tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60569400036743478232024-02-21T08:39:59.680+00:00Zombie Bank Death Squad24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08767482406728757732noreply@blogger.comBlogger439125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-73899330478666870752014-01-19T01:06:00.001+00:002014-01-19T01:06:28.519+00:00Ry Cooder No Banker Left Behind<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ZXHckAFMzaw" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-78795359163994716022013-05-30T01:35:00.001+00:002013-05-30T01:35:02.146+00:00The Quant<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/VQWdnTFrqiY" width="459"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-68034710555934199832013-05-15T20:10:00.001+00:002013-05-15T20:10:51.804+00:00Bill Oddie's BankWatch<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/HX3k75ps0VQ" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-29525952305022655042013-02-24T16:53:00.001+00:002013-02-24T16:53:03.903+00:00THE PEOPLE v THE BANKS: Conviction beats Eviction<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FPKOa-5GPPg" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-23639336667694335942013-02-24T16:47:00.001+00:002013-02-24T16:47:28.362+00:00Constitution Halts Sheriff<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PpUjl4LvQM8" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-90386601635175326182013-02-05T20:07:00.001+00:002013-02-05T20:07:09.305+00:00They Live<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OJIUIXn4qD8" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-40059685722860739482012-10-30T20:50:00.001+00:002012-10-30T20:51:17.614+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO33_idklClDZ-AEChBMsMRyRCqe9WdjbGuYgcDcpcrreaZl7OoOR2255ltw6yoqktY88mrOZzyp8DaFxZ82hO3cOCdLbAwIjZAWhGDgD5Kq9ZyCRFZ32YPigCgD7Ml6tnojIYr2Z3FVM/s1600/eye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO33_idklClDZ-AEChBMsMRyRCqe9WdjbGuYgcDcpcrreaZl7OoOR2255ltw6yoqktY88mrOZzyp8DaFxZ82hO3cOCdLbAwIjZAWhGDgD5Kq9ZyCRFZ32YPigCgD7Ml6tnojIYr2Z3FVM/s400/eye.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-46957241953383349072012-10-08T21:05:00.001+00:002012-10-08T21:05:30.519+00:00The Intruders crash the Investment Banking Awards in Mayfair<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WXhqvAbUDmg?fs=1" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-27175503761091337622012-10-01T19:06:00.001+00:002012-10-01T19:06:09.158+00:00Wilcko - Land of Lies and Pies<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mGH8XUZdXTY?fs=1" width="459"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-90887889910601153422012-10-01T19:04:00.001+00:002012-10-01T19:04:10.630+00:00Loopholes by Wilcko<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/AQrEMyhtYCo?fs=1" width="459"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-43071558835063558942012-09-27T16:14:00.001+00:002012-09-27T16:14:10.924+00:00Max Keiser and The artist taxi driver<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PNxVTa54cF8?fs=1" width="459"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-29319214048504028842012-09-25T20:22:00.001+00:002012-09-25T20:22:15.716+00:00Keiser Report: Bankstatocracy (E345)<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4r0KaEWa6y0?fs=1" width="459"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-7144061439315594902012-09-24T16:04:00.001+00:002012-09-24T16:04:20.844+00:00Black tie activists crash HMRC boss' retirement do<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3w4tcIsaInE?fs=1" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-53560869420991670662012-09-12T16:41:00.001+00:002012-09-12T16:41:56.764+00:00Peacock Spider 5<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/E-nmeYirsvA?fs=1" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-39131621110709720012012-09-11T01:27:00.001+00:002012-09-11T01:27:47.402+00:00RAP NEWS 15: Big Brother is WWWatching You<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/o66FUc61MvU?fs=1" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-72381771950332013372012-09-10T19:42:00.001+00:002012-09-10T19:42:56.666+00:00The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/akVL7QY0S8A?fs=1" width="459"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-45890429990673816442012-09-03T17:14:00.001+00:002012-09-03T17:14:07.884+00:00George Osborne, low interest rates for banks! (02Sept12)<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YYwOqM12oz8?fs=1" width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-57210711347714358862012-08-21T00:04:00.002+00:002012-08-21T00:04:59.670+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://acrossthestreetnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/bernanke-magazine.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://acrossthestreetnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/bernanke-magazine.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-84046016848552568942012-08-21T00:02:00.002+00:002012-08-21T00:03:04.883+00:00The word "billion" gets thrown around today like it's some small
number. Is a billion cars a lot of cars? Is a billion people a large
crowd? What about a billion dollars? <br />
<br />
Some perspective:<br />
<br />
A billion seconds ago it was 1980. <br />
<br />
A billion minutes ago was the
time of Jesus.<br />
<br />
A billion hours ago was the stone age.<br />
<br />
A billion days
ago no one walked upright.<br />
<br />
Yet a billion dollars ago was 8 hours and 20 minutes at the present clip that Ben hyper-depresses the world.24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-81887175086690429782012-08-20T23:58:00.001+00:002012-08-20T23:59:40.582+00:00<span style="color: #333333;">Next thing you know, you’ll start
connecting the dots between the nation’s skyrocketing public debt and
the private fortunes amassed by a select few.</span>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-1766879204095810682012-08-19T23:10:00.001+00:002012-08-19T23:10:46.944+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8XUyBXk9xGyyMVsrlntpBwOXsO_WAljxBQ-cLbW7rKKj76IUokjlXRwarcNFh6bxmgOO6ya_jJyRTDLgIiv3ugngFWeOrORHVNlumnX_ZQY86PBaYPELMw1Tg_T5U4_m22lFDClqT-Uc/s1600/10453_458077794224276_573135263_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8XUyBXk9xGyyMVsrlntpBwOXsO_WAljxBQ-cLbW7rKKj76IUokjlXRwarcNFh6bxmgOO6ya_jJyRTDLgIiv3ugngFWeOrORHVNlumnX_ZQY86PBaYPELMw1Tg_T5U4_m22lFDClqT-Uc/s640/10453_458077794224276_573135263_n.jpg" width="492" /></a></div>
<br />24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-66694456918753764852012-08-19T19:48:00.001+00:002012-08-19T19:48:39.391+00:00MPs didn't like Barclays Bob Diamond answers (18Aug12)<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LHJIvvoSr6M?fs=1"t=5m45s width="480"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-47498075105458648072012-08-15T15:50:00.001+00:002012-08-15T15:50:40.508+00:00General Public is on crack<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VItB9GEnw5U?fs=1" width="459"></iframe>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-33850290583686444732012-08-10T12:19:00.003+00:002012-08-10T12:20:49.765+00:00Where Are They Now?<div id="article-header">
<div id="main-article-info">
<h1 itemprop="name">
Financial crisis: 25 people at the heart of the meltdown – where are they now?</h1>
<div class="stand-first-alone" data-component="comp : r2 : Article : standfirst_cta" id="stand-first" itemprop="description">
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy?intcmp=239">In 2009 the Guardian identified 25 people</a>
– bankers, economists, central bankers and politicians – whose actions
had led the world into the worst economic turmoil since the Great
Depression. On the fifth anniversary of the credit crunch, what are they
