The SEC Aiding and Abetting the Criminals On Wall Street

How does Bernie Madoff manage to perpetrate a ponzi scheme of such a magnitude for decades? How does AIG get bailed out, even though several of their top execs were investigated for trading impropriety? How does SAC get nailed for insider trading years after they had been investigated for it? How come the SEC, our one protection against shady and criminal behavior on wall street, doesn't follow patterns of improper behavior by wall street banks?


Because it's their practice to destroy all records on investigations that don't result in actual charges. And why don't these charges come to light, even though the claims are insanely obvious? Because they are controlled by the banks they are supposed to be watching.

Matt Taibbi's article at Rolling Stone lifts the shades on the corrupt, pointless watchdog known as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

www.rollingstone.com...


that's right, the people who are supposed to be monitoring and protecting investors, are aiding and abetting the criminals that run wall street.

An SEC employee makes peanuts and is then tasked with catching and charging billion dollar banks with committing crimes. How hard is it to convince an SEC employee that the claims they are investigating are nonsense? Well, when an $80,000 a year SEC employee is offered a job paying far more money to switch sides, I'm guessing it ain't hard at all.

The silencing of reformers, the persecution of dissenters, along with shallow, whitewashed investigative processes are systemic manifestations of a deeply compromised regulatory cooperative > integral elements supporting a framework of crony capitalism.

Link

If $80,000 is peanuts I want to be an elephant.
I love Taibi's articles, he's usually spot on and digs deep to come up with the relevant facts.
Certain legislation has aided and abetted the banksters in their ponzi scheme shenanigans but I was not aware that the SEC destroys records.
They're on my ass right now because I'm technically still the President of my former homeowner's association and we owe them some money.

Sounds like a must read.

reply to post by Crakeur


Looks like the cats' out of the bag now

link here.

Agency staff “destroyed over 9,000 files” related to preliminary agency investigations, according to a letter sent in July to Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and obtained by MarketWatch.

There's a good bit of finger pointing now and some of them are directed to Goldman Sachs. No surprise there. This is big news, but more than likely get spun by lawyers and fluffed up for the MSM.

I think we're slowly (too slowly) reaching a point where the public will no longer put up with the shenanigans of the banks and investment houses, the watchdogs and the elected officials. Sadly, suing the SEC is a total waste of time but, in my eyes, they are the ones responsible for the various Ponzis, the banking scandals, the 08 collapse and so on.

Our elected officials didn't help but, in the end, they merely gave the banks and investment houses the roads to travel, the SEC was supposed to control the speed and make sure they weren't breaking the laws.

The sad thing is, our government has made it so easy for the banks and investment houses to rake in the dough that they didn't need to bend and break the laws. Insane greed and ego fueled that behavior.

reply to post by Crakeur


Couldn't agree more. When they started exloiting ghost finance derivatives like CDSs and CDOs after they gutted the Glass Steagall Act, I figured they deregulated most of wall street and gave the reigns to the SEC to oversee it just like a corporate CEO. When the power and regulations stay at the top, and the underlings are kept in the dark about the goings on, it can only spell trouble for hobby traders and banks. Central banks and the Holding companies they support gives ugly realms of power to deceptive financial practices of profit motivated nation building and privatization. The first time I heard the expression 'Dark Pools of Liquidity' I figured it was undeniably corrupt at the top. I'm sure we haven't heard our last report on the hardline fleecing of Mother Earth.

Stock and Bond trading was originally designed to help businesses and governments raise capital in order to expand. When did we allow it to become a casino? And when did we allow the introduction of high-speed automated trading which essentially pushed the individual, private investor to the sidelines? Most of the 'wealth' generated in this country over the last 30yrs has been balance sheet entries. Vaporware. We produce virtually nothing anymore.

Anyone on this board that still banks with the major banks is a hypocrite. Everyone should have moved their banking to small, local banks a long time ago. Eat the bankers. Eat the lawyers. Eat the politicians. Save the world.

reply to post by jtma508


you do know that the banks that fail are, usually, the small, mom and pop shop banks, right?

unless they get bought out.