Larry Doyle's Blog, page 11

Book Review: All The Presidents’ Bankers by Nomi Prins

[image error]While all too much of our analysis of market developments comes to us in the form of sound bites and snippets, leave it to the great writers of our time to provide real depth and study of the business and political relationships that ultimately impact all of us.

I recently completed reading just such a study, All The Presidents’ Bankers by Nomi Prins. The author is not only a Wall Street insider but also highly regarded for her prior books and well documented written and spoken commentaries.

I very much had the sensation of sitting in on a semester long tutorial in Financial and Political History while working my way through this book. While at times the level of detail provided required me to take a break to ponder the magnitude of the message, the picture never lost focus.

Ms. Prins brings so much to bear in this work as a result of her visiting each and every Presidential Library going back to Woodrow Wilson’s presidency in the earliest years of the 1900s. She informed me in the midst of a recent interview that not all of the information was immediately provided. As need be, Prins utilized the Freedom of Information Act to gain an even greater understanding of the relationships between those occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the executive offices of our major banking institutions.

The relationships were very often as much social as they were business and political. In the earlier years of the prior century, the relationships ran throughout a handful of the most powerful and influential families in the land. A sense of elitism very much is on display in the process.

Prins looks through these power based relationships running between Wall Street and Washington to bring a depth of understanding of almost every major national event and goes far beyond most history books in doing so.

The founding of the Federal Reserve, our engagement in the great wars of the 20th century, the market crash of 1929 and subsequent regulations, international relations, the financialization of our economy, bailouts, and so much more, Prins covers it all. In the process, she also outlines when and how the balance of power within these relationships shifted so that the banking executives on Wall Street now very much hold the upper hand.

She concludes, “Our choice is simple: either we break the alliances, or they will break us.”

I strongly recommend All The Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power by Nomi Prins for anybody who wants a detailed understanding of just who is running our nation and how they are doing it.

Larry Doyle

Please order a hard copy or Kindle version of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

For those reading this via a syndicated outlet or by e-mail or another delivery, please visit the blog to comment on this piece of ‘sense on cents.’

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail.

The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

UPDATED w/Podcast: Listen to LD and Gary Aguirre Saturday Night on KFMB 760AM San Diego, CA

Last evening I was truly honored to share the forum of “It’s Your Money and Your Life” with renowned securities lawyer and SEC whistleblower Gary Aguirre.

What has and still is going on within the realm of our financial regulators while corrosive practices such as high frequency trading and much more perpetuate on Wall Street? I strongly recommend you grab a second cup of coffee and find 40 minutes to listen to this interview:

It’s Your Money and Your Life

Navigate accordingly.

Larry Doyle

Please order a hard copy or Kindle version of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

For those reading this via a syndicated outlet or by e-mail or another delivery, please visit the blog to comment on this piece of ‘sense on cents.’

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail.

The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

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On Saturday, April 12th (10pm EST, 7pmPST),  I will be on “It’s Your Money and Your Life,” an exceptionally popular radio show airing on KFMB-760AM in San Diego, California. I am incredibly pleased to highlight this interview.

Why will this show be so special? Joining me as a guest on the show is a true American hero, former SEC whistleblower Gary Aguirre. In my opinion, Gary Aguirre is a lawyer without peer and may be the only individual in the nation today who could be favorably compared to Ferdinand Pecora. I say that with no sense of hyperbole.

Please make sure to listen in to this show. I am confident you will not be disappointed. Listen LIVE at 7pm PST (10pm EST) on KFMB 760 AM or online here.

LD

Listen to LD and Gary Aguirre Saturday Night on KFMB 760AM San Diego, CA

Tomorrow evening (10pm EST, 7pmPST),  I will be on “It’s Your Money and Your Life,” an exceptionally popular radio show airing on KFMB-760AM in San Diego, California. I am incredibly pleased to highlight this interview.

Why will this show be so special? Joining me as a guest on the show is a true American hero, former SEC whistleblower Gary Aguirre. In my opinion, Gary Aguirre is a lawyer without peer and may be the only individual in the nation today who could be favorably compared to Ferdinand Pecora. I say that with no sense of hyperbole.

Please make sure to listen in to this show. I am confident you will not be disappointed. Listen LIVE at 7pm PST (10pm EST) on KFMB 760 AM or online here.

