Posts Tagged ‘Fraud’
Richard Heinberg: the end of growth, and the natural gas controversy
Post Carbon Institute June, 2011
Last weekend, the New York Times published a series of articles that — through leaks from EIA officials and natural gas industry insiders — corroborated the findings of our landmark report, Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?: Don’t believe the hype about plentiful U.S. natural gas supplies.
Of course, the controversy over natural gas is far from over, and PCI continues to provide energy realism and literacy to the debate. This week, PCI Fellow David Hughes published an analysis of two contradictory studies assessing the greenhouse gas emissions of shale gas vs. coal. The conclusion? Shale gas is worse for the climate over a 30-50 year timeframe.
From hot air to deflating (economic) balloons… We were blown away to receive nearly 600 orders in the span of 12 hours for Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg’s newest book, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. In the video above, Richard Heinberg, author of “The Party’s Over” and leading peak oil educator, talks about the future of our ‘growth’ society.
Government sues bankers over offenses government regulators ignored
Left Hand, Meet Right Hand
The government sues bankers over offenses government regulators once ignored.
By Bethany McLean Tuesday, March 29, 2011, Slate
A couple of weeks ago, the government started signaling, at long last, that it was ready to get tough on the bankers who caused the 2008 financial crisis. On March 16 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, sued three former top executives of Washington Mutual, or WaMu, for taking “extreme and historically unprecedented risks,” thereby causing the bank to lose “billions of dollars.” That same day, the New York Times reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission had sent so-called Wells notices—often a sign that civil charges are imminent—to a handful of former executives at mortgage-securitization giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The targets seem well-chosen. The collapse of WaMu, acquired by JPMorgan Chase at a fire-sale price in the fall of 2008 was, according to the FDIC, the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. The FDIC is seeking to recover $900 million from the three bankers. Fannie and Freddie were taken over by the government in the fall of 2008. So far, they have cost taxpayers about $130 billion.
Perhaps you’re thinking: If only the government had known at the time what these scoundrels were up to, we could all have been spared a great deal of pain. The trouble with that line of reasoning is that, um, the government did know what was going on. The Office of Thrift Supervision, which regulated WaMu, and the Office of Housing Enterprise Oversight, which regulated Fannie and Freddie, were supervising the very behavior that their sister agencies are now suing over. The government’s lawsuits call to mind a cynical boast by Burt Lancaster, playing tabloid power broker J.J. Hunsecker, in the 1957 noir classic Sweet Smell of Success: “My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in 30 years.”
Will GOP Congress Overturn Property Law to Enable Another Big Bank Bailout?
Big Bank Bailout Redux
January 14, 2011 ourfuture.org
Central to the Tea Party revolt was a fierce reaction against the bailout of the big banks.
Will the Republican Congress now spit that sentiment in the eye and push through another bailout, this time by overturning centuries of property law and nationalizing what has always been governed by state law?
Will the power of their donors overwhelm the power of their voters and the platitudes of their ideology?
The Third Way, one of a gaggle of outlets for the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, has just published a paper “Fixing Foreclosure-gate” urging that Congress take over and overturn state laws on mortgages and property. Increasingly local courts are choking on the reality that the banks trampled all property law in their rush to market mortgage backed securities. Now as they try to foreclose on millions of homeowners, they can’t establish who has the right to foreclose because they haven’t kept the records required by law. The bank position is “nevermind,” let us foreclose anyway. That’s essentially what the Third Way is saying. Only problem is without clarity about the title and who has the right to foreclose, the courts — at least those that aren’t bought and sold — can’t force someone out of their home.
In Continued Compromise, Failure
by: RDemocrat 
HillBillyReport Tue Dec 07, 2010
compromise- A concession to something detrimental or pejorative: a compromise of morality.
http://www.thefreedictionary.c…
With the announcement that the Administration will indeed roll over to Republicans once again one thing is ringing true. In the political arena when these “compromises” are reached the only folks that are expected to give anything up are Progressives, and working America. When we had huge majorities in Congress and the White House still Progressives were expected to concede everything. Now it has become apparent that once again we are the only ones to sacrifice. One begins to wonder if this is not the way it was meant all along.
The sad fact is that in the spirit of “bi-partisanship” these were not compromises but capitulations. You see, with a compromise both sides are expected to sacrifice. However, with the weakness and cowardice of our Democratic leadership starting at the top with the President Progressives never receive anything in return. This is called cowardice, not compromise.
