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"When
Larry Summers, Obama's chief
economic advisor, piously tells us that the administration's hands are tied
because we all must abide "by the rule of
law," perhaps it's time to ask: What
rule and for whom?"
Tim Rutten March 18, 2009 LA Times
The science of household affairs, or
of domestic management.
Social science dealing with the production,
distribution and consumption of goods and
services and the theory and
management of economic systems.
It is
the duty of those who have been enlisted in the
organization of society to give every individual the opportunity of
acquiring the necessary talent or
skill and the means of utilizing such a
talent so that that individual may
exercise their inherent talent in
the pursuit of a livelihood.
"Wherever politics intrudes upon economic
life, political success is readily attained by saying what people like to hear
rather than what is demonstrably true.
Instead of safeguarding truth and
honesty, the State then tends to become a major source of insincerity and
mendacity." – Hans F. Sennholz
"Karl Marx, whose
economic analyses are strikingly
prescient and relevant today, demonstrated how the credit economy is one way
that central banking systems attempt to
stretch out and soften the boundary where the private accumulation of profit from production
runs up against the waning
purchasing
power of the consuming
public.
In a nation whose
governing parties and
increasingly wealthy corporate elite can't
restrain themselves from devastating and costly
imperialist wars overseas
while at the same time impoverishing ever-growing numbers of the struggling and
poor at home, there isn't going to be any good economic news for most people."
- Eric Brill 01/08
savings and loans debacle
The savings and loan debacle began
the regression of the American republic into
a "plutonomy" - a society in which the largest
economic gains flow
to an ever smaller portion of the population creating a decadent
social order that poorly rewards human
labor.
After the stockmarket
crash of 1929, Congress passed a series of laws designed to restrict
the ability of Wall Street to
manipulate markets through the banking industry.
1933
Glass-Steagall Act
Congress passes the
Glass-Steagall Act
separating commercial banking
activity, which accepted deposits and issued loans, from
investment banking activity, which
underwrote stocks and corporate
bonds.
This is the governing economic principle for more than half a
century.
late 1970's
Paul Adolph Volker attempts to reign in
the money supply,
and inflation, by
raising interest rates to stratospheric
heights.
Most savings and loans fixed rate assets rate of return are
considerably below the prevailing rate of Federal Reserve funds.
Savings
and loans are paying, assume 12%, for loan capital but their return on previous
released capital is only 6%.
This policy basically obliterated the
Savings and Loan industry.
December 12,
1980
Federal Reserve chairman Paul Adolph Volker
BB /CFR/TC raises the prime loan rate to
21.5%.
Deregulation legislation is
proposed to address the low rate of return forged by an investment portfolio
full of long-term, low fixed-rate assets.
Savings and loans are
given additional investment opportunities and adjustable rate mortgages are
allowed.
Wall
Street now sees the savings and loan industry as a "cash cow" to be "levered" accordingly.
"I was working in the Carter
White House in
1979-80.
Unbeknownst to the president, Federal
Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, another
Rockefeller
protégé, suddenly
raised interest rates to fight the inflation the
bankers had caused by the OPEC
oil price deals, and plunged the nation into recession.
It was
through the "Reagan Revolution" that the
regulatory controls over the banking industry were lifted, mainly in allowing
the banks to use their
fractional
reserve privileges in making mortgage loans.
Volcker's recession
shattered American manufacturing and hastened the flight of jobs abroad.
Under the "Reagan
Doctrine," the US
military embarked on an unprecedented mission of world conquest by attacking
one small nation at a time, starting
with Nicaragua.
Global capitalism
was also on the march, with the US armed forces its own private police
force." - Richard C. Cook
1982
Gain-St Germain Depository
Institutions Act deregulation legislation expands acceptable savings and
loans investments by permitting savings and loans to make short term consumer
loans, issue credit cards, and make commercial real estate loans.
This became the preferred method of stoking commerce after dumping
water on the entire economy by increasing the prime loan rate to 21.5% on
December 12, 1980.
