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Goldman Sacked?
- AIG
- American International Group
- Bank of America
- Bank of America
- Ben Bernanke
- CDO
- Collateralized Debt Obligations
- Fail
- Germany
- Goldman Sachs
- goldman sachs
- Insider Trading
- John Paulson
- Market Manipulation
- Merrill
- Merrill Lynch
- Recession
- Securities Fraud
- Simon Johnson
- TARP
- Too Big To Fail
- Tyler Durden
- Wall Street Journal
The Goldman fraud charge is obviously huge news.
The Connecticut Attorney general wants to file criminal charges:
And New York might not be far behind.
Germany and other European nations and companies might also sue.
ProPublica points out that other major banks did the same thing as Goldman. Yves Smith points to one example:
The Wall Street Journal reports that Dutch bank Rabobank has filed a
suit alleging that Merrill Lynch engaged in the same type of behavior
as Goldman did with John Paulson, namely, devising a CDO on behalf of a
hedge fund who was using it to take a short position, and not
disclosing that fact to investors in teh deal.
Shahien Nasiripour writes:
Securities fraud charges against Goldman Sachs are
just the beginning as federal regulators and investigators comb through
the wreckage of a fraud-induced recession, caused by a pervasive and
systemic culture of deceit at Wall Street's biggest firms, say Wall
Street analysts.
Simon Johnson thinks "our Pecora moment" - where the powers-that-be are finally confronted, and the tide turns - has arrived.
Are the prosecutions finally starting? Is the dam finally breaking? Has Goldman really been sacked?
Maybe.
But Tyler Durden thinks it's all bread and circuses.
And as Mish points out (edited slightly for readability):
Here is a list of some of the things the SEC has ignored.
- 77 Fraud, Money Laundering, Insider Trading, and Tax Evasion Investigations Underway Regarding TARP
- Secret Deals Involving No One; AIG Coverup Conspiracy Unravels
- Questions Geithner Cannot Escape
- Time To Indict Geithner For Securities Fraud
- Bernanke Guilty of Coercion and Market Manipulation
- Paulson Admits Coercion; Where are the Indictments?
- Bernanke Suffers From Selective Memory Loss; Paulson Calls Bank of America "Turd in the Punchbowl"
- Let the Criminal Indictments Begin: Paulson, Bernanke, Lewis
***
We
need a complete ethics overhaul but we will not see it until people are
thrown into prison and corporations have to choose which business they
want to be in as opposed to the current state of affairs where anything
for a profit is acceptable.
- Firms give advice based on how much profit the firms will make on it
- Firms trade their own books to the detriment of clients
- Firms make upgrades and downgrades after they take positions themselves
- Firms front-run trades
- Firms engage in dark pools
- Firms deemed too big to fail take advantage by upping leverage
- Firms
like Goldman Sachs (which is nothing more than a giant hedge fund with
no ethics) have access to Fed funds at low interest rates to do
whatever the hell they please
Is someone finally standing up to the vampire squids of the world?
Or is this yet another p.r. stunt, where deals will be cut, some tens
or hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fines imposed (a slap on
the wrist for a behemoth like Goldman), a few low-level patsies will be
convicted, and business as usual will continue?
Only time will tell ...
- advertisements -
I just read a news story that says the company itself is being charged instead of actual people and that it's a civil suit.
If that is the case the employees are not at risk and a civil suit that could only resulting in a fine will be obviously paid with the bailout money.
Lets hope our Pecora moment has arrived, but I'll believe it when I see it...
The Administration and the Congress are too deep into the pocket. There are too many wire transfers and secret accounts and backroom deals.
Let's suppose the SEC or DOJ *really* goes after Goldman. How long do you really think this lasts before the MDs at GS threaten to turn State's in exchange for immunity deals, and implicate everyone up and down K Street and both aisles of the Capitol?
Money will change hands and it will be made to go away. Remember that this is not about right and wrong, it is and always has been about money.
Goldman will be fined...one of the side effects of having only corrupt politicians is that EVERYONE has dirt on them and can be Spitzer'd. And this goes all the way to the top. If Bama gets uppity and rediscovers a conscience after being shown a deck of Red Queens, his Kenyan birthcert will pop up somewhere or they'll suddenly find him on tape helping trade his senate seat with Blago on conference for money.
The SEC's moves against the aftermath of the Accounting Reform Act nearly cost them their budget several times.
Goldman is a" Sovereign state" setting policies and negotiating with countries in ways that the White House and the Democrats have no control over but which affect US policy.