doing?</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="content">
<ul class="article-attributes trackable-component b4" data-component="comp: r2: Byline">
<li>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/rupertneate" rel="author">
<img alt="Rupert Neate, Guardian byline" class="contributor-pic-small" height="60" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Pix/pictures/2011/10/17/1318845485033/Rupert-Neate-Guardian-byl-004.jpg" title="Contributor picture" width="60" />
</a>
</li>
<li id="contrib-shift"><ul>
<li class="byline">
<div class="contributor-full">
<a class="contributor" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/rupertneate" rel="author">
Rupert Neate</a> </div>
</li>
<li class="publication">
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/">guardian.co.uk</a>,
<time datetime="2012-08-06T20:49BST" pubdate="">Monday 6 August 2012 20.49 BST</time>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<div id="article-wrapper">
<div id="main-content-picture">
<img alt="Alan Greenspan" height="276" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Pix/pictures/2012/8/6/1344260369779/Alan-Greenspan-008.jpg" width="460" />
<br />
<div class="caption">
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan
Greenspan testifying before the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
in 2010. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP</div>
</div>
<div id="article-body-blocks">
<h2>
Central bankers</h2>
<b>Alan Greenspan, chairman US Federal Reserve 1987-2006</b><br />
A
disciple of libertarian icon Ayn Rand, Greenspan became chairman of the
Fed just in time to save the global economy from the 1987 stock market
crash from becoming a full-blown disaster. He went on preside over the
boom years of the 90s and lead the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy" title="More from guardian.co.uk on US economy">US economy</a> through the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and was widely referred to as an "oracle" and "the maestro".<br />
But
Greenspan's super-low interest rates and consistent opposition to
regulation of the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market are now widely
blamed for causing the credit crisis. Under Greenspan's tenure the
derivatives market went from barely registering to a $500 trillion
industry, despite billionaire investor Warren Buffett warning that they
were "financial weapons of mass destruction".<br />
His rock-bottom
rates encouraged Americans to load up on debt to buy homes, even when
they had no savings, no income and no job prospects.<br />
These
so-called sub-prime borrowers were the cannon fodder for the biggest
boom-bust in US history. The housing collapse brought the global economy
to its knees.<br />
He was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 for his
"contribution to global economic stability", but in 2008, at a
Congressional hearing investigating the causes of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/financial-crisis" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Financial crisis">financial crisis</a>, Greenspan finally admitted he "made a mistake in presuming" that financial firms could regulate themselves.<br />
"You
found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right, it was
not working?" Henry Waxman, the committee chairman, said.<br />
"Absolutely,
precisely," Greenspan replied. "You know, that's precisely the reason I
was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very
considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."<br />
After
he quit the Fed, in 2006, Greenspan joined Pimco, the world's largest
bond investor, as a special consultant. Pimco's co-founder Bill Gross
said Greenspan had helped make the firm "billions of dollars'' in his
role as a consultant.<br />
Gross said Greenspan's "brilliance" was a
"big money saver for us''. "He's made and saved billions of dollars for
Pimco already,'' Gross said in 2008.He has also advised Deutsche Bank
and hedge fund billionaire John Paulson.<br />
Greenspan has also found
time to criticise current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's programme of
quantitative easing. "I've stayed away from commenting on Fed policy,"
he said on US TV earlier this month. "I will say this, however, that the
data do show that the expansion of assets has had very little impact on
the economy, for an important reason, that we've created a major
increase in the asset side of the Fed balance sheet and a very large
trillion and a half increase in excess reserves."<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Mervyn King" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967487331/Mervyn-King-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England</b><br />
At
his first meeting chairing the Bank's monetary policy committee (MPC)
interest rates were cut to an historic postwar low of 3.5%. King's
ambition as governor was to make the Bank "boring". If only that had
been the case.<br />
He was slow to react to the crisis and initially
refused to follow Greenspan in pumping cash into the system. The
Treasury select committee (TSC) said he should have noticed that the
housing bubble was becoming unstable and should have been "more
pro-active" to damp it down.<br />
Just the other week King finally
admitted that the financial crisis was the result of "major mistakes" by
policymakers and not just the fault of greedy bankers.<br />
At the
government's Global Investment Conference in London in the buildup to
the Olympics he said: "We saw this going into the crisis, we kept
meeting at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but we did nothing to
solve it collectively, and I don't think that this was a problem that
could have been solved individually."<br />
More recently, King had to
face the TSC to explain why the Bank failed to spot the Libor interest
rate-fixing scandal that pre-dated the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/credit-crunch" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Credit crunch">credit crunch</a>
and last month Bob Diamond stepped down as chief executive of Barclays
after King let it be known Diamond no longer had the confidence of the
Bank.<br />
In the shake-up of regulation that followed the financial
meltdown, the governor of the Bank of England has emerged with more
power than ever. However, King is due to stand down next summer, with
former cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell and deputy governor Paul
Tucker the favourites to replace him.<br />
<h2>
Politicians</h2>
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Bill Clinton" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967669577/Bill-Clinton-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Bill Clinton, former US president</b><br />
Politicians'
current plan to help prevent another financial crisis is to ringfence
banks' risky "casino banking" divisions from the more pedestrian high
street banking departments. 13 years ago Clinton repealed the
Glass-Steagall Act, which had done just that. Clinton's move, which came
after fierce lobbying from bankers, heralded the birth of superbanks
and primed the sub-prime pump.<br />
He also signed the Commodity
Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from
regulation. Around the same time Clinton also beefed up President
Carter's 1977 Community Reinvestment Act – forcing lenders to take a
more sympathetic approach to poor borrowers trying to get on the housing
ladder.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Gordon Brown" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967696022/Gordon-Brown-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Gordon Brown, former prime minister</b><br />
Brown's
big boast as chancellor was that he had "abolished Tory boom and bust".
