05 | June | 2014 | New Economic Perspectives

Daily Archives: June 5, 2014

How Institutional Defects Get Ignored: The GM – and Lehman Reports by Valukas

Posted on June 5, 2014 by William Black | 4 comments

The beleaguered profession of law has one lucrative growth area – preparing reports for a corporation on the misdeeds of the corporation. One of the leaders in this burgeoning field is one of the Nation’s top white-collar defense firms – Jenner & Black. Its head, Anton Valukas, is now famous for the “Valukas” reports for Lehman and GM. I testified at the same House hearing on Lehman’s failure with Valukas. Valukas famously suggested there could be grounds for criminal prosecutions of Lehman’s use of an accounting device designed to deceive investors and creditors about the (crippling) extent of its debt. Attorney General Holder and a senior SEC (anti) enforcement leader combined to allow Lehman’s officers commit this variant of accounting control fraud with impunity. (This is one the events that sparked the recent long-time SEC enforcement attorney’s evisceration of the SEC at his retirement dinner.)

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged Barra, GM, Valukas

The Tories Refuse to Take Responsibility for the EU “Fault Lines” They Decry

Posted on June 5, 2014 by William Black | 1 comment

By William K. Black

The Tory insider and journalist Matthew D’Ancona has written a remarkably disingenuous op ed in the New York Times entitled “Europe’s Dangerous New Fault Line.”

The setting for the op ed is three related crises that D’Ancona’s dogmas have helped create (and a fourth one that is likely in the process of being created). D’Ancona, of course, ignores causation and his responsibility for the policies that caused each of the crises. The three crises are the Great Recession, the gratuitous second recession (Second Great Depression in the case of Spain, Greece, and Italy), and the rise of fascist and racist parties in the EU. The fourth crisis that may be developing is the troika’s austerity policies forcing several EU nations back into a third recession.

Continue reading →