Barclays Asked to Account for 3.3 Billion in Lehman Bonus Money

The difference between the monies transferred to Barclay's and the amounts actually disbursed may have accounted for almost a third of Barclay's reported pre-tax profits.

One would have to wonder if the Barclay's executives were paid bonuses on such impressive financial results.

Thus do fees and bonus money provide a cornucopia of personal enrichment to the financiers at the expense of the real economy.

Financial Times
Barclays questioned on funds
By Francesco Guerrera, Greg Farrell and Julie MacIntosh in New York
March 5 2009 11:03

Lehman Brothers’ US liquidators have asked Barclays to explain what happened to an estimated $3.3bn earmarked for bonuses and other liabilities that the UK bank received when it acquired part of the bankrupt Wall Street company last year.

The move by Bryan Marsal, who heads the firm managing Lehman’s US liquidation, underlines the tension between the company’s creditors and Barclays, which acquired the North American arms of the investment bank for $1.5bn after it filed for bankruptcy in September.

The decision by Alvarez & Marsal, charged with recovering funds for creditors, to query Barclays’ use of the money could fuel controversy over bonuses paid to Lehman executives who stayed with the UK bank.

In its yearly results last month, Barclays booked a gain of £2.3bn ($3.3bn) on the difference between the fair value of the assets and liabilities acquired from Lehman and the price paid for them. The gain accounted for about a third of Barclays’ pre-tax profits and helped Barclays Capital, its investment banking arm, to record a profit of £1.3bn.

People close to the situation said Mr Marsal wrote to Barclays on February 19 asking it to reconcile the $4.2bn transferred to the UK bank after the takeover – composed of $2bn for compensation and $2.25bn for other purposes – with his firm’s estimate that BarCap has so far spent about $900m.

Mr Marsal’s letter – sent to Rich Ricci, BarCap’s chief operating officer, and Jonathan Hughes, its general counsel – says that, under the takeover deal, Barclays received $2bn from Lehman to pay bonuses and severance to transferring employees, according to people who have seen the document. However, Alvarez & Marsal estimates Barclays had to pay only about $700m in bonuses and severance, these people say.

The liquidators’ analysis of Lehman’s internal documents concluded that the total amount of compensation set aside for the investment bank’s global workforce until the end of August was $1.3bn. But because Barclays bought only Lehman’s North American operations, whose 10,000-plus employees accounted for 55 per cent of the compensation pool, its expenses should have been about $700m.

The agreement between Barclays and Lehman also provided for the transfer of cash and collateral, including $2.25bn to pay for liabilities to be settled after the takeover, according to people who have seen the letter. However, in the document Alvarez & Marsal calculates that Barclays’ payments for these liabilities have been about $200m, and the estimate for the final amount is much lower than expected, these people said.

People close to the situation said Barclays had written to Mr Marsal on February 23 saying BarCap was open to discussing the issues but rejected the suggestion that the original takeover agreement should be amended.

Barclays said on Wednesday: “Alvarez & Marsal’s position is completely without merit, baseless and a serious misunderstanding of the facts. All of these matters were approved by the New York bankruptcy court in September 2008.”

Lehman Brothers Holdings, the bank’s remaining businesses, now managed by Alvarez & Marsal, said it was “not making any allegations but is simply requesting factual information from Barclays as to certain discrepancies”.

JP Morgan Made $5 Billion in Profit on $88 Trillion in Unregulated Derivatives Speculation

There is no justification for a commercial bank, with regulated depositors' funds insured by the government, should be speculating on a level this great.

One also has to wonder who actually 'lost' in those derivatives bets that JP Morgan made, who the counterparties were. How many losses were taken by AIG, Bear Stearns, and Lehman?

Who is really being bailed out here? Aren't we paying for JP Morgan's "winnings?"

If they speculate and lose, who pays for that? We do.

What is a bank doing gambling in unregulated over-the-counter derivatives involving commodities and financial instruments worth $89 Trillion?

Getting paid by the public whether they win or lose it appears.

When a single player with deep pockets and government guarantees is placing bets in markets on a scale that dwarfs the Gross Domestic Product of United States that is the very definition of moral hazard.

Until the Obama Administration takes strong steps to bring back Glass-Steagall, and put hard limits on the banks there will be no reform and no recovery.

We are 48 days into this Administration. We have see little or no systemic reform. Just a continuation of crony capitalism under Bernanke, Summers and Geithner.


Bloomberg
JPMorgan earns $5 billion derivatives profit
By Ratul Ray Chaudhuri in Bangalore
Tue Mar 3, 2009 2:56am EST

March 3 (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co generated $5 billion in profit during the worst year in Wall Street history by trading over-the-counter fixed-income derivatives, Bloomberg said, citing two people with knowledge of the results.

The bank, which reported $5.6 billion of total profit in 2008, has not disclosed earnings for its interest-rate swap, municipal bond and foreign exchange derivatives group, the agency said. The unit was among the most profitable at the New York-based company, it added.

The JPMorgan trading desk may have benefited as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc and JPMorgan's takeover of Bear Stearns Cos left companies and hedge funds with fewer trading partners in the private derivatives markets, the agency said.

Among commercial lenders, JP Morgan dominates OTC derivatives trading, the agency said, citing data compiled by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The bank held $87.7 trillion worth of outstanding OTC contracts as of Sept. 30, more than the next two banks, Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc, combined, the agency reported.

JPMorgan could not be immediately reached by Reuters for comment.

The Next Bailout: Pension Funds Imploding

It is in times like these that Pension Fund Managers, and the Other People's Money crowd in general, are showing how they earned their pay, or didn't.

Aren't you glad the Bush Administration did not achieve its objective of putting the Social Security Trust Fund into the stock market?

Although its not clear how much difference that is going to make in the long run.

We are still in the calculated and deliberate 'general looting of the country' phase and the tide has not yet turned. The financiers are still in control.


Chicago Business News
Pension bombs going off
By: Paul Merrion
March 02, 2009

Exploding pension fund shortfalls are blowing billion-dollar holes in the balance sheets of some of the Chicago area's biggest companies, forcing them to make huge contributions to retirement plans at a time when cash flow and credit are already under stress.

Boeing Co.'s shareholder equity is now $1.2 billion in the hole thanks to an $8.4-billion gap between its pension assets and the projected cost of its obligations for 2008. At the end of 2007, Boeing had a $4.7-billion pension surplus. If its investments don't turn around, the Chicago-based aerospace giant will have to quadruple annual contributions to its plan to about $2 billion by 2011.

Stock market losses also pounded pension funds at Abbott Laboratories Inc., Caterpillar Inc. and Exelon Corp., with others sure to emerge as companies file their annual financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission in coming weeks.

The pension gaps underscore a growing conundrum. Unfunded pension liabilities have to be subtracted from shareholder equity, weakening balance sheets at a time when it's already tough to borrow money. Barring a reprieve from Congress, companies may be forced to make more layoffs or curb capital investments to divert cash to shore up pensions....

The Chicago companies are symptomatic of nationwide woes. Last year, the 100 largest corporate pension funds in the U.S. saw their net assets decline by 21%, while liabilities increased 1.2%. Applying those averages to any of the region's top funds puts almost all of them into the red by at least $1 billion....

GDP Number Far Worse Than Expected by Most Economists (But Not Here)

The Fourth Quarter GDP number came in at a negative 6.2% versus the original negative 3.8 percent announcement earlier this year.

That is not a big adjustment. It is a HUGE adjustment. That first number was so obviously cooked by a high side inventories estimate and a lowball chain deflator that it was a knee-slapping howler to anyone who is following this economy closely.

This decline did not happen overnight. It is merely being reported that way.

There should be little doubt in most people's minds that Bernanke, Greenspan, Paulson, and many in the Bush Administration were deceiving us about the state of the economy, for years, almost routinely as a matter of course.

