Call To "Open Source" AIG Investigation 259
VValdo writes "As you may recall, the citizens of the US shelled out about $85 billion to bail out AIG and its creditors (Goldman Sachs in particular) last year. But as 80% owners of AIG, we still don't know what happened, exactly. That may change. In a new op-ed piece, former prosecutors (including former NY governor Eliot Spitzer) are calling for the US Treasury to force AIG to release its treasure-trove of emails to the public before allowing AIG to 'break free' of our control. As the prosecutors put it, 'By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of "open source" investigation. Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story.' Good idea?"
Rigghttt... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's a good one. Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros ARE the government.
Re:Rigghttt... (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
We own 80% of AIG, so 80% of AIG is technically part of the federal government. That means we should have open access to everything just like we should have open access to the Congress, senate, court system, etc.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Interesting)
The American political system has evolved today into one that the only people capable of buying their way into congress are the Donald Trumps and Bernie Madoffs
Once in there the only legislation passed are bills that favor them and the wealthy class
The best example I can think of right now is the Health Care reform clusterfuck. The root of our problem is the insurance industry. They are raping the system and all citizens and are the cause of the escalating costs of medical care. So what do our representatives do? They move to require all citizens to buy insurance or face a fine for not being wealthy enough to afford it. Does anyone really think people working at walmart can afford insurance if it isn't given to then as a benefit? The insurance industry is the same as the financial industry. Controlled and run by greedy corporate scum like Madoff.
I say sack them all and start over with a clean slate. I'm not the only one thinking violent revolution may be our only way out of this quagmire. I hear this idea more each day from people on the street. Those that have lost their homes and/or life savings and now watch as we fork over billions of public tax dollars to the scum responsible.
Not a good sign
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Interesting)
The root of our problem is the insurance industry.
That's an awfully simplistic explanation. I am very much against the current health care legislation for a number of reasons including the one you mentioned, but the truth is that the problem has many roots; including the insurance industry, hospitals, government, and patients themselves. NPR's This American Life did a show [thisamericanlife.org] on it that highlights the complexity of the issues. There's plenty of blame to go around and IMO the insurance companies deserve less blame than government, which through wage freezes essentially kicked the insurance companies from a primary market of individuals to a market of corporations. Hospitals vary their charges (sometimes by a factor of 10) for identical procedures depending on how many patients use that insurance company. Doctors are afraid of liability if they don't run a requested test even if it's in the patient's best interest to remain untested.
The health insurance industry doesn't get off easy--there's a second show [thislife.org] devoted entirely to it. It's a huge mess. But here's the thing: they're not really like the financial industry. They seek profits, like everyone else, but they have been demonized. Their hands are tied by hospitals, and they are left with the choice of raising premiums for everyone or dropping the policies of people in areas where they have little clout with hospitals. IMO their biggest failing is that they don't care about the patient: they approve lots of unnecessary procedures because much of their profit lies in the volume of claims they process.
"Clusterfuck" is an appropriate term, because it's a whole lot of things gone wrong all at once. Without having a clear understanding of the problem, you can be sold a bill of goods like the current legislation. You've seen through this bill, but enough people haven't that it's still creeping along. It's important to get the shape of the problem so that if we get rid of this bill it won't be replaced by something equally awful.
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Interesting)
A unified systems of risk management with limitations on liability will have those that need tests get them, and those that don't need them not be given them. One of the highest rising parts of health care is the tests. There are more, and they are expensive. And everyone getting them because their doctor doesn't want to get sued is wasting money.
And, of course, another way to keep costs down is to reduce work on those with less life left. The costs are increasing because there are more old people. Death can't be prevented, no matter how much is spent. Work on making sure the quality is good, and less on preventing it for those that are headed there because of age. But that's considered political suicide because of the AARP voting bloc.
So yes, there are factors, and insurance is a big one out of it, and not the only one. But it's an easy target and should be a good starting point.