Especially when the public as a whole supports your position. On these tax cuts as with the public option, a majority of Americans favored asking the greediest and least patriotic to pay their fair share. Yes, poll after poll showed the American people favored ending these cuts but still our President was too timid to stand up to the Mitch McConnells and the John Boehners of the world who will never be satisfied until we have a two-class society run by the elites. Folks like them and yes, President Obama.
This crisis is all about fraud
Truth is where you find it
November 1, 2010
You may think that a nurse without an academic degree in economics would not be a good source of information about the ticking Debt Bomb that Wall Street lobbed into world financial markets in the last decade.
If you thought that you’d be wrong. Lisa Epstein offers what may be the clearest, to-the-point explanation of the astonishingly long chain of fraud behind the so called “mortgage-backed security” crisis I’ve heard.
Following her is Professor William Black who backs up her common sense analysis and points out that there have been more than one million cases of mortgage fraud per year- but no convictions.
Remember, while the Fed may have taken this “bad paper” off the books of a few banks, it’s done nothing for the thousands of pension plans, colleges, foundations, local government accounts and other funds that were sold this garbage.
This stuff was sold as AAA paper and was sold by the trillions. It’s everywhere.
For more Banking malfeasance videos, click here
Who caused the financial collapse? Why aren’t they in jail?
Devona Walker May 26, 2010 AlterNet
We’re livid about the Wall Street bailout and skeptical about financial reform
If you write bad checks, if you steal a car, you are going to jail. That’s how the system works for regular folks. On Wall Street, if you rip someone off, defraud them, take their (our tax) money, you may get a bonus or you may lose your job. But not one of the players that contributed to the financial meltdown has seen the inside of a jail cell. That’s predatory capitalism at its finest. That’s the American double standard that has so many Americans livid about the Wall Street bailout and skeptical about financial reform.
Here are some of the biggest players, who have not been held accountable and won’t really be touched by Financial Reform.
WHO issues warning about corruption of pharmaceutical industry
Natural News April 30, 2010
(NaturalNews) – The World Health Organization (WHO) recently issued a fact sheet warning about the corruption and unethical practices that are endemic to every step of the pharmaceuticals business.
“Corruption in the pharmaceutical sector occurs throughout all stages of the medicine chain, from research and development to dispensing and promotion,” the fact sheet reads.
The medicine chain refers to each step involved in getting drugs into the hands of patients, including drug creation, regulation, management and consumption. According to WHO data, unethical practices such as bribery, falsification of evidence, and mismanagement of conflicts of interest are “common throughout the medicine chain.”
The fact sheet also highlights other forms of corruption specific to particular steps in the chain. For example, clinical trials may be conducted without proper regulatory approval, royalties may be collected through manipulation or disregard of the patent system, and products may be registered with incorrect or insufficient information. Drugs may be produced through substandard or counterfeit methods, leading to products that are less effective at best, and hazardous at worst. Corruption can also occur during the drug inspection process, allowing such shoddy products to be given a government seal of approval.
Once drugs have been produced for the market, corruption can occur via the selection of non-essential drugs for different governments’ lists of “essential” medications. Unethical marketing strategies — both legal and illegal — are common throughout the drug business. Vendors may collaborate with pharmaceutical companies and doctors might be unduly influenced to dispense drugs to gain the greatest profit rather than to produce the greatest benefit for the patient.
This corruption can have serious consequences, the WHO warns.
“Medicines are only beneficial when they are safe, of high quality, and properly distributed and used by patients,” the fact sheet says.
Fraudonomics- The big dirty secret of fraud crackdown
When you use the Mafia as a business model, this result should be no surprise.
The big dirty secret of why you should worry about a fraud crackdown more than Goldman Sachs—revealed for the first time by an anonymous private equity ‘hypocrite’ and ‘liar.’
NYPress.com April 28, 2010
There was a strange moment last week during President Obama’s speech at Cooper Union. There he was, groveling before a cast of Wall Street villains including Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, begging them to “Look into your heart!” like John Turturro’s character in Miller’s Crossing…when out of the blue, the POTUS dropped this bombshell: “The only people who ought to fear the kind of oversight and transparency that we’re proposing are those whose conduct will fail this scrutiny.”
