Let’s hope that Goldman and other financial firms that skirted the edge of the law (and beyond) get what they deserve – or at least some meaningful restrictions on their freedom to socialize their losses.

Goldman’s "Fabulous" Fab’s conflicted love letters

People walk past revolving doors of the Goldman Sachs headquarters in lower Manhattan, April 7, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fabrice Tourre and his girlfriend talked like a couple very much in love.

They emailed back and forth about how they wanted to curl up in each other’s arms and how they looked forward to tender moments together. Tourre, a Goldman Sachs bond trader, also wrote in the emails of the impending collapse of the subprime mortgage market and how he was masterminding ways at Goldman to make money from it.

Little did they know that three years later these very personal emails written through Tourre’s Goldman Sachs e-mail account would become part of one of the biggest investigations into the subsequent financial crisis.

In the email exchanges between Tourre and his girlfriend, Marine Serres, Tourre comes off as a young, hotshot trader who foresaw the subprime meltdown while still selling shoddy subprime-backed products so prolifically he could peddle them to "widows and orphans."

But Tourre — the only individual the Securities and Exchange Commission charged in its fraud case against the firm — also seems ethically conflicted.

"Anyway, not feeling too guilty about this, the real purpose of my job is to make capital markets more efficient and ultimately provide the U.S. consumer with more efficient ways to leverage and finance himself, so there is a humble, noble and ethical reason for my job amazing how good I am in convincing myself !!!" Tourre said in an e-mail to Serres in January 2007.

That portion of the e-mail reflecting Tourre’s conflicted views on his role in the subprime meltdown immediately followed another part of the e-mail that the SEC released in its complaint earlier this month.

The SEC’s complaint only included Tourre referring to himself as "fabulous Fab" and talking about "standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!"

The SEC left out Tourre’s ethical musings in its complaint.

Goldman Sachs released the Tourre emails over the weekend as it readies for its appearance before a Senate panel on Tuesday. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and Tourre are scheduled to testify, along with other former and current executives.

The collection of e-mails also show that Tourre was not the only person at Goldman with confidence the subprime market was doomed.

Daniel Sparks, a former head of the mortgages department at Goldman, is also expected to testify on Tuesday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

"According to Sparks, that business is totally dead, and the poor little subprime borrowers will not last so long!!!" Tourre wrote in a March 7, 2007, email to his girlfriend.

Tourre — who refers to Serres at one point as a "super-smart French girl in London" — also tells her about selling to unwitting investors the type of synthetic collateralized debt obligation, or CDO, at the center of the SEC case.

The SEC charges that Tourre and Goldman fraudulently marketed an "Abacus" CDO by hiding vital information from investors, including the role that hedge fund Paulson & Co played in picking mortgage products tied to the CDO. Paulson & Co betted against the CDO.

"Just made it to the country of your favorite clients!!! I’m managed (sic) to sell a few abacus bonds to widow and orphans that I ran into at the airport, apparently these Belgians adore synthetic abs cdo2," Tourre wrote in June 2007.

Earlier in 2007, in an e-mail to a friend, Tourre shares his fears that the product he helped create is crumbling — and he has a sense of humor about it.

"It’s bizarre I have the sensation of coming each day to work and re-living the same agony – a little like a bad dream that repeats itself," Tourre writes. "In sum, I’m trading a product which a month ago was worth $100 and which today is only worth $93 and which on average is losing 25 cents a day …That doesn’t seem like a lot but when you take into account that we buy and sell these things that have nominal amounts that are worth billions, well it adds up to a lot of money."

He added, "When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: "Well, what if we created a "thing", which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?") it sickens the heart to see it shot down in mid-flight… It’s a little like Frankenstein turning against his own inventor "

Tourre, 28 when he wrote the emails, reflects on the strangeness of being so young, yet being in such a critical role with pressures from those above him at the firm to make money.

"… I am now considered a "dinosaur" in this business (at my firm the average longevity of an employee is about 2-3 years!!!) people ask me about career advice. I feel like I’m losing my mind and I’m only 28!!! OK, I’ve decided two more years of work and I’m retiring."

(Reporting by Steve Eder in New York and Karey Wutkowski in Washington; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Barry Ritholz:

The Daily Show just kills it in this piece on Corporate fraud.

If you haven’t seen it, its must viewing.

By giving the big banks every possible bailout with no concern for cost to taxpayers, Geithner, Summers, and Fed Chairman Bernanke, ignited a firestorm of popular anger – much of which got directed toward Obama – and rightfully so.

Volcker, who was initially appointed as Fed Chairman by President Carter but whose real influence came under Reagan, broke the back of the growing inflation of the 1960’s (that doubled prices in that decade) by raising short-term interest rates to unprecedented levels. This was the opposite of the zero-interest rate policy of Bernanke – and the effects on bank profits was opposite also. In the end, though, Volcker came to be regarded by the financial community as a hero.

Volcker has been a strong critic of letting banks get too big to fail and using that status to take risks that imperial financial stability of the world – with the banks reaping the upside and taxpayer and savers bearing all the downsides.

Let’s hope this is just the first round

Financial Regulation

Bank plan highlight’s Volcker’s new clout

Fri Jan 22, 2010 3:35pm EST

Related News

* Volcker had been outspoken on "too big to fail" concern

* Ex-Fed chief consulting about bank plan with lawmakers

By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) – When President Barack Obama launched a fight with Wall Street by announcing a new U.S. plan to limit banks’ size, the man standing at his side was former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

Volcker’s new clout on the White House economic team was on full display as the 6-foot-7-inch longtime adviser took the choice spot next to Obama, who named his proposal to restrict bank trading activities "the Volcker Rule."

The 6-foot-1 Obama referred to Volcker as "this tall guy behind me."

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and senior economic adviser Lawrence Summers — who attended the announcement but at a greater distance from the president — still wield a tremendous amount of power.

Volcker, who commands respect on Wall Street and among both Democrats and Republicans, is seeing a resurgence of his influence after venting frustrations to friends that he had been left out in the cold when it came to economic decision-making at the White House.

The 82-year-old Volcker was one of Obama’s most influential advisers during his 2008 presidential campaign and now chairs a panel of outside economic advisers to the White House.

He had rarely been seen in Washington since the start of the Obama administration and made no secret of a difference in opinion with the White House over how to deal with the problem of "too big to fail" financial firms.

Volcker’s fear, shared by some other economists, is that newly consolidated U.S. banks might engage in reckless behavior on the belief that the government would never allow them to fail because of their sheer size. Such risky activity could put the financial system at risk of another crisis, these economists say.

CLOUT

Asked by the New York Times in October about reports he was losing influence with the Obama White House, Volcker retorted that he "did not have influence to start with."

That made Volcker’s presence at the announcement all the more significant to underscoring Obama’s commitment to push the new regulatory approach that Wall Street appears set to fiercely oppose.

