Free Republic

In December, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees how investments are sold, proposed what it calls Cards, an electronic system that would regularly collect data on balances and transactions in brokerage accounts. But some critics think it could endanger the privacy and security of investors’ confidential data. Under Cards (which stands for Comprehensive Automated Risk Data System), Finra would collect—probably weekly—a record of activity at all of the more than 4,100 brokerage firms nationwide.

Simply said: when one truly digs in, MF Global exposes the 2011 equivalent of the 2008 AIG: virtually unlimited leverage via the shadow banking system, in which there are practically no hard assets backing the infinite layers of debt created above, and which when finally unwound, will create a cataclysmic collapse of all financial institutions, where every bank is daisy-chained to each other courtesy of multiple layers of "hypothecation, and re-hypothecation."

What’s worse than Enron and Worldcom? STOCKGATE, the biggest scandal to hit the markets yet! By: Kevin M. West Americans saw the television airwaves lit up this week with closure coming to the Worldcom fiasco by way of the CEO finally being held accountable for the crimes committed. Now we can finally sit back and say to ourselves “justice has prevailed and our SEC is really on top of their game”. Or can we? The SEC has gone after Worldcom, Martha Stewart and Enron, but what about the biggest fraud in the market? Are they attempting to really go after...