LD

James Kidney Stones the SEC: “A Tollbooth on The Bankster Turnpike”

[image error]James Kidney recently retired from the SEC.  He skewered the commission’s culture and management on the way out the door.

For those who care to understand how Wall Street has gotten away with incredibly egregious offenses over the years, Kidney’s brief remarks are well worth the few minutes to review. The highlights include:

1. The revolving door is a very serious problem. I have had bosses, and bosses of my bosses, whose names we all know, who made little secret that they were here to punch their ticket. They mouthed serious regard for the mission of the Commission, but their actions were tentative and fearful in many instances.

2. . . . an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors. On the rare occasions when Enforcement does go to the penthouse, good manners are paramount. Tough enforcement – risky enforcement – is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening.

3. . . . we are at most a tollbooth on the bankster turnpike. We are a cost, not a serious expense.

4. The system is broken.

I hope people might keep a mental image of the heads of the SEC and its Enforcement Division in your mind while reading this. Please click on the image below to open up a pdf of Kidney’s retirement speech.

 

Can you say, “SEC: asleep, incompetent, captured and corrupted” five times fast?

Navigate accordingly.

Larry Doyle

Please order a hard copy or Kindle version of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

For those reading this via a syndicated outlet or by e-mail or another delivery, please visit the blog to comment on this piece of ‘sense on cents.’

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail.

The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

James Kidney Stones the SEC: Retirement Remarks

[image error]James Kidney recently retired from the SEC. I drew attention yesterday to the fact that he skewered the commission’s culture and management on the way out the door. For those who care to understand how Wall Street has gotten away with incredibly egregious offenses over the years, Kidney’s brief remarks are well worth the few minutes to review.

I hope people might keep a mental image of the heads of the SEC and its Enforcement Division in your mind while reading this. Please click on the image below to open up a pdf of Kidney’s retirement speech.

 

Can you say, “SEC: asleep, incompetent, captured and corrupted” five times fast?

Navigate accordingly.

Larry Doyle

Please order a hard copy or Kindle version of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

For those reading this via a syndicated outlet or by e-mail or another delivery, please visit the blog to comment on this piece of ‘sense on cents.’

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail.

The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

Retiring SEC Lawyer Indicts Schapiro, Khuzami et al as Being ‘In Bed with Wall Street’

In what might only qualify as turning one’s weapon on those formerly running a defense unit, a retiring attorney in the SEC’s Enforcement Division just left the commission and went out with “guns a-blazing.”

I welcome immediately inducting this attorney, James Kidney, into the Sense on Cents Hall of Fame. Let’s navigate as Bloomberg reports:

A trial attorney from the Securities and Exchange Commission said his bosses were too “tentative and fearful” to bring many Wall Street leaders to heel after the 2008 credit crisis, echoing the regulator’s outside critics. 

James Kidney, who joined the SEC in 1986 and retired this month, offered the critique in a speech at his goodbye party. His remarks hit home with many in the crowd of SEC lawyers and alumni thanks to a part of his resume not publicly known: He had campaigned internally to bring charges against more executives in the agency’s 2010 case against Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The SEC has become “an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors,” Kidney said, according to a copy of his remarks obtained by Bloomberg News. “On the rare occasions when enforcement does go to the penthouse, good manners are paramount. Tough enforcement, risky enforcement, is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening.”

Kidney said his superiors were more focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service than on bringing difficult cases. The agency’s penalties, Kidney said, have become “at most a tollbooth on the bankster turnpike.”

Can you say revolving door and meter maids? That’s right. In the process, a sense of fairness and decency within the system has been obliterated.

His speech bemoaned the lack of SEC enforcers who “believe in afflicting the comfortable and powerful.”

The SEC has taken a beating from critics including lawmakers, judges and advocacy groups who say the agency has been too easy on the banks that helped fuel the 2008 crisis by peddling mortgage-backed securities of questionable value to unwary investors. No senior executive at a major financial firm has gone to jail and the SEC has brought civil charges against only a handful.

In his speech, Kidney also hit the agency for using misleading statistics to showcase its enforcement efforts. The SEC should focus on the quality of its actions, rather than try to file as many as possible just to tout its record to lawmakers and the media, he said.

“It is a cancer,” Kidney said of the agency’s use of numbers. “It should be changed.”