"Volcker being there was huge," said Simon Johnson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

The bank announcement elated many of Obama’s liberal supporters, who have welcomed his tougher rhetoric in recent weeks toward the banking executives he referred to in December as "fat cats."

Geithner and Summers, who worked together at Treasury during the Clinton administration, have been criticized by some liberal supporters of Obama and view them as too cozy with Wall Street.

Legislation in 1999 tearing down the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law separating commercial and investment banking passed under their watch. Obama’s new bank rules would not bring back Glass-Steagall but would revive its spirit.

Volcker, who has been consulting on Capitol Hill about Obama’s bank proposal, could be an asset to the administration in selling the proposal, said Johnson, who shared Volcker’s frustrations that the administration had not moved earlier to limit the size of banks, which get an implicit subsidy in the form of federal deposit insurance.

"Volcker carries a cache that is unparalleled," said Johnson, noting the former central banker’s role in breaking the back of double-digit inflation in the early 1980s — a victory that came despite a huge popular backlash against the economic pain brought on by his interest-rate increases.

RIFT WITH GEITHNER?

In an indication of a possible rift, financial industry sources told Reuters on Thursday of some reservations Geithner had expressed behind the scenes about the new bank plan, which was not included in the original plan on financial regulatory reform that the administration unveiled last June.

Administration officials, while noting the importance of Volcker’s role, insisted the decision to go forward with the plan was unanimous.

Geithner and Summers worked closely with Volcker late last year on it and had largely finalized it by late December. They put the finishing touches on it on Jan. 13.

Aides said Obama personally felt strongly about moving ahead on curbs on the banks, in part because of concerns about risk-taking by banks after they returned to profitability in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial meltdown.

White House officials played down any talk of Geithner and Summers losing influence.

A trademark of Obama’s management style, which was apparent during the deliberations over his Afghanistan strategy, is to encourage the airing of dissenting views and then to work with his advisers to arrive at a consensus.

"He is concerned to make sure that he’s exposed to all points of view," Summers told a small group of reporters in a briefing last week when asked to describe Obama’s decision-making process. "So he wants to hear disagreement with things that he has said or advisers who have different perspectives to share those differing perspectives."

Also emerging as a bigger player in shaping economic policy is Vice President Joseph Biden, who devoted much of his time last year to helping to oversee the $787 billion stimulus program that Obama signed into law last February.

Biden feels "passionately about the same set of problems" of firms becoming too big to fail and helped to shape the proposal on banks, said one White House official.

(Editing by Howard Goller)

Perhaps the best news of all  is that he had Paul Volcker at his side when he made the announcement. More on this on the following post.

Investment sources clearly sees Obama’s new initiative as a serious threat to the financial sector and thereby the inflated values of stocks, sending the market down sharply two days in a row.  This may be the pin that pricks the latest stock market bubble.

Here’s a quick summary from Reuters. See related video at the end.

Obama threatens fight with banks on new risk rules

Jeff Mason and Kevin Drawbaugh

WASHINGTON

Thu, Jan 21 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama threatened to fight Wall Street banks on Thursday with a new proposal to limit financial risk taking, sending stocks and the dollar tumbling.

Obama, a Democrat who is struggling to advance his agenda after a key election loss this week, laid out rules to restrict some banks’ most lucrative operations, which he blamed for helping to cause the financial crisis.

"If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have," Obama told reporters at the White House, flanked by his top economic advisers and lawmakers.

"We should no longer allow banks to stray too far from their central mission of serving their customers," he said.

Financial sources said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had hesitations about the proposals, concerned that good economic policy was being sacrificed for politics.

But a White House official said the plan had the unanimous backing of Obama’s economic team.

"We should no longer allow banks to stray too far from their central mission of serving their customers," Obama said.

After a mixed first year as president, Obama took a tough, populist-tinged stance aimed at revving up his political base by exploiting anger over Wall Street excess.

The proposals, which require congressional approval, would prevent banks or financial institutions that own banks from investing in, owning or sponsoring a hedge fund or private equity fund.

They would also set a new limit on banks’ size in relation to the overall financial sector that would take into account deposits — which are already capped — as well as liabilities and other non-deposit funding sources.

The proposed rules also would bar institutions from proprietary trading operations, unrelated to serving customers, for their own profit.

Proprietary trading involves firms making bets on financial markets with their own money rather than executing a trade for a client. These expert trading operations, which can bet on stocks and other financial instruments to rise or fall, have been enormously profitable for the banks but can hold huge risks for the financial system if the bets go wrong.

The White House blames the practice for helping to nearly bring down the U.S. financial system in 2008.

The White House said it wants to coordinate with international allies in its implementation of the measures.

POPULIST MOVE HITS SHARES

Big financial institutions criticized Obama’s move.

"Trading, proprietary or otherwise, did not lead to the financial crisis," said Rob Nichols, president of the Financial Services Forum, a lobbying group for CEOs of firms such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.

He said the government should be focused on better risk management, corporate governance and other forms of regulatory oversight, "rather than arbitrarily banning certain activities, or setting arbitrary size limits."

Obama’s move is the latest in a series to crack down on banks and follows a devastating political loss for his party in Massachusetts on Tuesday, when a Republican captured a U.S. Senate seat formerly held by the late Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy, potentially imperiling his domestic agenda.

Bank shares slid and the dollar fell against other currencies after Obama’s announcement.

JPMorgan fell 6.59 percent, helping push the Dow Jones Industrial average down 2 percent.

Citigroup Inc fell 5.49 percent and Bank of America Corp fell 6.19 percent while Goldman dropped 4.12 percent despite posting strong earnings on Thursday.

Ralph Fogel, investment strategist at Fogel Neale Partners in New York, said the move would have a major impact on big-name brokerage firms like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.

"If they stop prop trading, it will not only dry up liquidity in the market, but it will change the whole structure of Wall Street, of the whole trading community," he said.

Underscoring the high level of public anger at banks, a majority of 1,006 Americans surveyed in a Thomson Reuters/Ipsos poll said executive pay was too high.

White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee said the proposals were not designed to be punitive. He said they aimed to end the concept that some banks were "too big to fail" and to show that when such firms "mess up, they die."

Before his announcement, Obama met with Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who heads his economic recovery advisory board and who favors putting curbs on big financial firms to limit their ability to do harm.

The House of Representatives approved a sweeping financial regulation reform bill on December 11 that included a provision that would empower regulators to restrict proprietary trading. The Senate has not yet acted on the matter.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan, Ross Colvin, Matt Spetalnick, Alister Bull and Karey Wutkowski; Editing by Will Dunham)

Related Video

Obama takes aim at bankers

Commentary

• Make that two cheers for Obama
• Obama escalates his War on Wall Street

If Obama is indeed a populist at heart, he is sure doing a good job of disguising it. A lackey of the corporations with the most money would seem to more accurately describe his actions. Government financing for corporations, but not for people in need of health care.

Home Builders (You Heard That Right) Get a Gift

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Published: November 14, 2009

ON Nov. 6, President Obama signed the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009 into law, extending unemployment benefits by 20 weeks and renewing the first-time homebuyer tax credit until next April.

