DOJ Will Not Prosecute Goldman Sachs in Financial Crisis Probe

LOOKS LIKE OBAMA BAILED 'EM OUT AGAIN!!!

DOJ Will Not Prosecute Goldman Sachs in Financial Crisis Probe




The Justice Department has decided it will not prosecute Goldman Sachs or its employees for their role in the financial crisis, following an investigation by senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Tom Coburn (R-OK). The congressional investigation found problems with the credit rating agencies and poor oversight from regulators, and highlighted abuses by Goldman Sachs and other large investment banks. Senator Levin sent a formal referral to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation in April 2011.

The investigative report by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Levin, found that Goldman Sachs "used net short positions to benefit from the downturn in the mortgage market, and designed, marketed, and sold CDOs in ways that created conflicts of interest with the firm's clients and at times led to the bank's profiting from the same products that caused substantial losses for its clients."

A statement from the Justice Department issued late on Thursday evening noted, "Based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report."

"The department and its investigative partners conducted an exhaustive review of the report and its exhibits, independently gathered and scrutinized a large volume of other documents, and tenaciously pursued potential evidentiary leads, including conducting numerous witness interviews," the Justice Department's statement continued. "While the department and investigative agencies ultimately concluded that the burden of proof to bring a criminal case could not be met based on the law and facts as they exist at this time, we commend the hard work of those involved in preparing the report and thank the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for its cooperation in regard to the criminal investigation."

"We are pleased that this matter is behind us," Goldman Sachs spokesman David Wells said when contacted by ABC News.

The Justice Department statement noted that if additional information emerges, the cases could be prosecuted in the future.

This most recent decision follows other high-profile investigations that Justice decided not to prosecute: There was the collapse of AIG and the role of the top executive at AIG Financial Products division, Joseph Cassano, and former Countrywide CEO Anthony Mozillo, who was fined by the SEC in an insider trading case. Citibank and JP Morgan both had multi-million-dollar settlements with the SEC over collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, tied to the U.S. housing market, but Justice has not brought any criminal cases. Freddie Mac was subpoenaed in a grand jury investigation in 2008 but the firm disclosed in an Aug. 8, 2011, SEC filing that the Justice investigation was closed.

Attorney General Eric Holder defended the Justice Department's record in pursuing high profile financial fraud cases. "There have been, I guess, 2,100 or so mortgage-related matters that we have brought here at United State Department of Justice. Our state counterparts have done a variety of things. The notion that there has been inactivity over the course of the last three years is belied by a troublesome little thing called facts."

Goldman has faced stiff penalties from the Securities and Exchange Commission. In April 2010 the SEC filed a civil charge against Goldman Sachs and Fabrice Tourre, a vice president, for making misstatements and omissions from financial records in connection with CDOs that Goldman Sachs marketed to their investors. CDOs played a significant part in the financial crisis in 2008.

ABACUS 2007-AC1 was tied to the performance of subprime residential mortgage-backed securities and was composed of investment choices hedge fund manager John Paulson had a financial interest in selecting, although Tourre never disclosed to potential investors that Paulson & Co. had a short-interest position in seeing ABACUS go down. Investors in ABACUS allegedly lost an estimated $1 billion.

According to the SEC complaint Tourre, who called himself "Fabulous Fab" wrote to a friend in a January 23, 2007, email: "More and more leverage in the system, The whole building is about to collapse anytime now…Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre] … standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstruosities(sic)."

Goldman Sachs reached a settlement with the SEC in July 2010, paying a $550 million fine for admitting that they should have included information about Paulson's investment position. Tourre is currently in ongoing litigation with the SEC over the case.

THEY'RE ALL GETTIN OFF THE HOOK!!


U.S. Intelligence Suspected of Killing CFTC Silver Manipulation Case Against JP Morgan


Posted on August 7, 2012 by Dominique de Kevelioc de Bailleul By Dominique de Kevelioc de Bailleul

“Four-year silver probe set to be dropped,” FT titles its piece Monday regarding the JP Morgan silver manipulation scandal.

