Libor: Judge forces Barclays to reveal names of staff involved in rate rigging

Barclays will be forced to disclose the names of staff involved in Libor rigging, following a damning court judgment over claims it mis-sold interest rate swaps to a care home operator. 
 

Barclays was accused of 'shadow boxing' over Libor-rigging claims in a court case involving allegations it mis-sold interest rate derivatives to a care home operato

By Harry Wilson, Banking Correspondent

The bank was chastised on Monday at the High Court in London by Lord Justice Flaux, who claimed Barclays was intentionally trying to hide the true scale of the Libor scandal, which has already seen the lender fined £290m.

The criticisms came as Barclays faced a preliminary hearing, ahead of a trial, over allegations it mis-sold to a care home group complex interest rate derivatives that were in turn based on false Libor rates.

Issuing a damning judgment, Lord Justice Flaux said Barclays’ objections to the Libor-rigging claims brought against it by Guardian Care Homes were “wholly without merit” and accused the bank of “misleading” customers.

Allowing the case to continue to trial, the judge described the bank’s attempts to dismiss the Libor aspects of the care home operator’s claim as “shadow boxing” and said they were “doomed to fail”.

Guardian Care Homes’ lawsuit is seen as a test case for Libor-rigging claims and the court decision to allow the case to go to trial potentially opens the door to billions of pounds of legal actions against other banks involved in the rate-setting scandal.

Over a day-long hearing, Lord Justice Flaux repeatedly struck down Barclays’ objections and said the bank would be forced to disclose potentially embarrassing details, such as the identities of staff implicated in Libor manipulation.

“[It] just seems perfectly obvious... that the people responsible for giving those instructions [manipulate Libor] must have known customers were being misled,” he said.

Tim Lord QC, representing Guardian Care Homes, which has more than 30 care homes around the country, told the hearing that disclosures so far from the bank were “likely to be the tip of the iceberg” and that the case went to “the heart of the management of Barclays”.

“Barclays seeks to serve up its own version of the facts, a santised version,” said Mr Lord.
Representing Barclays, Adrian Beltrami QC said the information asked for by Guardian Care Homes would have “signficant ramifications” and make the case “unmanageable”.

However, Lord Justice Flaux rejected the arguments and said Barclays would from next month have to begin providing the names of staff involved in Libor-rigging to Guardian Care Homes’ legal team.

“This is all shadow boxing. The real issue is they [Barclays] are trying to shut it down because they don’t like it,” he said.

The Guardian Care Homes’ claims against Barclays over mis-sold swaps, designed to protect the company against rises in interest rates, amount to about £38m. It is alleged that Libor-rigging at Barclays inflated the cost of the swaps to the company. The care home group has already settled a similar swaps claim against Lloyds Banking Group for an undisclosed sum.

In a statment Barclays said: "The judge’s decision means these issues will need to be determined at a full trial in due course. This business had a suite of advisors and a lot of financial experience and skill in-house. We understand that Graiseley entered into their swaps with sufficient understanding to exercise their own judgment as to whether the products would meet its business objectives. They are a significant business, which owes Barclays £70m. We do not believe the case has merit and will defend it.”

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/rate-swap-scandal/9641721/Libor-Judge-forces-Barclays-to-reveal-names-of-staff-involved-in-rate-rigging.html

Join Natural News in offering prayers to all those about to be impacted by the 'Frankenstorm' Hurricane Sandy

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)

(NaturalNews) The time for preparedness is over. Now those who are in the path of Hurricane Sandy and the converging "superstorm" must hunker down, ride out the storm and stay focused on safety and survival. They need the blessings of all of us who are not in harm's way, so today Natural News urges all our readers to say a prayer for those who are about to find themselves at ground zero.

The National Weather Service has issued a public warning describing the storm as "...AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS STORM TO IMPACT THE AREA..."

It goes on to urge residents to heed evacuation warnings, adding, "THINK ABOUT THE RESCUE/RECOVERY TEAMS WHO WILL RESCUE YOU IF YOU ARE INJURED OR RECOVER YOUR REMAINS IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE."

This is unusually blunt language from the National Weather Service. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing NWS warnings with this kind of urgent language.

