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Michael Lewis Summarizes Financial Reform Infiltration
To: Wall Street chief executives
From: Your man in Washington
Re: Embracing the status quo
Our earnings are robust, our compensation has returned to its naturally high levels and, as a result, we have very nearly regained our grip on the imaginations of the most ambitious students at the finest universities — and from that single fact many desirable outcomes follow.
Thus, we have almost fully recovered from what we have agreed to call The Great Misfortune. In the next few weeks, however, ill-informed senators will meet with ill-paid representatives to reconcile their ill-conceived financial reform bills. This process cannot and should not be stopped. The American people require at least the illusion of change. But it can be rendered harmless to our interests.
To this point, we have succeeded in keeping the public focused on the single issue that will have very little effect on how we do business: the quest to prevent taxpayer money from ever again being used to (as they put it) “bail out Wall Street.”
As we know, we never needed their money in the first place, and by the time we need it again, we’ll be long gone. If we can keep the public, and its putative representatives, fixated on the question of whether their bill does, or does not, ensure there will be no more bailouts, we may entirely avoid a discussion of our relationship to the broader society.
....
In the short term, we must do whatever we can to dissuade Representative Barney Frank from allowing any part of these discussions between senators and representatives to be televised. In the longer term we must return to the shadows. Do your work in private; allow your money to speak for you; and remember, the only way we’ll get the financial reform we need is if we pay for it. No one else can afford it.
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Just bot the Big Short at Borders as they sink into the warm pacific ocean. He's got it and can't get it out of his mind. - Ned
Have that book in my 'to read' pile!
Got a bit more time to myself this summer before learning how to farm doing the WWOOF program (might serve me some purpose when times get tough as opposed to my current knowledge in quant finance) so have a bunch of books im enjoying.
Just finished When Genius Failed and its alarming at how there are so many similarities between the saving of LTCM in 1998 and now the bailout of major institutions 10 years later.
enjoy liars poker--don't know how these ... well I'm trying to be a gentleman -- get to play again. Must need a few nobel prize winnerz. waiting for krugman to fail (well ... again) in public. don't think he'll get to merriwether's extreme.
Donthcha remember when LTCM was "threatening to collapse the system"??? Needed "full intervention"???
- Ned
Bread and Circuses Live!
Circuses for the public
Bread for the bankers
Regulatory Reform is Neither.
No Changes to the Wall Street Business Model.
Maintain the Diversions, Men!
So Who Gives a Shit.
What a Great Fuckin' Country.
I wish this was satire. It would be funny. Instead it is painful truth.
The Truth hurts....but sets free.
"The Truth hurts....but sets free."
I don't think the truth was meant to hurt.
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free"
Anyone ever question what the truth sets you free from?
me-yep. doing things that don't get to the correct direction.
If I may ask? MOS?
S/F - Ned
"We do not have a problem with the American people, we have a problem with American women. Elizabeth Warren, our TARP supervisor, continues to ask questions about what we did with our government money; Mary Schapiro has used her authority at the S.E.C. to sue Goldman Sachs" - from the full article.
Women do seem less corruptible, have nicer handwriting, and generally smell nice. Anyone ever notice that every picture you see of Angela Merkel at the side of an article is taken at inopportune moment? What's up with that.
May Michael Lewis continue to bring it on...he's got one hell of a footprint.
Well, this is about Bernanke. This is about Bernanke. He has to be on that call. Forget the investors. The investors are gonna do- If Bernanke listens- Bernanke needs to open the discount window. That's how bad things are out there. Bernanke needs to focus on this. Alan Greenspan told everyone to take a teaser rate, then raised the rate 17 times? And Bernanke is being an academic. It is no time to be an academic. It is time to get on the Bear Stearns call. Listen. Open the darn Fed window. He has NO IDEA how bad it is out there. He has NO IDEA! He has NO IDEA! I have talked to the heads of almost every single one of these firms in the last 72 hours and he has NO IDEA what it’s like out there! NONE! And Bill Poole has NO IDEA what it’s like out there. My people have been in this game for 25 years, and they are losing their jobs and these firms are gonna go out of business and HE’S NUTS! THEY’RE NUTS! THEY KNOW NOTHING!
I have not seen it like this since I went 5-bid for half a million shares of Citigroup and I got hit in 1990. This is a different kind of market. And the Fed is ASLEEP! Well, Bill Poole is a shame. He’s SHAMEFUL! He ought to go and read the Accredited Home document, at least I read the darn thing.
You can’t get a darn loan if you’re rich like me.
have fun squeezing those camels thru the eye of the needle
Heh, is that the transcript of what Cramer said on TV when the stock market started to plummet two years ago?
This financial reform stuff always takes place after the fact and never prevents the next crisis which invariably occurs for a completely different reason.
Ponzi schemin, coast to coast,
Easy stealin money everywhere
Feelin the transcontinental debt load,
Just get behind the Federal handout deal
How does it feel
When there's no fraudulent innovation - that goes too far
And somewhere on the way,
you might find out how freakin rich you are
Banking in America - pies in the sky, bubble elation
Banking in America - your hand to their hands, the bailout nation
Banking in America - can we have just one defenestration?
James Brown and WilliamBanzai7
please set this to music and i promise 2m+ views on youtube
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
A customer informed me that the TARP needed to pass in order to "save" the banks. I asked him why he wanted to save the very entity that had its foot on your throat?? He had a retirement account in Citigroup. Like all traders, we all speak to our own self-interests. Convincing me to bailout the banks was to validate his poor investment choices. I replied, "Never give free money to a bank."
The Federal Reserve System is a zero-sum game designed to ensure conflict among the population that the Primary Dealers can benefit from, through consumption, taxation, and criminalization.
We must default on the US Debt. Let the banks and their theivery collapse on each other and rebuild our nation upon a fiat currency, the "Full Faith and Credit of the United States" with a clear federal mandate that establishes the Rule of Law.
I don't care how much "little Jimmy's" college tution is.
I'm sick of hearing about everyone "loosing their jobs."
And the basic lie that the earth will stop spinning unless Goldman Sachs is allowed to front-run every trade.
The November elections will send a clear message to politicians who knowingly provide legal cover for the villans of our nation!
IMHO, all the financial reform legislation in the world isn't going to change a damn thing.
The core problem is our unsound, debt-based, floating fiat monetary system.
All the regulations in the world won't change the fact that the human animal is greedy and forever seeks higher status.
Honest money provides the built-in check on these impulses.
Frankly, I don't know if it needs to be a gold standard, a basket of commodities, or clam shells.
Gold has certain properties that have proven to work down through history.
So, yes, count me among those who are calling for a return to the gold standard.