Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

[ST]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

for reference, 2008:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/sectors.php?sector=F

2008 Presidential Election

Finance/Insurance/Real Estate Sector Totals to Candidates

Display: Select a Sector Agribusiness Communications/Electronics Construction Defense Energy/Natural Resources Finance/Insurance/Real Estate Health Lawyers & Lobbyists Transportation Misc Business Labor Ideology/Single-Issue Other

Total to these candidates: $141,183,502 (Dems 54.0% and Repubs 45.9%)

Finance/Insur/RealEst

Obama, Barack	$42,047,073
McCain, John	$31,020,439
Clinton, Hillary	$20,895,439
Romney, Mitt	$14,237,487
Giuliani, Rudy	$13,817,732
Dodd, Chris	$5,848,236
Richardson, Bill	$3,083,903
Edwards, John	$2,380,388
Thompson, Fred	$2,062,919
Biden, Joe	$1,675,361
Huckabee, Mike	$1,396,215
Paul, Ron	$1,366,952
Gilmore, Jim	$291,991
Brownback, Sam	$262,514
Vilsack, Tom	$194,900
Thompson, Tommy	$128,609
Hunter, Duncan	$116,200
Kucinich, Dennis	$114,011
Nader, Ralph	$85,346
Tancredo, Tom	$73,710
Barr, Bob	$48,409
Gravel, Mike	$14,575
Keyes, Alan	$9,701
Baldwin, Chuck	$7,342
McKinney, Cynthia	$4,050

[lektrode]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

thanks for the comment EJ... we've been missing you, Big Guy

....
But at the end of the day Americans will be left to vote for either FIRE Economy Candidate A or FIRE Economy Candidate B.

sigh... but guess this is no surprise - the only surprise at the moment was RP getting 2nd in NH (what with the onion loader, i mean the NH union leader, backing newt and stabbing the mittster in the back - guess that kinda tells you how much credence the _new_ (and blue) hampster crowd place in the manchester paper.... (once upon a time, they were make or break for the politicians in NH, now... not so much ;)

From opensecrets.org, can you spot the FIRE Economy candidates?

doesnt this just tell us that they (the FIREman, rats, what have ya) have or are thinking about jumping the dems sinking ship (at the moment anyway)

but considering all they got out of having all 3 branches of the .gov under their control when it REALLY MATTERED (09-10, just as all the big NY banks were essentially bankrupted by their own malfeasance and should've gone under, just like the S&L's in the 60's and 90's), would say they still have plenty of FIREpower at the helm and will be surprised if the mittster goes the distance - even if he might be the most electable (but i'll bet at this moment, he's glad the GOP went with mccain last time...)

Harvard is a FIRE Economy institution, Elizabeth Warren being the exception that proves the rule.

and thank the gods for her, for without her work the GD DC aristocracy would still be under the impression that the middle/working class is 'doing just fine'

guess it also shows that even harvard's lock-stepped PC-arrested 'culture' can do good things once in awhile, eh?

[EJ]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

As a Dailey follower, I watched that interview and it corrected my ignorant belief (not ever having watched Napolitano's show) that he was just another Judge Judy. And I agree that Stewart has been most interesting in giving Paul a fair hearing. It was Stewart's show a couple a while back that got me noticing how Paul was being completely ignored by the media. I've since convinced my Democrat wife that there is, in fact, a vast MSM conspiracy to frame Paul as a fringe player.

We posted this image during the previous presidential election. It depicts the two anti-FIRE Economy candidates on both the left and the right positioned as they are by the media, at the extremes.

This time around there is no left-leaning ant-FIRE Economy candidate. Ron Paul is on his own.

Granted he's made considerably better progress this time than last.

But at the end of the day Americans will be left to vote for either FIRE Economy Candidate A or FIRE Economy Candidate B.

From opensecrets.org, can you spot the FIRE Economy candidates?

Harvard is a FIRE Economy institution, Elizabeth Warren being the exception that proves the rule.

[goodrich4bk]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

As a Dailey follower, I watched that interview and it corrected my ignorant belief (not ever having watched Napolitano's show) that he was just another Judge Judy. And I agree that Stewart has been most interesting in giving Paul a fair hearing. It was Stewart's show a couple a while back that got me noticing how Paul was being completely ignored by the media. I've since convinced my Democrat wife that there is, in fact, a vast MSM conspiracy to frame Paul as a fringe player.

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

Thanks, Raz. That sounds a lot more like it. Such are the hazards of transcribing before my second shot of caffeine!

