MF Global Looted Customer Accounts

MF Global Looted Customer Accounts

November 25th, 2011 

 

By Stephen Lendman

Wall Street's business model is grand theft. Jon Corzine was MF Global's CEO. Earlier he headed Goldman Sachs, America's premiere racketeering organization.

He also was one of legions of corrupt politicians as US senator and New Jersey governor. His extreme, longstanding criminality warrants putting him in prison for life. No restitution can reverse his harm. It's true also for many others like him.

Before its collapse, MF Global (MFG) faced a run on its holdings. On October 31, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

On November 19, Reuters said the firm "moved hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money from its US brokerage unit to Bank of New York Mellon Corp. in August, just months before filing for bankruptcy...."

In other words, MFG lawlessly looted customer accounts. It used client money for its own purposes to speculate, as well as cover debt obligations and losses. At issue is grand theft.

In fact, it's one of the most brazen acts in memory in a business notorious for outrageous criminality. What ever's gotten away with incentivizes Wall Street crooks to steal more. Why not! At most, they're slap on the wrist punishments mock rule of law justice.

On November 19 on the Kaiser Report, Barry Ritholtz commented on the big lie, hyper-leveraged banks, the MFG scandal, and congressional political whores, saying:

People responsible for creating these problems shift blame to others. Facts say otherwise. Wall Street speculators take big risks. They use hyper-leverage that's only effective when it works.

"Their models were wildly optimistic. Banking is supposed to be very boring." Decisions are supposed to be made about who's credit worthy and who isn't. Instead, reckless speculation replaced investing and sound lending policies.

Wall Street's ideology is bankrupt, "and it's causing global damage to the economy. For investment banks, the five biggest houses got waivers on leverage rules."

SEC collaborators rigged the system for them. These banks also "happen to be the five biggest donors to Congress," or among the largest. Over time, successful lobbying removed everything affecting profits, no matter the risk. The SEC, Fed, FDIC and CME rigged the system for them.

Brazen fraud became standard practice. Criminals deserving prison keep stealing. The dirty game involves grabbing "whatever the hell you want and run for the hills. No one will prosecute you."

"MF Global is another order of magnitude. If anyone is going to jail over this whole period, it has to be" their top officials. Don't bet on it, especially a power broker like Corzine.

He's directly responsible for stealing $1.2 billion in client funds. He looted them brazenly. According to Bloomberg:

"Examiners from CME Group Inc., the world's largest futures exchange, found unexplained wire transfers" and $1.2 billion missing "during the weekend the failing broker was talking with possible buyers, a person briefed on the matter said."

Multiple investigations began, including by Justice Department lawyers. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) were responsible for overseeing MFG. They knew what went on but did nothing.

Huffington Post writer Daniel Dicker said the Koch Brothers were tipped off in time to get out safely. Others weren't as lucky.

MFG is America's eighth largest bankruptcy, the first major one the Eurozone crisis caused. Expect more ahead.

Practices cratering economies in 2008 continue. Nations teeter on bankruptcy. Corzine bet heavily that Spanish and Italian debt wouldn't collapse.

Using 40 to 1 leverage, he bet massively the wrong way. His second quarter $190 million loss drove investors away. Those remaining lost everything. Corzine and top executives pocketed millions.

In 1999, he was worth an estimated $400 million when he left Goldman Sachs. Perhaps its double that now, including funds looted from MFG. We may know more later on.

From 1994 - 1994, Corzine headed Goldman Sachs during the time banking became deregulated. Carter began it late in his tenure. Reagan did much more. Clinton completed unfinished business. James Petras calls the 1990s "the golden age of pillage," the decade of anything goes.

It persists in the new millennium because political Washington and regulators look the other way, profiting handsomely by doing it. Everyone feathers nests belonging to others. Self-sustaining corruption continues. Only little people and unknowing investors get scammed. Power brokers make out like bandits.

After losing his 2009 gubernatorial reelection bid, government regulators welcomed Corzine back on Wall Street. New York Fed president William Dudley (a fellow Goldman alumnus) made MFG a "primary dealer." Despite its size and a former trading scandal $10 million fine, it became one of a handful of firms marketing US Treasuries.

At the behest of Corzine and other power brokers, CFTC head Gary Gensler suspended implementation of new rules imposing limits on broker-dealer use of client funds, especially for foreign sovereign debt. In other words, they were freed to commit grand theft. MFG took full advantage.

Wall Street Journal Money & Investing editor Francesco Guerrera wrote about "Three Lessons From the Collapse." He quoted University of San Diego Professor Frank Partnoy, saying:

MFG's "failure illustrates how much financial markets are about trust and confidence. Once you lose those, you are done."

Guerrera's three lessons include:

* closing accounting loopholes and strengthening oversight;
* establishing lead regulators for nonbank financial firms; and
* writing new rules for "nonsystemic" firms as well as "too big to fail" ones.

Dodd-Frank financial reform left a broken system in place. The entire law needs rewriting. Better still, scrap it and start over. Stiff regulations with teeth are needed, including mandatory prosecution of crooks, especially those highest up to let others know invulnerability days are over.

When culpable CEO heads roll, it'll be a good start. However, game-changer differences won't happen until all high level Wall Street swindlers wear numbered striped suits.

Trends forecaster Gerald Celente lost $100,000 in an MF Global gold futures account. He told Russia

Today:

"I really got burned. I got a call," saying "I needed to have a margin call. (W)hat are you talking about," he asked? "I've got a ton of money in my account. They responded, oh no you don't. That money's with a trustee now."

His advice for everyone holding gold ETFs is cash out because "they are going to steal all our money." Angry about MF Global's theft, he called Corzine a "cheap SOB." He's that and much more.

"How come he's not in Jail," railed Celente. It's "because he's one of the white shoe boys from the Goldman Sachs crowd." He added that "the merger of state and corporate power" brought "fascism" to America.

The entire system's too corrupted to fix. Only tearing it down and starting over can work. It's high time the process started. Hopefully, OWS protests began it.

Rumor has it that JPMorgan Chase and perhaps other Wall Street banks are involved. Judge Martin Glenn is handling MFG's bankruptcy. HL Camp, Proprietor of HL Camp Futures, wrote him as follows:

"Our firm is a registered introducing broker with the CFTC. I have written to you previously on behalf of our customers."

"Here is a comment this morning from one of our former customers in Europe," saying:

"I will never do business in the United States of America again."

According to Camp, "(t)he system is to protect futures accounts is broken. And the whole world knows it."

"What started as a failure of one FCM (Futures Commission Merchant) that quickly gave a black eye to the CFTC and especially the CME has now made our United States of America a very bad joke to commodity futures traders all over the world."

"The problem this morning is not just excess margin equity."

"The problem this morning is the reputation of the United States of America."

"Thank you very much for your time and for listening."

Forbes staff writer Robert Lenzner said traders and clients didn't know about MFG's unscrupulousness.

He said a CFTC loophole lets firms speculate with segregated client accounts. Few know it without carefully reading contract fine print or getting sound legal advice.

Lenzner's lesson one is CFTC Rule 1.29 must be scraped. It lets futures commission merchants gamble with client funds.

Lesson two is knowing personal funds aren't safe in futures metals, energy, precious metals, or agricultural futures accounts.

Lesson three is resolving which regulator oversees firms like MFG - the CFTC or CME. One should have primary responsibility and be held accountable for fraud.

Lenzner added that Justice Department attorneys are determining whether federal crimes occurred. He expects a lengthy process because MFG's books "are in a state of chaos," deliberately no doubt.

Whether anyone ends up indicted isn't sure. At most perhaps, expect lower level patsies hung out to dry to let crime bosses like Corzine stay free to steal more. It's how it always works.

-###-

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

This Is The Report That Caused Banks To Tank today

Bank stocks plummeted after Fitch Ratings released a statement about U.S. bank exposure to Europe.
Goldman sachs fell fell $4.21, or 4.16%, to close at $95.60 a share.
JPMorgan dropped 3.76%.
Bank of America fell 3.75%,.
Morgan Stanely tumbled $1.27, or 7.97%.
Here's the key part of the report:

U.S. banks have manageable direct exposures to the stressed European markets (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain), but further contagion poses a serious risk, according to a Fitch Ratings report.

Fitch believes that unless the Eurozone debt crisis is resolved in a timely and orderly manner, the broad credit outlook for the U.S. banking industry could worsen. Fitch’s current outlook for the industry is stable, reflecting improved fundamentals at most banks combined with ratings lower than at pre-crisis levels. However, risks of a negative shock are rising and could alter this outlook.

U.S. banks have reduced direct exposure to stressed European markets considerably over the past year in Fitch’s view. Direct exposures appear manageable in the context of banks’ capital positions and diverse earnings streams. Public disclosure of direct exposures has generally improved recently but varies from bank to bank

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bank-stocks-hammered-after-fitch-report-2011-11?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+businessinsider+(Business+Insider)#ixzz1duLFyfpC

Bank Transfer: Successful

Bank Transfer: Successful

by Mark Engler

This past Saturday was “Bank Transfer Day,” a day of action in which thousands of people moved their money from “too big to fail” banking titans into credit unions and smaller regional banks. While it’s hard to tell precisely how many people followed through on their threats to close accounts on Saturday itself, over the past month credit unions have added 650,000 new members (as opposed to 80,000 in a regular month), resulting in more than $4.5 billion in new deposits.
As Sarah Jaffe at Alternet noted, ABC News aired a remarkable report calling the exodus of customers a “bank revolt” and stating, “as of today, 1 million consumers are hurling a lightning-bolt warning at the big banks, moving their money out in protest.”
Now, a lot of the impact of closing accounts might have been symbolic, and $4.5 billion might not be all that much money relative to the size of the banking system as a whole. But, as Salon’s Andrew Leonard writes, riffing on an old joke, “$4.5 billion here, $4.5 billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money, even for JPMorgan-Chase.”
All in all, Bank Transfer Day was a pretty powerful expression of collective disgust by Americans fed up with the goliath banks. Right?
Well, not everyone agrees. Leave it to the New Republic to publish a piece of smug nay-saying in which the writer shows himself to be far smarter than all those who had the nerve to take collective action.
In this case, Simon van Zuylen-Wood, a reporter-researcher for the magazine, penned an article entitled, “How Bank Transfer Day Will Help the Banks It’s Trying to Hurt.” He argued:

[I]f the executives at the country’s biggest banks have circled Bank Transfer Day on their calendars, it’s probably not out of anxiety. Whatever the intentions of its organizers, Bank Transfer Day may end helping the very one percenters they mean to punish.

At the root of the problem is that many Bank Transfer Day enthusiasts have overestimated their value to the banks they patronize: Ultimately, not all bank customers are made equal....According to Jennifer Tescher, President and CEO of the consultancy Center for Financial Services Information, banks typically earn at about 80 percent of their deposit revenue from the top 20 percent of their customers.

In his post, van Zuylen-Wood goes on to explain that maintaining small checking accounts can actually cost big banks more money than the accounts generate in profits. And, owing to the passage of the Dodd-Frank bill last year, banks are limited in the amount they can charge in overdraft or “swipe fees” that they previously used to make small customers worthwhile for them. He continues:

Bank of America’s early October proposal to supplement its lost “swipe fee” revenue using a five dollar per month charge to holders of debit cards should probably be understood in that context. It was designed to be a win-win proposition for the bank: either it earned $60 per year from each debit card customer with a checking count under $20,000...or it would drive unprofitable customers away from the bank entirely (or at least toward Bank of America credit cards, which have become more profitable than debit cards), to the benefit of the bank’s bottom line.

If the article were meant merely as an analysis of the business of handling small checking accounts, I would say that it makes some perfectly fair points. But it’s framed as something more than that—as a piece that analyzes the efficacy of a political action and that argues that those taking the action are naive. In that capacity, it is model of crap contrarianism. If I had a dollar for every self-satisfied commentary written (even by ostensibly sympathetic liberals) about protests being misguided and ineffective, I’d no doubt be able to join the wealthy elite that the #Occupy movement has been targeting. And I expect that I would earn about 80 percent of my deposit revenue from the New Republic.
The fact of the matter is that, if the big banks wanted to expel customers, they could easily do so. (Why not a $20 monthly fee for debit card use?) But far from receiving an eager farewell at bank branches eager to shed small-time depositors, many of those who have descended upon institutions such as Citibank demanding to close their accounts report encountering bank managers who tried to convince them to change their minds.
Of course, the “move your money” effort is not only a matter of individuals’ decisions about their personal finances. In the context of larger Occupy Wall Street mobilizations, many people were coupling the closing of accounts with demands for political change. That’s why others who have swarmed in as part of group actions have encountered police threatening (or even conducting) arrests.
Overall, Bank Transfer Day was part of a wave of public outrage, defiance, and protest that is doing significant damage to the banks’ reputations—which they evidently value. As van Zuylen-Wood himself notes:

Ultimately, the Bank of America and its competitors chose not to go ahead with the five dollar charge, deciding that the hit to their PR wasn’t worth the potential gains to their bottom line. As Diane Casey-Landry, a former CEO of the American Bankers Association told me, the public outcry against BoA was enough of a “reputational kick in the chin” that its top competitors—Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Chase—abandoned their proposed debit fees as well.