He hadn't. His prime ministerial tenure was spent presiding over the
biggest bust since the Great Depression.<br />
In his last big speech
before becoming prime minister just before the crisis began he praised
bankers for their role in bringing in a "new golden age for the City of
London".<br />
To tempt foreign bankers to work in the City he backed
low taxes for non-doms and "light-touch" regulation that meant they
could get away with a lot more in London than elsewhere.<br />
Brown is
now working on projects to improve child poverty levels and education,
worldwide, with organisations such as the United Nations.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="George W Bush" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967758169/George-W-Bush-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>George W Bush, former US president</b><br />
The
meltdown happened on Bush's watch. While Clinton got the ball rolling
with sub-prime lending, Bush failed to bring in much tighter regulation,
bar the Sarbanes-Oxley Act brought in after the Enron scandal. And he
didn't do a lot to stop the boom in lending to "Ninjas" [no income, no
job applicants].<br />
Nouriel Roubini, the economist who earned the
nickname Dr Doom for his prediction that the crisis was about to hit,
blames Bush. Obama "inherited a mess", <a href="http://money.msn.com/mutual-fund/article.aspx?post=09d90714-2402-4772-a6c5-86d2af7ccaed" title="">Roubini has said</a>. "We're lucky that this Great <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/recession" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Recession">Recession</a> is not turning into another Great Depression."<br />
Bush
is in self-imposed political exile and has been notable for his absence
in Mitt Romney's campaign to become the next Republican president. "He
is enjoying his life in Texas. He's not seeking the limelight. And he is
really focused on the Bush Center," his spokesman said recently. He has
"no plans to endorse, at least not at present," the spokesman added.<br />
The
former president has written a book, Decision Points, about the 14
biggest decisions of his presidential career. The former president was
paid $7m for 1.5m copies.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Phil Gramm" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967630426/Phil-Gramm-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Senator Phil Gramm</b><br />
"Some people look at
sub-prime lending and see evil. I look at sub-prime lending and see the
American dream in action," Gramm told a Senate debate in 2001.<br />
Another
dynamite quote. "When I am on Wall Street and I realise that that's the
very nerve centre of American capitalism and I realise what capitalism
has done for the working people of America, to me that's a holy place."<br />
It
was Gramm that had fought hardest for deregulation and helped write the
law that enabled the creation of financial giants such as Citigroup and
Bank of America.<br />
He remains unrepentant. Just a couple of weeks
ago Gramm, who went on to work for Swiss investment bank UBS until
earlier this year and is now a visiting scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute, said: "<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-26/gramm-glass-steagall-repeal-didnt-cause-crisis" title="">I
don't see any evidence that allowing them to affiliate through holding
companies had anything to do with the financial crisis nor has anybody
ever presented any evidence to suggest that it did.</a>"<br />
Sandy
Weill, however, a man with hands-on experience of running a
too-big-to-fail bank as the former chairman and chief executive of
Citigroup, begs to differ. Last week Weill said: "What we should
probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have
banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and
real-estate loans and have banks do something that's not going to risk
the taxpayer dollars, that's not too big to fail."<br />
Weill added:
"The world changed with the collapse of the housing market and the
real-estate bubble … so I don't think it's right anymore (to have huge
investment and retail banking combines)."<br />
<h2>
Wall Street/Bankers</h2>
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Abi Cohen" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967449772/Abi-Cohen-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Abby Cohen, Goldman Sachs senior strategist</b><br />
Bear market? Cohen appears not to have heard of the term.<br />
She
made a name for herself in the late 1990s by being the bullest of the
bulls during the dotcom bubble, and it's hard to remember when she
hasn't been bullish since.<br />
She's still a bull now. "If we were to
look just at fair-value estimates over the next year to three, we think
that returns that are roughly 8-10% on the stock market are sensible,"<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-27/goldman-s-cohen-says-stocks-will-give-better-returns-than-bonds.html" title=""> she told Bloomberg last week</a>.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Kathleen Corbet" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967405874/Kathleen-Corbet-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Kathleen Corbet, former CEO, Standard & Poor's </b><br />
The
credit rating agencies, of which S&P is the biggest, gave triple A
ratings to the mortgage-backed securities that turned toxic and were
accused of conflict of interest because the bond issuers were paying
them for the ratings. As one S&P analyst wrote in an email, "[A
bond] could be structured by cows and we would rate it."<br />
Another analyst emailed a colleague: "Let's hope we're all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters."<br />
Corbet
resigned amid a wave of criticism in 2007. She has since set up a
company to invest in tech, energy and, of course, financial services
companies. <a href="http://kathleencorbet.tumblr.com/" title="">She has a tumblr, but is yet to actually blog.</a><br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Hank Greenberg" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967279510/Hank-Greenberg-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, former chief executive AIG insurance group</b><br />
While
AIG was taking a multibillion-dollar bailout from the US Treasury and
the Fed after its massive credit default business went sour, 100 AIG
execs where spending $444,000 on a golf and spa retreat in California.
