My Statement Regarding Greg Smith's Goldman Resignation

Today, I have received dozens of media requests and hundreds of emails regarding former Goldman Sachs executive, Greg Smith's gutsy, and internationally resonating, public resignation.

I applaud Smith's decision to bring the nature of Goldman's profit-making strategies to the forefront of the global population's discourse, as so many others have been doing through books, investigative journalism, and the Occupy movements over the past decade since my book, Other People's Money, was written after I resigned from Goldman. It would be great if Smith's illuminations would serve as the turning point around which serious examination and re-regulation of the banking system framework would transpire.

The inherent conflict of interest that firms such as Goldman possess through enjoying the multiple roles of 'market-maker,' 'securities creator' and 'client-advisor' foster an environment rife with systemic risk. The trading revenue portion of Goldman's profits, as well as its derivatives vs. assets ratio, is the highest amongst the American bank holding companies. And yet, in the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve approved Goldman Sachs (along with Morgan Stanley) to alter its moniker from investment bank to bank holding company, thereby allowing it to gain access to federal subsidies and potential ongoing support.

In this regard, the firm's practices should remain under intense scrutiny by the general public and legislators. I would hope that the message behind Smith's resignation will not be obfuscated by debates over the extent to which the firm's clients are either supported or exploited, but instead, serve as a powerful call to foster a more-strictly delineated and less reckless financial system.

The Audacity of Bonuses at MF Global

In the spirit of George Orwell’s Animal Farm commandment: “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal then others” comes the galling news that bankruptcy trustee, Louis Freeh, could approve the defunct, MF Global to pay bonuses to certain senior executives. This, despite the fact that nearly $1.6 billion of customer funds remains “missing” or otherwise partially accounted for, yet beyond the reach of those customers, perhaps forever, since before the firm declared bankruptcy on October 31, 2011.

Another commonality between the MF Global incident and Animal Farm is the abject rewriting, or re-interpretation, of rules. At the farm, the rule ‘No animal shall drink alcohol” was ultimately ‘re-remembered’ as ‘No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.’ Absent opposition to this particular fact alteration, the pigs got drunk. It wasn’t pretty.

The Orwellian nature of finance is spiraling out of control. It was acutely demonstrated during the fall 2008, merge-and-be-bailed period, and subsequently, through mainstream acceptance that “too big to fail” validates the subsidization of reckless banking practices (bail first, ask questions or consider tepid regulation later), and the European debacle.

Three wrinkles of audacity underscore the potential MF Global bonus approvals. First, there is the moral responsibility layer. MF Global, classified as a broker-dealer wasn’t specifically subject to the investment-advisor fiduciary rule that requires ‘systemic safety and soundness’’ with respect to retail customers. But, comingling customers’ funds inappropriately with the firm’s, as former chief, Jon Corzine’s European bets were blowing up, was an abject misinterpretation of the rule's intent.

Aside from that, MF Global lied about funds segregation to its customers, which constitutes fraud. The final page of the firm’s brochure touts “the strict physical separation of clients’ assets from MF Global accounts.”

Separately, MF Global broker-dealer activities were subject to SEC oversight and restrictions on its use of client funds. During any normal investigation, like say for embezzlement, funds should be frozen until issues are resolved. Releasing any bonus pay until this matter is settled is just plain wrong.

The reason for possibly allowing bonuses for MF Global chief operating officer, Bradley I. Abelow, finance chief, Henri J. Steenkamp, and general counsel, Laurie R. Ferber follows the same twisted logic pervading Wall Street: no one else can do the job as well.

These people are apparently so special that despite incompetence, negligence or potential malfeasance in diverting customers’ funds away from their rightful spots, their expertise is critical to the bankruptcy proceeding. In that realm, their ‘job performance’ will help Freeh "maximize value for creditors of the company”. Translation: it will ensure banks like JPM Chase keep their cut, since customers are not creditors. Again, plain wrong.

But forget simple matters of right and wrong for a moment. After all, this is Big Finance: what's most important is not necessarily what’s legal or illegal, but more practically, what you can get away with and what you can’t. In that regard, the sheer impotence of regulators, the Department of Justice, and the FBI are enabling factors in perpetuating financial crimes. 

In early 1933, during the Depression that followed the 1929 Stock market Crash, Democratic president, FDR and Republican Treasury Secretary, William Woodin, declared a bank holiday, during which Treasury Department agents examined banks’ (which included at the time, broker-dealers) books to determine solidity and solvency.

Today, our regulatory bodies are incapable, or simply don’t want to be bothered with, tracing money and returning it to the public customers to whom it belongs. The inability to independently examine MF Global’s books, without its executive involved, reveals the sorry state of our financial system.  In this post-Glass-Steagall-repeal world, the mixing of customer money and speculative betting – whether at a super-market bank or broker-dealer, whether involving subprime loans packages or European Sovereign debt, poses too dangerous a level of complexity. If regulatory bodies can’t, or won’t, diminish the related risk, more concrete Glass-Steagall boundaries throughout the financial framework should be resurrected.

Meanwhile, two senators have taken on the bonus-pay fight. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), member of the Senate Agriculture Committee investigating MF Global, wrote to Freeh that the plan is "unacceptable." Senator Jon Tester (D., Mont.), whose constituency includes a number of farmers with funds in the ‘missing’ category, called it "outrageous.”