That is important to understand. This was no act of God, no hurricane or meteor strike. And a lot of folks on Wall Street and in Washington playing dumb now knew what was coming. You can decide their motives for yourself, but fear and greed should be high on the top of your list.

The economy has been rotten for a long time, since at least 2001 if not before, and as it worsened more and more money was taken off the table by the Bush Administration and their corporate cronies through no bid contracts and welfare for the wealthy. Coats of paint were slapped over the growing imbalances, market manipulation, malinvestment, fraud and corruption.

Remember that. Don't let it go. Because as sure as the sun will rise, these jokers will be back in business given half the chance. They are shameless, greedy beyond all reason, and persistent. The fiscal responsibility being preached now by the Republican minority is repulsive hypocrisy.

That is why it is so disappointing to see what looks like business as usual from the Obama Administration. Larry Summers appears to be a tragic choice as chief economic advisor. And Tim Geithner, while a capable fellow, is not a thinker, but a doer, an implementer, and a disciple of the fellows that caused this mess.

What to do? Let them know now we expect reform. Don't fall for the same old rhetoric from the 'conservative' think thanks and paid pundits who misled you for the past eight years. They are not conservatives. They are jackals who play on your emotions. And let's not accept a new batch of paid pundits and clever deceivers either. But don't give up and pull over a blanket of cynicism.

Typically Americans will give a new president like Obama 100 days to get his bearings and deal with a tidal wave of problems that he did not create. We do not expect him to fix them, but we want to see a decent start in the right direction. We gave Bush far too much allowance, primarily because of 911 which his handlers played for all it was worth.

So far, with some noted exceptions in non-financials, we the people have not seen what we voted for last November.

President Obama recently said that Wall Street reform is coming, but it will take time.

Mr. President, you may not have the leisure to show us that you know what needs to be done. You are riding a high tide of bipartisan support in the people who voted for you. Once you lose them it will be very difficult to get them back.

We must demand action from the Congress and the Administration who we recently put in place through the elections to clean this mess up and then change the system that delivered it.

Contact the White House

Contact Your Senator

We do not want fewer, bigger banks exacting a fee on every commericial transaction in this country.

1. Bring back Glass-Steagall.

2. Clean up the derivatives market, starting with J.P. Morgan and their 90 Trillion dollar positions.

3. Enforce the various anti-trust laws, enacting new ones where necessary, and break up the media and banking conglomerates.

4. Enact aggregate position limits in all commodity markets and transparency with immediate disclosure of all position over 5% in any market.

5. Effective restrictions and enforcement of naked short selling, price manipulation, reinstatement of the 'uptick rule,' the prohibition of regulated banks from engaging in any speculative markets either for themselves or as agents, and usury laws and regulation of all interstate financial transactions at the national level.

And for the sake of the country, establish a vision, a model, of what the system should look like in accord with the Constitution. And then strike out for it, as painful as that may be, and stop this management by crisis.


Bloomberg
U.S. Economy Shrank 6.2% Last Quarter, Most Since ’82
By Timothy R. Homan

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy shrank in the fourth quarter at a faster pace than previously estimated as consumer spending plunged, companies cut inventories and exports sank.

Gross domestic product contracted at a 6.2 percent annual pace from October through December, more than economists anticipated and the most since 1982, according to revised figures from the Commerce Department today in Washington. Consumer spending, which comprises about 70 percent of the economy, declined at the fastest pace in almost three decades.

The recession is forecast to persist at least through the first half of this year as job losses mount and purchases plummet. The Obama administration’s attempts to break the grip of the worst financial crisis in 70 years are unlikely to bring immediate relief as companies from General Motors Corp. to JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut payrolls.

“There has been no evidence that the pace of decline is slowing at all, there are other shoes waiting to drop,” Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services Inc. in Boston, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “There is a chance that the stimulus package will kick in” in the middle of this year, he said.

How the Economy Was Lost

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.

"How long can the US government protect the dollar’s value by leasing its gold to bullion dealers who sell it, thereby holding down the gold price? Given the incompetence in Washington and on Wall Street, our best hope is that the rest of the world is even less competent and even in deeper trouble. In this event, the US dollar might survive as the least valueless of the world’s fiat currencies."

Counterpunch
Doomed by the Myths of Free Trade
How the Economy was Lost
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The American economy has gone away. It is not coming back until free trade myths are buried six feet under.

America’s 20th century economic success was based on two things. Free trade was not one of them. America’s economic success was based on protectionism, which was ensured by the union victory in the Civil War, and on British indebtedness, which destroyed the British pound as world reserve currency. Following World War II, the US dollar took the role as reserve currency, a privilege that allows the US to pay its international bills in its own currency.

World War II and socialism together ensured that the US economy dominated the world at the mid 20th century. The economies of the rest of the world had been destroyed by war or were stifled by socialism [in terms of the priorities of the capitalist growth model. Editors.]

The ascendant position of the US economy caused the US government to be relaxed about giving away American industries, such as textiles, as bribes to other countries for cooperating with America’s cold war and foreign policies. For example, Turkey’s US textile quotas were increased in exchange for over-flight rights in the Gulf War, making lost US textile jobs an off-budget war expense.

In contrast, countries such as Japan and Germany used industrial policy to plot their comebacks. By the late 1970s, Japanese auto makers had the once dominant American auto industry on the ropes. The first economic act of the “free market” Reagan administration in 1981 was to put quotas on the import of Japanese cars in order to protect Detroit and the United Auto Workers.

Eamonn Fingleton, Pat Choate, and others have described how negligence in Washington DC aided and abetted the erosion of America’s economic position. What we didn’t give away, the United States let be taken away while preaching a “free trade” doctrine at which the rest of the world scoffed.

Fortunately, the U.S.’s adversaries at the time, the Soviet Union and China, had unworkable economic systems that posed no threat to America’s diminishing economic prowess.

This furlough from reality ended when Soviet, Chinese, and Indian socialism surrendered around 1990, to be followed shortly thereafter by the rise of the high speed Internet. Suddenly, American and other first world corporations discovered that a massive supply of foreign labor was available at practically free wages.

To get Wall Street analysts and shareholder advocacy groups off their backs, and to boost shareholder returns and management bonuses, American corporations began moving their production for American markets offshore. Products that were made in Peoria are now made in China.

As offshoring spread, American cities and states lost tax base, and families and communities lost jobs. The replacement jobs, such as selling the offshored products at Wal-Mart, brought home less pay.

“Free market economists” covered up the damage done to the US economy by preaching a New Economy based on services and innovation. But it wasn’t long before corporations discovered that the high speed Internet let them offshore a wide range of professional service jobs. In America, the hardest hit have been software engineers and information technology (IT) workers.

The American corporations quickly learned that by declaring “shortages” of skilled Americans, they could get from Congress H-1b work visas for lower paid foreigners with whom to replace their American work force. Many US corporations are known for forcing their US employees to train their foreign replacements in exchange for severance pay.

Chasing after shareholder return and “performance bonuses,” US corporations deserted their American workforce. The consequences can be seen everywhere. The loss of tax base has threatened the municipal bonds of cities and states and reduced the wealth of individuals who purchased the bonds. The lost jobs with good pay resulted in the expansion of consumer debt in order to maintain consumption. As the offshored goods and services are brought back to America to sell, the US trade deficit has exploded to unimaginable heights, calling into question the US dollar as reserve currency and America’s ability to finance its trade deficit.

As the American economy eroded away bit by bit, “free market” ideologues produced endless reassurances that America had pulled a fast one on China, sending China dirty and grimy manufacturing jobs. Free of these “old economy” jobs, Americans were lulled with promises of riches. In place of dirty fingernails, American efforts would flow into innovation and entrepreneurship. In the meantime, the “service economy” of software and communications would provide a leg up for the work force.