"Have you heard of anything more outrageous?" said Elijah Cummings, a
Democratic congressman, said. "They were getting their manicures, their
facials, pedicures, massages, while the American people were footing the
bill."<br />
Greenberg, now 87, has now started over – and is running C
V Starr & Co, a private equity firm named after AIG's founder
Cornelius Vander Starr. Hank's son Scott is helping tap up sovereign
wealth funds and the ultra-wealthy for cash for buyout deals expected to
last a decade.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Andy Hornby" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967240525/Andy-Hornby-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Andy Hornby, former HBOS boss</b><br />
The former
wunderkind of British business who came top of his 800-strong class at
Harvard and rose to become a board director of Asda by the age of 32 was
the man running HBOS when it had to be rescued by Lloyds. His
reputation took a knocking from the FSA, with the regulator finding HBOS
guilty of "very serious misconduct" in the run up to its taxpayer
bailout and rescue by Lloyds. But he's still a busy man. After HBOS's
demise he was installed as chief executive of Alliance Boots (he quit
last year with no payoff) and is currently chief executive of bookies
Coral and non-executive chairman of online and mail order
pharmaceuticals business pharmacy2U.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Fred Goodwin" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967199597/Fred-Goodwin-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Fred Goodwin, former RBS boss</b><br />
Fred "the shred"
was stripped of his knighthood earlier this year as public anger over
his role in causing the financial crisis reached boiling point. Goodwin,
who has been dubbed "the world's worst banker", brought Royal Bank of
Scotland to its knees via a series of over-ambitious acquisitions. A
string of 20 takeovers transformed RBS into a global leader but Goodwin
wasn't satisfied and just before the financial crisis struck he led a
$100bn takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro.<br />
RBS went on to record the
biggest annual loss in UK corporate history and had to be bailed out by
the government to the tune of £45.5bn. It is now 82%-owned by the state.<br />
Goodwin
hit the headlines again recently when he was blamed for a crisis at
Scotland's biggest architecture firm, RMJM, where he was an adviser. <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/fred-goodwin-forced-to-make-up-staff-pay-1-1655951" title="">About 80 staff left the firm after a battle over unpaid fees</a>.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Steven Crawshaw" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967165884/Steven-Crawshaw-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Steve Crawshaw, former B&B boss</b><br />
What would
the fictional Mssrs Bradford and Bingley say? The two bowler-hatted
gents represented good, old-fashioned prudent banking. B&B's
downfall can perhaps be traced to a single moment of arrogance in 1995
when it splashed out more than £1,000 for Stan Laurel's bowler hat to
display at its head office.<br />
Steven Crawshaw bought the specialist
lender Mortgage Express from Lloyds TSB, which catered for the
self-employed, those seeking second-home finance and buy-to-let
mortgages. The loans earned the nickname "liar loans" because the
applicant didn't have to prove they had a regular income. When the
wholesale money market collapsed, so did B&B, as it couldn't finance
the loans. Eventually, B&B was nationalised, a few weeks after
Crawshaw stepped down with heart problems. He left with a pension worth
£105,318 a year.<br />
He has apparently retired to the Yorkshire
countryside, and his only public role appears to be chairing the
advisory board of the School of Management at Bradford University.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Adam Applegarth" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967046810/Adam-Applegarth-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Adam Applegarth, former Northern Rock boss</b><br />
Applegarth
transformed Northern Rock from a sleepy Newcastle building society into
the nation's fifth-largest mortgage provider. But the business
collapsed and images of customers queuing up outside Northern Rock to
rescue their savings have became the dominant memory of the financial
crisis.<br />
In the five years running up to the bank's disaster, he
was paid around £10m. During the 18 months immediately before, he cashed
in shares worth £2.6m.<br />
He collected a £760,000 payoff despite the
TSC savaging his conduct at the bank. It was also later revealed that
he was having an affair with a junior colleagues during the crisis.<br />
In 2009 Applegarth started his first job post-Northern Rock, advising US private equity firm Apollo Management.<a href="http://www.agm.com/OurTeam.aspx" title=""> He is no longer listed as part of the team on the company's website.</a> But remains in the post advising the firm's European Principal Fund on buying up distressed debt.<br />
He
has also reportedly set up a company, Beechwood Property Management,
with his son Greg. But there is very little publicly available
information about the company.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Richard Fuld" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967087011/Richard-Fuld-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Dick Fuld, chief executive Lehman Brothers</b><br />
"The
Gorilla of Wall Street", as Fuld was known, steered Lehman deep into
the business of sub-prime mortgages. Lehman took the loans and packaged
them up into (soon-to-be toxic) bonds which they sold to investors.<br />
Fuld
is said to have raked in almost $500m in pay and bonuses during his
