Update: Apparently there was also a fire in the CFTC building, says Bob Wenzel:

“A fire earlier this week in the basement of the building located at 140 Broadway in New York City has forced the temporary move of the New York office of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which was located in the building. The office has been relocated on a temporary basis to 201 Varick Street.

Reports on the internet state that gold and silver records of the CFTC were damaged in the fire, which would be interesting given it is just one week before the Congressional Precious Metals Manipulation hearing. However, Steve Schneider a CFTC spokesman at their Washington D.C. headquarters informs me that the damage was unrelated to the CFTC and that no CFTC documents were lost or damaged in the fire.”

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Original Post

Commodity Futures Trading Commission whistle-blower, Andrew Maguire, who testified at Thursday’s CFTC hearing on Metals Futures trading, was injured the next day, along with his wife. They were struck by a hit-and-run driver in the London area, says a report this evening on the GATA website. The couple was admitted to a hospital overnight and released the next day. They are expected to make a full recovery, said GATA’s contact CFTC member Adrian Douglas.

Maguire’s car was hit from a side road by another car that then tried to race away. As it did, it almost struck a pedestrian who tried to block it. It hit two other cars before police, using helicopters, chased it down.

Deep breath.

OK.

First, a number of people deeply involved in the Madoff scandal die.

Just a month before the fraud is exposed,  Alex Widmer, CEO of Bank Julius Baer, Switzerland’s largest wealth manager, dies unexpectedly, the family withholding the cause from a desire for privacy (November 5, 2008).

Then, top HSBC banker Christian Schorr was found hanging from his hotel room ceiling (December 21, 2008).

Just after him, there was the aristocratic manager of Madoff feeder-fund Access International Advisors, Rene-Thierry de la Villehuchet, found dead in his New York office, his arms and wrists slashed by a box-cutter (December 22, 2008)

Next, Freddie Mac’s Chief Financial Officer David Kellerman commits “apparent” suicide (April 22, 2009).

In the fall of the same year, Jeffrey Picower, an attorney who ran a foundation that invested in Madoff’s fund and allegedly siphoned off $7 billion through it, was found dead in his swimming pool in Florida (October 25, 2009).

More recently, the co-head of trading at suspect hedge-fund Third Point, Adam Sackett, died unexpectedly of a bacterial infection at the age of 35 (March 20, 2010).

That happens only the day before the release of the Valukas report on the 2008 collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers, which strangely exonerates hedge-funds from any involvement in the collapse. This is accompanied by triumphant proclamations in the media that the markets have not, and cannot, be manipulated by speculators.

Now, we have an important whistle-blower almost mowed down on the streets while he’s in the process of outing blatant manipulation of the precious metals market by JP Morgan traders.

No conclusions yet, mind you. Our bar is high. We’re quite willing to believe it’s all coincidence, astrological alignment, and mystical karma, until proven otherwise.

But meanwhile, if you’re planning to blow any whistles, leak, snitch, or snoop, it looks like it might be a good idea to hire a food-taster and look both ways (and behind) when you’re crossing the road….

….and do pick up a kevlar vest while you’re at it.

Update (hat-tip to Jim Hall at Deep Capture):

Financier/speculator/activist George Soros (Soros Fund Management) is in Nigerian scouting for opportunities for investment, according to all Africa.com:

“The Soros delegation met Nigerian bankers including senior managers from United Bank for Africa and Diamond Bank during their trip to Lagos, according to sources within the banks. Representa-tives of at least two other big US and European funds have also visited Lagos since the start of the year, according to another industry source. Soros Fund Management declined to comment.”

The banking sector is heavily represented in the Nigerian stock-exchange, and after a high in March 2008, has taken a tumble that many blame on the withdrawal of funds by foreign investors. However, foreign hedge funds and investors apparently take up only 10-12% of share capital, say analysts. They blame the market collapse on the popular practice of banks lending money to people to buy shares, which led to speculation and soaring prices. Since then,

“The plunge in stock prices has provoked concern about the extent of banks’ exposure to losses from these loans and raised questions about the level of supervision by the Central Bank of Nigeria and other regulators.”

So there’s a Goldman Sachs hedge-fund executive in the Nigerian cabinet, which obviously would have a good deal to say about the running of the Central Bank, and there’s George Soros, meeting with Nigerian bankers.

That’s all three parts of my formula for corruption (“some government officials, some speculators, and some banks” versus everyone else):

s(G) + s(S) + s(S) v EE, where ‘s’ is always a positive integer

FinAlternatives reports:

“Nigeria’s acting President Goodluck Jonathan has appointed a Goldman Sachs prime brokerage executive to the country’s cabinet. Olusegun Aganga, who is based in London, heads Goldman’s hedge fund consulting services. The managing director has reportedly been actively developing the firm’s business in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa.”

Now what would that business be?

A Goldman report, “Health Buys Wealth” suggests one angle:

GS Health Buys Wealth

Maybe, Goldman is angling for some lucrative private-public deals in health care, infrastructure, and other “humanitarian” investments?

Great piece at Lew Rockwell by Albert J. Nock on the vanity of instructing the masses

“In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are.” He said, “Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.”