But tucked inside the law was another prize: a tax break that lets big companies offset losses incurred in 2008 and 2009 against profits booked as far back as 2004. The tax cuts will generate corporate refunds or relief worth about $33 billion, according to an administration estimate.

Before the bill became law, the so-called look-back on losses was limited to small businesses and could be used to counterbalance just two years of profits. Now the profit offset goes back five years, and the law allows big companies to take advantage of it, too. The only companies that can’t participate are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and any institution that took money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Among the biggest beneficiaries are home builders, analysts say. Once again, at the front of the government assistance line, stand some of the very companies that contributed mightily to the credit crisis by building and financing too many homes.

This is getting to be a habit: companies that participated on the upside and are now reaping rewards from the taxpayers on the downside. The banks that underwrote so many dubious loans, for example, received government aid to get them lending again. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the result.

One can make an argument that throwing money at the banking system is necessary if we are to jump-start the economy. And banks need a bigger capital cushion to protect against future losses.

But dropping helicopter money on the home builders — the folks who massively overbuilt in community after community — seems decidedly less urgent (unless you are one of these companies, of course). Given that the supply of housing far outstrips demand, it is unlikely that these companies will use these tax breaks to hire workers (unless they go into a completely new line of business).

“I AM surprised that home builders are getting hundreds of millions of dollars given that many have very strong balance sheets,” said Ivy Zelman, chief executive at Zelman & Associates, a research firm. “We question the public policy decision to gift home builders with capital that many will not use to create jobs, since they admit that job growth will be dependent not on capital, but on improving demand.”

When Mr. Obama signed the law, his administration said the tax break would help “struggling businesses.” But as Ms. Zelman pointed out, many large home builders are sitting atop mountains of cash. Pulte Homes, which will receive refunds exceeding $450 million under the new law, has $1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet, according to its most recent financial statement.

Hovnanian Enterprises is another big beneficiary of the tax break. It anticipates a refund of $250 million to $275 million next year. It had $550 million in cash in its most recent quarter.

Smaller recipients include Standard Pacific, which is poised to reap cash refunds of $80 million under the new tax break. According to its most recent financial filing, Standard Pacific held $523 million in cash and cash equivalents.

Finally, Beazer Homes told investors that it expects to receive a refund of $50 million. The company reported cash and equivalents of $557 million at the end of September.

Some of the home builders poised to receive tax refunds have even more cash today than they did last year. D. R. Horton, for example, has $1.966 billion in cash, up 45 percent from September 2008 levels. And some are healthy enough to have retired significant amounts of debt from their balance sheets this year. Pulte has bought back $1.93 billion in debt in 2009.

So what do these companies plan to do with their refunds?

Ken Campbell, the chief executive of Standard Pacific, said the money would allow his company to continue buying land. “Will we build more houses or will there be more people employed in the first quarter? Probably not,” he said. “Will employment accelerate when the market starts to grow? It will.”

Caryn Klebba, a spokeswoman for Pulte Homes, said in a statement that the company planned to use the funds it receives “to support its current operations and, when market conditions improve, fund future growth and expansion.”

In other words, job creation does not seem imminent, notwithstanding the claims of the administration or those in Congress who supported the giveaway.

Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, has conducted a lonely fight against the tax break all year.

“Some have said this is like a bridge loan to these companies,” Mr. Doggett said in an interview. “Well if it’s a loan, it is like a no-doc loan, because the recipients provide no indication that they will create jobs or do anything other than keep the money. I just feel it is a total windfall.”

Unfortunately, this seems to be another example of an age-old phenomenon: Good Things Come to Those With Lobbying Power.

Securing this tax break was a top priority for home builders, lobbying records show. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that through Oct. 26 of this year, home builders paid $6 million to their lobbyists. Last year, the industry spent $8.2 million lobbying.

Much of this year’s lobbying expenditures were focused on arguing for the tax loss carry-forward, documents show.

Among individual companies, Lennar spent $240,000 lobbying while companies affiliated with Hovnanian Enterprises spent $222,000. Pulte Homes spent $210,000 this year.

That’s some return on investment. After spending its $210,000, Pulte will receive $450 million in refunds. And Hovnanian, after spending its $222,000, will get as much as $275 million.

Meanwhile, the bag that we taxpayers are left holding gets bigger and bigger.

THE problem here is that this public policy decision was made with little to no input from the public. Sure, tax rebates like these give a lifeline to companies that were about to sink beneath the waves, but would it be so terrible if some builders that lost their heads during the housing mania ceased to exist? It is not as if a housing shortage will result or that more jobs will be lost if these companies don’t receive these tax breaks.

Pretending to promote job creation, the government is dispensing cash to companies that either do not need it or need it precisely because they didn’t run their businesses prudently. Isn’t there something wrong with that picture?

I followed this doubleheader program with the following interview with Simon Johnson, who I previously recommended here, and U.S. Representative March Kaptur, who totally captured my heart. It was a perfect complement to the first program, making it all too clear why the ghetto dwellers are left to rot when not thrown in prison. If the bankers care not at all about those whites in middle America who are suffering while they fatten up on the public purse, what possibility is there that we will truly address the failure of our society/economy to provide a meaningful life for the black and brown of the ghettos?

I haven’t posted anything on the financial crisis for quite some time, because the main flows have not changed since March or April 2009, when the Obama Administration made abundantly clear they were going to continue to turn the firehose of public money onto the banking sector until big firms were flush with cash and profit. The flow continues and the banks are now flush – while the rest of the economy is in the sh__house.

The anatomy of this scandal is laid out in depressing detail in Barry Ritholz’s book, Bailout Nation.  He also today posted the Moyer interview with Johnson and Kaptur in convenient format, including the transcript.

The interview ends with this exchange. If nothing else, you should watch the end of the interview so that you can see the expression on Johnson’s face as he says, “I’m skeptical.” The expression leaves no doubt of the depth of his skepticism.

MARCY KAPTUR: I don’t think President Obama has the right people around him. The poor man inherited a total mess, globally and domestically. I think some of the people that he trusted haven’t delivered. I urge him to get new generals. It’s time.

SIMON JOHNSON: Louis the Fourteenth of France, a very powerful monarch, was famous for having many bad things, you know, happen under his rule. And people would always say, ‘If only Louis the Fourteenth knew. I’m sure he doesn’t know. If we could just tell him, he’d sort it out.’ You know. I’m skeptical.

Kaptur & Johnson on Bill Moyers

By Barry Ritholtz – October 11th, 2009, 8:57AM

Just over a year after economic calamity brought promises of reform from Washington, has Wall Street really changed? Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson and US Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) report on the state of the economy.

click for video

In Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story, Congresswoman Kaptur says there has been a financial coup d’etat, and that Wall Street – rather than Congress – is in charge.

October 9, 2009

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.

