Tag Archives | Wall Street

Wall Street Criminal Rajat Gupta Convicted

By on June 15, 2012 in News 8

Photo: World Economic Forum (CC)

A symbolic strike for the good guys, for once, as ex-Goldman Sachs bankster Raj Gupta is convicted of insider trading. For an explanation of why Wall Street is a crime scene check out this week’s Disinfo Deal: Danny Schecter’s Plunder: The Crime of our Time. Report from the Los Angeles Times:

A jury has convicted former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta in his high-profile insider-trading case in New York.

A federal jury had been weighing Gupta’s fate for two days. The jury of eight women and four men found Gupta guilty of four criminal counts in a wide government push against insider trading. Gupta was found guilty of three counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy for leaking stock tips to Raj Rajaratnam, head of the Galleon Group hedge fund. He was acquitted on two counts of securities fraud.

Each fraud charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison; the conspiracy charge could result in up to five years.

… Read the rest

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U.S. Lets China Bypass Wall Street for Treasury Orders

By on May 23, 2012 in News 0

US TreasuryThe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Via Reuters:

China can now bypass Wall Street when buying U.S. government debt and go straight to the U.S. Treasury, in what is the Treasury’s first-ever direct relationship with a foreign government.

The relationship means the People’s Bank of China buys U.S. debt using a different method than any other central bank in the world.

The other central banks, including the Bank of Japan, which has a large appetite for Treasuries, place orders for U.S. debt with major Wall Street banks designated by the government as primary dealers. Those dealers then bid on their behalf at Treasury auctions.

China, which holds $1.17 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, still buys some Treasuries through primary dealers, but since June 2011, that route hasn’t been necessary. The documents viewed by Reuters show the U.S. Treasury Department has given the People’s Bank of China a direct computer link to its auction system, which the Chinese first used to buy two-year notes in late June 2011.

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Only on Wall Street: Lose $2 Billion of Your Company’s Money and Make $15 Million Yourself

By on May 14, 2012 in News 6
One Chase Manhattan Plaza

Photo: Leoboudv (CC)

It’s great to have a job where even if you seriously screw up, you still make plenty of dough. Via RT:

Ina Drew helped make bank for JPMorgan Chase as the firm’s chief investment officer — until a blunder on her part cost the company roughly $2 billion. Drew resigned as CIO on Monday, but that’s not to say she is stepping down with nothing to show.

Despite being responsible for an in-house trading loss that totaled as much as $2.3 billion in losses for JPMorgan Chase, Drew stands to walk away from the Wall Street firm with a payout that could bring her as much as $15 million.

Drew’s departure from JPMorgan Chase was publicized early Monday, only days after she was named in a major economic goof-up that garnered criticism directed towards one of Wall Street’s most iconic institutions.

The bank is still slated to hold its annual shareholders meeting on Tuesday this week, with a new CIO already stepping up to the plate.

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How Wall Street, Congress and President Obama Killed Financial Reform

By on May 12, 2012 in News 4

Financial Reform“It’s bad enough that the banks strangled the Dodd-Frank law. Even worse is the way they did it – with a big assist from Congress and the White House.” Another must read from Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone:

Two years ago, when he signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, President Barack Obama bragged that he’d dealt a crushing blow to the extravagant financial corruption that had caused the global economic crash in 2008. “These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history,” the president told an adoring crowd in downtown D.C. on July 21st, 2010. “In history.”

This was supposed to be the big one. At 2,300 pages, the new law ostensibly rewrote the rules for Wall Street. It was going to put an end to predatory lending in the mortgage markets, crack down on hidden fees and penalties in credit contracts, and create a powerful new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to safeguard ordinary consumers.

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A Photographic Recap Of May Day In NYC

By on May 2, 2012 in News 16

Impose Magazine‘s Gretchen Robinette has a very thorough photo treatment of yesterday’s May Day activities in lower and mid-Manhattan. Parks and major thoroughfares such as Broadway north of Union Square were filled with protesters and celebrators who were busy marching and listening to lectures, teach-ins, and musical performances, culminating in a 5:30pm march to Wall Street. In the process, familiar spaces around the city were completely transformed, at least for a little while.

mayday… Read the rest

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Free $10 Million Loans For All!

