kate520 wrote:
I read the
Rolling Stone article and the
Economist article. It sounds like this massive error could not occur to a more worthy "attorney," Joe Floren of Morgan Lewis. I take it that the speculation as to whether his organs have already been harvested is a jest, but in the world described in these two articles, I would not entirely write it off as a possibility.
I doubt that it comes as a surprise to most people to hear the charge that Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were intentionally violating the rules concerning naked short selling. This paragraph in the
Economist article did come as a surprise to me:
Quote:
Other missives suggest a cavalier attitude to the rules. In a 2005 e-mail, the president of one of Merrill’s stock-clearing businesses responds to internal concerns about the intentional failing of short sales thus: “F**k the compliance area—procedures, schmecedures.” He has since assured the court that this statement was a joke, according to the filing.
I had thought these crooks were smarter than that. Putting that into a e-mail strikes me as worthy of George Tierney of Greenville South Carolina.
E. Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch was gone in November, 2007. John Thain promised to restructure top management, but got into his own scandal with bonuses during a sustained period of large losses and resigned. I would expect to see similar management changes at Goldman Sachs following this disclosure, and I suspect that Jamie Dimon does not have a bright future with J. P. Morgan Chase.
The question is, of course, are there people with ethics, financial competence, and Street credibility available to replace them? A secondary question is whether the nation can afford to have firms of this size controlling the markets. Smaller consumer banks, smaller investment banks, and smaller brokerage houses would seem to reduce the risk to us all.
Unfortunately, Chris Dodd did not have the moral integrity to draft the legislation that needed to be drafted. Barney Frank does but was apparently not strong enough to overcome Dodd's strong ties to the financial industry.
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