There is no way this administration can get out of this without cutting a deal. If they don't they may not make it to the 2012 elections.
Another great clip from George Carlin that sums it all up:
Nothing will come of this, 10 mil fine on a Friday at 4:00 p.m. and BO's largest $ supporters walk. When you deal with people for profit and there are no rules what do you expect. There are no ethics on Wall street or Washington BO proves that with every broken campaign promise!
There's a lot of public anger right now. Something big has to come out, or BO will get blamed. He has a sub 50% approval rating. Wall St. is hated by just about everyone. Now, that news about teacher, police, and other pensions that took it on the chin is beginning to surface, more anger will brew.
I'm staying hopeful that something positive will come out of this.
The Goldman politico/criminal syndicate will eventually be exposed and prosecuted. They got too greedy and stole from too many, too fast. They are now standing in the back blast area of the bazooka hanky panky paulson and pals created.
With all due respect to ras et all, the last thing TBTB want is a melt-up past certain key levels.
All the crooks and zombie banks can still plunder plenty of cash by playing short.
An out of control melt up would screw the economy for real. The illusion of a slow steady bubble-free recovery must be maintained.
The only thing accomplished was an early bonus payment accrual for the shorts on its own stock, the Russel Financials, S&P500, and myriad others, that Lord Blankfein and his friends locked in last week when they were apprised of the filing.
They are all laughing this weekend on some private island having a Murder Mystery Party with the Mary Shapiro as the sleuth.
More smoke & mirrors as the largest wealth transfer in the history of America continues unabated. The late George Carlin told it EXACTLY like it is:
This is politically motivated to prop up sinking Obama ratings. If there was any intention to repair the corrupt financial system, there would be criminal indictments. These indictments would have to include many congressmen and senators, because they are all complicit in the largest theft of history.
It starts with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, instituted during the Great Depression, which was repealed under President Clinton in 1999 and replaced with (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (passed by a Republican majority).
The Glass-Steagall Act was in response to what caused the Great Depression in the hopes that this threat posed by banks to America would not happen again. It prevented banks from being more than banks such as dealing in securities. So here we are 11 years after the repeal and the same thing that the Glass-Steagall Act was specifically designed to prevent has happened again.
It only took the banks about 7 years for banks to recreate the conditions that caused the Great Depression. It took other financial institutions far less time than that under deregulation.
As soon as these type people get the green light, they arrange for the money to vanish into thin air and they go bankrupt or they are bailed out at taxpayer expense. It never fails. They even vacated the guilty conviction of Enron's former C.E.O because he died (a heart attack at that time is just to convenient so I think he committed suicide or was murdered) before sentencing and that stopped the hunt to retrieve the money dead in it's tracks because suddenly there is no guilty party responsible so that means his wife and family won't be liquidated like Bernie Madoff's was.
Before the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed there were warning issued by Senator Byron Dorgan.
Part One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvnO_SH-4WU&feature=player_embedded
Part Two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veAOoQEy0PI&feature=player_embedded
Dorgan's 10 year warning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2nZbo8SKbg&NR=1
Along with Cheney, McCain, Greenspan, et al, how many others after the fact have alluded to the idea that no one saw all this coming? Quite a few.
So far, this whole debacle has resulted in the prosecution of those running Ponzi schemes. Ponzi schemes that operated quietly and efficiently for ages and right under the nose of the S.E.C. (US Securities and Exchange Commission). I think the (alleged) criminals in the banking industry designed it that way to divert attention away from them so that the American people could gnaw on these Ponzi prosecutions as a form of satisfaction and forget about the bankers.
Meanwhile, the list of financial crimes (allegedly) committed by the bankers grows at an astonishing rate with no form of law enforcement known to our planet or any Senate or Congress willing to take up the cause to prosecute these (alleged) criminals. Worse, every time they are caught or exposed there is some "authority" or another whitewashing these peoples crimes again, again and again.
As long as they engage in the spider web of blame as some authority or another follows the trail they never will be prosecuted because it is so deep they can just make the web bigger. At some point that whole spider web will be all the proof of a prearranged conspiracy that one needs.
This all has the very abject appearance of collusion and a protection scheme. How long can this go on? If the protectors and whitewashers are somehow getting paid for these favors this would be racketeering.
It's already patently obvious what is going on.
It just doesn't exist with the banking industry either. It involves many years of illegally spying on Americans, with confessions too, all swept under the rug with full immunity given to those doing the illegal spying and the corporations that went along with them. Full immunity. And after the fact.