Kidney said in the interview that he will always be an SEC loyalist and was trying to offer constructive criticism that could help the agency. He said he wasn’t singling out any specific cases or officials in his comments.

I will. Let’s start with Mary Schapiro and Robert Khuzami.

In his retirement speech, Kidney noted that he had been “involved in a high-profile case or two” and said he had gotten a message from above not to take too many risks.

“I have had bosses, and bosses of my bosses, whose names we all know, who made little secret that they were here to punch their ticket,” Kidney said. “They mouthed serious regard for the mission of the commission, but their actions were tentative and fearful in many instances.”

Tentative and fearful? Sounds like a pack of bed wetters. Let’s make no mistake, in the midst of such tentative and fearful enforcement, frauds were perpetuated and accountability went missing.

How does this happen? Those running the commission were asleep, incompetent, and/or corrupted.

Thank you, Mr. Kidney.

As for everybody else, let’s continue the fight as we navigate accordingly.

Larry Doyle

Please order a hard copy or Kindle version of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

For those reading this via a syndicated outlet or by e-mail or another delivery, please visit the blog to comment on this piece of ‘sense on cents.’

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail.

The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

HFT Exposed: Market Is Not Fair; Little Guy Loses

Of all the questions on all the topics across all the market segments, the one that keeps being repeated by most investors — both institutional and retail alike — is the question regarding the fairness of the game.

That question and others were posed yesterday to James McCaughan who, as President of Principal Global Investors, just so happens to oversee the management of $300 billion and was interviewed by Tom Keene and Michael McKee on Bloomberg Surveillance.

Regarding market fairness in the midst of current high frequency trading practices, McCaughan does not equivocate in stating, “the market is not fair.”

In regard to our favorite punching bag, that being Wall Street’s self-regulatory organization FINRA, Keene inquires, “Will the industry take care of itself and police itself?” McCaughan eviscerates this premise in stating, “The industry won’t police itself because there are industry participants who make money from the imperfections and lack of regulation in the market.”

That statement directly echoes my own. On page 193 of my book, In Bed with Wall Street, I write: “FINRA and the other financial self-regulatory organizations should cease to exist. To think that Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan . . . and every other bank can fund a regulator that will, in turn, aggressively oversee their activities is simply ridiculous.”

Shortly after the 2-minute mark in the interview, McCaughan is asked whether the little guys lose as a result of the manner in which high frequency trading operates.

He responds, “I think they do lose.”

McCaughan pulls no punches in this Bloomberg Surveillance interview. The first 5-minutes are an ABSOLUTE MUST LISTEN.

The ruse is laid bare.

What do we learn?  The market is not fair. The little guy loses. Self-regulation is a farce.

Navigate accordingly.

Larry Doyle

Please order a hard copy or Kindle version of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

For those reading this via a syndicated outlet or by e-mail or another delivery, please visit the blog to comment on this piece of ‘sense on cents.’

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail.

The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

The Stock Exchange Brothel and Regulatory Pimps

I am compelled to share a fabulous post from Wall Street on Parade that outlines the corruptible relationship and practices that lie at the core of the ongoing debate around high frequency trading.

Major props to Pam Martens for drawing further attention to the ugly reality within this incestuous relationship. Other media outlets should be so fearless in revealing the truth of the captured regulators.

The fallout from the new book, “Flash Boys” by Michael Lewis continues. Yesterday, Jonathon Trugman wrote in the New York Post that “These traders who use the HOV lane to get ahead of investors could not do their trades without the full knowledge and complicity of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.”

Trubman went on to compare the two best known stock exchanges in the U.S. to houses of ill repute, writing: “What is clearly unfair and unethical — and, frankly, ought to be outlawed — is how the exchanges have essentially taken on the role of running a high-priced, high-frequency brothel…”

While it’s true that the New York Post might possibly overuse sexual analogies (on August 10, 2011 it ran a front page cover comparing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a “hooker’s drawers”), in this instance Trugman is spot on.

Not only are the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq allowing high frequency traders to co-locate their computers next to the main computers of the exchanges to gain a speed advantage over other customers at a monthly cost that only the very rich can afford to pay but they’re now tacking on infrastructure charges that price everyone out of efficient use of the exchanges except the very top tier of trading firms.

