Posted on 07/21/2002 4:53:00 PM PDT by OPS4
With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff For the story behind the story...
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Sen. Corzine's Wall Street Sleaze
Sen. Jon Corzine, one of the loudest Democrats trying to blame others for corporate corruption, led an investment banking firm that stands accused of inflating stock prices in the 1990s and contributing to the market crash.
"Goldman Sachs, the firm that Mr. Corzine left as chairman in May 1999, has been a target of class-action lawsuits and accusations by a former broker who complained to the Securities and Exchange Commission that the investment house engaged in a scheme to force unwitting investors to pay artificially high prices for certain stocks," the Washington Times reported today.
Ignorant
The red-faced Corzine claims to be totally ignorant about such schemes when he ran the firm from 1994 to 1999.
"I don't believe there is ever going to be anything that sticks about us at Goldman Sachs forcing anybody to buy anything," said the senator from New Jersey, one of 16 Democrats who took off for Nantucket last weekend on a money-grubbing corporate junket after voting to close debate on corporate-accountability legislation.
"Goldman Sachs never forced anyone to buy anything when I was chairman, I can tell you that," he insisted.
However, "Nicholas Maier, who was syndicate manager of the Wall Street firm Cramer & Co. from 1996 to 1998, told SEC investigators in the spring that Goldman Sachs routinely forced him to buy stocks at inflated prices if he wanted to purchase shares of an initial public offering," the Times reported.
'Worst Perpetrator'
"Goldman, from what I witnessed, they were the worst perpetrator," Maier said. "They totally fueled the bubble. And it's specifically that kind of behavior that has caused the market crash. They built these stocks upon an illegal foundation — manipulated up, and ultimately, it really was the small person who ended up buying in."
Maier told the SEC that Goldman Sachs would offer him shares of a new company's IPO at the initial, low price of $20 a share only if he agreed to buy "aftermarket" shares of the same company at $100 each. And he would sell the shares of the higher-priced stock to small investors.
"None of these aftermarket orders had anything to do with what I honestly valued a company to be worth," Maier said. "Goldman created the convincing appearance of a winner, and the trick worked so well that they seduced further interest from other speculators hoping to participate in the gold rush.
"The general public had no idea that these stocks were actually brought into the world at unnaturally high levels through illegal manipulation."
As President Bush noted Monday, Wall Street went on a "binge" in the 1990s and now has a "hangover."
Corzine, by the way, bought his Senate seat with $60 million of the $320 million he received after taking Goldman Sachs public. (What does he do when his fellow congressional Dems, many of whom are also multimillionaires, start droning on about how much they hate "the rich"?) Now he's scrambling to explain himself to the public he claims to represent.
"What we had was a breakdown in corporate ethics and corporate responsibility that I don't think has anything to do with anything other than excessive focus on share price and managed earnings," he said.
That, to me, is more than a little bit interesting.
He poses as an enlightened hippie who listens to the dead and wears birkenstocks, but he's got skeletons in his closet...oh yeah, HARKEN OIL!
"I don't believe there is ever going to be anything that sticks about us at Goldman Sachs forcing anybody to buy anything," said the senator from New Jersey,
Anything that sticks! He sounds like Gotti! (Who I hold in higher esteem than Corzine)
We've been with about four different investment houses for quite some time, and being conservative, things have been ponderous but secure. We refuse to invest in Disney and Levi but pretty much stick to blue chips. Now everyone seems to have gone down, the market sag dragging everyone to the depths for a while.
I believe it will bounce back before the November elections. How do I know? Um...woman's intuition!
Once again, the words of the great Ann Coulter ring true!!!
He spent 27 MILLION DOLLARS of his OWN money to buy a job that pays $150,000.00 and all the perks you can grab.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.