We may actually see some banksters go to prison on the apparent massive Lehman fraud as detailed in the 2000 page report by the bankruptcy examiner. Not only does the report say then-CEO Dick Fuld was “at least grossly negligent,” it says their auditor Ernst & Young could be accused of “professional malpractice.” Then too, are the obvious questions about the involvement of the NY Fed and Geithner.
How Lehman’s executives lied about their assets to fool everyone about their financial health.
This is one of those few news stories where there is much more than meets eye. The headlines are understating the seriousness of the deception Lehman’s executives employed in an effort to fool investors and creditors about the health of their investment bank.
This is only going to get worse for the former executives of Lehman.
Did JPM and Citi cause Lehman’s collapse
Lehman faked it. Timmay knew it, that settles it?
Yes, I think it does.
Why it doesn’t matter if Lehman round-trip sales technically complied with accounting rules
Will Ernst & Young survive the Lehman fiasco?
From Barron’s
“Dick Fuld is going to be bankrupted and he’s going to spend the rest of his life in court fighting legal battles,” observes Dick Bove of Rochedale Securities in a phone call this afternoon. Bove, who said he’s having the nine volumes of the examiner’s report printed and bound, added, “There may be others forced to do the same.”
The libertarian Zero Hedge, who has broken major financial stories about the banksters, now sounds more than a little Marxist.
The evident conclusion is that the core driver of modern capitalist society is fraud at its very core, and nothing short of a massive revolutionary overhaul of the political system, which is the number one defender of the status quo courtesy of very lucrative bribes and kickbacks originating from the same rotten Wall Street that day after day is uncovered to be nothing but a sham filled with toxic assets, used to collateralize an ever growing wall of liquidity (thank you Bernanke).
[Ratigan:]”This report comes just short of suggesting this is by no means an accident but instead one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated by a group of people, and enabled by the US government.” And Spitzer concludes: “there is no doubt civil cases will be brought. We had a failure of CEO, the CFO, the accountants, and indeed the regulators, the Fed and the Treasury, that were inside these banks, and the question has to be asked: where were they.”
Indeed. And what will Obama do about it?
Capitalism may or may not have been a good thing once upon a time. One thing for certain is its ability to generate vast wealth. Another is the lopsided distribution of that wealth, with most of those who did the real work to generate it on the short side, and in effect, little more than glorified slaves.
Whether or not it was somehow good in the beginning, is moot. What we have now is a corporate/military monster rampaging through our nation and steamrolling over everything in its path.
Those “captains of industry” and “pillars of the community” are nothing less than racketeers, completely lacking morals, scruples, or anything resembling ethical behavior.
The only difference between them and the criminal gangs called the MOB is their label.