I foolishly hoped the Facebook IPO might actually bring some confidence back to Wall Street.
What was I thinking?
Turns out it’s just another example of how the soulless Wall Street culture is destroying American style capitalism.
We have barely gotten past JP Morgan Chase’s $3 billion catastrophe, and the outrage over their foolish decisions, but here we are again. The attention span on Wall Street seems equivalent to that of a small child.
Scott Udine, a broker friend of mine, said it best, “The brokerage firm community is made up of salesmen and people that mainly care about THEIR bottom-line….not yours!!! They will sell anything, say anything and do anything.”
Morgan Stanley over sold and over hyped too many shares of Facebook to an unsuspecting public, while quietly telling large institutional investors another story. And to add insult to injury NASDAQ had such huge headaches processing all the buy, sell and cancellation orders that they now admit the whole IPO was an unmitigated disaster.
So once again its heads, the banks win, and tails, you lose.
I can only add this to the mounting list of evidence against the too-big-to-fail and too-big-to-jail banksters and sigh in disgust.
If you’re wondering why a foreclosure defense attorney is up-in-arms about a stock offering, it is because the same shady tactics that have led homeowners to my office are the same ones on display here. (more…)
A group from the Miami Workers Center clean up the area around an abandoned bank-owned house, as police officers wait nearby (Photo Courtesy:Miami Workers Group)
It never ceases to amaze me the glaring duality of the world I live in.
I am constantly reminded that we live in world where you and I have to play by one set of rules, yet the vast financial complex that resides on Wall Street isn’t held to even a fraction of those standards.
A few members of the Miami Workers Center, a grassroots organization, arrived at an abandoned foreclosed home, a property that like countless others is nothing more than a glorified trash dump.
Their nefarious plot? To clean the home up, and try to make it a little less of an eyesore.
Scary right?
And what did this group, which included a grandmother and an pregnant woman, encounter when they arrived at that home?
About a half dozen cops, who threatened to arrest any of them if they stepped foot on the Bank Of America-owned property.
The protesters, to their credit, didn’t give up and cleaned up the public areas around the home. Not once was a burglary tool spotted.
The officers watched over these men and women like mother hens as they picked up beer bottles and broken glass, among other fabulous ‘accessories’ the home had accumulated over the last few years. (Bank of America took the home in 2010.)
But when the banks not only trespass, but break into my clients homes? How many police officers can I get on the case? Not a single one. (more…)
It was never an expression that had any legitimacy. It was just a nice little way for the media to classify the banking industry in a ready-made slogan.
Guess what? Too Big To Fail isn’t a joke anymore. It’s actual policy towards our nation’s biggest financial institutions.
It was a nice early birthday present when I got home yesterday and read the report, written by the head of the Dallas Fed’s research department. Harvey Rosenblum.
When Greg Smith published his critique of Goldman Sachs, the aftershocks rang through the halls of every office on Wall Street.
It’s about time that someone on the government side validated the anger and anxiety shared by the Occupy and Tea Party movements. Right there in an official Fed paper!!
So what did I find so appealing about his critique? He spells it out, clear as day, what Too Big To Fail really is, and what’s it’s led to.
What It Is: In 1970 the top 5 banks possessed 17% of the nation’s banking assets. In 2010? 52 percent. (more…)
It’s time to call them out once more. Not for another column, but rather, a lack of one.
In October 2010 their column“The Politics of Foreclosure” made light of the plight many of my clients have undergone, and shrunk the foreclosure crisis down to a mere inconvenience for a few Washington insiders.
And as the crisis grew wider and wider, and the expansiveness of the banks fraud became even more apparent,The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Boardcontinued to be a haven for outdated ideas, protection of the status quo and disgust for anyone trying to do good by the American homeowner.
I found it disturbingly amusing that a settlement that was basically little more than a public spanking for the banks angered them so. The settlement didn’t land a single banking executive in jail, yet the columnists at The Wall Street Journal still treat the banks as the victims in the housing crisis.
The crisis, you know that the banks basically created.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board still believes the banks didn’t illegally foreclose on a single homeowner, something I personally know not to be true.
Either their editorial board is remarkably stupid or just ignorant.