tenure as chief executive, but the 66 year old insisted to Capitol Hill
that he actually only earned $300m. During the testimony, Fuld was asked
if he wondered why Lehman Brothers was the only firm that was allowed
to fail. "Until the day they put me in the ground, I will wonder," he
said.<br />
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/01/26/us-lehman-fuld-idUSTRE50P04A20090126" title="">A
lot of Americans might have been stung by the collapse in property
prices in the wake of the crisis. Not Dick, in November 2008 Fuld
transferred the ownership of his $100m Florida mansion to his wife. They
had bought it four years earlier for $13.5m.</a><br />
In 2009 Fuld
joined US hedge fund Matrix Advisors. A year later he joined broker
Legend Securities, he left the firm earlier this year.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Ralph Cioffi" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232966985205/Ralph-Cioffi-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin</b><br />
Cioffi and
Tannin are two of a very small group that have faced financial penalty
for their role in causing the crisis. The pair, who ran Bear Stearns
hedge funds that went bankrupt in 2007, were accused by the SEC of
misleading investors about the risks of sub-prime loans.<br />
This
summer the pair agreed to pay$1.05m to settle the charges. US District
Judge Frederic Block described the fine as "chump change". Their
investors lost $1.6bn.<br />
<a href="http://observer.com/2010/08/ralph-cioffi-after-the-fall/" title="">"I certainly would have liked my career to have ended differently," Cioffi said in a 2010 interview.</a><br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Lewis Ranieri" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232966889213/Lewis-Ranieri-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Lewis 'Lew' Ranieri, 'godfather' of mortgage finance</b><br />
<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2004-11-28/lewis-s-dot-ranieri-your-mortgage-was-his-bond" title="">Ranieri wanted to be an Italian chef, but his asthma stopped him working in smoky kitchens.</a>
Instead he moved into trading via Salomon Brothers mailroom and
pioneered the mortgage-backed bonds immortalised in Liar's Poker.<br />
In
1984 Ranieri boasted that his mortgage-trading desk "made more money
than all the rest of Wall Street combined". But when sub-prime borrowers
started missing payments, the mortgage market stalled and bond prices
collapsed. Investment banks, overexposed to the toxic assets, closed
their doors and investors lost fortunes.<br />
<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/08/real_estate/lewie_ranieri_mortgages.fortune/index.htm" title="">"I
do feel guilty," Ranieri said in an interview in 2009. "I wasn't out to
invent the biggest floating craps game of all time, but that's what
happened."</a><br />
He blames Wall Street for misusing his brainchild to construct "affordability products" that homeowners really couldn't afford.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Joseph Cassano" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232966798047/Joseph-Cassano-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Joseph Cassano, AIG financial products</b><br />
Cassano
has been dubbed "patient zero" of the global economic meltdown. He ran
the AIG team that sold credit default swaps in London that led the
company into bankruptcy and a massive bailout. Democratic senator John
Sarbanes said Cassano "single-handedly brought AIG to its knees".<br />
After
the bailout Cassano refused all media interviews and had not spoken
about the crisis until he was called before the US congress financial
crisis inquiry commission in July 2010. "I think there would have been
few, if any, realised losses on the CDS contracts had they not been
unwound in the bailout," he said, adding: "my perspective diverges in
important ways from the popular wisdom".<br />
Cassano, who used to live
in an opulent townhouse behind Harrods, has since moved back to
Westport, on Long Island Sound, where he is apparently unemployed, and
uncontactable.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Chuck Prince" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232966769045/Chuck-Prince-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Chuck Prince, former Citi boss</b><br />
Just when the
sub-prime crisis was starting to take hold in the summer of 2007,
Prince told the FT he didn't expect the brewing crisis to hurt his bank.
"As long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're
still dancing," he said. Shortly afterwards the music stopped and Citi
racked up more than $45bn of writedowns.<br />
Recently, <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/when-did-sandy-weill-change-his-mind-about-too-big-to-fail-and-why-20120803#ixzz22Vr3oC4n" title="">Sandy Weill said handpicking Prince to be his successor was "one of the major mistakes that I made".</a><br />
Last
year Price said: "If we want a better outcome, supervisors and business
leaders had better do something different this time around."<br />
He hasn't been heard from again since.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Angelo Mozilo" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232966693644/Angelo-Mozilo-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial</b><br />
Mozilo
popularised the notion that practically anyone could have a massive
mortgage, even if they didn't have a job. Countrywide was the world's
biggest sub-prime lender before it was rescued from bankruptcy by Bank
of America.<br />
The SEC investigated Mozilo over fraud and insider
dealing charges, but in the end he agreed to pay a $67.5m fine and
accept a lifetime ban from serving as a company director. The fine
represents just over a 10th of Mozilo's estimated net worth of $600m.