Immediately after this story was published, the NWS pulled its online warning, but we captured a screen shot of the full alert before it was pulled. Here it is:

Before you pray, don't forget to prepare 

 

My motto is: Prepare, then pray. Prayer cannot take the place of preparedness, of course. To sit around praying while doing nothing to take responsibility for your own preparedness is foolish. But prayer can help lend strength and courage to those who need it most. The scientific literature reveals many rigorously tested clinical trials showing that patients recover from surgery more quickly when others pray for them, even in a so-called "double-blind" test where those doing the praying have never met the person they're praying for.

The reason prayer works is because we are more than just physical beings. We are spiritual beings experiencing life through physical bodies, but our consciousness is non-physical and exists above and beyond our physical brain. This understanding, if fully embraced, would revolutionize our world and our civilization, because so much of the evil in this world today is based on the "materialism" view of science which says that humans are mere biological machines with no minds, no free will and no consciousness.

The higher truth of the matter is that material things are only the beginning. We may at first appear to be made of matter, but our consciousness interfaces with our brains and bodies through a non-material pathway which has not yet been identified. When we pray, we broadcast a desirable outcome to the cosmos, and while we are not Gods and do not have the power to reshape worlds by merely wishing, we do have the power to subtly influence apparently "random" events, nudging them toward the direction of our desired outcome.

This, too, has been well demonstrated in the scientific research. An outstanding book summarizing some of the non-material phenomena of which the mind is capable is Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics by Chris Carter and Rupert Sheldrake. I also highly recommend Science Set Free by Sheldrake, an impressive thinker, writer and philosopher.

Prayer is, after all, an appeal to a non-material consciousness to aid in achieving a more positive outcome. Even those who have been lifelong skeptics of prayer are instantly transformed into true believers the moment they experience it themselves. Read the astonishing book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, M.D. You will be absolutely enthralled by the journey of this brain surgeon from hard-core skeptic to passionate believer.

The simple truth is that the power of prayer is real. It works because there's more to us than just our physical bodies and brains. We are beings of immense energy and light, capable of achieving great things not just with our hands but also with our minds. Our entire universe, I believe, is but one of an infinite number of other realms brought into existence by our Creator -- a highly advanced consciousness which has been given a thousand different names throughout human history but which ultimately stands for the same unified concept: LOVE is the fabric of the cosmos, and through prayer, or meditation, or even just practicing gratitude, we can broadcast love to those who need it most.

Today, the people in the path of Hurricane Sandy are in need for our prayers and our support. May they find safety and comfort during this difficult time, and may they emerge from this test with a greater appreciation for life and all that it offers. While hurricanes may destroy material things, the experience of surviving one can only strengthen that part of us which is not material: our souls.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/037731_Hurricane_Sandy_preparedness_prayer.html#ixzz2AkIEA3wK

 

Benjamin Fulford 10-29-12…”Bush the boogey man plays the HAARP as Halloween approaches”

by Benjamin Fulford 10-29-12

High level pentagon sources contacted the White Dragon Society this week to warn that the massive storm hitting the US North-East this week was a HAARP attack by the Nazi faction of the Western oligarchy. At the same time, the deep sea drilling ship Chikyu has been spotted off the coast of Aichi, Prefecture near the Nagoya headquarters of Toyota Motors. Nazi representative Richard Armitage and US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian affairs are in Tokyo now warning a massive new earthquake attack on Japan will take place as soon as they leave, unless they get their way, according to Japanese security police affiliated with the WDS.

Lord James Sassoon has also been making astronomical bribe offers to a variety of Japanese politicians, right wing power brokers and gangsters as he tries to keep the Sassoon Asian empire afloat.

A top source at the Bank for International Settlements also contacted with WDS with a combination threat/bribe.

A group of young Chinese generals and industrialists too have come forward with offers of heavy support during the past week.

All of these moves are…(Please support the WDS by subscribing or, if you cannot afford to, get yourself on the free e-mailing list, thank you)…signs of intensified power jockeying in the run up to planned government changes this fall in the US, China, South Korea, Japan and elsewhere.

