Alan Grayson

Liberals and Conservatives Agree: Vote Third Party ... Plus Why Many Ron Paul Supporters (Like Me) Are Voting for Gary Johnson

Independent from Congress … or from the American People?

"Suckers" - Alan Grayson discusses the Federal Reserve's purchase of debt from Bear Stearns, including debt from recently foreclosed Red Roof Inn's.

It doesn’t matter what terms the President offers. It’s that simple. Boehner can’t deliver the votes...That's why Boehner is always crying--Alan Grayson

For all Zero Hedge readers who have long waited for their chance to ask Mr. Scott Alvarez of "Have The Federal Reserve Or Prime Brokers Ever Tried To Manipulate The Stock Market?" fame a question about life, the universe or why the CME decides to hike ES margins in an environment of rising realized vol, here it is. Tomorrow, at 2PM, Ron Paul will lead a hearing by the Financial Services Committee, which will luckily be carried by C-SPAN meaning one will be actually able to hear the dialog (alas, the House continues to believe that investing in microphones for their internal webcasts is a bad idea), titled: "Federal Reserve Lending Disclosure: FOIA, Dodd-Frank, and the Data Dump." The witnesses will be Mr. Thomas C. Baxter, Jr., General Counsel, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the one and only Scott G. Alvarez, General Counsel, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. While the usual heeming and hawing will follow each and every question, what is unique about this session is that the FSC actually allows anyone to submit questions for the honorable lawyers. The link to submit questions is here: we urge Zero Hedge readers to take advantage of this opportunity and have Mr. Paul read their questions to the two general counsels, even if no legible answers will be (ever) forthcoming.

Now that Alan Grayson is no longer in Congress, Fed hearings have certainly lost that certain dose of panache which only a man, wearing a dollar sign tie, and cross examining the Fed's General Counsel which grinning like a diabolical Tasmanian Devil, would bring to the table. We managed to catch up with Grayson during today's session of Radio Free Dylan, in which the traditionally opinionated Fed critic had some very choice words about the President. In essence, the former Florida Democrat said that it is none other than the President, who is the reason there have been no prosecutions on banks: " I am not only blaming the Obama administration, if the Bush
administration had its head on straight they would have prevented a lot
of these things from happening to start with. But the President Obama administration said at the beginning, we are
going to look forward and not back and therefore in the process of
making that decision basically let these crooks off the hook." But that's ok - see the SEC, which incidentally has to give a person by person org chart and job description of its 3,500 porn addicts before it receive one additional penny of funding, is about to catch one or two criminal masterminds who bought some NYX calls after the information of today's merger, which was so badly leaked that virtually everyone knew about the deal ahead of the announcement, are about to spend some time in prison. In the meantime, all those who knowingly and willfully committed crimes in the great housing pump and dump (up to and including misrepresenting underwriting documents), are about to get away scott-free. Thank you Mr. President. That's some might fine change you got there.

"As is the case with most 'gold panel' commissions, those who control the game make sure they can skate away."

Remember when double and even triple inverse leveraged ETFs were all the rage? That all occurred in the brief period of time before it became clear that Bernanke would first take down the global financial system before he let Citi get back to $1/share again. Apparently one reader recalls it all too well: "In 2008 at the bottom of the market I sold positions I owned in physical gold and banks stocks such as Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C) and also non financial companies such as Ford (F). I used these proceeds to purchased inverse ETF’s such as NYSE: FAZ (Direxion Financial 3x Short) and NYSE:SRS (Proshares Real Estate 2x Short). Since making these purchases, these ETF’s have suffered significant drops in value as reflected in their price. In fact NYSE: FAZ has plummeted from $1100 per share to $11 per share and SRS has reduced in price from $1000 per share to $19.50 per share. It is now apparent that the Fed spent trillions of dollars to raise the price of bank stocks and to inversely suppress the price of these inverse ETFs." Yet is this nothing but a case of fippers' remorse? Is there legal precedent for an actual claim? Was the Fed in breach of duty "by allowing investors to make investments into funds such as FAZ and SRS and other inverse ETF’s, while the Fed was performing transactions that the Fed knew or should have known would severely harm the investors in these publicly traded fund." Will Bernanke cave and make whole everyone who dared to put money into the market, even if it meant betting on a broad market decline? After all the whole purposes of the latest propaganda campaign is to get people to put money in the market with no fear of loss whatsoever: whether one is bullish or bearish (and as the lack of participation shows, most are certainly still bearish). Which is where it gets interesting: "Therefore, I appeal to your office to make due and just compensation in treble damages amounting to $__ million dollars for a full and good faith settlement of this matter. If this is agreeable, I am prepared to enter into a confidential good faith settlement." In our ridiculous bizarro world, in which nothing makes sense following each recurring Fed intervention, perhaps the Fed making whole those who lose money regardless of their bias, is just what is needed to break the 33 weeks of outflows...

