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Crackdown on Wall Street: The Perp Walks Are Coming

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by Greg Richards, Feb 2, 2009.

Reaver
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Quote from nutmeg:

But when it comes to potentially the most pervasive frauds of all, it could take years to catch all of the crooks, officials say.
----------------------------

woo hoo. To those that it matters, they'll be dead. Everyone else will have forgotten.

As for the money lost.... fines, disgorgments, etc will be dumped into the black hole of whatever agency will police the next Enron-Ponzi-Rating generation.

"Perp walks are coming", yeah yeah yeah, show me don't tell me..
More...

Yup. Don't talk about it, be about it.

I won't believe shit til I see it.

And like the guy after you mentioned...it will just be a bunch of small fish scapegoats who get nailed in order to appease the masses.

#11 Feb 2, 2009

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tradersboredom Guest
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the guys in wall street were billionaires and thought they could buy the media gov't investigators(SEC) etc and market regulators with their money.

these guys thought they owned the market.

theser brokers, Investment banks and banks are given the PRIViLLEGE to be brokers,market makers and banks...

Even the SEC employees were kissing ass at wall street

as for rico, this is one rich mafia(madoff)

Quote from WaveStrider:

At least they are calling it what it is - Fraud. And they should go after them with RICO.

But how high up does it go? I'm thinking it may end up with some very famous, well-known names.
More...

#12 Feb 2, 2009

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tradersboredom Guest
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what could happen is Re-regulation of the financial sector like the 60's and 70's.

Quote from Greg Richards:

http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2009/02/02/crackdown-on-wall-street-the-perp-walks-are-coming/

Emac Stock Watch - Fox Business - February 2, 2009
by Elizabeth MacDonald

First of a series on the Crackdown on Wall Street

With the economy in a national nervous breakdown, with global losses mounting into the trillions of dollars, a top Wall Street executive in an interview echoes the Streetâs water cooler talk when he asks:

âWhere are the smartest guys in the room being hauled off in handcuffs?â

Specifically, executives say the markets have only seen high-profile perp walks in two cases, the two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers charged with securities fraud, and the two Credit Suisse brokers also charged with securities fraud in selling auction rate securities linked to subprime loans.

âWe saw more executives hauled off at about this time during the accounting scandals [earlier this decade], WorldComâs Bernie Ebbers, Enronâs [Ken] Lay and [Jeffrey] Skilling, Tycoâs Dennis Kozlowski,â one investor complains, in whatâs likely an overstatement.

But top law enforcement officials have news for the markets.

The perp walks are comingâin fact expect 2009 to be a bonanza year for arrests, a Justice Dept. official says. Law enforcement officials say the bursting of the worldâs biggest bubble has created a very crowded scene of the crime.

Reason for the delay: X-raying the bursting of the worldâs biggest bubble in order to find out who to charge has proven to be devilishly more complex, more variegated, and involve bigger sums than ever before, says David Cardona, 52, head of the FBIâs criminal division in New York City, in an interview.

What should send a chill up Wall Streetâs spine is the fact that the FBI is âlooking at all market participants from top to bottom who helped constructâ potentially fraudulent loans and asset-backed securities, wherever the evidence leads the agents, says Cardona, a veteran agent widely respected in the bureau for being a smart, savvy straight-shooter.

(Though given the massive Wall Street layoffs and the empty offices, the probes could prove to be a chill looking for a spine to shiver up, to quote former South Africa official Helen Suzman).

Will These Frauds Escape?

However, interviews with Wall Street executives show a deep concern that the biggest frauds of all may escapeânot predatory loans, but predatory securitizations.

Itâs the predatory securitizations that are the most complicated, with agents expert in terrorist and al Qaeda financing now working these cases. Cardona notes that the FBI has fully staffed both these investigation areas, adding that terrorism remains the worst threat to the US economy, with white collar frauds second.

Cardona, who came to the FBIâs New York office in May 2007 after running the bureauâs Miami office, is now riding herd on 400 agents who, overall, handle criminal cases.

Terrorist financing agents are well-equipped and needed on fraudulent securitizations more than ever.

Thatâs because tracking the purblind pools in securitization financing is similar to prowling through hawala financing, where money changes hands through an anonymous money transfer network in the usury-forbidden world of Muslim finance throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Fallout Grows

The International Monetary Fund now says the cost of this bubble potentially surmounts $2.2 tn, with financial companies the world over taking $975 bn in profit hits to date.

The $305 bn in profits earned by the top nine investment banks over the last three years has been easily vaporized by $323 bn in writedowns taken over the last year or so.

Top executives including Countrywide Financialâs Angelo Mozilo, former Merrill Lynchâs E. Stanley OâNeal, Citigroupâs Robert Rubin, Citigroupâs Charles O. Prince, all have walked out the door with lavish compensation packages built on fake profits earned during the bubble years.

