Posted on 09/18/2010 3:00:36 PM PDT by WriteStuff
President Obama is doing everything he can to kill the American economy and turn Wall Street into a ghost town.
His latest decision to appoint Wall Street critic and Harvard law school professor Elizabeth Warren to a newly-created government post that will cost the US taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars just to form the new agency, then billions more to keep it up and running, is evidence that he hates the American capitalistic system and wants to destroy it.
(Excerpt) Read more at conservativepoliticalblog.wordpress.com ...
” and turn Wall Street into a ghost town.”
I wonder, if whether or not the Chinese are trying to get a stock exchange set up in their country. They could recruit the execs and then talk about how such things are done. Or a government in the Eastern Bloc would welcome them and the money they bring. Would be neat to see somewehre like Bucharest setting up an exchange.
Bill Himpler, executive vice president of the American Financial Services Association, says Warren’s commission would “take us essentially back to the 1970s, where we had double-digit interest rates...and one-third the consumer credit available that we have now.”
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The appointment of this marxist czarina is yet further data that nobama is purposefully attempting to destroy America. This fool (nobama) is the first truly anti-American president. Would everyone who voted for him please apologize NOW!
Wall Street’s company officers are turning Wall Street into a “ghost town,” and all of its controlled politicians are commies/fascists.
We will defund and eliminate them all in January.
I found Warren tells the hard truth no one wants to hear. Wall Street is built on lies and misinformation.
Eh, if Obama wanted to destroy Wall Street, why has he given them Trillions?
He must be playing a deep deep game.
Yes, that is true, and I forgot to mention that.
I’d say (offhand) that the Shanghai exchange seems much more lunatic on some days. There’s something in the water there... or there’s a whole lot of people consuming the product of one corner dope dealer on some days. ;-)
That is true and true.
The trouble I have with these recent proposals is this:
We already have laws, regulations and so on that would have prevented many of the worst excesses on Wall Street.
The regulators and Congress refuse to enforce the laws and regulations we have now. Their answer is to create a new bureaucracy, install Yet Another Bunch of Ivy Leaguers to run it, and spend more money... to produce no results.
We should have seen the CEO and CFO of most any investment bank in the US hauled into court on SarbOx charges by now, with convictions started to happen later this year to early next year. Not a single i-bank CEO/CFO has been charged.
The SEC should have not settled the auction rate securities cases for mere cash; the violations of the Securities Act were numerous and thick. Not a single criminal charge was brought.
The ratings agencies should have been investigated and someone within their ranks charged by now. Not a peep.
There should have been an investigation into the Fed by now. Nothing but heel-dragging.
Can you imagine how Jeff Skilling feels. He was a baby snake in the Den.
Oh yea. By comparison to the i-banks and AIG, Skilling was a rank noob.
That said, Skilling didn’t have the time to perfect the abuse of unregulated derivatives as the i-banks have. It is a whole lot easier to steal the bank blind when you’re the one supposedly locking the vault at the end of the day.
The SEC doesn't have the authority to bring criminal charges. They can refer the case to the locality, state or DOJ. You can see with SCOTUS and the Skilling case this year that the Federal govt will need a better law than "honest services" to pursue these cases in the future. I do think a certain number of these cases (I think they involved bribery amongst JPMorgan and some local officials to game the system) were brought at the local level.
Correct, I should have been more clear.
The SEC does have a big influence on whether the DOJ brings criminal charges, starting with how the SEC handles the settlement of civil charges. When I say “no criminal charges were brought” - I meant that the SEC didn’t refer cases to the DOJ or USAO for prosecution. The DOJ (especially) seems far too occupied recently with chasing terrorists.... and then letting them go. But that’s not an issue the SEC can solve. Referring cases is an issue they can solve.
If we see the phrase “without admission of wrongdoing” inserted into the mea culpa letters by offenders to the SEC when they make their settlements, that’s a clue that the SEC won’t be making criminal referrals to the DOJ. We saw a variant of this turn of phrase, “without admitting or denying wrongdoing” in the auction rate securities settlements. If there was a case which was cut-and-dry for criminal enforcement of wire fraud charges, the ARS mess was it. They were sold as “safe as cash” - and there is nothing in the market that is “as safe as cash” other than cash. Once someone uses that phrase “safe as cash” on something that isn’t cash, the DOJ should be called in and wire fraud charges brought immediately. It is that simple.
The SEC finally started showing a little spine when they took on Goldman this past spring, but the size of the settlement was still far too small. If the SEC wants their civil enforcement actions to sting, they have to make the monetary settlements so large that they affect the bonus structure of the i-banks.
That means amounts in the 10’s of billions.
Even if there was some kind of Patriot Act for financial fraud (where the SEC would actually work with DOJ, etc. to bring civil and criminal charges), you just know it wouldn't work. Witness the underwear/Xmas bomber, etc. The agencies still don't really talk to each other when it comes to terrorism.
I might as well rant a little more. I had to send in a Curio & Relic License renewal (an FFL for collectors). I probably had to surrender more info to the BATFE and my local PD than the panty bomber needed to enter the U.S. or JPM needed to sell their ARS. Still steamed. /rant
Oh yea, I hear you on the FFL’s.
I’m sure that I’m going to have to allow a full rectal exam to get 07 FFL in the future.
Then there’s the zoning, planning commission and use permits, as well as the requirement that I have a safe, blah, blah, blah. All to turn bits of metal into rifles. Then there’s the State Department’s nonsense about exports if you make anything in a military-usable configuration (ITAR). Never mind that you don’t sell anything overseas, or that you refuse to export any of your products.
Yet we’ll allow any number of young males from unfriendly nations into the US to study science and engineering at our schools.
Back on the SEC: They’re incompetent. They simply don’t have a clue how markets work (or are not working now). Take the HFT crap right now. They’re front-running, plain and simple. And yet the SEC does... nothing.
The HFT business is so big that cisco even has a group dedicated to serving the needs of HFT shops:
http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/financial/algo_speed.html
Absolutely insane.
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