Just wanted to thank everyone that responded tonight and for recommending this diary, yes, Rachel is always great, but can we discuss some issues here? I presented three major debate issues, and if that is all right, then I just want to get back to that, ok? Sorry to be such a hard ass, but that is why I come here.
I just wanted to take moment to thank Rachel Maddow tonight for her courageous stand. She had two amazing truth tellers on her show tonight: Matt Taibbi (the only Rat Sniffing, (Hunter Thompson/Julian Assange) that refuses to STFU no matter what, and Nouriel Roubini.
I was somewhat dismayed with Roubini, but that is another diary and another story.
More about my Taibbi and the story out today about Lehman Bros., but first some background ok?
Do you all remember this letter from the now 'faithfully departed Hizhnonner..... the Late Great Senator Chistopher Dodd?' I do.
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Chris Dodd (D - Conn.), the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, called for an investigation into the accounting activities used by Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis.
Last week, Lehman's bankruptcy examiner issued a scathing report that detailed the firm's use of "Repo 105" transactions to keep debts from being reflected on their balance sheet. The deals were essentially loans that were improperly classified as revenue on Lehman's books. The effect was to remove $50 billion from Lehman's balance sheet -- an act that then CEO Richard Fuld, was "at least grossly negligent" in allowing, the examiner said.
Based on Dodd's letter, it seems that NPR was correct in saying that it's a "safe bet" criminal trials are not far off. Here's Dodd's letter:
Dear Attorney General Holder:
I am deeply concerned about the facts that have come to light regarding the demise of Lehman Brothers and the accounting manipulation that contributed to it. I respectfully ask you to commission a task force to investigate the Lehman situation as well as other companies that may have engaged in similar accounting manipulation with a view to prosecution of employees or agents who contributed to any violations of the law.
According to the Report of the U.S. Trustee-appointed Examiner Anton R. Valukas, Lehman presented a misleading picture of its financial condition to the public by using extensive repurchase agreements known as Repo 105 transactions. The Examiner found that "Lehman did not disclose its use - or the significant magnitude of its use - of Repo 105 to the Government, to the rating agencies, to its investors, or to its own Board of Directors." The result was to conceal its holdings of bad assets and to temporarily remove approximately $50 billion of assets from its balance sheet at the end of the first and second quarters of 2008. The Examiner found that Lehman used Repo 105 transactions for no other articulated purpose than to shrink its balance sheet at the quarter-end, in a manner that deceived investors and creditors about its true financial state and misleading others.
We must work tirelessly to reduce the incidence of financial fraud in order to restore trust and confidence in the financial markets. A task force investigation and taking appropriate Federal actions in these matters will contribute to these goals.
Sincerely,
Christopher J. Dodd
Chairman
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
I look daily across America, and I see how many people in our nation who are committing suicide, taking their entire families with them, including our own own soldiers, (at an all time high).
Naturally, and understandably we do not want to 'talk about this' because, that would make us face up to what we are all paying for, least of all in the MSM.
Instead, we all skate on the ice, the top layer of our political spectrum, while we continue to pay more attention to the 'DECOYS' than who is robbing us blind, and who is going to come for even more, and how they all 'got away with it.'
This was never about political compromise, this is political suicide. When many have said, it is 'all rigged,' we knew that in our hearts, (and thanks to bink and bobsweve and Pluto and War on Error and Dallas Doc have proven that) but we just simply turned away from that reality which bites, doesn't it?. But here is something you may not understand...I give you all a huge loving heart and hug, as a Democrat, because our party, is not about who we elected, but who we are....got that? I feel right now about like every single dog I ever owned, that licked me all over my face, for all of you, when I knew I did not want it, but needed it anyway. You may find this is a strange analogy, but I do not. I think, the time we need to embrace one another those most, is when we, as fellow Democrats, refuse to face the truth.
So, like a big sloppy St. Bernard Dog, I will regal all of you lost Democrats, by digging you out of you avalanche of your 9 feet of snow, that is your 'unreality': The Cat Food Commission PLUS no re-negotiation for NAFTA, PLUS THE ENDLESS WARS, PLUS NO JOBS COMMISSIONS, means, this:
(plus all the other shit)....
You did not elect who you thought you did, and we NO ONE IS COMING TO DIG YOU OUT OF THE SNOW.