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The explanation is simplistic. The solution is not. Single payer systems like Canada's work in virtually every other capitalist democracy. Are they perfect and trouble free? No. Are they better than ours? It would seem so (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_compared#Cross-country_comparisons). Saying that this wouldn't work *here* is just a way of saying that Americans are too stupid and lame to do what virtually every other advanced industrialized country has done.
The simple, logical, thing would be
Not quite (Score:3, Informative)
Being 80% owned does not integrate a corporation into the entity that owns it. Trust me, Verizon has been using the exact theory for decades to lock Verizon Wireless workers out of the main Verizon company's collective bargaining agreement. Also, ask the Rigases (who owned Adelphia) if full ownership entitles you to complete run of the company -- it can be a jailable offense if you go about owning the company you own to aggressively.
A stockholder company has a wide range of fiduciary issues. It's very li
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So your argument is, that because Verizon did it, that’s what will happen?
Yeah. Right.
Let’s formalize that:
$evilCompany did $evilAction.
Therefore $everybody will do $evilAction.
So essentially you miss a central link here. And the only link that I can see, that would fit, is:
$everybody is like $evilCompany.
Sorry, but I don’t follow that. Even if $everybody in this context is narrowed down as much as possible.
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Re:Not quite (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yes, it's Bad Analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a difference between having 80% ownership of a corporation and owning indebtedness of 80% of a loan for the agreed value of a property. The bank can only ask you to satisfy the debt owed, not vote upon your decisions dealing with the property nor claim ownership before foreclosure.
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The question then is whether the information we're looking part of the 80% or is it part of the 20%? What if they just average it out and only give us 80% of every meg of data as an example?
Keep Dreaming (Score:4, Informative)
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It's likely that they could have pushed the haircut issue, but the banks that got the money were not the ones that would lose on the insurance contracts (for instance, Goldman only stood to lose $14 billion if AIG completely exploded, AIG's customers stood to lose hundreds of billions, so the government would have been depending on the generosity of the creditors (if they were willing negotiators), or doing even more damage to contract law (if they were unwilling)).
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Bankruptcy is a regulatory mechanism in place to resolve situations where companies don't have the financial means to abide by their contracts.
Re:Keep Dreaming (Score:4, Interesting)
Insurance businesses are regulated in such a way that they are not supposed to go bankrupt, AIG managed to avoid those regulations and become bankrupt (but the government chose to dump money in rather than attempting to resolve it through the traditional process).
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Corporations have no more "right to privacy" than any private citizen. It sickens me that the government will respect "trade secrets" and other such nonsense, but sees no reason to protect your privacy, or mine. As a taxpayer, as a voter, and as a citizen, I think my right to know WHY GS needed some of my hard earned coin supersedes any need for privacy on their part. Once the public understand exactly why GS needed that cash, then maybe the nation will be more agreeable to regulations that prevent such
No (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
We need that and a 'Cultural Revolution' that fights back against the idea that the upper class knows what's best for the rest of us and that any attempt to eek out even 4% more of their wealth from them is not socialism at all.
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
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Um, I write software for an investment house. Where do I fall on your libertarian scale of social value?
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Not quite. The major problem in the current situation is because bankers have started including investing houses. Banking is supposed to provide reliable, low-interest, low-return loans as
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I'm a libertarian
The fact that an ideologues like Bush Jr. & Dick Cheney went ahead with the bailout should tell you what a bad idea "let them fail" is.
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Unfortunately Libertarianism is the fungus in which this behaviour grows.
A completely unregulated (anarchistic) capitalist system fails for the same reasons a completely unregulated (anarchistic) socialist system fails. It relies on everyone thinking the same and following unenforced and unwritten rules, the system breaks down when one person decides
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Could you point out where Capitalism is in the Constitution, and where Socialism is banned? Thanks in advance.