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job – in fact, he had asked for it – but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so – if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start – was there any sense in starting it? “Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.”

Business Insider owner, Henry Blodget, has fired John Carney, the editor of its blog, Clusterstock, apparently over differences on what sort of news commentary to run. From Village Voice blogs:

“We’re told Carney was fired by Blodget this afternoon, and it was speculated that this was the result of the last few weeks of disagreements between Blodget, publisher Julie Hansen, and Carney over how to best run Business Insider: Blodget wanted more sensational, pageview-grabbing posts and click-friendly features like galleries, while Carney wanted to put forth breaking news scoops that told a longer narrative. It was also speculated that Carney, one of the highest paid members on the Business Insider staff, wasn’t bringing the traffic numbers to sufficiently satisfy Henry Blodget, given his high profile within the financial reporting world, but that Clusterstock’s homepage had the highest traffic of all the verticals at Business Insider during Carney’s tenure, and that his own stories generated “tons of [unique visitors].”

While I didn’t care for Carney’s routine dismissal of naked short-selling critics, he was a thoughtful writer on other topics, the latest evidence for which was his column on why Lehman executives should not be criminally prosecuted.

It’s not that I agree with everything he says there. I don’t. I think there’s a place for criminal prosecution, even in a “they all did it” culture. It’s just that it isn’t the popular thing to say now, with anger running high out there, and I admire people when they make unpopular arguments, based on reason.

Meanwhile, at Economic Policy Journal, Robert Wenzel makes a fairly good case that the firing had to do with Carney not putting in the sweat and blood needed for a start up, and – perhaps – upstaging/undermining one of Blodget’s own scoops..

Since then, I’ve also seen Carney’s name on a list of speakers at the Milken Institute…

[That’s Michael Milken, the junk-bond dealer-turned-philanthropist, and Sith Lord of market-racketeering even unto this day, according to Deep Capture: http://www.deepcapture.com/michael-milken-60000-deaths-and-the-story-of-dendreon]

Not that that necessarily means anything, of course, since scores, if not hundreds, of writers, business men and consultants voice their opinion at the Milken Institute. Still, it does remind you how incestuous the financial world is, and makes you wonder whether the coziness of the culture really does prevent most arguments made there from being much more than a post hoc rationalization of the buttered side of some piece of bread somewhere. Not in any vulgar quid pro quo sense. But simply in the sense of a shared blind spot, much like the blind spot Dick Fuld shared with other investment bankers, like, say Henry Paulson, who, we hear is doing just fine on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University...

“Since the dominant voice in any society is that of the beneficiaries of the status quo, the ‘alienated intellectual’ who tries to pursue the normal path of honest enquiry – perhaps falling into error on the way – and thus often finds himself challenging the conventional wisdom, tends to be a lonely figure.”

~ Noam Chomsky, “The Function of the University in a Time of Crisis” in For Reasons of State (1973), p. 91

A sad day for freedom of speech. University of Ottawa student protests led to the canceling of a scheduled speech by controversial conservative writer, Ann Coulter.

Nothing wrong with protesting. That’s just what the tea-parties were about. But for one group of students to obstruct what another group might want to hear is uncivil, to say the least.

And then there was that letter by University of Ottawa Provost Houle. It all but threatened Coulter with criminal prosecution should she cross over into “hate speech.”

“I would, however, like to inform you, or perhaps remind you, that our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or “free speech”) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here.

You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind.”

(http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2710037#ixzz0j8rftU3r)

At Salon, Glenn Greenwald points out the creepiness of such a threat, even for a “hate-monger,” while Coulter grabbing onto the “hate” tag, is accusing Houle of a hate-crime, in his turn.

Personally, I’d like to see the word “hate” given a rest. Coulter’s language is often crude, insensitive, and juvenile, sometimes inflammatory, and a lot of the time just plain wrong,  but “hate” is pretty harsh. And far too broad. Didn’t Noam Chomsky – whose writing on foreign policy I admire – call Murray Rothbard’s writing – which I admire even more – a form of hate?

These days “hate” is just invective – like “fascist” or “Nazi” – for something you don’t like.

Besides, even Ann Coulter can be insightful and truthful.**

[Admittedly, the ratio of insight to invective in her writing has diminished over time, but some part of the blame for that also rests on her critics. Liberal venues- which are the prestigious ones – are often so intolerant of conservative views that they ignore or ostracize people off the bat, unfairly. That reinforces conservatives in their role as  “victims” of liberal close-mindedness, and they give up on respectability. Eventually, they start playing to the roughest part of the gallery, turn into caricatures of themselves, find that lucrative, and end up settling into the role of class clown and disruptor of all things civil and polite….the train-wreck mode of discourse, as some wag puts it].

Ann Coulter has perfected this strategy of ticking- off the left, fueling the right, and making big money in the process.

And today, she’s also a free-speech martyr.

Now, that’s what I call a business instinct…

** In one notorious remark about John Edwards, Coulter implied that the senator wouldn’t be above using a family tragedy for political advantage. At the time, her remark was (rightfully) denounced, and by none more loudly than the tragic Elizabeth Edwards. But that denunciation sounds poignantly off-base when reread today.