10 posts tagged “fraud”

Death Bonds: More Financial Engineering

Sep 7, 2009
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After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one.

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

Bank of America Discriminates Against Disabled People

Sep 3, 2009
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Financial Regulators Ignore Financial Crime

Jun 3, 2009
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The problems with naked short selling have been all over the mainstream media. But hardly a peep when clearing firms fail to deliver stock after a trade. It's analogous to selling a product on EBay and then failing to ship it to the buyer.

Here is the list of Threshold Securities from yesterday.

Please contact your Congressperson and the SEC. Tell then to start enforcing existing law (Section 17A of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act)!

How Much Has The Bailout & Stimulus Cost?

May 11, 2009
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$9.7 trillion!

That is what Bloomberg reports as of February 9, 2009 has been committed on behalf of the American taxpayer to bail out America's finance system and stimulate the economy. Only a small percentage of this money--$1.68 trillion--has been voted on by Congress. The vast majority of the spending, $8.1 trillion, has been off the Congressional books and made by the Federal Reserve and FDIC.

The amount is equal to almost two-thirds of the value of everything produced in the US during 2008.
It is enough to pay off 90% of the mortgages in the United States--$10.5 trillion would pay for all mortgages, according to the Federal Reserve.
It is $30,000 for every man, woman and child in America.
It would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world.

Insulate yourself from gangster government and the banksters now!

Congress Fosters ID Theft

Jan 22, 2009
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The burden is on the individual, who in most cases, is unaware of the breach. Why not shift the burden to those who process transactions? Breaches would still occur, but not at the levels shown in the clip below.

clipped from www.cnbc.com

On Tuesday, with all eyes on the inauguration, Heartland Payment Systems, a company that processes 100 million credit card transactions for 1750,000 merchants every month, announced that its computer system was hacked. Last year. Hundreds of millions of credit card numbers were potentially exposed.

This is not a new phenomenon. In 2007, the owner of TJ Maxx and Marshalls reported that 46 million credit and debt card numbers had been compromised. Recent statistics show data breaches increased nearly 50% last year from the previous year.

The scary part is that for consumers, there’s nothing we can do to ever fully protect ourselves. You can do everything right, John Ulzheimer says – from securing your information online to reading your monthly statements and keeping them in a safe place, and you can still be a victim of identity theft.

The Greatest Financial Crime in History Part II

Oct 23, 2008
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My earlier post detailed the problem. Now I find out the NYSE publishes a daily list of stocks that have naked short sellers. Of course they don't call it that, they use Orwellian double-speak and call them Threshold Securities. If you go through the list day by day, you'll probably find a stock you own!

Remember, this practice is illegal yet no one at the SEC or in our phony government seems to be enforcing the rule of law.

1/07/2009 Follow Up

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Proposals by a U.S. Treasury market industry group to allow participants to charge their counterparties for failure to deliver securities on time will improve market liquidity, a Treasury official said on Tuesday.

"The practical measures recommended by the TMPG should serve to minimize episodes of chronic fails, promote overall market liquidity, and enhance the operational integrity of the Treasury market place," said Karthik Ramanathan, acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets.

Ramanathan was responding to proposals announced on Monday by the Treasury Market Practices Group (TMPG) that market participants should from May 1 start gathering data on so-called "fails" where securities have not been provided by the scheduled settlement date.

TMPG was formed by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to address market manipulation.

The Proper Use of a Debit Card

Oct 22, 2008
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It is safer to make a debit card purchase using the “credit” option (no PIN used) if the card has a Visa or MasterCard logo on it. That’s because the credit card company’s zero liability protection policy applies to this transaction.

You get better protection, a thief doesn’t get your PIN and you’re not going to get money raided out of your bank account.

And as always, continue to support this infopreneur with whatever you can afford.

Consumer Alert: Credit/Debit Card Skimmers

Oct 12, 2008
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The Greatest Financial Crime in History

Aug 22, 2008
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The problems with naked short selling have been all over the mainstream media. But hardly a peep when clearing firms fail to deliver stock after a trade. It's analogous to selling a product on EBay and then failing to ship it to the buyer. This practice has skewed the market in the favor of the large hedge funds.

The podcast below is about an hour. Please contact your Congressperson and the SEC. Tell then to start enforcing existing law (Section 17A of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act)!