Sarkozy threatens to walk out of G20

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is ready to walk out of next week's G20 summit if no progress is achieved on curbing bankers' bonuses, his chief of staff said Monday.

"There must absolutely be an agreement to make things change and the president is absolutely determined on that score," said Claude Gueant, the secretary general of the Elysee, on RTL radio. Sarkozy will be leading a charge for tough curbs on bonus payments for bankers at the G20 meeting of the world's major economies in the US city of Pittsburg on September 24 and 25.

France argues that the big payouts reward the risk-taking that led to the 2008 financial meltdown.

Already, at the G20 summit in London in April, Sarkozy had threatened to storm out of the gathering and later credited this threat for an agreement on steps to clamp down on tax havens.

Sarkozy's proposals for capping bankers' bonuses has won support in the European Union but Britain and the United States have voiced reservations.

Asked whether Sarkozy was ready to walk out of the Pittsburg summit if no progress was achieved, Gueant said this possibility must be "taken seriously."

"The head of state is extremely determined as he was at the G20 in London a few months ago when he pushed for his proposals on tax havens to be agreed," he said.

The G20 summit in Pittsburg will focus on tightening global financial regulation at a time when some major economies are beginning to pull out of recession and some banks are preparing to pay out large staff bonuses.

I couldn't give a crap about bankers bonuses. Talk about political theater scape goating.

I want them to make sure they can't continue to deal trillions of unregulated toxic waste credit derivatives that caused this worldwide recession. If they are to continue to exist, there should be a federally regulated, exchange-based market to trade CDSs. The banks will be forced to conform to this system. Sellers must be able to prove via public record that they have the assets to pay out if a Bond defaults. Strip out all the anti CDS regulation that Phil Gramm stuffed in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

Not only that, I want the bastards that are responsible for this on trial. You can start with JPMorgan Chase who invented Credit Default Swaps, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, UBS AG, AIG, and the other main culprits of this disaster. No more coverups by the US government and these financials about this any longer.

Some freepers think Wall Street did nothing wrong, all of the blame should be on subprime loans, and banks were not complicit in liar loans. One of the freepers actually had me thrown off one of the posting because he claimed I threatened him with physical harm that Joe public is fed up with Wall Street bankers and if the unemployment gets any worst, people who vocally support Wall Street is puting themselves in danger, because the mood of the country is getting ugly. Any way I digress. I recommend youtube for William Black who did an excellent presentation on the pathology of white collar criminals. Many of us understand the pathology of street criminals, but not too many of us understand the thought process and attitudes of white collar criminals. Too many times we mistaken white collar corruption for good old fashion aggressive business leadership. Mr Black is the person who closed the Lincoln S & L and actually have hands on experience in dealing with bank failures caused by reckless/criminal CEO behavior in the financial market. Interesting enough the Obama admin who touted change, never called him for any advice. All Wall Street wrongdoings are swept under the rug as the clock is running on the statue of limitations to prosecute. His prediction is the Obama admin will prosecute a few token Wall Streeters, and a majority will escape accountability as the clock runs out. One of his major observation is economic bubbles will always produce financial fraud/recklessness because at the beginning of a bubble it provides an opportunity for corrupt CEO’s to expand rapidly and make money thru high leveraging/borrowing that would be considered too high risk and behavior that is potentially illegal under normal times. The end result for every bubble is financial collapse caused by the reckless and illegal behavior. It happened during 1929, it was repeated during the S&L crisis, the high tech bubble and now the real estate bubble, and Obama is making it worst with the deficit spending bubble. In today’s crisis you need to add to your list of investigation is Moody and all the rating agencies who were suppose to review the bank loan data before they can accurately rate the securities. Since banks pay Moody and rating agencies to conduct ratings for their securities, they used this relationship to coerce Moody and other rating companies to get AAA ratings on defective mortgage backed securities. Today there are Moody analysts who are serving as key witnesses for investors suing Moody. Many of these analysts are professionals, and their Moody supervisors actually berated them when they point out that they need the loan data so they can evaluate the financial soundness of the mortgage backed securities. They were told that their requests endangered future business from these banks and that if they knew what is good for their future the analysts were instructed to find some method to rate the securities that will make the banker clients satisfied (ie rate the securities AAA with no loan data). Many of these supervisors were dumb enough to send this guidance via email. Copies of these emails are being used as exhibit A in the ongoing civil lawsuits because the analysts who were coerced needed something to protect their professional reputation if the issue on their high rating of financially poor securities should ever arise. What really shocks me is there are freepers who want to exonerate the rating agencies because they feel that the buyers of these securities bear the absolute responsibility for questioning the AAA ratings givened by Moody/rating companies. It is like telling the buyer of a toaster that he is responsible to make sure the UL tag on the toaster is real and that the manufacturer is not responsible for the fire if he put a fake UL tag on the appliance. In reality Moody deviated from common commercial practice and violated SEC laws and deserve to be shutdown pending a complete audit of their rating procedures. When this is pointed out in my posting, there are some freepers who thought an investigation of Wall Street is an anti capitalist plot to undermind America!!!!

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