The Nazis under Bush are insisting that their man Romney be put in power during the November 6 (not 8 as erroneously reported by this newsletter on previous occasions) “election” or else they will wreak steadily intensifying havoc. Other threats believed to be connected to the Nazis include a warning to hit Geneva with a tsunami caused by a landslide and to hit the US West coast with a mega-earthquake.

They have targeted the North East of the US with a storm as a show of power and as a sign of their opposition to the Eastern establishment and their man Obama, the Pentagon source says.

Of course neither Obama nor Romney has more than 15% support in the real world (as opposed to the Stalinist “polls”), making it a perfect time for an independent candidate like Ron Paul to kick both bums out.

Some of the Nazi demands were hand delivered to this writer in a letter written by a person believed to have been close to post-war Nazi Fuehrer Admiral Canaris. The main demand of the letter is to allow the free energy technology to be released to the people of the planet.

Free energy, if used for constructive purposes, would allow for an era of unprecedented growth and prosperity for the planet and the WDS has always supported it. The problem is in that years of research on this subject, nobody has been able to show this writer personally an actual working free energy device. If the Nazis have free energy technology they should just go ahead and release it.
Of course the existing energy industry accounts for a huge percentage (some estimate as high as 70%) of global economic activity and a smooth transition to the new technology (if it really exists) is recommended to prevent chaos and major possible social disruption.

The BIS source, for his part, said the Western elite still wanted a World War in order to rid the world of two-thirds of its population prior to setting up a world government according to a 1973 Club of Rome plan.

http://www2.ministries-online.org/biometrics/rome.html

The map in the link above shows the end game of the BIS led group, this source said. The titular head of the BIS is Ben Bernanke. This BIS source also said the US Federal Reserve Board was already being shut down and that all its powers and staff were being transferred to the US Treasury Department. There was also a hint that vast funds would start to flow towards the WDS if it went along with the program.

Of course since the US is no longer a democracy, transferring Fed powers to the Treasury at this point is a bit like changing the titles on the name cards but leaving the usual suspects in charge.
The Asian power brokers who approached the WDS representative in Indonesia last week were more of the mind to replace the entire top management of the planet and bring in new blood with new ideas.

Certainly a lot of us wonder why a bunch of 80 and 90 year olds who seem to have secret access to life prolonging medicine (denied to the rest of us), should be allowed to remain in charge.
The general impression from the flurry of contacts and threats last week is that there are now three main factions battling for control of the future of this planet. One is the committee of 300 with the Pope and Queen Elizabeth pushing for Obama, the other is the Nazis under Bush et al pushing for Romney and the third is us peasants who just want these murderous power games to be replaced with love and friendship.

We also need to remember that this week is Halloween. Halloween has traditionally been the time, when the harvest is just in, when the poor go to the rich and ask for their fair share so that they can survive the winter. If the 99% do not get their “treat,” you can be sure they will follow with a “trick.”
If the elite try to again use mass murder and terror to control the poor, they and their extended families will be systematically hunted down and slaughtered. The average person does everything possible to avoid violent confrontation but when you try to kill their families and loved ones, their righteous fury is unstoppable.

The general understanding of the WDS and its allies, though, is that we have a clear choice between a win-win solution for everybody and a lose-lose solution for everybody. War and terror is a two-way street, so is love and friendship.

 

[A subscription to Ben's full articles is only $8 per month ("Payments can... be made with a ‘PayPal’ [account]“), but Ben will allow anyone who can not pay this to subscribe for less (or free). On one page of his site he says, “All subscribers will agree to pay whatever monthly subscription price they can afford. Those who are really poor can get it for free.” In my mind, if you like the articles, and want to support Ben and his work, consider subscribing to his blog.

Ben may be contacted at any of the emails below which he provides on his websites:
benjaminfulford@hotmail.com, benjaminfulford@gmail.com, postmaster@benjaminfulford.com, benjaminoffice88@gmail.com]

Mayans protest government sponsored apocalypse party and slam “doomsday myth”

The world will not end. It will be transformed. -- Mayan elders.

JG Vibes Activist Post

For years the Mayans have been fighting against the doomsday myth surrounding the incorrect reading of their ancient calendar. As the date of December 21, 2012 approaches the hype has caused an increasing amount of distress for the indigenous Mayan people, especially with their homeland in Guatemala being turned into a cheap tourist attraction for the coming “apocalypse”.

