Just In Time For The DNC: Debbie Wasserman Schulz's Parents Are Headed To Jail For Tax Evasion And Corruption

File under: You just can't make this up.

Imagine: Had Rence Preibus's folks been sent to the clink the week before the RNC, that would be alllllllllll......we would have heard about.

The media's silence on this debacle is deafening.

Corzine Walks, Zakaria Gets His CNN and Time Jobs Back

Dog bites man. Corzine walks away from a massive, in many cases crushing, destruction of the wealth of his depositors (not his investors, his depositors), and the Justice Department clears him.

The sun rises in the East. Plagiarist Fareed Zakaria gets his gigs back with Time and CNN after publishing other people's work under his own name.

The stealing of depositors funds from the bank down the street would have resulted in the local bank president going to the sheriff, begging to be arrested for his own protection. He would not have a house to return to, in any case, it having already been burned to the ground by his customers.

But Corzine is OneOfUs, sez Mr. Holder. Nothing to see here, move on. Let all those ruined farmers recover their lost wealth via civil litigation. They'll get a dime on the dollar eventually. After all, those guys aren't going to vote for us, anyway.

Let's just move on, nothing to see here.

Since Mr. Zakaria is a champion of All Things Progressive, well--boys will be boys. Even if they are 48 years of age. Old enough to know better, still too leftist to care. After all, he was presenting a passionate case for one of our pet projects, gun control. Completely understandable mistake by one of our GoodOldBoys. He's OneOfUs, after all. Let's not look too hard, lest we allll come under scrutiny.

Let's just move on, nothing to see here.

This blatant plagiarism, which is what it is--not a 'mistake'--, would have resulted in Mr. Zakaria's failure in classes and perhaps dismissal from any number of universities that insist their 20-year-olds actually do their own work, and write their own words. As the father of one of those kids who lives with this risk, OS objects.

Close your eyes and imagine if the offender were of a much more conservative shade of opinion, and had plagiarized someone else's words.  One can smell the tar being heated even now, as the deliveries of feathers are being signed for in every mainstream media outlet in the nation.

The Double Standard lives, be it a thief of ideas, such as Zakaria, or a negligent destroyer of the wealth of depositors, such as Jon Corzine.

Boys, after all, will be boys...Good Old Boys...One Of Us...

Welcome to the Nixon Administration Redux. Heaven help us all.

Once Again, Karl Denninger Is On The Mark: The Paltry Goldman-Sachs Settlement

The Angry Man of American Financial Blogdom hits the bullseye once again.

OldSouth heard the announcement of the GS settlement on the radio yesterday.

As Denninger points out, a $550 million dollar fine extracted from a firm with some $75 billion of market cap is simply a cost of doing business. No admission of guilt.

A promise that 'Honest, we'll never ever ever ever do it again--cross our little black banker hearts and hope to die!'.

These people nearly collapsed the world's economy; as in, the ability for normal people living their potty little Main Street/High Street lives to simply go about their business, do their jobs, raise the kids, and maybe have enough at the end to live with a bit of dignity, not forced to share their final years living under the same roof with their kids and grandchildren. That's just in North America and places like the UK. In other parts of the world it means: 'Is there enough food for the children today, and will I get a bit to eat myself?'

And, if you'll look at the announcement in the second link above, there was a sharp move upwards on the GS stock just before the announcement. As in, the settlement number was leaked to the trading desks somewhere, and they were off to the races. That's just run-of-the-mill insider trading, ya'll, nothing to see here.

Tell-ya'-whut-OldSouth's gonna do, in light of the settlement:

He's gonna get with Bubbah, the local independent insurance agent, and buy fire insurance on all the houses for about a mile around. Illegal-illschmegal! We're makin' us some money, honey!

Then, he's gonna sell shares in all those policies to a teachers pension fund in Arkansas--them folks is really stupid, they'll buy anything!

Then, he'll get with Bubbah's cousin Bubbah, fresh back from the pen, stock him up in gasoline and matches, burn down all them houses, and collect the insurance. Pay Bubbah and Bubbah a few grand in cash, send them on their way.

Then, he'll wire the proceeds to the Caymans (what-chew-mean-that-money-belongs-to-that-pension-fund? They'ze in Arkansas, chump! They deserve to lose their money!), turn Bubbah and Bubbah over to the pohleece, and buy himself a seat on the boards of some local charities and get himself elected to the deacon board of the local largest Baptist church he can find.

