By Pam Martens: April 27, 2012  Jon Corzine, former CEO of MF Global, the financial firm that collapsed with a $1.6 billion hole in customer accounts, has wealth, a top criminal attorney, and political clout in Washington.  But there’s another lesser known John in the MF Global story who is proving himself to be a tenacious thorn in the side of the former U.S. Senator and Governor from New Jersey.   John Roe has what Jon Corzine should fear most: he’s an industry executive and former insider at the predecessor firm of MF Global — Refco, Inc. — and understands how its accounting technology works.  He’s not buying the “official” story that $1.6 billion of customer money just innocently fell into the wrong hands during the last week of the firm’s existence.  Since MF Global filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 31, 2011, Roe has led a whirlwind assault on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 21, 2012 MF Global’s Regulators Take the Oath Before Congress; They Have Yet to Explain What Happened to $1.6 Billion of Customer Funds The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will hold a hearing on Tuesday, April 24, to seek answers on how a brokerage firm teetering toward bankruptcy misplaced $1.6 billion of customer funds – funds that by law must be held in accounts that are segregated from the firm’s own money. Thus far, since December, Congress has held five hearings with no clarity emerging on precisely where the money is or who is responsible for dipping in to customer funds.  The firm is MF Global, whose Chairman, CEO and Debt Trader in Chief, was Jon Corzine.  Corzine took the helm at MF Global in March 2010 and blew it up just 19 months later with a spectacularly ill-conceived bet on $8.1 billion … Continue reading →

April 16, 2012 An event honoring Judy Mione, Wall Street veteran and activist for women’s equality in the male dominated field of securities trading will be hosted by her daughter, Lynn Mione, on April 23 on Long Island, New York.  Judy Mione, who died last year following a long battle with breast cancer, was a lead plaintiff in the high profile Federal lawsuit against the New York Stock Exchange, National Association of Securities Dealers and the retail brokerage firm, Smith Barney.  The suit forced out of the shadows Wall Street’s private justice system known as mandatory arbitration and its pivotal role in keeping Wall Street’s misdeeds hidden from public view in open courtrooms.  (Both the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers were successful in removing themselves as parties to the suit.)  The lawsuit became infamously known as the “Boom Boom Room” case following media saturation … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 19, 2012 The muppets are in revolt against their masters.  No, I don’t mean customers of Wall Street’s big firms.  I’m speaking of corporate media muppets.  Greg Smith lit a match and now there are smoldering embers dangerously burning at Bloomberg Views and Forbes. Smith is the 33-year old derivatives executive at Goldman, Sachs & Co. who published his blistering resignation letter on the OpEd page of the New York Times.  According to Smith, managing directors at Goldman call their clients muppets and openly speak about “ripping their clients off.”  Smith said the environment at the firm is “as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.” The OpEd was published on Wednesday, March 14, and went viral on the internet.  Next came a mesmerizing look at the underbelly of crony capitalism.  The Mayor of the city that sent its police in the dead of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 12, 2012 The oil billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, are adept at planning ahead.  In 1984, the Kochs formed Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation with Richard Fink and Jay Humphreys.  After CSE received too much publicity suggesting it was just a front for corporate interests,  the Koch brothers changed the foundation’s name to Americans for Prosperity in 2004.  By 2009, planning ahead for the midterm elections in 2010,  Koch money, through Americans for Prosperity, was sluicing through the  “grassroots” campaign called the Tea Party. Watch the video as David Koch stands before a crowd of Tea Party leaders (reporting to him on their progress) and explains how he and his brother, Charles, provided the start up funds and are so proud of the results. Now, in an effort to make good on their promise of launching the  “mother of all wars” to take the White House in the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 27, 2012 Tomorrow, St. Martin’s Press releases the new book by Wall Street writer, Gary Weiss: Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul.    This book is critical to understanding the dangerous nexus of corporate financing of radical capitalism (deregulation and privatization) and nonprofit front groups.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that the fate of this country hangs in the balance.  Consider this excerpt from the book, quoting Yaron Brook, the head of the corporate financed Ayn Rand Institute. (The Associate General Counsel of Goldman, Sachs & Co., Arline Mann,  co-chairs the Institute.)  “I think in fifteen years, Ayn Rand will be everywhere…She’ll be taught, her standards, in many universities. She’ll be in a significant proportion of high school English classes. Her ideas will be debated on television, in classrooms, and in the public forums. It will be hard to escape, not so much … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 20, 2012 Beginning on the evening of February 8 and throughout the next two days, every newsroom in those expensive media real estate offices was running with the government press release that the  $25 billion agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and 49 state attorneys general was a “foreclosure” settlement.  Turns out, it was a “mortgage fraud settlement” made before the public could be informed of the depths of the mortgage fraud and how it was collusively perpetrated.  Here’s a sampling of how the story was spun.  (Italic emphasis added.)  Feb. 8 (New York Times) “…It is part of a broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market’s downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses.”  Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) – “Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and three other U.S. banks reached a $25 billion settlement with 49 states and the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 16, 2012 Occupy the SEC, an affiliated group to Occupy Wall Street, has filed a 325 page comment letter on the SEC’s proposal for implementing rules pertaining to Wall Street’s practice of trading billions of dollars for the accounts of the firm (proprietary trading) rather than limiting their trading to benefit their customers.  The rule is called the Volcker Rule, after its namesake, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. The SEC and Wall Street want to carve out market making from the prohibitions against proprietary trading.  Here’s an excerpt from Occupy the SEC’s letter that has to be causing a lot of indigestion on Wall Street this week.   Market making is an indispensable component of liquid, efficient markets. This service, however, simply does not belong in banks. One of the most challenging aspects of our attempt to digest and comment on this Proposed Rule has been navigating the presupposition that banks have some … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 10, 2012 Another press representative from a state attorney general who played a key role in negotiating the foreclosure settlement (see post below) says there is not really $14 billion missing from the foreclosure settlement.  The difference between the $25 billion settlement reported by the United States Department of Justice, and every major business newspaper, and the cumulative total of $39 billion being reported by the 49 individual states is – drum roll – hypothetical money.  That’s right, according to this source, the foreclosure fraud that has caused more economic misery to families than any other event since the Great Depression, is being settled with $14 billion of  hypothetical money – not like the real money from the taxpayers to bail out these same institutions – but hypothetical money.  The hypothetical part is explained as the difference between what the Wall Street firms will have to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 10, 2012 Why is it that whenever Wall Street and Washington are involved, money disappears?  Even under the noses of the Department of Justice and 49 State Attorneys General, there’s $14 billion missing from the foreclosure settlement announced yesterday. The deal that Wall Street agreed to, announced by the DOJ and reported widely by corporate media, is a $25 billion deal encompassing 49 states.  But just two of those states say they will get $26.4 billion – sounding very Madoffesque or MF Globalesque or Enronesque or pick from a myriad of choices in the last decade.  California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris states on her web site and in this video that California is getting $18 billion.  Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi says on her web site that Florida is receiving $8.4 billion.   It gets more interesting.  If you go to each of the 49 state attorneys general web … Continue reading →