Just this week, Guatemala’s Mayan people accused the government and state sponsored tour groups of perpetuating the myth that their calendar predicts the end of the world, so they can benefit financially from tourist revenue.

The Culture Ministry of Guatemala is hosting a massive event in Guatemala City, which as many as 90,000 people are expected to attend, all being promoted under the pretext of a “doomsday" celebration.

Felipe Gomez, leader of the Maya alliance Oxlaljuj Ajpop protested this week with other Mayans, urging the Tourism Institute to rethink the doomsday celebration, which he criticized as a “show” that was disrespectful to Mayan culture.

“We are speaking out against deceit, lies and twisting of the truth, and turning us into folklore-for-profit. They are not telling the truth about time cycles” Gomez told the AFP news agency.

In a statement released by Oxlaljuj Ajpop, the end of the Mayan calendar simply means that “there will be big changes on the personal, family and community level, so that there is harmony and balance between mankind and nature.”

Last year, a Mayan elder named Carlos Barrios interviewed over 600 other senior Mayan elders to get the clearest possible understanding of the situation. In an online interview representing the Organization for Mayan and Indigenous Spiritual Studies, Carlos made the following statement:

“Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It’s just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed. We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition. As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes. Humanity will continue, but in a different way. Material structures will change. From this we will have the opportunity to be more human.”

As the Mayans believe, and as many modern researchers also believe, the human species has already went through many different changes during their history on the planet earth. Those changes have many times been difficult, but have also been followed by rapid leaps in understanding, compassion and social advancement.

As I discussed in my book Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance “The doomsday theory is unlikely and overused by power hungry governments that wish to keep their populations in fear. As we have seen quite recently in the past decade in the United States, the establishment constantly uses fear to manipulate the minds of US citizens. This technique is not new either, it has been used for centuries whether it be the fear of economic collapse, natural disaster, the enemy, or the fear of god, fear has been used by the few to dominate the many for ages.

When the Spaniards were conquering the Mayan empire they learned through missionaries that 1698 was the end of the Mayan time cycle. So the Spanish waited until 1698 to invade and the Mayans took it as a sign and fled without resistance. One of the most celebrated of all doomsday predictions was made by astrologers who predicted a great flood that would end the world on February 20 1524 based on the conjunction of all the planets in the heavens mercury, Venus, Mars Jupiter and Saturn. We have also seen quite recently with the media hoax Y2K, which threatened us with a “cyber Armageddon” at the turn of the millennium. In both cases obviously, the world continued to turn. “

The end of the world has been predicted many times and has yet to come, the last time that this kind of hysteria swept the world was just over a decade ago, around the change of the millennium with the y2k scare. The world didn’t end last time, and it is not going to end next time. However, there may be some truth that we are on the verge of some sort of societal transition, looking around the world all of the signs are certainly there.

Oxlajuj Ajpop is holding events it considers sacred in five cities to mark the event and Gomez said the Culture Ministry would be wise to throw its support behind their real celebrations. However, there it is not likely that the government tourist agency and the ministry will change their course.

J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer and reporter for The Intel Hub and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio. He is also an artist with an established record label and event promotion company that hosts politically charged music events. You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com .

Sixty million at risk as deadly 'Frankenstorm' Sandy triggers mass evacuations

People stand on the Ocean City Music Pier watching heavy
surf caused by Hurricane Sandy, on October 28, 2012 in
Ocean City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)

The ‘Frankenstorm’ Sandy is set to be unprecedented in size once it hits the US mainland Monday night. Tens of millions of people could be affected as the hybrid hurricane wreaks havoc from the East Coast to the Great Lakes on Halloween week.

­Increasingly dire warnings of powerful winds, power outages, widespread flooding, torrential downpours and even snow are being sounded in New York and other major population centers as Hurricane Sandy continues its trek up from the Caribbean.

President Obama signed an emergency declaration for the states of New York and Massachusetts on Sunday evening.

Forecasters said Sandy is set to transform into "super storm," as the tropical storm merges with a winter storm and a cold front, threatening up to 12 inches of rainfall in some areas and heavy snow inland.