You might also enjoy the Jim DeMint interview from last night (although Stewart himself gets a little annoying during the interview).

[Raz]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

I enjoyed one of the quotes Andrew Napolitano had in this respect on Jon Stewart Show a couple nights ago: "I don't believe there are two parties in this country . . . We have one big government party; it has a Democratic Party wing that likes war and taxes and individual welfare, and a Republican wing that likes war and *deficits* and corporate welfare."

Here's the interview, worth watching through: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tu...rew-napolitano. Stewart is hosting an increasing number of conservative and libertarian commentators lately, and has been an early sympathizer (not supporter) of Ron Paul's this election season. Interesting realization going on at both ends of the political spectrum.

Thanks, Prazak. I enjoyed that one!

(And I *corrected* your "transcript" - Napolitano said "deficits" along with war and corporate welfare are what Republicans like.)

I believe that BOTH of them like deficits.

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

Uh, goodrich, Billy Clinton sent Robert Rubin down to Crapital Hill to seek the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Saying it had "nothing to do with ... Democrats" just ain't so.




http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot...rt-rubins.html


Now I'll freely admit that Phil Graham and Jim Leach led the charge and deserve more than 50% of the blame, along with that useless Ole' Miss cheerleader Trent Lott, and most of the whole damn Elephant crowd. But the Demonrats are just as corrupt, and until everyone recognizes that fact and seeks the remedy of a Third Party - none of this gangrenous government is going to really change.

I enjoyed one of the quotes Andrew Napolitano had in this respect on Jon Stewart Show a couple nights ago: "I don't believe there are two parties in this country . . . We have one big government party; it has a Democratic Party wing that likes war and taxes and individual welfare, and a Republican wing that likes war and taxes and corporate welfare."

Here's the interview, worth watching through: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tu...rew-napolitano. Stewart is hosting an increasing number of conservative and libertarian commentators lately, and has been an early sympathizer (not supporter) of Ron Paul's this election season. Interesting realization going on at both ends of the political spectrum.

[Raz]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

Raz, my last post on this thread gave Clinton and a bi-partisan Congress full "credit" for the repeal of Glass-Steagall and further argued that it was one of the leading causes of the financial collapse. My point above was much more narrowly focused on the 2005 BK amendments and how they allowed JP Morgan to assert superior claims to MF's customer accounts. Those amendments had very few Democratic votes, Clinton was not in office and Obama, of course, had nothing to do with it. In fact, Senator Obama voted against the very law which Ms. Barnhardt is now belatedly realizing has fucked her clients. For her to drag him into the debate is ignorant or reprehensible.

In that case you have my apology for any misunderstanding.

I'm glad that Obama voted against those amendments; along with his vote against the Messinpotamia (Iraq War) it allows me to say that his indistinguished career has been sprinkled with a few correct decisions.

[goodrich4bk]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

Raz, my last post on this thread gave Clinton and a bi-partisan Congress full "credit" for the repeal of Glass-Steagall and further argued that it was one of the leading causes of the financial collapse. My point above was much more narrowly focused on the 2005 BK amendments and how they allowed JP Morgan to assert superior claims to MF's customer accounts. Those amendments had very few Democratic votes, Clinton was not in office and Obama, of course, had nothing to do with it. In fact, Senator Obama voted against the very law which Ms. Barnhardt is now belatedly realizing has fucked her clients. For her to drag him into the debate is ignorant or reprehensible.

[don]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

“Obama was correct on 60 minutes: what caused the financial crisis was not illegal.”

This seems almost as bad spin as blogs that claim, “Government intervention caused the financial crisis.” Clearly regulatory capture and the revolving door between FIRE and the federal government are the ultimate root causes, but the housing bubble could not have happened without somebody buying the paper and the paper was fraudulently sold and laws were broken. Gemstone 7 comes to mind.

You may be right that only mortgage lenders will go to jail, but there was plenty of criminal activity a tier or two above. Miller's inability to get 50-state agreement suggests that it's more than just robo signing and foreclosure fraud that Coakley and others are going after.

I understand this thread is mostly about MF Global which had probably legally secured the use of the customer funds through fine print, but that doesn't translate to “what caused the financial crisis was not illegal.”

A recent posting, "State AGs Flipping Rocks", covers some of the latest "discoveries" in mortgage and foreclosure malfeasance.

[Raz]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

Here is another quote from Ann's letter to clients when she closed her futures brokerage firm after the MF Global bankruptcy:

"Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise."


