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Army Of Avarice Plunders America Into Calamity That Did Not Have To Happen by calltoaccount December 3, 2009 Every

legit competitive sport has rules of conduct governing how the game is to be played, all conceived to maintain the fairness, honesty and integrity of the process. Umpires, referees, linesmen, field judges and alike dont hesitate to im pose sanctions the moment they spot an infraction. Break a rule, youre penalized , benched, fined, out of the game, out of the sport, maybe even for good. Congr ess and the media repeatedly tell us the American public would tolerate no less, even though the overwhelming majority of sports fans have nothing more than a m ere rooting interest in the outcome; no skin as it were, in the game except gambler s, who have all the more reason to want it to be on the level, unless theyve alre ady fixed it. How bizarre then, that on Wall Street, repository of the hopes, dreams and whats left of the hard earned cash and retirement savings of American investors, the m ost basic of rules enacted to protect the fairness, honesty and integrity of the process are routinely ignored and dishonored. Like its predecessor, the Obama administration has thus far assiduously avoided e xamination, pursuit or punishment of those most responsible for plunging us and the rest of the world into a financial calamity that did not have to happen and f rom which many believe we will never recover. In fact, in the name of avoiding financial Armageddon, theyve bent over backwards t o provide cash and cover for, if not actively participate in, a thoroughly corru pt status quo that selectively eschews the rule of law to enable manipulation of a broad range of markets that hugely profit the most greedy and lawless among u s to the permanent detriment of everybody else. That might not be the intention at the very top, but the scoreboard still reads: Wall Street 10, Public minus 10 plus interest, payable forever. A seminal element of the enormous problems we face today is little known or unde rstood by the general public and most investors: the governments abject failure, via the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency charged withprotecting in vestors and the integrity of the markets, to enforce the most basic, rudimentary business axiom: that when a buyer pays, the seller must deliver that which was sold (obliquely: he who sells what isnt hisn, must make good or go to prison). Congress passed the Securities Exchange Acts of 1933 and `34 to restore greatly diminished public confidence in our capital markets and mandated the SEC: having due regard for the public interest, the protection of investors, and the safegua rding of securities, to facilitate the establishment of a national system for th e prompt and accurate clearance and settlement of transactions in securities. But incredibly, the SEC has done just the opposite by empowering the Wall Street owned and operated black box Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation to creat e a Three card Monte style, bait and switch, non-settlement, non-delivery of sec urities system that facilitates the unlimited sale of securities that the seller is never required by anybody to actually deliver, so that the transaction is ne ver properly settled. Known as naked short selling or failure to deliver, the sca m has the same effect as counterfeiting because by definition and design, it dil utes the actual value of real shares by overpowering the natural laws of supply and demand. The governments long toleration of this fraud at the very core of the system has enabled Wall Street banks, broker-dealers and hedge funds running all kinds of h ot, dirty and foreign money along with their own, to reap huge, often tax free p rofits, by selling and never delivering unlimited quantities ofphantom stock, op tions, bonds, and even US Treasuries, with total impunity. Over the years, the

