Corporate finance generalist, investment banker and expert in derivatives, Austin Burrell, sums up last week’s announcement by Attorney-General Eric Holder that there are 5000 pending indictments [sic] arising out of the investigation of fraud in the capital markets:

[Note: the DOJ is involved in some 5000 odd cases of fraud related to the financial industry…

This isn’t the same as the “pending indictments” cited by Burrell (for which we are hunting for sources) but it does make the figure credible..]

“The summation of this memo was that criminals both domestic and global were tactically manipulating all forms of assets, engaging in various forms of counterfeiting facilitated by vested public interests, in a huge global conspiracy lined inextricably to all forms of organized crime, again, done strategically to launder U.S. assets into foreign accounts for the purpose of evading all forms of taxes, both legitimate and illegitimate.

“The enormous size of the thefts here (in the trillions of dollars) threatens U.S. national security, and global stability. We have seen the dollar implode, retirement accounts savaged, and major institutions brought to their knees and worse, much worse in many cases. These thefts have been implicated in the destruction of investor confidence, and there is no form of security that has not been impacted, from stocks and bonds, currencies, physical and forward commodities, agencies, to commodities, and more. These same thefts could never have been executed except with the wholesale cooperation of not just hedge funds, and investment banks, but only with the implicit cooperation, support and protection of every form of financial service monopoly involved in trading, clearance and settlement of securities globally in all forms of assets along with the major international money center banks, a pliant press, and a corrupt research industry perforated by criminal interests who pay top price for the purchase or sale of research for securities they specialize in. Oversight provided by our U.S. government branches and agencies hasn’t been deficient, it has been non-existent, a canard by every perspective.”

Of course, that’s just what I wrote in June, July 2006, March-April 2007, September-November 2007, and September 2008, in a dozen pieces laying out the whole scenario, but you wouldn’t know it from the people who are taking the credit for being Christopher Columbus…

We already know that the commission looking into the financial crisis is widening its probe to include past regulators and Fed Chairman Greenspan.

The whole business is repellent.

But that’s the nature of an empire. It’s essentially and at every level, physical to intellectual to financial, the theft of the labor and money of other people.

Bail-Out Nation?
More like Burglar Nation….

Update:

Here is the relevant quote from AG Holder’s speech at Palm Beach:

Last year, Allen Stanford, Tom Petters and, most recently, Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein – who is alleged to have run a $1 billion investment scam – joined Bernie Madoff in becoming headline news and household names. I’m proud that these men, along with more than 450 others convicted of corporate and securities fraud in 2009, have been taken out of the game. And I’m heartened that the Department of Justice, at last count, is moving forward on more than 5,000 pending Financial Institution Fraud cases

“Moving forward”, of course, can mean any number of things. I don’t know if it translates into “pending indictments.” And indictments don’t mean convictions either.

Take-aways from the speech:

• A new interagency financial fraud task force (Lila: Why do we need yet another bureaucratic layer put in place by executive order? There are laws against fraud already on the books. This is where I start getting nervous. To whom is this task force answerable? Oh, I see – it’s “led by the DOJ” – so it’s under the AG…)
• The new force will focus on 4 types of financial crime: Mortgage fraud — from the simplest of “flip” schemes to systematic lending fraud in our nationwide housing market;
  Securities fraud – from traditional insider trading, to Ponzi schemes, to accounting fraud, to misrepresentations to investors;
  Recovery Act and rescue fraud – including the theft of federal stimulus funds and the illegal use of taxpayer dollars intended to shore up our financial institutions; and
  Financial discrimination – including predatory lending practices in minority communities and the sale of financial products that exploit the elderly and disadvantaged.
  
  (Lila: You’d think those last two items would be a warning. Each time you intervene, you set off unintended consequences that require even more intervention to correct them…and then even more intervention to correct the correction…and so it goes on).
• The task force will be using powers granted by the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009         (Lila: I’ve got to check this one out).
• Mortgage fraud cases are up 400% from 2005. Some 2800 mortgage fraud cases are being investigated. (Lila: Are these part of that 5000 figure or besides it?