Pelosi's investor husband is low profile; takes care to avoid causing controversy (obsessively adept at all the self-serving dodges)

CIRCA 2007 Paul Pelosi stays in the shadows, even as the millions he has made as a successful San Francisco financier and businessman have helped fuel the political career of his wife, Nancy.......conservative Republican commentators and bloggers raise the threat of her "San Francisco values" steering Congress hard to the left are turning their sights on 66-year-old Paul Pelosi and his investments as a way of attacking the new Democratic speaker.

Paul Pelosi won't be giving interviews because "he's a private person, not involved in political life,Mr. Pelosi's investments are separate from hers, and they have separate careers," saaid an aide.

But the couple's net worth, most of it linked to Paul Pelosi's investments, has made the legislator the ninth-richest person in the 435-member House.

The family money, along with the many business and social connections Paul Pelosi has brought to their 43-year marriage, gave Nancy Pelosi the financial independence she needed to spend long hours doing unpaid Democratic Party business in the 1970s and 1980s, and also added a degree of comfort to her life in Washington, where she has a $1 million-plus residence and a lifestyle that doesn't depend on the $212,100 annual salary she will receive as speaker.

"Having a Town Car pick you up is way better than Yellow Cab," said Joe Cotchett, a Burlingame attorney and Democratic fundraiser who is a longtime friend of the Pelosis.

"Frankly, it's a copout to say, 'My husband makes the money,' " said Peter Schweizer, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution whose recent book "Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy" contains a chapter on the Pelosis. "It's not a viable defense. Nancy Pelosi is fully aware of what the issues are (for elected officials) and is not naive about financial matters."

THIS IS INTERESTING......seems Ponzi king Bernie Madoff was laundering money for a select few billionaires using “do-good foundations.”

WIKI. The Jeffry M. and Barbara Picower Foundation was created in 1989 by Picower and his wife Barbara.[17] Barbara Picower was listed as Executive Director and trustee, with both Picowers being members of the board of directors.[21] Longtime friend Bernard Madoff managed foundation assets listed at over $1 billion.[17][22] It distributed over $268 million in grants to various American organizations, including Human Rights First and the New York Public Library.[17][22] In 2002, it granted $50 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscience research center, which was subsequently renamed the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.[17][23] However, the Picower Foundation was forced to close in 2009 due to losses arising from the uncovering of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.[22]

It was reported that between December 1995 and December 2008, Picower and his family withdrew “from their various Madoff accounts $5.1 billion more than they invested.”[24]

In June 2009, Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Madoff’s assets, filed a lawsuit against Picower in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan), seeking the return of $7.2 billion in profits, alleging that Picower and his wife Barbara knew or should have known that their rates of return were “implausibly high”, with some accounts showing annual returns ranging from 120% to more than 550% from 1996 through 1998, and 950% in 1999.[25][26]

According to a June 28, 2009, MSNBC article, that would make Picower and his wife the biggest beneficiaries of Madoff’s scam, exceeding even Madoff himself.

propublica.org
THE PAUL AND NANCY PELOSI CHARITABLE FOUNDATION
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94104-2902 | TAX-EXEMPT SINCE JULY 1992
EIN: 94-3150212
Nonprofit Tax Code Designation: 501(c)(3)
Defined as: Organizations for any of the following purposes: religious, educational, charitable, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition (as long as it doesn’t provide athletic facilities or equipment), or the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.

Donations to this organization are tax deductible.
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The IRS Form 990 is an annual information return that most organizations claiming federal tax-exempt status must file yearly. Read the IRS instructions for 990 forms.

If this organization has filed an amended return, it may not be reflected in the data below. Duplicated download links may be due to resubmissions or amendments to an organization’s original return.

If you would like to download Form 990 document PDFs in bulk, the Internet Archive operates a mirror of the original bulk data.....snip.....

Madoff’s unusual Access to Washington

The Madoff family gained unusual access to Washington’s lawmakers and regulators through the industry’s top trade group. The Madoff family maintained long-standing, high-level ties to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the primary securities industry organization.