Education was the answer to all challenges. This appeased the academics, and they produced no studies that would contradict the propaganda and, thus, curtail the flow of federal government and corporate grants.

The “free market” economists, who provided the propaganda and disinformation to hide the act of destroying the US economy, were well paid. And as Business Week noted, “outsourcing’s inner circle has deep roots in GE (General Electric) and McKinsey,” a consulting firm. Indeed, one of McKinsey’s main apologists for offshoring of US jobs, Diana Farrell, is now a member of Obama’s White House National Economic Council.

The pressure of jobs offshoring, together with vast imports, has destroyed the economic prospects for all Americans, except the CEOs who receive “performance” bonuses for moving American jobs offshore or giving them to H-1b work visa holders. Lowly paid offshored employees, together with H-1b visas, have curtailed employment for older and more experienced American workers. Older workers traditionally receive higher pay. However, when the determining factor is minimizing labor costs for the sake of shareholder returns and management bonuses, older workers are unaffordable. Doing a good job, providing a good service, is no longer the corporation’s function. Instead, the goal is to minimize labor costs at all cost.

Thus, “free trade” has also destroyed the employment prospects of older workers. Forced out of their careers, they seek employment as shelf stockers for Wal-Mart.

I have read endless tributes to Wal-Mart from “libertarian economists,” who sing Wal-Mart’s praises for bringing low price goods, 70 per cent of which are made in China, to the American consumer. What these “economists” do not factor into their analysis is the diminution of American family incomes and government tax base from the loss of the goods producing jobs to China. Ladders of upward mobility are being dismantled by offshoring, while California issues IOUs to pay its bills. The shift of production offshore reduces US GDP. When the goods and services are brought back to America to be sold, they increase the trade deficit. As the trade deficit is financed by foreigners acquiring ownership of US assets, this means that profits, dividends, capital gains, interest, rents, and tolls leave American pockets for foreign ones.

The demise of America’s productive economy left the US economy dependent on finance, in which the US remained dominant because the dollar is the reserve currency. With the departure of factories, finance went in new directions. Mortgages, which were once held in the portfolios of the issuer, were securitized. Individual mortgage debts were combined into a “security.” The next step was to strip out the interest payments to the mortgages and sell them as derivatives, thus creating a third debt instrument based on the original mortgages.

In pursuit of ever more profits, financial institutions began betting on the success and failure of various debt instruments and by implication on firms. They bought and sold collateral debt swaps. A buyer pays a premium to a seller for a swap to guarantee an asset’s value. If an asset “insured” by a swap falls in value, the seller of the swap is supposed to make the owner of the swap whole. The purchaser of a swap is not required to own the asset in order to contract for a guarantee of its value. Therefore, as many people could purchase as many swaps as they wished on the same asset. Thus, the total value of the swaps greatly exceeds the value of the assets.

The next step is for holders of the swaps to short the asset in order to drive down its value and collect the guarantee. As the issuers of swaps were not required to reserve against them, and as there is no limit to the number of swaps, the payouts could easily exceed the net worth of the issuer.

This was the most shameful and most mindless form of speculation. Gamblers were betting hands that they could not cover. The US regulators fled their posts. The American financial institutions abandoned all integrity. As a consequence, American financial institutions and rating agencies are trusted nowhere on earth...

The Word for This Week

Demagoguery refers to a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the popular prejudices, emotions, fears and expectations of the public — typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist or populist themes, usually singling out a group or groups.

Also see Demagogue

The word for this week, and likely for this year, and the next.

No, not demagogue or demagogy. The Word for the Week is "them."

Why should we help them.

We are being dragged down by them.

Blaming them feels good. It makes one feel as if they were successful, not part of the problem.

It wasn't us, it was them.

They caused their own problems. They caused our problems. It is unfortunate but they would be better off somewhere else, out of sight, no longer an impairment or competition for scarce resources.

They are the scapegoats, usually singled out by the group or groups that caused the problems, and even those who benefited indirectly, made some money out of the bubble, less deservedly than they might like to imagine.

They are the weak, the poor, the defenseless, the different, the other.

And the circle of the ones that are considered them spreads wider and wider.

Because even those shouting and waving their fists in the crowds against them are also them to someone else higher in the power structure. Useless eaters is a relative objectification of the human.

And then someone will come and take them away, where they do not wish to go.

And then comes the descent into madness and destruction, for all.


One might ask, "But Jesse, you have inveighed against the Bankers on numerous occasions. How is that different? Aren't you a demagogue too, with just a different opinion?

No. All banks are not bad. All who work at banks, even the biggest Wall Street banks, are not bad. Even all those who turned a blind eye to what went on around them are not bad, just weak, distracted, overwhelmed.

But there were prime actors in this tragedy. The first objective is to stop it, to reform the system, to end the imbalances. And it would be disingenuous to not notice that the big Wall Street Banks, and the rating agencies and accounting firms, were at the epicenter of the financial crises for the past ten years. They were the lobbyists, the financial engineers, the architects of fraud, the enablers of many frauds going back to Enron and beyond.

Cui bono? Who benefited the most?

It was not so much the poor slob acting foolishly on bad advice. It was the joker taking millions off the table time after time by gaming the system, and actively promoting the bubble culture and deep capture that knocked out the regulatory process and the rule of law.

And then the law can deal with individual transgressions, and the emphasis here is "individual." Not a lynching of the bystanders. A serious investigation with individual accountability and equal protection.

That is not demagoguery. That is justice, because it is based on law and individual actions.

Wall Street Execs Knew Madoff Was a Fraud Years Ago But Kept Silent

There is no way that the top execs on Wall Street did not know Bernie Madoff was running a scam. No way.

Why? Because once they heard he was pulling down those kinds of returns in all types of markets they would have had their own whiz kids climbing up his company's investment portfolio looking to see how he did it. They would want to do it too. It took Markopolos how many minutes to figure out it wasn't legitimate?

But now you know why so few Wall Street firms lost any money with Madoff despite his 'superior returns.'

Why did they keep quiet? Professional courtesy amongst scumbags is not likely, because there isn't any. More likely Bernie knew about some of their frauds, and that made him untouchable.

If they dig deeply enough they might find the real truth behind the Madoff scam, and it won't be pretty. This is no lone trader operation.

We may never hear the details behind this scam. It might shake our confidence in the system.


NY Post
Madoff Wall of Silence
By James Doran
February 16, 2009

Senior executives at some of Wall Street's biggest firms were convinced Bernard Madoff was a fraud as early as 2005 - yet none alerted authorities, documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal.

Leon Gross, the former managing director in charge of worldwide equity derivatives research for Citigroup, told friends and colleagues on Wall Street in 2005 that he thought Madoff was being less than honest about the returns he could make for investors but did nothing to prevent the fraud.

Likewise, Joanne Hill, Goldman Sachs' global head of equity derivatives research, believed there was something wrong with Madoff's investment scheme because the returns he boasted in marketing materials seemed too good to be true.

Like Gross, Hill did not alert her superiors or regulatory authorities. She did, however, tell friends and colleagues about her suspicions.

Bud Haslett, of Write Capital Management, an investment firm, also suspected something fishy. But he told no one of his concerns.

The actions - or inaction - of the bankers is unveiled in a 700-plus-page dossier of e-mails, letters and analysis filed with the SEC by Harry Markopolos, the fraud investigator who tried to blow the whistle on Madoff for eight years.

The silence by the executives is disturbing to some, who claim a second alarm bell could have forced the SEC's hand and brought Madoff's alleged scam to an end sooner.

Markopolos told the SEC, according to the documents in the file, that he had been in contact with Gross, Hill and Haslett and that they would give evidence to the SEC so long as they were never required to speak in an official capacity.