I sat in a theater packed with passionate moviegoers, every one of them seemingly aghast at the Wall Street skullduggery exposed by Michael Moore in his latest film. It’s called ‘Capitalism: A Love Story.’ Here’s an excerpt:

MICHAEL MOORE: We’re here to get the money back for the American People. Do you think it’s too harsh to call what has happened here a coup d’état? A financial coup d’état?

MARCY KAPTUR: That’s, no. Because I think that’s what’s happened. Um, a financial coup d’état?

MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah.

MARCY KAPTUR: I could agree with that. I could agree with that. Because the people here really aren’t in charge. Wall Street is in charge.

BILL MOYERS: That’s the progressive Representative from Ohio, Marcy Kaptur, she’s with me now. She has a Masters from the University of Michigan, did graduate study at M.I.T. and still lives in the same house in the Toledo working class neighborhood where she grew up.

She’s in her 14th term in Congress, the longest-serving Democratic woman in the history of the House, and she’s an outspoken financial watchdog on three important Committees: Appropriations, Budget and Oversight and Government Reform.

Also with me is a familiar face to viewers of this broadcast. Simon Johnson is the former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. He now teaches Global Economics and Management at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. He’s one of the founders of the website Baselinescenario.com. I check it out daily for Simon’s take on the economic and financial crisis.

It’s been a year since the great collapse and both my guests are well equipped to assess what’s happened since then. Welcome to you both.

MARCY KAPTUR: Thank you.

BILL MOYERS: Let’s look at this story that I just read from the Associated Press this week about how Treasury Secretary Geithner is on the phone several times a day with a select group of very powerful Wall Street bankers, especially Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs. He will talk to them when Members of Congress have to leave a message on the answering machine. And these are the bankers who helped bring on this calamity and who are now benefiting from it. What does that say to you?

MARCY KAPTUR: That says to me that Wall Street and Washington is a circuit. And because Mr.Geithner headed the New York Fed that that historic relationship, unfortunately, continues. And it gives them special access and special power to influence policy.

SIMON JOHNSON: Well, I think it really tells you how the system works. The system is based on access and is based on what on Wall Street shaping Washington’s view of what’s important.

It’s the people who are very close to Mr. Geithner before when he was the head of the New York Fed. Before he became Treasury Secretary. These people have unparalleled access. And in a crisis, when everything is up for grabs, you don’t know what’s going on, the people who will take your phone calls, right, in government and people who are going to be standing in the oval office, making the key decisions. That’s the heart of the system. That’s the heart of how you get your agenda through, by changing their worldview.

MARCY KAPTUR: And they also move people. In other words, Mr. Geithner came from the New York Fed, he came from Wall Street, and he becomes Secretary of the Treasury. His predecessor, Mr. Paulson, came from Goldman Sachs, and he becomes Secretary of Treasury. You can go back decades, and you will see that there’s this revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. And I recently asked Chairman Bernanke of the Federal Reserve, ‘Let me ask you a question. Would you be willing to consider a reform where the Cleveland Fed would have equal power to the New York Fed, in terms of how the Fed is run?’ And his answer was, ‘No.’

BILL MOYERS: And why did you ask that question?

MARCY KAPTUR: Because I think we need to democratize the Fed. I think that my region of the country, which is suffering so heavily from these decisions that were made by Wall Street and Washington, we need to have voice. And our bankers, who didn’t do the bad things, our community bankers, who are having to pay higher fees shouldn’t be treated this way. Why should the people who did it right be penalized for those that did it wrong?

SIMON JOHNSON: Remember Wall Street convinced us that trading derivatives without any regulation, that all these kind of crazy housing loans, which are very dangerous for consumers. That all of this was sensible. All of this was a good way to sustain growth. That was wrong. That wasn’t it. That wasn’t that’s not the end of the story. In the crisis, when things got bad, they also convinced the key people in Washington that they, the bankers, the big bankers, the Wall Street bankers, who are really responsible for all of these problems, they should be saved. Not just their banks, but they individually and should be saved. Their jobs, their pensions, all their perks. It’s an extraordinary moment.

BILL MOYERS: You asked on your blog, just this week, a question I want to put to you now, and to both of you. You asked, ‘Does this crisis reflect something about the disproportionate influence of a few incompetent investment bankers or a deeper breakdown of capitalism?” What’s your answer to your own question?

SIMON JOHNSON: Well, definitely, this disproportionate influence of some fairly incompetent bankers, that’s for sure. That’s what we’re seeing today. That’s what we’ve seen over the past few months. I think on the issue on the issue of capitalism, we have to take this very seriously. To me, at least, the financial part of our capitalism is very seriously broken.

SIMON JOHNSON: They persuaded us to allow them to take incredible risks. And then they pushed all the downside, all those losses onto us, the taxpayer, at the same time as really hammering hard all the people who were duped, essentially, into taking out loans. People lost their houses. It’s an absolute tragedy. This combination cannot go on. And yet, the opportunity for real reform has already passed. And there is not going to be not only is there not going to be change, but I’ll go further. I’ll say it’s going to be worse, what comes out of this, in terms of the financial system, its power, and what it can get away with.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

SIMON JOHNSON: That’s the.

BILL MOYERS: Why is it going to how is it going to be worse?

SIMON JOHNSON: Well, there’s four we used to have a dozen or so substantial big banks, now we’re down to four. Now we’re down to four big banks that have a lot more market power and a lot more political power. They make the campaign contributions. They shape agendas in ways that are that are really quite scary. If you look, for example, at derivatives. And the debate on whether or not derivatives should be regulated in a sensible manner. And at this point, actually, the Obama Administration has is leaning in a better direction. But the big financial players are absolutely against any kind of sensible regulation. And I think they’re going to win.

MARCY KAPTUR: Let me give you a reality from ground zero in Toledo, Ohio. Our foreclosures have gone up 94 percent. A few months ago, I met with our realtors. And I said, ‘What should I know?’ They said, ‘Well, first of all, you should know the worst companies that are doing this to us.’

MARCY KAPTUR: I said, ‘Well, give me the top one.’ They said, ‘J.P. Morgan Chase.’ I went back to Washington that night. And one of my colleagues said, ‘You want to come to dinner?’ I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s a meeting with Jamie Dimon, the head of J.P. Morgan Chase.’ I said, ‘Wow, yes. I really do.’ So, I go to this meeting in a fancy hotel, fancy dinner, and everyone is complimenting him. I mean, it was just like a love fest.

MARCY KAPTUR: They finally got to me, and my point to ask a question. I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to speak out of turn here, Mr. Dimon.’ I said, ‘But your company is the largest forecloser in my district. And our Realtors just said to me this morning that your people don’t return phone calls.’ I said, ‘We can’t do work outs.’ And he looked at me, he said, ‘Do you know that I talk to your Governor all the time?’ He said, ‘Our company employs 10,000 people in Ohio.’