These people who do these things both during and after pass themselves off as reputable businessmen, role models, the pillars of the community, patriots and whatever else but with laws, law and order, legal rights and the Constitution, et al, meaning nothing to them and the flagrant flaunting of it with endless impunity, if anything it's un-American or anti-American.
Both they and their protectors by their very public deeds and actions are as good as throwing a movie up on the wall documenting that they are the opposite of what they claim to be yet they still expect the general citizenry to respect and trust them. Sometimes you got to wonder if they are really crazy or just playing us all for idiots.
Even in the military. Not just one killing that could have been a mistake. The mass killing of unarmed civilians and wanton destruction of property. You can read the stories from trusted sources. Full immunity except for a couple cases.
The involvement of the protector looks like outright acquiescence to play a role in the commission of a crime. It seems that they are an accessories after the fact.
Even the most uneducated and unprincipled Americans can plainly see that these people are only about greed and lawlessness. This is not just for us but every nation in the world is looking at this situation.
We have near lost all credibility especially where the money is concerned. Then this economic disaster caused the same to spread around the globe. The only nations unaffected so far are those who banks are not involved with dealing in securities.
It is laughable to even say that what these people are doing is dealing in securities because they are dealing in insecurities. If what they was doing was secure they wouldn't be needing the betting and the hedges and the insurance or a bailout. It would even be too easy to purposely arrange something like this and say ooops the bottom fell out of it.
The bailout from the US Treasury acted as their private insurance company. With trillions of dollars at stake I think that these "financial institutions" should be paying billions of dollars in insurance premiums each year to the US Treasury.
The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) in the event of a bank collapse covers bank accounts up to $100,000.00. How man elite bank accounts got their losses covered by the taxpayer bailout that went way beyond the 100k in that account. Could that be considered subverting the F.D.I.C.? Banks pay for this insurance under the F.D.I.C.'s risk based premium system.
I think that this type of protectionism practiced by politicians or whoever is in charge that gives immunity or engages in the refusal to press charges can be broken and prepare the way for these bankers to be lined up and prosecuted.
This protectionism is preventing the perpetrators from receiving a fair trial. No fair trial. How subversive and un-American is that? Even if a law is passed granting retro-active immunity or such was the result of a closed door meeting it's still illegal because that law or decision point blankly denies the perpetrators the right to a fair trial.
We aren't talking about terrorists in a war zone who may be an American citizen. I have no problem with them being shot dead at all because a terrorist is a terrorist and one terrorist should not get any special privilege over another terrorist here or there unless it's a perk in their own circle of people. If politicians or whoever is in charge can blatantly and so overtly prevent one who has committed crimes from having a fair trial, at the stroke of a pen, or from behind closed doors then they CAN do it to Jane and John Doe.
Preventing someone from getting a far trial, in my opinion, is just as good as tampering with a jury.
This readily incriminates the politicians or whoever that are dependent on votes. Votes from people who are already grossly angered at these high rolling gamblers and banks in general and votes from people who across the board do not like the idea of Americans not getting a fair trial because they may one day not get a fair trial.
Americans abhor the idea of not getting a fair trial especially when they are the victims and the perpetrators walk away unscathed.
Justice can never be served if these (alleged) banking criminals never get a fair trial.
So with the politicians who hate term limits are at serious risk of being voted out because they like the idea of these people not getting a fair trial. I was even told by one person that the reason they are not charging, arresting and prosecuting the swindlers is because so many of them in their financial circles are Jews and the Jewish community would start screaming "persecution" and "antisemitism" though I doubt that they would do that if there are provable crimes involved.
If that is true and if any of the offenders are Jewish then that this is an act of racism on top of not getting a fair trial so in this case the perpetrators have been doubly wronged under the law.
If the offenders really wanted to they could file civil lawsuits across the spectrum for their legal rights to a fair trial being violated. Protecting them by refusing to press charges or giving them any immunity could have a serious backlash and is not worth the risk to the community at large.
The what looks like a protection scheme between the banks and the politicians or whoever could possibly be broken if the situation is approached from the standpoint of these people never getting a fair trial. Plus one cannot depend on many of these people in high office to prosecute their own like kind because Wall Street and the banks is WHERE THEY CAME FROM before taking that office and most likely will return there after leaving office.
It looks like these interests have locked down both sides of the street and as such can operate with impunity.
The protection by cronyism could be dropped like a hot potato because the ones protecting the perpetrators or failing to charge, arrest and prosecute will be voted out of office for having the position of being the advocate of Americans not getting a fair trial.