Citigroup confirmed that Gross had been an employee but had left the bank some months ago. The company declined to comment about his views on Madoff.

A source close to Citi said Gross should not be singled out, as his views about Madoff were commonplace on Wall Street, adding that Gross did not spend much time analyzing Madoff's investment strategies.

Goldman Sachs did not return calls seeking comment. Write Capital Management, meanwhile, has not filed records with the SEC since 2006.

Whistleblower: Gordon Brown is Culpable and Should Resign

The UK would do well to force Gordon Brown to resign, and for a new government to be created. Who would take his place? Surely no one among the Tories, as they planted the seeds for this debacle and remain unreformed and unrepentant.

In the US, we have done something emulating this already, using our process of regularly scheduled elections and the repudiation of the Republican party principles (or lack thereof).

However, it remains most unsatisfying and discouraging that Obama continues to put pressure on the Congress to 'just move on' and not investigate any of the abuses of the past eight years, and points of Constitutional excess that led us to this point, or engage in meaningful investigation and reform of the monied interests who are such heavy contributors to the Democratic party.

He looks less like the Lincolnesque figure his admirers assume him to be, and more like a small time dealmaker from the Chicago machine.

He can do better than this. And we the voting public deserve better. Obama needs to grow a principled backbone worthy of his words.

UK Independent
Blame Brown: Revenge of the whistleblower
By Margareta Pagano and Jane Merrick
February 15, 2009

A former HBOS executive says he has documents that prove the Prime Minister must take responsibility for the mess in the markets

The HBOS whistleblower whose revelations led to the resignation of one of the Government's top regulators is about to release a tranche of documents which he says point a direct and accusatory finger at Gordon Brown's responsibility for the banking crisis, and has called on the Prime Minister to resign. In a further blow to Labour, an Independent on Sunday poll showed voter support for the party evaporating, leaving it only a few points ahead of the Lib Dems.

Paul Moore, the former head of risk at HBOS, told the IoS that he has more than 30 potentially incendiary documents which he will send to MPs on the Treasury Select Committee. He says they disprove Mr Brown's claim about the reasons for HBOS's catastrophic losses – now estimated to be nearly £11bn – and show that it was the reckless lending culture, easy credit and failed regulation of the Brown years that led directly to the implosion of British banks.

After Mr Moore's explosive testimony at the MPs' banking hearing, the Prime Minister had denied the former executive's central charges and said that HBOS's difficulties were due to its flawed business model. Mr Moore says his documents refute this and prove the cause of the crisis can be laid at Gordon Brown's feet. He believes Mr Brown's failure to intervene over the reckless lending undertaken by all the banks over the past decade means he should go. "The failure goes right to the heart of the system – to the internal supervisory system and right to the top of government."

Mr Moore told the IoS yesterday: "Brown must go. He cannot remain in office. He has presided over the biggest boom in the history of the country as well as one of the biggest busts. But he promised no more boom and bust. He must be held accountable for his failure to oversee the stability of the country.

(Obama's blocking of congressional investigations of the abuses of prior administration is a kind of professional courtesy among politicians that is not warranted nor serving of the public interest, only of the concept of a class of ruling elite. And his appointment of Larry Summers and other appointments that fail the integrity test is a disgrace. - Jesse)

"Brown presided over a policy based on excessive consumer spending based on excessive consumer credit based on massively increasing property prices, which were caused by excessively easy credit which could only ultimately lead to disaster. But no, in Gordon's mind it was all caused by global events beyond his and anyone else's control...."

(Gordon Brown pales by comparison to the enormity of Alan Greenspan's serial malfeasance and advocacy for ruinous policy errors. - Jesse)

He says the papers – which he has kept from his time in his post as head of risk, from 2002 to 2005 – show that HBOS was involved in a huge sales drive to win market share which ultimately led to its collapse. Mr Moore claims that the "driven sales culture" was led by Sir James, and this, plus the "staggering failure" of the Government to manage the economy, had forced him to speak out. "Brown swaggers around holding himself out as the economic saviour of the world with a level of hubris that defies belief. But does he ever acknowledge that it was he, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, who presided functionally over the economic strategy that got us into this mess in the first place?"

As a trained barrister, Mr Moore stressed that his new evidence being sent to the committee will back up his claims. "I have compiled a meticulous record of my time at the bank. This will show that the version of events given by KPMG, which was brought in to carry out an audit of my claims, is inaccurate," he said. "Key witnesses were not included in the original audit and there are many factual errors. I will only be vindicated when all my allegations are proved by the evidence I have....."

Why Is There No Reform?

First the reform of the financial system, and then the stimulus can find a footing. The existing level of debt obligations are too large and unproductive of cash flows to service.

The debt must be written down and the currency devalued to increase the wages of debt payers relative to them. This is an unacceptable alternative at the moment because politically the debt holders and the big money center banks are running the system. The parallels to Japan are remarkable, where the inability to realize their losses caused an entire country to lose its way for a decade.

Until we break up the big money center banks into their parts, and write off their debt obligations, we are pouring money into a Wall Street sinkhole of corruption. This will involve the reinstatement of Glass-Steagalls.

"The United States should emerge from the economic crisis with a two-part financial system that places tighter restrictions on banks, says former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

To prevent another banking crisis from undermining the economy, the U.S. financial system must turn back the clock to a time when commercial banks were the core of the credit system, said Mr. Volcker...

The system that Mr. Volcker envisions "looks more like the Canadian system than it does like the American system," he told a Toronto audience last night..."

And there will be no recovery, only increasing pain, until we break the pattern.

“The Government should allow every distressed bank to go bankrupt and set up a fresh banking system under temporary state control rather than cripple the country by propping up a corrupt edifice…

…amounts to swapping taxpayers’ ‘cash for trash,’ Stiglitz said yesterday in a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ‘You shouldn't chase good money after bad. We’re talking about a national debt that’s very hard to manage.'" Joseph Stiglitz

What is the reason then that we are following a path that will fail? Are those who know what is happening afraid to admit it, to tell the truth? Is it simple looting until the harsh medicine is taken? Is it the cowardice of the Democrats? Is it the obstructionism of old line thinkers like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner?

It is most probable that there are still just too many of those who say, "Why can't things just go on as they have done before?" The awareness that the game has changed will penetrate the public consciousness slowly.

It's over. We cannot keep trying to rebuild the unsustainable, because eventually the great forces of probability will crush us and destroy us, all that we have.

But until the people are ready for change, to accept that reforms are necessary, the Administration must tread lightly. As de Tocqueville said, "The most dangerous moment for bad government is when it begins to reform."

Only time will tell. Until then you know what to do.

P.S. An early responder said, "I presume that you mean buying gold" about 'you know what to do.' And then they laid out the reasons and ways in which the government would confiscate it.

Sorry to have been cryptic, and its my fault. Let me give you the more straightforward answer that I gave to them.

"Actually it's "need little, want less, and love more" which is at the bottom of he blog.

But if it does become the kind of government that blatantly confiscates wealth through whatever means, where will you hide? First they came for gold...

Ok don't buy gold. What you will buy? Whatever wealth you do have will be taken eventually. There are no bystanders if a government turns to lawlessness.

Better to get your head screwed on straight now and realize it is not about gold, it is not about the right investments, it is about freedom."

The Next Phase: Looting Social Security, 401Ks, IRAs and Whatever Is Left?

After what we have seen in the last eight years in particular, why do we assume that there is any boundary to the venality of powerful men? That there is ever enough?

Crony capitalism gives way to coolie capitalism. The belief in the priority of the privileged few to possess the greatest share of the nation's wealth endures.

Where is the justice? Where is the reform?

"Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough."
Janwillem van de Wetering

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor."
Thomas Jefferson

"The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it."
Dr. Josef Mengele

The Nation
Looting Social Security
By William Greider
February 11, 2009

Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea--Washington's leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.