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Well, regulating interstate commerce is permitted, but even there, the word "regulate" meant "to make regular". It didn't mean to imply that the federal government had complete control over commerce. It was only meant to be a means of harmonizing commerce between the states.
I'd also like to add that the fifth am
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The point is that we won't get congress or etc. to split them up without having people really get mad and the only way to get people mad enough to care may be this email thing.
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That wouldn't work, the banks are all interconnected through loans and insurance policies, if some start to fail they all fail.
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Well, the dicing up will limit the power of individual banks.
However, you are correct that the problem was that EVERYBODY was acting stupid. The problem is that when all your competitors are making risky loans and selling them to investors as safe loans you have two choices:
1. Do the same thing.
2. Watch all the investors pull out all of their money and give it to those who do #1.
After all, if you're an investor, which fund would you invest in? The AAA bond fund yielding 15%, or the AAA bond fund yieldin
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I think the insurance industry needs the same sort of backing that the FDIC gives our banking system.
At a minimum I think it would be prudent to require an insurance company to carry a government backed surety bond to ensure that clients get paid their settlements even if the company goes tits up.
I say government backed because asking the insurance industry to insure itself is a circular nightmare.
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I think the insurance industry needs the same sort of backing that the FDIC gives our banking system.
At a minimum I think it would be prudent to require an insurance company to carry a government backed surety bond to ensure that clients get paid their settlements even if the company goes tits up.
I say government backed because asking the insurance industry to insure itself is a circular nightmare.
The only difference between the bailouts and an FDIC-like system is that the FDIC-like system is negotiated and its terms are spelled out before something goes wrong. Otherwise they are the same.
Moral hazard ... (Score:3, Insightful)
IMO FDIC is an abomination ... government bonds should be the investment of choice for people who want to have guaranteed savings (and private citizens should be first in line during issuance). Banking and other types of investment should be for people who want to bear the risks. Implicit or explicit insurance for financial instruments causes moral hazard.
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I take it that your paycheck is automatically converted into gold coins for storage in your mattress?
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Indeed. 401ks and other retirement funds are kind of a scam in themselves. The liquidity you sacrifice by having your wealth tied up might very well not be offset by the (uncertain due to the shifting nature of politicians sticking their thumbs on in the tax pot all the time) tax savings.
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
However, you are correct that the problem was that EVERYBODY was acting stupid.
Fundamentally, the Fed was forcing everybody to act stupid. Central banking works by artificially changing rates outside actual market rate. That the function by which the Fed can dictate that, either you "invest" (speculate), or your money gets eaten by inflation (the actual which has little to do with normally reported numbers).
The thing is, it's not that investors are insulated from investment decisions, it's that they have no control over the game either way. They, or their representatives, do what they're told, invest in whatever bubble the Fed blows, or they get reamed anyway by funding the bill for the crash. There may not be an educated choice to make, everyone may know that it's a bubble that's gonna crash, but either you're in on it, or your money gets depreciated anyway.
What we really need... (Score:3, Informative)
What we really need is a giant freaking RESET button. Everybody's debt and credit is now at 0. You have what you have, start over. And be smarter this time.
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I agree, the public is just going to crucify the company. We need to move forward, fix the problems, and make sure they don't happen again.
On the other hand, this might be a great learning exercise for academia. It might be nice if accredited institutions could review a portion of the details in the interests of study cases; particularly a business ethics class (no that's not an oxymoron).
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, the public is just going to crucify the company. We need to move forward, fix the problems, and make sure they don't happen again.
On the other hand, this might be a great learning exercise for academia. It might be nice if accredited institutions could review a portion of the details in the interests of study cases; particularly a business ethics class (no that's not an oxymoron).
Business ethics: if it's legal, do it for short-term profit with no regard for side-effects, long-term losses, or harm that it might cause to other people. If it's not legal, grease the right palms until it becomes legal.
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Restore the Glass–Steagall Act and separate commercial banking from investment banking.