The SEC's director of enforcement said: "Mozilo's record penalty is the
fitting outcome for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded
his duties to investors by concealing what he saw from inside the
executive suite – a looming disaster in which Countrywide was buckling
under the weight of increasingly risky mortgage underwriting, mounting
defaults and delinquencies, and a deteriorating business model."<br />
<a href="http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Countrywide-112th-Report-7.3.12-1207-PM.pdf" title="">Earlier
this year, Mozilo, who was known as "the orange one" for his
effervescent tan, hit the headlines again when Congress released a
report into how Countrywide used its "VIP program" – which offered
favourable terms to influential figures – to influence Washington
policymakers.</a><br />
Mozilo and his wife Phyllis sold their LA home
for $2.9m earlier this year. The LA Times described it as "Georgian
Colonial-style two-storey" property, sitting above the second fairway at
the Sherwood Country Club, complete with "a cherry-finished
library-office, five bedrooms, six bathrooms and an oversized four-car
garage". The couple still own a string other luxury homes in southern
California.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Stan O'Neal" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232966606403/Stan-ONeal-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Stan O'Neal, former boss of Merrill Lynch</b><br />
Another
casualty of the thirst for CDOs. By June 2006, Merrill had amassed
$41bn in sub-prime CDOs and mortgage bonds, according to Fortune.<br />
O'Neal,
who had Merrill security guards hold a lift at all times for his
exclusive use, was booted out (with a $161.5m golden parachute) and Bank
of America snapped Merrill up less than a year later.<br />
There were
rumours O'Neal was going to join Vision Capital, a hedge fund run by two
visually impaired managers, but the role never materialised. Vision was
later investigated by the SEC.<br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Jimmy Cayne" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232966573100/Jimmy-Cayne-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Jimmy Cayne, former Bear Sterns boss</b><br />
While Bear Sterns was going bust Cayne was playing bridge in Detroit. <a href="http://www.worldbridge.org/people/person.asp?qryid=13178" title="">He's quite an accomplished player and has won several rounds of the North American Bridge Championships</a>. But he was less good at running Bear Sterns, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/30502091?slide=18" title="">with CNBC naming him one of the "worst CEOs of all time"</a>.<br />
Bear
Sterns was sold to JP Morgan for $10 a share, compared with the $133.20
a share it was trading at before the crisis. Cayne, who had a big stake
in the company, lost about $1bn.<br />
Cayne has now disappeared from the corporate public eye, <a href="http://www.bridgetopics.com/news/2010/oct/how-survive-jimmy-cayne" title="">but it is still possible to play him at bridge online</a>.<br />
<h2>
Others</h2>
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Christopher Dodd" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232966519393/Christopher-Dodd-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Christopher Dodd, former chairman Senate banking committee</b><br />
Dodd
pushed back against calls for tighter regulation on Fannie Mae and
Freedie Mac, while receiving $165,000 in campaign donations from …
Fannie and Freddie.<br />
The Dodd-Frank Act, which aims to reform Wall
Street, is named after him and financial services committee chairman
Barney Frank. But Dodd disagrees with proposals to split up big banks'
investment banking and high-street divisions. <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/48333854" title="">"[The
idea that] breaking up these institutions is going to solve the
problem, I think it's frankly too simplistic an approach," he said last
week.</a><br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="Geir Haarde" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232966477669/Geir-Haarde-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>Geir Haarde, prime minister of Iceland 2006-2009</b><br />
Haarde is the only politician to have been found guilty by a court of helping to cause the crisis. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/23/iceland-geir-haarde-found-guilty" title="">Earlier
this year an Icelandic court found Haarde guilty of failing to hold
emergency cabinet meetings in the run up to the crisis.</a> Haarde fell
from power after the country's three biggest banks collapsed, the
country's economy went into meltdown, and the government was forced to
borrow $10bn (£6.3bn) to prop up its economy.<br />
During the trial, he
said: "None of us realised at the time that there was something fishy
within the banking system itself, as now appears to have been the case.<br />
<b>The American public</b><br />
It
wasn't just the bankers who were greedy. The men and women on the
street took out billions of dollars of loans they knew they couldn't
afford. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/business/economy/family-net-worth-drops-to-level-of-early-90s-fed-says.html?_r=1" title="">American
families' wealth has fallen by 38.8% between 2007 and 2010, according
to the latest three-yearly data from the Fed. The collapse in house
prices, which was caused by Americans' failure to keep up repayments on
loans they couldn't afford, caused US families median net worth to
decline from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010.</a><br />
<span class="inline">
<img alt="John Tiner" height="64" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Business%20competitions/pictures/2009/1/26/1232967335678/John-Tiner-001.jpg" width="64" />
</span>
<b>John Tiner, FSA chief executive 2003-07</b><br />
He
once had a reputation for being the luckiest man in the City. Without a
university degree, he worked his way up to the top of accountant Arthur
Andersen – and left nine months before it collapsed under the weight of
fraud and false accounting at its client Enron.<br />
In July 2007 he
quit as chief executive of the Financial Services Authority with praise
ringing in his ears (his leaving party reportedly cost the regulator
£20,000). But the praise quickly evaporated, not least for the FSA's
inadequate stewardship of Northern Rock, which was slammed in an
internal report.<br />
Tiner, who has a personalised T1NER numberplate,
then joined colourful entrepreneur Clive Cowdery at insurance buyout
vehicle Resolution. They bought Friend's Provident life insurance group
but then the deals dried up and last week the group revealed it could no
longer return cash, as expected, to shareholders.</div>
</div>
</div>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6056940003674347823.post-41475033661566673302012-08-07T20:02:00.002+00:002012-08-07T20:02:36.145+00:00UNTS<div class="trackable-component crumb-wrapper" data-component="comp: r2: Crumb Navigation">
<br />
</div>
<div id="article-header">
<div id="main-article-info">
<h1 itemprop="name">
Credit crunch: elusive ghosts of the financial feast lurk in the shadows</h1>
<div class="stand-first-alone" data-component="comp : r2 : Article : standfirst_cta" id="stand-first" itemprop="description">
It
is half a decade this week since the 'world changed', in Adam
Applegarth's famous phrase. But what has happened to the architects of
economic meltdown? And has anything really changed for them?</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="content">
<ul class="article-attributes trackable-component b4" data-component="comp: r2: Byline">
<li>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnharris" rel="author">
<img alt="John Harris" class="contributor-pic-small" height="60" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/2/13/1329144525760/John_Harris.jpg" title="Contributor picture" width="60" />
</a>
</li>
<li id="contrib-shift"><ul>
<li class="byline">
<div class="contributor-full">
<a class="contributor" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnharris" rel="author">
John Harris</a> </div>
</li>
<li class="publication">
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/">guardian.co.uk</a>,
<time datetime="2012-08-06T22:32BST" pubdate="">Monday 6 August 2012 22.32 BST</time>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<div id="article-wrapper">
<div id="main-content-picture">
<img alt="Northern Rock" height="276" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pixies/2012/8/6/1344288622677/Northern-Rock-003.jpg" width="460" />
<div class="caption">
Customers of Northern Rock queue outside
the Kingston branch of the company in London on September 15, 2007.