These players are promoting a tricky way to whack Social Security benefits, but to do it behind closed doors so the public cannot see what's happening or figure out which politicians to blame. The essential transaction would amount to misappropriating the trillions in Social Security taxes that workers have paid to finance their retirement benefits. This swindle is portrayed as "fiscal reform." In fact, it's the political equivalent of bait-and-switch fraud....

Read the rest of the story here.

Discussion of this topic at Economist's View here.

Congress Removes Provisions to Limit Wall Street Bonuses "Behind Closed Doors"

The Democrats talk a good game, but their record of reform and renewal after winning the Congressional elections and then the Presidency is pathetic.

Nancy Pelosi is useless as House Speaker. Barney Frank is all talk and little action. The Democratic leadership should be replaced along with about half the remaining Republican congressmen.

Ok, Obama how about some transparency on this one. And better yet, can we see a single reform that improves the system, other than firedrills to shore up the status quo?

AP
Congress kills plan to recover Wall Street bonuses
By Matthew Daly
Thursday February 12, 2009, 5:19 pm EST

Congress kills plan, approved in Senate stimulus bill, to recover Wall Street bonuses

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional leaders have killed a plan that would have forced financial institutions to compensate taxpayers if they paid their executives large bonuses after receiving federal bailout money.

The Senate had approved the repayment plan as part of an effort to crack down on Wall Street firms that paid huge bonuses -- some in the millions of dollars -- to their top executives even as they received taxpayer money in the federal bailout last fall.

The provision was removed as House and Senate negotiators hammered out final details of the $789 billion economic stimulus legislation this week.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said no one spoke against the amendment when Wyden introduced it on the Senate floor. "Somehow, it got stripped out behind closed doors," said the spokeswoman, Jennifer Hoelzer.

Wyden is looking for an opportunity to offer his amendment again to help taxpayers get their money back, Hoelzer said.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, co-sponsor of the amendment, issued a statement saying the financial bailout Congress approved last fall "left open an escape hatch of golden parachutes for top executives on Wall Street."

Many of the executives who got bonuses were the ones whose mistakes hurt the financial system and forced taxpayers to foot the bill in the first place, Snowe said.

The Wyden-Snowe amendment would have penalized companies that paid bonuses greater than $100,000 to executives after receiving government rescue funds last year. The companies would have had to repay within four months any portion of the bonus above $100,000 or face an excise tax of 35 percent on the portion of the bonus above $100,000.

Lawmakers removed the provision without explanation in closed-door talks this week. Hoelzer said several senators had questioned whether the provision was legal, since Congress had not limited the bonuses in approving the original legislation last October.

But Hoelzer said the measure was appropriate. She cited a letter from the Joint Committee on Taxation saying the measure "presents a strong case for constitutionality since it has only a modest look-back period."

Most of the bonuses in question were paid in the final two months of 2008.

The tax committee estimated that the Wyden-Snowe amendment would have raised as much as $3.2 billion. Financial institutions received more than $274 billion through the bailout program while paying out an estimated $18.4 billion in employee bonuses last year, the committee said.

A Closer Look at the Revisions to the Non-Farm Payrolls Numbers

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
--Abraham Lincoln

The 'actual' jobs loss number, before seasonal adjustments are applied, was significantly worse than expected. It was so bad that we had to adjust the lower boundary of the chart by an extra 500,000 jobs lower than the projected chart we showed yesterday. Jobs Number for January Could Be Much Worse than Expected



So why was the 'headline number' after seasonalization relatively benign and better than many had expected, or 'not as bad as feared?' A gas station pricing number that came in at -598,000 just below the psychologically important -600,000? Besides a liberal upgrade from seasonality, the revisions to the prior month, and months as it turns out, were interesting.



Revising job losses from prior months lower 'creates jobs' that can be moved forward on the statistical count. It would be like revising losses in the prior years of your income statement to allow you to show lower losses in the more current periods. Its kind of like shoving job losses around on a plate. Nothing really changes, but the data 'looks better.'

Further, we see the usual "current month - prior month" two-step wherein the current month is shown slightly better than the prior month. Then at the next reporting period, you revise the former current month lower, and show the new current month as slightly better.

We had a business unit direct report who liked to play those kinds of games to show 'better numbers' for their piece of the business. The fix was to lock them into rolling averages for results and not something more short term.

And so it is with the US jobs jockeys. The longer term trend does not lend itself so easily to data manipulation in the revisions and seasonality.

And it shows the economy is in a nose dive. But stocks are rallying today on the expectations that the bad numbers will insure that the Senate will pass the stimulus, and that Turbo Tim will announce a big giveaway for the banks next week.

The Obama Administration is doing nothing new. The Bush Administration's numbers were so hollow that we started calling the US a Potemkin Economy, or perhaps Ponzi Economy because it is built on ever increasingly unredeemable debt. Clinton was no better, merely more effective, more competent, more 'artful.'

This may not be new, but it is not reform either. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Corruption as an Element in the Financial Crisis - Forbes

The only surprising thing about this essay is that it appears in Forbes.

After the demise of Glass-Steagall the gloves came off and corruption became an unusually prominent factor in our financial system. There should be little doubt that the taint reached the highest levels in the US over the past ten years or more, and is still a serious problem.


Forbes
Corruption And The Global Financial Crisis
Daniel Kaufmann
01.27.09, 02:58 PM EST

The financial debacle has many causes and implications, but it would be wrong to underestimate systemic corruption.

It would be very convenient to start this article by stating that corruption is a challenge mainly for public officials in developing countries and that it is unrelated to the current global crisis.

I also wish I could claim that corruption has declined worldwide as a result of the global anti-corruption and awareness-raising campaign, the many effective anti-corruption commissions, and the recognition that poverty and culture are the reasons why corruption prevails.

But none of it is true. For starters, corruption is not unique to developing countries, nor has it declined on average. Some developing countries, such as Chile and Botswana, exhibit lower levels of corruption than some fully industrialized nations. And countries like Colombia and Liberia have made gains in recent years, while others, such as Zimbabwe, have deteriorated. Bribery remains rife in many countries, totaling about $1 trillion globally every year.

In truth, anti corruption commissions, revised laws and awareness-raising campaigns have had limited success. Focus on petty or administrative bribery has been misplaced at the expense of high-level political corruption.

One neglected dimension of political corruption is "state capture," or just "capture." In this scenario, powerful companies (or individuals) bend the regulatory, policy and legal institutions of the nation for their private benefit. This is typically done through high-level bribery, lobbying or influence peddling.

The cost to society of bribing a bureaucrat to obtain a permit to operate a small firm pales in comparison with, say, a telecommunications conglomerate that corrupts a politician to shape the rules of the game granting it monopolistic rights, or an investment bank influencing the regulatory and oversight regime governing them.

As a country becomes industrialized, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear. They simply morph and become more sophisticated: Transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash is less frequent.

Instead, subtler forms of capture and "legal corruption" exist: an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached. In many countries this may be legal, even if unethical. In industrialized nations undue influence is often legally exercised by powerful private interests, which in turn influence the nation's regulations, policies and laws.

This has dire consequences: Witness the various forms of corruption underlying the current global financial crisis that started in the U.S.

There are multiple causes of the financial crisis. But we can not ignore the element of "capture" in the systemic failures of oversight, regulation and disclosure in the financial sector. Concrete examples abound...

(The examples given are Fannie Freddie, AIG, the mortgage lenders, and the Investment Banks)

The new U.S. administration has stated its intention to address the challenges of transparency and accountability in its stimulus plan. The devil will be in the details. Merely creating an oversight institution will not do; system-wide reforms in incentives are required. Deep-seated transparency reforms need to be a cornerstone in the government's plan, and should apply to U.S. public agencies as well as domestic and international financial institutions. Regulations supporting effective disclosure, as well as improved audit, accounting and risk-rating standards, should be preferred to restrictive regulatory controls that block innovation and growth.