As my other post notes, I am not very impressed with Ms. Barnhart's knowledge of her own industry. She seems to think that the loss of customer funds was a result of Corzine's "theft" when, in fact, it was an express right that JP Morgan had in its written agreements with MF Global --- a right that was also enshrined by amendments to the bankruptcy code in 2005 that elevates JP Morgan's collateral rights to those funds ABOVE the rights of the owners of those funds.

Don't get me wrong. I think the result stinks. But it was a result that was mandated in 2005 by a "free market" Republican president and Republican Congress. It has absolutely nothing to do with Obama, his "regime" or Democrats. The only connection between the loss of customer funds and Obama is that the head of MF Global was a democrat. I think the more important connection is that he was an ex-Goldman CEO and that Ms. Barnhart was a very small fish playing in a very big pond.

Uh, goodrich, Billy Clinton sent Robert Rubin down to Crapital Hill to seek the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Saying it had "nothing to do with ... Democrats" just ain't so.




http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot...rt-rubins.html


Now I'll freely admit that Phil Graham and Jim Leach led the charge and deserve more than 50% of the blame, along with that useless Ole' Miss cheerleader Trent Lott, and most of the whole damn Elephant crowd. But the Demonrats are just as corrupt, and until everyone recognizes that fact and seeks the remedy of a Third Party - none of this gangrenous government is going to really change.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

“Obama was correct on 60 minutes: what caused the financial crisis was not illegal.”

This seems almost as bad spin as blogs that claim, “Government intervention caused the financial crisis.” Clearly regulatory capture and the revolving door between FIRE and the federal government are the ultimate root causes, but the housing bubble could not have happened without somebody buying the paper and the paper was fraudulently sold and laws were broken. Gemstone 7 comes to mind.

You may be right that only mortgage lenders will go to jail, but there was plenty of criminal activity a tier or two above. Miller's inability to get 50-state agreement suggests that it's more than just robo signing and foreclosure fraud that Coakley and others are going after.

I understand this thread is mostly about MF Global which had probably legally secured the use of the customer funds through fine print, but that doesn't translate to “what caused the financial crisis was not illegal.”

[goodrich4bk]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

thanks for that overview g4bk, altho what shes had to say seems plausible, methinks shes a bit over the top and perhaps a bit overly biased to the right (the 'christian' right) - however to say the "only connection" tween what happened with MF'nG and the dems is corzine requires the 'suspension of disbelief' as hilary so famously put it a few years back - corzine is the poster child for whats happened in the past dozen or so years and how the dems (puppets on the end of GS strings) in both DC and NYC have so thoroughly corrupted the financial system - from the repeal of glass-steagall on forward - mostly engineered by the upper echelon of lower manhattan - whom in my observation are _mostly_ dems.

and what further evidence does one need to conclude this to be true?

with all three branches of the .gov under control of the dems, NOTHING was done to effectively address the issues that repeal of glass-steagall hath wrought - NOTHING has been done to prosecute what most people (not politicians) would consider to be a step or 2 beyond 'immoral', while we have the POTUS quoted as saying nothing was "illegal" on 60minutes - NOTHING was done to prevent AIG from paying GS 100 cents on the dollar for counter-party risk contracts that AIG had neither the legal basis to write nor the capital to back - and that this was allowed to occur, while the bondholders of GM got SCREWED?

meanwhile the dept of 'justice' seems intent on merely running down the clock till either the end of this rotten to the core administration is ejected next november, or the statute of limitations allows these thievin bastards to escape with the BILLIONS they've swindled the US Taxpayers out of!

nope - the 'suspension of disbelief' is being as polite as i can be in disagreeing with that POV.

I understand your point, but how could Democrats prosecute Wall Street for acts that were no longer illegal after the repeal of Glass-Steagall? And exactly how would one go about reinstating Glass-Steagall now that commercial deposits are the capital that backs Wall Streets' products? There may be a way to do it, but I have seen nobody submit such legislation. If you think every Congressman is GS's bitch, I might agree but where are the outside voices calling for a return to Glass-Steagall?