"We're looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people," says Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Set to approach the coasts of the mid-Atlantic states by Monday, Sandy is likely to make landfall in the New York metropolitan area, home to about 22 million people, on Monday night.

The Category 1 storm’s sustained winds of 75 mile per hour are nothing extraordinary, but with hurricane force winds reaching out 105 miles from its center and weaker tropical storm-force winds extending 700 miles, forecasters are on edge about its potential impact.

The powerful gusts are expected to stretch as far inland as Pennsylvania.

“These winds are just amazing in terms of their high speed. I cannot recall ever seeing model forecasts of such an expansive areal wind field with values so high for so long a time. We are breaking new ground here,” a National Weather Service meteorologist in the agency’s Washington, DC/Baltimore office said on Saturday night.

"The size of this [Sandy] alone, affecting a heavily populated area, is going to be history making," said Jeff Masters, a hurricane specialist who writes a blog for Weather Underground.

This image obtained on October 28, 2012 from the University of Wisconsin'd Space Science and Engineering Center, shows Hurricane Sandy off the US East coast (AFP PHOTO / UW-SSEC)

Those far away from costal areas still have cause for alarm, as forecasters predict that inland flooding from the storm surge could pose a much greater risk than the winds.
 
Utilities officials have also warned that rain-saturated grounds could send trees plummeting into power lines, leaving residents at home without electricity for days.

Officials have urged residents to stock up on food, water and batteries, with grocery stores being swamped in anticipation of the potential power outages.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered a mandatory evacuation of Gotham's low-lying areas, home to some 375,000 people in total.

"If you don't evacuate, you are not only endangering your life, you are also endangering the lives of the first responders who are going in to rescue you," Bloomberg said at a news conference Sunday.
The city's school system will also be closed on Monday, the mayor continued.

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) had previously noted that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had directed "an orderly shutdown and suspension of all subway, bus and commuter railroad service" beginning at  7 pm Sunday.

Cuomo also said the decision to shut down the state's bridges and tunnels would be made on a case-by-case basis.

The city closed the subways before Hurricane Irene last year, with a Columbia University study predicting that an Irene surge just one foot higher could have shut down lower Manhattan.
Bloomberg's stark warning to residents regarding evacuation might have been spurred by fears that complacency had set in once Hurricane Irene turned out to be far weaker than initially predicted.
Irene, which struck the eastern US in August 2011, was responsible for 56 deaths and $15.6 billion dollars in damage, making it the fifth costliest storm in the country's history.

"The National Weather service believes there is increasing potential for high winds, coastal flooding and heavy rains across a broad area for a lengthy period of time Sunday through Tuesday," said Howard Glaser, director of New York State Operations.

Next door in New Jersey, hundreds of coastal residents started moving inland after Governor Chris Christie declared a state of emergency on Saturday. A dozen Atlantic City casinos were closed following the declaration, as the gambling hub is located on a barrier island. The town’s nearly 40,000 residents will be evacuated Sunday, city officials said.

Atlantic City is likely to flood, as National Weather Service Forecasters in New Jersey predicted “larger mainstream flooding for Tuesday through much of the week.”

A sign reads "Danger Ocean Closed" at the entrance to the beach, due to approaching Hurricane Sandy, on October 28, 2012 in Ocean City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)

A man surfs as Hurrican Sandy approaches on October 28, 2012 in Long Beach, New York (Mike Stobe / Getty Images / AFP)

As of 8:00 am EST, Hurricane Sandy was located roughly 395 miles south of New York City and is moving over the Atlantic parallel to the coast at a clip of 14 mph. It is expected to make a sharp westerly turn towards the coast on Sunday night.

Sandy is expected to transform into “a large and intense post-tropical cyclone as it turns toward the northwest," Environment Canada said early Sunday morning.

"It is possible that this transition could intensify the storm slightly further prior to moving inland somewhere along the New Jersey coast late Monday night or Tuesday morning," the agency continued.

"As many as 23 million Canadians stand to be affected by this storm. That's 70% of the country," meteorologist Mark Robinson at The Weather Network warned on Saturday.