Meanwhile, the bubble has caused the US to launch an estimated $8.4 tn in new facilities to deal with the crisis. That includes the Federal Reserveâs credit facilities, and the US Treasury its $700 bn TARP program, with to date 355 banks getting TARP funding, including seven private banks.

It also includes the guarantees the US government has now given in the way of backstops to $427 bn in bad assets at places like Bank of America, Citigroup and American International Group. And the Federal Reserve, now the worldâs largest junk investor, has taken on about $81.5 bn in bad securities from Bear Stearns and AIG on its own books.

Also, the US government is set to debut an enormous $819 bn fiscal spending package to rescue the US economy from potentially the deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

And the US government may now set up a mega Bad Bank, a colossal dumpster, for the bad bank assets backed by subprime loans sliced and diced in Wall Streetâs CDO deli machine.

The mortgage-backed bonds that were really only so much baloney, despite being rubberstamped by the credit rating agencies as triple-A, credit ratings agencies called the marketâs âastrologersâ by Janet Takavoli, the structured finance specialist and author of âDear Mr. Buffett: What An Investor Learns 1,269 Miles From Wall Streetâ (2009).

Ironically, Wall Streetâs compulsive financial engineering was supposed to limit the risk of financial contagion, but it didnât work as the subprime crisis went viral and sickened all asset classes around the world.

Now some Justice Dept. officials fear that the federal bailout of the financial industry âmay itself become a problem because it contains inadequate controls to deter fraud,â a top official warns.

The Perp Walks Are Coming

With the markets complacent for more than eight years, âwhat is happening now is the equivalent of turning the lights on in the kitchen and finding an avalanche of cockroaches,â says a Wall Street executive.

The magnitude of the bubble means the fraud cases are more sweeping than ever, from the small-bore mortgage loan frauds, or âwhite collar street crimesâ as former Attorney General Michael Mukasey calls them, to Ponzi scams to hedge fund investigations to accounting frauds to structured finance and derivatives frauds.

The last are âvery complicated,â the âmost complicated Iâve ever personally seen,â says the FBIâs Cardona in an interview.

Overall, FBI Director Robert Mueller has testified that the FBI has already launched 24 investigations into major Wall Street firms and investment banks, including Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and American International Group. The number is thought to have since grown to 26.

Just the FBI mortgage loan fraud caseload alone has more than doubled in three years, to about 1,700. About 200 FBI agents are assigned to these cases, up from 120 a year ago. The Securities & Exchange Commission has more than 50 pending civil investigations in the subprime area.

Meanwhile, Ponzi scams are surfacing fast and furiously, beyond the alleged $50 bn scam run by Bernard Madoff, as well as the three alleged Ponzi schemes run by Arthur Nadel, Nicholas Cosmo and Joseph Forte. âItâs only natural,â the FBIâs Cardona says, that with the bursting of the biggest bubble the world has ever seen, for the markets to now see a wave of Ponzi scams.

The SEC brought at least 23 Ponzi cases last year, up from 15 in 2007, with four already in the month of January alone.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission prosecuted 15 Ponzi schemes in 2008 and expects that number to increase this year. And hedge funds remain squarely in the bullsâ eye.

The Hardest to Catch of All

But when it comes to potentially the most pervasive frauds of all, it could take years to catch all of the crooks, officials say.

Not predatory lending, but predatory securitizations.

Namely, the asset-backed bonds cooked up in Wall Streetâs âfinancial meth labs,â structured finance expert Takavoli notes in her new book, its byzantine CDO factories that pumped out bad bonds that have melted down savings accounts world wide and are just pure âhot molten evil,â as one investor calls them.

âIt seems to me that some investment banks knowingly participated in predatory securitizations,â says Takavoli in her book.

But although these securitizations are as transparent as a bucket of molasses, Wall Street executives who have worked on these deals and demand anonymity say there might be a way to catch the bad guys behind them.
More...

#13 Feb 2, 2009

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TraderZones
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Quote from Greg Richards:

http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2009/02/02/crackdown-on-wall-street-the-perp-walks-are-coming/

Emac Stock Watch - Fox Business - February 2, 2009
by Elizabeth MacDonald

First of a series on the Crackdown on Wall Street

With the economy in a national nervous breakdown, with global losses mounting into the trillions of dollars, a top Wall Street executive in an interview echoes the Streetâs water cooler talk when he asks:

âWhere are the smartest guys in the room being hauled off in handcuffs?â

Specifically, executives say the markets have only seen high-profile perp walks in two cases, the two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers charged with securities fraud, and the two Credit Suisse brokers also charged with securities fraud in selling auction rate securities linked to subprime loans.