Yes, several harmful changes to banking laws made during the nineties need to be rolled back, including the the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act [wikipedia.org] as it was pushed through by Sens. Dodd and Schumer. Also the amendments passed in 1992 [wikipedia.org] which mandated banks make high risk loans they wouldn't have made otherwise.
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If you want high rates of return, you've got to make high risk loans-- and hide the risk.
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Well those probably should be repealed ... but to say the banks wouldn't have made those loans otherwise is silly. There was literally no risk in making those loans. Hundreds of subprime lenders were set up in fact just to make those kind of loans without any need for government pressure. The risk was in buying MBS's build on those loans ... but no law mandated anyone to do that, and yet so many did because of misplaced trust in Moody's/etc. The problem is that the market can't recognize (systemic) risk.
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Actually, once the big banks stopped buying mortgage backed securities, the mortgage brokers were left with quite a bit of risk...
only too true (Score:3, Insightful)
No, not a good idea. What is the point in having a Cultural Revolution? Better to just split these companies which are too big to fail into smaller chunks, kick out the top management making sure they never work in that capacity anymore, enforce layers of separation between businesses and let them free. Restore the Glass–Steagall Act and separate commercial banking from investment banking.
That fits with my idea that the standard politician idea of going after bankers' salaries and bonuses [ft.com] is moronic. The crux of the problem is how fat the BANKS get, not how they pay bigwigs.
One more comment: all governments seem bent on getting aid money back from the banking system ASAP, and the Herds are mooing that that's a good thing; but if you consider that the regulations of the banking system is more or less what it was when Lehman went under, central bankers included, I see it more as a "blank
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It's not really moronic; it's deliberate. It's actually quite clever, though in an evil sort of way. The point of that is to satisfy the visceral outrage of their constituents without having to actually address the real problem.
If the politicians did otherwise, they'd be backstabbing the people who got them
Wonderfull Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Put PJ in charge! :)
Hrmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike movies, the guys in high places taking home the multimillion dollar salaries 99% of the time dont get caught. They cover for each other.
Sad fact of life,
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Unlike movies, the guys in high places taking home the multimillion-dollar salaries 99% of the time don't do anything wrong.
Happy fact of capitalism.
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waste of a bullet besides hanging is better (rope is reuseable)
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You may want to switch to a different school.
The Risk (Score:4, Insightful)
As purported owners of 80% of AIG, shouldn't taxpayers also be concerned that the information released could compromise the viability of their investment necessary to regain their lost billions?
I'd love to know what happened but I also want the money they took from me plus an onerous amount of interest. I think the interest will discourage them (and anyone who looks up to their executives as examples of how to rape taxpayers) from repeating their greed/mistakes. Of course what they really deserved was to sink like the anchors they were... Seriously, if you divide the TARP bailout money it comes out to $20,000 per US citizen. My savings and investments can't cover that level of corporate charity disguised as taxes.
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Sure, if you ignore the simple fact that TARP just put a band-aid on. So in the next couple of years we'll get to pay for the real collapse as well.
$2,333 per person to delay and compound something for a few years doesn't seem so wonderful to me.
If gov funded research has to be published why not (Score:3, Informative)
I will say that when they did it for Enron.... (Score:2)
Hell yeah it's a good idea (Score:2)
Which is why it will never, never happen. You'll learn the truth about Roswell and JFK before you see those emails.
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You'll learn the truth about Roswell and JFK before you see those emails.
Wait, JFK landed in a flying saucer in 1947?!? But that means GHW Bush saved the world from alien overlords in '63...
Privacy of customers? (Score:2)
If they can somehow ensure that the identity of the bank's customers will not be released or revealed, then I have no problem with the books being opened.
Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)
We know exactly what happened... a few *idiots* in AIG's derivatives trading department thought they could sell credit default swaps on mortgage backed securities without keeping *anything* in reserve. It's actually a great strategy... unless housing prices go down, in which case you will take huge, mind-boggling losses. Essentially a few people in one department of an otherwise well run institution took down the whole thing by drastically underestimating risk.