Meanwhile, I have some Brandy on my trusty collar, and will lick your face to wake you up:
More about this new story from Matt:
Crisis Dominoes Start Falling With Lehman Auditor
It took more than two years, but there might finally be some capital sentences handed out for crimes committed during the financial crisis. That’s metaphorically speaking, of course. Like the accounting firm Arthur Anderson, whose head was sacrificed during the Enron debacle, the once-proud financial auditing firm Ernst and Young now looks poised to take a spin down the toilet of history thanks to its role in the Lehman Brothers debacle. New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is about to file civil fraud charges against E&Y for the work it did helping Lehman cook its books during 2007 and 2008. The short version of what happened goes something like this. Lehman Brothers, like all the other big banks on Wall Street in those years, was nearing insolvency and desperate for cash. In advance of its quarterly reports in 2007, the firm executed a series of something called Repo 105 transactions in an attempt to make their balance sheet look healthier than it was.
These Repo 105 transactions are just loans that Ernst and Young and Lehman Brothers conspired to book as revenue from sales. If I go to you and I ask you to lend me a hundred bucks to pay for Knicks tickets, that’s a loan, and you and I and the SEC and every investor on Wall Street all know I’m in debt to you, that I owe you a hundred bucks. Here’s how Lehman Brothers paid for their Knicks tickets: a week before the game, they went to you and offered to you "sell" you their worthless puke-stained lava lamp for a hundred bucks, with the understanding that two days after the Knicks game, it would come back and "buy" the lamp back for the same $100 (plus a small commission for your trouble). And when Lehman pocketed that $100 from the initial transaction, they decided to call that not borrowing but a true sale, i.e. they booked that hundred bucks as revenue from an honest sale of a worthless piece-of-shit lava lamp.
In 2007 and 2008 Lehman would do this before the end of every quarter. They would "sell" billions of dollars of assets, typically bonds, to various companies, and use that money to pay down debt before the quarter’s end, so that they didn’t look so flat-ass broke to investors. Then, a week or so after the end of the quarter, they would go out and borrow more money, and then "buy" the assets back. The reasons they did this were myriad, but in most cases the assets they were "selling" were depressed in value at the time and could not have been sold at anything like face value had they really gone out on the market and tried. So instead of really "selling" these items on their balance sheet, they worked together with other companies to jury-rig these "repurchase" agreements that looked like sales but were actually loans. Lehman was doing massive amounts of these deals every quarter. In the second quarter of 2008, they lightened up their balance sheets with $50 billion worth of Repo agreements. This technique, apparently known as "window dressing," isn’t that much different conceptually from the Enron-style book-doctoring that used "independent" special purpose vehicles to hide liabilities. In this case Lehman didn’t use shell companies but instead scattered its dent in the financial atmosphere by booking loans as sales. Ernst and Young, which made over $100 million in fees between 2001 and 2008 working with Lehman, aided the process by signing off on Lehman’s crazy accounting. In the report by bankruptcy examiner Anton Valukas that came out last March, he describes how Ernst and Young threw up a brilliant "We’re not corrupt, we’re just incredibly stupid" defense when confronted with the question of the $50 billion in Repo 105s in the second quarter of 2008. The report (a PDF of which you can view here) talks about what E&Y’s Lehman auditor Hillary Hansen had to say when future E&Y whistleblower Michael Lee confronted her about the $50 billion in Repos: During the Examiner’s interview of Hansen, Hansen recalled that while Ernst & Young questioned Lee about his May 16, 2008 letter, Lee "rattled off" a list of additional issues and concerns he held, one of which was Lehman’s use of Repo 105 transactions. Ernst & Young had no further conversations with Lee about Repo 105 transactions. Prior to her interview of Lee in June 2008, Hansen had heard the term Repo 105 "thrown around" but she did not know its meaning...In other words, the lead auditor reviewing one of the world’s largest investment banks had no idea what a series of regularly-occurring billion-dollar transactions committed by her main client were, and apparently wasn’t interested. It also didn’t seem to bother E&Y that Lehman was not disclosing any of this to its investors in its SEC filings. My guess is that this suit is the beginning of the end for Ernst and Young and, who knows, may be the beginning of a series of investigations that ultimately take down the auditors and ratings agencies that made the financial crisis possible. Without accountants and raters signing off on all the bogus derivative math and bad bookkeeping, a lot of this mess would never have happened. Zero Hedge has an excellent piece detailing all the ass-covering and finger-pointing going on at Ernst and Young; check it out if you have time.
http://www.rollingstone.com/...
