Financial fuckery thread

[hirley0]

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[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Just because the government has shut down doesn't mean Congress will cease its central function of making Americans' lives miserable. While everyone watches the legislative back-and-forth on the budget, the House may vote this week to thwart a key new Labor Department protection affecting $10.5 trillion in retirement funds. Basically, House Republicans want to allow the financial services industry to continue to steal from your 401(k) and IRA plans. And far too many Democrats want to help them.

The Labor Department proposal, known as the "fiduciary rule," would change the ethical standards by which employer-based retirement products like 401(k)'s and IRAs are marketed and sold. The rule has not been updated since 1975, before 401(k)'s and IRAs even existed. The Labor Department wants to broaden the definition of a "fiduciary" to cover all financial advisers who offer individual investment advice for a fee. Under the rule, they would be legally required to work in the best interest of their clients. For example, a fiduciary would not be able to push investment products on customers in which they have a financial stake.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114944/labor-department-fiduciary-rule-congress-votes-thwart-it

Given all the tricks and self-dealing from this industry, an allegedly "independent" study that refuses to release the context for its claims is mostly worthless. Moreover, even if you were to take the Wyman study on its own terms, it claims that non-fiduciary advice is valuable, so valuable that brokers could not offer it to small investors if the costs became too burdensome. This directly contradicts the secondary argument, that the industry makes more than enough money off large investors, almost all of whom have a fiduciary arrangement, so they can float cheap advice to the smaller retirement account holders. It's pretzel logic.

This is a huge deal. The retirement crisis will become one of the bigger stories of the next decade as the baby boomers turn 65. Millions of people are being systematically ripped off and sold a bill of goods about how they can maintain their standard of living after they stop working. And politicians in both parties want to keep allowing the financial industry to perform this deceitful game. While the true solution, as said before, is a total revolution in thinking about retirement, protecting ordinary investors and ending the rent-extraction from worthless intermediaries is at least a start. This one is worth a call to your Congresscritter.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/david-dayen-mysterious-study-backs-financial-adviser-thieves-who-want-to-keep-bilking-small-investors.html#sjGVAFTvHpycePTZ.99

[hirley0]

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... That would be a  pay rise for me

Wow. {did U MeAn DoW?|

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J st  http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114944/labor-department-fiduciary-rule-congress-votes-thwart-it

Gi v

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[Cain]

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[Demolition Squid]

Wow.

I don't feel qualified to predict what the effects on the economy will be if they go through with it, but it'll be damn interesting to find out! Here's hoping they put it into action.

[hirley0]

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[Junkenstein]

I think this has pretty much all the classic modern signs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24989742

An investigation has been launched at the Co-op Bank after its ex-chairman was filmed allegedly buying drugs.

The Co-op Group said it was launching a "fact-finding process to look into any inappropriate behaviour" and a review of its "democratic structure".

West Yorkshire Police said it was making enquiries after Mr Flowers, 63, was reportedly filmed by an acquaintance he met online buying £300 worth of illegal drugs including cocaine.

Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the influential Treasury Select Committee and headed up the recent banking standards commission, said MPs could see Mr Flowers was "manifestly unsuitable" for the job.

"There's also the track record of the bank," he added.

"The Co-op was a bank that was up to its ears in bad lending... and it did its full share of PPI mis-selling even as it was busy articulating its higher ethical principles."

Just another day at the bank. Remember, it's just a bad apple. It's not all of them. This is totally the only banking executive who has anything to do with poor decisions and drugs.

[Cain]

The Black Agenda Report has a very interesting piece up on what is happening in Detroit:

In place of an already straitjacketed, comprador-dominated home rule, Michigan's Republican Gov. Rick Snyder governor imposed his own regent in the noxious form of Emergency Financial Manager Kevyn Orr, who was until this year a bankruptcy attorney from the multinational firm Jones Day, which is the mercenary legal arm for much of the Fortune 500, including most of the banks that have conspired to destroy Detroit's tax base.

This summer Orr, acting as the one-man embodiment of Detroit's now-powerless executive and legislative branches, requested that the city be declared bankrupt. Federal Bankruptcy Court Judge Steven Rhodes finished hearing testimony last Friday on whether Orr, possibly the most hated man in Detroit, has met all the criteria for Chapter 9 law, including having negotiated in good faith with its creditors. These include the city's retirees, whose pensions are protected by Michigan's constitution and, therefore, do not consider themselves "creditors" who can be forced to take a "hair cut," in Wall Street parlance, in a municipal bankruptcy proceeding. Until just days before he announced his proposal to cut pensions on June 14, Orr pretended that he both respected those protections and thought there was only a "50-50" chance that he would try to pull the bankruptcy trigger.

Even Judge Rhodes thought he smelled a rat, although that doesn't mean he won't rule for the rodents. He asked Jones Day lawyer Bruce Bennett – who is, in this Alice in Wonderland legal world, acting as Detroit's lawyer and, therefore, the lawyer for former Jones Day employee Kevin Orr – if Orr hadn't acted in bad faith by misleading the retirees.