Photograph: Cate Gillon/Getty Images</div>
</div>
<div id="article-body-blocks">
When Adam Applegarth was forced out of a sinking <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/northern-rock" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Northern Rock">Northern Rock</a>
in December 2007, it was amid the kind of numbers that tend to dance in
front of your eyes. In the five years running up to the bank's
spectacular crash he had been paid around £10m. During the 18 months
immediately before he cashed in shares worth £2.6m. On leaving he
secured a golden goodbye to be paid in monthly instalments, totalling
£760,000. His pension, payable when he turns 55, is worth £304,000 a
year.<br />
The year after his exit he was glimpsed in a very familiar
setting, once again turning out for the second XI of his beloved
Sunderland Cricket Club. "This summer," said one of his old associates,
"he will be putting his feet up. He is playing an awful lot of cricket,
enjoying his motors and travelling."<br />
In the autumn of 2009
Applegarth became a senior adviser to the American private equity firm
Apollo Management, advising a new arm, the European Principal Fund, on
the buying-up of distressed debt – perhaps a field of expertise. Three
years on he remains in the job and shielded behind a communications
firewall administered by a New York PR firm called Rubenstein
Associates, whose other clients include Walt Disney, the Las Vegas
Comedy Festival, and the American Kennel Club.<br />
When I contacted
them, I was handed over to a breathlessly efficient operative called
Melissa, who said I should send over my questions. With a view to at
least trying to get his attention, I kept them non-confrontational, and
short: What does Mr Applegarth's role at Apollo involve? Could he
explain how the depth of banks' problems in 2007 first revealed itself
to him? And how has his life been since? Twenty-four hours later she
called back: "Put us down for a decline to comment," she said.<br />
So,
on to another lead. In September 2010 it was reported that Applegarth
had joined his son Greg in setting up a company called Beechwood
Property Management, in which he held 55 of the 100 shares. Their
documents list both men's occupation as "consultant". Their registered
office is on the 11th floor of a gleaming Newcastle office block called
Cale Cross House, but when I called the in-house security guard he had
never heard of them. In fact, this is merely the address of their
accountants – who passed on a message, with no result.<br />
There is no
entry for Beechwood Property Management in the phone directory, nor has
it a website. On the face of it, it is a ghost outfit, whose existence
is only noticeable to those hard-bitten people who pore over records
held at Companies House.<br />
Such is the great cloud of silence that
now surrounds people who were once among the loudest voices in the
financial services industry.<br />
The reclusive lifestyle of former
Royal Bank of Scotland chief Fred Goodwin barely needs mentioning. Steve
Crawshaw, who turned Bradford and Bingley from a staid building society
into a specialist in self-certified mortgages and left the company
weeks before it had to be nationalised, has apparently retired to the
Yorkshire countryside: his only publicly-recorded activity these days is
as the chair of the advisory board of the School of Management at
Bradford University, who forwarded him my list of questions, but I heard
nothing back.<br />
Even the few who still have heavyweight business roles keep schtum: there may be a beautiful poetry in the fact that the former <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/hbos" title="More from guardian.co.uk on HBOS">HBOS</a>
chief executive Andy Hornby is now the boss of Coral bookmakers, but
getting him to talk is a non-starter. "As the article does not relate to
his current role at Coral he wishes to respectfully decline your
request," said his spokesman.<br />
At the height of a financialised
age, it was the done thing to refer to these people as "Masters Of The
Universe". Five years on, picking through the subsequent career
histories of those who sparked first the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/credit-crunch" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Credit crunch">credit crunch</a>
and then the crash, the suggestion of omnipotence sounds absurd. Most
of the people at the centre of the events of 2007-8 tend to suggest a
much less titanic stereotype: the faded rock star, often still trying to
keep their hand in, well aware that the hits have dried up, the old
tricks have long since turned embarrassing, and their time has passed.<br />
Meanwhile, a very awkward question sits in the public mind: will there ever be any convincing payback?<br />
In
the US, only a tiny handful of former bankers have been criminally
indicted on charges relating to the crash: most notably, Ralph Cioffi
and Matthew Tannin, two former <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/bear-stearns" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Bear Stearns">Bear Stearns</a>
employees – and one-time sub-prime specialists – who were acquitted of
fraud and conspiracy in November 2009. In February this year a civil
case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission was settled on
the basis of a $1.05m payout from the two, which the judge in charge
termed "chump change".<br />
The only big figure sent to jail for his
part in two decades of crazed speculation and irresponsibility has been
Bernie Madoff. By contrast, the people who bundled up the bad debt in
arcane financial instruments that pushed the world to the brink of ruin
are still out there: hugely diminished – but free, and hardly penniless.<br />
Even
those who steered Lehman Brothers into catastrophe and thus started the
decisive crash of 2008 seem to have got away with it. In May this year
an internal memo from the SEC leaked to Reuters said that after its
investigation into the bank it had been "determined that charges will
likely not be recommended".<br />
Which brings us to 780 3rd Avenue in
Manhattan, the location of an almost comically dull office block that
looks like a giant house brick.<br />
Inside is the HQ of Matrix
Advisors. Its founder is a byword for the events of 2007-8: Dick Fuld,
the CEO of Lehmans, until its cataclysmic demise. Back then, he was the
pumped-up corporate icon once known as "the Gorilla", the man who summed
up his business style with the boast that he wanted to reach into the
bodies of Lehmans' competitors, "rip out their hearts and eat it in
front of them before they die".<br />
These days he apparently flits
between New York and his homes in Florida and Sun Valley, Idaho – on
bog-standard commercial flights, according to witnesses – looking after a
tiny outfit which provides "strategic advice to client management teams
and senior employees … across all aspects of business". One source
close to Fuld has said that the workforce extends to "a young guy from
Lehman and two secretaries". When I called their office, I therefore had
the tantalising sense that the figure most indelibly associated with
the crash might only be a few yards from the person parrying my
questions. Her name was Carla Schiavo: she suggested I send over a few
lines of inquiry.<br />
What, I asked, does Mr Fuld's work at Matrix
Advisors involve? What are his views on the aftermath of the credit
crunch and how banks and regulators have responded? What did the
financial services industry need to do to recover its esteem?