Financial engineers claimed that
broader investment opportunities would allow savings and loans to better
diversify their portfolios enabling them to increase their short term earnings
and financial stabilty.
Beginning from a situation where liabilities
exceed assets, financial managers cannot overcome shortages by pursuing a
conservative investment course.
Gain-St Germain deregulation
legislation provided the means for increased risk taking while ignoring the
need for future capital investments.
Gain-St Germain deregulation
legislation lowered savings and loans capital requirements and revised
accounting rules to artificially boost reported
fractional reserve
equity.
With artificially boosted
fractional
reserve equity savings and loans began to look for new lending and
investment opportunities promising higher rates of returns.
Once the
interstate lending rules had been suspended the preferred method became raising
rates paid on certificates of deposits - CDs - to garner more deposits and to
make new investments promising still higher returns.
In the past
depositors had no reason to send funds to savings and loans halfway across
America but rapidly advancing computer technology - the overnight transfer -
changed that by making possible a nationwide market in deposits while the
higher rates made it worth the trouble.
Federal deposit insurance (FDIC)
put insolvent savings and loans in a position to abuse the new market as
federally insured depositors were largely unconcerned about the health of the
institutions in which they placed their money.
Undercapitalized savings
and loans assured themselves a continuous inflow of funds by simply offering to
pay slightly higher interest
rates than their competitors.
Healthy savings and loans were asked
to pay increasing deposit insurance premiums to protect depositors in failed
institutions and consequently gained little or no cost advantage from the fact
that they were well capitalized.
Funds flow from stronger banks and
savings and loans to the weakest banks.
"People think the Federal
Reserve central bank is US
government institution.
It is not a government institution.
It
is a private credit monopoly of those who prey upon the people of the US for
the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic
speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.
A dark
crew of financial pirates are those who send money into States to buy votes to
control our legislation; and there are those who maintain an international
propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us and of wheedling us into the
granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past
misdeeds and set again in motion
their gigantic train of
crime.
Twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully foisted
upon this country by bankers who came
here from Europe and who repaid us for our
hospitality by undermining our American institutions." -
Louis T. McFadden
House Banking Committee Congressional Record, pg 1295 & 1296, June 10,
1932
1986
The movement to use the Federal
Reserve Board to kill Glass-Steagall begins.
Federal Reserve Board reinterprets
existing law to allow commercial
banks to derive a minuscule 5% of their revenues from
investment banking activities.
1989
Alan Greenspan bumps
investment banking activities up to
10%.
1996
Through creeping
incrementalism Alan
Greenspan kills Glass-Steagall when he ups the limit
investment banking activities to
25%.
July 1999
Larry Summers is appointed Treasury
Secretary when Robert Rubin leaves
to become Vice Chairman of Citigroup.
Larry Summers
is the man directly responsible for the financial institution meltdown.
As William Jefferson
Clinton's Treasury Secretary from July 1999 - January 2001 Larry Summers shaped
and pushed the financial deregulation that unleashed the present
crisis.
"Glass-Steagall is no longer appropriate to the
economy in which we live."
William Jefferson Clinton
"Scores of banks failed in the
Great Depression as a result
of unsound banking practices. Their failure deepened the crisis. Glass-Steagall
was intended to protect our
financial system by
insulating commercial banking from risk. It was one of several stabilizers
designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to
repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its
place." - Paul
Wellstone
"If we got a return to positive growth - an economy
growing at 1% would be an economy with rising unemployment. I don't think we
can hold out the prospect we'll stabilize at the current level." -
Larry Summers
4/9/09
November 12, 1999
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act officially repeals the Glass-Steagall Act of
1933.
The merger of commercial
and investment banking once again allows investment bankers to use FDIC
insured personal commercial deposits to purchase "financial instruments" from
hedge funds.
2000
Larry Summers backs the
Commodity Futures Modernization
Act.
Larry Summers directly
profits from the deregulation he
vigorously supports advising DE Shaw and Taconic Capital Advisors in
hedging strategies.