Now, if Bubbah and Bubbah gits their panties in a wad 'bout goin' to prison, they may tell their side of the story to the pohleece. Let 'em. OS's got lawyers, and heee'z already bought off the judge, and besides, the pohleece iz too stupid to decipher the books and follow the money, and the prosecutor wants to git hired on that law firm that represents OS, anyway. And, the guhvner got himself a piece of the action back there a bit, so there's always a pardon available, jest in case things get nasty. Besides, OS's got some entertaining footage of the guhvner and three or four of his interns--Bambi, Julie, Robert, and Phillip. Very entertaining, know-whud-I-mean?

But, just in case, somebody somewhere someday, decides to pursue him, OS's got him the Goldman-Sachs-Get-Out-Of-Jail-Almost-Free-Card: Get his lawyers to share that footage with the Guhvner, offer that job to the prosecutor, sue those hick teachers in Arkansas for having the temerity to complain, remind the judge where his loyalties lie, and negotiate a fine in the amount of, say .5% of the proceeds of the transaction described above.

Pay the fine, never admitting that anything was ever done wrong to anyone, and promise to never-ever-ever do it again, until the next time.

Fund an orphanage in the Caymans, courtesy of the large local Baptist church. Visit it often.

Make sure Bubbah and Bubbah gets sent up to Brushy Mountain Prison, where they held James Earl Ray all those years, and arrange for them to meet an untimely end.

Gots to clean up them details, you know.

Miss Nancy's Family And Friends See The World

HT to Doug Ross.

Looks like Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been using US military aircraft as personal taxi service for family and friends.

Often when she's not on board.

Doug's post includes copies of travel orders and receipts. Interesting reading.

The bar tabs are pretty impressive.

The Choice, aka The Testimony The House Democrats Refused to Hear or Publish

It isn't just what happens that we should notice.

It's what doesn't happen.

It's the voices of dissent, however reasoned, that are suppressed, the testimony deliberately never entered into the record or published, that also must be noticed.

Robert Johnson, whose credentials are noted below, was called at the last minute to testify before the House Banking Services Committee this week. He warned starkly of the dangers of the bill proposed.

Five minutes into his testimony, he was cut off by the acting chair. He submitted his testimony, which was subsequently never published.

The account can be found here.

The full testimony can be found here.

Johnson is no tin-hat Tea Party type.  He is an experienced executive in the financial world, and is employed by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute!  If his voice is to be suppressed, what then?

Here is the summary of his testimony, which runs twenty-sen pages.  Little wonder the Committee did not wish it entered in the record!

THE CHOICE: REFORM OR ENDORSEMENT OF A MAN MADE FAULTLINE

Wall Street's leaders cannot control their urge to seek protection despite the fact that it is demeaning to their reputations. Yet the members of this Committee and your counterparts in the Senate are responsible for resisting their demands for the good of society. I do believe that this is no minor matter. The financial security and strength of our nation is in the balance. Confidence in the U.S. dollar as the world's foremost reserve currency depends upon the integrity of our financial system. As I stated at the outset, I believe that the intersection between the OTC derivatives market and the large financial institutions is the financial equivalent of the San Andreas fault. Yet there is one difference. The San Andreas fault is a natural occurrence that we must all cope with to mitigate the consequences of an earthquake. It is beyond our power as people to eliminate. The current state of OTC derivatives regulation and its relation to the guarantees of large financial institutions are a man made fault that is the product of past human errors financial legislation and regulation. It has been revealed by catastrophic events to have devastating consequences. It has produced an avoidable earthquake.  That earthquake and its consequences need not be repeated. One can only imagine the consequences for the reputation of those public officials who would choose to act to codify into law this fault line and expose our society to a repetition of the financial crisis that has devastated the world in recent months.

To avoid reform would be harmful enough. We know the fault lines of past human error regarding the regulation of OTC derivatives continue to threaten us. But to affirm the status quo with new legislation that codifies these structural flaws and deems them to be healthy would be far worse. This is not about just leaving a few crumbs on the table for big financial institutions and asking the rest of us to pay a little more. This is about the representative government of our society choosing to affirm a dangerous financial structure that could explosively harm us all again just after we experienced a severe and unnecessary crisis that resulted from these very failures of design. It would be both dangerous and demoralizing for America and the world if our legislators choose to take that path forward in deference to the parochial desires of a few firms in the financial sector. 


Robert Johnson is the director of the Economic Policy Initiative at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and is a regular contributor to NewDeal 2.0. He serves on the United Nations Commission of Experts on Finance and International Monetary Reform. Previously, Dr. Johnson was a managing director at Soros Fund Management, where he managed a global currency, bond and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. He was also a managing director at the Bankers Trust Company. Dr. Johnson has served as chief economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire and was senior economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici.