h/t to
ozsea1
Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE), the person whom Joe Biden handpicked to serve out the balance of his term in the Senate after he was elected Vice President, will make another important speech on the floor of the Senate, today (TomP had an outstanding post on Kaufman's speech from last week, linked here: "Financial Reforms To Prevent A Great Depression"), questioning the very "core principles of U.S. democracy." And, "breaking," (actually, a more appropriate word would be: "broken") headlining over at HuffPo, right now, we have this about Kaufman's upcoming speech, from Simon Johnson, in a double-deck on the top page: "Senator Kaufman accuses Goldman of Fraud." (Note: this headline just changed, over the past few minutes, to...)
Senator Kaufman: Fraud Still at the Heart of Wall Street
Posted: March 15, 2010 08:42 PM
Simon Johnson
Baseline Scenario via Huffington Post
...the Senator has gone one better, putting many private criticisms of the financial sector -- the kind you hear whispered with conviction on the Upper East Side and in Midtown -- firmly and articulately on the public record in a Senate floor speech to be delivered tomorrow: "fraud and potential criminal conduct were at the heart of the financial crisis."
He goes after Lehman -- with its infamous Repo 105 -- as well as the other entities potentially implicated in those transactions, including Ernst and Young (Lehman's auditors). This is the low hanging fruit -- but have you heard even a squeak from the White House or anyone else in the country's putative leadership on this issue?
And then he goes for the twin jugulars of Wall Street as it still stands: The idea that we saved something, at great expense in 2008-09, that was actually worth saving; and Goldman Sachs.
--SNIP--
Here's the most intriguing bit -- he challenges the moral authority of those who think they are doing "God's work" in finance...
From Kaufman's prepared speech text...
"If we uncover bad behavior that was nonetheless lawful, or that we cannot prove to be unlawful (as may be exemplified by the recent reports of actions by Goldman Sachs with respect to the debt of Greece), then we should review our legal rules in the US and perhaps change them so that certain misleading behavior cannot go unpunished again."
Back to Johnson...
But that's not all -- he actually lays out the parameters of what should be, if our legal institutions still functioned, a compelling case against Goldman....
At that point, Kaufman covers ground that I've been covering for the past few weeks in diaries about Goldman's actions with regard to their management of the sale of numerous Greek bond offerings. You may read some of these: HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
This past day, the Columbia Journalism Review came out and directly told us that the MSM--referencing the Lehman Brothers scandal--is burying what economist L. Randall Wray has just called the "...Biggest Scandal In U.S. History."
The folks over at CJR have pointed to the Naked Capitalism and Zero Hedge blogs as being more forthright and spot-on in their coverage of this "huge" (Wray's words, again) story over the past few days than the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. (Zero Hedge had the full text of this speech, almost 12 hours ago--see links, below. )
From Zero Hedge, this past evening...
Senator Kaufman Makes A Stand Against The Criminality Exposed By The Lehman Examiner Report, Questions The Core Principles Of US Democracy
Zero Hedge
Tyler Durden 6:26PM 3/15/10
[From Sen. Ted Kaufman's speech:] "I'm concerned that the revelations about Lehman Brothers are just the tip of the iceberg. We have no reason to believe that the conduct detailed last week is somehow isolated or unique. Indeed, this sort of behavior is hardly novel."
Zero Hedge...
As Kaufman points out in a Speech to be delivered before the Senate, the precedent of failing to pursue justice in just this one case, may be the final barrier before the fundamental concept of American democracy disintegrates into a cloud of crony interests and captured political elements.
More from Senator Kaufman's speech (text)...
[More from Sen. Ted Kaufman's speech:] Mr. President, last week's revelations about Lehman Brothers reinforce what I've been saying for some time. The folly of radical deregulation has given us financial institutions that are too big to fail, too big to manage, and too big to regulate. If we have any hope of returning the rule of law to Wall Street, we need regulatory reform that the addresses this central reality. As I said more than a year ago: " At the end of the day, this is a test of whether we have one justice system in this country or two. If we don't treat a Wall Street firm that defrauded investors of millions of dollars the same way we treat someone who stole 500 dollars from a cash register, then how can we expect our citizens to have faith in the rule of law? For our economy to work for all Americans, investors must have confidence in the honest and open functioning of our financial markets. Our markets can only flourish when Americans again trust that they are fair, transparent, and accountable to the laws." The American people deserve no less.
Back to Zero Hedge...
Full Kaufman speech to be delivered before the Senate, a must read for anyone who still hold out any hope for the survival of US society and the American middle-class.
Hmmmm....yes, as I've been saying over the past few days, it appears we've reached a tipping point...and as the President says, "Grab a mop." A whole hell of a lot of mops...because there will be blood...