Humbly learning from other nations will also go a long way. The situation in the U.S. warrants studying other countries--for instance, Sweden and Chile, which successfully addressed their financial crises long ago. Chile also offers guidance on how to structure less corrupt and effective concessions in infrastructure, where the U.S. is a novice.

In order to restore confidence, citizens, entrepreneurs and bankers need to have renewed trust in the financial system. That way they can be persuaded that it is no longer a giant Ponzi scheme. Transparency is the key.

US Treasury Department Official Allegedly Aided and Abetted Banking Fraud (Again)

Darrell Dochow earns $230,000 per year at Treasury in banking regulation. He reportedly gave Indymac some suggestions on cooking their books, and then allowed the exception to the rules to accomplish it. It appears to have been a blatant and obvious accounting fraud.

Mr. Dochow is also the official who presided over the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal. Having looked into Charles Keating's eyes and seeing him a good man, he reportedly overrode the protests and findings of fraud from the banking experts. After his S&L debacle he was apparently demoted, but brought back into a position of importance under the Bush Administration. All the details on this have not yet been made public.

Mr. Dochow is unlikely to do any prison time, but may lose his job. That is because this is 'criminal with a small c' according to this news report.

When this sort of behaviour becomes criminal with a 'capital C' and when people like Dochow find themselves on the business end of FBI probes and Justice Department indictments at least as serious as the one mounted against Eliot Spitzer and his hooker, we might make some approach to honesty and reform in this country.

Ok, Obama Administration, the buck is on your desk now. Time to take meaningful action to back up the rhetoric.


ABC News, New York
Government regulators aided IndyMac coverup, maybe others
By Brian Ross, Justin Rood, and Joseph Rhee
Friday, January 16, 2009

A brewing fraud scandal at the Treasury Department may be worse than officials originally thought.

Investigators probing how Treasury regulators allowed a bank to falsify financial records hiding its ill health have found at least three other instances of similar apparent fraud, sources tell ABC News.

In at least one instance, investigators say, banking regulators actually approached the bank with the suggestion of falsifying deposit dates to satisfy banking rules -- even if it disguised the bank's health to the public.

Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson announced in November his office would probe how a Savings and Loan overseer allowed the IndyMac bank to essentially cook its books, making it appear in government filings that the bank had more deposits than it really did. But Thorson's aides now say IndyMac wasn't the only institution to get such cozy assistance from the official who should have been the cop on the beat.

The federal government took over IndyMac in July, after the bank's stock price plummeted to just pennies a share when it was revealed the bank had financial troubles due to defaulted mortgages and subprime loans, costing taxpayers over $9 billion.

Darrel Dochow, the West Coast regional director at the Office of Thrift Supervision who allowed IndyMac to backdate its deposits, has been removed from his position but he remains on the government payroll while the Inspector General's Office investigates the allegations against him. Investigators say Dochow, who reportedly earns $230,000 a year, allowed IndyMac to register an $18 million capital injection it received in May in a report describing the bank's financial condition in the end of March.

"They [IndyMac] were able to maintain their well-capitalized threshold and continue to use broker deposits to make loans," said Marla Freedman, an assistant inspector general at Treasury. "Basically, while the institution was having financial difficulty, it kept the public from knowing earlier than it otherwise should have or would have."

In order to backdate the filings, IndyMac sought and received permission from Dochow, according to Freedman.

"That struck us as very unusual," said Freedman. "Typically transactions are to be recorded in the period in which they occur, not afterwards. So it was very unusual."

One former regulator says Dochow's actions illustrate the cozy relationship between banks and government regulators.

"He did nothing to protect taxpayers in losses," former federal bank regulator William Black told ABC News. "Instead of correcting it [Dochow] made it worse by increasing the accounting fraud."

Meanwhile, IndyMac customers who lost their savings are demanding answers and are further infuriated after learning Dochow was also the regulator in 1989 who oversaw the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan, a scandal that sent its CEO Charles Keating to prison.

"He's the person who claimed that he looked into Charles Keating's eyes and knew that Keating was a good guy and therefore ignored all of the professional staff that told him that Keating was a fraud, and he produced the worst failure of the Savings and Loan Crisis at $3.4 billion. Now he's managed more than triple that," said Black, now an economics professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, Missouri.

Following the Lincoln scandal, Dochow was demoted and placed into a relatively obscure office, but later, inexplicably was brought back into the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Dochow declined to answer questions from ABC News.

After Ronnie Lopez was killed in Iraq, his mother Elaine invested the life insurance proceeds at IndyMac. She lost $37,000 of it.

"I was hysterical," she told ABC News. "I literally thought I was going to kill myself that day, because I felt so bad that I had let him down. I remember going to his grave and telling him "don't worry, I'm going to get that money back,' and I feel like he was saying, 'Hey, Mom, don't let them take that. I did the ultimate for that.'"

A group of angry investors has started a website, demanding answers on the extent of Dochow's actions.

"It's just the strife and anger," said IndyMac customer Lisa Marshall. "That this Dochow person is still employed. It's unbelievable, it's shocking."

While Dochow could end up losing his job, neither he nor his colleagues are expected to go to prison.

"This is criminal with the small 'c,'" said Black. "No one within the regulatory ranks may go to jail, but they have done the worst possible disservice to the taxpayers of America."

West Texas Intermediate Benchmark Diverging Widely from World Oil Prices

If there indeed is a glut of oil in the US at a bottleneck, as NYMEX appears to contend, then world prices should diverge, and more oil would be flowing to other venues.

Interestingly enough, there is also a huge difference in price between the February contract at 36.51 for WTI and the March contract at 42.57.

So let's see how this short term oil glut in Oklahoma gets squared away. Sure to be interesting. It would be a shame if the NYMEX loses some of its credibility as a price discovery mechanism.


Reuters
Signs of shift away from WTI
By Javier Blas in London
January 18 2009

Oil traders are quietly pricing some of their deals away from the West Texas Intermediate contract, traditionally the world’s most important oil benchmark, as it is being distorted by record inventories at its landlocked delivery point.

The move is a setback for the benchmark that since the launch of the Nymex WTI futures in the early 1980s has dominated physical and financial oil markets.

The surge in oil inventories in Cushing, Oklahoma, where WTI is delivered into America’s pipeline system, has depressed its value not only against other global benchmarks, such as Brent, but also against other domestic US crudes.

Julius Walker, an oil market analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris, said there was “anecdotal evidence” of traders moving away from WTI and “doing deals based on other US oil benchmarks”.

The IEA monthly report said Brent was now “arguably more reflective of global oil market sentiment”. However, Bob Levin, managing director of market research at Nymex said that the WTI contract was performing “transparently”, reflecting a “loss in oil demand and sharply rising inventories”.

“WTI is better reflecting global oil fundamentals than Brent,” Mr Levin said. “The oil industry has not abandoned the WTI contract and it has confidence in it.”

Nevertheless, traders in London, New York and Houston confirmed a small number of transactions away from WTI after its price plunged last week to record discounts against other global and domestic benchmarks. The traders cautioned that the move could reverse if the WTI situation normalised. Lawrence Eagles, at JPMorgan, said any move away from WTI would face “strong resistance as none of the other US benchmarks have the price transparency of an exchange market”.

Highlighting the price disconnection with the global market, WTI, which usually trades at a premium of $1-$2 a barrel to Brent, last week plunged to an all-time discount of $11.73. The detachment hit the US market too, where Light Louisiana Sweet, jumped to a $9.50 premium, the highest in 18 years.

Brent ended last week at $46.18 a barrel, well above WTI at $36.

Walter Lukken, outgoing chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, told the FT the regulator was following “very closely” the WTI disconnection.