MARCY KAPTUR: And I’m thinking, ‘What is that? A threat?’ And he said, ‘I speak to the Mayor of Columbus.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you come further north?’ I said, ‘Toledo, Cleveland, where the foreclosures are just skyrocketing.’ He said, ‘Well, we’ll have someone call you.’ And he gave me a card. And they never did. For two weeks, we tried to reach them. And finally, I was on a national news show. And I told this story. They called within ten minutes. And they said, ‘Oh, we’ll work with you. We’ll try to do some workouts in your area.’

We planned the first one after working with them for weeks and weeks and weeks. Their people never showed up. And it was a Friday. Our people had taken off work. They’d driven from all these locations to come. We kept calling J.P. Morgan Chase saying, ‘Where’s your person? Where’s your person?’ And they finally sent somebody down from Detroit by 3:00 in the afternoon. But out people had been waiting all morning and a lot of people that’s how they treat our people.

BILL MOYERS: You did a remarkable thing on the floor of the House recently. And I want to show my audience a clip of a speech in which you urge people to break the law.

MARCY KAPTUR: So why should any American citizen be kicked out of their homes in this cold weather? In Ohio it is going to be 10 or 20 below zero. Don’t leave your home. Because you know what? When those companies say they have your mortgage, unless you have a lawyer that can put his or her finger on that mortgage, you don’t have that mortgage, and you are going to find they can’t find the paper up there on Wall Street. So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don’t you leave. In Ohio and Michigan and Indiana and Illinois and all these other places our people are being treated like chattel, and this Congress is stymied.

BILL MOYERS: Wow. You are urging them to resist the law when the Sheriff shows up to throw them out of their home.

MARCY KAPTUR: I’m saying that they deserve justice, too. And that the scales of justice in front of the Supreme Court are supposed to be balanced, and they’re not. And that possession is 90 percent of the law. And that you have legal rights, as a home owner. You have a right to legal representation. You have a right before the judge to have the mortgage note produced by whomever in the system has it. Judge Boyko of Cleveland threw out six cases, because when the foreclosures came up, the financial institutions couldn’t produce the note. Our people deserve their day in court.

BILL MOYERS: What’s your explanation as an economist. And a student of this financial system as to why the banks are taking so long to help the homeowners when Congress has allocated funds for that purpose?

SIMON JOHNSON: I’m afraid that it’s pretty obvious and it’s very tragic. That they have no interest in helping the homeowners. They make money with what they’re doing. Bill, they’ll expected a lot of these mortgages they made to default, okay? It was in their models. A high default rate. Now, they didn’t expect house prices to come down so much. That’s where they got their losses. But they absolutely made these loans expecting they would have to foreclose on people. And figuring they would make money on that.

SIMON JOHNSON: These are very smart, very profit-oriented people. I can assure you, if there was money in it for them. They would be negotiating you know, very various kinds of re-schedulings of these loans. They don’t want to do it. They it’s not in their interest. It’s not where the money is. Follow the money. The money is where Jamie Dimon says it is. Jamie Dimon says, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ in terms of his lobby in Washington. He’s on the record as saying, he’s this is his big initiative right now.

BILL MOYERS: To?

SIMON JOHNSON: To spend more time in Washington, more time cultivating all those relationships on Capital Hill and in the executive branch. And you know what else Jamie Dimon said to his shareholders? To his shareholders meeting this year, he said, with regard to 2008, the year of what we regard as the greatest financial crisis, an absolute human tragedy. He said, Jamie Dimon said to his shareholders, ‘This was perhaps our best year ever.’

MARCY KAPTUR: Think about what these banks have done. They have taken very imprudent behavior, irresponsible. They have really gambled, all right? And in many cases, been involved in fraudulent activity. And then when they lost, they shifted their losses to the taxpayer. So, if you look at an instrumentality like the F.H.A., the Federal Housing Administration. They used to insure one of every 50 mortgages in the country. Now it’s one out of four.

MARCY KAPTUR: Because what they’re doing is they’re taking their mistakes and they’re dumping them on the taxpayer. So, you and I, and the long term debt of our country and our children and grandchildren. It’s all at risk because of their behavior. We aren’t reigning them in. The laws of Congress passed last year in terms of housing, were hollow. Were hollow.

MARCY KAPTUR: Foreclosures in my area have gone up 94 percent. And we know the basic rules of economics. Housing leads us to recovery. Housing was the precipitating factor in this economic downturn. Unless you dealing with the housing sector, you aren’t going to have growth in this economy

BILL MOYERS: You’re both saying the financial world, the banks in particular, are putting their interests above anybody else’s interest. And they’ve got the power in the executive branch, and the Congress to back up their demands, right?

SIMON JOHNSON: This is capitalism, Bill. That’s what they’re supposed to do. They represent their shareholders, they’re appointed by the board of directors to make money for their shareholders. And the way they think that they can best make money is to shape the regulatory rules around housing around derivatives, around all everything we used to have that kept the financial sector under control. Has all been, you know, washed away, one way or another, by their efforts, right? They make money in the boom, that way. And when and when bad things happen, they shove all the downside onto the taxpayer. That’s what they’re doing their job.

MARCY KAPTUR: It’s socialism for the big banks. Because they’ve basically taken their mistakes and they’ve put it on the taxpayer. That’s the government. That’s socialism. That isn’t capitalism.

SIMON JOHNSON: Well people some people call that lemon socialism. So, when it turns out to be a lemon, it’s you it’s yours, the taxpayer. When it turns out to be good, it’s mine, I’m Wall Street.

BILL MOYERS: Why have we not had the reform that we all knew was being was needed and being demanded a year ago?

SIMON JOHNSON: I think the opportunity the short term opportunity was missed. There was an opportunity that the Obama Administration had. President Obama campaigned on a message of change. I voted for him. I supported him. And I believed in this message. And I thought that the time for change, for the financial sector, was absolutely upon us. This was abundantly apparent by the inauguration in January of this year.

SIMON JOHNSON: And Rahm Emanuel, the President’s Chief of Staff has a saying. He’s widely known for saying, ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’. Well, the crisis is over, Bill. The crisis in the financial sector, not for people who own homes, but the crisis for the big banks is substantially over. And it was completely wasted. The Administration refused to break the power of the big banks, when they had the opportunity, earlier this year. And the regulatory reforms they are now pursuing will turn out to be, in my opinion, and I do follow this day to day, you know. These reforms will turn out to be essentially meaningless.

MARCY KAPTUR: When Lincoln ran into trouble, during the Civil War, he got new generals. He brought in Grant. I hope that President Obama will bring in some new generals on the financial front.

BILL MOYERS: Should Geithner be fired? And Summers be fired?

MARCY KAPTUR: I don’t think that any individuals who had their hands on creating this mess should be in charge of cleaning it up. I honestly don’t think they’re capable of it.

BILL MOYERS: Let me show you an excerpt from the speech President Obama made on Wall Street last month, September. Here is the challenge he laid down to the bankers.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.

BILL MOYERS: A reality check. Not one CEO of a Wall Street bank was there to hear the President. What do you make of that?