Bernard Madoff sat on the board of directors of the Securities Industry Association, which merged with the Bond Market Association in 2006 to form SIFMA. Madoff’s brother Peter then served two terms as a member of SIFMA’s board of directors.[57][58] Peter’s resignation as the scandal broke in December 2008 came amid growing criticism of the Madoff firm’s links to Washington, and how those relationships may have contributed to the Madoff fraud.[59] Over the years 2000–08, the two Madoff brothers gave $56,000 to SIFMA,[59] and tens of thousands of dollars more to sponsor SIFMA industry meetings.[60]

In addition, Bernard Madoff’s niece Shana Madoff[61] who was the compliance officer and attorney at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities from 1995 until 2008, was active on the Executive Committee of SIFMA’s Compliance & Legal Division, but resigned her SIFMA position shortly after her uncle’s arrest.[62] She in 2007 married former assistant director of the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations Eric Swanson,[63] whom she had met in April 2003 while he was investigating her uncle Bernie Madoff and his firm.[64][65][66] The two had periodic contact thereafter in connection with Swanson speaking at industry events organized by a SIFMA committee on which Shana Madoff sat.

During 2003 Swanson sent Shana’s father Peter Madoff two regulatory requests.[64][67][68][69][70][71] In March 2004, SEC lawyer Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, who was reviewing Madoff’s firm, raised questions to Swanson (Walker-Lightfoot’s boss’s supervisor) about unusual trading at a Bernie Madoff fund; Walker-Lightfoot was told to instead concentrate on an unrelated matter.[72][73] Swanson and Walker-Lightfoot’s boss asked for her research, but did not act upon it.[73]

In February 2006, Swanson was emailed by Assistant Director John Nee that the SEC’s New York Regional Office was investigating a complaint that Bernard Madoff might be running “the biggest Ponzi scheme ever.”[67]

Nanzi has been accused of Insider Trading, perhapl slow-walking legislation impacting her investments; (did stock trades by Nancy Pelosi’s husband ever lose money?)

IS THIS THE CONGRESSIONAL MO?

Front running, also known as tailgating, is the prohibited practice of entering into an equity (stock) trade, option, futures contract, derivative, or security-based swap to capitalize on advance, nonpublic knowledge of a large (”block”) pending transaction that will influence the price of the underlying security.[1]

In essence, it means the practice of engaging in a Personal Securities Transaction in advance of a transaction in the same security for a client’s account.[2] Front running is considered a form of market manipulation in many markets.[3] Cases typically involve individual brokers or brokerage firms trading stock in and out of undisclosed, unmonitored accounts of relatives or confederates.[4] Institutional and individual investors may also commit a front running violation when they are privy to inside information. A front running firm either buys for its own account before filling customer buy orders that drive up the price, or sells for its own account before filling customer sell orders that drive down the price. Front running is prohibited since the front-runner profits from nonpublic information, at the expense of its own customers, the block trade, or the public market.[5][6]

In 2003, several hedge fund and mutual fund companies became embroiled in an illegal late trading scandal made public by a complaint against Bank of America brought by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. A resulting U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into allegations of front-running activity implicated Edward D. Jones & Co., Inc., Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Strong Mutual Funds, Putnam Investments, Invesco, and Prudential Securities.[7]

Following interviews in 2012 and 2013, the FBI said front running had resulted in profits of $50 million to $100 million for the bank. Wall Street traders may have manipulated a key derivatives market by front running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.[8]

The terms originate from the era when stock market trades were executed via paper carried by hand between trading desks.[9] The routine business of hand-carrying client orders between desks would normally proceed at a walking pace, but a broker could literally run in front of the walking traffic to reach the desk and execute his own personal account order immediately before a large client order. Likewise, a broker could tail behind the person carrying a large client order to be the first to execute immediately after. Such actions amount to a type of insider trading, since they involve non-public knowledge of upcoming trades, and the broker privately exploits this information by controlling the sequence of those trades to favor a personal position.[10]

For example, suppose a broker receives a market order from a customer to buy a large block—say, 400,000 shares—of some stock, but before placing the order for the customer, the broker buys 20,000 shares of the same stock for his own account at $100 per share, then afterward places the customer’s order for 400,000 shares, driving the price up to $102 per share and allowing the broker to immediately sell his shares for, say, $101.75, generating a significant profit of $35,000 in just a short time.