This is not the first time WTI has diverged from other benchmarks, but the discrepancy is far more severe this time.

The Plot to Overthrow FDR - The History Channel

The beginnings of the Great Depression, and the conflicts that tested the Republic to its foundations, and the commitment to freedom around the world.


Video Documentary The History Channel

The Plot to Overthrow FDR



The American Liberty League


Responses to the Great Depression 1929-1939

Where is Bernie's Trade Book? Who Were His Partners?

FINRA has found no evidence of trades by Bernie Madoff on behalf of his private investment fund through Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, a commercial brokerage founded in 1960.

This appears to be a brick in the wall of 'rogue trader' status. He could do it himself because he made no trades at all.

However this was not Bernie's only commercial operation in the securities business, in addition to his now nefarious private fund.

Primex was registered as Primex Holdings, L.L.C. in NYS in October of 1998. Primex is a joint venture involving a digital trading auction which operates out of Bernie's 18th floor office at 885 Third Ave.

Madoff's business partners in the Primex Exchange were Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch.

Did Bernie give any business to this joint venture? Did any of the above brokers have any investments or losses with the Madoff Fund? If not why not? It was one of the most successful funds, on paper, on the Street?

More questions than answers. Let's hope this one does not disappear down a black hole like the enormous put option positions placed on the airline stocks just prior to 9/11.


Madoff's fund may not have made a single trade
By Jason Szep
Fri Jan 16, 2009 6:55am EST

BOSTON (Reuters) - Bernie Madoff's investment fund may never have executed a single trade, industry officials say, suggesting detailed statements mailed to investors each month may have been an elaborate mirage in a $50 billion fraud.

An industry-run regulator for brokerage firms said on Thursday there was no record of Madoff's investment fund placing trades through his brokerage operation.

That means Madoff either placed trades through other brokerage firms, a move industry officials consider unlikely, or he was not executing trades at all.

"Our exams showed no evidence of trading on behalf of the investment advisor, no evidence of any customer statements being generated by the broker-dealer," said Herb Perone, spokesman for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Madoff's broker-dealer operation, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, underwent routine examinations by FINRA and its predecessor, the National Association of Securities Dealers, every two years since it opened in 1960, Perone said.

Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market who was a force on Wall Street for nearly 50 years, allegedly confessed to his sons the firm's investment-advisory business was "basically a giant Ponzi scheme" and "one big lie," according to court documents.

He estimated losses of at least $50 billion from the Ponzi scheme, which uses money from new investors to pay distributions and redemptions to existing investors. Such schemes typically collapse when new funds dry up.

Each month, Madoff sent out elaborate statements of trades conducted by his broker-dealer. Last November, for example, he issued a statement to one investor showing he bought shares of Merck & Co Inc, Microsoft Corp, Exxon Mobil Corp and Amgen Inc among others.

It also showed transactions in Fidelity Investments' Spartan Fund. But Fidelity, the world's biggest mutual fund company, has no record of Madoff or his company making any investments in its funds.

DISCREPANCIES

"We are not aware of any investments by Madoff in our funds on behalf of his clients," Fidelity spokeswoman Anne Crowley said in an e-mail to Reuters.

Neither Madoff nor his firm was a client of Fidelity's Institutional Wealth Services business, their clearing firm National Financial or a financial intermediary client of its institutional services arm, she said.

"Consequently, his firm did not work with our intermediary businesses through which firms invest their clients' money in Fidelity funds," she added.

There also appear to be discrepancies between monthly statements sent to investors and the actual prices at which the stocks traded on Wall Street.

For example, his November statement showed he bought software maker Apple Inc's securities at $100.78 each on November 12, about a month before his arrest. But Apple's stock on that day never traded above $93.24. The statement also showed he bought chip maker Intel Corp at $14.51 on November 12, but Intel's highest price on that day was $13.97.

"You could print up any statements you want on the computer and send it out to a client and the chances are the client wouldn't know, because they are getting a statement," said Neil Hackman, president and chief executive of Oak Financial Group, a Stamford, Connecticut-based investment advisory firm.

To some, the numbers did not add up.

About 10 years ago, Harry Markopolos, then chief investment officer at Rampart Investment Management Co in Boston, asked risk management consultant Daniel diBartolomeo to run Madoff's numbers after Markopolos tried to emulate Madoff's strategy.

DiBartolomeo ran regression analyses and various calculations, but failed to reconcile them. For a decade, Markopolos raised the issue with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has come under fire in Congress in recent weeks for failing to act on Markopolos's warnings.

Its Official - Obama Fatigue

Well this time we didn't even make it to the Inauguration before becoming disenchanted with a candidate. That beats our record set by ... wait for it ... Bill Clinton.

The straw that broke the camel's back, at least for us, was Obama's nomination of Eric Holder as his Attorney General.

After suffering through that continuing assault on the Constitution known as Alberto Gonzales, one might have expected the President-elect to appoint someone with a sterling reputation for upholding the rule of law, and not performing as a compliant tool to a particular Administration.

As the Deputy to Janet Reno from 1997, Eric Holder was intimately involved in many of the more controversial actions in the twilight of the Clinton Administration, including a key role in the infamous pardon of financial fraudster, Marc Rich.

Obama has spent much of his goodwill now with a series of highly cynical appointments of Clinton insiders, with virtually no signs of any type of a reform government.

He still has all our best wishes of course, but a healthy skepticism has already replaced much of the initial optimism. The honeymoon is over before it got started.

Bush II did not lose this voter's support until it was proven, at least to our satisfaction, that he systematically lied to the nation about something important, the case for the Iraq war.

The same criteria will apply to this President as well. But the goodwill has been spent.

In Defense of Economics

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has an interesting essay on her site Why So Little Self-recrimination Among Economists? which we would urge you to read if you are interested at all in this topic, as it is sincerely well thought and written, for which we her readers are always grateful.

It is difficult to assess the quality of an unfamiliar game if one does not know the rules, and even more if one does not understand the objectives. What is the 'goal' of the economics game which we all have been observing with greater than usual interest these past few years?

For the past twenty five years at least modern economics has not been seeking objective truth and the advancement of learning as much as the rationalization of policy positions in pursuit of power, awards, grants, and influence. This is not to say that there was a utopia before this, but rather that the less admirable aspects of the profession were in the minority, and not so widely accepted and tolerated and respected.

Our society on the whole does not value the truth as it had done before, but worships money and power and cleverness. That is both the long and short of it. We obtain the politicians and economists and news commentators that we encourage according to the character of the age.

Economics is a social science, with somewhat murky experimental methods, more like redacted statistical vignettes, and difficult to measure theories with grading periods too widely interspersed to be meaningful. This introduces a strong element of peer pressure and factionalism, of quack theories and nostrums hiding in the safe harbors of ambiguity and plausible error.

Granted, the academics are protected by tenure, but tenure is a weak consolation to the ambitious. It can be at worst a kind of exile, a quiet humiliation. And professors are weak in their resources as compared to the think tanks who have no qualms about pursuing their desired objectives. There is a power to the lie that can overwhelm those who stumble about in pursuit of the truth, or at least a better approximation of it.

Economics is not a purely objective science, because its theories are not readily verifiable through controlled experimentation, even allowing for the work of some of the behaviourists.

In this economics is not alone among the sciences, not at all, especially to those in the leading edge of some disciplines like theoretical physics, where experimentation is difficult, and grading periods are also interspersed widely. We often hear of courageous minds who hold out through years of isolated persistence to be eventually vindicated by new discoveries from experimentation and observation.

But is economics so much the problem? We would suggest that its condition, its character, merely makes it vulnerable, a thing to be encouraged and protected, but not to be relied upon as a bulwark against adverse societal influences.