Sandy has already been felt on the campaign trail, as President Barack Obama was forced to cancel campaign stops in Virginia on Monday and Colorado on Tuesday, while Republican contender Mitt Romney canceled all his scheduled events in Virginia and moved to the crucial swing state of Ohio instead, where he is currently neck and neck with the president.

Obama said he was working with state and local officials to make sure they had ample resources to prepare for the potential disaster, which could leave millions of Americans in its wake.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is readying water, meals, blankets and other resources at support bases, the White house announced on Saturday.

A sign announces "Danger Rip Current" as Hurricane Sandy approaches on October 28, 2012 in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)

A loader makes a sand barrier on the beach to help stop storm surge from approaching Hurricane Sandy on October 28, 2012 in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)

Carpenters Frank Jiacopello (L) and Ron Skinner put plywood over the doors at the Bally's Casino on the boardwalk as Hurricane Sandy approaches on October 28, 2012 in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)

Source: http://rt.com/usa/news/hurricane-sandy-us-storm-432/

Why Greg Smith left Goldman Sachs

Former VP's essay earned cheers, jeers

Christina Rexrode - Associated Press

Greg Smith wrote the essay that echoed across Wall Street like a thunderclap.

Smith was a vice president at Goldman Sachs until March. He announced his departure from the investment bank with a blistering essay inThe New York Times, accusing Goldman of routinely deceiving clients and relentlessly pursuing profit at the expense of morality.

And he struck a nerve. The essay, on the Op-Ed page of The Times, went viral in the financial world and beyond. Smith was praised for uncloaking corruption that was crying out to be addressed, and also derided as a disgruntled employee.

Goldman Sachs denies Smith’s allegations about deceiving clients. The bank says it took his concerns seriously, thoroughly investigated them, and found no evidence to support them.

Smith’s book, “Why I Left Goldman Sachs,” is being released Monday. It’s a window into a company that is notoriously tight-lipped, with stories about a swaggering place where interns arise for 5 a.m. meetings and business trips mean slapping down $150 for one person’s dinner.

What Smith hopes to do, he says, is educate people about how Wall Street works, and fuel a public conversation about what went wrong ethically, and how to fix it. The practices that caused the financial crisis, he says, were never really resolved; they’re just lying dormant.

Smith, 33, gave his first text interview to The Associated Press. Excerpts have been edited for clarity and length.

Illustration by Daniel Horowit - http://www.businessweek.com/

Question: Tell us about March 14, the day you left Goldman. You were working in the London office, and you say you had already cleaned out your desk and had been told the essay would go online at 7 a.m. your time.  

Answer: I get up at 6 a.m., and I type a very heartfelt email to nine people in Europe, including the CEO of Goldman Europe, and express in very personal terms why I’m leaving. I talk about exactly what I thought was wrong with the place, this obvious deceit of clients.

Within five minutes I get an email back from someone on the management committee in Europe who says, “I’m really surprised to hear this. I’m in London today. I’d love to meet with you.” I get two voice mails from two other people. And then at 6:57 or 6:58, the piece comes online. 

Question: What did the bank do? 

Answer: My work BlackBerry stayed on for about three more hours, and I started getting emails from clients who were saying, “We completely agree with you, we don’t trust Goldman Sachs, we do business with you guys with a ‘buyer beware’ attitude.” I started getting text messages from Goldman managing directors who were supportive as well. And Goldman reached out to me in formal fashion and said, “We’re sorry to hear you resigned; we’d like to air these concerns out.”  

Question: The bank denies everything you’ve charged about its ripping off clients.   

Answer: The thing that disappoints me most is that management is denying there’s a problem. Why not try to repair the trust instead? Clients are telling you they don’t trust you. There’s been an SEC fraud suit that was settled for half a billion dollars.

(The Securities and Exchange Commission accused the bank of selling investments to clients when the bank believed the investments were going to fail. Goldman paid $550 million. It remains the largest SEC penalty paid by a Wall Street firm.)   

I’m not some lone voice who thought there was a problem, a change from a client fiduciary model (doing what’s best for the client) to use-the-client-to-extract-wealth model. It’s a problem that many, many of my colleagues felt and that the public feels as well, borne out in SEC suits and congressional testimonies and clients saying publicly that they don’t trust us.

Question: Were you just disgruntled? Maybe you didn’t get the bonus or the promotion you wanted?