Larry Summers circle of friends include
the hedge fund managers Nancy Zimmerman, Laurence D. Fink, Kenneth D. Brody,
Frank P. Brosens, H. Rodgin Cohen, Orin S. Kramer, Ralph L. Schlosstein and
Eric M. Mindich.
Larry Summers
later has Harvard purchase interest rate
default swaps while president of Harvard that ended up costing Harvard over
$1 billion.
"The SEC's best estimate is that there are now approximately
8,800 hedge funds, with
approximately $1.2 trillion of assets.
If this estimate is accurate, it
implies a remarkable growth in hedge
fund assets of almost 3,000% in the last 16 years.
We are also
seeing hedge funds becoming more
active in such varied activities as the market for corporate control, private
lending, and the trading of crude petroleum.
Hedge fund account for about 30% of all
US equity trading volume.
Investment
strategies or operations of hedge
fund include their use of
derivatives trading,
leverage, and short
selling.
The number of enforcement cases against
hedge fund advisers has grown from
just four in 2001 to more than 90 since then.
These cases involve
hedge fund managers who have
misappropriated funds assets; engaged in insider trading; misrepresented
portfolio performance; falsified their experience and credentials; and lied
about past returns." - Securities and
Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, July 25, 2006
Short sellers attempt to
profit from an expected decline due to volatility of
fungible asset valuation in the price
of a fungible financial
instrument.
The short seller takes on loan
fungible financial
instruments - bonds, marketable securities, stock,
futures contracts,
securitized loans and
collateralized debt
obligations.
The short
seller then hopes to be able to purchase identical
fungible security
instruments to repay the loan at a lower price than originally purchased
shortly before the loan comes due.
Profit comes when
the fungible financial
instrument declines in value.
"The mistake most people make in
looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit
that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing
downer for the Wall Street class. But
if you look at it in purely
Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to
turn the US government into a kind of giant Enron - a huge, impenetrable black
box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of
individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary
shareholders, previously known as taxpayers." - Matt
Taibbi
predatory lending
"Tight residential real estate markets and low
mortgage rates fueled a five-year property boom as the number of US households
paying more than half their incomes for housing jumped from 13.8 million in
2001 to 17.9 million in 2007." - Brian Louis
"Predatory lenders deserve a lot of
blame for foreclosures and
bankruptcies. How odd to
think that the hopes of everyone owning a piece of property is now
as utopian as the collectivist
dreams of communism." - Doug Doepke
"Between 1999 and 2004, more than half the states,
both red (North Carolina, 1999; South Carolina, 2004) and blue (California,
2001; New York, 2003), passed anti-predatory-lending laws. Georgia lite a
firestorm in 2002 when it sought to hold Wall Street bundlers and holders of
mortgage-backed
securities responsible for mortgages that were fraudulently conceived.
Beginning in 2004 Michigan and forty-nine other states battled the US
Comptroller of the Currency and the banking industry (and The Wall Street
Journal's editorial page) for the right to examine the books of Wachovia's
mortgage unit, a fight the Supreme
Court decided in Wachovia's favor in 2007 - about a year before it
cratered." - Dean Starkman
1863 National Bank Act
establishes
the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as part of the United States
Department of the Treasury and a system of nationally chartered banks.
The Office of the Comptroller of
the Currency examined the books of national banks to make sure they were
balanced.
"Several years ago, state attorneys general and others
involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of
predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders.
In 2003 the OCC
invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions
preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them
inoperative.
The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented
states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against
national banks.
The US government's actions were so egregious and
so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking
superintendents, actively fought the new rules.
But the unanimous
opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow,
George Walker Bush in his goal of
protecting the banks.
In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible
discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of
banks, the OCC filed a
federal lawsuit to stop the investigation." - Elliot Spitzer,
Washington Post, February 13,
2008
On the
afternoon of February 13 federal agents of the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency staked out Elliot Spitzer's hotel in Washington. Elliot Spitizer's
dalliance with a prostitute became headline news on March 10.
Corporate
news never questioned the actions of the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency.