SIMON JOHNSON: Arrogance. Because they have no fear for the government anymore. They have no respect for the President, which I find absolutely extraordinary and shocking. All right? And I think they have no not an ounce of gratitude to the American people, who saved them, their jobs, and the way they run the world.

BILL MOYERS: In the scheme of things, it is the Congress, and the government that’s supposed to stand up to the powerful, organized interests, for the people in Toledo, who can’t come to Washington. Who are working or trying to keep their homes or trying to pay their health bills. What’s happened to our government?

MARCY KAPTUR: Congress has really shut down. I’m disappointed in both chambers, because wouldn’t you think, with the largest financial crisis in American history, in the largest transfer of wealth from the American people to the biggest banks in this country, that every committee of Congress would be involved in hearings, that this would be on the news, that people would be engaged in this. What we’re seeing is– tangential hearings on very arcane aspects of financial reform. For example, now we’re going to have a consumer protection agency to help the poor consumer, who doesn’t understand all of this, rather than hearings on the fundamental new architecture of reforming the American financial system, so that we have prudent lending, capital accumulation at the local level again; that we encourage savings and limit debt by the American people. Our country needs this. Those aren’t the hearings that are happening.

If you want a marker at the Federal level of how serious we are to get justice out of this financial crisis, look at the F.B.I. Look at the number of people who are really prosecuting and investigation mortgage fraud and securities fraud. It is so small

I’ve been one of the Members of Congress trying to increase by ten times the agents to get at the justice issues for the American people. For companies that have been hurt. For shareholders that have been hurt. Our government isn’t doing it. That it’s very easy to look at the budget of the F.B.I. in mortgage fraud and securities fraud and say, ‘How serious is the government?’ And until those numbers increase, we will not begin to get justice.

BILL MOYERS: If we can’t get reform out of this calamity, when can we get it then, given the realities you have both described?

SIMON JOHNSON: That’s the worry, Bill, right? And I’m very serious. I’m very serious about this. Which is, you know, does it take- we have elements of the Great Depression now, in terms of the impact on people, okay? I mean, people losing their jobs, their homes, their health insurance.

BILL MOYERS: Even though Wall Street says, ‘Well, we’re past the crisis now. Profits at the banks are up. And Wall Street- and the stock market is stirring.’

SIMON JOHNSON: We’re out of the financial part of the crisis, we’re not out of the human part of the crisis.

MARCY KAPTUR: And we’re not out of the housing crisis. The President ought to take these empty units and require his Administration to broker rental agreements with families, so they’re not kicked out. Property values are dropping, all over the country, sometimes by as much as 25 percent. You can do a 30 year mortgage, even a 40 year mortgage, where people have a job or even unemployment benefits, if they’re going to get them for another year. Well, my goodness, you can keep them in their home. Empty units do no one any good.

Let me tell you what happened in- where I live in Toledo, Ohio. The house next to me was foreclosed. And so, I called, the other day, a little plaque appeared on the door of this house. And it said, ‘$500 down, $300 a month rent.’ I said, ‘What is that, a land contract deal? What’s going on there?’ So I called the number. I get a repossession dealer in South Carolina. I said, ‘Hello sir, what’s your name?’ ‘Johnny,’ or something. I said, ‘And what’s your address?’ He gave me a P.O. Box number. I said, ‘Now listen,’ I said, ‘Your property is bringing down the value of our property because you’re on our heels.’ ‘Lady, I get these things from the bank.’ And he said, ‘You know, we try to unload ‘em. What are you going to offer me?’ This is what he’s saying to me over the telephone. I don’t think a single one of my neighbors knows that that home is now in possession of a group in South Carolina that could care less about it.

SIMON JOHNSON: Just to reinforce this point. Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac are now government agencies. Okay? They not only hold a lot of mortgages that are in default or close to default. They’re also responsible for enormous amount of the new loans- that are being originated anywhere in the country, actually. They work for the President. The kinds of proposals that Congresswoman Kaptur’s put in forth are entirely reasonable. And can be implemented by the executive branch, hopefully with Congress on board, certainly at the urging of certain members of Congress, obviously. But they can do it.

BILL MOYERS: So Simon, go ahead- you were saying- what is it that scares you? You’re worried?

SIMON JOHNSON: Another Great Depression. Right? If you don’t fix the financial system, Bill. If you allow them to have the same attitude. If you- if you actually allow them to increase their economic power, their ability to take risk, and their belief that they can shove the losses onto the government. And that’s why they didn’t show up to President Obama’s speech on Wall Street.

BILL MOYERS: Why don’t they respect him?

SIMON JOHNSON: Because they think that the next time they won’t even have to ask. They’ll just be given the bailout that they want.

MARCY KAPTUR: Right. That’s been their history. Their bed is feathered. When they messed up during the 1980s, they put their bill through the savings and loans crisis on the American people. $140 billion.

BILL MOYERS: And we’re still paying that off, by the way. I think the last payment will be made in 2013.

MARCY KAPTUR: Very good. Most people don’t even know that.

BILL MOYERS: Well, I covered that.

MARCY KAPTUR: But that, you know, it opened the flood gates. They go, ‘Oh, we can get away with $140 billion?’ This time how many trillions have they gotten away with? Plus all the deregulatory actions that were taken during the 1990s. I remember when they came to the Congress, when Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House. And they came down to the Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs Committee, and they took the name off the door. And they changed it to Financial Services. And people began to see that they had money in the bank, and they charged them a fee to cash their own check on their own money. And then fees went up for everything. And the ordinary consumer found, ‘Hey, it’s not so smart to have a savings account, because it costs me more money if I have under $10,000 in the bank, they charge me all this money on my own money.’ They got exactly what they wanted. And so, then all the abuses and the irresponsible and imprudent behavior of the 1990s that led to this, nobody did anything. They just kept opening more floodgates to them. And then with the removal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, which I-

BILL MOYERS: That was the rule that kept the investment banks from being owned by banks, right?

MARCY KAPTUR: It’s about separating banking and commerce.

BILL MOYERS: Right.

MARCY KAPTUR: They said as a country, you know, banks have extraordinary power. They have the power to create money. And decide how much that is worth. They have extraordinary power. And we used to have capital ratios. We need to get back to them. Ten to one. For every dollar in your bank, you can lend ten. You know what J.P. Morgan did? A hundred to one. And then with derivatives, who knows how much? Glass-Steagall separated banking from commerce, so that we didn’t have these institutions getting too big, getting into too many things. And we just gave them total abandon. And they took it.

SIMON JOHNSON: Well, the final end of the last vestige of Glass-Steagall came in just now in August. Unnoted, but I think very significant. Goldman Sachs, you remember, was an investment bank, a securities company. Not allowed to be a commercial bank; didn’t have access to the Federal Reserve and this ability to tap into the money supply of the country. Until September of last year, when the crisis broke, they were allowed a very short notice to convert to being a bank holding company. This was what saved Goldman Sachs in my opinion. Also Morgan Stanley. Which meant they could stay in the securities business. And they could also have access to the Federal Reserve. In August, just now, they converted to what’s called a financial holding company. That may seem like a technical detail to you, but this means they can borrow from the Fed, at essentially zero interest rate now.

