"Whistleblower says Madoff had help"

[EXman]

Originally posted by: smack Down
Just more quality bush government.

As early as May 2000, Markopolos said, he provided the SEC's Boston office with evidence that he said should have triggered an agency investigation of Madoff.

Wow I guess you put the smack down on yourself. Blaming Bush for something that had been brewing for years before Bush ever even thought of becoming president is laughable.

Just shows how libbies love to bash and not think first.

 

[senseamp]

This is GOP in nutshell. Screw up running the government, then blame the government for being screwed up.

 

[trenchfoot]

The Bush Admin and the "deregulate and deregulate and deregulate some more while looking the other way" ideology that Bush and Cheney was clearly and notoriously known for gave the financial sector a green light to get away with whatever they could while Bush and Cheney winked and subtley nodded their approval at it all.

It's also common knowledge that the Bush Admin. actively sought to gut out and neuter as many regulatory agencies as they could possibly get away wtih from the moment they took office.

Their obvious hatred for the regulatory agencies that they themselves had to deal with while in the private sector were proven out in their words and actions as the years went by with them in total control over those agencies, as well as those other agencies that they thought could be exploited for more personal power, control and profit.

These two crooks at the top of government clearly set the tone and culture of those industries that immensely profited from the deliberative emasculating process of the regulatory agencies that Bush and Cheney earnestly set in motion from the get-go.

To simply brush all of that history aside and casually absolve these two snakes of any culpability over the financial mess we're presently in is revisionism of the highest order.

How some folks can ignore the obvious to keep the faith no matter how wrong headed it is, well, it's amazing.

 

[Moonbeam]

The government has to be worthless. It's all there in bamacre's script. Bad bad government.

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: GroundMeat
LK you need to go beyond spoon feeding you need to do the airplane noises / funny faces routine as well. Hedge funds do buy/sell stocks (among many other things), so it's an easy mistake for the layman to assume the SEC has much of a say in how they operate / report (as evidenced by OP and multiple replies here).

Also if you think hedge funds are regulated, what about the CDS market is it regulated? You might want to do some more research into what a free (zero regulation) market brings when all the participants know there's no regulation, and what the consequences are.

And Madoff's investors didn't really care much about regulation. The point I was getting across was that a huge number of Madoff investors relied on HIS reputation and one other key factor, which most people STILL don't get. They don't understand how his circle works. but hey, I'll let them discover that one their own.

GroundMeat, nobody gives a shit if there is no regulation, that's the key. People are going to regulate, by and large, by themselves. However, there will be the group of people that will fuck everybody no matter what. They'll trash reputations, create vast enemies, and destroy the market for their own greed. Additionally, the irrationality of the market will be untempered by a solid base of rules.

Even Adam Smith recognized that there needed to be regulation in a "free market".

 

[LegendKiller]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
The government has to be worthless. It's all there in bamacre's script. Bad bad government.

Isn't the government the people?

 

[StageLeft]

Who here, and you can be honest, wishes that they knew enough about this scheme to get in years ago and then bail, say, mid summer of 08?

*raises hand*

 

[Ernie99]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Who here, and you can be honest, wishes that they knew enough about this scheme to get in years ago and then bail, say, mid summer of 08?

*raises hand*

Honestly, you would be willing to participate in a fraudulent investment scheme?

Knowing what you know now, you see profit, but at whose expense? You would not care about ignorant victims' money being taken away to produce your so-called profit? People have killed themselves for losing money in this scheme. Would you be prepared to deal with that?

I do not wish to start a debate with you, as I don't post often enough to do so, but really think about what you are saying.

 

[GTKeeper]

To bamacre and all the other free market ideologues. Isn't Madoff the quintessential 'free market' type of guy? Not regulated at all, just doing what he does best, make money for his investors.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: LegendKiller

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
The government has to be worthless. It's all there in bamacre's script. Bad bad government.

Isn't the government the people?

Yes and no. Probably far more than I will ever know applies here. I am reminded of a Communist buddy of mine, a genuine genius and Doctorate in Economics who always spoke of the problem with government as systemic, that if the government were changed the outcome would change and the people would too. I believe this is true, with the slight problem that you can't actually change the system unless people change first. There are always these loons who think they see how the government should be, and that people should be made to conform to their vision.

Nobody, however, changes by force. I, therefore, counter his argument with the notion of education. People change when they know more about such things as why change would be good for them, or more particularly, in my case, education includes information including certain facts pertinent here, such as, that people hate themselves, don't know it, don't want to know it, and don't want to know they don't want to know, with the effect being that they don't really want what is good for them because they actually feel they don't deserve it.

The result, of course, if you see and understand this, is that humanity is in something of a pickle. All the fanatic need for a feeling of self worth creates tremendous demand, that somebody besides myself fix things. I can't because I'm worthless coupled with, don't you do anything, you bastard, because, projecting our feelings out into the world, we feel it's actually the world, the powers that be, that are out to get us. Well they are, of course, because they are our collective unconsciouses, the monsters of the Id, as it were, that destroyed the Krell, in Forbidden Planet, if you know that film.