"One is struck by the similarities with the Savings and
Loan scandal which was allowed to continue through the 1980s, long after it
became apparent that deliberate bankruptcy was being
used by unscrupulous profiteers to amass illegal fortunes at what was
ultimately public expense.
The long drawn-out
housing bubble of the current
George Walker Bush decade, and
particularly the derivative
bubble that was floated upon it, allowed the Bush administration to help
offset the trillion-dollar-plus cost of its
Iraq misadventure." - Peter
Dale Scott
investment bank meltdown
"The injunction of Jesus to love others as
ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest." - Brian Griffiths,
Goldman Sachs
public relations man
"We see TARP as an insurance policy. No matter how
bad it gets, we're going to be one of the remaining banks."- John C. Hope III,
Whitney National Bank chairman 1977 AL Williams establishes its base by mass-marketing the
concept of "Buy Term and Invest the Difference." With "BTID" the incorporation
illustrated how its middle-income client base could purchase sufficient
protection with term life insurance and systematically save and invest in
separate investment vehicles, such as mutual fund Individual Retirement
Accounts.
AL Williams is initially established as a privately held
general agency, at first selling term life insurance policies underwritten by
Financial Assurance.
1980 A.L. Williams enters
into a contract with Boston-based Massachusetts Indemnity and Life Insurance
incorporation (MILICO), a larger underwriter of life insurance, whose parent is
PennCorp Financial Services, Santa Monica.
1980s Salomon Brothers is
acquired by the commodity trading firm Phibro.
Salomon is noted for its
innovation in the bond market,
selling the first mortgage-backed security,
a hitherto obscure species of financial instrument forged by Ginnie Mae.
Salomon begins purchasing home mortgages from thrifts throughout the US
and packaged them into mortgage-backed
securities, which it sells to local and international
investors.
1981
First American National Corporation is established as a holding incorporation
for First American Life Insurance (later renamed AL Williams Life Insurance)
and First American National Securities (later renamed PFS Investments).
Shearson is acquired by American
Express and operated as a subsidiary.
1982
First American National Corporation, renamed The AL Williams Corporation,
underwrites a public stock offering.
1983 The AL
Williams Corporation is listed on the NASDAQ exchange under ALWC.
American Can and PennCorp Financial Services merge.
1984 Shearson merges with
Lehman
Brothers/Kuhn Loeb
evolving into Shearson Lehman.
1986 Sanford
Weill, scion David-Weill family purchases Commercial Credit from Control
Data for $7 million.
Lazard Freres - the biggest investment bank in
France - is owned by Lazard and
David-Weill families - old Genoese banking scions.
1987 86-year-old American Can announces a name change to
Primerica Corporation.
Primerica Corporation completes a
hostile takeover of Smith
Barney.
Sanford Weill acquires Gulf Insurance.
1988 Commercial Credit acquires Primerica Corporation for
$1.54 billion.
Shearson Lehman acquires EF Hutton to be Shearson Lehman
Hutton.
1989 Sanford Weill acquires retail
brokerage outlets Drexel Burnham
Lambert.
Eight Charged in $50-Million Car Loan Fraud
1991 Primerica Corporation changes the name of AL Williams to
Primerica Financial Services.
US taxpayers, already billed over $500
billion dollars for the S&L looting, are charged another $70 billion to
bail out the FDIC.
US taxpayers then footed the bill for a secret 2
1/2-year rescue of Citibank, which was close to collapse after the Latin
American debt crunch hit home.
The Saving of Citibank
John S. Reed, chairman and CEO
of Citicorp, engineered a radical change in a major operating group, built a
lucrative new business from scratch, and played a high-visibility role in the
pivotal issue of Third World debt.
Citicorp Faces the World: An Interview with John
Reed
(The Washington Post article above implies that the problem was
domestic when clearly the problem revloved around Third World
debt.)
1993 Primerica acquires Travelers
Insurance and adopts the name Travelers.
Sanford Weill purchases
Shearson Lehman Hutton from American
Express for $1.2 billion.