And so I shouldn’t be all that surprised that they have been silent after the Department of Housing and Urban Developmentreleased auditsthat laid out how pervasive the culture of fraud was amongst our nation’s lenders. (more…)
Just as Oppenheim anticipated, this year we’ve seen how big this foreclosure mess really is. There were numerous investigations, and a self-imposed moratorium on foreclosures during parts of 2011, resulting in a massive backlog of cases.
It was ludicrous, as Bank of America officials first said, that they would only need 60 days to review their inventory of files.
“It took them virtually a year to figure out that they were doing were just not kosher and had to stop,” Oppenheim explained.
There were several huge financial settlements offered to the banks over their illegitimate foreclosure practices, but the majority just did not stick. Judges told them the settlements were unacceptable and did not go far enough. With various attorneys general and the IRS among the agencies getting involved, these cases are nowhere close to settled.
“The banks literally got their hand not just caught in the cookie jar, but the lid was slammed on it, and everyone got to see the hand just hanging there,” said Oppenheim.
2011 is leaving us with a still unstable market, so people are looking for tangible investments, Oppenheim continued, and with the dollar still weak, Florida real estate is not a bad deal. When you add the fact that there is an excess of distressed properties, prices are not expected to rise anytime soon. he said.
Now every year there is an X-Factor, and this year it was Occupy Wall Street. It was a movement no one really saw coming, and despite some right-wingers attempts to limit Occupy as a fringe movement, Oppenheim said, there is no question the message of Occupy has resonated with middle America. (more…)
Wall Street corruption blurs the lines between good guys and bad guys as this week’s headlines bubble to the top.
Government's Long Enforcement Slumber is Over, says Roy Oppenheim
Unbelievably guilty in the court of public opinion. Now ultimately guilty in a court of law.
The conviction of Galleon hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam on all 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud is a prime example of rampant Wall Street greed and conspiracy.
It’s become clear that bankers took advantage of us all through the tricks and frauds of petty crooks. Ironically, these crooks bankers are now being brought down by the same investigatory wiretap techniques once used only in drug and mob cases. Perhaps “Bankster” is now the appropriate moniker.
Rajaratnam, formerly viewed as a skilled investor and stock market genius, should have stuck to “counting cards.” It’s one thing to make informed, intelligent investments by counting cards through legitimate research and public knowledge. It’s another matter entirely to “mark the cards” through insider secrets, privileged tips and paid informants.
Now, after a mosaic of insider trading and deception has been uncovered, the billionaire Rajaratnam is exposed as a card marker. Consequently, he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in federal prison.
Not surprisingly, this card marking culture is closely tied to the banks and mortgage-baked securities (MBS) industry that brought down the American real estate market. Banks simply were playing a game they new they couldn’t lose. (more…)
The question of the decade: Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?
In a typical jaw-dropping article for Rolling Stone Magazine The Real Housewives of Wall Street, Matt Taibbi reveals the shocking practices of the Federal Reserve during the Great Recession.
With the nation staggering, the Federal Reserve took it upon itself to lend trillions of dollars at nearly zero percent interest. Then, as collateral, the Fed took the securities that were bought with the loans. The arrangement meant that if the securities lost money, the Fed would be stuck with the losses but if the securities made money, then the investors would pay back the loans and keep the higher priced security. Privatizing gains, socializing losses, all in an effort to stimulate the economy. Such loans were not made available to everyday folks; only to the important pillars of our economy: Japanese car companies (while bailing out their competitors), Middle Eastern banks (including one later bought by Muammar Gaddafi), tax dodgers in the Cayman Islands (imagine, subsidizing tax evasion), and the spouses of Wall Street executives. No, that isn’t a typo, the wives of Wall Street executives were offered risk free loans guaranteed by you, the taxpayer.
Taibbi looks at the case of Christy Mack and Susan Karches, the wife and widow respectively of the CEO and the late president of investment banking at Morgan Stanley. While Morgan Stanley itself received over $2 trillion in Federal Reserve risk free, subsidized loans, Christy and Susan also received $220 million for their company, Waterfall TALF Opportunity. With the money, the duo bought student loans and commercial mortgages. If the loans or mortgages ever decrease in value, Waterfall effectively will not have to pay back the Fed and let the Fed keep the devalued securities. (more…)
I foolishly hoped the Facebook IPO might actually bring some confidence back to Wall Street.