What is a day of action in which thousands close their accounts and denounce the banks as greedy bastards if not another PR “kick in the chin”?
In his article, van Zuylen-Wood uses selective citation of a source to suggest that credit unions might not want the influx of new members:

Worse yet, by transferring their money to credit unions, Bank Transfer Day participants may also be harming the very financial institutions they mean to help. These not-for-profit banking co-ops are governed by their depositors and are generally more customer-friendly than banks—although too big a customer base could threaten that. Indeed, a little more than a week ago, in anticipation of Bank Transfer Day, the National Credit Union Administration sent out a memo advising its federal regulators that a large influx of new customers could lead to long-term problems down the road, reminding them that credit unions are penalized if their retained earnings fall short of seven percent of their total assets. In other words, by inundating credit unions with a flood of capital they likely cannot profitably invest, the Bank Transfer Day participants may be pushing those institutions to abandon the perks that make them attractive, like free checking accounts.

Bank Transfer Day gets one basic thing right: Checking account holders have a right to take their business wherever they wish. What they forget, however, is that not everyone will want the business they have to offer.

Except that, the credit unions do want the new business—and they’ve been very vocal about that fact. The same source that van Zuylen-Wood cites, the National Credit Union Association, sent out a press release last week lauding Bank Transfer Day and celebrating the influx of new members. It includes exuberant quotes from the organization’s president, Bill Cheney:

“Many credit unions across the nation...are making special efforts to tap the surging interest in credit unions,” said Cheney. “They are conducting advertising campaigns both individually and cooperatively with others, sending ‘switch kits’ to existing members to share with family members or other prospective members, beefing up websites, extending hours and staffing for Bank Transfer Day, performing e-mail blasts to members, maximizing social media campaigns, putting up banners in lobbies or on their buildings, offering bonuses to members who bring in new members, and giving bonuses to members as well,” Cheney said.

The New York Daily News quoted another credit union executive basically saying the exact opposite of what van Zuylen-Wood wants to convey:

“These are very good times for credit unions,” said Kirk Kordeleski, CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union, one of Long Island’s largest with 24 branches and $4.4 billion in assets. “All this conversation about fees has led to a lot of opportunity for us,” said Kordeleski, who saw a 60% hike in new members in October, to 1550 from 925.

In general, “vote with your dollars” consumer actions are not my preferred model of organizing. Moreover, I have no illusions that the amount of money transferred by small account-holders, in itself, is going to cripple the banking giants. But my answer to people who raise that point is the same as my response to people who think that moving your money to a credit union is merely a lifestyle decision with no real political impact. The energy of something like Bank Transfer Day only feeds into other activist efforts and broadens the constituency supporting regulation of the financial sector. This weekend, activists got thousands of people to move their money. Next week they can find a new way to stick it to the big banks.

© 2011 Dissent

Mark Engler is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via the website http://www.DemocracyUprising.com

Occupy Wall St. to a Bank in the Public Interest: M Hudson/The Real News

Michael Hudson: A public option in banking will be a structural answer to the power of finance

The Fed's $16 Trillion Bailouts Under-reported

Image by telmo32 via Flickr

The media’s inscrutable brush-off of the Government Accounting Office’s recently released audit of the Federal Reserve has raised many questions about the Fed’s goings-on since the financial crisis began in 2008.

The audit of the Fed’s emergency lending programs was scarcely reported by mainstream media – albeit the results are undoubtedly newsworthy.  It is the first audit of the Fed in United States history since its beginnings in 1913.  The findings verify that over $16 trillion was allocated to corporations and banks internationally, purportedly for “financial assistance” during and after the 2008 fiscal crisis.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) amended the Wall Street Reform law to audit the Fed, pushing the GAO to step in and take a look around.  Upon hearing the announcement that the first-ever audit would take place in July, the media was bowled over and nearly every broadcast network and newspaper covered the story.  However, the audit’s findings were almost completely overlooked, even with a number as high as $16 trillion staring all of us in the face.

Sanders press release, dated July 21st, stated:

“No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president.”

