E-mail from attorney Al Hodges:
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Your assistance is respectfully requested: PLEASE PROVIDE THE WIDEST POSSIBLE CIRCULATION OF THE FOLLOWING FROM MICHAEL C. COTTRELL:
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ALTHOUGH THIS WAS PUBLISHED ON 18 SEPTEMBER 2008, IT IS MY OPINION THAT THESE RULES-BASED PROPOSALS ARE STILL RELEVANT AND SHOULD BE REVIEWED/IMPLEMENTED WHEN THE NEW BANKING SYSTEM IS EXECUTED.
MICHAEL C. COTTRELL, B.A., M.S.
PRESIDENT
PENNSYLVANIA INVESTMENTS, INC.
MICHAEL C. COTTRELL'S U.S. FINANCIAL REFORM PROPOSALS
MORE RELEVANT THAN EVER GIVEN BASEL-II COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS
Thursday 18 September 2008 02:00
U.S. FINANCIAL MARKET REVAMP LAST MARCH IS A FALSE PROSPECTUS BY TREASURY
ALTERNATIVE PLAN PRESENTED HEREWITH IS SIMPLER, TIMELY, CHEAPER AND EFFECTIVE
PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP 'REFORM PLAN' EXPOSED AS A SELF-SERVING RUSE
BETTER PLAN BY MICHAEL C. COTTRELL, B.A., M.S. CAN BE UP AND RUNNING IN MONTHS
CONVOLUTED 'PAULSON' FABRICATION WOULD COST IMMENSE $ SUMS TO IMPLEMENT
TREASURY'S PROPOSALS REQUIRE SEVEN NEW AGENCIES, MR COTTRELL'S JUST ONE
THREE-STAGE 'PAULSON' PROPOSALS CALCULATED TO UNDERMINE MARKET PSYCHOLOGY
ALTERNATIVE PLAN SUPPLEMENTED BY A COMPREHENSIVE SECURITIES MARKET GLOSSARY
•Economic Intelligence Review contains Michael C. Cottrell's Rules-Based Reform Plan and the extensive Glossary of Financial Market Definitions. Publication date: Friday 15th August 2008.
•See our report dated 12th August 2008 inter alia for historical intelligence on GEORGIA. See reports dated 14th, 16th, 18th and 19th August for Georgia and Settlements Crisis Updates.
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By Christopher Story FRSA, Editor and Publisher, International Currency Review, World Reports Limited, London and New York. For earlier reports, press the ARCHIVE. Order your intelligence subscriptions and our 'politically incorrect' intelligence books online from this website.
SIMPLE RULES-BASED MARKET STABILISATION PLAN BY MICHAEL C. COTTRELL, B.A., M.S.
In the first quarter of 2008, Michael C. Cottrell, B.A., M.S., President of Pennsylvania Investments , Inc., contacted the Editor of this service to brief him in detail on the dubious stratagems behind the disparate proposals that were finally unveiled at the end of last March by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, a.k.a. the ‘Paulson proposals’.
As a result of several conversations, Mr Cottrell, one of the foremost securities markets experts in the United States, prepared a critique of the US Treasury’s extraordinary ‘Plan’, which he was easily able to demonstrate is highly destablising, not least since its plainly confused recommendations undermine financial market confidence while demonstrably serving the interests of the criminalist kleptocracy at the expense of the genuine investment community. This analysis is presented here.
In short, the Working Group’s ‘blueprint’ is shown herewith to be a false prospectus.
Having discredited the Working Group’s proposals, which would call for the creation of no less than SEVEN expensive and mischievously overlapping new US regulatory bureaucracies and for the abolition of the essential rules-based securities market environment, which would be phased out over an imprecise but prolonged timeframe, Michael Cottrell presents his own effective and simple solution to the chaos brought about by years of officially condoned fraudulent finance.
This will require just ONE new US regulator, will call for the revalidation by Congress of the Glass-Steagall Act and for the decisive re-establishment of the essential rules-based system which the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has neglected to enforce in recent years, and can be implemented in full within the space of just a few months, at most. Additionally, Mr Cottrell’s simple Plan will be infinitely cheaper to implement than the top-heavy Working Group proposals.