As long as these perpetrators never receive a fair trial, especially after they publicly confess to their felonious deeds, we are living in the day where all jurisprudence in our nation has totally collapsed.
Anarchy.
If there is going to be any ethics overhaul, at the top of the list it must include the mandate that there should be no interference with any of the perpetrators getting a fair trial.
There is still opportunity for politicians and others to extract themselves from this nightmare by taking the position that they won't take part in anything that prevents the accused from getting a fair trial.
Search engine "selective enforcement" and "selective prosecution" to see how this violates the rule of law and to see how truly evil and un-American that it is. It is even worse when leverage or influence is used to prevent prosecution or enforcement because that delves into influence peddling which in itself is a crime and as such is collusion, conspiracy or an accessory after the fact.
This is the fear that needs to be put into politicians and others because if they are doing this they are themselves wide open to prosecution and then can be civilly sued blind by those whom they may be protecting for violating their rights to a fair trial.
A total backfire situation. Damn the campaign contributions, I would be separating myself from these guys.
Moreover, these banking people are a bigger THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY than terrorists are.
Ugly scenario?: SEC loses (as planned) or drops case (as planned). Loss/Dismissal insulates all thieves and liars from any further prosecution(s). Back to business as usual. CNBC is sooooooo happy. Must be time to BUY! BUY! BUY! (Nontheless I went short yesterday).
Wake me when Lloyd Blankfein, Hank Paulson, and the rest of the notorious Goldman Sachs gang are arrested, handcuffed, and perp walked to jail.
Wake me when the rampant criminal activity is attacked head on, with coast-to-coast arrests at Countrywide, the mortgage industry, the appraisers, Freddie and Fannie, Citi and the big banksters, the ratings agencies, Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks, AIG, the federal co-conspirators at U.S. Treasury, SEC, OTS, and the Federal Reserve, especially FRBNY, and those members of Congress who aided and abetted.
Wake me when the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) prosecutions of these overlapping criminal enterprises for greatest financial crimes in U.S. history begins.
Got FAZ?
Investment banks including JPMorgan Chase [5], Merrill Lynch [6] (now part of Bank of America), Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and UBS also created CDOs that a hedge fund named Magnetar was both helping create and betting would fail. Those investment banks marketed and sold the CDOs to investors without disclosing Magnetar's role or the hedge fund’s interests.
http://www.propublica.org/ion/blog/item/other-major-banks-did-deals-simi...
Sure sets up a nice " everybody was doing it " defense for the Squid.
In order to hang one, you must hang them all.....which is fine with me. The SEC would need to quintuple in size to take on the whole bunch of crooks at the same time.
SEC? Where's the FBI? Where's the DOJ? Where is law enforcement? This will mean absolutely nothing until the guys and gals with guns and badges start enforcing the law.
Wasn't the bulk of the FBI convieniently pulled off of white collar crime investigations to chase al-cia-duh boogeymen in Afghanistan ?
Don't worry though the US of blessed A is planning on hiring 16,000 IRS agents/sarc
ahhh priorities... qui bono ?
As Thomas Nasty as possible...
Any artists out there? I need a rendering of a time delay stinky synthetic CDO black box, pleese.
"I need a rendering of a time delay stinky synthetic CDO black box, pleese."
Walk Out Onto Your Front Lawn
Take a picture of the steaming bowel movement your neighbor's rottweiler just left for you...
Wondering if the PigMen are calling Washington as we speak, starting to negotiate a deal or settlement. I'd like to see how many of the Plutocrats in Washington are "accredited investors" in all the various "private club" investment schemes, such as those which have a Col. Kurtz cable wired directly to the Prop Desk.
Rasputin doesn't think this thing gets very far...
Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Dennis Levine, Charles Keating...
Rasputin
- Sat, Apr 17, 2010 - 07:50 AM
...Martha Stewart, Bernie Ebbers, Andrew Fastow, Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay.
What do all these people have in common?
They were all arrested, tried, convicted and (with the exception of
Ken Lay, who mysteriously "died") jailed for various financial schemes
over the last twenty or so years.
Yet--and this is the important point to remember--despite the
preponderace of "perp walks", the Ponzi Pymarid of Debt and Derivatives
Death monetary system not only grew during this entire period, but
actually EXPLODED TO EXPONENTIAL PROPORTIONS in size, scope and
pervasiveness.
