Goldman, Morgan Stanley And JP Morgan Named In Commodity Manipulation Investigation

[malaise]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2014/11/19/goldman-morgan-stanley-and-jp-morgan-named-in-commodity-manipulation-investigation/
<snip>
A two-year investigation conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has accused Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley MS -0.25% and JP Morgan of manipulating commodity prices. In a nearly-400 page report released Wednesday evening, the subcommittee says that these banks have become “heavily involved with” the commodities markets and increasing risks to financial stability, industry and consumers.

The results of the investigation contain new details about Goldman, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley’s management of aluminum warehouses, details that the Senate committee says raise new questions about whether the banks harmed businesses and consumers and manipulated the markets.

The subcommittee will hold a two-day hearing this week to hear testimonies from bank officials as well as experts and regulators.

“Wall Street’s massive involvement in physical commodities puts our economy, our manufacturers and the integrity of our markets at risk,” senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the subcommittee’s chairman, said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “It’s time to restore the separation between banking and commerce and to prevent Wall Street from using nonpublic information to profit at the expense of industry and consumers.”

[hifiguy]

1. Break them up, smash them to atoms

and hang/jail all of the top executives. Come to think of it, nothing says "knock it off, assholes" like a bloody head on a pike, so perhaps a public guillotining on Wall $treet would be a more appropriate punishment

[malaise]

5. Personally I'd walk them to a ledge and say

[hifiguy]

8. That works too!

Can we put a few beds of nails at the landing spots?

[malaise]

11. And then heat them

[Odin2005]

37. I say bring out Le Guillotine.

[KoKo]

2. They Laugh in Our Faces! They Poke Us in Our Eyes!

How many fines will this give them? They will NEVER be Held Accountable...just "Pay the Fine" ...and "You Won't Do the Time."

How much more can our System of Government take this Blatent Criminality that Goes Unpunished?

[hifiguy]

4. These pigs factor in the "fines" as a cost of doing their evil business.

I still like the idea of heads on pikes.

[malaise]

7. Until they pay dearly this madness will continue

That said the banks own way too many politicians

[hifiguy]

9. Like Harry Truman said back in '48

They love the government so much they want to buy it lock, stock and barrel.

[irisblue]

3. all I want for Christmas is to see the CEOs do a perp walk

(like that will ever happen)

[malaise]

14. I want more

I'd like to see them jump.

[calimary]

26. I want even more.

Anybody got a guillotine? In the middle of Times Square. What if the consequences were THAT serious? And you CAN'T write it off, and you CAN'T throw money at more politicians, and you CAN'T move people around to hide them or assign them somewhere else out of the heat and call it some fancy-ass, focus-group-tested different name. Think that'd be a deterrent, for once?

[malaise]

27. I'm not a fan of the death penalty but they really need to learn

a severe lesson and that sure would be a deterrent - for a few years.

[nikto]

31. Back in the day...

Drawing-and-quartering always was a dependable crowd-pleaser.







I say,
stick with the hits.

[calimary]

36. There's also stocks and pillories.

You know those wooden things that were erected in the Town Square? Where someone would be placed in public shame-display - caught between two pieces of wood with three holes cut in it, each piece of wood with half-holes. Their hands stuck through two small holes on either side of a larger hole. In the larger hole went their heads. And then the two pieces of wood were locked together to imprison the hapless punishee in place for full exposure to public derision and scorn and rotten-tomato-throwing. And they were made to stand there in that bent-over position, for whatever length of time was their sentence for various kinds of schmuckery.

Although I don't think that's a bad enough penalty for some of these assholes. Heck, for MOST of these assholes!

[edhopper]

6. They had a great chance

to deal with these assholes after the collapse. Obama decided to get in bed with them instead and have them control the economy further.

[hifiguy]

13. Which is Obama's single greatest failing as POTUS

and it is an unforgivable one, IMO.

[FiveGoodMen]

20. I think the decision was made a lot sooner

I think the way to the White House was pretty well paved for him by parties that knew they could count on his cooperation.