This $35,000 is likely to be just a part of the additional cost to the customer’s purchase caused by the broker’s self-dealing.

This example uses unusually large numbers to get the point across. In practice, computer trading splits up large orders into many smaller ones, making front-running more difficult to detect. Moreover, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2001 change to pricing stock in pennies, rather than fractions of no less than 1/8 of a dollar,[11] facilitated front running by reducing the extra amount that must be offered to step in front of other orders.

By front-running, the broker has put his or her own financial interest above the customer’s interest and is thus committing fraud. In the United States, he or she might also be breaking laws on market manipulation or insider trading.

Other uses of the term
Front-running may also occur in the context of insider trading, as when those close to the CEO of a firm act through short sales ahead of the announcement of a sale of stock by the CEO, which will in turn trigger a drop in the stock’s price. Khan & Lu (2008: 1) define front running as “trading by some parties in advance of large trades by other parties, in anticipation of profiting from the price movement that follows the large trade”. They find evidence consistent with front-running through short sales ahead of large stock sales by CEOs on the New York Stock Exchange.

While front-running is illegal when a broker uses private information about a client’s pending order, in principle it is not illegal if it is based on public information. In his book Trading & Exchanges, Larry Harris outlines several other related types of trading. Though all these types of trading may not be strictly illegal, he terms them “parasitic”.

A third-party trader may find out the content of another broker’s order and buy or sell in front of it in the same way that a self-dealing broker might. The third-party trader might find out about the trade directly from the broker or an employee of the brokerage firm in return for splitting the profits, in which case the front-running would be illegal. The trader might, however, only find out about the order by reading the broker’s habits or tics, much in the same way that poker players can guess other players’ cards. For very large market orders, simply exposing the order to the market, may cause traders to front-run as they seek to close out positions that may soon become unprofitable.

Large limit orders can be “front-run” by “order matching” or “penny jumping”. For example, if a buy limit order for 100,000 shares for $1.00 is announced to the market, many traders may seek to buy for $1.01. If the market price increases after their purchases, they will get the full amount of the price increase. However, if the market price decreases, they will likely be able to sell to the limit order trader, for only a one cent loss. This type of trading is probably not illegal, and in any case, a law against it would be very difficult to enforce.[12]

Other types of traders who use generally similar strategies are labelled “order anticipators.” These include “sentiment-oriented technical traders”, traders who buy during an asset bubble even though they know the asset is overpriced, and squeezers who drive up prices by threatening to corner the market. Squeezers would likely be guilty of market manipulation, but the other two types of order anticipators would not be violating any US law.[12]

“Front running” is sometimes used informally for a broker’s tactics related to trading on proprietary information before its clients have been given the information.

In insurance sales, front running is a practice in which agents “leak” information (usually false) to consumers about a competitor insurance company that leads the consumer to believe that the company’s products or services are inferior, or worthless. The agent subsequently obtains a sale at the consumer’s expense, earns a commission, and the consumer may have given up a perfectly good product for an inferior one as the result of the subterfuge.

For example, analysts and brokers who buy shares in a company just before the brokerage firm is about to recommend the stock as a strong buy, are practising this type of “front running”. Brokers have been convicted of securities laws violations in the United States for such behavior. In 1985, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, R. Foster Winans, tipped off brokers about the content of his column Heard on the Street, which based upon publicly available information would be written in such a way as to give either good or bad news about various stocks. The tipped off brokers traded on the information. Winans and the brokers were prosecuted by the prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani, tried and convicted of securities fraud. Their convictions were upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 1986.[13] (WIKI)

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