Answer:I was actually doing well in my career at Goldman. My bonus, I was told I outperformed my peers by 10 percent. I’m a competitive person, and my goal was to get promoted, and I was told by multiple partners that I was two years away from getting promoted. So it certainly was a goal of mine. And on the compensation side, I was earning a lot of money and had a very good living, so I was grateful for what I was earning.

Question: But you were at Goldman for almost 12 years, if you start with your summer internship in 2000. Weren’t there times when you should have stood up, should have said something about what you thought was morally wrong?

Answer:I actually made a conscious decision not to sell toxic deals to clients. I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, but I also saw the idea that if clients’ trust is being burned and they’re getting blown up, you’re not going to have a career for very long.

Now that does not mean I was not part of a system that was doing things that were unethical. In the book, I try to show some of the conflicts I noticed that gave me pause. For many years, I gave the firm the benefit of the doubt. It absolutely could have happened quicker. But one can always see things earlier and sooner.    

Question: OK, but isn’t the purpose of any capitalist company to make money? You certainly made a lot of money at Goldman.

Answer: Capitalism should be where everyone competes hard and makes money, in an environment where there is fair play and competitiveness. Right now the system is stacked against everyone else in favor of the banks.

It’s a little like a casino. A real casino is regulated and there are cameras everywhere and the casino cannot see your cards. With Wall Street today, the bank can see what every government, every pension fund, every hedge fund in the world is doing. They can effectively see everyone’s cards. Then, instead of facilitating the client’s will, they’re trying to get the client to facilitate their will.

Source:
http://www.floridatoday.com/viewart/20121028/BUSINESS/310280133/Why-Greg-Smith-left-Goldman-Sachs 

Poofness – The Drama of It All

Greetings and Salutations;


We’ve hit the end of the wait so, of course we had bankers throwing themselves on their swords from switzerland, to austria, even denver fed boys. Arrested and locked up. One of the problems these clowns have is, they just can’t grasp the technology of the matrix. It’s as alien as any et stuff, comparable to ‘sentient’ computers. Watch the movie again if you don’t get it. It’s more real than you imagine, that’s why these guys get busted so quick. The bad guys have also enlisted more sci fi stuff to try and get control of the white house…Haarp and that’s what’s charging up the east coast right now.

http://www.haarpstatus.com/status.html

These are desperate times for the bad guys so, they are subject to try anything, like a bunch of cornered rats. Now, what would you do if the sewer rats where trying to take over your house? In this case, they’ve been running it so, extermination is afoot. D con works or like my dad used to use, phosphorous spread on a piece of bread…keep some water close, it sucks the water right out of their body. And it leaves no stink of decaying flesh. They become ‘frisbees’, furry one’s. That’s why you don’t let children chew on match tops. In the art of war, you use all measures to win the war and preserve as much life as you can.

I’m sure you seen the blurbs out here about wall st bankers finally being taken down. Took a while but, the time has come and diarrhea is everywhere. Malox and pepto bismol is selling off the shelves. What’s with the boys jumping off of high places in london? Can’t handle not running stuff anymore. Can’t defeat. What happened to the ‘stiff upper lip’? Reminds me of Shaka Zulu, the movie. Get a little pride about yourselves. All is in order and there’s no reason for panic, just a changing of the guard. It’s Life and life is not a static state. That’s one thing you can bet on, no matter who’s in charge. That’s why all the freaking is going on, people losing their ever lovin’ minds, change is afoot and they are losing their sense of control, thus the abdominal issues.

Be prepared to be surprised and well off, steady as she goes. If you’re reading the internet to get a sense of things, I’ll just say a lot of smoke and mirrors are being fed to the talkers and ‘magic card tricks’ to keep folks off balance. Even Trump is about to have his sense of who he thinks he is, is about to be challenged in the money dept. I bet he doesn’t even see it coming, his ego is too big…goes along with his comb over hair. Freedom is coming shortly, now, be patient (as if you haven’t already) but, they’ve hit a deep drive center field. It’s a confirmed home run for all of humanity across the planet.

If you are looking for a consultation, email…. 2goforth@safe-mail.net

Love and Kisses,
Poofness