Article: Accidentally Released – and Incredibly Embarrassing – Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in ‘Naked Short Selling’

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Accidentally Released – and Incredibly Embarrassing – Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in ‘Naked Short Selling’

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 15 May 2012

The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time – primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks.

Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed.

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Book: Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America by Matt Taibbi

Book
Amazon Page

Review by Robert David Steele

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star Game Changer….Maybe

November 2, 2010

This is an extraordinary book, combining gifted insights and turns of phrase with serious research that has a point worth fighting for: Wall Street led by Goldman Sachs has ripped off the entire US economy, and they still have most people thinking that politics matters.

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Article: Wall Street’s Big Win

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Wall Street’s Big Win

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 4 August 2010

Cue the credits: the era of financial thuggery is officially over. Three hellish years of panic, all done and gone – the mass bankruptcies, midnight bailouts, shotgun mergers of dying megabanks, high-stakes SEC investigations, all capped by a legislative orgy in which industry lobbyists hurled more than $600 million at Congress. It all supposedly came to an end one Wednesday morning a few weeks back, when President Obama, flanked by hundreds of party flacks and congressional bigwigs, stepped up to the lectern at an extravagant ceremony to sign into law his sweeping new bill to clean up Wall Street.

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Article: Wall Street’s Naked Swindle

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Wall Street’s Naked Swindle

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 5 April 2010

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who —made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — “like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets,” according to one financial analyst.

But what’s even crazier is that the bet paid.

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Article: Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle

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Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle

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.

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Filing: CMKM Diamonds Lawsuit Against the SEC

Filing

These Defendants, acting in the course and scope of their employment by the United States of America as duly authorized Commissioners of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal agency, through their acts and omissions knowingly, consciously, wrongly, without compensation and without due process of law have effected a taking of property from each of the named Plaintiffs and all who are similarly situated.

PDF (18 Pages): CMKM Lawsuit Against the SEC 9 January 2010

Article: How Wall Street Is Using the Bailout to Stage a Revolution

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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.

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THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?