Shearson Lehman Hutton acquires
Colorado-based lender, Aurora Loan Services, an Alt-A lender.
1994
Sanford Weill spins Lehman
Brothers out of American Express. The
CEO is
Richard Severin Fuld Jr.
1995 Travelers becomes The Travelers Group.
1996 The Travelers Group purchases the property and casualty
business of Atena.
1997
Timeline of the Asian financial crisis
1998
Citicorp and Travelers merge and
form the behemoth Citigroup.
Travelers
aquires Salomon and merges it with Smith Barney creating Salomon Smith
Barney.
Citibank schemed with firm to hide its woes: Ex-Dewey
partner
2000 Shearson
Lehman Hutton purchases West Coast subprime mortgage lender BNC Mortgage LLC.
BNC Mortgage LLC quickly becomes a force in the subprime market.
September 11, 2001 Salomon Smith Barney is by
far the largest tenant in 7 World Trade Center, occupying 1,202,900 sq ft
(111,750 m2) (64% of the building) which included floors 28–45.
Shearson Lehman Hutton occupies three floors of World Trade Center
where one employee dies.
2002 Citigroup spins off
Travelers Property and Casualty.
2003 Shearson
Lehman Hutton makes $18.2 billion in loans and ranked third in
lending.
2004 Shearson Lehman Hutton makes over
$40 billion.
Shearson Lehman Hutton has morphed into a real estate
hedge fund disguised as an investment bank.
2005
Goldman Sachs receives
approximately $1.6 billion in
taxpayer subsidies (mostly through Liberty Bonds) from New York City and
state taxpayers to finance a new headquarters near the World Financial Center
in Lower Manhattan.
2006 Aurora and BNC are
lending almost $50 billion per month.
Goldman Sachs changes its
corporate structure into a bank holding corporation.
Employees earn an
average of $622,000 on a profit of $9.4 billion.
Much of the commercial
paper wealth is made on takeovers and
leveraged buyouts.
Goldman Sachs employees:
George Herbert Walker Bush (Lehman);
Robert
Zoellick (World Bank
BB
CFR
TC);
Henry Paulson (US Treasury
Secretary);
Robert
Rubin* (US Treasury Secretary, Chairman Citigroup);
John Thain (Merrill Lynch, Chairman
NYSE);
Henry H. Fowler, (US Treasury Secretary);
Edward Lampert (hedge
fund manager);
Michael Cohrs (Global Banking at Deutsche Bank);
Mark
Carney (Bank of Canada);
Robert Steel (CEO of Wachovia);
Ed Liddy (CEO of
AIG);
Neel Kashkari;
Gary Gensler (Commodity Futures Trading
Commission)
Stephen Friedman (Chairman
Intelligence Oversight Board, Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, The Aspen Institute,
CFR,
Brookings Institution,
Federal Reserve Bank
of New York.
Barack
Obama received $981,000 for his campaign from
Goldman
Sachs.
2007 4th quarter Citigroup posts a
$10 billion loss, 21,200 Citigroup employees are laid off.
Citigroup's
single largest shareholder becomes Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the
investment arm of Abu Dhabi government, with a $7.5 billion injection of
capital in late 2007 in exchange for a 4.9% stake which pays a $1.7 billion a
year dividend.
The second largest Citigroup shareholder, with a 3.6%
stake, is now Kingdom Holding incorporation owned by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal
of Saudi Arabia.
$6.88
billion of prefered stock is sold to an investment fund controlled by the
government of Singapore.
March
through September 2008
Five largest investment
bankers on Wall Street go bankrupt.
March
2008 Lehman
Brothers assets of $680 billion are supported by $22.5 billion of firm
capital.
From an equity position, its risky commercial real estate
holdings are three times greater than capital.
In such a highly
leveraged structure, a 3 to 5% decline in real estate values wipes out all
capital.
Federal Reserve sells
Bear Stearns to
JP Morgan Chase for
ten dollars per share, a price far below the previous 52-week high of $133.20
per share.
June 2008
Merrill Lynch seizes $850
million worth of the underlying collateral from
Bear Stearns but only
recoups $100 million in auction.
