Wall Street's WarRead the rest here
Congress looked serious about finance reform – until America's biggest banks unleashed an army of 2,000 paid lobbyists
It's early May in Washington, and something very weird is in the air. As Chris Dodd, Harry Reid and the rest of the compulsive dealmakers in the Senate barrel toward the finish line of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act – the massive, year-in-the-making effort to clean up the Wall Street crime swamp – word starts to spread on Capitol Hill that somebody forgot to kill the important reforms in the bill. As of the first week in May, the legislation still contains aggressive measures that could cost once-
indomitable behemoths like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase tens of billions of dollars. Somehow, the bill has escaped the usual Senate-whorehouse orgy of mutual back-scratching, fine-print compromises and freeway-wide loopholes that screw any chance of meaningful change.
The real shocker is a thing known among Senate insiders as "716." This section of an amendment would force America's banking giants to either forgo their access to the public teat they receive through the Federal Reserve's discount window, or give up the insanely risky, casino-style bets they've been making on derivatives. That means no more pawning off predatory interest-rate swaps on suckers in Greece, no more gathering balls of subprime shit into incomprehensible debt deals, no more getting idiot bookies like AIG to wrap the crappy mortgages in phony insurance. In short, 716 would take a chain saw to one of Wall Street's most lucrative profit centers: Five of America's biggest banks (Goldman, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup) raked in some $30 billion in over-the-counter derivatives last year. By some estimates, more than half of JP Morgan's trading revenue between 2006 and 2008 came from such derivatives. If 716 goes through, it would be a veritable Hiroshima to the era of greed.
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Friday, May 28, 2010
Goldman's Wall Street War
The latest from Taibbi:
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Does the government control the corporations or do the corporations control the government?
Goldman Seeks to Settle With Lesser Charge
May 28, 2010, 5:40 am
Goldman Sachs is looking to avoid a charge of fraud from the Securities and Exchange Commission by coming to a settlement over a lesser offense, The Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the bank’s negotiating position.
The move would mean Goldman accepting a fine of hundreds of millions of dollars, but would aim to cap the furor that has dogged the bank since the Abacus scandal broke.
Negotiating a lesser charge in fraud cases is not an unusual procedure — it would reduce the risk of Goldman’s being involved in a lawsuit with its investors and avoid the further damage that settling a fraud charge would do to the reputation of the bank, The FT said.
More at: http://tinyurl.com/35anbs8
Is The SEC Still Working For Wall Street?
Regulatory capture begins when the regulator starts to see the world only through the eyes of the regulated. Rather than taking on board views that are critical of existing arrangements, tame regulators talk only to proponents of the status quo (or people who want even more deregulation). This seems to be what is happening with regard to HFT.
HFT is a big deal – perhaps as much as 70 percent of all stock trades are now done by “black box” computer algorithms (i.e., no one really knows how these work), and there are major open questions whether this operates in a way that is fair for small investors.
The names of panelists for this discussion are not yet public and probably not yet final – but the preliminary list is far too much slanted towards proponents of HFT (6 out of 7 seats at the table; see Senator Kaufman’s speech for details), with hardly any representation of people in the markets (e.g., “buy side” mutual funds) who think HFT is potentially out of control or unfair. It looks very much like someone is setting up a love fest for HFT – and a boxing match with 6 tough guys against one lonely critic.
http://tinyurl.com/39usqvp
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