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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (561685)	4/19/2010 2:12:49 PM
From: Jim McMannis	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575598

Many are hidden. Plus federal income is the one people are most tooned in to.

To: SilentZ who wrote (561685)	4/19/2010 2:22:12 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1575598

Bring Spitzer Back Before It's Too Late By Gary Weiss 04/19/10 - 10:04 AM EDT 12 Comments Loading Until Friday, it seemed like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI, and/or the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, have all been AWOL. Then suddenly the SEC charges Goldman Sachs (GS) with conspiring with a short-seller to design a particularly loathsome bit of toxic-waste derivative, allegedly skinning investors alive in early 2008. But that doesn't change the fact that the people whose job it is to catch such things have appeared asleep at the wheel for far too long. Before the Goldman charges, the media had been oozing with disgusting revelations about Lehman Brothers systematically hiding assets. Now, let's pause for a moment to consider where these revelations have originated. It's a short list: the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy trustee and media articles following up on the trustee's staggering findings. The SEC seems to be playing catch-up. Back in 2008, when former Lehman CEO Dick Fuld appeared on Capitol Hill not to beg for forgiveness, as would have been appropriate, but to blame short sellers and Goldman, it was reasonable to expect that his scalp would have been dangling from a prosecutor's belt by now. Instead, he's faded away like one of Douglas MacArthur's old soldiers--while we have to read in the papers about how Lehman's asset-hiding repo scheme had been going on since 2001, and had been "materially misleading." Now, ask yourself this question: if Eliot Spitzer were somewhere in the vicinity--and by that, I don't mean guest-hosting at MSNBC -- do you really think that we'd be seeing our watchdogs in such a prolonged siesta? Would it have taken Spitzer two years to pounce on Goldman -- and would Fuld have been let off the hook completely? Hell no! When he was attorney general, Spitzer used to hound Wall Streeters on far less provocation, such as when he went after Dick Grasso for cashing $140 million pay checks. Today that seems about as serious as leaving a Porsche running unattended outside wherever Grasso's mansion is located nowadays. As the get-Grasso campaign demonstrated, Spitzer definitely pushed the envelope at times. He could be as vindictive as Bobby Kennedy when he was bearing down on Jimmy Hoffa. In other words, he's precisely the kind of mad dog you want to face off against creeps like Fuld and the hyper-compensated ex-SEC officials and lapsed prosecutors now providing legal defense for Wall Street bankers. And Spitzer is a smart cookie who was going after lending industry abuses as far back as 2003. read more............ thestreet.com