So, please tell a skeptical Ras why he should believe that a
toothless, civil case only, against some "sacrificial lamb" no-name VP
at Godman Sachs is somehow NOW gonna be the
end-of-the-financial-world-as-we-know-it?
Don't waste your breath (or your keystrokes) trying, because it
ain't gonna happen. What WILL happen will be Godman pays some paltry
"wrist-slap" fine, then it's back to business as usual.
Now, stop worrying your pretty little heads (and ESPECIALLY don't
make the finacially-fatal mistake of shorting the stock markets, U.S.
Treasuries or the U.S. nightcrawler!) and instead buy some of the new
"movie box office futures" the CTFC just approved.
Or, better yet, rush out and snap up some of Uncle Gorilla's
"Fiatscos for Fridges" to help you purchase that two-thousand fiatsco,
stainless steel, hot-cold-and-bourbon-dispensing refrigerator you always
wanted.
No wait, I have an even BETTER idea: scurry over to BestBuy and be
the first one on your McBlock to carry home a new 3D TV and BluRay DVD
player--all charged to your thirty-percent-compounded-monthly-APR charge
card.
Because there is NO stock market or other collapse gonna happen
anytime soon.
Period.
I have to agree; GS has or will by now have already called all the people that they own.
Now, Senator X may not be willing at this point to directly and actively hinder the investigation, but it will be clear that if GS goes down, they are taking the entire motherfucking system with them.
If the government proceeds in earnest, this will lead to chaos and the disclosure of Pelican Briefs all over the place.
......sadly must agree with Ras.
The Pump Team is okay with letting air out of the bubble. Popping it with a sharp pin is unacceptable. Same goes for the bond market.
All the other central bank survival schemes depend on both functioning props.
Only a stray nuke, massive cyber attack or asteroid strike will change the course that has been set. Even a chronic volcanic dust cloud settling over the Euro/Asian continents won't alter the course.
Those idiots didn't buy Dylan's Ferrari, they bought his Yugo. Typical SEC nonsense. Why doesn't my broker tell me who is on the opposite side of my stock trade? As for Mister big gobermint Bloomenthal, he's running for Connecticut Senator and is about to get a smackdown from Linda McMahon.
http://www.stangbangers.com/Yugo_Ad2.jpg
what I want to know is ... why blow this up on Friday morning before options expire? Why not wait until market close? Who benefits? Does Obama and the democrats gain from the publicity? If so, is GS being singled out as to be sacrificed? For sure, unlike JPM, BAC, C, GS serves very little economic purpose ...
They're just shuffling a little shit around because they became afraid of losing their jobs where they get to watch tranny porn all day.
Only time will tell but my suspicion is that the lid on Pandora's Box has just been lifted and we will see lawsuits filed from multiple quarters ultimately eviscerate Goldman Sachs. Look for municipalities and states suing for their swap losses; pension funds seeking to refill their coffers; university endowments ... well, just about every institutional investor who may have been shortchanged. Snowball effect. If I were a partner, I'd "go limited" on Monday.
How about starting with Germany?
AP BERLIN — The German government may consider taking legal action in a case in which Goldman Sachs & Co. is accused of defrauding investors, a newspaper reported Saturday.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/now-germany-may-go-after-goldman-sachs-for-duping-one-of-its-banks-2010-4#ixzz0lOTC9Ko0they make a good scapegoat, but they aint the cause, just a symptom
Time is not needed to see that this will go nowhere. Too many politicians have their dirty hands in this...
Here is a report on the great success the Germans have had in prosecuting their bankers:
http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-article-is-being-read-by...
"Full faith and credit of the United States Government" or as Von Mieses and Dr. Paul call it "Fiat money".
The Wall Street Bankster Oligarchy that captured our government has also ended America.
There will be a squeeze on gold that pushes that substitute for fiat money to $5,500 an oz.
How to Corner the Gold Market
TSF - March 30, 2010
http://www.tavakolistructuredfinance.com/Gold.pdf
Buy the essentials of life, go somewhere safe and secluded, be heavily armed, have the means to communicate in an anarchy / police state and above all else, get right with God
http://www.propublica.org/feature/all-the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble
The real fun stuff started when they knew housing was gonna tank, back in 2006, so they created time delay stinky synthetic CDO black boxes, then used the initial income from those to buy CDS against them. Elegant.
Without a doubt, SEC got the go ahead to assault the Squid directly from Bennie and Tim. What better way to deflect the heat away from the Beltway ?? Especially with the mid-terms coming up.
