Posted on 04/19/2010 9:02:35 AM PDT by mlocher
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Representative Barney Frank said on Monday that securities regulators' fraud case against Goldman Sachs increases the chance that financial reform will pass.
Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, also said he does not believe all 41 Republicans in the Senate will vote against the financial reform bill.
"It reinforces the need for much of what we were doing" on financial reform, Frank said on CNBC Television. On Friday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman with fraud for its marketing of a subprime mortgage product.
Frank also said it is not essential to create a standing fund of capital to dismantle troubled financial firms, responding to Republican objections that it would amount to a bailout fund.
Hello? If the SEC can bring charges under existing laws, why do we need more laws?
Want to solve the “finacial crisis”?
Toss Dodd, Frank, Schumer, Pelosi, Reid, Conrad, Rangel and all the Corruptocrats in Gitmo.
They are more dangerous and have caused more damage to the US then the guys who are currently residing in Gitmo are.
At least as much as you did Barney....
Feb 2010---Cong Frank lauds Dodd's fight for US financial watchdog: Chairman of the Financial Services Committee Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass), attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Frank emerged from a two-hour banking meeting, and made it clear that governments were now calling the shots after spending billions to bail out the industry.
SEN DODD'S CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS FROM FINANCE INDUSTRIES
Citigroup, $310,294;
SAC Capital Partners, $282,000;
United Technologies, $263,400;
AIG, $224,678;
Bear Stearns, $205,600;
St. Paul Travelers, $205,400;
Royal Bank of Scotland, $203,750;
Goldman Sachs, $175,600;
Morgan Stanley, $155,000;
Credit Suisse, $154,550;
Merrill Lynch, $134,950;
The Hartford, $94,350;
Bank of America, $91,300;
JPMorgan Chase, $129,150;
USB, $101,900;
Hartford Finance Services, $101,500
Lehman Brothers, $128,400;
KPMG, $113,100;
General Electric, $108,250;
Deloitte Touche, $108,000
============================================ The Scott brown Aftermath.
JUST THE OTHER DAY, BWANEY SAID HE WAS "DEFINITELY" RUNNING FOR REELECTION Frank acknowledged that it may be a tougher race than he’s used to. “But, if I want to get re-elected it’s my job to talk about the issues and my record, and that’s the nature of democracy,” he said. Fierce competition or not, Frank said he will “definitely” seek re-election this November.
Bwaney Frank’s 4th congressional district went overwhelmingly for Scott Brown; just five of the 24 cities and towns voted for Coakley.
NOT HIS DECISION TO MAKE What this self-absorbed Lipless Wonder failed to fathom is that his constituients (including those townhallers he sneered at) would decide whether he was fit to run for reelection.
Fwank got his answer loud and clear: "GET OUT---WE DON'T WANT YOU REPRESENTING US."
=======================================
NOTE Fwank was (you should excuse the expression)sucking up to hyphenates..........addressing the "National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals," and the "Asian Real Estate Association of America."
Guess those ethnic campaign donations never materialized.....ROTFL.
“Hello? If the SEC can bring charges under existing laws, why do we need more laws?”
EXACTLY!!! Please keep repeating this. That has been my biggest issue - there are already laws against fraud, etc - the problem is enforcement. The SEC and gov’t officials turn a blind eye on many violations. They have no problem going after small, start-up firms for “filing” and “paper” violations, but could not get around to finding anything wrong with the way Bernie Madoff was running things...hm, too big to fail??? or friends in high places??
The bummerrama magic show: one hand distracts you while the other scratches his a$$!
You sure got that right! Since most of Obama’s advisers are former Goldman Sachs, you get the feeling that this is some political theater to make the rubes feel all swell inside.
Goldman Sachs is the excuse for this Intolerable act. Companies that displease Obama (because they do things like tell the truth about him for example) can be arbitrarily seized without any judicial overview. Blatantly unconstitutional, any Senator who votes for it should be brought up on charges of violating their oath.
If every time an investor loses money they sue whoever sold them anything they bought for "fraud", it doesn't stop a single problem it just makes a dozen new ones. It gives lawyers power over the entire financial industry for the past, and for the future no one will do anything. I mean anything.
That way lies sorrow.
The rule is as old as Roman law - let the buyer beware. It is the only principle that lets commerce occur. Remove it and commerce just seizes.
Rove’s book ‘splains Dodds and Franks role in the Freddy/Fanny mess very well.
Former Barney Frank staffer now top Goldman Sachs lobbyist
Goldman Sachs’ new top lobbyist was recently the top staffer to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Frank. Michael Paese, a registered lobbyist for the Securities Industries and Financial Markets Association since he left Frank’s committee in September, will join Goldman as director of government affairs, a role held last year by former Tom Daschle intimate, Mark Patterson, now the chief of staff at the Treasury Department. This is not Paese’s first swing through the Wall Street-Congress revolving door: he previously worked at JP Morgan and Mercantile Bankshares, and in between served as senior minority counsel at the Financial Services Committee.
I agree with “Buyer Beware”
I also think gov’t is WAY too involved with the financial industry and where the public might think there is a legitimate referree in say the SEC to make an even-playing field - that is not what is happening.
Key points -
1. The buyers in the transaction were major mortgage market players who understood these items in great detail and knew exactly what bets they were making.
2. The underlying vehicle was a synthetic CDO. That means for those in Rio Linda that no actual mortgages were in the bond and everyone involved knew it. It consisted entirely of credit default swaps, that is bets for or against the credit losses of other mortgage bonds already issued and outstanding. This was fully disclosed and known by everyone involved.
3. CDS bets are two side derivatives, and there is no non-financial intermediary involved. Just like a futures contract, somebody is "long" and somebody is "short" whatever is being bet about, and again everyone involved knows this. The idea that the buyer of these thinks nobody is betting against the position they are taking is flat crazy; the bet cannot be made at all without someone taking the opposite position. Who is paying them if they are right? Not an end mortgagee, just the firm taking the other side of the CDS bet.
It would be like buying an oil future then alleging that you didn't know that the guy who sold it to you was going "short". Flat crazy. The vehicle for the bet does not exist unless someone else is "short".
4. The supposedly horribly non disclosure of the identity of the other side bettor isn't discussed properly even in that article, because it is too bad for the SEC's case to be believed. It is as simple as this - it is flat illegal for a broker or other banker intermediary to disclose a client's trades to other parties in order to inform those other parties how to bet. It would indeed be an insider trading violation for Goldman to tell the end buyer that Paulson was the one going short against them.
5. Let me repeat that in case it went by too fast - if Goldman had told the end investors what the SEC is now alleging it was fraud not to tell them, Goldman would have been guilty of insider trading collusion with said end buyers. The SEC is effectively indicting Goldman for not having given the benefit of inside information to the end buyers of the CDOs. If it had, it would be able to indict them for insider trading instead.
This whole case is a crock. It is simply trying to cash in the sustained hate campaign against bankers in general and Goldman in particular, keep everyone confused with the complexity of the deals involved and stoked up to hate the rich players, to return a public lynching of the community hated scapegoat.
Great layout of the issues involved here. A great point to highlight that there has to been someone on both sides of the trade.
I also read something earlier today talking about e-mails they retrieved and it highlighted that they also have e-mails stating the opposite of what they were predicting.
They could not shake down a more deserving communist organization.
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