“U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff smelled something fishy in the August 3rd deal the SEC cooked up with Bank of America…….
That was the same view held by the Congressional questioners in the Madoff matter at the February 4, 2009 dust up with top SEC officials. After many rounds of pointed questions produced unresponsive answers, round tripper Andrew Vollmer, then Acting General Counsel of the SEC, explained why. He and his fellow SEC panelists were claiming executive privilege. This position elicited the following outburst from Congressman Ackerman: “Your value to us is useless…Our economy is in crisis, Mr. Vollmer. We thought the enemy was Mr. Madoff. I think it’s you…you were the shield…You come here and fumble through make believe answers that you concoct and attribute it to executive privilege….”
On April 2, 2009, another of Wall Street’s favorite law firms, WilmerHale, announced that Andrew Vollmer would be returning to the firm as a partner. According to the press release, before joining the SEC, Vollmer was a vice-chair of WilmerHale’s Securities Department…….
…And just what does the Madoff fraud have to do with the big firms on Wall Street? The multi billion dollar proceeds of the fraud were wired in and out of JPMorgan Chase where Madoff maintained his firm’s account. Also, Madoff partnered with Citigroup’s Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs to compete head on with the New York Stock Exchange in a venture called Primex Trading as reported here at CounterPunch on January 15, 2009.