LightSquared CEO, and Obama Ally, Sued by SEC for Fraud

Obama went to bat for LightSquared and it’s CEO. His FCC bankrupted LightSquared’s competitors by delaying a waiver. Team Obama tried to get a  4-Star Air Force General to change his testimony to reward a political donor. Then they offered “guidance” to the director of the National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing. They wanted him to change his report to hide the fact that LightSquared’s technology interferes with military GPS systems. All this because of political donations from an Obama supporter. It’s the same pay-to-play scheme Obama has been tied to over-and-over again.

From Breitbart.com:

US regulators sued hedge fund billionaire Philip Falcone for fraud Wednesday, accusing him of taking $113 million from a fund to pay his taxes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Falcone, who raked in billions betting against packaged mortgage securities ahead of the US real-estate crash, took clients’ money from funds run by his Harbinger Capital Partners to pay his personal taxes.

It also said Falcone illegally manipulated bond prices, traded preferential treatment to investors who backed a controversial board initiative, and broke restricted period trading rules in three initial public offerings to make money on short sales.

Also charged, for aiding in the tax misappropriation charge, was Harbinger’s former chief operating officer, Peter Jenson.

“Today’s charges read like the final exam in a graduate school course in how to operate a hedge fund unlawfully,” Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a statement.

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Stimulus-Funded “Green Energy” Company Being Investigated for Insider Trading

More corruption from Obama’s green energy corruption.

From CBS:

A company awarded $126.2 million in stimulus taxpayer funds from the U. S. Department of Energy is under investigation for insider trading according to a federal subpoena obtained by CBS News.

The company, San Francisco-based Ecotality, makes and installs chargers for electric cars.

This is another one of those companies Obama called a “success.”

The company received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission in October of 2010.

The president of Ecotality North America Don Karner was sent an additional subpoena in December of 2011, which specifically asks for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company for $99.8 million on August 5, 2009.

The government also wants all communication regarding the federal grant from at least four Ecotality employees and two board members including the company’s CEO Jonathan Read. Karner was required to supply documents to the SEC by early January.

A company spokesperson told CBS News in an email, “We are cooperating fully with the SEC and have no further disclosures or updates that we are able to provide outside of our public filings.”

Ecotality was awarded $99 million in 2009 and an additional $26 million in October 2011. Since the beginning of the grant period in October 2009 the company reported creating 144 jobs according to Recovery.gov .

$125 million for 144 jobs. These green jobs sure are expensive.

As part of the $99 million grant, the company is supposed to install 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. To date the company says they have installed 6,400, less than half.

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SEC wants to force Public Companies to Disclose Political Contributions

This is the same SEC that couldn’t missed the subprime scandal and Bernie Madoff. This is nothing more than a political proposal to stop certain corporations/companies from receiving government contracts due to giving contributions to politicians. As we all know, it is the Democrats who are the corporate whores, as liberal OpenSecrets.org has exposed.

FromWaPo:

A proposal before the Securities and Exchange Commission that would require public companies to disclose political contributions has drawn some favorable comments from investors, but it won’t go a long way in meeting the demands of those advocating for more transparency in political fundraising.

A group of 10 law professors filed a formal petition asking the commission to require corporations to list political contributions in annual proxy statements sent to shareholders. The professors cite a growing interest among shareholders for disclosure of political contributions.

What party receives the most money from Trial Lawyers? Democrats.

“Many shareholders recognize that the interests of executives and directors with respect to political spending might differ from those of shareholders,” said Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard Law School professor who co-chaired the group of professors seeking the new rule. “Such shareholders are naturally concerned when, as is commonly the case, their company provides them with no information about its political spending.”

Are they concerned with the political contributions from the AFL-CIO, Teacher Unions, SEIU etc? Highly unlikely since they tend to give most of their money to Democrats.

The agency has posted several commentsfrom other outside observers supporting the rule, including the International Corporate Governance Network, which represents institutional investors with a combined $18 trillion in assets.

The issue has come to the fore in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in early 2010, which legalized independent corporate political spending. In the majority opinion, the justices wrote that shareholders are responsible for controlling the actions of executives in charge of the corporate purse, opening the door for new rules, as long as they don’t violate the First Amendment.

