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- Superior Biotechnology Leads to Superior Drugs
- The Delusion of Regulating Risk
- Talk of a Greek Exit Gets Louder
- Doug Casey on Taxes and Freedom, Part II
- Is Facebook the Rusty Hinge of the Stock Market?
- Fitch Downgrades Japan
- Doug Casey on Taxes and Freedom
- Greeks Run on Banks as Euro-Confidence Wanes
- To the Class of 2012
Senate passes insider-trading bill
Washington (CNN) — Aiming to restore voters’ faith in Congress, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill Thursday that makes clear it’s illegal for members of Congress, their staffs and many executive-branch employees to trade stocks and other securities based on inside information learned on the job.
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which President Barack Obama has urged Congress to approve, passed 96-3.
The bill states that insider trading is criminal and requires public disclosure online of any trades within 30 days of a transaction. It was aimed initially just at Capitol Hill. However, Republicans clamored for the inclusion of executive-branch employees.
“The same standards should apply to the White House and the executive agencies that spend hundreds of billions of dollars at the president’s direction,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.
Obama, referring to his State of the Union address, said in a statement: “Last week, I called on Congress to pass a bill that makes clear that Members of Congress may not engage in insider trading. … So I’m pleased the Senate took bipartisan action to pass the STOCK Act. I urge the House of Representatives to pass this bill, and I will sign it right away.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, issued a statement after the Senate vote saying the House may take up the STOCK Act next week.
“We will quickly review the entire bill and the amendments that were added today to ensure that public servants, whether in the legislative or executive branch, do not personally profit from insider information. It is critical that the bill we send to the president guarantees that the same rules apply to those in the federal government as they do to everyone else,” Cantor said in the statement.
Senators approved an amendment by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, that Republicans said would require about 28,000 senior executive-branch employees to abide by the new disclosures. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Connecticut, a key backer of the bill, opposed the provision, warning its reach could be far broader. He said it would affect as many as 300,000 federal workers, including “drivers (and) secretaries.”
Lieberman wanted to include only about 2,000 of the most senior executive-branch employees — those “who hold positions most equivalent to those of us in Congress who are policymakers,” he said.
Shelby said his approach “creates parity, fairness and true transparency.”
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$1.2 Billion ‘Vaporized’ Under Obama Bundler Jon Corzine’s ‘Leadership’ at MF Global
Former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine had little trouble finding $500,000 in his role as a top Obama campaign bundler, but locating the missing $1.2 billion in customer funds he oversaw as the head of MF Global funds is proving far more difficult–impossible even, reports the Wall Street Journal.
A person close to the investigation told The Journal that a “significant amount” of customers’ money appears to have “vaporized”:
Nearly three months after MF Global Holdings Ltd. collapsed, officials hunting for an estimated $1.2 billion in missing customer money increasingly believe that much of it might never be recovered, according to people familiar with the investigation.
As the sprawling probe that includes regulators, criminal and congressional investigators, and court-appointed trustees grinds on, the findings so far suggest that a “significant amount” of the money could have “vaporized” as a result of chaotic trading at MF Global during the week before the company’s Oct. 31 bankruptcy filing, said a person close to the investigation.
Many officials now believe certain employees at MF Global dipped into the “customer segregated account” that the New York company was supposed to keep separate from its own assets—and then used the money to meet demands for more collateral or to unfreeze assets at banks and other counterparties as they grew more concerned about their financial exposure to MF Global.
During a House hearing in December, Mr. Corzine said he “doesn’t know” where the $1.2 billion went or is.
Romney Parks Millions in Cayman Islands
Although it is not apparent on his financial disclosure form, Mitt Romney has millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven.
A spokesperson for the Romney campaign says Romney follows all tax laws and he would pay the same in taxes regardless of where the funds are based.
As the race for the Republican nomination heats up, Mitt Romney is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a shroud of secrecy around the details about his vast personal wealth, including, as ABC News has discovered, his investment in funds located offshore and his ability to pay a lower tax rate.
“His personal finances are a poster child of what’s wrong with the American tax system,” said Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who is an authority on tax enforcement and offshore banking.
On Tuesday, Romney disclosed that he has been paying a far lower percentage in taxes than most Americans, around 15 percent of his annual earnings. It has been Romney’s Republican rivals who have driven the tax issue onto center stage. For weeks, Romney has cited a desire for privacy as his reason for not sharing his tax returns — a gesture of transparency that is now expected from presidential contenders.
“I can tell you we follow the tax laws,” he said recently while on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. “And if there’s an opportunity to save taxes, we like anybody else in this country will follow that opportunity.”
But tax experts tell ABC News there are other reasons Romney may not want the public viewing his returns. As one of the wealthiest candidates to run for president in recent times, Romney has used a variety of techniques to help minimize the taxes on his estimated $250 million fortune. In addition to paying the lower tax rate on his investment income, Romney has as much as $8 million invested in at least 12 funds listed on a Cayman Islands registry. Another investment, which Romney reports as being worth between $5 million and $25 million, shows up on securities records as having been domiciled in the Caymans.
Official documents reviewed by ABC News show that Bain Capital, the private equity partnership Romney once ran, has set up some 138 secretive offshore funds in the Caymans.
Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks
(Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who’s Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.
The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington’s biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.
Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.
Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn’t brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.
The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks’ offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.
In recent weeks the Justice Department has come under renewed pressure from members of Congress, state and local officials and homeowners’ lawyers to open a wide-ranging criminal investigation of mortgage servicers, the biggest of which have been Covington clients. So far Justice officials haven’t responded publicly to any of the requests.
While Holder and Breuer were partners at Covington, the firm’s clients included the four largest U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co – as well as at least one other bank that is among the 10 largest mortgage servicers.
Author Schweizer: Pelosi Made Killing Off of Most In-Demand IPO in History
As Congress weighs a measure that would ban insider trading among lawmakers and federal workers, the conservative author whose book touched off a national maelstrom on the topic, insists that the practice rises to the level of corruption.
“There’s no question about it. We are supposed to be a country governed by laws, not by men,” charges conservative author Peter Schweizer in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV.
A research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Schweizer chronicles alleged abuses by members of both the House and the Senate in his new book, “Throw Them All Out,” which was heavily featured on “60 Minutes” with reporter Steve Kroft going after leaders of the two parties in the House on camera.
The Corruption Continues…
Is the Great Correction still underway? Yes it is! The Wall Street Journal reports:
Consumers continued to cut debt levels in the third quarter, largely as they pulled back from the housing market again, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported Monday.
For the most recent quarter, overall debt loads for households fell 0.6% from the prior quarter, for a drop of around $60 billion to $11.66 trillion. The bank said mortgage balances recorded on consumer credit reports fell by 1.3%, or $114 billion, while home equity lines increase by 2.3%. The retreat in mortgage borrowings was the primary driver of the overall drop in consumer borrowing.
Hey, wait. If the central bankers are printing money, why should consumers continue to cut back?
Ah…glad you asked. The central banks are bailing out speculators, bankers, and the feds…not households. The money only reluctantly gets to the consumer level…or not at all.
Instead, the rich get richer…courtesy of a corrupt money system. They get bailed out of their mistakes…and handed a lot of money they don’t deserve.
And the poor? Do they get richer simply because the central banks coddle bondholders? Do the bondholders set up factories and provide middle-skill jobs? Do the speculators invent new industries? Do the insiders set up small businesses and build companies that create new wealth?
