Wednesday
Aug082012
Bailed Out Wells Fargo Will Fire You If Your Kid Gets Cancer, Big Fight For Audit The Fed In The GOP Platform, John Mica Crony Capitalism Florida Style (LINKS)
Warren Buffett and Berkshire still love Wells Fargo...
Afternoon reading from around the web:
- Lawsuit Alleges Wells Fargo Fired Man Because His Daughter Got Cancer
- REP. JOHN MICA: CRONY CAPITALISM, FLORIDA STYLE
- Bernanke’s Nightmare FED Audit Pushed For GOP Platform - Bloomberg
- Standard Chartered Bank - Fraud is one thing, but this would verge on treason
- FAA seeks RECORD fines against AMR, American Air
- CORRUPTION - Pfizer Admits Bribery in Eight Countries
- WWIII: Great commodities war to end all wars
- Obama Videographer: Official record or taxpayer-financed politics?
- Are Three Nuns and a Priest the Keys to TB Immunity? - Bloomberg
- Olympics spectator with Parkinson's arrested 'for not smiling'
Aug 8, 2012 at 4:40 PM
Reader Comments (18)
Buffett’s Betrayal
http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/08/04/buffetts-betrayal/
Better Ways to Lower Warren Buffett's After-Tax Income
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/08/15/better-ways-to-lower-warren-bu
How Buffett Saves Billions On His Tax Return
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/08/17/how-buffett-saves-billions-on-his-tax-return/
Saint Warren’s dark side
Ugliness the media overlook
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/saint_warren_dark_side_mhMyAHUqp3nn0jR0xdtGmI
Buffett Defends Moody's Managers
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282133337565878.html
The Just-us Department has decided it will not prosecute Goldman Sachs or its employees for their role in the financial crisis, following an investigation by senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Tom Coburn (R-OK).
http://washingtonmerry-go-round.blogspot.com/2012/08/doj-will-not-prosecute-goldman-sachs-in.html
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round...
You gotta love a Just-us Department full of defense lawyers. As long as everyone pays their shake down money, uh, I mean fines that are lower than the amounts evaporated all will be considered a success.
If you haven't read Neil Barofsky's book, "Bailout" (which debuted last week at #9 on the NYT's non-fiction bestsellers list), you're in for a treat. It's an insiders account of Wall Street's complete capture of the government that doesn't pull its punches.
Barofsky's accont of the Taylor Bean & Whittaker TARP fraud and prosecution is priceless. Barofsky and his partner-in-crime at SIGTARP, Kevin Puvalowski, worked together at the U.S. Attorneys Office in the Southern District of New York, and are shocked at the outright cowardice of the DOJ in prosecuting the slam-dunk TBW case.
In one meeting, Barofsky and Puvalowski get so frustrated with the DOJ geldings' reluctance to act on the mountain of evidence of TBW's outright fraud that they resort to personally wheedling the DOJ pussies.
Barosky tells one guy to put his "big-boy pants on," while Puvalowski orders a Democratic appointee to "stop acting like a birther." Fully 10 months pass before the DOJ accumulates a planet's worth of evidence and indicts.
The book is astonishing. Under Geithner, the Treasury's sole function is to be Wall Street's law firm, repeating argument after argument after argument--all of them transparently ridiculous--dictated to Tim by bankers about why it's helpless to do anything about the blatantly fraudulent bailout programs that are designed to enrich elite bankers at the expense of Main Street.
If you have been arrested by a private citizen and did not commit a crime, you may sue for unlawful arrest, even if the citizen had reason to believe you were guilty. However you may not sue property owners or merchants if they detained you because they believed you had wrongfully taken their property.
I haven't seen that book yet, I will get it but I don't have much reading time till the snow flies. On a side note, check out this local newscaster. He has been making some interesting news items lately. Start with "Reality Check: Is auditing the Federal Reserve really necessary?", I find it interesting that he is allowed to report reality.
http://www.fox19.com/category/208878/reality-check-with-fox19s-ben-swann-from-wxix-cincinnati
Before watching this clip, I didn't know either that:
1. JP Morgan got $390 billion in Fed assistance (I thought it was $260 bllion); or that
2. William Dudley held stock in GE and AIG while the NY Fed bailed out both companies. (I knew about Stephen Friedman's Goldman conflct from this site, but not about Bill "Let them eat iPad2" Dudley.)
Moreover, the explanation of why Dudley wasn't made to sell his holdings before bailing these companies out would be hilarious if it weren't so Orwellian: the Fed didn't want to create the appearance of a confilict of interest. What!? That's akin to telling a thief not to disgorge his loot for fear of calling attention to the impropriety. Unreal.
William M. Dudley
Associated General Counsel
Excel Energy Services
I got this from a FERC filing.