Senator Carl Levin is the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and has jurisdiction to conduct investigations into a broad range of issues, including federal waste, fraud, and abuse, corporate crime, offshore banking and tax practices, energy markets, corruption, and national security.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Senator Levin has subpoenaed several financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG, seeking evidence of fraud in last year's mortgage-market meltdown.
Apparently the investigations will be focused on whether internal communications, such as email, show bankers had private doubts about whether mortgage-related securities they were putting together were as financially sound.
According to people familiar with the matter, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations also has issued a subpoena to Washington Mutual Inc., a Seattle thrift that was seized by regulators in last year's financial crisis and is now largely owned by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. It appears likely that several other financial institutions also have received subpoenas. Subcommittee investigators declined to comment. A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment on the subpoena. Deutsche Bank didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
http://online.wsj.com/...
In addition, J.P. Morgan Chase spokesman Thomas Kelly did not wish to comment on whether the firm, which gobbled up the banking assets of Washington Mutual last September, had received any subpoenas.
No comment? Oh come on you guys, you must have something to say about the 'bailout aka extortion' racket you cooked up to eliminate nearly all of the competition out there in Wally Wall Street World. It's not like every person on the entire planet hasn't figured out what this 'game changer' was really all about.
There's that queazy feeling I get every time I think about how two of Obama’s biggest campaign contributors (Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan) keep coming out smelling like roses these past few months since the 'engineered economic collapse', and just how these people close to our President are such major players in the game. Must just be one of those 'strange coincidences.'
Tip toe carefully through the tulips Senator Levin. We mustn't upset the status quo and let the bright neon yellow brick road leading from Wall Street all the way up through the West Wing shine too brightly in the spot light.
A subpoena from the subcommittee raises a number of factual questions and asks for various company correspondence, according to a person who reviewed it.
The subpoenas are the latest in a series of moves by Congress to trace the roots of the financial crisis. Goldman has been a favorite target for criticism in Washington.
Favorite target? How about the very center of the Financial Universe Mega-Bullseye - that should just have a huge sign on it that reads:
We are the Biggest Crooks In the Entire World
The last part of the article gave me the biggest laugh of all:
Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of 10 members of Congress sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, questioning whether Goldman Sachs is being too lightly regulated and too generously backed by taxpayers.
If it wasn't so ridiculous, it would make me cry, but instead after everything that has happened with Goldman Sachs including getting their 'front running machine stolen' right under their rich little noses (which was just another farce) all I can do is laugh at the thought of the ten idiots in Congress who would actually write to Ben Bernanke and ask him if:
- Goldman Sachs is being too lightly 'regulated.'
- If Goldman Sachs was too 'generously' backed by the taxpayers.
I picture Ben Bernanke writing a letter back to Congress stating that regarding 'the too lighted regulated part'...that maybe the employees at Goldman Sachs should just start incorporating more 'BRAN' into their diets.
As far as if Goldman Sachs was too generously backed by the taxpayers, perhaps Ben could just give up the ghost and spill his guts and tell Congress what everyone in the world already knows:
That the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs are one in the same.
OMG, the stoooopid of it all.
We would be well to remember the follow legislation that Senator Levin, Senator Obama and (If you don't go away how can we miss you, Norm Coleman) worked on together:
In 2008, Sen. Levin, then Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and then Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., introduced the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act (S. 2956) to help law enforcement stop the misuse of U.S. corporations. The bill was reintroduced in March 2009, as S. 569, by Sen. Levin, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. This bill has been endorsed by numerous law enforcement associations, including the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, as well as by organizations that support transparency and good governance, such as Citizens for Tax Justice, Global Financial Integrity Program, and Public Citizen.
On June 18, 2009, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing to examine the state incorporation practices and discuss S. 569. The Honorable Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney for the County of New York, New York, offered his endorsement of S. 569 in written testimony:
"S. 569 provides a minimalist and direct answer to a difficult problem. It places almost no burdens on the states or on business, while simultaneously addressing our security needs. I urge the Committee to adopt it and recommend its passage."
Witnesses from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security emphasized the threat posed by a lack of transparency in corporate filings, and stated that their ability to obtain beneficial ownership information is key to their abilities to thwart money laundering and other criminal activity.
Transparency. That is what this bill is all about. Somebody should remind President Obama that he co-sponsored this bill. I think he might have forgotten what that means.
Perhaps Senator Levin will recall. I don't know how far Senator Levin will go with his questions to Goldman Sachs, and the other Banks and financial institutions on 'what they knew and when they knew it' regarding the 'profoundly irresponsible' (Obama's words) actions of their 'risky' behavior. But that behavior brought the financial world crashing down around all of our lives, and will reverberate and continue to have severe consequences on our nation for many many years to come.
Somehow I doubt that anyone of these financial wizards will be held accountable and instead will continue to be rewarded for their outrageous behavior, because when the financial world decided to take America hostage, our entire government from the top down looked the other way and have failed us miserably to once again protect Americans with even the simplest 'temporary' measures, that could have been put into place by Congress if they cared enough about what had taken place.
Instead the monopolies are grower larger, the Anti-trust laws are being ignored, and the Federal Reserve is being touted as the new Super-Regulator.