Eventually, Schiavo pointed me in the direction of Fuld's lawyer, a
former president of the New York Bar Association named Patricia Hynes –
who, predictably enough, did not deign to reply to either phone calls or
emails.<br />
Two months ago Fuld was seen at an ice hockey game
between the New Jersey Rangers and the New York Devils. An eyewitness
reported on the scene for the Wall Street news and gossip site
Dealbreaker: "He was with two goons who were clearly his bodyguards, one
sitting next to him in a tan jacket and the other one standing behind
him in black. Fuld was wearing a suit … I guess to try and look like he
actually has a job he was coming from before the game."<br />
Documents
filed with US regulators two years ago said Fuld's work at his new
venture stretched to around 60 hours a week. Such hard graft may be a
necessity: proof, as with the sale of his Park Avenue apartment three
years ago (for $25.87m) that he may not be enjoying quite the life of
unending luxury that some would imagine, and setting money aside for
future litigation, which has so far been met from the coffers of
Lehmans' insurers. There is also an abiding sense of twitchiness. When a
reporter doorstepped him three years ago, he blurted out: "You don't
have a gun. That's good."<br />
For others who were intimately involved
in the crash, there is a similar sense of shrunken lives, and mouths
sealed shut. Kathleen Corbet was the president of the hugely important
ratings agency Standard & Poors, but quit in August 2007 just as it
started to become clear that the safe-as-houses triple-A ratings given
to mortgage-backed securities had turned out to be illusory. She is now
in charge of Cross Ridge Capital, a small private equity firm based in
New Canaan, Connecticut – and did not respond to messages asking for her
take on what happened in 2007 onwards, and what has transpired since.<br />
Neither
did Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who pumped up AIG to the point that the
American group became the biggest insurance company in the world – only
to watch it plunge towards bankruptcy and become 80% nationalised by the
US government.<br />
He resigned two years before the start of the
crash, in 2005, in the midst of the accounting scandal that began the
firm's nosedive – but the fact that he avoided direct involvement in the
crash presumably accounts for the fact that in controlled
circumstances, he can speak with a belligerence that might suggest the
events of 2007-8 never happened.<br />
"We now have huge government,
which is not the creator of opportunity – it's the private sector that
creates opportunity, so our basic values are under attack," he recently
said, warning against the prospect of "regulating ourselves out of
business". By way of putting his money where his mouth is, Greenberg is
suing the US state for $25bn, alleging that AIG's board was "coerced"
into turning over control of the company to the federal government.<br />
Such
a high-profile action contrasts with the post-crash story of his old
AIG colleague Joseph Cassano – the man who sold credit default swaps in
London to keep the money coming in, and thereby pushed the company
towards such ruin that it needed £182bn of US taxpayers' money to keep
it alive. Back then, Cassano lived in an opulent townhouse behind
Harrod's. He has since moved back to Westport, on Long Island Sound,
where he is apparently unemployed, and uncontactable.<br />
But if there
is one man who remains the best embodiment of all the delusion and
absurdity that led to the crash, it is 74-year-old Angelo Mozilo, the
son of a Bronx butcher, a man so tanned that his skin looks like an
orange dipped in toffee. Until July 2008 he was the chairman and chief
executive of Countrywide Financial, the USA's biggest provider of
sub-prime mortgages. Between 2001 and 2006 he took home something in the
region of $470m.<br />
The company crashed from August 2007 onwards,
finally being bought out by the Bank Of America. In a civil case that
ended in October 2010 Mozilo settled with the SEC to pay $22.5m to cover
allegations of fraud and insider trading, with a further $45m going to
his company's former shareholders to cover "ill-gotten gains", to be
taken from BoA and Countrywide's insurers.<br />
The SEC's director of
enforcement said this: "Mozilo's record penalty is the fitting outcome
for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duties to
investors by concealing what he saw from inside the executive suite – a
looming disaster in which Countrywide was buckling under the weight of
increasingly risky mortgage underwriting, mounting defaults and
delinquencies, and a deteriorating business model." At the same time,
Mozilo was cashing in shares to the tune of $285m.<br />
Last year a
criminal investigation into Mozilo's activities was shelved. But the
intrigue swirling around him will not go away: four years after stories
about his firm's dealings with American lawmakers first appeared in the
media, a Congressional Committee has alleged that Mozilo ran a "Friends
of Angelo" unit to grant influential members of congress preferential
loans, and thereby subdue any drive to rein in his very risky kind of
business.<br />
The impact of what Mozilo and his company did cannot be
overstated: it was Countrywide that led the drive to drown the
international financial system in bad debt, while he was paying himself
spectacular amounts of money. In Wall Street, the City and beyond, the
result of what he and his colleagues were doing was a deathly panic, and
the end of the boom years; in the real world, millions of people had
their homes repossessed or lost their jobs and now we labour under the
austerity cuts that still grip the Western economies like a vice.<br />
In
May this year a piece in the LA Times reported that Mozilo and his wife
Phyllis had sold their home in Thousand Oaks, 29 miles west of near LA,
for $2.9m. It described a "Georgian Colonial-style two-storey"
property, sitting above the second fairway at the Sherwood Country Club,
complete with "a cherry-finished library-office, five bedrooms, six
bathrooms and an oversized four-car garage", along with "an infinity
pool, spa, lawn and a built-in barbecue".<br />
Reading it, you wondered
if perhaps, in their own way, the Mozilos were feeling the pinch. And
then came the last sentence, and the sickly scent of the high life,
uninterrupted: "They hold other southern California properties in trust,
in Riverside and Santa Barbara counties."<br />
</div>
</div>
</div>24Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11038568668786012611noreply@blogger.com0