On Sunday, Freeh's spokesperson released a statement saying the senators’ concerns were ‘noted’ and a final decision on the bonuses hadn’t been made. But to the extent that the money trails shrouding MF Global’s final moments remain more apparent to its former employees than external examiners, it’s likely the people involved in the wreckage, will be paid extra for sorting thru it. And, that’s an expensive, outrageous, shame.

Five Dots from Cabbie to Billionaire

Sometimes the lines connecting dots are so overwhelmingly bold and darkly obvious that, despite knowing better, I find myself concentrating too much on the dots and not the lines. At any rate, I did a segment for the Alonya Show on RtTV this afternoon that covered four dots of financial dislocation. As I left the studio in a cab, a fifth dot appeared:

In Los Angeles, traveling eastward on Santa Monica Boulevard, you pass the mansion-laden enclave of Beverly Hills on your left, and a less ornate stretch of police and office buildings on your right. While we were driving, the driver revealed a mark of inequality, seemingly secret and trivial, and yet so significant.

“See that,” he gestured to a sprawling, perfectly manicured estate. “People that order a taxi from there to the airport, pay a flat rate of $30.  But over there,” he points to my right, “you’re on the meter. Forty-five bucks.”  

He shook his head, “They make 100 times more in those homes than what other people make. You tell me why the people with all the money get the cheaper fare.”

The answer was the line connecting the dots of the show I’d just taped.  They reap the benefits, because they make, or buy, the rules. A half an hour earlier, Alonya and I had discussed four other dots.

The first was an FT piece that noted there had been no new bank applications in the United States in 2011, after only 3 in 2010.  What does this mean? It means that it’s cheaper to acquire a bank with FDIC and Fed assistance, than to start a small one. Not only that, smaller banks can’t even raise the capital required to stake out a physical location. This, while mega-banks sprout like weeds on the corner of every block, capturing spacious street-front property, rolling out expensive signage, and able to negotiate better rents for their bulk presence. It is a sign of the small being crushed by the large; a situation whose side-effects include removing choice from citizens, who are left paying collusively high fees for ATM and banking services, at omnipresent, federally subsidized institutions.

The second dot was the excellent video, accompanying a petition, that Public Citizen just released called Breaking up is Hard to Do – aimed at Bank of America (but that could equally have been addressing any member of the too-big-to-fail contingent.) Alonya asked me what I thought of the video. I replied, “It’s not going to happen.” (These goliaths will remain joined at the commercial and speculative hip.) Not because it shouldn't, but because...

Our regulatory and legislative systems have been supremely indulgent of these behemoths. Here and there, the big banks emerge from settlements with fines for fraudulent practices, but it doesn’t make a dent in the risk they can manufacture, or the size to which they can grow. The Federal Reserve has ultimate regulatory authority over the big banks, and under Chairman Ben Bernanke, used that authority to approve, not reject mergers, to facilitate a cheap money party to fuel, what would otherwise have been insolvent financial giants, and to allow those same giants to re-funnel their subsidies back to the books of the Federal Reserve as excess reserves that gross .25% interest per year. Separately, the tepid Dodd-Frank Act gets watered down more each day. But even at its ‘strongest’ inception state, it didn’t break up the banks, nor reduce the risk they pose our global economy. Bank of America holds 35% MORE derivatives today than before the fall of 2008.

The third dot had to do with a billionaire index that Bloomberg created.  It provides a closer to daily tracking of the wealth of the world’s 20 most ostentatiously wealthy.  I don’t really know what to say about that.  But, whoever gave the internal go-ahead to that monstrous showcase of inequality should have perhaps included a location-tracker, so people could send their daily heart-felt awe and congratulations.

The fourth dot was the income gain of the top 1% vs. the 99% over the past year. The fact that the top 1% captured 93% (basically almost all) of the growth demonstrates that the inequality gap isn’t just widening; it’s accelerating. The more one has, the greater the cushion to soften economic Depressions. It was no different going into the 1930s Great Depression as illustrated in my novel, Black Tuesday. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you feel each oppressive drop of an increase in health care, education, childcare, food, energy and utilities costs. If your income isn’t growing in tandem, you are comparatively falling further down an economic hole. This accelerated income-rise-to-the-top is one more sign that when the media and Washington say we’re in an economic recovery, they have an ultra-myopic definition of who constitutes ‘we’, and it’s not the majority of the population.

That’s why there’s an Occupy Movement. As I wrote on behalf of the compelling book, "The economic elite vs. the People," “Occupy Wall Street has coalesced across towns, cities, and countries. It represents people of every race, age, and disposition as the only meaningful opposition to a winner-take-all financial system that extracted untold wealth from the global population to puff up the personal portfolios of elite executives with impunity. And until a more equitable society and system prevail, the Occupy movement is not going anywhere.” (See the rest on www.ampedstatus.com)

All these dots and lines project a gamed world, where it is not sweat or merit that propels people forward, but connections and power and pedigree. Which brings me back to my cabbie friend.  As he dropped me off, he offered this morsel of wisdom, “Things won’t change until we’re all paying the same fares. At least, that’s a start.”