The Editor has incorporated Mr Cottrell’s proposal into this analysis; and the extensive Glossary, built around Michael C. Cottrell’s original framework, has been expanded so that all concerned can readily understand what has to be done. Michael C. Cottrell, B.A., M.S., can be contacted direct on: 814-455 9218 (voicemail), and at: pii-mcc@msn.com.
Mr Cottrell’s reform framework has been elaborated by the Editor to incorporate ideas for which he alone is responsible but which Mr Cottrell has graciously approved.
•Important Note: We can only report US law as it stands. We cannot make exceptions and neither can we speculate as to the prospective actions of authorities given, for instance, the admission by UBS that it broke the law, and the consequences of that admission for some US investors who may consider that they are eligible for Settlement payouts. Nor can we enter into ANY correspondence concerning that matter. The only issues that we will discuss arising from this post are Mr Cottrell's practical and straightforward recommendations: and these issues should be raised with him direct.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This paper describes, exposes and then systematically demolishes the credibility and relevance of the so-called ‘Paulson’ proposals, a.k.a. the mish-mash of convoluted notions brought forth by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets at the end of March 2008.
In passing, it questions the basis upon which expectations of repayment by some US participants in ‘humanitarian’, Omega and other often unregistered, and therefore usually (in the United States) illegal, Ponzi schemes are predicated, shows why these schemes are illegal by comparing them to what the US securities and other relevant US legislation requires, and presents inexpensive and constructive proposals to replace ‘Paulson’s’ dog’s dinner – which, incidentally, would call for the establishment of no less than SEVEN expensive new US bureaucratic agencies, whereas the Plan, devised by the securities expert Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., which is advanced here, would require just ONE new agency instead. Further, Mr Cottrell's scheme could be up and running within a few months, whereas the 'Paulson' dog's dinner is phased over an indeterminate timeframe.
OFFICIAL PROPOSALS ARE MISCHIEVOUS
On investigating this matter, we were quite surprised at the ease with which the Working Group’s spurious obfuscation operation could be shown to be a glaringly false prospectus that has been jumbled together in order to disguise what can only be described as its underlying mischievous intent. For these proposals dishonestly seek to convey an impression of regulatory reform (in response to the chaos in the financial markets which has been brought about exclusively by the serial criminality of holders of high office) – whereas their actual purpose is to mask the objective of precluding meaningful reform in favour of cosmetic adjustments consistent with an even more permissive and crime-friendly environment than exists today.
Indeed a pattern of nefarious US official behaviour has become clear since the deregulation of the Savings and Loan Associations in 1982. It can be summarised as follows. Far from entertaining any clear intention of curbing excesses and seeking to contain financial sector crises and instability brought about by organised financial fraud condoned at the highest levels of American power, the participating US authorities typically allow the prevailing crisis of confidence and its real economic consequences to escalate until, as happened at the end of the 1980s with the messy ‘responses’ developed by Congress to the ‘hollowing out’ (enronisation) of the thrifts, the problems become so huge that radical departures are agreed upon ‘under duress’ which, in turn, provide the intended basis for a proliferation of fraudulent financial operations ‘by other means’.
FOLDING THE CRIMINALISTS' CRISIS INTO A 'UNIVERSAL SOLUTION'
This is exactly what these cynical ‘Paulson’ proposals are predicated to achieve. The underlying motive here is to ‘fold’ the contemporary financial and economic crisis into a ‘ universal solution’ which will, if this Treasury has its way, give the arch-planners of fraudulent finance practices, carte blanche to proliferate their scams and aberrations for many years to come.
Accordingly, the fraudulent prospectus disgorged by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets needs to be consigned forthwith to the trash can. This report will help to achieve that.
As indicated, we present a simple, straightforward, constructive, inexpensive and quickly and easily implemented alternative Plan to replace it. Its author, Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., one of the United States’ foremost securities markets experts, argues that no further attention should be paid to the dishonest and discredited ‘Paulson’ proposals, which have in any case more or less run into the sand; and that the straightforward measures advocated below should be adopted, instead.
They would immediately inject the necessary discipline into the marketplace, precluding scope for securities scamming models to which the notorious American kleptocracy has become accustomed.