Merrill Lynch is sold
to Bank of America for
0.8595 shares of Bank of
America common stock for each Merrill Lynch common share, or about $50
billion or $29 per share.
The market valuation of
Merrill Lynch was about $100
billion one year earlier.
During the final quarter of 2008 Merrill
Lynch loses $15.3 billion.
August 2008
Morgan Stanley is
contracted by the Treasury Department to advise the government on potential
rescue strategies for Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac.
September 21, 2008 Federal Reserve allows
Morgan Stanley to change its
status from investment bank to bank holding incorporation in order to
survive.
November 23, 2008
Fed and Treasury announce a rescue package for
Citigroup to provide
insurance against large losses on
bundled securities and
derivatives of approximately
$306 billion backed by residential and commercial real estate.
Citigroup agrees to
absorb the first $29 billion in losses on the
bundled securities and
derivatives; the
government will then cover 90% of losses that exceed that figure.
Citigroup spends $1.77
million on lobbying fees in the fourth quarter.
"Citigroup, like many
others, had sought to insure itself against losses with a variety of
transactions, including the purchase of insurance, only to learn that the
losses were overwhelming those who had promised to pay. Insurance on the assets
was issued both by the bond insurers and by others that wrote what were known
as credit
default swaps, which amounted to insurance but were not regulated in the
same way. Those who wrote large amounts of such insurance are now in trouble,
either negotiating to pay claims for less than promised or, in the case of the
American International Group, still in
business only because of a
government bailout. The American
International Group officials responsible for writing the swaps told
investors they would never suffer any losses." - Floyd Norris, November 24,
2008
"Sovereign wealth funds operated by
China, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and
other countries have taken large equity stakes in Citigroup,
Merrill Lynch,
Morgan Stanley, and other
firms, including leading European financial institutions." - Mark
Jickling
"With the
Long-Term Capital Management
bailout as a precedent,
creditors came to believe that their loans to unsound financial institutions
would be made good by the Fed - as long
as the collapse of those institutions would threaten
the global credit system.
Bolstered by this sense of security, bad loans mushroomed. The major creditors
of the fund included Bear Stearns,
Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers,
all of which went on to lend and invest recklessly. The ad hoc aspect of the
bailout forged a
precedent for what has come to be called "regulation by deal" - now the
government's modus operandi." - Tyler Cowen, December 26, 2008
"When the "credit crunch" began and Washington
began the rush to solve the problem with taxpayer cash, no accounting of this
derivative nightmare was ever brought to bear. In all the deliberations and
press releases there was not
a single mention of the fact that the primary cause of the bank collapse was
due to these
'time
bombs'." - Andrew Hughes 1/27/09
April 2, 2009 Financial Accounting Standards
Board relaxes the "mark-to-market" rule.
Financial
institutions are given the go ahead to value their derivative assets in a
"mark-to-model" manner - use creative accounting methods to
value their toxic debt at 'projected market
value'.
"The announcement April 2, 2009
by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) weakening "mark-to-market" accounting
rules allowing banks to value their toxic debt at inflated prices. This is a
green light to continue the same methods of fraud and double bookkeeping that
triggered the breakdown of the
financial system in
the first place." - Tom Eley
"US taxpayers may be on the hook for as
much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bailout financial companies."
- Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the
Troubled Asset Relief Program
(TARP) Treasury Department, July, 2009
November 25, 2008 to July 8, 2009
Financial
institutions issue $274 billion in debt under the
Temporary Liquidity
Guarantee Program.
General Motors Financial
Services auto and home lender which recieved $13.5 billion from US
taxpayers in exchange for corporate debt in the form of junk
bonds becomes a bank to qualify for the
Temporary Liquidity
Guarantee Program.
To insure $10 million of General Motors
Acceptance Corporation junk bonds annually with
a five-year
credit default swap contract it costs $895,000.
To insure the
entire $13.5 billion in General Motors Acceptance Corporation junk bonds
annually will cost over $1.2 billion annually.
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