It was a free speech case. Washington Post is parroting President Obama’s lie.

“Prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the decision.

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SEC may charge Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Executives for hiding information from investors

The taxpayers are being bilked by the government who has refused to regulate these two GSEs. Not only are the taxpayers covering their losses, they’re also covering the legal fees for these crooks.

If only the President, who raised Freddie and Fannie’s debt ceiling, would have appointed an Inspector General, the taxpayer would have been saved billions.

The Washington Post reports:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is moving toward charging former and current Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives with violations related to the financial crisis, setting up a clash with the housing regulator that oversees the companies, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The SEC, responsible for enforcing securities laws, is alleging that at least four senior executives failed to provide necessary information to investors about the companies’ mortgage holdings as the U.S. housing market collapsed.

But the agency that most closely regulates Fannie and Freddie, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, disagrees with that assessment, according to sources familiar with the matter.

FHFA officials think Fannie and Freddie’s financial disclosures, which agency staff members had reviewed before the documents were released to the public, were sufficient, the sources said. One source added that FHFA has sent a letter to the SEC opposing the filing of charges.

An FHFA spokesman declined to comment.

Over the past eight weeks, the SEC sent notices to the executives saying they may face civil charges. The SEC has not yet formally filed such charges and ultimately may choose not to.

The agency alleged that executives at both companies misled investors about their exposure to dangerous mortgage products, such as subprime loans, sources familiar with the matter said.

The executives include former Fannie chief executive Daniel Mudd, former Freddie chief executive Richard Syron, former Freddie chief financial officer Anthony “Buddy” Piszel and current Freddie executive Donald Bisenius, who recently announced that he would leave the company after he received his notice.

The allegations are slightly different for both the companies. One of the chief allegations against Fannie executives is that it characterized mortgage loans as “prime” — meaning high-quality — when they should have been classified in a more risky category of loans.

Meanwhile, Freddie executives are accused of not fully warning investors about the risks associated with subprime loans.

Fannie and Freddie, on the verge of collapse as the financial markets imploded in the fall of 2008, were seized by the federal government. The companies, now owned by taxpayers, have needed $150 billion in aid to stay afloat.

Democrats raised the debt ceiling to $400 billion, sticking more debt to the taxpayers.

The SEC case may also add to a brouhaha on Capitol Hill over federal expenditures by Fannie and Freddie for former executives. The companies are spending tens of millions of dollars to cover the legal costs of a different set of former executives who face private class-action lawsuits. FHFA officials say the former executives are legally entitled to that coverage.

The SEC case will add to those taxpayer bills because the executives facing allegations are also indemnified.

In other words, the taxpayers are getting fleeced twice.

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Watchdog groups wants SEC to investigate Wall Street Short-Sellers partnership with Obama regime

Another Obama regime pay-to-play scheme.

The Daily Caller reports:

A key watchdog group urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Tuesday to investigate a partnership between noted Wall Street short-seller Steven Eisman and the Obama administration regarding burdensome new regulations on the for-profit education sector.

And Obama wanted us to believe he disliked those “fat-cat” Wall Street bankers.

A March 1 letter from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) highlights documents released last week under the Freedom of Information Act showing extensive collaboration between the short seller and the administration.

In one email, Eisman alerted Department of Education officials to market reaction he claimed was caused by the view on Wall Street the agency was backing down from a strict regulatory approach.

“I know you cannot respond,” Eisman wrote July 19 to a top Education bureaucrat, “But just fyi. Education stocks are running because people are hearing DOE is backing down from gainful employment [regulations].”

Eisman’s email was forwarded to a top aide to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Phil Marten, with the request, “Let’s discuss.”

Further, the documents hint Eisman and other short sellers may have been given advanced notice of key regulatory moves by the agency, which would have allowed them to position themselves early in the market, and profit handsomely.

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U.S. drops criminal probe of former Countrywide chief Angelo Mozilo

Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and a host of other Democrats are wiping sweat from their brow.