This paper is supplemented by an extensive Glossary of securities environment terms, for the benefit of the lay reader. The Editor has incorporated several appropriate new terms in the list.
SELF-SERVING PLAN TO ‘CLEAN UP’ MESS THE CRIMINALISTS THEMSELVES CREATED
Among the most distasteful characteristics of the world-class financial criminals exposed through our reports is their habit of advising the Rest of Us how the distasteful consequences of their own glaring criminality are to be overcome. The flip-side of the accomplished US financial criminalist is typically an unimpressive ‘angel of light’, who preaches the virtues of sound finance, in order to mask the fact of his endless reprobate financial misbehaviour.
Thus, having presided over and orchestrated the stealing of colossal sums of other people’s money, the US intelligence operative calling himself Henry M. Paulson Jr. [but see Memorandum below], as advertised, promulgated, in March 2008, a set of goofy and confused proposals for the ostensible ‘reorganisation’ of the way the US financial markets are regulated, which amounts to a pre-planned ‘new regulatory order’ – but the purpose of which, on investigation, turns out NOT to be improved financial sector discipline, but rather the cynical and surreptitious institutionalisation of market conditions that will facilitate replication of the abuses and fraudulent finance that have so far been exposed, but on a far broader scale, in the years to come.
A prerequisite for understanding what follows, and the prevailing financial days of reckoning and their origination generally, is to recognise the subversive reality of the ‘angels of light’ deception model. The financial sector traditionally clothes itself in a mantle of assumed righteousness, which is reinforced by generational layers of perception yielding a belief that financial institutions are, generally speaking, models of rectitude which cannot deviate from the strict codes of conduct that are presumed to surround them, and therefore from the Rule of Law.
BELATED, GRUDGING REALISATION THAT WHAT HAS BEEN REPORTED IS ACCURATE
Because this general lazy presumption is rarely, even today, called into question, it took, to our certain knowledge, certain British and American circles over two years to reach the staggered conclusion that what we have been reporting was accurate, both in general terms and more often than not, in terms of specifics as well.
By the same token, the underlying assumption that the exotic Treasury proposals developed by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, which will be demolished here, are of beneficial and enlightened intent, has no basis in reality, as will now be examined. On the contrary, as might have been expected, they represent ANOTHER pathetic scam, a deception, a diversion, a PLOY.
We will begin with a ‘straight’ summary of the 'Paulson' proposals, which will then be exposed as representing a false and deceitful prospectus.
THE FALSE PROSPECTUS AS ANNOUNCED
Following our exposures of financial fraud between June 2006 and the same month a year later, tensions rose to such a pitch behind the financial sector scenes that the US authorities felt the sudden need to be seen to be ‘doing something’ – an urge that resulted in the establishment of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
But by ‘doing something’, the criminalists actually meant leveraging the financial crisis which has developed as a direct consequence of their criminality through the advocating of false ‘reforms’ under cover of which they intended to institutionalise a permissive US environment which would guarantee that their addiction to manufacturing liquidity out of thin air through untaxed high yield investment programs (out of bounds to ordinary mortals because outside the officially protected corruption zone, they are lethally risk Ponzi scams: see below), would be OK'd without recourse.
The phrase ‘Working Group’ is a designation used by Israeli intelligence to describe an operation inside the Israeli Government structures (viz., intelligence), with a focus on developing a modus operandi to achieve an instructed objective, according to Robert Littell [‘Vicious Circle’, Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, New York, 2006].
After ‘labouring’ for eight months, the Working Group brought forth a convoluted, fragmented and opaque ‘THREE-STAGE plan’ to ‘reform’ US regulation of the very financial institutions with which the now disgraced ruling kleptocracy has been collaborating to scam ordinary American citizens, mortgage ‘holders’, the US Government itself, and foreigners who fail to do their ‘due diligence’.
The overall effect of the regulatory fragmentation plan put forward in bad faith (as we demonstrate below) by the Working Group would be to place the control of all financial markets wholly under the power of the President of the United States – which, given the criminality of the present and recent incumbents, would be a recipe for the institutionalisation of fraudulent finance, the elimination of all remaining checks and balances, and consequently for a corrosive financial market environment leading to a financial meltdown in a few years’ time which would make the present crisis look like a pleasant afternoon by the seaside.