Dennis wants the power of the Federal Reserve in Congress. His ambitions are actually quite disturbing because he is also pursuing the flawed concept of full employment, but now he has added even grander ambitions - the one thing that the horrible Federal Reserve prevented Congress from doing - creating money for the purpose of spending it. Granted with QE2 in full swing it becomes difficult to make that argument, because buying US debt so that the US Government can continue functioning is essentially the same thing, but at least our total debt grows and Americans are still aware of the cost. With Kucinich's bill this aspect disappears as money will appear whenever Congress wishes it to be so and the value imbued in this money will come through Congress alone - a Chartalist dream come true. - Arkady Kamenetsky

Don't strip the Fed of its "Dual Mandate" ... just strip the Fed of its power.

Here is why an open-ended QE2 may be a very moot point: Slate reports that Ron Paul, Ben Bernanke's greatest nemesis, will chair the all important monetary policy subcommittee. In other words, Bernanke v Paul theater will soon be a weekly feature. Too bad Alan Grayson will be no longer present.

And now back to the popcorn.

When two weeks ago we highlighted the news that key title insurers such as Fidelity National are demanding indemnity and warranty from banks, we asked "what happens if the bank is once again caught to be, gulp, lying?
Who foots the bill then? Why the buyer of course. All this does is to
remove the liability from companies like Fidelity National and puts it
back to BofA, which is already so much underwater it has no chance of
really getting out without TARP, contrarian Goldman propaganda
notwithstanding." And while our speculation provided amusement to some of the more (vastly so) polemic elements in the blogosphere, it appears that Alan Grayson took this development seriously, and sent a letter to Geithner demand that a special capital buffer be established at the TBTFs, to absorb any and all losses that will arise from foreclosuregate (especially since earlier today it was made clear that certain banks such as First Horizon don't have any provision for putbacks). In Grayson's words: "Recently, Bank of America struck a deal with Fidelity National Title Insurance to indemnify the title insurer should legal problems with foreclosures create unanticipated title liability.  Title insurers are clearly worried that they may face higher legal and policy costs if foreclosures are reversed, or should legal ambiguity cloud titles they already have insured...Since title insurers have in some cases just refused to insure this market, someone must pay for the liability these insurers have refused to incur. Both banks and regulators are claiming that the problems are simply process-oriented document errors that aren't really causing harm to the public at large.  I suspect that no one really knows the extent of the problem, or the potential liability.With that in mind, it would seem prudent to require additional capital buffers for systemically significant institutions until the extent of the foreclosure fraud crisis is understood." We wholeheartedly agree with Grayson.

Looming losses from the mortgage scandal dubbed “foreclosuregate” may qualify as the sort of systemic risk that, under the new financial reform bill, warrants the breakup of the too-big-to-fail banks. The Kanjorski amendment allows federal regulators to pre-emptively break up large financial institutions that—for any reason—pose a threat to U.S. financial or economic stability.

Alan Grayson is back on the scene, having sent a letter to Financial Stability Oversight Council which includes pretty much all of Wall Street's pawns, including Bernanke, Geithner, Bair, Gensler, Walsh, and DeMarco, in which he asks the FSOC to "suspend foreclosures until this problem is understood and its ramifications dealt with." And the ramifications, per Grayson, Zero Hedge and everyone else, will be dire for the banking sector: "So far, banks are claiming that the many forged documents uncovered by courts and attorneys represent a simple 'technical problem' with foreclosure processes.  This is not true.  What is happening is fraud to cover up fraud... The banks didn't keep good records, and there is good reason to believe in many if not virtually all cases during this period, failed to transfer the notes, which is the borrower IOUs in accordance with the requirements of their own pooling and servicing agreements. As a result, the notes may be put out of eligibility for the trust under New York law, which governs these securitizations. Potential cures for the note may, according to certain legal experts, be contrary to IRS rules governing REMICs. As a result, loan servicers and trusts simply lack standing to foreclose. The remedy has been foreclosure fraud, including the widespread fabrication of documents.  There are now trillions of dollars of securitizations of these loans in the hands of investors. The trusts holding these loans are in a legal gray area, as the mortgage titles were never officially transferred to the trusts... The liability here for the major banks is potentially enormous, and can lead to a systemic risk."

This is Rep. Alan Grayson explaining the crisis of foreclosure fraud and how it links to the entire securitization chain of Wall Street.

"Their is one set of rules for the banks and another set of laws for everyone else" More @ 4closureFraud.org