Foreign Collusion, Naked Shorting (Counterfeiting) & Money Laundering — All Illicit Wealth
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone, 17 February 2010
On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.
Major Investor in Russia Sees Wide Fraud Scheme
Andrew E. Kramer, 31 July 2009
William F. Browder, once the largest foreign investor in the Russian stock market, filed court documents in New York this week contending that other Western investors in Russia had colluded with the authorities to steal hundreds of millions of dollars through tax refunds and then laundered the money through New York banks. Continue reading “Article: Major Investor in Russia Sees Wide Fraud Scheme”
Regulation of Naked Short Selling
Name Redacted
Congressional Research Service, 31 July 2009
Until the current financial crisis, the SEC did not view short selling of large, blue-chip stocks as a problem. In July 2008, however, the SEC temporarily banned naked short sales of the stock of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and 17 other large financial institutions. On September 18, 2008, the SEC banned all short selling of the shares of more than 700 financial companies in an emergency action that expired on October 8, 2008. On October 1, 2008, the SEC adopted an interim rule requiring short sellers’ brokers to actually borrow shares to deliver to buyers, within one day after the expiration the normal three-day settlement time frame. The rule was made permanent on July 27, 2009, and it applies to all stocks. This report will be updated as events warrant.
PDF (10 Pages): Paper CRS Regulation on Naked Short Selling
How Wall Street Is Using the Bailout to Stage a Revolution
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone, 2 April 2009
It’s over – we’re officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline – a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country’s heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.
Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose
Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry, Alison Fitzgerald
Bloomberg cited by Yonkers Tribune
The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
Crisis of Convenience for Roiling SEC
David Patch
InvestigateTheSEC.com via Wayback, 30 October 2008
To say that support for the Securities and Exchange Commission is at an all time low would be an understatement. With Congressional Investigations into the agencies handling of critical investigations and recent reports out of the Office of Inspector General, investors are left guessing as to what exactly the agency is doing to police our markets. Heck, even a presidential candidate has suggested that the SEC Chairman should be fired and it was his party that hired him.
Cox’s SEC Censors Report on Bear Stearns Collapse
Mark Pittman, Elliot Blair Smith, Jesse Westbrook
Bloomberg cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 7 October 2008
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox’s regulators stood by as shrinking capital ratios and growing subprime holdings led to the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos., according to an unedited version of a study by the agency’s inspector general.
The report, by Inspector General H. David Kotz, was requested by Senator Charles Grassley to examine the role of regulators prior to the firm’s collapse in March. Before it was released to the public on Sept. 26, Kotz deleted 136 references, many detailing SEC memos, meetings or comments, at the request of the agency’s Division of Trading and Markets that oversees investment banks.
The Counterfeiting of Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Where are Our Regulators and Who are They Protecting?
17 September 2008
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are publicly traded Government Sponsored Enterprises (―GSEs‖), a quasi – partnership between the private sector and the government. The shares of the GSEs trading in the public markets have been counterfeited and deliberately manipulated. This is not rocket science; known ownership of the GSEs shares exceeded the number of shares that were available. Counterfeiting shares of the GSEs caused their stock prices to collapse. The regulators turned a blind eye to the takedown, encouraged it or were not effective enough to recognize it and enforce the laws against market manipulation that have existed since the 1930s. The industry and the regulators have little room for a plausible deniability claim that they did not know what was occurring in the trading of the GSEs.
PDF (33 pages): The Counterfeiting of Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Where are Our Regulators and Who are They Protecting?
Did It Help to Curb Short Sales?
Floyd Norris
The New York Times, 12 August 2008
A rule that made it harder to short some financial stocks and that may have helped raise prices and reduce the volume of shorting in those stocks expired Tuesday, as the Securities and Exchange Commission considers whether to tighten the rules on all short selling.
It may be a coincidence, but the announcement of the rule on July 15 coincided with the bottom of the bear market for financial stocks, which leaped that day and are now well above where they were. And the final day proved to be a very bad day for those shares.
Bringing Down Bear Began as $1.7 Million of Options
Gary Matsumoto
Bloomberg cited by RGM Communications via Wayback, 11 August 2008
On March 11, the day the Federal Reserve attempted to shore up confidence in the credit markets with a $200 billion lending program that for the first time monetized Wall Street’s devalued collateral, somebody else decided Bear Stearns Cos. was going to collapse.
In a gambit with such low odds of success that traders question its legitimacy, someone wagered $1.7 million that Bear Stearns shares would suffer an unprecedented decline within days. Options specialists are convinced that the buyer, or buyers, made a concerted effort to drive the fifth-biggest U.S. securities firm out of business and, in the process, reap a profit of more than $270 million.
Public Statement by SEC Chairman:
Naked Short Selling Is One Problem a Slumping Market Shouldn’t Have
Chairman Christopher Cox
SEC.gov, 18 July 2008
The demise of IndyMac, coming on the heels of Bear Stearns’ desperate sale to JPMorgan Chase, is a sure sign of the fragility of today’s markets. What’s needed now, more than ever, is reliable information for investors and confidence that trading can be conducted without the illegal influence of manipulation.
Bud Burrell Comments on Amendments to Regulation SHO
SEC, 13 July 2008
“August 1973 I started on Wall Street in Block Trading for Bache. Worked in all Major firms through the years.Traveled all over the world.
From $6 Billion per day Fails to deliver is now Over $13 1/2 billion per day.
There is More Naked Short shares in the market than there is Outstanding Shares.
We have allowed our Clearing systems to be Gamed, to the point where they are able to manipulate markets.”
Bryan Burrough
Vanity Fair, 30 June 2008
On Monday, March 10, the rumor started: Bear Stearns was having liquidity problems. In fact, the maverick investment bank had around $18 billion in cash reserves. But soon the speculation created its own reality, and the race was on to keep Bear’s crisis from ravaging Wall Street. With the blow-by-blow from insiders, Bryan Burrough follows the players—Bear’s stunned executives, trigger-happy reporters at CNBC, a nervous Fed, a shadowy group of short-sellers—in what some believe was the greatest financial scandal in history.
Ellen Brown
Global Research, 14 May 2008
The mother of all insider trades was pulled off in 1815, when London financier Nathan Rothschild led British investors to believe that the Duke of Wellington had lost to Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. In a matter of hours, British government bond prices plummeted. Rothschild, who had advance information, then swiftly bought up the entire market in government bonds, acquiring a dominant holding in England’s debt for pennies on the pound. Over the course of the nineteenth century, N. M. Rothschild would become the biggest bank in the world, and the five brothers would come to control most of the foreign-loan business of Europe. “Let me issue and control a nation’s money,” Rothschild boasted in 1838, “and I care not who writes its laws.”
Liz Moyer
Forbes, 13 September 2006
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has received a deluge of requests to amend short-selling rules it enacted just two years ago as the New York Stock Exchange continues its efforts to enforce existing regulations.
JPMorgan Chase has become the fifth bank to be censured and fined by the NYSE’s regulatory division for violations of trading rules meant to curb abusive short-selling.
THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?