Before we go any further, we must summarise the Working Group’s proposals without commenting in any detail immediately on their implications:
STAGE ONE, AS PROMULGATED BY THE PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP:
•The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets would be expanded to add banking sector regulators not hitherto participating in its deliberations, in order to broaden the Working Group‘s supposed focus to incorporate the whole of the US financial sector, rather than just the financial markets as such (begging the question: what was the problem? Why the delay?).
•Lending by the Federal Reserve: Because non-bank financial institutions have, since December 2007 (thanks to the chaos brought about by fraudulent finance operations over which this ‘Paulson’ himself presided) had access to the US Federal Reserve, the Fed would be able to conduct on-site examinations of such borrowers and impose conditions on their operations.
•Establish a Mortgage Origination Commission to consist of six Board Members, taken mainly from Federal structures. The new entity would proceed to establish minimum licensing standards and testing criteria, and would gauge and grade the adequacy of each State’s mortgage control system. This would be accompanied by clarification of which Federal body is to enforce mortgage lending legislation (which, for some unexplained reason, the Working Group could not manage to do).
STAGE TWO, AS PROMULGATED BY THE PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP:
•Federal Oversight of State-Chartered Banks: It was reported that the US Treasury recommended a study to determine whether the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) should have oversight of State-chartered banks. (Great! So we need a 'study'. Why didn't the Group perform that study, then? Why the 'need' for further delay while the 'study' is carried out?).
•Thrift Charter to be eliminated: The following banking sector regulator was categorised as ‘past its sell-by date’: The Office of Thrift Supervision. This entity, which oversees US Savings and Loan Associations (so-called ‘Thrift Institutions’) should be closed down and folded into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which has oversight of National Banks. (No reason given).
•A new (optional) Federal Insurance Charter: The US Treasury proposed the creation of a Federal regulator to cover the insurance sector, which is extremely corrupt in the United States. The first step would be to ask Congress to create an Office of Insurance Oversight within the US Treasury, to focus on international issues and to advise the Treasury on insurance sector affairs. This would be the first step towards the creation of step two, namely the creation of a new Federal Insurance Charter. (Notice that everything is 'spaced out', laid-back, confused and overlapping).
•Revised payments and settlement arrangements: Under the eccentric proposals brought forward by ‘Paulson’, it was suggested that the Federal Reserve Board should be given oversight and rule-making authority over the payment and settlement systems for the processing of payments and the transfer of securities between financial institutions and their clients. (Hence, de facto regulation of the securities markets would devolve into the hands of the untrustworthy Federal Reserve).
•Futures and Securities markets: The US Treasury used this report to call for the merger of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC), neither of which has been doing its job properly, given the sheer scale of the bribery and corruption behind the scenes, plus reports that the SEC has itself been engaged in trading on own account (see below).
In particular, the Treasury proposed that the Securities and Exchange Commission, which operates (or should operate) on the basis of precise rules and regulations backed by rigorous enforcement, should ‘preserve’ the modus operandi of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is that business should instead be conducted in accordance with stated ‘principles’.
In other words, the Treasury wanted to scrap the rules-based system (required under the 1933 and 1934 Securities Acts) and to replace it by a vague ‘principles- based’ system’, which would mean that enforcement would be almost impossible – because a régime of relativism would prevail and key terms would remain undefined.
Securities professionals are taught and intensively trained to operate exclusively on the basis of the SEC’s ‘rules-based’ system, which precludes any deviation whatsoever from the established rules (provided the regulations are enforced, which has not been the case for years because of corruption within the Securities and Exchange Commission itself).
STAGE THREE, AS PROMULGATED BY THE PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP:
A new US regulatory structure would be imposed over the longer term, under which US financial institutions would be asked to choose between one of three Federal Charters:
•Federally Insured Depository Institution:
This would be applicable to all lenders with Federal deposit insurance.
•Federal Insurance Institution:
Applicable to all insurers offering retail ‘products’ which entail some degree of Federal guarantee.
•Federal Financial Services Provider:
This charter would cover all other categories of financial services firms.