Obama was correct on 60 minutes: what caused the financial crisis was not illegal. Nobody is going to jail, other than the mortgage brokers and borrowers. Yes, it's a "crime" that it was not illegal, but that "crime" was committed in 1999 by a bipartisan Congress and a Democratic president who is not Obama. That was my point. The "crime" was committed by Christopher Cox's SEC giving the five largest Wall Street investment banks the ability to leverage MBS 30:1. The "crime" was committed by Alan Greenspan's excessively low interest rates and his failure to use existing regulatory power to restrain subprime lending products. The "crime" was committed by the ratings agencies who were paid to find mathematical justification for their ratings and did, despite such evidence being contrary to common sense. The "crime" was committed by millions of Americans who when offered financial products that were too good to refuse, didn't refuse. I can continue with other favorite targets --- Fannie Mae, Barney Frank, CRA --- but in each case there is no federal law prohibiting the actions they did that may have contributed to the financial system's collapse.

The only cogent argument I've seen for how what happened constitutes illegal fraud is William Black, who has done a masterful job of framing the issue as "control fraud". But "control fraud" is not a crime that can be prosecuted by our government under U.S. laws that apply to any of the above players (private plaintiffs such as investors might be able to bring suit, and many of them have). The government can't sue Cox for being an idiot or exercising poor judgment. It can't sue Greenspan for his judgment failures. It can't sue the ratings agencies for their opinion (1st amendment protection) -- and, in any case, they've got lots of evidence that their opinion was shared by most economists around the world. Yes, we all know how the Fed's groupthink influenced that, but you'd never even get to a jury to make that argument.

My point about Ann Barnhardt is that she and others in the financial industry saw no problems with making all of the above actions legal. She just never read the fine print and understood how she might be a victim of even larger greed than her own. Hence, the small fish/big fish remark.

As for GM, I'm sorry if you were a bondholder. But as a bankruptcy attorney, I can tell you that there was nothing different or unusual about the GM prepackaged plan that hasn't been done hundreds of times before by private reorganization efforts. GM's shareholders were screwed by prior management and the financial crisis. At the time the prepackaged BK was confirmed, their collateral was worth much less than they received under the Chapter 11 plan --- which, again, is all the law guarantees them, their collateral values. I don't know where you get the idea that the GM reorganization was somehow illegal, or that bondholders had a right to receive more than the value of their collateral, but the notion is mistaken, as evident from the lack of any successful appeal.

[lektrode]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

thanks for that overview g4bk, altho what shes had to say seems plausible, methinks shes a bit over the top and perhaps a bit overly biased to the right (the 'christian' right) - however to say the "only connection" tween what happened with MF'nG and the dems is corzine requires the 'suspension of disbelief' as hilary so famously put it a few years back - corzine is the poster child for whats happened in the past dozen or so years and how the dems (puppets on the end of GS strings) in both DC and NYC have so thoroughly corrupted the financial system - from the repeal of glass-steagall on forward - mostly engineered by the upper echelon of lower manhattan - whom in my observation are _mostly_ dems.

and what further evidence does one need to conclude this to be true?

with all three branches of the .gov under control of the dems, NOTHING was done to effectively address the issues that repeal of glass-steagall hath wrought - NOTHING has been done to prosecute what most people (not politicians) would consider to be a step or 2 beyond 'immoral', while we have the POTUS quoted as saying nothing was "illegal" on 60minutes - NOTHING was done to prevent AIG from paying GS 100 cents on the dollar for counter-party risk contracts that AIG had neither the legal basis to write nor the capital to back - and that this was allowed to occur, while the bondholders of GM got SCREWED?

meanwhile the dept of 'justice' seems intent on merely running down the clock till either the end of this rotten to the core administration is ejected next november, or the statute of limitations allows these thievin bastards to escape with the BILLIONS they've swindled the US Taxpayers out of!

nope - the 'suspension of disbelief' is being as polite as i can be in disagreeing with that POV.

[goodrich4bk]

Re: Ann Barnhardt on a Bank Holiday

Here is another quote from Ann's letter to clients when she closed her futures brokerage firm after the MF Global bankruptcy:

"Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise."


As my other post notes, I am not very impressed with Ms. Barnhart's knowledge of her own industry. She seems to think that the loss of customer funds was a result of Corzine's "theft" when, in fact, it was an express right that JP Morgan had in its written agreements with MF Global --- a right that was also enshrined by amendments to the bankruptcy code in 2005 that elevates JP Morgan's collateral rights to those funds ABOVE the rights of the owners of those funds.

Don't get me wrong. I think the result stinks. But it was a result that was mandated in 2005 by a "free market" Republican president and Republican Congress. It has absolutely nothing to do with Obama, his "regime" or Democrats. The only connection between the loss of customer funds and Obama is that the head of MF Global was a democrat. I think the more important connection is that he was an ex-Goldman CEO and that Ms. Barnhart was a very small fish playing in a very big pond.