Corruption

So far, Bank of America has been aggressively denying it will in any way be compromised by any possible Wikileaks disclosure. After all the bank claims it has done nothing to merit a take down based on what Assange has claimed is an "ecosystem of corruption." As everyone knows, Bank of America is the most non-MERS abusing, bonus non-extracting, putback over-reserved, and otherwise law abiding bank in existence. Which is why we are just modestly troubled by the fact that this innocent not until proven guilty but in perpetuity bank is doing all it can to demonstrate that there is in fact a very disturbing ecosystem just below the surface. The NYT reports that "a team of 15 to 20 top Bank of America officials, led by
the chief risk officer, Bruce R. Thompson, has been overseeing a broad
internal investigation — scouring thousands of documents in the event
that they become public, reviewing every case where a computer has gone
missing and hunting for any sign that its systems might have been
compromised." What goes unsaid is that BofA is really looking for what the disclosed dirty laundry is. Which really makes no sense: after all, for that to be the case, there would have to be dirty laundry in the first place, which would mean Bank of America is lying. How does one go about reconciling these two mindbogglingly contradictory facts...

Does Goldman deserve the theatrical roasting it has been subjected to all day? Of course. Will anything come out of it? Not too likely, especially with our president, who made a whirlwind global tour on the Volcker Rule, and now is aggressively backtracking behind the shadow of his teleprompter (or at least until the next Massachussettes emerges, and the next, and the next). Yet in order to keep a fair and balanced perspective on things, it may behoove those watching Carl Levin's sanctimonious monologues to realize that the November 4, 1999 vote on S. 900, better known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, received Senator Levin's full endorsement. If Goldman is the pure, unadulterated evil it is today, it is so only because of idiotic Senators who were corrupt, or stupid enough, or both, to let GLB pass when it did, and usher in the era of unbridled prop trading/hedge funding by banks with full access to the discount window and taxpayer bailouts.

Any attempt at fixing Goldman must begin with reinstating Glass-Steagal - period. Anything and everything else is smoke and mirrors. Yes it will be painful (for the banks), and yes it will cost massive equity losses due to forced spin offs (for bank shareholders), but it will prevent the next scapegoating circus after the fact. How about we preempt these things from happening for once?

Kyrgyzstan’s mass anti-government protests last week were essentially the culmination of more than a decade of disillusionment and dissatisfaction that accumulated in the nation’s political, economic and social spheres from the period of Akayev to his successor Kurmanbek Bakiyev, with virtually every Kyrgyz concerned about rising prices and falling standards of living, both issues of little concern and dimly understood in Washington.

David Loglisci, who was Hevesi's chief investment officer at New York's state pension fund, has agreed to dish to investigators for Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on a culture of corruption that existed in the office.

Columbia's Charles Calomiris, who predicted the Argentina sovereign debt crisis (not sure which one: do people actually keep count?) was on Bloomberg TV spreading some more logic, first as pertains to those satanic monsters better known as CDS traders with the following piece of brilliance - "the CDS market always requires two parties in any transaction." This is something that everyone tends to forget. Unlike stocks or cash bonds, where the whole concept of Zero Sum is somewhat murky (especially in naked shorting) in derivatives it is precisely that - one man's loss is another man's gain - no exceptions. Why is nobody scapegoating those traders who enable the speculators to exist? If you raise the CDS offer high enough nobody will buy - we could just as easily blame the CDS sellers for their stupidity and willingness to take on capital losses. But as the whole topic of CDS speculators is pretty much a dead horse at this point. Calomiris also points out another obvious feature of the Greek speculator raid: "the spreads that we saw in Greece at their worst in the CDS market were about 4%. Based on what we know from the history of sovereign crises given the current fundamentals in Greece if anything that is a very muted response in the market. I would have expected a much greater response and I think we will see a much greater response..." Second, Calomiris says that the next country to fall after Greece will be not Spain, but Italy - the reason: massive governmental corruption.

Don't say the SEC doesn't work hard for its billion dollar budget. The syndicate endorsing corruption (and not even worthy of capitalization), has released a press release indicating it is now pursuing enforcement action against a "known" psychic "who fraudulently raised $6 million after telling investors he could predict stock market highs and lows." Uhm, so does that mean that the SEC is now after every single pundit on CNBC as well? To be sure, while there are many more egregious cases of market manipulation out there, this one will surely make the late night comedy circuit.

Should we throw out capitalism altogether? Or would that be throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

One of those hopefully seminal moments, when someone, somewhere decided to take a hard stand against the perpetual engine of corruption, greed, and cronyism.

BNO reports that that the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago will announce another public corruption case, possibly involving an elected official at 2 p.m. local time today.

Update: Well, it is not someone else people may have been expecting... Instead it is Ike Carrothers, the chairman of the City Council's police and fire committee.