Under this regime, the following SEVEN NEW FEDERAL AGENCIES, each with its own hyper-expensive self-serving bureaucracy would 'regulate' US financial institutions:
•The Market Stability Regulator: Under this vague proposal, the Federal Reserve was to ‘look out’ for threats to the stability of the United States’ diverse financial system, whether they originated with banks, insurance corporations, mortgage lenders, investment banks, hedge funds, or with any other type of financial institution.
The Federal Reserve could require corrective measures to be taken to address current risks or to curb future risk-taking, but these powers could only be exercised if overall financial stability was threatened. In other words, this entity would essentially achieve nothing at all, leaving the financial markets alone (until it was too late), thereby passively facilitating a progressive repetition of the near-catastrophe experienced since the mid-1980s, but on a far larger scale.
•Prudential Financial Regulatory Agency: This new entity would regulate US financial institutions buttressed by explicit Government guarantees associated with their operations, such as Federal deposit insurance. The new US agency would assume the rôles of the current Federal prudential regulators, including the Office of the US Comptroller of the Currency and the Treasury's Office of Thrift Supervision. Yet another (subsidiary) regulator would focus on the hitherto unrestrained and unregulated off-off-budget Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) which, though established by the Federal Government, were placed (on creation) into the ‘private’ sector and have implicit Government backing, such as the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) and the Federal Home Loan Bank System. See our report dated 26th December 2007 for insights into how Fannie Mae, for instance, has been used to perpetrate fraudulent financial transactions in the US mortgage sector [Archive].
•Conduct of Business Regulatory Agency: This new regulator would be charged with ‘consumer protection’ with respect to all categories of financial entities. The agency would watch disclosures and business practices, and would supervise the licensing of certain types of financial firm.
It would absorb many of the functions of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and would undertake some responsibilities that are currently handled by the Fed, state insurance regulators, and the Federal Trade Commission.
•Federal Insurance Guarantee Corporation: This new agency would replace the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, charging premia to guarantee bank deposits and insurance payouts.
•Corporate Finance Regulator: This new entity would take over other functions of the Securities and Exchange Commission, such as the oversight of corporate disclosures, governance issues, accounting, and other matters.
In other words, SEVEN NEW BUREAUCRACIES would regulate everything and achieve nothing.
THE PURPOSE OF THE FALSE PROSPECTUS: OBFUSCATION
Confused? That’s precisely what is intended. As can be seen, this curious pot-pourri of convoluted arrangements matches the intentions of those who framed it (and who will not see it implemented, we feel sure). Those intentions can be summed up in the single word: OBFUSCATION.
For these proposals were developed during the immediate aftermath of the emergence of overt financial sector strains arising from the ongoing exposures of the open-ended financial fraud; and their purpose, from the outset, was not to enhance regulation and to make it ‘more efficient’, but rather to bring forward a novel framework under cover of ‘overdue reforms necessitated by the credit crunch and the financial crisis generally’, which could be exploited and leveraged to cover up, rather than to further expose, the serial financial criminality that blew up in the faces of the US kleptocracy as a consequence of the exposures of its endless criminality.
In other words, the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets appears to have been briefed in bad faith, its task being to develop a platform and framework of proposals which would serve the purpose of obfuscating financial criminality, while appearing to do the opposite. This was, in short, nothing less than a typical deception, intended to convey the dubious impression that ‘reform’ was (belatedly) being recommended, while in practice substituting the existing regulatory system which has not been properly enforced, with a vague, woolly régime framed so as to facilitate the very free-wheeling fraudulent finance and risk-taking that the proposals are supposed to deter.
Since, however, the proposals were brought forward by deception operatives whose speciality has all along been dialectical ying-yang behaviour, duplication and duplicity, the discovery that these proposals are a sham, comes as no surprise. Whether those who listened to ‘Paulson’ making this pitch on 2nd July 2008 at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London (the globalist UK think-tank which masquerades as a free-standing institution of the British nation state while constantly undermining it), understood this duplicity, seems improbable.
On that occasion, ‘Paulson’ presented a series of vague generalities for the consideration of the British ‘Great and the Good’ assembled to hear this pitch, such as that ‘the financial landscape has changed, and non-bank financial institutions play a significantly greater role’ than used to be the case. (When one of our special contacts attempted to make himself known to this ‘Paulson’ fellow, he vanished out of sight).
