Here’s something interesting from Bloomberg today that I hadn’t known before.

Apparently Timothy Geitner was trying as early as 2008 to get the BOE to deal with its LIBOR problem.

dawolf… yes! And this is coming just at the time when there is
widespread mistrust and fury at “money men” (like what we see in the
posts immediately preceding.)

Even more important from a Really Destructive Scandal point of view…
Romney’s salary from Bain wasn’t just $100,000/annum. That is listed as
the minimum his salary would be each year, but it probably far
exceeded that (which will increase the demands for him to release his
tax returns.)

Most damaging of all, IMO, is the political fallout. He has always
claimed he left Bain in 1999 because in the years immediately following,
Bain was engaged in all kinds of activities that would sink a political
career, especially for a Republican. Bain outsourced jobs, ran Chinese
companies that competed with Americans for jobs, and ran an American
company that profited from the sale of aborted fetuses.

No wonder Romney has repeatedly lied about his ties to Bain after 1999.

Most entertaining of all… this story broke in the Boston Globe
yesterday, just when the Romney campaign made a huge national ad buy,
running TV ads in 14 states attacking Obama as a liar.

I just can’t see how someone can, with a straight face, be sole shareholder, CEO, Chairman & President (also while drawing a $100,000 salary) and say they have nothing to do with the running of the company. Sole shareholder, fine. All the others together as well? Seriously, who does he think he’s kidding?

Neither a Chairman nor a President are generally involved in the day-to-day affairs of a company, although they will be for major changes. A CEO certainly is involved, in fact it’s their main role.

Whether it sinks Romney is a different matter, but the ads practically write themselves and this is certainly likely (IMO) to hit him in the polls once the story gets wider coverage.

Certainly it means that Obama is going to keep up with the attacks on Bain.

I am currently trending towards the idea that Obama won’t just win, he’ll win big, 300+EV.

It’s always bothered me how the financial crisis of 2008-present was sparked by what appeared to be common-law fraud on a mind-boggling scale — the repackaging of worthless loans into AAA-rated investment vehicles, and yet nobody has been criminally prosecuted for it. And now it appears that this was really the tip of the iceberg in banking malpractice.

The Administration’s reasoning has been that these practices were not technically illegal under the US criminal code, but there is a precedent with crimes against humanity to hold people accountable for horrendous acts that were either committed with the cooperation of the government and its legal system or which the lawmakers were not sufficiently sick and twisted to anticipate.

(and the umlaut for cooperation is amazing, by the way)

mittens is doing a lot to lower their pro­file

As did Bernie Madoff former American businessman, stockbroker, investment advisor, financier and former non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market …

Interesting con billionaires are trying to buy the presidency for mittens ’cause hey, you can never have enough $$$!

>

mittens said he new how to read a balance sheet and a liberal pundit mentioned so did Madoff.

Our choice seems to be to tar and feather these bastards, or elect one of them President.

I pro­pose that we con­vene a tribunal.

I second that.

Over the past few years we have learned that international bankers have consistently engaged in flagrant financial misconduct — misconduct which has resulted in, among other things, the worst economic crisis since 1929.  Unfortunately, many of the things they have done with the exception of complete and utter ponzi-scheme fraud are either not actually illegal or hold quite limited criminal liabilities — most of the people responsible for causing a global economic collapse collected, and continue to collect, obscene sums of money for their dubious services.

From the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court:

Crimes against humanity are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority.

While financial crimes are hardly the kind of “red meat” atrocities that one thinks of when the term “crimes against humanity” is used, the term was legally fleshed out at Nuremberg to cope with the legal black hole that existed from regimes committing atrocities against their own citizens which did not fall under traditional war crimes statutes, and which were of course not illegal under their own laws.

I propose the creation of a new class of extraordinary crime, one suited for our ever-so-civilized age — “crimes against prosperity”. It would be used to criminally prosecute those responsible for great economic disasters when existing statutes prove inadequate to the task, as they so often have.

And I propose that we convene a tribunal.