Credit default swaps are an insurance product. If you sell them, then you had better keep proper reserves to cover claims AND you had better buy reinsurance in case there is a market downturn. AIG did neither and went kaput.
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We know exactly what happened... a few *idiots* in AIG's derivatives trading department...
Sorry, but I don't buy it. My experience is that idiocy generally starts at the top, but it doesn't really matter. Like the Captain of a ship, the people at the top of a company should be responsible in any case, even if they didn't know.
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Open Source the Whole Industry (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a great idea, but it is POST-crash thinking. That's how prosecutors think: They wait for something bad to happen, see blood in the water and then look for the crime. Certainly this is a part of how regulation must happen.
But, there is an even more powerful, I would say way more powerful, idea lurking behind what they are considering: Why not "open source" the whole industry? For example:
o Have open source analytics that measure risk and values and apply those analytics against firm positions to show aggregate exposures and stress values? The recent "stress tests" that were performed against the banks were generally considering quite weak by industry standards. For example, they were based on single scenarios being applied against option-like positions. And, the scenarios were simply housing and interest rate related but not further defined by prepayment and default models. A full analytics package applied with monte carlo methods would give a much more robust answer of the true risks. Shouldn't we know exactly what exposure all large firms have? If the market has much more information on the risks that various firms are taking, it will be much easier to reward good decisions and punish bad ones.
o Force all firms of a given size to publish their largest counter-party exposures on a daily basis. If I own BAC and they are long AIG, shouldn't I as a shareholder be able to see the exposure? Shouldn't anyone be able to see that, for the benefit of the whole? If you produce enough of the counter-party graph connectedness, the market will have much more information on system stability and be able to punish/reward bad/good decisions.
o Shouldn't we be able to see prices of ALL transactions that occur in the capital markets? This is a pretty simple database: CUSIP, Date/Time, Amount, Price. Currently members of the public can only see corporate and (I believe) muni prices. What about MBS/ABS/CMBS/CDO/CLO etc? Also, for OTC transactions there could be other databases that show counter-parties, etc.
o How about seller transparency in fixed income markets? If an MBS deal is coming to market, shouldn't the buyers get access to all material information the sellers have? This would allow for a market where the buyers can actually price risk without massive information asymmetry.
o Getting back to open source analytics, having such analytics (paid for by the large financial firms and produced by independent modelers) would greatly help the fractured buy-side firms who simply can't otherwise compete with the large firms that develop sophisticated, proprietary analytics.
If you want to open source the capital markets, there are many, many things you could do that are proactive and would lead to much greater transparency and stability.
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Privacy is necessary for modern capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Adam Smith talked about markets with reverence because an open market is a truly free market. When the consumers are able to see the effect of their purchases, they make much better decisions.
The problem with markets today is that they value opaqueness and secrecy above anything else. If a financial institution dared to let any of their investors see the mish mash of VBA slugged excel spreadsheets that are running their lives, they would probably lose half of their customer base overnight. If McDonalds, or
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That's a very interesting observation. I think it's worth mentioning that "consumers" rarely fought for openness; we just want some end product and we want it cheap and immediately. Perhaps if we'd been less intellectually lazy it never would have gotten to this point.
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MBS/ABS/CMBS/CDO/CLO
How many times do we have to go over this? It's GNU/MBS/ABS/CMBS/CDO/CLO...
Wait, what were you talking about?
It is a great idea, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of COURSE it's a good idea (Score:5, Informative)
As many accountants have said: Show me a company who does not get audited, and I will show you fraud.
There are only two options here:
Option1: We the People get ripped off.
Option2: We the People are allowed to see exactly where OUR money went.
All other options are Option 1 in disguise.
