OK. So this is nothing short of outrageous!
I just saw the news that Patrick M. Parkinson was named to be the new "top bank regulator" - in the words of New York Times. So I'm scanning the article half expecting the guy to be a former Goldman Sachs director. I get to the end of the article and breathe a sigh of relief that he's not a Goldman Sachs crony. But then I take another look at the last paragraph and here's what it says.
Mr. Parkinson previously served as deputy director of the Fed’s division of research and statistics, where he worked on issues related to financial regulation. Mr. Parkinson was also an adviser to Mr. Bernanke and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, on issues considered by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets from 1993 to 2008.So right away I'm pissed again that this guy is so close to Bernanke and Greenspan. And not only that but he was part of the infamous President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, aka the Plunge Protection Team. This is the group that is widely rumored to spearhead federal government intervention in the markets. So this guy is an insider's insider.
Alright, so I do a Google search to see what information is available on the web about him. (It's a good idea to do this now before the links get cluttered with the information from this new appointment.) Right away I find - as one of the top links - some testimony before Congress back in 2000. I get ready for a real snoozer full of Fed-speak.
Instead I find more incriminating evidence. In fact I would call this the smoking gun!
I am pleased to be here to present the Federal Reserve Board's views on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (H.R. 4541). Much of my testimony today will repeat testimony that Chairman Greenspan and I have presented during the last few weeks to other committees in the Senate and the House.Unbelievable right!? This guy was part of the little putsch that allowed derivatives to be unregulated. He was one of the co-conspirators along with Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers and Phil Gramm that rammed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act on an unsuspecting US public. This directly led to the blow up of AIG which ended up causing the Federal Government (that's you Mr. and Ms. Taxpayer) billions and billions of dollars.
The Board continues to believe that such legislation modernizing the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) is essential.
[...]
In its November 1999 report, Over-the-Counter Derivatives and the Commodity Exchange Act, the President's Working Group on Financial Markets (PWG) concluded that OTC derivatives transactions should be subject to the CEA only if necessary to achieve the public policy objectives of the act--deterring market manipulation and protecting investors against fraud and other unfair practices. In the case of financial derivatives transactions involving professional counterparties, the PWG concluded that regulation was unnecessary for these purposes because financial derivatives generally are not readily susceptible to manipulation and because professional counterparties can protect themselves against fraud and unfair practices. Consequently, the PWG recommended that financial OTC derivatives transactions between professional counterparties be excluded from coverage of the CEA. Furthermore, it recommended that these transactions between professional counterparties be excluded even if they are executed through electronic trading systems. Finally, the PWG recommended that transactions that were otherwise excluded from the CEA should not fall within the ambit of the act simply because they are cleared. The PWG concluded that clearing should be subject to government oversight but that such oversight need not be provided by the CFTC. Instead, for many types of derivatives, oversight could be provided by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, or a foreign financial regulator that the appropriate U.S. regulator determines to have satisfied its standards.
And now this bankster is put in charge to be the "top bank regulator"!? What kind of testosterone excreting glands does it take to nominate someone with those kind of credentials to be a "top bank regulator" while the memory of the Great Bailout of 2008 is still fresh in the minds of the American People!?
Is this really the best you can do President Obama? Do we need anymore proof of who really runs the government? Does anybody care anymore?
P.S. It's now 9 PM and the Frontline program featuring an interview with Brooksley Born who tried to stop this silent coup is just about to start. Don't miss it.
P.P.S. OK. It's 10 PM now. You can go back to watching "Dancing with the Stars" on your DVR now. Forgot to set it? Sorry about that.
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9 comments:
I care. But I think American Idol is on, so I'll get back to reading your post after that.
@princepersia - OMG! Who got eliminated this week!
haha... check out this link and tell me what you think about it. This is basically a summary his work (www.enterprisecorruption.com) here: http://investment-blog.net/what-is-globalization/
He (Reinhardt) supposedly charges for his site because he does this type of research and recommends stocks. Again, I am not advertising his site, but I am just curious what your take on the whole idea of corruption is based on the views pointed out in the "What is globalization?" article.
@princepersia - I agree that a big part of globalization is a "search for cheap labor". In a way that is nothing new under capitalism. The article talks about "what" but doesn't get into "why". And it doesn't discuss what is new about the globalization of the last 20 or so years vs. the type of globalization that already existed under previous European and American imperialism.
Corruption is a necessary part of any form of imperialism in order to get local lackeys to be accomplices in the exploitation of their countries. Again there's nothing new there.
Some of the things I think are new are:
- The abandonment of the idea of a middle class - especially in America.
- The inclusion of China in the WTO and its transformation from a communist pariah state into a global power
- The deliberate transfer of power to China from the US
- The global warming agenda which also transfers more power to China by allowing it free rein to develop while the US is forced to pay the costs
- The emergence of Police State apparatus in the US
- The direct engagement of the US in wars in the Middle East and Central Asia (mostly for the benefit of Israel) which sap the US of economic resources and increase the US debt.