The Big Secret, of course, is that every living creature within a 100-mile radius of Cooper Union would fail “this scrutiny”—or that scrutiny, or any scrutiny, period. Not just in a 100-mile radius, but wherever there are still signs of economic life beating in these 50 United States, the mere whiff of scrutiny would work like nerve gas on what’s left of the economy. Because in the 21st century, fraud is as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet Volts—fraud’s all we got left, Doc. Scare off the fraud with Obama’s “scrutiny,” and the entire pyramid scheme collapses in a heap of smoldering savings accounts.
That’s how an acquaintance of mine, a partner in a private equity firm, put it: “Whoever pops this fraud bubble is going to have to escape on the next flight out, faster than the Bin Laden Bunch fled Kentucky in their chartered jets after 9/11.”
And that’s why this SEC suit accusing Goldman Sachs of fraud is really just a negotiating bluff to give Obama’s people some leverage—or it’s supposed to be, anyway—according to the PE guy. He dismissed all the speculation that the fraud investigations would turn on other obvious villains like Deutsche, Merrill, Paulson & Co., the Rahm Emmanuel-linked Magnetar and so on.
Simon Johnson: Fraud at the heart of Wall Street
Our Pecora Moment
By Simon Johnson
We have waited long and patiently for our Ferdinand Pecora moment – a modern equivalent of the episode when a tough prosecutor from New York seized the imagination of the country in the early 1930s and, over a series of congressional hearings: laid bare the wrong-doings of Wall Street in simple and vivid terms that everyone could understand, and created the groundswell of public support necessary for comprehensive reregulation. On Friday, that moment finally arrived.
There is fraud at the heart of Wall Street, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Pecora took on National City Bank and J.P. Morgan (the younger); these were the supposedly untouchable titans of their day. The SEC is taking on Goldman Sachs; no firm is more powerful.
Pecora exposed the ways in which leading banks mistreated their customers – typically, retail investors. The SEC alleges, with credible detail, that Goldman essentially set up some trusting clients and deliberately misled them – to the tune of effectively transferring $1 billion from them to a particular unscrupulous investor.
Pecora had the drama of the congressional hearing room and used his skills as an interrogator to batter the bastions of Wall Street, day-after-day, with gruesome and convincing detail. We don’t know where and when, but the SEC action points in one direction only: Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman) in the witness box, while John Paulson (unindicted co-conspirator) waits in the on-deck circle.
Disposable Soldiers
Luther’s case is not an isolated incident. In the past three years, The Nation has uncovered more than two dozen cases like his from bases across the country. All the soldiers were examined, deemed physically and psychologically fit, then welcomed into the military. All performed honorably before being wounded during service. None had a documented history of psychological problems. Yet after seeking treatment for their wounds, each soldier was diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, then discharged and denied benefits.
The Nation Joshua Kors 
The mortar shell that wrecked Chuck Luther’s life exploded at the base of the guard tower. Luther heard the brief whistling, followed by a flash of fire, a plume of smoke and a deafening bang that shook the tower and threw him to the floor. The Army sergeant’s head slammed against the concrete, and he lay there in the Iraqi heat, his nose leaking clear fluid.
“I remember laying there in a daze, looking around, trying to figure out where I was at,” he says. “I was nauseous. My teeth hurt. My shoulder hurt. And my right ear was killing me.” Luther picked himself up and finished his shift, then took some ibuprofen to dull the pain. The sergeant was seven months into his deployment at Camp Taji, in the volatile Sunni Triangle, twenty miles north of Baghdad. He was determined, he says, to complete his mission. But the short, muscular frame that had guided him to twenty-two honors–including three Army Achievement Medals and a Combat Action Badge–was basically broken. The shoulder pain persisted, and the hearing in his right ear, which evaporated on impact, never returned, replaced by the maddening hum of tinnitus.
Then came the headaches. “They’d start with a speckling in the corner of my vision, then grow worse and worse until finally the right eye would just shut down and go blank,” he says. “The left one felt like someone was stabbing me over and over in the eye.”
Doctors at Camp Taji’s aid station told Luther he was faking his symptoms. When he insisted he wasn’t, they presented a new diagnosis for his blindness: personality disorder.
“To be told that I was lying, that was a real smack in the face,” says Luther. “Then when they said ‘personality disorder,’ I was really confused. I didn’t understand how a problem with my personality could cause deafness or blindness or shoulder pain.”
For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors’ fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers [see Kors, "How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits," April 9, 2007]. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier’s final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.
According to figures from the Pentagon and a Harvard University study, the military is saving billions by discharging soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with personality disorder.
