So now we find out that not only did The Fed "accidentally" leak the minutes a full day early but that the recipient list included banks and lobbying organizations.
I have two questions:
- Why are there special people who get emailed copies of these things while the rest of us look them up as PDF's on The Fed's web site? Regulation FD anyone? Yeah, I know, The Fed isn't a company but the principle is the same - giving someone special access in front of everyone is wrong. Period. It's also supposed to be illegal but it appears that some "exemptions" have shown up. Those need to go away. Now.
- Why did none of the people who received this transmission early tell anyone about it? An innocent error only remains one when the person who gets the early transmission notifies someone that it happened so the problem can be mitigated. That didn't occur.
Do I actually expect the SEC to bring charges and the DOJ to indict for insider trading? Here's my response to that question:
Yeah, right. That'll happen when Hell freezes over.
But this is just one more example out of hundreds over the last few years of blatant and outrageous behavior -- this may have begun as a mistake, but it didn't stay one for more than a few minutes. Over 100 recipients and none alerted The Fed or SEC to what had happened.
Riiiiiight.
Really?
Remember this?
Yeah.
Washington — The nation's largest banks will begin sending payments this week to millions of Americans who may have been wrongfully foreclosed on during the housing crisis.
The Federal Reserve and the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency say a total $3.6 billion in cash will be distributed to 4.2 million borrowers
So there were in fact 4.2 million borrowers who got screwed?
Nobody committed any crimes, remember?
George Orwell was early.
The cat's out of the bag: The name of the recently fired KPMG LLP partner who was responsible for the firm's audits of Herbalife Ltd. and Skechers U.S.A. Inc. is Scott London.
He also has an interesting side gig: Chairman of the Los Angeles Sports Council. The nonprofit describes its mission as "the promotion of spectator sports programs in the Los Angeles and Orange County area, including support of our local teams and the attraction of events to the area."
Keep reading. The Soccer team's primary sponsor? Herbalife.
Now maybe this is a real conflict of interest and maybe it's not. But it sure looks like one, and I thought that independent auditors were supposed to be, well, independent. And exactly how did KPMG management either not know about this or not do anything about it?
I hate when that happens...
Kudos to Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil for the break -- anyone want a side bet on whether anyone -- or any companies -- get a date in the slammer on this deal?
PS: If you haven't learned from this little episode all you need to know about the words "independent audit" you aren't very bright.
“We have now concluded the initial stages of our investigations about the financial status of the company, and it appears that the company is in a cash ‘shortfall’ position of approximately US $700,000,” said Ronald Bernstein, a director at Intrade, on the company’s website. “If the company is not able to rectify this cash shortfall position very quickly, the Company will become insolvent and therefore is very likely to go into liquidation.”
...
What Intrade’s possible liquidation means to its customers remains unclear.
The company said it contacted members with account balances greater than $1000 to propose a “forbearance” arrangement with these members.
Forbearance?
How about PTITA (that stands for "Pound Them In The Ass") prison terms for the people responsible for the funds being missing? Why is that not the proposal, and instead the company thinks that those who have material funds with it should give them "forbearance" when it is rather clear that their money was ripped off.
Oh, and for those of you who think your "Bitcons" are safe or for that matter any other form of wealth stored anywhere other than under your mattress with you, personally, protecting same with a nice firearm or three (and the will to use it), may I ask exactly how you propose to know that when you attempt to exchange them back into something else, or if and when you store your "wallet" somewhere other than on your person, that it too won't become subject to a need for....... "forbearance"?
Society has degenerated from something based on the rule of law to something far more simple: Steal anything that's not nailed down and half of what is, then "ask for forbearance" instead of accepting that the correct thing you should receive when you steal is a sentence.
I'm shocked folks -- seriously.
Last year, consumers paid $32 billion in overdraft fees, a $400 million jump from 2011 according to a recent study by Moebs Services. This 1.3% increase came almost entirely from a greater number of overdrafts rather than an increase in the price of the fee.
Remember that one of the (few) things The Fed has done to make the banking system a bit more fair was to require that instead of "Opting Out" of such fees consumers had to opt in.
It didn't change anything, however -- the scarmongering by banks clearly has worked, or we wouldn't see figures like this.
If you think about it, with 330 million Americans (more or less) this means that the average American paid $100 in overdraft fees. That's outrageous -- remember that there are roughly 100 million people outside working age and for those over the median income they're unlikely to get hammered by this.
That implies that the lower two quintiles of the working-age population is paying something close to $400 a year in overdraft fees, which is damned close to a month's rent for a lower-end flat or apartment!
This is a flat outrage and I'm willing to bet that nearly all of it is coming from debit card access and other similar acts where the person in question doesn't realize they're overdrawn until after it happens.
Don't expect the banksters to be stopped from this act of raw theft from those least able to afford it -- the scaremongering the banksters use in this regard (e.g. "But you might bounce a rent check if you don't have this on your account!") is ridiculous.
Indeed, I've had them try to run that crap on me, despite the fact that I am certainly not in the "at risk" population group.