âWe saw more executives hauled off at about this time during the accounting scandals [earlier this decade], WorldComâs Bernie Ebbers, Enronâs [Ken] Lay and [Jeffrey] Skilling, Tycoâs Dennis Kozlowski,â one investor complains, in whatâs likely an overstatement.

But top law enforcement officials have news for the markets.

The perp walks are comingâin fact expect 2009 to be a bonanza year for arrests, a Justice Dept. official says. Law enforcement officials say the bursting of the worldâs biggest bubble has created a very crowded scene of the crime.

Reason for the delay: X-raying the bursting of the worldâs biggest bubble in order to find out who to charge has proven to be devilishly more complex, more variegated, and involve bigger sums than ever before, says David Cardona, 52, head of the FBIâs criminal division in New York City, in an interview.

What should send a chill up Wall Streetâs spine is the fact that the FBI is âlooking at all market participants from top to bottom who helped constructâ potentially fraudulent loans and asset-backed securities, wherever the evidence leads the agents, says Cardona, a veteran agent widely respected in the bureau for being a smart, savvy straight-shooter.

(Though given the massive Wall Street layoffs and the empty offices, the probes could prove to be a chill looking for a spine to shiver up, to quote former South Africa official Helen Suzman).

Will These Frauds Escape?

However, interviews with Wall Street executives show a deep concern that the biggest frauds of all may escapeânot predatory loans, but predatory securitizations.

Itâs the predatory securitizations that are the most complicated, with agents expert in terrorist and al Qaeda financing now working these cases. Cardona notes that the FBI has fully staffed both these investigation areas, adding that terrorism remains the worst threat to the US economy, with white collar frauds second.

Cardona, who came to the FBIâs New York office in May 2007 after running the bureauâs Miami office, is now riding herd on 400 agents who, overall, handle criminal cases.

Terrorist financing agents are well-equipped and needed on fraudulent securitizations more than ever.

Thatâs because tracking the purblind pools in securitization financing is similar to prowling through hawala financing, where money changes hands through an anonymous money transfer network in the usury-forbidden world of Muslim finance throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Fallout Grows

The International Monetary Fund now says the cost of this bubble potentially surmounts $2.2 tn, with financial companies the world over taking $975 bn in profit hits to date.

The $305 bn in profits earned by the top nine investment banks over the last three years has been easily vaporized by $323 bn in writedowns taken over the last year or so.

Top executives including Countrywide Financialâs Angelo Mozilo, former Merrill Lynchâs E. Stanley OâNeal, Citigroupâs Robert Rubin, Citigroupâs Charles O. Prince, all have walked out the door with lavish compensation packages built on fake profits earned during the bubble years.

Meanwhile, the bubble has caused the US to launch an estimated $8.4 tn in new facilities to deal with the crisis. That includes the Federal Reserveâs credit facilities, and the US Treasury its $700 bn TARP program, with to date 355 banks getting TARP funding, including seven private banks.

It also includes the guarantees the US government has now given in the way of backstops to $427 bn in bad assets at places like Bank of America, Citigroup and American International Group. And the Federal Reserve, now the worldâs largest junk investor, has taken on about $81.5 bn in bad securities from Bear Stearns and AIG on its own books.

Also, the US government is set to debut an enormous $819 bn fiscal spending package to rescue the US economy from potentially the deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

And the US government may now set up a mega Bad Bank, a colossal dumpster, for the bad bank assets backed by subprime loans sliced and diced in Wall Streetâs CDO deli machine.

The mortgage-backed bonds that were really only so much baloney, despite being rubberstamped by the credit rating agencies as triple-A, credit ratings agencies called the marketâs âastrologersâ by Janet Takavoli, the structured finance specialist and author of âDear Mr. Buffett: What An Investor Learns 1,269 Miles From Wall Streetâ (2009).

Ironically, Wall Streetâs compulsive financial engineering was supposed to limit the risk of financial contagion, but it didnât work as the subprime crisis went viral and sickened all asset classes around the world.

Now some Justice Dept. officials fear that the federal bailout of the financial industry âmay itself become a problem because it contains inadequate controls to deter fraud,â a top official warns.

The Perp Walks Are Coming

With the markets complacent for more than eight years, âwhat is happening now is the equivalent of turning the lights on in the kitchen and finding an avalanche of cockroaches,â says a Wall Street executive.

The magnitude of the bubble means the fraud cases are more sweeping than ever, from the small-bore mortgage loan frauds, or âwhite collar street crimesâ as former Attorney General Michael Mukasey calls them, to Ponzi scams to hedge fund investigations to accounting frauds to structured finance and derivatives frauds.

The last are âvery complicated,â the âmost complicated Iâve ever personally seen,â says the FBIâs Cardona in an interview.