"I'm the wrong person to ask," Bennett said.

"You're his lawyer," the judge replied, repeating, "You're his lawyer."

Bennett maintained that, even if Orr had been misleading, "it was corrected three...or four days later.... Mistakes happen."

Earlier in the week, Judge Rhodes rejected the NAACP's challenge to Kevyn Orr's Emergency Financial Manager powers on the grounds that they unconstitutionally disenfranchise a majority of Michigan's African American citizens. The judge said the public has a more "substantial interest in the speedy and efficient resolution of a municipal bankruptcy case that affects as many people and institutions, and as much of the local, regional and national economy, as this case does." He said the NAACP could continue its suit after the bankruptcy is done.

In other words, the people's right to vote is secondary to working out the financial claims brought by derivatives-wielding bankers. If the people's franchise stands in the way of Lord's of Capital's right to "restructure" Detroit to their liking, then the franchise must be rendered inoperative, at least until the spoils have been divvyed up – that is, until all the issues that matter have been made moot.

Of course, this is quite similar to how the EU has gone about dethroning national governments whose economic policy is not to the liking of the financiers in Frankfurt and Zurich.

[Junkenstein]

I bet this will eventually tie in to something bigger and more interesting:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25742130

For five years, she is believed to have controlled Uzbekistan's largest conglomerate, a Swiss-registered company called Zeromax. She has always denied any connection to the company which published profits of $3-4bn a year until it was mysteriously shut down in 2010.

Kamollodin Rabbimov, a political analyst who used to work for the presidential administration but is now based in France, says Zeromax was causing such problems that Islam Karimov decided to close it.

"Gulnara monopolised entire sectors of the economy," he says. "She started interfering in sales of natural gas, gold trade, logistics. She was sucking away so many resources that she single-handedly created a budget deficit."

I won't claim any kind of insight into Uzbekistan, but I'd suggest it's probably indicative of what's occurring behind the scenes in similar nations.

[Cain]

So, the Mail potentially has found something interesting here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2547684/TWO-senior-American-bankers-working-London-commit-suicide-just-two-days-one-jumped-500ft-death-JP-Morgan-skyscraper.html

Two top ranking American bankers working in senior positions in London have committed suicide in the space of two days.

Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan bank executive, died early this morning after he jumped 500ft from the top of the bank's European headquarters. His body was discovered on the ninth floor roof, which surrounds the 33-story Canary Wharf skyscraper.

Just two days earlier, on Sunday, fellow American banker, William 'Bill' Broeksmit, 58, was found hanging in his South Kensington home.

Broeksmit – who retired last February – was a former senior manager at Deutsche Bank and had lived in London many years. He started working for the bank in 1996 but left for a period of 7 years before returning in 2008.

[Salty]

He was retired? Well that is weird. I could speculate and pull all kind of wild ass ideas about why people such as those might do that, and probably have no idea.

But it seems strange that someone who is not actively involved in that business would bail like that.

Unless he thought we were ALL fucked no matter what. Then again, incomplete info.

[Cain]

Yeah.  It could all be personal reasons, and nothing work-related at all.  But still, worth noting.  JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank are involved in shady shit on occasion, and it's possible, despite being retired, Broeksmit knew something or had done some consulting work or similar.

[Junkenstein]

Hmm

Broeksmit was one of around 100 bankers who left Merrill Lynch for Deutsche when its investment banking arm was founded in the 1990s.

He was involved in the process of rescuing the bank in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, when many investment banks found their debts were 'toxic', and unlikely ever to be repaid.
Broeksmit, a renowned risk expert, assisted the bank's efforts to shift the worst of the debt, and reduce its total amount of lending.
Chiefs at Deutsche Bank had planned to promote  Broeksmit to its management board in 2012, but stopped when the German financial regulator expressed doubts about his experience as a leader.

Can't help but wonder where that debt got shifted to. The inexperience as a leader thing seems a little odd as well. This would suggest German regulators are actually serious, which makes this sound more like a "We know what shady shit you're up to, we just can't prove it"

[hirley0]

C5F |   FB

http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/z?s=CDE&t=6m&q=l&l=on&z=l&c=FB&p=b&a=ss,fs,ss,r14&lang=en-US&region=US

[Cain]

Another banker suicide.  Not in London this time, so probably not connected...but still, worth keeping an eye on:

Mike Dueker, the chief economist at Russell Investments, was found dead at the side of a highway that leads to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, according to the Pierce County Sheriff's Department. He was 50.

He may have jumped over a 4-foot (1.2-meter) fence before falling down a 40- to 50-foot embankment, Pierce County Detective Ed Troyer said yesterday. He said the death appeared to be a suicide.

Dueker was reported missing on Jan. 29, and a group of friends had been searching for him along with law enforcement. Troyer said the economist was having problems at work, without elaborating. Dueker was in good standing at Russell, said Jennifer Tice, a company spokeswoman. She declined to comment on Troyer's statement about Dueker's work issues.