They can invest in, I mean, as far as we can see, from the outside, looking at their portfolio, anything they want, including, you’re going to love this one, they just bought some stock, big chunk of stock in a Chinese automotive company. Okay? So, that’s your money, that’s your Federal Reserve, financing a highly speculative investment. And if it goes well, they get the upside. And if it goes badly, that’s another one for us.

BILL MOYERS: Well, and this is what we were talking about earlier, the system. I mean, President Clinton’s Secretary of Treasury, Robert Rubin helps eliminate Glass-Steagall. And then leaves the government and goes to work for? Citicorp?

SIMON JOHNSON: Well Rubin’s a fascinating character. He ran Goldman Sachs, he went into the Clinton White House, then he became Secretary of the Treasury, and it was on his watch that, first of all, Glass-Steagall began to really seriously crumble, and then it was completely swept away- replaced, abolished, really. And then, of course, Rubin goes on after he leaves Treasury, to be the senior guru type figure at Citigroup. And Citigroup is absolutely epicenter of everything that’s gone wrong with our financial system.

BILL MOYERS: And wasn’t it Robert Rubin the mentor, the guru to both Tim Geithner and Larry Summers?

SIMON JOHNSON: Absolutely. Both Geithner and Summers advanced to senior positions in the Treasury under Rubin was instrumental in bringing Larry Summers to be President of Harvard, after the Clinton Administration. And according to published new report, he was absolutely key person in making sure that Tim Geithner first went to a senior job at the IMF, and then became President of the New York Fed. And there are unconfirmed reports that Robert Rubin was an essential advisor to then candidate Obama in fall of last year, with regard to who he should bring on board as the leadership team on the economic side.

MARCY KAPTUR: And you know, looking at it from the heartland, when I look at Wall Street and all their connections into Washington, and I’ve been at it a while now, it’s very disheartening to me, because I know they don’t care about us out there. We’re flyover country for them. And they’re just out to make money.

And I have seen people that I worked with in the Carter White House, who were associated what the bond industry of Wall Street, use their access and create for themselves a money path that today has led them to head organizations like Black Rock, and get private contracts with the Federal Reserve. The over $2 trillion, we don’t know how much that the Federal Reserve has extended at this point.

BILL MOYERS: And Black Rock is?

MARCY KAPTUR: Black Rock is an institution that has gotten the major contract of the Federal Reserve to do the mortgage workouts. And my question is, the very people involved in Black Rock, who’ve gotten these confidential contracts with the Federal Reserve, they were involved on Wall Street in creating the instruments in the first place. So how do we know that they are not covering up their own crime?

BILL MOYERS: So, Simon, what happens now? If we’re going to avert a depression and the next calamity, what needs to be done?

SIMON JOHNSON: Well, I think you have to keep at it, Bill. I mean, that’s the lesson from previous generations of Americans, who have really confronted entrenched power like this. You have to keep at it. And you mustn’t be satisfied. When the Administration says, ‘Okay, we fixed it. Don’t worry. We did some technical tweaking on capital requirements, for example, in the banks.’ You have to say, ‘No, that’s not true. Let’s look at what’s happening, let’s follow it through.’

The muckrakers of today are absolutely essential, I think, to really pushing these banks. And revealing what they’re doing. And by the way, Bill, it’s going to I think it’s going to be a long haul. I think that the economy will start to recover. We’ll get some jobs back. It’s going to be very painful for a lot of people. But other people’s attention is going to drift. It’s a three, five, seven, maybe twelve year cycle. But when it comes back, it will come back with a vengeance. And it will be even, I think, even more devastating, in all likelihood, than what we just saw.

BILL MOYERS: How do we get Congress back? How do we get Congress to do what it’s supposed to do? Oversight. Real reform. Challenge the powers that be.

MARCY KAPTUR: We have to take the money out. We have to get rid of the constant fundraising that happens inside the Congress. Before political parties used to raise money; now individual members are raising money through the DCCC and the RCCC. It is absolutely corrupt. It’s good people.

BILL MOYERS: Those are the fundraising groups both parties-

MARCY KAPTUR: Parties.

BILL MOYERS: In the Congress.

MARCY KAPTUR: And then people wonder, ‘Well, why doesn’t Congress get along?’ Because they are made into arch enemies by the type of fundraising system that is embedded in the very guts of the institution. So, you’ve got to clean that out. But meanwhile, we need to get hired over at the justice department, 1,000 agents, in mortgage fraud and in securities fraud. Then, I pray, that the leadership of both chambers will do the kind of robust hearings that the nation deserves to rout out those who did wrong and to change the fundamental financial architecture of this country. And then the President needs to get his top housing advisors in the room with him. And they need to meet all weekend. And they need to get their arms around this housing market, in order to stem the rising foreclosures. We haven’t stopped the bleeding out there.

BILL MOYERS: Does President Obama get it?

MARCY KAPTUR: I don’t think President Obama has the right people around him. The poor man inherited a total mess, globally and domestically. I think some of the people that he trusted haven’t delivered. I urge him to get new generals. It’s time.

SIMON JOHNSON: Louis the Fourteenth of France, a very powerful monarch, was famous for having many bad things, you know, happen under his rule. And people would always say, ‘If only Louis the Fourteenth knew. I’m sure he doesn’t know. If we could just tell him, he’d sort it out.’ You know. I’m skeptical.

BILL MOYERS: Simon Johnson, Congresswoman Kaptur, thank you both very much for this interesting discussion.

MARCY KAPTUR: Thank you.

SIMON JOHNSON: Thank you.

The quote du jour this week comes from Richard Russell, 84-year-old doyen of newsletter writers who has been scribing the Dow Theory Letters for the past 50 years. Russell said:

“The whole bailout campaign stinks to high heaven. It was created and run by Wall Street – FOR Wall Street. Again, I say, personally, I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to bail Wall Street out. Let all these Wall Street thieves stew in their own toxic juices. Thieves should be out on the street or in jail, not luxuriating in government bailout money.

“In the end, the bailouts will simply extend the bear market in stocks and the economy. The Wall Streeters will be richer, and the nation will be poorer, choking on trillions in debt that will keep future generations struggling to deal with the sins of Wall Street. Too bad Obama didn’t have the courage (or knowledge) to tell the nation what was going on. Obama should have said, ’sit tight’ and ‘this too shall pass’. Unfortunately, after the trillions spent in bailouts, ‘this too will not pass’. [Emphasis added.]

There is absolutely no one in the inner circle of Obama’s economic advisors who doesn’t believe fully in that the current financial/corporate, free market economy. There is no one within the administration to tell Obama of the pressing need for fundamental changes in the management and operation of our economy and in the political economy of power. Even Paul Volcker, who is no radical thinker, has apparently been pushed to the sidelines.