The report serves as a clear testimony of the Fed’s emergency action plan to bailout foreign corporations and banks in a time of crisis, but the GAO reportdoes not berate the Fed; rather, it provides a lucid explanation of where the money was allocated and why.

According to The Washington Post, “The GAO report did not condemn the Fed’s actions, it simply illuminated them.  The GAO also recommended that the Fed make clearer and more rigorous its policies for hiring independent contractors to manage investment programs.”

A wider investigation of the Fed is due on October 18th, which will provide more thorough details.   The GAO report said that the Fed issued “conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.”  The audit will inspect the “conflicts of interest” and the inner-workings of the Fed’s emergency-lending programs.

For Sanders, one thing is clear: “The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street.”

+ Comment now

RELATED POSTS:

• Obama and the Establishment Have Tried Everything But Reaganomics

http://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the-feds-16-trillion-bailouts-under-reported/

Interest in Principles? Can Banks Aspire to Greatness?

Arjan Schütte, Contributor

Investing in innovative fintech companies serving the underbanked

After hundreds of billions of bailout dollars and a litany of ensuing debacles, our banks are not the pride of the nation.  Bankers are more maligned than used-car salesmen, it seems.  Bank regulators have been completely overhauled and the aftermath of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau won’t be written for quite a while.  Trust in banks is low.  Only one banker has ever received the President’s highest honor, the Medal of Freedom.  What’s wrong with this picture?

Of all sectors, you’d think the conservative, risk-averse pillars of our economy – banks – would be models of trust, examples of citizenship, and pantheons of our communities.

But that’s not all: Banks don’t have a monopoly on managing consumers’ money.  Alternative Financial Services providers, including finance companies, check cashers, payday lenders and payments companies also serve most Americans in one form or another.  They, too, are not often listed among our heros (zero Medals of Freedom here).

We all rightfully complain about consumers’ short sightedness, addiction to instant gratification and demand for excessive credit.  The financial services industry is up in arms about the CARD Act, Dodd-Frank, Durbin, CFPB and other federal initiatives to limit the industry’s opportunism.

A small nonprofit in Chicago is trying to change this:  The Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI, with whom I am affiliated) is trying to set a standard of excellence in collaboration with financial services providers.  It’s no small feat, but they are working with some of the largest financial services companies in the country, along with some of the most innovative startups.

This isn’t about corporate social responsibility, or philanthropy, or the Community Reinvestment Act (the rules that force banks to contribute to the underserved in their footprint).  These standards are about self-interest.  If the industry doesn’t change course, it will further lose consumer trust and risk additional regulation.  Neither helps profits.

CFSI is calling this effort the Compass Principles (www.compassprinciples.com).  It’s pretty straightforward, with just four leading principles:

• Embrace Inclusion
• Build Trust
• Promote Success
• Create Opportunity

Each has specific examples, and the idea is to set a high bar that is aspirational to the industry, but not out of reach.  The principles are broad, but have precise ways you can succeed or fail to do so.  They’re great for consumers, but free-market based and great for business, too.

Our consumer finance industry has plenty to be careful and shy about.  But I hope they will chose to be bold about aspiring to something better.  It’s good for business, America and Americans.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/taleb1/English

The Great Bank Robbery

Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Spitznagel

2011-09-02

The Great Bank Robbery

NEW YORK – For the American economy – and for many other developed economies – the elephant in the room is the amount of money paid to bankers over the last five years. For banks that have filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the sum stands at an astounding $2.2 trillion. Extrapolating over the coming decade, the numbers would approach $5 trillion, an amount vastly larger than what both President Barack Obama’s administration and his Republican opponents seem willing to cut from further government deficits.

That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools, and other long-term projects, but is directly transferred from the American economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees. Such transfers represent as cunning a tax on everyone else as one can imagine. It feels quite iniquitous that bankers, having helped cause today’s financial and economic troubles, are the only class that is not suffering from them – and in many cases are actually benefiting.

Mainstream megabanks are puzzling in many respects. It is (now) no secret that they have operated so far as large sophisticated compensation schemes, masking probabilities of low-risk, high-impact “Black Swan” events and benefiting from the free backstop of implicit public guarantees. Excessive leverage, rather than skills, can be seen as the source of their resulting profits, which then flow disproportionately to employees, and of their sometimes-massive losses, which are borne by shareholders and taxpayers.

