Video: To Catch a Trader | Watch FRONTLINE Online | PBS Video: a good Frontline expo of insider trading by Wall Street hedge funds. Of course, it has limitations. For example, there is zero mention of offshore banking entities like the ones used by Romney. There is no examination of lobbying Washington to get laws weakened or removed. Or why hedge funds suddenly shot up like a rocket when the Wall Street laws were changed in 1998.
The smart guys who launched a thousand pirate ships knew quite well what they were up to. They loved ‘artwork’ about sharks, they named some of their outfits after piracy icons, they loved dogs from hell and other Dark Arts elements because their operation was a naked looting business. They grossly warped the stock markets and small investors and institutional pension investors were openly ripped off.
These pirates made profits when pushing a stock upward and shorting it downwards. 30% profits a year were harvested this way, fueled by insider information which they paid for quite generously but made quadruple profits off of these bribes.
I carried this story last summer: SEC Sacks SAC Capital: Government And Ex-wife Go After Pirate Cohen | Culture of Life News. It seems that his ex-wife accused him of fraud and theft and this was thrown out in court but the SEC wire taps now show that the entire SAC firm was a crime syndicate and so her lawsuit has been reinstated in the courts.
In today’s news, Hedge Funder Steven Cohen Rushes to Dump $60 M. Estate in ‘Too Jewish’ East Hampton | The New York Observer The claim here is, Cohen is winding down SAC Hedge Fund and laying off 800 traders due to the insider trade investigation that has put a number of his underlings in prison.
He is to also pay a $1.8 billion fine from his $10 billion pile of illicit wealth. This is around 20% which, if viewed as a tax, is laughably low. He bought the McKeon mansion (a dead banker) for $62.5 million and now is selling it, less than a year later, for $60 million with no takers.
Ever since these people wrecked stock trading, most small investors ran off to gold and other commodity markets which then shot up briefly, too. Then collapsed. Now, these same small investors have run off to Bitcoins only to be ripped off yet again. It is sad watching this because the entire point of issuing stocks is to make economic systems grow, not blow up and smash everything in their paths!
Also in the news is this revelation about world trade: Press release – Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is leaked by Wikileaks. Here is Assange’s analysis:
When compared against other TPP chapters, the Environment Chapter is noteworthy for its absence of mandated clauses or meaningful enforcement measures. The dispute settlement mechanisms it creates are cooperative instead of binding; there are no required penalties and no proposed criminal sanctions. With the exception of fisheries, trade in ‘environmental’ goods and the disputed inclusion of other multilateral agreements, the Chapter appears to function as a public relations exercise.
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ publisher, stated: “Today’s WikiLeaks release shows that the public sweetner in the TPP is just media sugar water. The fabled TPP environmental chapter turns out to be a toothless public relations exercise with no enforcement mechanism.”
All systems are being set up so they don’t work on behalf of people. They are designed to make a very small elite very rich. The funny thing about the pirate hedge fund game is, even after weakening the laws and opening the barn door to looting, they still did illegal things and are now going to prison and about time!
The sad thing is, the overall system still doesn’t work right and won’t work right for the foreseeable future.
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But Cohen is just a medium-size fish.
When will they go after the real crooks of Wall St?
They will ride the greed straight into the guillotines. They can’t stop themselves.
@Jim R the political and law systems are neck deep in corruption. They are a part of the crooks. They won’t go after them.
Once I read the ‘Tale of Ron Perlman’…geezzzzz. Started in Pennsylvania with [grocery vending machines?] then moved way up, to that mega mansion on the best part of the island!
And what of the Israeli who will be #2 behind Yellen?
Elaine, how long to “civil unrest here”?
Id like to hear more of yr OP on TPP! Thanks.
Egypt, Syria and Ukraine is coming to a street near you, on a global scale.
The problem is that, by the time it happens, the self proclaimed kings and queens of the world – bankers, fund CEOs and traders – are really high on drugs to realize that this will affect them, very soon. There is no other explanation for this pathetic blindness from their part.
You can’t have community, politics and stability when you destroy the very foundations of society and steal its ablity to create real wealth. The result is war, chaos, revolt and new elites emerging while the old ones perishing in the firestorm. No one is safe from what is coming. Not really.
And KARL MARX figured it out!!!
Capital is LABOR. And they have cut the connection between the two, ideologically, devaluing labor while elevating the concept of money making out of thin air (Bitcoins are a typical example of this) so they can value something they created that has no civic or social value, and then enslave us to these things they created (money).
Labor is true wealth. Even land is useless unless it is worked by peasants and slaves which is why Southern gentleman fought ferociously to keep labor devalued that is, slavery. Where the humans had great value with the slave owners who traded slaves at a high price, but the laborers were told they were worthless and deserve nothing for their work.