I agree with Caviar. The Europeans, as backward and stodgy as we may think they are, have much more of a backbone for ethics than Americans.
They can remember, historically, the rise of Hitler, Bastille Day, the fall of the Berlin Wall and all sorts of other upheavals. Happened right over there just a few short years ago.
Americans have few such historical reminders of righteousness over greed/incompetence, pitchforks over office/title.
I don't think that we are as gullible as they would want to believe we are. If they are not successful in managing this unwind (which has happened sooner than they had planned, IMO...), the entire apple will be peeled before all the world.
If TPTB are not able to rein in this dissent and it actually foments into something stronger, there is a disctinct possibility that Americans will elect a new sherrif in many of its districts; political noobs willing to make a name for themselves. Hmm...sound familiar, Elliott?
I'll speculate that the only reason the SEC moved in this case was pressure from foreign governments. Two injured parties in the Abacus deal were ABN Amro (Netherlands) and IKB Bank (Germany).
The Wall Street/ Washington Combine is too strong to permit DOJ charges. And yes, they were hoping that this little suit and the BS Financial Reform Bill would silence any opponents. Al Capone, you hearing this?? You coulda had it good in the 2010s!
Let's cut to the chase.
The real criminals are those who work in the most sophisticated vehicles that through their persuasion, exchanged their views and worked with the rating agencies to put the AAA stamp on CCC paper.
Had the name CCC appeared on these vehicles, they would not have been sold to anyone.
However was it not the securities industry which initiated this drive by payment for ratings ?
Here within lies the core reasons for financial havoc.
Above average investors were duped by the AAA mark.
The securities industry should be allowed to create vehicles of all ratings, but should never be able to change the ratings labels for a fee, just to get it sold.
Let's further cut to the chase.
The real criminals are those who were the Gatekeepers. You can blame the teenagers for raiding the liquor cabinet. You can blame their friends who burned down the house. But who left them alone with the open vault.
Congress. None of this could have gone on in America without the blessings of Congress.
And while I do concur that the Dimons, Paulsons et al of this criminal racket should be fined and frogmarched under the RICO Act it is Congress that should face the guillotine.
Boys will be boys and the punishment will never fit this crime. But it is the parents that should face the ultimate sacrifice. And come November we had best be moving this forward. Will the replacements be any better? The only answer I have for that is can they be ANY WORSE?
Phil Gramm had all this stuff dismantled in his two "modernization" acts. His wife worked for Enron. His nation of whiners comment evokes Nero. He would look good in a toga, or pinstripes.
Dog and pony show.
Agreed. Government Sachs will emerge "stronger than ever". We all know who runs the show.
BTW -- Fabrice is a great "prison bitch" name. Have fun, cum stain.
+1,000
This was done strictly for the following reasons:
1. Obama's ratings were heading for the dumpster. They needed to feed something to the sheeple to make them think their President and his Administration cares for them. He doesn't. Wall Street money put him there and without that source of funding ZERO prospect of a re-election.
2. Steamroll over opposition to Dodd's "reform" bill. The FED will get more power from Congress by hook or by crook. Uncle Ben is the great puppet master, Congress and the Administration are the puppets and the American public is blissfully ignorant.
3. Yields on the 10-yr UST will not be allowed to approach the "red zone" of 4%. The USG needs to continue to borrow obscene amounts at low rates and keep the illusion of a housing market still intact.
4. Smack down OIL. Oil at over $90 presents a huge problem for Uncle Ben and his recovery hoax. It also lets the cat out of the bag that the Heidelbergs in the baseman of the Marriner S. Eccles building have been running at full speed.
5. Smack down GOLD. Gold will not be allowed over $1,200 again by Uncle Ben. Greenspan admitted making a mistake in leaving the price of gold unchecked, Uncle Ben is not going to make the same mistake.
GS pays a fine which they can earn back by manipulating SPY for a day, Fabulous Fab goes to jail, Obama declares victory and the sheeple rejoice. Mission accomplished.
+10
I agree. Big Ben has a lot more to do than just goose futures and tatical stick saves. He has to create a grand illusion of a real recovery; steady, slow, some ups and downs, ups outweighing the downs.
He must keep gold suppresed, 10 yr rates within reason, oil and inflation contained as well.
The market was way overheated and due for a sell-off anyway. TPTB need sell-offs, but not sell-offs that undermine confidence in the markets.
The futures will go ungoosed and the hockey stick saves will go away for awhile, until enough frustrated bears are all nice and cozy in their new trap.
Then back to the melt-up.