practice has destroyed countless companies and crushed the hopes and dreams of m illions of investors worldwide. Yet the SEC, self-proclaimed as the investors fi rst line of defense against securities fraud and the pre-eminent gold standard of enforcement of securities laws, has not brought a single enforcement action to st op it or punish the perpetrators. Is it any wonder the bad guys have come to fe el invulnerable? Even more incredible (and more profitable for Wall Street insiders), the Stock Bo rrow Program of the Depository Trusts National Securities Clearing Corporation (NS CC) subsidiary allows the exact same parcel of shares to be loaned and reloaned over and over again to create an ever-metastasizing cancer of freely tradable sec urity entitlements. These illusions of ownership overhang the market (just like naked shorted shares) artificially depressing share prices, They are not backed by an equal number of duly authorized certificates, and lack the full bundle of ownership rights a buyer thinks they are getting with their purchase (ie. votin g rights, having dividends taxed at preferential rates, etc.). Most investors looking at their monthly statements have no idea they may not reflect actual sha res bought, received and held in their account, but only IOUs from their trusty brokers, who consistently violate the duty of fair dealing owed their clients by failing to insist on delivery of shares they were paid a commission to purchase for them. Thats because to keep the scam going, the SEC-approved system quietly provides incentives for them not to. For at least the past dozen years, evidence of gross conflicts of interest, frau d and derelictions of duty and principle up and down the political/financial foo d chain, have been abundant, but ignored. We are now living with the consequenc es. Deregulation and non-enforcement of statutes, rules and regulations designe d to provide a measure of integrity, fairness and stability to banking and the c apital markets (ie. limits on leverage, usury laws, separation of commercial fro m investment banking), and basic investor protections like those mentioned above , have been systematically ditched. Honest accounting standards that used to pro hibit cooking the books, offshorespecial purpose vehicles, and performing auditi ng services while simultaneously giving tax avoidance advice were simply bought off. Time was, assets had to be marked to their actual fair market value (mark t o market) instead of numbers totally contrived to enable insolvent banks to illu de otherwise. Basic principles of insurance law which require an insurable interest (ownership or risk of commensurate loss) in that which you insure (especially regarding so meone elses life or property), were legislatively trashed to enable rapacious, et hically bereft speculator banks and hedge funds to erect a new and extremely luc rative swindle using a kind of debt insurance product they called credit default swaps (CDS); so named, because by their rightful name, bond insurance, they wou ld violate every states insurance laws and be void as against public policy witho ut ownership of the underlying bondswhich was certainly not in the predators game plan. Parlaying never having to actually buy or own the underlying bonds along with the ability to broadly manipulate and malign their market price downward, made 40-1 leveraged CDS bets almost sure winners; outcomes dictated from the sid elines by greedy gamblers with little or no risk of commensurate loss. And theyr e still at it today, unregulated, and operating in almost total secrecy; a Quadr illion Dollar Derivatives Death-Star that may well some day implode all. Getting away with so many fraud-based practices for so long has emboldened the w rongdoers to almost obsessively believe they can get away with anything. Years of successfully bilking the public without fear of being caught or punished has imbued them with the kind of blinding arrogance that boldly shoves 3 pages at Co ngress and says with a straight face: Give us the dough ($700 billion) ours to do with as we will, free from liability or accountabilityor else. And now theyre bei ng rewarded for it with the biggest profits and bonuses ever. Why?

Why were all the safeguards so intentionally set in place in 1933 and 1934 aband oned? Because those empowered to make and enforce our laws sworn to be good stew ards of the public interest allowed themselves to be seduced and inducted to serv e private interests, not the least of which their own, courtesy of campaign cont ributions, lobbyist largess, lucrative job prospects, and other co-optive emolum ents known anywhere else in the world as bribes. When will we learn that its not about politics, ideology or principle? Its about the money! But drop me a line the next time you hear any corporate or mainstream media pro daring to talk or w rite about it in those terms. Somehow, as obvious and pernicious a role as it p lays in our political process, discussing venal motive is off limits, part of th e pretense that our elected officials actually represent the best interests of t he people who voted for them (as distinguished from those who bankroll them). The Wall Street banksters, of course, are not the only corrosive anti-social for ce at work here. Other divisions of the corporate kleptocracy Army of Avarice t hat dictate our national policy and exploit our national wealth (big oil, insura nce, agra, pharma, health care, telecom, and defense) also spend generously to k eep feasting at the public trough. Its just that Wall Streets misdeeds (even to t he dismay of their co-predators) have brought us to the edge of a full-scale lon g term national/international disaster. So one has to wonder whether the announcement of a new federal Financial Fraud E nforcement Task Force to combat financial crime is to be taken any more seriousl y than Peking University economics students took Treasury Secretary Geithners ass urance that Chinese assets [invested in US dollars] are very safe. Their raucous laughter came from knowing what more and more of the world now knows that assets invested in US dollars are not so safe at all. Of course, TBTB do not want any of that nonsense getting around. They definitel y dont want people knowing the true magnitude of our financial problems, or that many savvy, independent economists, financial experts and market observers belie ve America is not only broke but in great peril as a nation if we continue on the present course. As they watch the steadily sinking value of the dollar, they f oresee a time not too distant when real joblessness will be 30% or more; when th e value of your house will drop another 30%, same as your pension or 401k; a tim e when governments are taking in far less than needed to cover Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, transportation, police and yes, even national def ense, requiring drastic cuts in all government services, federal and state, alon g with markedly increased taxes of all kinds, in a climate of rising interest ra tes, energy and commodity prices, and alas, civil unrest. In order to pay our c reditors $700 billion plus in annual interest on a $12 trillion and counting nat ional debt, they see Americans being required to turn in a portion of whats left of their retirement plans in exchange for long-term, low yield US government bon ds. In short, they see us being screwed blue, now and later, condemned to a ste adily deteriorating standard of living that for most, will turn the American Dre am into a nightmare. Our leaders dont want us to know that todays crisis was the inevitable result of m assive unchecked fraud by mortgage lenders, auditors, investment banks, ratings agencies, securitizers, regulators and insurance companies like AIG, which wrote credit default swaps both they and the purchasers knewthere were far too insuff icient reserves to coverand that could only be paid off by a taxpayer funded bail out. They dont want us to know that the so-called stress tests the banks underwent las t Fall were an exercise in wink, wink, nod-nod misrepresentation; or about the b loated valuations of hundreds of billions in toxic assets the privately owned Fe deral Reserve continues to unlawfully purchase from their too big to fail bankst er buddies. The banks were supposed to loan the proceeds out to ease the allege d credit impasse and help stimulate the economy. Instead, what they havent used