[Autumn]

10. Was this before or after Jamie was given Presidential cuff links from the White House?

The cool ones he flashed at the Senate hearings the last time they talked to him? Hmmmm........ Interesting.

[rhett o rick]

12. I hope this amounts to something but I expect it to be another joke. nm

[Octafish]

15. Hey! They do it with money, too. It's like a hose with a crimp.

With the financial scams coming down many in number and fast in speed, it's understandable why so few remember LIBOR, let alone understand what it meant for the US and global economies.

[malaise]

16. Sadly people do not pay attention

to those who create the most pain in their lives.

[Octafish]

21. It's the unseen bullwhip of today's master race, er, masters of the universe...

Their Profit is Our Loss

The Dark Heart of the Libor Scandal

by MARK VORPAHL
CounterPunch, August 07, 2012

Though, for most, the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate (Libor) interest rate fixing scandal appears to be distant and far too complex to understand, its potential consequences may be as economically devastating as a world war.

The Libor is used to set payments on $800 trillion worth of financial instruments. It sets the prices that people and corporations pay for loans and receive for savings. Given that the fraud impacted $10 trillion in consumer loans, the Libor scandal will likely leave a long list of previous financial scandals that contributed to the Great Recession look like child’s play.

It also pulls back the curtain on the mechanisms behind the world economy, its anti-social priorities, its willingness to gamble away the future of billions of people, and the government’s collusion in these operations. The Libor scandal reveals that the “invisible hand” Adam Smith spoke of in explaining how a capitalist economy regulates itself has been transformed into the trained hand of a swindler.

SNIP...

Barclays Bank is just the tip of the iceberg. In several countries, 20 big banks are under investigation, including such behemoths as Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, RBS and UBS.

Current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Chairman Ben Bernanke have had to defend the Fed’s response when it first became aware of the fraud in 2008. While Geithner said he was “aggressive” in expressing his concerns, this on-going scandal did not come to light until four years later.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/07/the-dark-heart-of-the-libor-scandal/

[malaise]

22. They should all be in prison

and those who removed regulations should not escape either.
Whether some like it or not Bill Clinton continued more than a few of Reagan's policies and helped to fugg up the country big time.

[nikto]

32. It's just too complicated and boring for the average person to want to think about

[redruddyred]

35. you mean those goddamn welfare recipients?

</joke>

[Rex]

29. BAIL EM OUT BAIL EM OUT!

You know the mafia has to be so jealous of Wall Street. Nobody ever sat on Alan Greenspan.

[malaise]

33. That's the truth

[Rex]

34. Al Capone would be looking for a way to get his 'cut' in derivatives.

[Jackpine Radical]

17. It gets all this official attention because it's the rich stealing from the rich.

We must always remember that the Corporate State is not monolithic. It is composed of internally writhing and competing economic behemoths, each with its share of purhased judges and politicians.

In the case of the rich stealing from the poor, of course, there has been little attention or prosecution for the perpetrators in the past few decades. And even worse in the Obama years!

[malaise]

23. The stealing from the poor is more like a heist

It is stealing on steroids.

You're right - this was stealing from the rich

[Fred Sanders]

18. Hire the Iceland prosecutors, they are almost done with the banking crime jailings there.

[malaise]

19. Ding ding we have a winner

You see where there's a will there's a way.

[TRoN33]

24. Doesn't matter. Nobody are going to jail.

This isn't even near the level of Madoff.

[valerief]

25. I predict a flurry, I say, a flurry of sternly worded letters as punishment.

Oh, wait, they stole from the rich this time? Well, that's a horse of a different color.

[Rex]

28. SHIT!!! HURRY UP AND BAIL THEM OUT FOR A FEW TRILLION DOLLARS! GO GO GO!

FREEDUMB is at stake!

'Wall Street' now means a legitimate way to commit organized crime and get rewarded for it. You know the mafia has to be saying WTF why didn't we think of it first?

[Segami]

30. These crooks have options...

[spanone]

38. k&r...

[Odin2005]

39. LOL, Wall Street OWNS Obama, nothing will happen.