Wasn't this technique used already (Score:2, Interesting)
Open source "investigation" (Score:2, Insightful)
Will be a fun test of sovreign immunity (Score:2)
Not clear on what the problem is (Score:2)
It's a start (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no doubt that there is a lot of dirty stuff in those emails, so releasing them would be good.
Since clearly not everything could be released (HIPPA stuff, personal bank account numbers, etc.), this raises the question of who would remove the private information, and whether they could be trusted. Clearly, if this was done by AIG, an amazing amount of stuff would presumably be declared personal and private and not for release.
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I have no doubt that there is a lot of dirty stuff in those emails, so releasing them would be good.
Why should anything be released? I wasn't aware that the money was given (not loaned) with any expectations in mind. Else we'd be able to bypass considerable Constitutional and judicial restrictions on law enforcement search and seizure by giving someone a token amount of public funds and then claiming the right to search based on the fact that they now receive public funds.
not only (Score:4, Insightful)
not only is it a great idea, it should have been a requirement before the bailout.
Great success! (Score:2)
After all the fanfare and comradery inspired by P.J. of Groklaw fame, we need to ask whether this is a good idea? It's an EXCELLENT idea. Many eyeballs make a heap of problems very shallow, to coin a phrase from Richard Stallman's work.
This is an insidious suggestion. (Score:4, Insightful)
While it is certainly easy to suggest something like this for those evil people at AIG, it presupposes that those good prosecutors and men at law that would protect us from such evil themselves are actually good. In truth the situation is much more grey than that. Firstly consider that many prosecutors in the country are elected and the prosecutorial policy is originates in the politics of the various office holders. Are politicians so indifferent to their own self interest that such a policy as being proposed by the article could be executed in good faith? Of course not. Politicians, and those that serve at them, are as notorious as any 'fat cat' in using their position and power to their own benefit at the expense of the others. All this policy does is feed a sort of populist anger that garners political support for those that suggest it and at the expense of real justice for the small minority that it targets... regardless of their past transgressions. One should remember that enshrining rights, such as prohibitions against search and seizure without convincing a court, exist largely to protect minorities from majority exploitation.
The real sin in the AIG case, to be fair, was not any action of AIG at all. It was that we bought into the bogus notion that a firm can be 'too big too fail' and must be bailout out by Government. AIG made bad judgments and bad investments and its owners (shareholders, including big investment banks) allowed it to be managed poorly. The company should have been allowed to fail, something all those involved earned. What we did instead was reward the foolish risk taking made by the shareholders and the managers and, worse still, told future generations of shareholders and managers that taking these risks is OK... the government will bail you out if you lose so there really is no risk at all... you're too big too fail. Let em fail! Stop taking my savings, diluting my money, borrowing on my behalf to save businesses that by all rights have earned their failure (including all those that chose to have a business relationship). There are other insurance companies, there are other investment banks, and there are others capable of filling the gap responsibly. Sure none of them have such good friends as Geithner, Paulson, Obama, & Bush... but they can rise to the occassion.
Privacy violation ! (Score:2)
Those emails were made under certain expectations of privacy and confidentiality -- that they would be read by the recepients and authorized corporate officers/audit. To dump them to the public is a gross violation of those employees rights and shareholder rights -- the minority shareholders _do_ have rights.
Look at what happens in criminal searches and civil discovery -- anything that does not make it into evidence (much is disputed and requires judge's rulings) re
with a license to kill (Score:2)
Grandstander Eliot Spitzer thinks its a good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Audit the --- FED --- FIRST!! (Score:3, Informative)
And here's the way it'll happen:
Support Ron Paul's bill http://www.auditthefed.com/ [auditthefed.com] and http://www.campaignforliberty.com/ [campaignforliberty.com]
Why audit smalltime thieves when we could be coming after the GREATEST financial criminals this far into human history!!!
They stole trillions from us and wont tell us what they did with the money.
