JPMorgan, Bank Of America Municipal Bond Scam May Be 'Tip of the Iceberg'
Jamie Dimon thinks about the culture of fraud he's built at Chase.
Bid-rigging always seems like such an easy game. At least until someone at Bank of America gets scared and starts talking to the Feds. Uh-oh...
We started coverage of this story yesterday...
More color is leaking, and it appears other large banks have been implicated in the fraud. Imagine that.
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Bank of America Corp.’s agreement to pay $137 million in restitution for taking part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy for municipal-investment contracts may soon be followed by more settlements to repay the scheme’s victims, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division head said.
- “Stay tuned to this channel -- I think you will see a lot more activity in the coming weeks and months,” Christine Varney, the antitrust chief, told reporters yesterday. “We are committed to getting restitution, full restitution, to all the municipalities that were victims of this scheme.”
Bank of America, which has assisted the government probe of the $2.8 trillion municipal-bond market since at least 2007 in return for leniency, has provided documents, e-mails and recordings of phone calls, according to court records of civil suits. In September, Douglas Lee Campbell, formerly employed by the bank’s municipal derivatives group, pleaded guilty to taking part in a conspiracy to pay state and local governments below- market rates on investments purchased with bond proceeds.
- Bank of America’s settlement is “likely the tip of the iceberg,”Andrew Gavil, a law professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., said in an e-mail. He said other conspirators may pay much higher penalties.
The government has identified more than a dozen firms, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS AG, and Societe Generale as unindicted co-conspirators in a criminal case brought by the Justice Department against a Los Angeles investment broker.
JPMorgan, UBS, a unit of General Electric Co. and a former subsidiary of Belgian bank Dexia SA have also reported in regulatory filings that they face civil suits by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The companies say they are cooperating with the government.
- “I had conversations prior to the bid with the broker about who the bidders were going to be and who was going to win or lose,” Campbell, the former Bank of America executive, told a federal judge when he pleaded guilty on Sept. 9, according to a court transcript.
Eight one-time bankers and financial advisers, including former employees of UBS, JPMorgan and Bank of America, have pleaded guilty in connection with the municipal bid-rigging probe.
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Dec 9, 2010 at 6:21 PM
Reader Comments (15)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5j1gAkfmVNtJvCCzei2w9cg_jSihg?docId=N0063231291917461745A
J.P. Morgan and the Great Silver Caper
Fears Mount on TSA Body Scanners
By PAM MARTENS
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens12092010.html
Ulysses S. Grant
And the Oscar for best supporting actress goes to Nancy Pelosi for her portrayal of the hated elitist woman who helped her Marxist Fuhrer dupe the left wing lunatics into believing that they were forced into agreeing with George Bush in the Marxist hostage taking docudrama aptly titled Obamanomics and the Devil from Kenya.
“And call to her
For her evil is come to an end
Her iniquity is forgiven
She hath received of the hand of the Lord double
For all her sins.”
Behold the lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world.
Pride- is excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
Envy- is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
Gluttony- is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
Lust- is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
Anger- is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.
Greed- is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.
How about Queen Nancy's wardrobe, give us a fashion report.
B.H. Obama
Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
Rene Descartes
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2010/12/muni-bonds-bab-build-america-obama-congress-tax-free-yields.html
http://blogs.barrons.com/focusonfunds/2010/12/07/muni-etfs-fall-as-build-america-bond-extension-left-out-of-tax-cuts-plan/?mod=rss_BOLBlog
No matter how bad, we eventually find out that "it's the tip of the iceberg!
It always gets worse and there is no way out other than to reboot the banks
malfunctioning computers to get rid of the 1/(s-i) positive feedback that makes
debts grow beyond the money to pay it with. Usury. Of course, these students
are too dumbed-down to go study the source of their financial woes. They don't
care to find out how it's being done to them, just that they make as much noise
until it stops. Ha. As if demanding it be done right will work when no one is claiming
to know how to run money chips right like LETS timebanks (who gets on
mainstream news, that is).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-03/massachusetts-green-bonds-mirror-world-bank-muni-credit.html
The tax-exempt general obligations are modeled after ones from the Washington-based development lender, which has sold more than $3 billion in green securities since 2008 to help combat climate change. Endowments and pension funds that are required to invest in environmental ventures may be attracted to the issue, state Treasurer Steven Grossman said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-26/carbon-markets-need-global-regulator-to-spur-climate-investment.html
United Nations envoys meeting in November should appoint a regulator to link carbon markets emerging from China to California and stimulate investment in emission-reduction projects, according to a carbon lobby group.
A global overseer would coordinate markets and boost private-sector confidence in efforts to cut greenhouse gas, said Anthony Hobley, president of the Climate Markets & Investment Association, whose members include JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Cargill Inc. More than 50 jurisdictions have set up or are considering carbon markets, UN and World Bank data show.