- The huge swindle which was the Great Bailout of 2008, which instantly multiplied the national debt turning all US citizens into debt slaves
These are some of the issues that I try to tie together in my blog articles. You may recognize some of these themes from Alex Jones. I have a problem with the way he sensationalizes on his show. And I certainly don't agree with everything he says, but he does bring up some very good issues.
Actually, I haven't tackled the Global Warming issue yet because I have been slow to educate myself on this issue. I've tried a few times to write articles about this, but it is a very big issue. And it is complicated. The issue has deliberately been raised in such a way that it has received support from left leaning environmental groups while mostly benefiting the Elite class. I recommend watching "The Great Global Warming Swindle". I know it has been challenged, but I think it gets the big picture right. Here are some links.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle"
The movie is available here.
The Wikipedia article on the movie does a great job of summarizing the points made in the movie and exploring the areas of controversy.
I noticed an uptick in traffic to my blog. I quickly traced it back to Rolfe Winkler's Reuters blog. I had placed a comment there with a link back to this article so I was happy to see people following the link. But I was really surprised by the number of visits. So I went back to Rolfe's blog and found out he had actually featured my article in his list of "Afternoon Links 10-21". Woo-hoo! Thanks Rolfe!
So I went back and placed another comment in his blog thanking him for the honor. All his comments are moderated beforehand so it may take a while before it appears.
I actually also gave links to my story to Matt Taibbi and Max Keiser, but neither of them thought it was important enough to highlight. But still this story has gone unreported by the MSM - except for Rolfe of course. The only other place where I have seen any mention of this is over at Zero Hedge. But I honestly don't think they did as good a job of writing it up as I did. And for the record, their story hit the web before mine, but I was unaware of their story until after I had completed mine and began searching Google to see if my story was showing up in a web search.
Actually if you do a Google search on "Patrick Parkinson" right now, this article is one of the top hits. I'm sure Mr. Parkinson can't be to happy about that. One place where the search fails is if you look for CFMA and Patrick Parkinson together. I never used the acronym CFMA in my article on Parkinson. I spelled it out instead as Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Usually Google is pretty smart about knowing that things like CFMA and Commodity Futures Modernization Act are one and the same, but I guess it hasn't figured that out just yet.
BTW, at the rate at which it is learning, Google will become the first fully conscious Artificial Intelligence. And don't think that the Google founders don't know it.
There is a wonderful article written by Washington Post writer Manuel Roig-Franzia back in May 2009 titled "Credit Crisis Cassandra: Brooksley Born's Unheeded Warning Is a Rueful Echo 10 Years On". It covers in greater detail much of the same information that the Frontline story does.
In case you don't know who Cassandra is... She is a character from Greek mythology who was "cursed" with knowing the future, but no one would listen to her.
This is... well.
Blatant cronyism and favoritism.
I really want to do an article on Barney Frank and his incredible voting record to protect the entrenched financial thieves' interest.
I should get to it.
Basically the whole system is crooked.
And, since your blog is now bigger than mine, I'll spam my big rant about... well, everything.
http://americangoy.blogspot.com/2009/10/conflict-of-interest.html
Cheers!
I wish I could work on my blog a bit more, but I have no time nor energy...
Hi AG,
I have a long way to go to catch up with your over 200,000 hits.
Go for it with Barney Frank. And don't forget Chrisopher Dodd. Their all in the pocket of big business.
Here's a proper link to your article/rant.
Conflict of Interest
Exciting news, FNT fans! Our "friend", Reuters reporter Rolfe Winkler, has written an article on Patrick Parkinson and highlighted his links to derivatives. You can find the article here.
Is Fed’s choice tough enough?
And in a subtle nod to FNT, Rolfe starts out his story with this line.
"An insider’s insider. That’s how Patrick Parkinson, the Federal Reserve’s newly appointed head of bank supervision and regulation, has been described."
Of course the quote, "insider's insider" is from this very same article here on FNT. Well played Rolfe. As a "serious" professional journalist, I understand he can't use as a "source" for his article an amateur blogger who features populist headlines like myself. So I truly appreciate his gracious gesture. And he even managed to put it right in the opening line of the article, so that I would be sure to make the connection. Rolfe, all I can say is, "you've got class". (And please don' try to attribute any sarcasm to these remarks. I am being as sincere as I have ever been in my life.)
Rolfe goes on to highlight Zero Hedge's take on this story. And most likely he learned of the Zero Hedge story from a comment I left on his site.
So once again, many thanks to Rolfe for following up on this story. So far a quick search of Google News shows that his is the only MSM article that connects Parkinson in any way to derivatives. (Just do a search in Google News for 'Patrick Parkinson derivatives') But it hasn't even been 24 hours yet since Rolfe's story was published. So give it time.
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