LOS ANGELES – Federal prosecutors have ended a criminal investigation of Countrywide Financial Corp. co-founder Angelo Mozilo, a person close to the investigation said Friday.

The federal official told The Associated Press that the probe launched in 2008 into the actions of the former chief executive of the housing giant during the mortgage meltdown has been closed with no indictments. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was never publicly announced, and the Department of Justice as a policy does not announce the closing of investigations.

In October, Mozilo agreed to a $67.5 million settlement to avoid civil trial on fraud and insider trading charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but prosecutors pursuing the criminal case against him found that his actions did not amount to crimes.

The SEC’s charges alleged that the 72-year-old Mozilo and two other former Countrywide executives who also settled profited from doling out risky mortgages while misleading investors about the dangers.

The three men admitted no wrongdoing under the settlement, and it allowed them to avoid the risk of a verdict that could have been used by the prosecutors who would eventually drop the investigation.

Un-fucking-believable. It looks like the rich and corrupt can get away as long as they pay. Since this comes from the Eric Holder-led DOJ, I wouldn’t be surprised this was done to keep all those Democrats, who received sweet-heart deals, out of court records.

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SEC Hires Former Goldman Sachs Banker

Another Goldman Sachs banker given a job to oversee investment management. What could possibly go wrong?

The Hill reports:

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday named former Goldman Sachs executive Eileen Rominger as its director of investment management.

The 56-year-old Rominger will start work next month at the division that protects investors and promotes capital formation through oversight and regulation of the nation’s multitrillion-dollar investment management industry, the SEC announced in a statement. For the past 11 years, she worked at Goldman Sachs, most recently serving as the firm’s global chief investment officer. 

Prior to Goldman Sachs, she worked for 18 years at Oppenheimer Capital, where she was a portfolio manager, managing director and a member of the firm’s management team, according to an SEC release. 

She will replace Andrew J. “Buddy” Donohue, who left the agency in November, the SEC said.

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Inspector General: Bank of America received leniency from the Obama Administration on SEC violations because it was already being bailed out by taxpayers

This is why the banks got away with all those risky business practices that contributed to the financial crisis. The SEC failed to do it job and now we have the Inspector General telling us that the same group that regulates these banks showed favoritism for a particular bailed out bank.

The Washington Post reports:

The Securities and Exchange Commission showed leniency toward Bank of America in penalizing the firm for securities law violations last year because the financially weakened bank was on taxpayer-backed life support, according to a new watchdog report.

The agency agreed to a settlement that was “favorable” to the bank “because of the nation’s perilous economic situation at the time” and the fact that it had received billions of dollars in taxpayer aid, according to the report by the SEC’s inspector general. Specifically, during settlement negotiations, Bank of America won relief from sanctions that could have hurt its investment banking business.

The inspector general, H. David Kotz, did not find fault with the decision but suggested that the SEC spell out its procedures for handling such cases more clearly. Agency spokesman John Nester said, “We value the report’s insights and look forward to addressing its recommendations.”

Kotz opened the investigation based on a request from Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.). Cummings made the request based on an August 2009 article in The Washington Post raising these issues, according to the inspector general.

The article examined how the SEC was confronting the challenge of handing out punishments against major banks for wrongdoing at the same time that other regulators and government officials were trying to ensure these firms remained on stable footing.

In particular, the article looked at issues raised by Bank of America’s fall 2008 acquisition of Merrill Lynch, a deal that was the subject of the SEC’s investigation and eventual settlement.

After initially agreeing to the purchase, Bank of America had second thoughts because of mounting losses at Merrill. But the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department pressured Bank of America to follow through on the deal, concerned that a change of course could worsen the escalating financial crisis.

Former Bank of America CEO, Ken Lewis, told the taxpayers this but it was no big deal that the federal government was forcing a corporation to purchase a risky corporation.

In August 2009, the SEC accused Bank of America of concealing nearly $6 billion in bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch employees before the acquisition was completed. The bank agreed to pay $33 million to settle the case.

These bonuses were paid from the bailout monies the government took from the taxpayers to reward fat-cat bankers.

