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Jeffrey Sachs on the stubborn, pathological intransigence of the 1% | Exopermaculture

Sachs described an environment of Wall Street influencing politicians with growing campaign contributions. In the 2012 election cycle, political contributions by the securities and investment sector hit $271.5 million, compared with $176 million in 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

“I meet a lot of these people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now,” he continued.

“I am going to put it very bluntly: I regard the moral environment as pathological. And I am talking about the human interactions . . . I’ve not seen anything like this, not felt it so palpably.”

“They have no responsibility to pay taxes; they have no responsibility to their clients; they have no responsibility to people, to counterparties in transactions,” he said. “They are tough, greedy, aggressive and feel absolutely out of control in a quite literal sense, and they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent.”

via Jeffrey Sachs on the stubborn, pathological intransigence of the 1% | Exopermaculture.

Tags: banks, Wall Street

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Categories CorpState, Inequality

Banks Revive Risky Loans and Mortgages – NYTimes.com

19 Apr

Boys and their toys:

The alchemists of Wall Street are at it again.

The banks that created risky amalgams of mortgages and loans during the boom — the kind that went so wrong during the bust — are busily reviving the same types of investments that many thought were gone for good. Once more, arcane-sounding financial products like collateralized debt obligations are being minted on Wall Street.

via Banks Revive Risky Loans and Mortgages – NYTimes.com.

Tags: derivatives, investment, Wall Street

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Categories CorpState, Economy

Wave of Volatile Trading Unsettles U.S. Markets – NYTimes.com

1 Aug

Whoops! Better not do that again. All this technology, all these mistakes.

The runaway trading suggests that regulators have not been able to keep up with electronic programs that increasingly dominate the supercharged market and have helped undermine investor confidence in stocks.

Traders on Wednesday said that a rogue algorithm repeatedly bought and sold millions of shares of companies like RadioShack, Best Buy, Bank of America and American Airlines, sending trading volume surging. While the trading firm involved blamed a “technology issue,” the company and regulators were still trying to understand what went wrong.

via Wave of Volatile Trading Unsettles U.S. Markets – NYTimes.com.

Tags: banking, stocks, trading, Wall Street

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Categories Economy

Will Wall Street turn on its own over Libor? – Salon.com

23 Jul

Here’s where, maybe, Goldman Sachs comes into the picture. Because according to a Bloomberg report, Goldman — uninvolved in setting the Libor — is considering taking the law into its own hands and taking care of this Libor business with suits against the firms responsible. Like a fictional comic book metropolis, the financial industry is dreadfully underpoliced, and many of the cops are themselves on the take, so, logically, what Wall Street needs is a morally dubious but incredibly wealthy figure to operate outside the law to achieve order by any means necessary. That’s right: Goldman Sachs is going to become The Green Arrow.

via Will Wall Street turn on its own over Libor? – Salon.com.

Tags: banks, libor, Wall Street

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Categories Economy, Politics

Wall Street’s Latest Campus Recruiting Crisis Sparked by Goldman Controversy – NYTimes.com

15 Mar

The best and the brightest don’t want to work on Wall Street anymore.

College students who were once attracted to prestigious banks like moths to bonfires are increasingly turning to other industries in search of success. Insiders say that pained testimonials of industry life can scare off would-be financiers from even applying for jobs at the most selective firms.

“This is a significant problem for Goldman,” said Adam Zoia, the chief executive of the placement firm Glocap Search, whose clients include many aspiring big-bank employees and hedge fund workers. “Their perch of being the investment bank to go to is definitely at risk.”

One former Goldman analyst recently decided to leave the firm after the rewards of a finance job no longer seemed to outweigh the costs. The former employee is now working at a small technology start-up for less money.

via Wall Street’s Latest Campus Recruiting Crisis Sparked by Goldman Controversy – NYTimes.com.

Tags: banking, college students, Wall Street

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Categories Great Revaluing

Insight: The Wall Street disconnect | Reuters

19 Nov

With U.S. cities moving this week to crack down on Occupy Wall Street encampments – including the one in New York’s Zuccotti Park – the staying power of the movement is in question. Whatever its future, it’s clear that so far, the Occupiers haven’t changed many minds on Wall Street over blame for the country’s hard times. The cognitive disconnect between the protesters and the captains of finance is alive and well.

David Mooney, chief executive officer of Alliant Credit Union in Chicago, one of the nation’s larger credit unions, used to work at one of Wall Street’s top banks, JPMorgan Chase. There’s a vast cultural gap between Wall Street and his new world, he says: Old friends from the Street, he says, now jokingly refer to him as a “socialist.” A credit union is supposed to be run in the interests of all members, he says, while commercial bankers tend to see consumers as customers who can be “exploited” by layering on more fees.

via Insight: The Wall Street disconnect | Reuters.

Tags: banking, investment, Wall Street

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Categories CorpState, Great Revaluing, Inequality

Wall Street Isn’t Winning It’s Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

27 Oct

Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that’s just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they’re cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

In this country, we cheer for people who hit their own home runs – not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.

That’s why it’s so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn’t disappointment at having lost. It’s anger because those other guys didn’t really win.

via Wall Street Isn’t Winning It’s Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone.

Tags: cheating, Wall Street

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Categories Great Revaluing, Occupy Wall Street

Wall Street: The Dead Face of Domination

9 Oct

Look at those huge buildings. What do they say? What do they express?

Only one of them, the smallest one, at the lower right, has any articulation (detail, action) on its surface. The others, smooth, glassy, slick.

Dead.

Those buildings are in New York City’s financial district (aka Wall Street). That’s where the captains of finance manipulate our world while playing ‘King of the Hill’ against one another. They’re keeping score with our money, while we go without health care, without pensions, without hope for our children and grandchildren.

The design of those buildings speaks volumes. Clean and slick, very smooth and efficient. But completely out of scale with human life. That’s what the lack of articulation in the surface says, nothing at human scale.

Nothing.

We don’t have to wait for the future in which the machines take over. They already have.

Those buildings are the machines. They are the Borg. We ARE living in The Matrix. We are nothing but feedstock for the adolescent games those machines play with one another.

See those people down front, left of center? That’s us, the 99%, the feedstock, as it were. See the foliage, the foliage that breaths life into the air by transforming the sun’s energy into bioenergy? More feedstock for the Borg Buildings. Continue reading →

Tags: #OccupyTogether, bankers, the Borg, Wall Street

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Categories Great Rebalancing, Great Revaluing, Photo, Politics, Positive Visioning

The Bankers and the Revolutionaries – NYTimes.com

2 Oct

Arab Springs comes to Wall Street:

“This was absolutely inspired by Tahrir Square, by the Arab Spring movement,” said Tyler Combelic, 27, a Web designer from Brooklyn who is a spokesman for the occupiers. “Enough is enough!”

The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills, and impressive in their organization. The square is divided into a reception area, a media zone, a medical clinic, a library and a cafeteria. The protesters’ Web site includes links allowing supporters anywhere in the world to go online and order pizzas (vegan preferred) from a local pizzeria that delivers them to the square.

This is big (boldface mine):

In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.

We’ve seen that inadequately regulated, too-big-to-fail banks can undermine the public interest rather than serve it — and in the last few years, banks got away with murder. It’s infuriating to see bankers who were rescued by taxpayers now moan about regulations intended to prevent the next bail-out. And it’s important that protesters spotlight rising inequality: does it feel right to anyone that the top 1 percent of Americans now possess a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent?

via The Bankers and the Revolutionaries – NYTimes.com.

Tags: Arab String, bankers, inequality, poliltics, protest, Wall Street