Do I actually believe that AG Andrew Cuomo will really carry this out? No more than Eliot Spitzer or Hizzzzzzzhoner, Christopher Dodd, but still, I wanted to report, to you all, who it is that left you in the 9 feet of snow, that this (and many other loyal St. Bernard Democrats are still willing to do): Dig you out when your are freezing cold, give you a drink to brace yourself for the worse that is yet to come and understand this reality:
2 Plus 2 Still equals 4. When a Duck leaves shit all over your door way and home, don't mistake it as a pair of love birds that are nesting in your home, calling upon you to feed them more expensive sunflower seeds, when they are fat and happy to begin with, and are feeding off what is left of the bones of your carcasses.
The Shock Doctrine is in full swing, and they have just begun their true and final destruction of our Unions, our Middle Class, the final dismantling of the New Deal, our final Safety Net.
Otherwise, we would have seen these actions being taken by now:
- At Job's Commission Program by both parties, not an Austerity Program to Cu our final Safety Net.
- A Real Pecora Commission to administer justice and Rico, Racketeering, a serious investigations with an Independent Investigator into the revolving door policies of the Bernie Madoff SEC/NYSE, Crash and Illicit Foreclosure Mills that have destroyed out national wealth, our homes and our jobs. This includes how Bush/Paulson/Rubin/Clinton, got away with destroying our nation, no matter how you call it legal. It was immoral, unethical, and it destroyed out nation and Democracy. How you, as an American want to play that out, is up to you, but we cannot, and must never equate ourselves as 'ravenous wolves with no regard for our fellow human beings'...otherwise, who are we? No better than animals. Is that is who we have become? God help us all.
- A Real War Profiteering Commission that would look into the War Crimes/Halliburton and Black Water, that continues today.
These three issues is what I would like us to debate upon in this diary. Do, if you must, go ahead....do what so many do:
Call this all just this 'fantasy' I've made up in my own head, a CT theory, but I implore you, don't got there...Be better than that, be bigger than that, find your highest self. Not for me, but your fellow man/women/families that have been destroyed. That is what being a Democrat always meant to me, that is what my daddy taught me. 'Let us always be thankful and help those that are less fortunate than those that have less than us, and let us all lift them up.'....This is what FDR, LBJ, MLK and the Kennedy Families taught my family no matter what their failures were..
As yourself these real questions: Why haven't these central issues, more than likely, what most Americans and Democrats keep asking over and over again, are not being addressed?
These 3 points are real issues. Not the DECOYS, that we refuse to discuss, but real dirty nitty grit issues, we just will not face.
I know, that we all know, this financial catastrophe and holocaust that involves these 3 central points/issues, are the only issues, that are not being addressed in the MSM, or on this site. It really goes to the heart of the Health Care Reform, that was never addressed, and so many other issues.
But can we put aside, just for one single diary, just this one time, no pie fights, no racism, no blame, but the real issues:
Again: I will remind you of President Obama, our Democratic Party, out Platform and these three central issues: address them or do not, but please:
If you can: refrain from not addressing these issues: If you cannot, could you just go to another diary?
Otherwise, we would have seen these actions being taken by now:
- At Job's Commission Program by both parties, not an Austerity Program to Cu our final Safety Net.
- A Real Pecora Commission to administer justice and Rico, Racketeering, a serious investigations with an Independent Investigator into the revolving door policies of the Bernie Madoff SEC/NYSE, Crash and Illicit Foreclosure Mills that have destroyed out national wealth, our homes and our jobs. This includes how Bush/Paulson/Rubin/Clinton, got away with destroying our nation, no matter how you call it legal. It was immoral, unethical, and it destroyed out nation and Democracy. How you, as an American want to play that out, is up to you, but we cannot, and must never equate ourselves as 'ravenous wolves with no regard for our fellow human beings'...otherwise, who are we? No better than animals. Is that is who we have become? God help us all.
- A Real War Profiteering Commission that would look into the War Crimes/Halliburton and Black Water, that continues today.
Just wanted to say once again, way to go Rachel Maddow, amazing show today....hope someone else does another diary on her show tonight. She should have been in place of that total Ass Hat David Gregory, on Meet the Press, from the get go....
Maddow is a National Treasurer......exceedingly brilliant, beautiful, the fucking very best on the MSM...(she makes everyone else look like Gumby on drugs)....
Thanks as always..
Ms. B.