Press reports document criminality of US financial elite

[IndianaGreen]

Press reports document criminality of US financial elite

Fallout from the Madoff scandal continues to batter investors, banks and private charities in the US, Europe and Japan. The massive fraud carried out by a prominent Wall Street insider, Bernard Madoff, the former head of the Nasdaq stock exchange, has exposed clients to as much as $50 billion in losses.

Recent press reports make clear that the Madoff affair is not an aberration. It is indicative of pervasive fraud and criminality in the highest echelons of the financial establishment, aided and abetted by government regulatory agencies.

On Monday, Truthout, an independent internet news service, published an interview with former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigative attorney Gary Aguirre. The SEC is the federal regulatory agency tasked with enforcing securities law and regulating stock exchanges and the securities industry.

As an attorney for the SEC, Aguirre launched an investigation several years ago into insider trading by the hedge fund Pequot Capital Management. Aguirre sought to subpoena one of Wall Street's most formidable figures, John Mack, then CEO of Credit Suisse and now the head of Morgan Stanley. But Aguirre "was told that Mack had ‘juice' (meaning he had access to senior-level SEC officers) and that he had heavy political connections to the Bush White House," according to San Diego Magazine. "In the middle of June 2005, his superiors told him to take a week's vacation. ... Before the week was up, he was unceremoniously fired, and the investigation was scuttled."

According to the Truthout account, the internal SEC watchdog found that Aguirre's supervisors acted improperly in firing Aguirre and shutting down the investigation, and recommended punishment against four SEC officials. But SEC Chairman Christopher Cox "refused to hold them accountable."

Aguirre told Truthout that the SEC "has been reluctant to apply the securities laws to the big players, to Wall Street's elite." Instead, it is "focused on the small players."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/dec2008/pers-d24.shtml

[bluesmail]

1. I doubt if they'll ever be done. Or stopped. *sigh* and n/t

[truedelphi]

2. The OP states: Recent press reports make clear that the Madoff affair is not an aberration

No it is not an aberration. When there are no boundaries, in thanks to de-regulation, our entire economic system for the past twenty years ahs just been acquisitions, mergers, hedge funds with their SIV's and credit default swaps. My RW friens are right when they say that Reagan killed off private enterprise in the eighties.

How can you tell if a cat has mad cow disease? And how can you tell if any of the financial instruments offered to consumers over the last five to ten years were legit?

So the average consumer HAD TO go to insiders. And the insiders were too busy lying to themselves and to everyone else to care - as long as their billion dollars worth of commission (OR MORE!) went into their bank accounts each year.

[natrat]

3. what you don't think president obama will seek justice---sarcasm

[BadGimp]

4. I'm shocked I tell you, absolutely shocked

eom

[kristopher]

5. This is bullshit

I don't understand these criticisms; doesn't anyone remember that they nailed Martha Stewart to the jailhouse wall?

WTF more do you people want???