By on April 23, 2012 in News 22

Madoff JokerIf you work on Wall Street it’s time to take Bill’s Hicks’ advice for advertising and marketers … because this will never happen. Sheila Bair writes in the Washington Post:

Are you concerned about growing income inequality in America? Are you resentful of all that wealth concentrated in the 1 percent? I’ve got the perfect solution, a modest proposal that involves just a small adjustment in the Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy. Best of all, it will mean that none of us have to work for a living anymore.

For several years now, the Fed has been making money available to the financial sector at near-zero interest rates. Big banks and hedge funds, among others, have taken this cheap money and invested it in securities with high yields. This type of profit-making, called the “carry trade,” has been enormously profitable for them.

So why not let everyone participate? Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest.

… Read the rest

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It’s Tax Time: Time to Occupy the IRS

By on April 5, 2012 in News 4

IRSEvery year I trek down to a nondescript office building near Wall Street with a bag full of receipts and a belly full of anxiety.

When it’s tax time, I always hope for the best but … I also had an accountant who I trusted to keep me on the up and up. He was recommended years earlier by the Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman, who wanted to avoid the Al Capone problem.

Abbie had been busted enough for his political activities and didn’t want more jail time for non-payment of taxes. So he had to be like the driven snow to withstand any audit. And he was. He was a revolutionary who held his nose and paid the man.

Back in the day, the government used IRS investigations to threaten political activists and intimidate activists that paid their taxes as opposed to those who became tax resisters to refuse to pay for wars.… Read the rest

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Greg Smith’s NY Times Op-Ed Cost Goldman Sachs $2.2 Billion for Shareholders

By on March 15, 2012 in News 19

Christine Harper reports on Bloomberg:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. saw $2.15 billion of its market value wiped out after an employee assailed Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein’s management and the firm’s treatment of clients, sparking debate across Wall Street.

The shares dropped 3.4 percent in New York trading yesterday, the third-biggest decline in the 81-company Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index, after London-based Greg Smith made the accusations in a New York Times op-ed piece.

Smith, who also wrote that he was quitting after 12 years at the company, blamed Blankfein, 57, and President Gary D. Cohn, 51, for a “decline in the firm’s moral fiber.” They responded in a memo to current and former employees, saying that Smith’s assertions don’t reflect the firm’s values, culture or “how the vast majority of people at Goldman Sachs think about the firm and the work it does on behalf of our clients.”

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, 84, whose “Volcker rule” would limit banks like New York-based Goldman Sachs from making bets with their own money, called Smith’s article “a radical, strong” piece.

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Goldman Sachs Exec Quits And Tells All

By on March 14, 2012 in News 24

Goldman SucksAbout to be former Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith is the talk of Wall Street today as a result of his op-ed piece in the New York Times, in which he describes his decision to quit the temple of Mammon (my term, not his):

Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way.

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Is One Out Of Ten Wall Street Workers A Psychopath?

By on March 2, 2012 in News 30

MCDAMPS EC020With clinical psychopaths dramatically overrepresented in finance, one can only assume that mentally healthy workers must learn to imitate psychopathic behavior to remain employed. Via the Huffington Post:

One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is likely a clinical psychopath, writes the trade publication CFA Magazine. In the general population the rate is closer to one out of every 100.

Journalist Sherree DeCovny pulls together research from several psychologists for her story, which helpfully suggests that financial firms carefully screen out extreme psychopaths in hiring.

A clinical psychopath is bright and charming, writes DeCovny. He lies easily, and may have trouble feeling empathy for other people. He’s more willing to take dangerous risks…the outcomes matter less than the gambles themselves — and the chemical rush of serotonin and endorphins that accompanies them.

This is hardly the first time that mental illness has been equated with a certain capacity for professional success — especially in the financial sector, where some stock traders have actually scored higher than diagnosed psychopaths on tests that measure competitiveness and attraction to risk.

… Read the rest

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