But the existing US regulatory régime has not ‘failed’ because it is no longer ‘fit for purpose’. It has ‘failed’ for three straightforward reasons:
(1) Some of the regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Reserve Board itself, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are/have been corrupt.
(2) The corrupt regulators have accordingly failed to regulate, let alone to enforce their regulations.
(3) The focus of the corrupt regulators is to prolong the obfuscation operation, to verbalise their dereliction of duty through spinning for the benefit of the likes of The Wall Street Journal, and to seek to draw a veil over such issues as the SEC's 'legitimisation' of naked shorts for a restricted group of participants, whereas a regulator should be completely impartial. The overall objective is self-preservation, protection of their own personal interests, and staying out of jail themselves.
•In respect of 'naked shorts', has the SEC conveniently forgotten the old securities market adage:
'He who sells what isn't his'n, Must put it back or go to prison'?
TERMS DELIBERATELY LEFT UNDEFINED UNDER THE INTENDED 'PRINCIPLES-BASED' REGIME
In place of the existing (albeit unenforced) regulatory régime, ‘Paulson’ proposed a system not of rules-based regulation, which could be enforced if the regulatory agencies themselves were not corrupt, but of ‘principles’-based regulation, which, by definition, would entail that there would be no rules to be enforced, terms are not defined, and that breaches of ‘principles’ are liable to be irrelevant because it would always be a nuanced matter of relatavist judgment whether principles were being flouted, or not. In otherwise, such a régime would not amount to a regulatory régime at all, but rather to a crooks’ charter and paradise. ALL OVER AGAIN.
If the existing US regulatory agencies were doing their jobs properly, they would be adequate for the purpose – and certainly far more adequate than the deliberately complexified, overlapping and obfuscatory framework suggested by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
But while the Working Group may be redundant and has discredited itself, the financial market issues that it was supposed to have addressed, remain in existence and as intractable as before.
THE EXISTING U.S. REGULATORY FRAMEWORK
The existing US regulatory framework, for the record, consists of the following agencies:
•Federal Reserve System: Supposedly regulates the US monetary system and oversees bank holding companies. Historically lacked real assets apart from its contract to print the currency of the United States, which ought to be a function of the US Treasury,
•Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): Established by the Congress in 1934 to regulate the securities markets in accordance with stated rules and under the 1933 and 1934 Securities Acts, to maintain ‘fair’ markets and to protect investors. The SEC also, as a primary element of its oversight powers, reviews corporate financial statements, is supposed to enforce the securities regulations, and provides guidance for the framing of accounting rules.
•Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC): This regulator insures deposits lodged by bank customers against the failure of banks. The FDIC was created in 1933 to build and maintain public confidence and to encourage stability in the financial system by fostering sound banking practices.
•Office of the Comptroller of the Currency: This traditional arm of the US Treasury Department was established in 1863 to supervise and regulate National Banks and the Federal branches of foreign banks. Its purpose is to promote the safety and soundness of the banking system and to conduct on-site examinations of banks across the nation.
•Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC): Established as a US agency in 1974, this entity is supposed to ensure the open and efficient operation of the US futures markets, which started out trading agricultural futures, and now trade sophisticated synthetics (derivatives).
•Office of Thrift Supervision: This agency issues and enforces regulations governing the United States’ Savings and Loan sector (Thrift Institutions). It is responsible for ensuring the safety and soundness of deposits with Thrift Institutions.
SHORT HISTORY OF U.S. FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY
(A) 1890 to the 1920s:
Leading American financiers of the late 19th century, such as John J. Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan (1), provided capital to finance the establishment of very large corporations and combines, also known as the trusts, which came to wield enormous power across entire industrial sectors. As a consequence, by the year 1890, the control of 5,000 corporations was held by about 300 such trusts operating all over the country. By 1900, the largest dozen of these combines were capitalised at over $1.0 billion (2) .
Accordingly, investment bankers became corporate directors – with Morgan, for instance, having board representation on 78 investment bank companies.
Therefore, when these large corporations needed injections of capital, the bankers who were sitting on their Boards claimed to represent the bondholders (3).
Disclosure of financial information was entirely voluntary, even though disclosure of predator practices could only be revealed via the balance sheet (4). The Sherman AntiTrust Act of 1890 was enacted in order to define and make the monopolistic activities of such trust companies illegal (5).
