Tag Archives: banksters

The Vampire Squid has feelings and Obama is no longer her BFF

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Devin Smith | 5 comments

Matt Taibbi famously dubbed Goldman “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Taibbi knew his metaphor worked a deep injustice on Vampyroteuthis infernalis, a small animal that feeds on carrion and excrement (I will let the reader explore the metaphorical possibilities). Goldman Sachs’ leaders were always secretly flattered by Taibbi’s metaphor. They like being thought of as hyper-aggressive and intimidating. Saying that an investment banker’s goal is to make money is to state the obvious and causes no embarrassment. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged banksters, crony capitalism, goldman sachs, obama

The Best Way to Rob a Bank is still to Own One: a Postscript

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Devin Smith | 4 comments

By William K. Black

The central questions for a theorist are whether his theory showed strong explanatory power and to what extent it proved useful in diverse settings. A distinguished economist, Dr. Jayati Ghosh, has addressed those questions in an article in which she was explaining to Indian readers that a large fraud, Satyam, was not the product of unique defects in Indian regulation.

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4 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged accounting control fraud, banksters, Control Fraud, Financial crisis, gresham's dynamic

The Peril of Obama’s “Man Crush” on Geithner is exposed by the Debate

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Devin Smith | 57 comments

By William K. Black

FDR transformed the nation when he was confronted with the Great Depression and World War II. He famously welcomed the hate of the banksters. President Obama wanted the love (and the contributions) of the banksters. He chose Timothy Geithner to be his pipeline to the banksters because Geithner shared Obama’s lack of passion for holding the banksters accountable for their frauds that drove the ongoing crisis. We have known the core of these sad facts for years, for they were revealed (irony of ironies) in a May 22, 2010 article whose theme was that we had all done Geithner and Obama a terrible injustice by criticizing them for their servile approach to the banks. The key facts that the article disclosed can be summarized in a sentence: Obama developed a “man crush” on Geithner and decided to follow Geithner’s policies to bail out the banksters rather than hold them accountable for the frauds that made them wealthy and caused the Great Recession. Obama’s “man crush” is particularly odd given the fact that Geithner is a Republican who, as a fig leaf, became an independent.

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57 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged banksters, Geithner, Mitt Romney, obama

JPMorgan targeted for role in financial crisis

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Devin Smith | 4 comments

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has become the first target of the task force that the Justice Department created this year to hold big Wall Street banks accountable for their role in the financial crisis. NEP’s William Black provides input regarding these first steps taken by regulators to prosecute in an article at the LA Times. You can read the LA Times article here.

The Globe and Mail has also published an article on the prosecution of JPMorgan Chase & Co with input from William Black. You can read the Globe and Mail article here.

4 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged accounting control fraud, banksters, Financial crisis

Fiat Justitia? Breuer fires blanks on elite financial frauds

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Devin Smith | 20 comments

By William K. Black

Beurre blanc is the classic white butter sauce of France. Americans who hate the French claim that they became adept at saucing to cover up the rot in their meat in earlier times. A beurre blanc does not remove the rot. It masks the bad taste and the bad color of bad meat. Indeed, the sauce makes the dish even less healthy. If the rotten meat doesn’t get you, the sauce’s cholesterol will.

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