Destroying the Economy: Rigged Wall Street System of Daily Fraud

This post is a fusion of the two different media items of interest regarding the rigged Wall Street financial system with my own thoughts on the subject as former Smith Barney financial consultant.

I’ve included the new #KeiserReport on #RT with Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert, which addresses only a couple of the many rigged games Wall Street plays these days, thus sucking resources and life out of the US economy, as well as the economies of other countries. These two are: 1. “high-frequency trading” and 2. “insider trading.” While the latter is well-known, the former being a fraud may be a surprise for some. How does high-frequency trading work? Max Keiser gives us his primer. In the second half Max interviews Doug Casey about investing and its secrets. One of the interesting points is about Argentina, which again seems to be in a pre-default crisis.

I worked on Wall Street as financial consultant for Salomon Smith Barney (at the time, the investment banking arm of Citigroup), and I left because I was disgusted with its dirty innerworkings. However,  several years ago even I couldn’t imagine the degree to which the game would be rigged today… Max and Stacy like to talk about the JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, and his role in the rigging of the system, which will eventually lead to its collpse. When I worked at Smith Barney, Jamie Dimon was one of the top honchos at Citigroup, who was tipped for the next CEO’s position. However, he ubruptly left in the end of 1990s (was fired?) after a mystery row with Citi’s then CEO, Sandy Weill.

At the time we all scratched our heads. Later I realized that Sandy Weill, who was really quite a smart guy, and who created Citi the way it is today, had apparently realised that in Jamie Dimon he was dealing with a reckless and ruthless time bomb. If that’s what caused Dimon’s ousting back then, then Weill was correct, as this particular time bomb is presently busy crushing and burning everything in sight, from the US economy, to the value of the dollar, to the world banking system.

Too big to fail banks, naked shorts manipulating and grossly distorting the free market, and quadrillion dollars in derivatives that will have to be unwound at some point, causing financial system as we know it to collapse… Jamie Dimon was apparently a faithful student to Sandy Weill – one of the fathers of the too big to fail banks, but student by far surpassed his teacher.

The difference between Sandy and Jamie is that the former left on the high note and kept his respect in the industry, while the latter will most likely be leaving being accompanied by rotten tomatoes.

I recently came across this curious article about Sandy Weill’s present position on the “too big to fails”:  Former Citigroup CEO: It’s Time to Break Up The Big Banks.

It’s funny coming from a guy who was instrumental in creating these  same too big to fail banks, of which Citigroup is a prime example, and who was one of the architects of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in the 1990s. The conclusion I am making here is that his vision has cleared, his reason returned, and he started seeing the monster he, and others like him, created… But only after he became a private citizen. BUT, and this is very important to understand, those who are presently associated with Wall Street, the FED and the government, cannot and will not think this way because they are part of the system, and therefore, PART OF THE PROBLEM. And as we well know, one can’t solve the problem on the same level that created it. Translation: need new people, need new laws – and, you guessed it – need new banks and new bankers with different mentality!

The good news: it’s all coming out into the open. More and more revelations of the dirty underbelly of the crumbling system will be coming out in the next few years, and I intend to do my part in exposing it. Stay tuned to my new Youtube Channel – coming in the Spring 2014!

Meanhwile, stay in touch by subscribing to this blog and by following Lada Ray YT channel!

Watch Keiser Report: Staged Rumble in Wall Street Jungle (E559)

Sandy Weill’s interview posted by IBTimes.com: By Eleazar David Meléndez on July 25 2012

“Former Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) chief executive Sanford I. Weill, one of the most important players in the deregulatory push of the 1990s that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act and allowed the formation of too big to fail banks, said Wednesday on CNBC the nation’s financial supermarkets should be split up by government mandate.

What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not too big to fail, Sanford said during the first half of a two-hour appearance, essentially endorsing the rollback of banking regime changes he had pushed for in the late 1990s.

Weill went even further than suggesting the re-instatement of something akin to the Glass-Steagall Act, saying banks should operate with a leverage ratio of 12 times to 15 times of what they have on their balance sheets, clear market transactions on a nightly basis and eliminate anything but the most straightforward of accounting methods.

There should be no such thing as off balance sheet, he said.

Weill admitted the move would completely change the character of Wall Street, as the main institutions currently behind the American capital markets will just be bigger regional banks if his suggestions are adopted.

Responding to the somewhat shell-shocked response by CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin that the plan he was suggesting would run into massive political opposition push Weill replied, I’m saying push them in a different way. Push them apart and make it work.

Weill’s policy position is a stunning turnaround at a personal level. In his biography, Weill once boasted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall — and which he is suggesting should now be discarded — should have been called the Weill-Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

Weill said he had changed his position about the industry because the world changes.

The world we live in now is not the world we lived in 10 years ago, Weill said. Good things are simple.”

And more about the time bomb in question… “JPMorgan Chase handed chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon a scandalous 74% raise — even though the investment bank was forced to shell out some $20 billion in legal settlements for a flurry of fiascoes in 2013.” Link: JPMorgan Chase raises CEO Jamie Dimon’s pay to $20 million http://www.nydailynews.com