In 1914, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act sought to increase competition across the business sector by restricting predatory corporate activity such as acquiring other competing corporations and the practice of allowing interlocking corporate directorships (6).
And the Federal Trade Commission Act, passed in the same year, established a regulatory authority, acting as the ‘watchdog of competition’, to protect the American consumer from ‘unfair methods of competition’ (7). In other words, raw, unregulated capitalism was by now seen as being prone to abuse and in need, therefore, of official constraint.
(B) 1920s to 1941:
During this period, the number of investment companies that were formed in the United States steadily increased from six in the year 1921, to 46 in 1925 (8).
While most of these investment companies were subject in some measure to the ‘Blue-Sky’ [see Glossary] requirements, the State statutes and regulations appear not to have treated investment companies much differently from the general run of corporations and business trusts (9).
As previously, disclosure of financial information remained voluntary, even though the disclosure of predatory practices could only be conveniently disclosed through the balance sheet (10).
Between 1927 and 1929, these investment companies raised approximately $2,300,000,000 from the sale of new securities. Their assets increased from $550,000,000 in 1927 to almost $2,600,000,000 in 1929 (11). Distribution of the shares in these fixed trusts reached peak levels during 1930 and 1931, when $600,000,000 of their shares were sold, inducing the passage of various US statutes and the promulgation of regulations which brought the expansion of these fixed trusts to an end (12).
In 1933, North Carolina adopted a regulation (which in due course was adopted as Section 11 of the Investment Company Act of 1940) which prohibited the charging of any sales load on the switching of trust shares (13). As a consequence of the lessons learned the 1920s and early 1930s, including bitter experiences suffered by investors with ‘bucket shops’, the original and copycat Ponzi and Pyramid-selling schemes, and other forms of fraudulent finance that flourished in this free-for-all environment, the Congress passed the stringent Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934, followed by the Maloney Act of 1935; and in the banking sector, the Banking Act of 1933 and the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which restricted US banks to banking operations and precluded their participation in the securities markets. The Securities Acts were updated by the Securities Acts Amendments of 1970.
THE EXPENSIVE FALSE PROSPECTUS ANALYSED:
U.S. TREASURY’S 2008 REGULATORY ‘REFORM’ PROPOSALS (14), (15)
Astonishingly, in view of the obvious fact that these proposals would be bound to have an impact on fragile financial market confidence, the Working Group’s suggestions were phased, with short- medium- and long-term proposals set within an imprecise timeframe, interspersed with periods of reflection for ‘study’, and personnel being liable to be poached from old regulatory agencies that would remain alive in one phase, but not the next, and with every opportunity taken to ensure that the responsibilities of no less than SEVEN newly proposed, expensive agencies would overlap as much as possible, while existing agencies would languish in a state of limbo or uncertainty pending prospective abolition, or not, as might be decided in a later phase.
Self-evidently, this confused prospectus is a recipe for undermining confidence in the integrity of financial market regulation, and therefore in the integrity of the financial markets themselves, as well as maximising the potential for obfuscation, as will be seen:
(A) THE SHORT-TERM PROPOSALS:
The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets is/was intended, we read, to be composed of a Coordinator of Financial Regulatory Policy and to cover the entire American financial sector, as indicated above, not merely the financial markets.
It was thus to incorporate banking regulators not currently participating in the study group, and would need to broaden its financial focus to capture the whole of the financial sector.
Hence the Working Group was to facilitate inter-agency coordination and communication, with a view (ostensibly) to developing proposals to mitigate all systemic risks to the financial system, to enhance the integrity of the financial markets, to promote protection of consumers and investors, and to support the efficiency and competitiveness of the financial markets.
Since overall ‘competitiveness’ covers the stance of any given financial market environment by comparison with foreign counterparts, the Working Group would or will have had to consider the impact of any proposals it puts forward on the competitiveness of the market in question, with its equivalents abroad; and the moment that such considerations had to be considered, the knee-jerk response of the Working Group’s membership is liable to have been to opt for the most lenient and liberal ‘solution’ on the drawing board.
