NY Fed Joins War On Whistleblowers To Shield Goldman Sachs From Its Own Examiner

And this sort of egregious behaviour from a 'regulator.'  They argue out of both sides of their mouths whether Goldman is a 'bank' or not, in order to get what they want for...  Goldman.

The Fed is not a government agency, but a privately owned creature of the very Banks whom it is charged to regulate and restrain.

And as we have seen, over and over again, the Fed is not part of the solution, but has become very much a part of the problem in distorting the banking system in favour of a few powerful financial interests.

A Mangled Case of Justice on Wall Street
By Pam Martens
May 8, 2014

On October 10, 2013, bank examiner Carmen Segarra and her attorney, Linda Stengle of Boyertown, Pennsylvania, took on one of the mightiest and interconnected institutions on Wall Street: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They relied on the Federal court system, funded by the taxpayer, and a fair and impartial judge to level the playing field. Things got off to a promising start.

Segarra was a bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a key regulator of Wall Street banks. She charged in her lawsuit that when she turned in a negative assessment of Goldman Sachs, she was bullied and intimidated by colleagues at the New York Fed to change her findings.

When she refused, she was terminated from her job in retaliation and escorted from the Fed premises, according to her lawsuit...

Read the entire story here.

Related: Judge Tosses Lawsuit of Fired NY Fed Examiner

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Cap, Cap, Cap...

The capping of gold and silver at 1300 and 20 is hard to miss.

Someone with deep pockets and a lot of power and regulatory clout seems interested in discouraging any precious metals rally and breakout.

This is turning into a battle of the titans, although on the surface it is harder to see the stresses building in the global markets.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Stick Save - Moneyed Interests

 

Stocks were all over the map, but managed to finish almost unchanged thanks to a late day rally, following a rally and then a sell off earlier in the day.

Have a pleasant evening.

Pandora's Box - The Repeal of Glass-Steagall

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929


“As Treasury secretary under Clinton, Rubin was the driving force behind two monstrous deregulatory actions that would be primary causes of last year’s financial crisis: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.. and the deregulation of the derivatives market.”

Matt Taibbi

The crowning achievement of the efficient markets hypothesis, and the culmination of a decades long lobbying effort by the financial sector.   Setting capitalism free to do God's work.

Bubbles, control frauds, financial crises, human misery, and bail outs.

Lest we forget this 'broadly bipartisan effort' to set the predator class free.  And they remain largely unemcumbered, unindicted, and unashamed.

Today I have signed into law S. 900, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. This historic legislation will modernize our financial services laws, stimulating greater innovation and competition in the financial services industry. America's consumers, communities, and its overall economy should reap the benefits of this Act.

Beginning with introduction of an Administration-sponsored bill in 1997, my Administration has worked vigorously to produce financial services legislation that would not only spur greater competition, but also protect the rights of consumers and guarantee that expanded financial services firms would meet the needs of America's underserved communities. Passage of this legislation by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of the Congress demonstrates that we have met that goal.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act makes the most important legislative changes to the structure of the U.S. financial system since the 1930s. Financial services firms will be authorized to conduct a wide range of financial activities, allowing them freedom to innovate in the digital age.

The Act succeeds in repealing provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act that, since the Great Depression, have restricted affiliations between banks and securities firms. It also amends the Bank Holding Company Act to remove restrictions on affiliations between banks and insurance companies. Finally, it grants banks significant new authority to conduct most newly 'authorized activities through financial subsidiaries.

Removal of barriers to competition will enhance the stability of our financial services system. Financial services firms will be able to diversify their product offerings and thus their sources of revenue. They will also be better equipped to compete in global financial markets...

William J. Clinton, November 8, 1999

Related: The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - A Metals Hit For Humphrey-Hawkins

“The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed...

This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”

Rutherford B. Hayes, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States

Janet Yellen performed her first Humphrey-Hawkins testimony today.  The charade of the moneyed class continues.

Voilà tout.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Yellen Says Alakazam, Wall St Says Alibaba

“The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.”

John Maynard Keynes


“After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleashed its greedy and - above all - its suicidal power. The belief is now that everything, and everyone, is fair game.”

Günter Grass

Speaking of the culture of death, the good news of the day is that Scientists Discover that the Black Death 'Had a Silver Lining'

It also had a positive economic effect, since fewer people were able to enjoy the same amount of goods.

Perhaps we can have another plague, bio-engineered to take out the 47 percent.

What a sick world.

Russell 2000 Small Caps and the Wilshire 5000: In a Stall, Or the Pause That Refreshes the Bull

Bespoke has a recent article pointing out some weakness in the small caps.

It is interesting to see that the broad lower end of the equity market is stalling here, with a negative return year to date. This is what we see in the Russell 2000 small caps index. It has been flirting with this support level for some time, and is testing its 200 DMA once again.

This *could* be distribution, or profit-taking if you will, but absent determined selling on volume, the markets can continue to drift with an upward bias for some time, given the Fed's bubble of liquidity going right to the banks, and thereby to Wall Street.

And we get a broader perspective from the Wilshire 5000, which is effectively flat for the year, and is oscillating round its 50 DMA.

The SP 500 is the locus of market support, some might say propping, and if there is weakness it may first appear in sector specific areas and the broader markets.

But not so yet, even though we are seeing weakness, and the volumes are thin, especially if one discounts HFT antics. 

The market is vulnerable to an exogenous shock, lacking firm underpinnings from the real economy, but absent a shock the vicious cycle of wealth extraction through the printing of money and paper asset inflation seems to be operating quite efficiently for the gangster class.

"We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

Louis D. Brandeis

And this aggregation of power and wealth will likely continue until the next financial crisis.  Wealth and power are being steadily transferred, as a matter of de facto policy, from the many to a select few in the rise of a new, transnational oligarchy.

This is the Anglo-American way, which has been widely adopted both at home and abroad, through manipulation, intrusion, intimidation, and intervention.