But a judge refused to offer the court approval necessary to finalize the settlement. The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York, questioned whether the penalty was sufficient and whether the SEC had investigated thoroughly enough to settle.

Months later, the SEC and Bank of America agreed to a modified settlement that also charged the bank with failing to disclose mounting losses at Merrill Lynch. Bank of America agreed to pay $150 million and a host of other sanctions. This settlement won Rakoff’s approval.

The inspector general found that the SEC showed leniency in the first settlement. He did not find that Bank of America’s status as a bailed-out bank affected the settlement’s price tag. Rather, he found that the SEC exempted Bank of America from other sanctions.

Like many of its competitors, Bank of America has long enjoyed a special status with the SEC that allows it to issue securities more easily.

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Obama Voter, and Speech Writer, Mort Zuckerman Claims: “Obama’s Anti-Business Policies Are Our Economic Katrina”

Mort Zuckerman has buyer’s remorse, like most of the zombies who fell for the snake oil Obama was selling. Not only did Zuckerman vote for Obama, he admitted to writing a speech for his pal Obama as well. Now Zuckerman wants to tell those of us who knew Obama was bad for America that Obama is anti-business.

 

  You’re only 20 months too late Mort:

But one unfortunate pattern that has emerged in the last 18 months is to lay all the blame for our difficulties only on the business community and the financial world. This quite ignores the role of Congress in many areas, but most glaringly in forcing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration to back loans to people who could not afford them. And not to mention the role of the Securities and Exchange Commission , which in 2004 sanctioned higher levels of leverage for financial firms, from 12 times equity to over 30 times equity.

This predilection to blame business is manifest in the unnecessary and provocative anti-business sentiment revealed by President Obama in a recent speech that was supposed to be seeking the support of the business community for a doubling of exports over the next five years. “In the absence of sound oversight,” he said, “responsible businesses are forced to compete against unscrupulous and underhanded businesses, who are unencumbered by any restrictions on activities that might harm the environment, or take advantage of middle-class families, or threaten to bring down the entire financial system.” This kind of gratuitous and overstated demonization of business is exactly the wrong approach. It ignores the disappointment of a stimulus program that was ill-designed to produce the jobs the president promised—that famous 8 percent unemployment ceiling.

 But it’s not just the rhetoric that undermines the confidence the business community needs to find if it is to invest. Consider the new generation of regulatory rules, increased bureaucracy, and higher taxes created by the Obama administration. For example, the new financial regulation bill includes nearly 500 “rule-makings,” studies, and reports, compared with just 14 in total for the controversial Sarbanes-Oxley bill, passed after the financial scandals of Enron and WorldCom. The disillusionment has spread to the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which represents small businesses that normally account for roughly 60 percent of job creation.

The chief economist of the NFIB, William Dunkelberg, put it clearly: Small business owners “do not trust the economic policies in place or proposed.” He also said, “The U.S. economy faces hurricane force headwinds and the government is at the center of the storm, making an economic recovery very difficult.”

Our economic Katrina, in short.

A Liberal admitting the actions of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae was a major factor in our economic crisis. The sky must be falling. Tell us something we didn’t already know Mort.

Liberal white guilt strikes again. Obama’s ‘spread the wealth’ economy is a failure. It’s almost sad to see a Obama zombie fall so far. I didn’t know zombies sniveled.

 

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Obama-Goldman Sachs Google-gate Scandal

Ok, something is fishy here. It should be expected since Rahm “Dead-fish” Emanuel is involved. Emanuel informed Charlie Rose that the White House knew nothing about the SEC filing fraud charges against Obama campaign donor Goldman Sachs.

Yet, the Obama administration had enough time to contact Google (another big-time Obama campaign donor) and buy the ad words “SEC” and “Goldman Sachs” which links directly back to Obama’s web site. How convenient and a total coincidence. All in the name to raise money or as Obama loves to say…’the status quo.’

UPDATE: Obama told CNBC Wednesday that there was no connection between the White House’s push for financial reform on Wall Street and the civil fraud charges filed against Goldman Sachs on Friday. “We are not Johnny-come-latelies to this issue,” said Obama. He said he has been pushing for financial reform for the past three years.

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