Overall, FBI Director Robert Mueller has testified that the FBI has already launched 24 investigations into major Wall Street firms and investment banks, including Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and American International Group. The number is thought to have since grown to 26.

Just the FBI mortgage loan fraud caseload alone has more than doubled in three years, to about 1,700. About 200 FBI agents are assigned to these cases, up from 120 a year ago. The Securities & Exchange Commission has more than 50 pending civil investigations in the subprime area.

Meanwhile, Ponzi scams are surfacing fast and furiously, beyond the alleged $50 bn scam run by Bernard Madoff, as well as the three alleged Ponzi schemes run by Arthur Nadel, Nicholas Cosmo and Joseph Forte. âItâs only natural,â the FBIâs Cardona says, that with the bursting of the biggest bubble the world has ever seen, for the markets to now see a wave of Ponzi scams.

The SEC brought at least 23 Ponzi cases last year, up from 15 in 2007, with four already in the month of January alone.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission prosecuted 15 Ponzi schemes in 2008 and expects that number to increase this year. And hedge funds remain squarely in the bullsâ eye.

The Hardest to Catch of All

But when it comes to potentially the most pervasive frauds of all, it could take years to catch all of the crooks, officials say.

Not predatory lending, but predatory securitizations.

Namely, the asset-backed bonds cooked up in Wall Streetâs âfinancial meth labs,â structured finance expert Takavoli notes in her new book, its byzantine CDO factories that pumped out bad bonds that have melted down savings accounts world wide and are just pure âhot molten evil,â as one investor calls them.

âIt seems to me that some investment banks knowingly participated in predatory securitizations,â says Takavoli in her book.

But although these securitizations are as transparent as a bucket of molasses, Wall Street executives who have worked on these deals and demand anonymity say there might be a way to catch the bad guys behind them.
More...

I fear that all we are doing, is cleaning up the balance sheets of these institutions, so they can do it all over again.

The Black Swan hit. But their behavior led to this. Who said the Black Swan isn't a Black Flock?

#14 Feb 2, 2009

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flytiger
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Quote from stock777:

been calling for this from day 1.

no brainer.
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Took a lot of work. And much of it was done by private citizens. I know.

Read the first deepcapture by mitchell. it's long, but you'll see how it went down.

Tonight, you'll see a major player, a billionaire outed.

#15 Feb 2, 2009

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Greg Richards
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Quote from TraderZones:

I fear that all we are doing, is cleaning up the balance sheets of these institutions, so they can do it all over again.

The Black Swan hit. But their behavior led to this. Who said the Black Swan isn't a Black Flock?
More...

Black (or any other color) swans had nothing to do with it. Tavakoli in her book Dear Mr. Buffett demonstrates that no model would have accounted for pros intentionally putting out bad product. They were well aware the loans were bad and the packages of product were overrated and overpriced. Those who talk about black swans and models give the bad guys an excuse to hide behind. Her notes section shows that most of the deals in 2007 were phony as were many before that. Incredible.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/04...&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463383371&pf_rd_i=507846

#16 Feb 2, 2009

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TraderZones
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Quote from Greg Richards:

Black (or any other color) swans had nothing to do with it. Tavakoli in her book Dear Mr. Buffett demonstrates that no model would have accounted for pros intentionally putting out bad product. They were well aware the loans were bad and the packages of product were overrated and overpriced. Those who talk about black swans and models give the bad guys an excuse to hide behind. Her notes section shows that most of the deals in 2007 were phony as were many before that. Incredible.

More...

The first thing you need to do, is understand what a Black Swan is, before dismissing what you don't see.

The Black Swan theory refers to a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations.

It was large-impact, beyond the realm of normal, and hard-to-predict (as if everyone knew this was going to happen 2 years ago - or as if everyone predicted what Madoff was doing - even large institutions had their money with him.)

#17 Feb 2, 2009

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Mvic
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Quote from flytiger:

Took a lot of work. And much of it was done by private citizens. I know.

Read the first deepcapture by mitchell. it's long, but you'll see how it went down.

Tonight, you'll see a major player, a billionaire outed.
More...

So who was it?

#18 Feb 4, 2009

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4444CJones4444
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Quote from TraderZones:

The first thing you need to do, is understand what a Black Swan is, before dismissing what you don't see.

The Black Swan theory refers to a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations.

It was large-impact, beyond the realm of normal, and hard-to-predict (as if everyone knew this was going to happen 2 years ago - or as if everyone predicted what Madoff was doing - even large institutions had their money with him.)

More...

I think you're totally missing the point of his post.

#19 Feb 4, 2009

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4444CJones4444
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Hey! When you guys quote someone, do you have to quote the ENTIRE article too? You can delete anything you want inside the quotes. I'm wearing out the scroll button on my mouse reading these threads.

#20 Feb 4, 2009

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