AMERICAblog: SEC oversight? What SEC oversight? What oversight, period?
gwpriester
· 11 months ago
Gutless members of congress just about says it all. You could add mindless as well.
tbhull
· 11 months ago
I have an idea. Why not use US taxpayer dollars to make the Madoff investors whole? It is only $50,000,000,000. Hell, let's put Madoff's sons in charge of this.
lucky hussein
· 11 months ago
Bail out the Madoff investors. Now! we need to do this now! Too big to fail... now!
lynchie
· 11 months ago
Our government prefers to hold the average American to the letter of the law with the most draconian punishments imagineable especially for anything to do with drugs. On the other hand the rich and the politicians are never found accountable for anything they do. Hump hookers and wear diapers, you are spokesman for the GOP. Toe tap you go free, chase interns you get to resign and go back to Florida. Delay, Hastert, Keating 5, Enron, all get to skate away no jail time, keep the money and our Congress is complicit in they have the old boys network going full speed. Obama appoints another worn out Clinton administration turd today. Where is the new blood, where are the people who haven't become jaded by Washington and not part of the club? They are at home wondering what the hell we vote for, why do we fall for the promises of change and a new way of doing things when all we get is more of the same. Someone smart said Insanity is doing the same thing day after day and expecting a different result. It is to much to expect anyone in the inner sanctum to be held accountable, instead it must be the auto workers, year that's it.
Roddy McCorley
· 11 months ago
so perhaps someone in Congress can find it important enough to develop a spine, instead of another goddamn nightly news video clip.
Yeah!
Ya know what else would be great? Anti-gravity boots.
Guess which one we're more likely to see first?
pdxprobert
· 11 months ago
Naked Shorting.. the most under reported news item of the last 10 years...it started in the penny stocks and eventually moved to the big boards.. .they sold air shares to the tune of trillions of dollars.. and the politicians knew it but held nobody accountable... then in the last 2 years they did away with the uptick rule that allowed for naked shorts to decimate the market... now were paying for it... if the SEC really wanted to begin to fix the market, they could bring back the uptick rule but its too lucrative, so they leave it broken... there's more money to be stolen... and not one of these fricking thieves will go to prison.. instead they bust Martha Stewart and Mark Cuban... this Madoff guy was head of the Nasdaq at one time, do you really think theyre going to step on him very hard.. he knows where the skeletons lay... http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=795065904...
Chris, if you haven't yet read Michael Lewis's essay The End Of Wall Street's Boom, I highly recommend it. Very relevant to this discussion.
John
· 11 months ago
Chris......"This is such an insiders club full of brainpower and statisticians, so I can't imagine that the big banks and their teams of researchers did not detect anything funny going on. How is it that others saw the red flags and Phil Gramm's UBS didn't? People see what they want to see and it sounds like some liked the results, no matter how far fetched they sounded" Here's a far fetched thought, but then again maybe not. A good old boy's club yes. But what if there is a bigger, badder club that just hides in the shadows waiting for the other club to screw up and then take over so as to begin a new game? me thinks for some time, other powers in our little world have been waiting and watching for just such a moment. A moment to finally pull the plug on the whole sordid operation so as to bring snaity back to a world gone mad. Just a thought..
sittenpretty
· 11 months ago
YOU WORKING STIFFS will bailout all the high rollers it seems
Judge signs order to protect Madoff investors
NEW YORK – A federal judge on Monday threw a lifesaver to investors who may have been duped in one of Wall Street's biggest alleged frauds, saying they need the protection of a special government reserve fund set up to help investors at failed brokerage firms.
RepubAnon
· 11 months ago
I heard some Wall Streeter claiming that we don't want to "stifle innovation by over-regulating." I disagree - innovation like Madoff's needs to be stifled...
The law doth punish man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common But lets the greater felon loose That steals the common from the goose -Anon.
...Bernard L. Madoff has been a major figure in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the major self-regulatory organization for US broker/dealer firms...
what kind of bad could happen when you can self-regulate ??
KenStarr
· 11 months ago
Two words: HARVEY PITT! Bush set out to destroy the SEC and he did, first with the walking disgrace named Harvey Pitt who worked as a lobbyist for the accounting industry that thought the cozy relationship with auditor and audited was just peachy. Gingrich hated SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt who was pushing for watchdog legislation.
Having vowed to restrict lawsuits in the Contract with America - pushed through a bill making it much harder to sue companies for misleading their investors, and threatening to gut the SEC's budget if Levitt's bill went forward. The lobbyist who spearheaded the accounting industry's campaign against the Levitt proposal - was none other than Harvey Pitt. After his election, President Bush the appointed Pitt to head a "kinder and gentler" SEC – the organization he was paid to destroy. Pitt was serious about doing just that. His first SEC budget proposed eliminating 57 staff positions, including 13 in the office of full DISCLOSURE, and 12 in the office charged with preventing FRAUD. Bush's Treasury secretary immediately shut down intergovernmental efforts to monitor the offshore corporate tax havens at the heart of Enron's financial maneuvers.
Americans lost billions of dollars.
Pitt nominated Wm. Webster in 2002 to the Securities & Exchange Commission’s Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, but Pitt never divulged that Webster had, as head of the audit committee of U.S. Technologies, voted to dismiss its outside auditors in the summer of 2001, after those auditors raised federal concerns about internal financial controls. So, Pitt nominated a guy that was under federal investigation for cheating investors! Perfect!
In the wake of a resulting shareholder stampede, Pitt topped off his oh-so-short politically tone-deaf career when he demanded a promotion to Bush's Cabinet and a pay raise so he could - fight fraud.
My opinion - the current economic crisis began with Phil Graham, and Newt Gingrich, and Harvey Pitt.