As for the proposed creation of a Federal Mortgage Origination Commission (MOC), this huge new bureaucracy would be headed by a Director appointed by the President of the United States for a four- or six-year term – which means that, in accordance with the standard corrupt US practice, the job would be likely to go to a presidential crony.
The six Board members would be supplied from the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), even though the last of these three agencies were to be abolished under the proposals, and the Federal Reserve itself remains vulnerable, under unpublished H.R. 2778 of the 110th Congress, to be abolished and merged within the US Treasury.
The other two Board Members would be supplied from the National Credit Union Association and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors.
The new Mortgage Origination Commission would develop minimum licensing standards, testing criteria and a system for grading the adequacy of each State’s financial regulatory arrangements. The drafting of regulations covering national mortgage lending legislation would, the Working Group apparently proposes, remain exclusively with the Federal Reserve, as provided for under the Truth in Lending Act.
Finally, the States should be given clear authority to enforce Federal mortgage legislation upon independent mortgage originators, that is to say, those mortgage originators considered to have been responsible for originating most of the so-called ‘sub-prime’ loans.
There was no reference to the practice of collectivising such mortgage loans, let alone with false documentation purporting to represent other mortgages but which lack any underlying asset at all, for the purpose of ‘securitisation’ and marketing to gullible investors at home and abroad who may not perform adequate (or any) due diligence.
For the short term, too, the Treasury’s blueprint put forward two considerations relating to the overall stability of the financial markets. Specifically:
(1) The prevailing temporary liquidity provisioning process, designed to alleviate threats to market stability (launched in December 2007 in the face of the crisis of confidence which overwhelmed the American authorities given the accumulated consequences of their incompetence, criminality and mismanagement of the US financial system), must ensure:
•That the process is calibrated and transparent (with no definition of terms here);
•That appropriate conditions are attached to the lending, (with no explanation of ‘appropriate’);
•That information flows to the Federal Reserve System via on-site examinations, and/or that other conditions or means can be imposed as determined by the Federal Reserve, with no recourse and without any indication here of what the Federal Reserve might have in mind.
(2) The President’s Working Group should consider broader regulatory issues related to discount window access for non-depository (i.e., investment banking) institutions. So, this Working Group has not yet undertaken such considerations? What, then, was it doing between August 2007 and March 2008, exactly?
(B) THE MEDIUM-TERM PROPOSALS:
Under this heading, the Treasury recommended, as summarised above:
•Elimination of ‘redundant’ banking regulators, without providing any rationale for such a drastic and reckless measure, and without having practical alternative proposals formulated or in place;
•Closing down the Office of Thrift Supervision, ditto;
•Folding the responsibilities of the Office of Thrift Supervision into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, again with no rationale for such action being provided.
Having shredded key existing regulatory institutions without replacing them (at this stage), the Treasury proposed that the next step should be that a leisurely ‘study’ should be undertaken, to establish whether the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the FDIC) should have oversight of the State-chartered banks.
This seems to us to be quite ridiculous, and asking for trouble. First, some existing regulators are abolished, without the Treasury at this stage having a clue what should take their place. Secondly, having abolished the regulators, the Treasury would then embark upon a ‘study’ to decide what to do next, as it says it is undecided (cannot make up its mind) whether the Fed or the FDIC should oversee the State-chartered banks – a confused recommendation akin to throwing all the furniture out of the window before deciding what, if anything, should replace it.
A moment’s reflection will convince even the most enthusiastic supporters of the corrupt US ‘Paulson’ Treasury that these proposals are, of put it mildly, mischievous.
Nobody who cares about US financial market stability can possibly take them seriously: indeed, the proposals , even as far as has so far been described here, are so mixed up and destabilising, that it is no exaggeration to ask whether they represent some kind of spoof.
Has some malevolent gremlin substituted this mischievous verbiage for what the Working Group actually submitted? Given the track record of ‘Paulson’s criminalist Treasury, that may not be as far-out a proposition as it may appear to be.
The third element of the intermediate recommendations brought forward by this muddled report departed from common sense by recommending that the Federal Reserve – which has achieved notoriety thanks to its two-tier policy of purporting to represent the Rule of Law while at the same time surreptitiously condoning and facilitating corrupt financial practices through exploitation of the unaudited and secretive Federal Inter Bank Settlement Fund – sh