Lewis writes in “Flash Boys” that “both Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange announced that they had widened the pipe that carried information between the HFT [high frequency trading] computers and each exchange’s matching engine. The price for the new pipe was $40,000 a month, up from the $25,000 a month the HFT firms had been paying for the old, smaller pipe.”

By late 2011, according to Lewis, “more than two-thirds of Nasdaq’s revenues derived, one way or another, from high-frequency trading firms.”

And we’ll take Trugman’s analogy one step further: the cops on the beat who have had their palms greased to turn a blind eye to the brothels are drinking their coffee and gobbling their donuts at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

I will include the same indictment of the cops on the beat within Wall Street’s own self-regulatory organization at FINRA.

For those who care to read the entire commentary, I welcome providing the link to If the New York Stock Exchange is a “High Frequency Brother” then the SEC is its Pimp.

Larry Doyle

Please order a hard copy or Kindle version of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

For those reading this via a syndicated outlet or by e-mail or another delivery, please visit the blog to comment on this piece of ‘sense on cents.’

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail.

The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

Upcoming In Bed with Wall Street Book Events in April

This month is shaping up to be a busy one for In Bed with Wall Street. I am thrilled that I have been invited to speak at what I would call the triple crown of library institutions: Library of Congress, New York Public Library, and Boston Public Library.

First up is Boston Public Library later this month (followed by Library of Congress in early June and New York Public Library in late July). In addition to these three grand libraries, please make note of the following events. If any happen to be in your neighborhood, please stop by to say hello!

Tuesday, April 8th at 7pm: Wellesley Books, 82 Central Street, Wellesley, Massachusetts

Thursday, April 10th at 7pm: Book Revue, 313 New York Avenue, Huntington, New York

Saturday, April 12th at 10pm EST (7pm PST): It’s Your Money and Your Life, 760AM KFMB, San Diego, California. I will be a guest along with the renowned attorney Gary Aguirre (profiled in the book) on this 50,000 watt station. Listen live here.

Sunday, April 13th at 2pm: Occupy Alternative Banking  at Columbia University, room 409 of the International Affairs Building, 420 West 118th Street (Amsterdam Avenue & 118th Street)

Tuesday, April 22nd at 7pm: New Canaan Public Library, 151 Main Street, New Canaan, Connecticut

Wednesday, April 23rd at 6pm: Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square, 700 Boylston Street, Boston, MA

Sunday, April 27th at 2pm: Glastonbury Library, 2407 Main Street, Glastonbury, Connecticut

Looking ahead . . .

Thursday, June 5th from 11:30am-12:30pm: Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Thursday, July 31st from 6-7pm: New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY

If you have a venue, outlet, or media connection (radio, TV, print, or podcast) at which you might have interest in my speaking, please do not hesitate to contact me at senseoncents@aol.com.

In light of all that continues to go from Wall Street to Main Street and from Washington to points around the globe, I welcome talking not only about the effects — such as high frequency trading — but even more so the causes and proposed reforms which are outlined in detail in my book.

I thank you.

Larry Doyle

Please order a hard copy or Kindle version of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

For those reading this via a syndicated outlet or by e-mail or another delivery, please visit the blog to comment on this piece of ‘sense on cents.’

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail.

The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

WSJ: HFT’s Real Villains Are Financial Regulators

[image error]In what might read as a prologue for my book, none other than the Wall Street Journal writes today that the real villains in the ongoing high frequency trading debate are our financial regulators.

Truer words were never spoken.

While America is fed a steady diet of technical terms on latency, co-location, and the like, let’s redirect the focus to where it really belongs, that is a financial regulatory system that has served to promote and protect Wall Street rather than upholding its mandate to protect investors.  The evidence is overwhelming and there is very real corruption that has transpired in the process.

As the WSJ concludes:

. . .  if New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and others looking for headlines want to string up high-speed traders, honesty requires them to put the regulators at the front of the rope line.

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Let’s start with an independent investigation with the power to subpoena. Then get Chris Cox and Mary Schapiro in here.

Larry Doyle

Please order a hard copy or Kindle version of my book, In Bed with Wall Street: The Conspiracy Crippling Our Global Economy.

For those reading this via a syndicated outlet or receiving it via e-mail or another delivery, please visit the blog to comment on this piece of ‘sense on cents.’

Please subscribe to all my work via e-mail.

The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.