So, education itself is damn near impossible, because people avoid truth like the plague.

Well, here we are. People are a mess so government is a mess because the quality of the government and the quality of the people go hand in hand.

But a couple of hundred years ago, a very strange thing occurred. We had a mini-enlightenment that produced a Constitution of rare form, a document that, among many other things, contained the notion that there are rights that adhere to humanness, that we and God are one and the same, that the freedom that God has is our right.

Here was a statement of tremendous importance, that man is not evil but good and this document is important because it is the Truth. Our feelings of worthlessness are a lie, the result of having been put down as children and made to feel bad, the notion that if man if truly free he will act with profound responsibility, nobility, modesty, and grace. The God in man broke free.

So here's the rub. The soul of man is love and man's soul has been perverted. That which we do out of love, to do to others as we would have done to us in love, produces good government, and that which we do from fear of the other, out of self hate, produces government that is sick. There is a war between the light and the dark and we can see it in the difference, I think, between Obama and Cheney, one full of hope and the other full of violence to ward off fear.

Fear lives in the reptile and a robotic authoritarian part of the brain. When fearful people collect the band together to destroy the other, the monster in themselves they see out there. So government can be very dangerous.

Government that arises from love and self respect lifts the soul.

Humanity will either wither and die or become what we now cannot imagine.

I said yes and no, therefore, because the truth about individuals create dynamics when they relate. Mass psychosis is different than individual insanity. There are synergies good and bad.

 

[LegendKiller]

I also find it interesting that the testimony stated how this situation could have been prevented by hiring ACTUAL finance people, not attorneys. One of the things he mentioned was hiring CFA/CAIA professionals. I agree.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: LegendKiller
I also find it interesting that the testimony stated how this situation could have been prevented by hiring ACTUAL finance people, not attorneys. One of the things he mentioned was hiring CFA/CAIA professionals. I agree.

Bush and Republicans are all about conformity and party line. They didn't want trained people, they wanted yes men. Personal initiative is not in their game. The system produces the results the system wants. If we really want the system to work the kind of people who will make it work will be found.

This is some of what is implied in Obama's claim he will be fact based and results driven, in my opinion.

 

[beyoku]

Look at their names, what did you expect?

 

[nobodyknows]

Originally posted by: bamacre
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200...m/us_madoff_congress_7

It wasn't a lack of regulations that helped Madoff, it was stupid investors and too much dependence on an ineffective and inefficient federal government.

I think you're right. It wasn't a lack of regulations, it was a lack of someone with the power to investigate and enforce those regulations without fear of the aftermath.

 

[trenchfoot]

Originally posted by: nobodyknows

Originally posted by: bamacre
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200...m/us_madoff_congress_7

It wasn't a lack of regulations that helped Madoff, it was stupid investors and too much dependence on an ineffective and inefficient federal government.

I think you're right. It wasn't a lack of regulations, it was a lack of someone with the power to investigate and enforce those regulations without fear of the aftermath.

Add to that how thoroughly homogeneous and like-minded the regulators and the regulated had become. They are one, and the regulators were shielding their kindred in the private sector.

How thoroughly corrupted and impotent our regulatory agencies have become during Bush's watch.

 

[GroundMeat]

LK you miss interpreted my post, I am agreeing with you 100%. I was just saying you need to add more to the picture; giving him a silhouette off a human isn't going to allow him to distinguish between a saint and a murderer. You need to add a few more clue's like a halo or a gun (well maybe less obvious ones).

There's a belief among paulbot's that free markets will generate their own regulation. Which would be akin to balancing on a ball floating on a river of lava trying to dodge a hundred shotguns in a hurricane wind. Eventually no matter who you are you are more than likely going to get hit and fall in the lava. If you're one of the few that doesn't, good job you have an ill-liquid asset i.e. it's worth nothing because you have no one to trade with. I think we can both agree that this analogy makes sense (ish).


There is a significant difference between zero regulation, effective regulation/enforcement, and burdensome regulation (which you understand, and others not in our industry do not). The paulbot's on this forum also understand this they just wont admit it, evidenced by their faith in gold etc. it's to bad you can't eat gold and you can mine it out of the ground.


The second part of my post was not directed at you, more towards the OP since he thinks the government (SEC) had the tools/authority to open Madoff's internal books. The reference to the CDS market was simply to stimulate the OP to do some research on what zero regulation brings. For the edification of the OP zero regulation = $40-50 T in liabilities or 1/2 of the financial market in liabilities in which no one knows the counter party and if they did it wouldn't matter because in all likelihood they wouldn't be able to cover.

The most ironic part is that the entire point of the testimony was that existing government regulation was not effective/enforced. It's not a case for no regulation it's a case for more/effective regulation.

 

[Vic]

A corrupt govt cannot be entrusted to regulate any better than corrupt officials at a ball game can be entrusted to make fair calls.

Some people, it seems, will never understand this.