to artificially inflate the equities market or invest abroad, theyve mostly redep osited with the FED, who then, fairy godmother-like, has gifted them back risk-f ree 3% interest in a round-trip razzle dazzle that seamlessly and shamelessly tr ansfers even more taxpayer dollars into bankers bonus-bloated pockets. They dont want us to know that most big banks, if their assets were marked to cur rent fair market value, and government handouts removed, would in fact, be insol vent; that Fannie, Freddie, the FDIC, and the all important Pension Benefit Guar anty Corporation (PBGC), insuring the pensions of some 34 million private sector workers and retirees, are also insolventas are most pension funds across America . They dont want the public to see the future too clearly because they fear the tru th would be too much for us to handle, and cause panic they are unready to cope with, along with deep resentment at the government for allowing things to get so bad (let alone for their failing to curtail wrongdoing after its been brought to their attention). So they distract, dissemble and offer promises of reform, sa ying: Hey, Its okay. We dodged the bullet. Things will be difficult, but in the end, well come shining through because were America, and we can do anything! Except pay the bill. The fact of the matter, the undeniable, irrefutable arithm etic is that we are not going to be able to pay the bill as it comes due and kee p the country reasonably free from soaring misery and discontent. US Senator Byron Dorgan speaks of modern-day bank robbers deploying anything goes ca pitalism in a system theyve rigged so they always win by wielding unfair advantage o ver average consumers and taxpayers with no accountability. Americans watching self ishness prevail over the public interest he says, is not only injuring the economy but undermining the publics trust in government. (where many of the Teabaggers are coming from). For those who follow the subject closely, selfishness is PC for plain oldstealin g. But then Wall Street has long considered Main Street the dumb money. theirs, a lmost by right, and certainly by tradition, for the taking. Not surprisingly, t hey created a culture of corruption thats proven itself bad to the bone. What ot her industry has literally dozens of words and phrases characterizing unethical, illicit conduct? (Backdating, Channel stuffing, Cherry picking, Churning, Cook ie jar reserves, Cooking the books, Dummy accounts, Earnings management, Flippin g, Fomenting, Free-riding, Front running, Insider trading, Late trading, Lulling , Market timing, Marking the close, Matching orders, Naked options, Naked short selling, Off balance sheet, Painting the tape, Ponzi scheme, Puffing, Pump and d ump, Pyramid scheme, Round-tripping, Scalping, Selling away, Short and distort, Spinning, Spring loading, Tipping, Touting, Trading ahead, etc., etc., etc.) Go ds work, indeed. Instead of facing reality now, telling the people the truth about whats occurred, demanding accountability, enforcing the laws made to protect you and me, and ta king steps to prevent wrongdoers from continuing to profit from their misdeeds ( a classic principal of jurisprudence), our government, aided by a thoroughly cap tured, moribund mainstream media thats forgotten how to speak truth to power, kee ps trying to shove the dirt under the rug. Extend and pretend. They say one thi ng and do another, hide the truth, avoid transparency, and engage in even more l ies and deceit. Do they not understand that the false expectations they are per petuating will only evoke greater outrage as people more and more realize they h ave been played for suckers and left to founder in despair? And that none of th is would have happened if the people in charge had upheld their oaths and acted to insure that liberty and justice for all were more than just words. http://calltoaccount.wordpress.com/

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