed documents“From what I’ve seen, it looks as if the SEC might have sanctioned some level of case-related document destruction,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, in a letter to the agency’s chairman, Mary Schapiro. “It doesn’t make sense that an agency responsible for investigations would want to get rid of potential evidence. If these charges are true, the agency needs to explain why it destroyed documents, how many documents it destroyed over what timeframe, and to what extent its actions were consistent with the law.” Agency staff “destroyed...

A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals. Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – "Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?" No more...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) to disclose which employees knew of its decision to downgrade U.S. debt before it was announced last week, the Financial Times said, citing people familiar with the matter. SEC's move is part of a preliminary examination into potential insider trading, the FT said. The inquiry was made by the SEC's examination staff, which has oversight of credit rating firms, one person familiar with the matter told the newspaper. However, the securities regulator is not aware of a leak from an S&P insider, nor was it...

In a remarkable development, the beleaguered Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) actually awarded the employee who botched the investigation of the largest Ponzi scheme in history with a cash bonus for a great job performance. It marks the latest of many scandals for the famously inept federal agency charged with policing the nation’s financial industry. An SEC Inspector General probe discovered that the agency rewarded an incompetent investigator who missed Bernie Madoff’s illegal, $50 billion Ponzi scheme with a cash bonus for good work. Released this week, the IG report doesn’t name the SEC investigator but confirms that he (or...

Although this is from the Houston Chronicle, the content is Bloomberg, so I can't post it. But it is WELL worth reading the article here.

The Justice Department is considering whether to prosecute Securities and Exchange Commission employees over the agency’s handling of a $557 million lease for downtown Washington offices that it could not afford and did not need, the agency’s inspector general said Wednesday. Inspector General H. David Kotz said he recently referred the matter to the Justice Department for potential investigation. The department requested relevant documents, Kotz said. Kotz said his referral focused on the back-dating of a document that was used to justify the lease. Kotz made that disclosure at the end of a House hearing in which lawmakers lambasted SEC...

The Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Schapiro and her bureaucrat underlings came under fire once again in a hearing on Wednesday for the agency’s decision to lease 900,000 square feet of unneeded office space at Constitution Center in downtown Washington, D.C. The bureaucrats that pulled the trigger obligated the taxpayers to pay $556 million in lease obligations over the course of the next 10 years. Rest assured these bureaucrats are going to have some major legal problems if the Department of Justice (DOJ) pursues a criminal investigation on the $556 million lease debacle. The DOJ is most likely looking...

The auto bailouts are now being touted by President Obama as a "success" even though the taxpayer is about to take at least a $10 billion hit when the government sells its remaining GM shares. There is, however, a missing dimension in this debate. It is the moral one. Prior to General Motors filing for bankruptcy in June of 2009, I was involved as a GM bondholder advocate for a group called the Mainstreet Bondholders. Attempts were made by my group to bring about fair negotiations for creditors of GM, attempts that were ignored by the Obama Administration's Auto Task...

The leadership at the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission interpreted the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law last July to mean that the SEC would secure funding to spend money however the SEC saw fit. This included signing a 900,000 square foot lease with no Program of Requirements in three days for an elegant, downtown Washington DC office building. Thankfully, the money to fund the 900,000 square foot lease was shot down in the Fiscal Year 2011 Budget that passed earlier this year. However, the SEC still jumped the gun back in July 2010 by signing the 900,000 square foot lease at the taxpayers...

This is your "what the hell?" video of the morning. Treasury Secretary Geithner is asked if he knew about the "predatory atmosphere" at the IMF. He says "this is a hard question to ask a man." Except, it's not a hard question, for a man or for anyone. "Were you aware of the culture of rape at IMF" has two possible answers: "yes, I noticed" or "no, I just didn't see it." But, of course, he can't say either because if he saw abuse then the follow-up question is going to be why he didn't do anything about it. And...