TOP STOCK MARKET POWERHOUSE ARRESTED!
Skip to search - Accesskey = s
My constant refrain is, ‘Arrest them all’. The art of banking is a difficult high-wire act. One has to balance the books, balance the future with the past, savings with lending, sober care has to be taken when playing with money. For the gravest of dangers are all internal, not external. The bankers and investment houses all have to deal with the deadliest dangers of them all: internal greed and internal lust. Since the people in charge of money are in a position of seemingly limitless powers, they have to hedge this with many restraints and punishments. Or they will become criminals.
Temptation is a queer thing. From earliest childhood, we are tempted by many things. Mothers must work most strenuously to charge children with curbing their desire to do bad things. These ‘bad things’ vary with every culture and society. But all societies have their taboos. The religious books of all types are filled with instructions and prohibitions. These are often quite whimsical and even disgusting. I’m certain reader can visualize a few without much effort.
Back to arresting all the bankers: our entire banking system from top to bottom is in the process of collapsing. This collapse appears to be nearly universal. The more money involved, the more likely the bank or investment house is bankrupt. The bigger they are, the worse they are and the more responsible they are for this collapse! All of them did exactly the same thing: they lied. They cooked up a series of swindles that are still unfolding. No swindle is more dangerous or worse than the entire Derivatives Beast con jobs.
The entire political and educational system supported these swindles. These strange and obviously dangerous and stupid schemes were promoted, protected and expanded by one and all. Any observer years ago who was not part of the system [HAHAHA, hello!] could plainly see that these things were swindles.
Alas, I cannot pull up all my postings at the old New York Times forums which were ended in 2000. I used to rule the roost there and I talked rather bitterly about the Japanese ZIRP system way back then. The strange but obvious Asian Currency Crisis required lots of commentary. The net was much thinner back then. One couldn’t haul out google and look for lots of data. I had to find the data in hard copy and then post it online. All that labor was lost when the NYT deep-sixed the entire forums.
Ditto with Salon and American Prospect. But I thought we were heading toward greater and greater woes because of the derivatives scam. I was angry about the many pirate islands since 1996, when I could post economic screeds at the NYT forums. I hated Greenspan back then.
Then there was iTulip.com - The Contrary Market View - For Independent Financial Advisor, Currency Online Trading, Commodity Online Trading, FOREX: an economics forum that began during that era. They, too, hated the same things. No one listened to them, either! For years, I roamed the internet and debated heatedly with more than a few economics professors. Virtually all of them were unable to see all the facets of the looming crisis. Especially the Japanese facet.
Today, the FBI arrested yet another con artist and a rather important one: Bernard Madoff Is Charged in $50 Billion Fraud at Investment Advisory Firm
(Bloomberg) – Bernard Madoff, founder and president of a New York firm that invested funds for wealthy individuals, hedge funds and other institutions, was charged with operating what he told employees was a long-running $50 billion Ponzi scheme in what may be one of the largest frauds in history.
A Global Leader in Trading US Equities
The use of computers to run ever-more complex confidence and fraud schemes is most awesome. Since computers can track things easily, one can spin many a web! And lo and behold, many webs were spun. Faster and faster, the spiders went to work. This reminds me of the role of spiders and weaving when we discuss magic money. Weaving straw into gold, weaving filigrees of snares, the spiders in the Cave are frightful beings, aren’t they? Shelob and all that sort of thing.
Yes, we are deep in the Cave of Wealth and Death and Death is scurrying along in the darkness! This Bernard guy probably first encountered his personal Shelob of greed when poking about the place during one of several financial collapses that have peppered the last 40 years. He is very definitely one of the gnomes who are like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, he wanted to find a ring of power and found this monstrous, hungry spider.
So he listened to her charming plots and realized, all he had to do was set into motion so many webs of deceit run by many computers and if he did this faster and faster, he could use that old, old, crummy, stupid Ponzi scheme to keep ahead. All he needed was for markets to go up and up and up. No one would be the wiser! No one would show up with a sword and slay the spider, rend the webs and make a big, oozy mess of this nice, dark, dank corner of the Cave!
The third market got started some years ago when such institutional investors as pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds and banks were permitted by law to expand their holdings into common stocks. The bond houses that had been serving them gradually broadened their services to meet their customers’ new needs, thus forming the core of the new market. It is now dominated by seven firms, but the Big Three are Blyth & Co., First Boston Corp. and Weeden & Co., all in Manhattan. Actually, the exchanges and the third market are quite different. While they are public auction places for company shares, it operates through a series of private, negotiating transactions, publishes no price quotations and has no central authority.The third market’s steadiest customers are still institutions and stockbrokers who are not members of an exchange. Because institutions usually buy and sell large blocks of stock, they use the third market to bypass the exchanges and thus move the big blocks without upsetting the market price. They also like the bargain rates. Most third market firms keep on hand an inventory of widely traded stocks (Weeden’s inventory of 210 listed stocks amounts to about $12 million), which they offer to customers at a flat price based on the exchanges’ last quotation plus a small fraction of a point—which nearly always amounts to less than a regular commission.
