My post/your ticker crossed on the intertubes.

This is one absolutely dead nuts jaw dropper. Think she's got the E&O to cover PFG? LOLLLLL!

Damn...As a former auditor I was hoping one of the big boys would take an embarrassing bow on this one.

So the regulator was cool with an external audit provided by a no name one man shop firm. Well there is lesson learned 1....

Wonder if this is going to be another Costa Concordia story, eh? Waserstein getting a little on the side and using his mistress' auditing co to audit his company?

This is all so ridiculously sad it is hilarious.

USA! USA! we have the most honest markets in the world. Except for the fact that they are completely corrupt from top to bottom and they are run by criminal organizations that like to steal from everyone they can. Nations, business average citizens it does not matter they just like to rob people. Other than that they are completely safe and the best most honest markets in the world.

And all the while stealing government pensions.

This ain't rocket science, first Madoff and now this. Any company using a one horse CPA is doing the dirty. Maybe someone will do a little search and reveal if these guys are filing 10-Ks and such, or are they all off the fiduciary horizon?


Search for Peregrine Financial Group.

http://www.cftc.gov/ucm/groups/public/@f....

Quick hand check of firms with "less" excess funds in customer segregated accounts divided by required customer segregated accounts than Peregrine Financial... about 1.2 percent. On the theory that some book cookers forgot to tell the big lie to be consistent.

Santander Investment Securities
Timber Hill LLC

A few others are less than 2 percent.

Quote:

Any company using a one horse CPA is doing the dirty. Maybe someone will do a little search and reveal if these guys are filing 10-Ks and such, or are they all off the fiduciary horizon?

That is true but the real story here is that companies that have armies of auditors are doing the dirty but are just better at it.
The fact is there is no ****ing regulations, not one, there is no law or regulation every large to big to fail are thieves and crooks that lie at will. There are no cops, none. Every financial company has a license to steal at will with the blessings of the USA gov.

See the same regulations and policing that was applied to the banks and financial institutions like MFglobal, also are applied to the big boys.

Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Wells, Metlife, Morgan, HSBC, and Barclays every last ******n one of them are thieves and liars and they are stealing billions and billions, sorry trillions.

There is no such thing as segregated funds. If you have money or an investment go to bed knowing without a doubt that it is not safe, there is no safety.
Know that in the morning it could be gone, poof!



That is the real story.

Comic relief:

U.S. Olympic Uniforms Made In China: Lawmakers Furious Over Ralph Lauren Gear Made Overseas

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12....

Check this Oct 17 2011 wsj article, that talks about the August Finra decision to change MFG capital calculations which resulted in MFG reporting a 150 million dollar capital shortfall to the CFTC for July 31, 2011.

Assuming the WSJ, FINRA and the CFTC are part of the problem, the August filing and the article were quite a signal, and would have been part of the mechanism of tossing MFG ( well deservedly ) under the bus ala Bear, Lehman, AIG, GSEs etc.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424....

What sort of fees can ONE person generate to audit a large firm? How much of that fee gets kicked back? Seems like the biggest expense would be staying in a constant state where you can rush to the airport and get on a bizjet to Brazil.

Ann Barnhardt's got a picture of said house in her post "You Couldn't Write This as Fiction" Thursday mid-day.

Audit fees for $500 million company. Priceless! You'll find them staggering and probably offshore somewhere. "There were no material weaknessess" yea in the fraud. Nobody caught it!

I had a friend (had because he died) who was a one man CPA firm and he audited an insurance company every year. It isn't rocket science. There were probably 3 or 4 entities that should have checked that bank account. We used to check bank accounts in writing years ago and ask for an average daily balance as well. Also, there is likely a way to have money in an account at the right time. Either the CPA was a crook or he was snowed. The size of his firm had very little to do with whether the audit was bad or good.

I will say this. They make convicted drug offenders call a number every morning to find out if they need to pee in a bottle. These people have done little wrong other than possess something the government gives the pharmaceutical/medical industry a monopoly over. Yet, we have no surprise system for the financials. They should never know the regulators are coming and they should be subject to having their accounts checked more so than the druggie should be checked for drug use.

We can go back to Enron. Anyone really think their going down was a surprise? Someone else and I don't means Joe trading futures from his desk, knew Enron was upside down a long time before they blew up. Like all of Wall Street. This was different, because there wasn't a losing hand showing on the outside. In fact, it probably played well because the company had to have next to nothing up at the exchange, as their traders accounts were summed and balanced themselves out. They probably were covering hundreds of millions in margin at the exchange (their customers required margin) with a few million. Only a huge loss by a big trader through the firm would ever require more than a few million outflow. It appears when you go back to Refco, then MF Global and others, these funds need to be readily verified. You would really think the exchanges themselves would be interested in what is required of their customers. Remember, they have to only cover the net shorts or longs and the individual positions can be massively greater.

is there any responsibility that could be derived from the discription of the resposibilities defined in the job of the two state senators of iowa that could be exposed and determined as neglect when it comes to the fraud practiced by this firm???

I have to second Eli. Among the attractions to U.S. equities markets was the broad assumption of fairness and honesty. In part, this has been a myth as the courts have eviscerated the meaning of fiduciary, but with these growing scandals, HFT access to the feed, Fed manipulation of markets, etc., the attraction to U.S. markets is dimming. Eventually, they will need to roll a few heads to restore the appearance of integrity so they can attract new rubes to the game. Wanna play?