When you add to Bernanke to Summers and Geithner, you have a trio seemingly hell-bent on transferring whatever the required amount of wealth from savers and taxpayers to the financial institutions to reinflate them to the bloated size they were before the meltdown. The biggest banks are being made whole while the rest of us are living with our wealth reduced by one-third to one-half, or more for many unlucky enough to buy and mortgage houses at the top of the bubble.

When I read a number of news items last week, my sense of discouragement grew. The biggest investment banks, led by Goldman Sachs, the biggest, baddest, and most successful, are upping bonuses, ramping up speculation, and using all of their political clout (which is massive) to water down the gentle regulatory reforms proposed by Obama.

As a hopeful investor, I was particularly struck by news that Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse had both mightily expanded their “program trading” activities. Program trading is minute by minute trading in massive quantities, using computers and sophisticated programs to profit from discrepancies in the pricing of securities – and also to profit from inside information and from their abilities to move the market. The numbers are staggering. In the week ended June 19, 2009, 40 percent of all trades on the NY Stock Exchange were program trades. This was an increase from 30 percent the prior week. As Zero Hedge said in reporting these numbers:

Virtually every broker saw their Principal PT operations double week over week: seems like everyone is brokering those ETF trades now. Poor SPY and IWM [popular ETFs] are being mangled 10 ways from Sunday nowadays.

The absolute numbers are equally staggering. Goldman Sachs’ program trades were almost a billion shares in the week, and Credit Suisse’s were half a billion.

With this amount of domination in the market by the investment banks, it makes me wonder what are the odds against me in the market?

The resurgence of the investment banks is not just in the US, but in Europe, too – where governments are equally dedicated to bailing them out. Reuter columnist Paul Taylor wrote on June 24, 2009:

No sooner has the financial system begun to stabilize than Big Finance is reverting to its old ways — aggressive hiring, remuneration on steroids, wriggling out of regulation or threatening to decamp to evade tougher supervision.

These are is not the rantings of some crypto-Marxist City-basher, but the considered view of one of Europe’s most thoughtful financial regulators.

Today’s Der Spiegel has a lengthy article, “A Real Free Lunch” detailing the extent of the transfer of wealth to investment banks in Germany, and their use of the low-interest loans from the central bank to make safe, profitable investments and speculations, rather than to loan to businesses – the ostensible, public justification for the bank bailouts.

The extent to which speculation appears to be driving the markets is indicated by how closely all asset classes –stocks, currencies, and commodities – have been moving together. I’ve noted that there is an almost perfect correlation between the price of the Australian dollar and the S&P 500! This seem completely bizarre.

In the chart below, the blue line is the S&P 500 index. The weekly ups and downs tracked very closely, though the change in the Australian dollar was generally more muted.

The close correlation in prices has been widely noted, and taken by some as a warning sign. A recent article in Bloomberg spelled out:

Cash Best as Record Correlation Hints Herd Collapse (Update3)

By Eric Martin and Michael Tsang

June 29 (Bloomberg) — Investors are moving in lockstep like never before, driving up stocks, commodities and emerging markets and risking a replay of last year, when they all plunged the most since World War II.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, whose increase in the past three months was the steepest in seven decades, is rallying in tandem with benchmark measures for raw materials, developing- country equities and hedge funds. The so-called correlation coefficient that measures how closely markets rise and fall together has reached the highest levels ever, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

…

The gains [in all markets’ pushed correlations between the indexes to 0.74 this month, based on percentage changes over the past 60 days. That’s the highest in at least five decades, data compiled by Bloomberg show. A reading of 1 means two assets move in tandem, while zero means no relationship.

The correlation never rose above 0.66 before this month.

Gains in U.S. stocks have mirrored those in crude oil as never before, with correlations above 0.7 this month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Full Article

David Rosenberg, of Gluskin Schiff, a Canadian economist whose insights I respect, pointed out the correlation and warned of its implications:

June 4, 2009
Everyone is back in the same trade

• Buy stocks (massive multiple expansion – S&P 500 priced for $75 operating EPS)
• Buy commodities (still long-term bullish but a pullback is definitely overdue)
• Buy non-Treasury bonds (same story as commodities – long-term bullish on corporates, but supply is now coming in droves and being gobbled up – this is NOT the contrarian trade of six-months ago)
• Buy gold (again, in a secular bull phase, but the dollar is not going to zero and being bearish on the greenback has become far too fashionable – especially in the wake of Bill Gross’s latest missive; the Euro is saddled with problems at least as deep as the USD, if not deeper)
• And of course, sell Treasuries (that was a good trade coming off the 2% lows on the 10-year note, but what we just saw crammed into six months, which took 48 months to accomplish in the last bear market in govie bonds, was yields soaring 175bps from the low). Sentiment on government bonds is exceedingly bearish and inflation views have become too extreme for my liking. I believe there is a lack of appreciation from what history tells us about the aftershocks that occur after a cycle that was dominated by a credit collapse and asset deflation, as opposed to a garden-variety inventory-led recession. In five words: economic fragility, lingering deflation pressure.

  Full Report (requires free registration)

What we are seeing is the re-creation of a finance-dominated economy, with the hedge funds and investment banks using easy money to play with our futures. This is not a pretty picture, and it is not one that seems likely to get any better. The central banks, which are creatures of the banks, are calling the tune around the world. Most politicians, even if not in the pay of the banks, appear to see no alternative for “saving the economy” to pumping up credit through the banking system.

I have more reasons for being discouraged, but I’ll save those for another day.

Continuing Claims “Exhaustion Rate”

Posted: 22 Jun 2009 07:00 AM PDT

Last week, we saw Continuing Claims decrease — proof, said the green shooters, of the imminent economic recovery.

Only, not so much:

Those of you (who can still afford the luxury of) a trusty Bloomberg will note the ‘exhaustion rate’ for jobless benefits – EXHTRATE – reveals that people are not leaving the pool of continuing unemployment claims because they are getting new jobs; Rather, they are leaving because they have exhausted their benefits.

They are now unemployed AND broke. That is hardly a green shoot . . .

Exhaustion Rate: U.S. Workers Losing Unemployment Aid

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Hat tip Bill King

The above chart shows the percentage of unemployed who have exhausted their benefits. The following chart, also from the Big Picture, shows the number of people who have this unfortunate experience:

Unemployment Benefit Exhaustions
Regular State UI Final Payments, Data from 1972 to 2009

This is one additional bit of evidence that we are not in a “normal” recession and that more people than ever are suffering greatly from the excesses of Wall Street. Yet, we the taxpayers and our Congressmen and our Administration all continue to treat Wall Street as though it were necessary to our wellbeing. Will they ever acknowledge that the excesses of the investment bankers, fueled by their own government-authorized protector, the Federal Reserve Bank, are responsible for our sorry plight and that MAJOR reform is needed? At present, there is no sign of such an awakening.