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How Obama Blew A Golden Opportunity To Kick Wall Street Ass And Inspire People

Posted by AGORACOM at 12:13 AM on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Man, We Really Had High Hopes For You

I was about to hit the sack when I took one last look at my news stream and found this great post by my friend Barry Ritholtz.

The Tragedy of the Obama Administration

It is a must read.  I am no Obama basher – and neither is Barry Ritholtz.  In fact, we’re both entrepreneurs that believe in the right to compete and earn as much money as your ability (and luck) allow you to.  Not exactly the mantra of the Democratic party.  Nonetheless, if you are like us, you hate any sense of unfair play.  You want to win, or lose, fair and square.  You want your competitors to abide by the same rules.  Wall Street hasn’t played by those rules in over 30 years – and they are now threatening the entire global financial system.

Obama had a chance to change all that – and he failed.  Barry best summarizes this opportunity and failure in the following excerpt:

The opportunity existed to get the renegade banks under control — to reduce their leverage, their recklessness, and to get their hands out of the taxpayers pockets. That opportunity was squandered, and Obama ended up as a defender of the banking status quo. It is where his presidency could have achieved lasting greatness, and instead was turned into just another elected official, who over promised and under delivered . . .

HOW OBAMA BLEW IT

Watching Obama lose the house tonight was painful from a hope point of view.  I personally can’t stand politicians and don’t believe either U.S. party will ever make a difference. But I did believe Obama – the person – was capable of making the changes he campaigned on.  I could write for an hour but it would be futile and I’m tired.  As such, I’ll summarize my view in these 8 bullet points:

  • Americans haven’t been happy with the health care system for decades.
  • BUT they were really mad about Wall Street / Bank fleecing right now.
  • He should have tackled Wall St first and hard.
  • It would have inspired citizens that desperately needed a hero.
  • He could have then ridden that wave into any reasonable legislation he wanted.
  • Obama blew it. I didn’t want him to. I’m a Conservative from Canada – but hoped that someone would stop the Wall Street train wreck.
  • It would have been nice to watch a President act Presidential.
  • Le Sigh.

Regards,
George

BREAKING: Silver Price Manipulation Lawsuits Begin. Expect More To Come

Posted by AGORACOM at 7:31 PM on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Via Zerohedge:

Yesterday’s announcement by CFTC commissioner Bart Chilton that he was fully aware of fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control silver prices may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back on precious metal manipulation. Today, Brian Beatty and Peter Laskaris (Southern District Court of New York, cases 10-08146, and 10-01857) sued the two firms at the very top of the precious metal manipulation pyramid: JPMorgan and HSBC. The lawsuit, which seeks class action status, alleges that “between in or about March 2008 and continuing through the present, Defendants have combined, conspired and agreed to restrain trade in, fix, and manipulate prices of silver futures and options contracts traded in this District on the COMEX division of the NYMEX. Defendants thereby have violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C ¶1. Also during the Class Period, individual Defendants have intentionally acted to manipulate prices of COMEX silver futures and options contracts. Such conduct violates Section 9(a) of the Commodity Exchange Act, 7 U.S.C. ¶13b.” And so, the tidal wave of lawsuits by all those who may have ever lost money trading precious metals against JPM et al begins.

The lawsuit alleges that the means by which JPM and HSBC manipulated the market is as follows:

  • Defendants have effected their foregoing restraint of trade and manipulation through diverse means. These means themselves include lawful and unlawful acts.
  • Defendants have held large positions in silver futures and silver options.
  • Defendant have held a concentrated and substantial amount of the open interest in silver futures contracts
  • Defendants have made large trades at key times.
  • Defendants or others have made large “spoof” orders which appeared on the trading screens; “spoofing” is the submission of a large order which is not executed but influences prices and is then withdrawn before it reasonably can be executed.
  • Defendants have communicated with and/or signalled one another their trades

Continue To Zerohedge article to see actual lawsuit filing.

This may be the first of such lawsuits but don’t expect this to be the last.  Across the USA, bigger and badder law firms are preparing their own lawsuits.

Further, don’t expect this to end with silver.  GATA, Sinclair, Sprott, Ron Paul et al will be vindicated in their assertions that gold too has been manipulated down for years.

Regards,
George

CNBC “House Of Cards”. How Wall Street Fucked America and The World. Why They Will Do It Again

Posted by AGORACOM at 1:34 PM on Monday, September 6th, 2010

The growing criticism of CNBC amongst financial bloggers and commentators (including me) is growing and warranted.  Too much cheer leading, too much emphasis on entertaining us, too little guest analysis beyond short octobox/decabox sound bites.

Having said that, they have some great talent over there and one of those people is David Faber, who put together the 90-minute must see documentary.  I’ve embedded it below.  I don’t care how busy you are, put the family to bed and find the time to watch it.  It will not only tell you how Wall Street greed fucked the global financial system – I believe it demonstrates why Wall Street greed is in the process of doing it again.

After all, no Wall Street CEO has gone to jail or even been forced to payback the hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses generated during Sub-Prime / CDO scam, so you count on them looking after themselves all over again during QE1 and the soon to be released sequel QE2.

Skip a movie, skip a game, skip anything that won’t arm you with the information you need to potentially protect your financial future.  Watch this video, absorb the information, never trust Wall Street again and do what you must to protect yourself.

CNBC presents the defining story of our time. Correspondent David Faber investigates the origins of the global economic crisis and the events leading to the most devastating financial collapse since the Great Depression.