Triumphrat

Tbirdnz

Saw it on TV and here's a link, I don't know how these guys get away with it for so long, seemingly the bigger the con the easier to do it.

Seems to be little financial controls by the 'watchdogs' in the financial world, can't trust anyone these days.

Repercussions for two major European banks, Santander also owns a couple of UK banks (and unfortunately one of them is mine !)


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7782731.stm


---------------
Ride on !

Beemie

I think we should be allowed to go after money like that no matter where it was hidden.

richb

A desperate indictment of the US financial regulatory authorities, or their mandate; apparently the business was done in an unregulated entity with no oversight from any third party. Beggars belief really.

Beemie, there ain't no money! It was by all accounts a giant pyramid scheme, using cash from the most recent investors to pay the others, while creaming a fat percentage off the top. Everyone was happy until suddenly there were no new investors...

__________________
Knowing is no substitute for thinking.

IrlMike

It is also a desparate indictment of the oversight & accountability of the entire 'democratic' system & news media that are also supposed to provide oversight for the majority, general population.

These institutions, systematically degraded over decades by adminstrations of all flavours, are simply not fit for purpose. Madoff, Enron, Ted Stevens, Blagojevich etc etc - just the tip of the iceburg, those blatant enough to get caught, whose token demise will be used to further the myth of accountability.

Little will change after Jan 20th. Even as all this is happening, Obama has appointed advisers who were key cheerleaders for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act (& other derugulation). G-S had previously separated high street & 'investment' banking. This completely opened the floodgates to bet the 'real' economy's cash in the pyramid casino of the massively leveraged (borrowed money) exploding derivatives market. This ensured that when the Ponzi scheme fell, as they all must do at some point, they would have to be bailed out by Governments using workers' & taxpayers' present & future earnings. 'Globalisation' also greatly weakened the ability of any States not to play along - failure to participate would have wrecked their own financial instutions ability to compete. The size of the US economy ( together with other nations fully complicit, UK ? Switzerland ? China?) ensured that all must follow the race to the bottom.

There are many insiders, CEOs, directors, bankers, credit rating cos., regulatory authority officials, politicians & their advisers who knew precisely where this was going. Not to mention a compliant corporate media still silent on any accountability for a system corrupt to the core.

In essence, this highly leveraged bubble (scam) has been encouraged by many at every turn, not least by Greenspan, disciple of Ayn Rand's neo-liberal garbage. It is little different to that which preceded the '29 crash. There's no possible excuse for this repetition - just pure fraud & greed at the highest levels of society.

Some will 'knee-jerk' reach for some '-ist' or '-ism' with which to dismiss such criticisms, as you have been trained to do like some Pavlovian dog.

Just to be clear, I subscribe to no particular ideology. I favour a mixed economy, but one that works and properly balances the interests of rich and poor alike. I have no problem with entrepreneurs (in the real economy) aquiring millions even tens of millions. But they must stick to business & not be able to buy the institutions of Politics & (news, analysis) Media which are needed to protect the majority of ordinary working citizens and the environment upon which all, present & future, depend.

There are many solutions outside the myopic, tired narrative of 'left' vs 'right' - but these are the last things the corporate media want a brainwashed, dumbed-down public to hear.

__________________
Legend chassis, Tbird tank/seat, Sprint fairing, tubeless wheels, Thunderbike 3-1, air box mods, 115/40 jets, DJ needles, Ignitech with TPS, ZX6R shock, ZX7R USD forks/yokes, Alcon 6 pot

Tbirdnz

It's one of the reasons I totally pulled out of trading NYSE shares just over a year ago after being in it as an amateur for nearly 20 years. I saw just too much manipulation, gross ramping, suspicious insider trading and family or owner companies creaming off huge profits and salaries then passing nil returns to public shareholders.

The whole system needs a severe regulatory overhaul, at the moment gangsters and crooks appear to be running most of it, the system is definitely rotten to the core.

Madoff set about this scam right from the start, he had no compunction in doing this and where it would lead to. He'll get 20 years for this, he'll probably die in jail as he deserves to, he's 70, and I hope all his cohorts go with him.


---------------
Ride on !

HiDesert

Okay, I'll bite. I've never heard Any Rand called a neo-liberal. Elaborate, please.

__________________
I won't stop riding because you tell me about someone who died in an accident, just as I won't stop eating because someone died of e.coli.

HiDesert's ride photos

wabill

Labels like Liberal or Conservative don't apply anymore. I think we are either "Perps" or "Victims". Ayn should have been labeled a super-libertarian back then.

__________________
DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY!

Tbirdnz

I vaguely remember her from Economics but had to look her up again:


Objectivism

Rand's philosophical system, Objectivism, encompasses positions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics.
Objectivism embraces objective reality in metaphysics, reason in epistemology, and rational egoism in ethics. In politics she was a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism and individual rights, holding that the sole function of a proper government is protection of individual rights (including property rights) against their violation by the initiation of physical force.
She believed that individuals should choose their values and actions solely by reason. According to Rand, the individual "must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life. Because she held that faith is antithetical to reason, Rand opposed mysticism, supernaturalism, and any form of religion.
Rand considered the initiation of force or fraud to be immoral, and held that government action should consist only in protecting citizens from criminal aggression (via the police), foreign aggression (via the military), and in maintaining a system of courts to decide guilt or innocence in criminal cases and to resolve civil disputes under objective law.

Here's a list of the big bank losers:

Clients of Santander, Spain - $3.1bn
HSBC, UK - $1bn
Natixis, France - $605m
Royal Bank of Scotland, UK - $601m
BNP Paribas, France - $460m
BBVA, Spain - $400m
Man Group, UK - $360m
Reichmuth & Co, Switzerland - $325m
Nomura, Japan - $303m


--------------
Ride on !

HiDesert

Libertarian, I can see. But given her extreme restrictions on the role of government, I can't see calling her a liberal.

I've read Atlas Shrugged and Anthem this year. Good books, and there's a lot I like about her philosophy, but she makes the same mistake as the communists she abhorred. Man cannot be perfected by the right circumstances or political system or education.

An economic system, like a political system or individual human behavior, requires checks and balances.

__________________
I won't stop riding because you tell me about someone who died in an accident, just as I won't stop eating because someone died of e.coli.

HiDesert's ride photos

joeswamp

There was book about Rand a several years back that highlighted this point, I heard the author interviewed on the radio. He said that one of the reasons Rand was so popular was that she was writing in a unique Russian style, and was the only one doing so in English. Her books follow formulas that were especially popular in communist literature when she was in high school, but are relatively unknown here.

For instance, there were several pro-communist novels in which a group of highly moral people dropped out of corrupt capitalist society and formed some sort of communist utopia -- basically a pro-communist version of Atlas Shrugged. The guy had examples from her other books, but since I've only read Atlas Shrugged this is the only one I remember.

Personally I think Rand was more of a pulp fiction author than a real philosopher. She never submitted any of her work to peer review, and most academics thought she was loopy -- her background in philosophy was definitely limited. I don't believe she ever even stated her "philosophy" in any sort of rigorous way, and when academics tried to interpret her essays they found her arguments to be full of holes.