The New York Stock Exchange complains that such backdoor operations are unduly secretive and siphon off stocks that otherwise would be available to the general public. Unlike floor specialists, third market dealers are also under no restrictions against dumping inventories when the market is falling. The exchange is even more upset over the commissions its member firms are losing to the third market. If the exchange wanted to, however, it could check the third’s growth in one stroke: by offering commission discounts on large-volume transactions. Under the pressure of competition, the exchange has begun to review the possibility of doing just that.
Just put a suit and tie on him, give him a briefcase and teach him how to hail a cab and off we go!
Bernard Madoff Is Charged in $50 Billion Fraud at Investment Advisory Firm
The business had been insolvent for years with losses of about $50 billion, he told the employees, according to the criminal and SEC complaints.
My Precioussss! Good grief! How can someone lose $50 billion and hide it? Well, if finance markets are designed to be virtual Shelob lairs so the gnomes and Gollums on Wall Street can shed their three piece suits and revert to type, yes! They can lose amazing amounts of money. Of course, the military is even more capable of bringing many trillions of dollars to a bloody finale, too. We lose over $50 billion a year shooting rockets at shepherds and wedding parties in Afghanistan, after all.
This old gnome, of course, decided to spread the loot when he knew he was going under. So he shared his thefts with friends and family. Isn’t he charming? Of course, I hope all this is returned to the real owners, the ones who trusted this gnarly old gnome. Let’s go back to the dark cyber cave where he set up shop:
Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC:
An Intricate Interweaving of Advanced Technology and Sophisticated Traders
All his computers wove were webs of deceit. They were certainly integral to his con job. But they were not set to see trading opportunities, they were set to shift money around so no one would notice what was really going on. So long as he could cough up some cash here or there, he could give the illusion of having money.
Why are all banking systems collapsing at the same time? HAHAHA. There wasn’t one Madoff/Gollum running riot! They were ALL running Ponzi schemes! I hope the FBI is on to this. When are they arresting Goldman Sach’s top Gollum, Paulson? Arrest them all, damn it! Anyone operating in the Darkness was criminal and should be stopped, now, not next year.
The very nature of the entire Off the Books Trading is 100% criminal conspiracies set out to defraud each other. There is lots of talk about lack of trust! Well, DUH! If you look at the above video of Gollum debating with himself, you can see the manifestation of the innermost souls of these difficult and damnable creatures who destroyed our entire global banking system. Using computers to exploit and expand weaknesses, flaws and glitches while also making deals that were unregulated and often conspiratorial in nature: this wrecked the entire system.
And the Derivatives Beast is rapidly destroying what is left! Eventually, it will finish off our banking system and we can start all over again. With strict laws and very severe penalties. Maybe, even the death penalty.
Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC:
HAHAHA. Everything is secure except for the actual money! That is gone. But the computers are safe and sound and will run day and night even during blackouts…running away with the money, that is! It gets even funnier, alas:
Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC:
Heavens, this gnome’s face shouldn’t be on his door, it should be on ‘Wanted’ posters! And he CREATED the systems!!!! Talk about insanity!!!! This guy is AT THE DAMN TOP. He is not like that youth in France who lost the same amount struggling to hide smaller losses. This guy knew exactly what he was doing from day one. He was no innocent led astray.
He was a greedy, obnoxious, horrid monster who cynically used the system he built so he could get rich while STEALING and LOSING everyone’s savings! And his crimes are international, too! This man should be punished with greatest severity. They all should be punished. For there is no excuse for any of this.
Obviously, anything being done in the dark is in the dark due to its criminal nature. Anything that isn’t severely regulated ends up destroying wealth for lack of laws and rules create highway men, gnomes, pirates and other desperadoes. Anyone who imagines a system works best with no one in control is NUTS.
We have many rules when we are little children. We can’t run in traffic. We can’t steal candy or punch smaller children in the nose. We can’t spit at adults or torture small animals like Bush enjoyed doing when a child. Gah! Arrest him. Anyway, we have a thousand rules when we are 5 years old! So adults need more, not fewer rules! Falling into greed and crime is too easy if there are no barriers, no hazards, no punishments. Executing these guys might put the fear of god in them. After all, it seems nothing else makes an impression!
FEEL FREE TO EMAIL ME AT emeinel@fairpoint.net