Anon
· 11 months ago
At the risk of overstatement, is it perhaps not time to ask what IS working in the United States? The list of dysfunctional institutions is now longer than the average arm and seems to be growing longer day by day. From the outside, I'm afraid the typical expectation of American institutions now is that they are all well and truly buggered up in the service of some religion-like theory of possessive individualism that shall not be restrained by law or regulation. For all intents and purposes, we might be tempted to assume that if its American, it doesn't work properly. Cars, banks, schools, elected representatives, army...you name it, its cruddy. Much like Japanese goods in the immediate postwar period... plastic, shoddy, and worth ever bit of 35 cents. It is breathtaking how fast the decline in performance of American institutions has been. Please explain in 35 words or less. And while you are contemplating your answer, the band will be playing Nearer My God to Thee featuring the stylings of soloist Ayn Rand.
TomJoad
· 11 months ago
You make a false assumption here, that is common to ALL marks in a con game. Assuming intelligence has something to do with not getting "fooled".
I think you are totally wrong on that. Smart people throughout history have been fooled, by greed. Greed is the con mans tool. Some con men say the smarter the mark, as long as greedy, the easier to fool. Dumb people often at least suspect they are dumb, smart people think they are invinceable.
All they saw was the return, and who wants to look TOO hard at a gift horse, even if it is your job to?
It's just like the Bush administration....the "checks and balances" only work when dealing with something inside the "normal framework", as we have seen. When some mutant, rabid, dog comes into the picture, one that doesn't recognize any of the rules, it turns out the checks and balances are useless (unless they REALLY used the tools congress has). Same here, there have always been cheats, and ponzi schemes, but what the hell...the housing bubble was one (just not centralized, more all inclusive), and the sub-prime, etc. So...
TomJoad
· 11 months ago
After posting, I just read Arrianna Huffingtons take on this. I think she nailed it. "Who could have known"...in the article she does mention someone sending numerous letters to the SEC from WAY back telling them it was the worlds largest ponzi scheme....ignored.
Our institutions are all playing the "what? How could we have known" card. The insiders some knew, some ignored, and others just didn't want to dig too deep.
RonNYC
· 11 months ago
Well, according to the GOP, the big problem is minorities getting all those loans they don't deserve.
All Comments
Yeah!
Ya know what else would be great? Anti-gravity boots.
Guess which one we're more likely to see first?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=795065904...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=794250312
here's an interesting observation about this Madoff mess and all its tentacles...
http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?b...
Here's a far fetched thought, but then again maybe not. A good old boy's club yes. But what if there is a bigger, badder club that just hides in the shadows waiting for the other club to screw up and then take over so as to begin a new game? me thinks for some time, other powers in our little world have been waiting and watching for just such a moment. A moment to finally pull the plug on the whole sordid operation so as to bring snaity back to a world gone mad.
Just a thought..
Judge signs order to protect Madoff investors
NEW YORK – A federal judge on Monday threw a lifesaver to investors who may have been duped in one of Wall Street's biggest alleged frauds, saying they need the protection of a special government reserve fund set up to help investors at failed brokerage firms.
The law doth punish man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But lets the greater felon loose
That steals the common from the goose
-Anon.
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:ldSXXM417l0...
...Bernard L. Madoff has been a major figure in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the major self-regulatory organization for US broker/dealer firms...
what kind of bad could happen when you can self-regulate ??
Having vowed to restrict lawsuits in the Contract with America - pushed through a bill making it much harder to sue companies for misleading their investors, and threatening to gut the SEC's budget if Levitt's bill went forward. The lobbyist who spearheaded the accounting industry's campaign against the Levitt proposal - was none other than Harvey Pitt. After his election, President Bush the appointed Pitt to head a "kinder and gentler" SEC – the organization he was paid to destroy. Pitt was serious about doing just that. His first SEC budget proposed eliminating 57 staff positions, including 13 in the office of full DISCLOSURE, and 12 in the office charged with preventing FRAUD. Bush's Treasury secretary immediately shut down intergovernmental efforts to monitor the offshore corporate tax havens at the heart of Enron's financial maneuvers.
Americans lost billions of dollars.
Pitt nominated Wm. Webster in 2002 to the Securities & Exchange Commission’s Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, but Pitt never divulged that Webster had, as head of the audit committee of U.S. Technologies, voted to dismiss its outside auditors in the summer of 2001, after those auditors raised federal concerns about internal financial controls. So, Pitt nominated a guy that was under federal investigation for cheating investors! Perfect!
In the wake of a resulting shareholder stampede, Pitt topped off his oh-so-short politically tone-deaf career when he demanded a promotion to Bush's Cabinet and a pay raise so he could - fight fraud.
My opinion - the current economic crisis began with Phil Graham, and Newt Gingrich, and Harvey Pitt.
I think you are totally wrong on that. Smart people throughout history have been fooled, by greed. Greed is the con mans tool. Some con men say the smarter the mark, as long as greedy, the easier to fool. Dumb people often at least suspect they are dumb, smart people think they are invinceable.
All they saw was the return, and who wants to look TOO hard at a gift horse, even if it is your job to?
It's just like the Bush administration....the "checks and balances" only work when dealing with something inside the "normal framework", as we have seen. When some mutant, rabid, dog comes into the picture, one that doesn't recognize any of the rules, it turns out the checks and balances are useless (unless they REALLY used the tools congress has). Same here, there have always been cheats, and ponzi schemes, but what the hell...the housing bubble was one (just not centralized, more all inclusive), and the sub-prime, etc. So...
Our institutions are all playing the "what? How could we have known" card. The insiders some knew, some ignored, and others just didn't want to dig too deep.