Paulson+Geitner+Berspankme=Criminal (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two time frames which require serious investigation. The first is the period Sept 10-Sept 17. What was said in these meetings? Who was there? It is not even entirely clear that AIG would have failed so spectacularly had they been allowed (as proposed by NYS) to tap into some of the excess liquidity of the subs. AIG, similar to Lehmans, was all about liquidity and the lack of access to short term lending facilities. The marks that the CDS portfolio was set to take that quarter were survivable. The cash crunch came from the securities lending side as well as some debatable collateral calls by the likes of Goldmans. The government then decided to effectively do eniment domain on AIG - taking it from its shareholders (80%, they would have done 100% if law permitted) and making it a conduit to funnel money into other institutions. There was never any serious consideration given to assisting AIG, either through relaxed regulation or temporary bridge financing (public or some mixture private/public) at rates similar to those given other institutions which were far, far less punative..
Second, the time period when Treasury decided to force AIG to pay par on the CDS held by many of the counterparts, even though they were not entitled to par as most, if not all, the underlying CDOs had not yet entered default. Even so, CDS held by other institutions *never* paid at par, even when underlying bonds/structures had legitimately defaulted. It was not uncommon to only receive 65 or 70c on the dollar. Yet AIG was forced to make whole a slew of counterparts who at the least should have taken a sizable haircut if not been made to go to court to enforce their agreements if AIG had violated any of the terms.
Instead, not only did the government via Paulson/Geitner/Bernanke pay off the likes of Goldmans and Deutche, they hosed the US tax payer as well as the shareholders of AIG. Some may object to the last but consider that all the above events, particularly those in early September, amounted to the pilfering of the AIG shareholders too. Yes, they may ultimately have lost everything but the way things went down was a sham.
Re:Superheroes (Score:4, Interesting)
A corporation's, or any other authority's "right to privacy" should be much more limited than it is. And even more obviously, we shouldn't be giving it rights as a person. What an absurd concept! But since we always try to put a human face on everything, from god on down, it seems inevitable. And vigilantism becomes inevitable when the confines of the law aren't applied equally and the system breaks down.
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If the entity is owned by the public, good. Everyone in it should be terrified to screw up and those not willing to be professional need shitcanning.
Let them live under military discipline, which would be appropriate for all sectors of government. Military discipline wouldn't cure everything, but
civilians have no discipline and it's amazing they can function at all. I'm not saying to actually militarise the government, just amend the Federal
code so government employees serve under a mirror system (including
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There's a great scene in The Dancer Upstairs when the the military steps in, takes control, and creates a giant traffic jam.
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That's what they do whenever you point out that this was an engineered, deliberate economic crisis. Or that fiat currency based on fractional reserve banking is inherently unsustainable and absolutely must have an ever-growing amount of debt attached to it. I think the people who are capable of realizing the truth of these things have already done so, and an at
Re:Will this be like the CRU emails? (Score:5, Informative)
Another Zeitgeist victim. Here's a tip; read a book on basic finance. Better yet, just read a book. Any book. The Great Crash. Animal Farm. I don't care. Stop getting your information from YouTube and the odd polemical internet site.
Every single one of the arguments applied to "fiat money" can be just as easily applied to supposed "hard currencies" like gold. Remember, when gold or platinum or what have you is mined out of the ground, from a currency standpoint, that's exactly equivalent to some new dollar bills being printed. Dollars, euros and yen are worth money because they are (relatively) rare. It has sweet FA to do with debt. The circulation money has nothing to do with debt levels. Debt is not "created" by printing bills or mining metals. Debt is created when people spend more than they earn; which is what western society has been doing economically for 20 or more years. We'd be in debt if we used fiat money, the bren-whatever gold muck-about, or else just traded in bottlecaps.
And brainless fools require someone to pre-digest their information into a pseudo-intellectual web-video so it can be masticated into their waiting mouths. Learn to chew.
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