According to FT:

A four-year investigation into the possible manipulation of the the silver market looks increasingly likely to be dropped after US regulators failed to find enough evidence to support a legal case, according to three people familiar with the situation. . .

In 2010, Bart Chilton, a CFTC commissioner, said that he believed there had been “fraudulent efforts” to “deviously control” the silver price.

But after taking advice from two external consultancies, the first of which found irregularities on certain trading dates that it believed deserved more analysis, CFTC staff do not have sufficient evidence to bring a case, according to the people familiar with the situation.

Though Ted Butler, GATA and Andrew Maguire have provided the ‘watchdog’ agency with a drivers licenses of the suspects, a video tape of the incidents, the address of the assailants and the usual time they sit down for dinner, two mysterious “external consultants” believe that the “CFTC staff do not have sufficient evidence to bring a case.”

Therefore, the refusal of the CFTC to hand over the ‘smoking gun’ evidence to the U.S. Department of Justice in the JP Morgan case is no longer the issue for silver bugs to seek relief; the issue now becomes: Why won’t charges ever be filed against Jamie Dimon?

On May 5, 2006, then-President George W. Bush essentially handed over Wall Street, COMEX and CME to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a spy agency created in Dec. 17, 2004. In essence, with the signing of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, anything that truly matters in the financial markets ultimately has no democratic oversight to protect market participants.

From the Business Week article of May 2006 (no longer available online):

Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules

Now, the White House’s top spymaster can cite national security to exempt businesses from reporting requirements.

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.

AUTHORITY GRANTED. William McLucas, the Securities & Exchange Commission’s former enforcement chief, suggested that the ability to conceal financial information in the name of national security could lead some companies “to play fast and loose with their numbers.” McLucas, a partner at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr in Washington, added: “It could be that you have a bunch of books and records out there that no one knows about.”

The memo Bush signed on May 5, which was published seven days later in the Federal Register, had the unrevealing title “Assignment of Function Relating to Granting of Authority for Issuance of Certain Directives: Memorandum for the Director of National Intelligence.” In the document, Bush addressed Negroponte, saying: “I hereby assign to you the function of the President under section 13(b)(3)(A) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.”

A trip to the statute books showed that the amended version of the 1934 act states that “with respect to matters concerning the national security of the United States,” the President or the head of an Executive Branch agency may exempt companies from certain critical legal obligations. These obligations include keeping accurate “books, records, and accounts” and maintaining “a system of internal accounting controls sufficient” to ensure the propriety of financial transactions and the preparation of financial statements in compliance with “generally accepted accounting principles.”

Knowing how the National Security Agency (NSA) has worked in the past, it, also, should not be too surprising that the ‘smoking gun’ witness to JP Morgan’s blatant manipulation of the silver market, Andrew Maguire (and his wife), was attacked by a hit man in a hit-and-run car assault the day following his damaging testimony against JP Morgan at a CFTC hearing of Mar. 25, 2010.

Here’s where the DNI may have stepped in to squash the CFTC investigation into JP Morgan and, possibly, took action to permanently squash Andrew Maguire, too.

At the time of the attack on Maguire, the highly-controversial Admiral Dennis C. Blair was on duty as director of national intelligence (Jan. 29, 2009 – May 28, 2010).

The U.S. economic collapse “already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries,” Blair told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 12, 2009.

“Time is probably our greatest threat,” Blair added. “The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests.”

Nearly a year later, Feb. 3, 2010, Blair testified again before Congress, and said, “If that direct action–we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that. … I would rather go into details in closed session, Mr. Chairman, but we don’t target people for free speech. We target them for taking action that threatens Americans or has resulted in it.”

Blair added, “Being a U.S. citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans.”

Those two ‘external consultants’ who ‘advised’ the CFTC to drop the case against JP Morgan may have come from the DNI, citing national security interests, of course.

And as far as Andrew Maguire, it may have been a pure coincidence that the director of national intelligence at the time of his hearing with the CFTC was a loose cannon, Blair, a possible psychopath. Was the DNI behind the hit-and-run of Andrew Maguire and his wife?

For more information on Blair’s checkered past, including disobeying direct orders, suspicions of perjury and other dishonorable accusations, read about him on Wiki.