If anything, economics is guilty of pretension, of having more influence and authority than its knowledge would allow. Was there anything so artfully disingenuous as the Congressional testimony of Alan Greenspan regarding critical policy decisions? Or more craven than the way in which many of the Congressmen sought to gain cover for their action under his prevarication?

How can there be self-recrimination where there is no outrage in general? Where is the objective analysis of what went wrong, and proposals to change things to correct this?

Most academics are notorious followers, trodding the well worn and well marked paths, no matter where they might lead. It is only the exceptional, both in mind and spirit, that dare to blaze new trails. Tenure is no armor for the ego, and there are no politics more vicious and petty than those of academia, excepting perhaps the fashion industry.

We ought not to blame economics, beyond its pretensions to administer advice from some position of authority because of superior knowledge. That has been shown to be hollow, false, a totemism. The pseudo-religious aspects of the extreme elements of some economic schools of thought is apparent, almost hysterically funny, when viewed from a distance.

We ought not to single out economists for not being virtuous because there were too few virtuous people on the whole both then and now, if one defines 'virtuous' as one who tells the truth, come what may, as the facts and their analysis leads them even in their lack of certainty.

This is not to say there is no blame to be attached, no criminality to be assessed, that 'society is to blame.' The problem is that there is so much of it that we can spend years striking at the branches, the scapegoats, without approaching the root.

The remedy is the law, and to affect this we must take back the rule of law from those who have corrupted it.

The Federal Reserve raised an enormous debt bubble to lift the economy out of the slump of 2002, and for this trouble we were rewarded with a housing and stock market bubble, and remarkable imbalances that are just now being unwound. This is what happens when one liberally applies monetary and Keynesian stimulus without reform. And we are doing it again.

Things will change for the study of economics, and probably for the better. There are more extreme examples of professions which were co-opted by the political world, like psychology in the Soviet Union and medicine in the Third Reich, sciences subjected to what some might call deep capture.

How can a society which defines its first principle, the ultimate good, as greed be anything but what it is? Cruel, self-absorbed, shallow, unjust, delusional and imbalanced. Nothing made this more apparent than the spectacle of the outgoing President's press conference today. And, we might add, the actions of his predecessor in that office.

Fear is the tool of a tyranny, and greed is a horse to be harnessed, not the measure of policy or an administrator of justice to run maximized, or even unchecked.

Why the lack of self-recrimination among the economists? Because they are no different than anyone else who failed to exercise their stewardship and basic human obligation to protect the innocent and to stand for justice, and uphold the standards of their profession. In this they are no different than politicians and lawyers and accountants and the mainstream media, although we foolishly expected more.

Economics will recover eventually from this lapse, as the majority of economists look back in quiet horror at the carnage that was inflicted on the world, accommodated by their silence. There were many who spoke out. There were even some who took the time and trouble to go to places where economists frequently discuss things, and caution that their silence would discredit the profession.

What is the next step? Forward, off the beaten path.

Privatized Social Security, Italian Style

Here are a few lessons which can be learned from the Italian experiment with privatized Social Security:

1. The average person does not understand, and is incapable of understanding and accepting, the relationship between higher return and higher risk.

2. The Wall Street bankers and economists apparently do not understand this either, so we ought not to be too hard on the average person for their shortcomings.

3. Higher risk investments are always and everywhere inappropriate choices for a fixed income investment plan with near term payment goals.

4. When the going gets tough, everyone will expect to get bailed out, in shameless geometric proportion to their social standing, influence, and personal income.

5. When it comes to economics the average person will suspend their common sense for as long as is possible.

6. Those in positions of power will promote the suspension of common sense and popular delusions for the sake of confidence. This is why it is called a confidence game.

7. If the fundamentals of an economic plan are 'confusing,' seeming to provide superior returns for extended periods of time with no effort, it is a fraud. (eg. the US dollar.)

8. Whatever pension plans are promoted for the public MUST include all government officials, including the Ministers, Legislators, and Judiciary, to have any hope of success.

9. Whenever the private financiers 'help' the legislators make a troublesome problem disappear the eventual losses are certain to be especially heavy.

10. Despite what this Bloomberg story says the US avoided nothing because of voter outrage; the public and private pension funds are simply being stolen. (See #6 above).

Bloomberg
Italian Pensions Sapped by Private Funds Bush Backed
By Andrew Davis and Alessandra Migliaccio

Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Italy did for retirement financing what President George W. Bush couldn’t do in the U.S.: It privatized part of its social security system. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

The global market meltdown has created losses for those who agreed to shift their contributions from a government severance payment plan to private funds meant to yield higher returns. Anger is rising both at the state, which promoted the change, and money managers such as UniCredit SpA and Arca Previdenza, which stood to profit.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s administration is now considering ways to compensate as many as 1.2 million people who made the switch, giving up a fixed return for private plans linked to financial markets. It’s also letting people delay redemptions on retirement funds to avoid losses after Italy’s benchmark stock index fell 50 percent in 2008, destroying 300 billion euros ($423 billion) in wealth.

Italy’s experience shows how difficult it is to solve a problem facing governments from the U.S. to Europe to Japan as populations age and the old system of taxing workers to support retirees becomes unsustainable. Bush failed to persuade Congress to let workers put a portion of their Social Security taxes into privately invested accounts as voter opposition increased.

Standard Plan

For a quarter of a century, employers in Italy have paid about 7 percent of each worker’s annual salary into the severance system, called TFR. Workers received lump-sum payouts whether they retired, were fired or simply changed jobs.

Someone earning 80,000 euros a year would receive more than 200,000 euros in TFR after 35 years on the job and more than 60,000 euros after a decade of work. The fund pays a fixed return that aims to exceed inflation.

The program was a tempting target for a government struggling to meet its pension obligations. Italy spends about 14 percent of gross domestic product on pensions, the most in the European Union. Spain spends 9 percent and the U.K. 7 percent.

Italy has the EU’s lowest birthrate of 1.3 children per woman. By 2050, the country will have fewer than two working-age people for each person over 65, the lowest ratio in the EU, according to Eurostat, the bloc’s statistics agency.

Pensions Cut

Previous governments adopted measures to lower pension payouts and force workers to retire later. Benefits will drop to as little as 30 percent of a worker’s final salary from about 75 percent now, creating an incentive for Italians to seek higher returns by moving severance funds into a complementary plan.

Gaetano Turchetta, a Rome office manager, made the irreversible move to a private plan after a union representative boasted of the potential for 20 percent annual returns. The 43- year-old father of three now says he would sign with “two hands and two feet” if he could switch back.

“What do I want from the government?” he said. “Just not to become a burden on my kids.”

The TFR plan was meant to dent Italy’s risk-averse culture and lure more people to investment funds, said Biagio Masi, head of Banca Sella SpA’s insurance unit, who called the shift a “world-shattering change in mentality.” (Government as debt dealer for the bankers - Jesse)

Low Investment Rate

Eight percent of Italians invested in stocks in 2008, half the level of 2002, according to an Oct. 30 report commissioned by Acri, the country’s savings bank association. About 80 percent favored keeping their savings in the bank and 25 percent have a private pension or life insurance, the report said.

Money managers such as UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank, and Arca Previdenza, the biggest pension fund manager, lobbied customers to make the change, seeing it as an opportunity to kick-start a moribund fund management industry. (Fee Seeking - Jesse)

Funds under management in Italy have shrunk by a quarter in the past seven years, according to the Bank of Italy. The value of pension funds is equal to about 3 percent of GDP, compared with more than 90 percent in the U.S.

Even with full-page newspaper ads, billboards and telephone hotlines spurring Italians to switch, only 1.2 million people, or 10 percent of the eligible private-sector workers, chose to give up the TFR for private plans before the June 2007 deadline, according to fund regulator Covip. Italian lawmakers approved the reform at the end of 2006. It was part of the 2007 budget proposed by former Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s government.