In other words, banks take risks, get paid for the upside, and then transfer the downside to shareholders, taxpayers, and even retirees. In order to rescue the banking system, the Federal Reserve, for example, put interest rates at artificially low levels; as was disclosed recently, it also has provided secret loans of $1.2 trillion to banks. The main effect so far has been to help bankers generate bonuses (rather than attract borrowers) by hiding exposures.

Taxpayers end up paying for these exposures, as do retirees and others who rely on returns from their savings. Moreover, low-interest-rate policies transfer inflation risk to all savers – and to future generations. Perhaps the greatest insult to taxpayers, then, is that bankers’ compensation last year was back at its pre-crisis level.

Of course, before being bailed out by governments, banks had never made any return in their history, assuming that their assets are properly marked to market. Nor should they produce any return in the long run, as their business model remains identical to what it was before, with only cosmetic modifications concerning trading risks.

So the facts are clear. But, as individual taxpayers, we are helpless, because we do not control outcomes, owing to the concerted efforts of lobbyists, or, worse, economic policymakers. Our subsidizing of bank managers and executives is completely involuntary.

But the puzzle represents an even bigger elephant. Why does any investment manager buy the stocks of banks that pay out very large portions of their earnings to their employees?

The promise of replicating past returns cannot be the reason, given the inadequacy of those returns. In fact, filtering out stocks in accordance with payouts would have lowered the draw-downs on investment in the financial sector by well over half over the past 20 years, with no loss in returns.

Why do portfolio and pension-fund managers hope to receive impunity from their investors? Isn’t it obvious to investors that they are voluntarily transferring their clients’ funds to the pockets of bankers? Aren’t fund managers violating both fiduciary responsibilities and moral rules? Are they missing the only opportunity we have to discipline the banks and force them to compete for responsible risk-taking?

It is hard to understand why the market mechanism does not eliminate such questions. A well-functioning market would produce outcomes that favor banks with the right exposures, the right compensation schemes, the right risk-sharing, and therefore the right corporate governance.

One may wonder: If investment managers and their clients don’t receive high returns on bank stocks, as they would if they were profiting from bankers’ externalization of risk onto taxpayers, why do they hold them at all?  The answer is the so-called “beta”: banks represent a large share of the S&P 500, and managers need to be invested in them.

We don’t believe that regulation is a panacea for this state of affairs. The largest, most sophisticated banks have become expert at remaining one step ahead of regulators – constantly creating complex financial products and derivatives that skirt the letter of  the rules. In these circumstances, more complicated regulations merely mean more billable hours for lawyers, more income for regulators switching sides, and more profits for derivatives traders.

Investment managers have a moral and professional responsibility to play their role in bringing some discipline into the banking system. Their first step should be to separate banks according to their compensation criteria.

Investors have used ethical grounds in the past – excluding, say, tobacco companies or corporations abetting apartheid in South Africa – and have been successful in generating pressure on the underlying stocks. Investing in banks constitutes a double breach – ethical and professional. Investors, and the rest of us, would be much better off if these funds flowed to more productive companies, perhaps with an amount equivalent to what would be transferred to bankers’ bonuses redirected to well-managed charities.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University and the author of The Black Swan. Mark Spitznagel is a hedge-fund manager. The authors own positions that profit if bank stocks decline in value.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org

You might also like to read more from Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Spitznagel or return to our home page.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Gallup Polls Show Years of Stagnation in Job Creation, Unemployment, Consumer Spending; Bank Stocks Signal Financial Recovery is Over

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Gallup Polls Show Years of Stagnation in Job Creation, Unemployment, Consumer Spending; Bank Stocks Signal Financial Recovery is Over

Recent Gallup polls show that Three Years After Crisis, Little Sign of Economic Relief in U.S.

1. There has been no improvement in underemployment (counting part-time workers) from a year ago
2. Job creation has been in a narrow range since October 2010
3. Consumer spending has been stagnant since January 2009
4. Economic confidence is near the lows seen at the depth of the depression

click on any chart for sharper image

Economic Confidence: Back at Recessionary Levels

Americans' confidence in the U.S. economy is now at its lowest point since February 2009 -- near the conclusion of the recession that officially ended in June 2009. Gallup's Economic Confidence Index was -52 in August, above its financial crisis lows, but much lower than the -21 to -35 range measured from June 2009 to June 2011.

Americans' current level of economic confidence -- which represents their views on the current state and future direction of the nation's economy -- is decidedly negative. Seventy-seven percent said the economy was getting worse in August, the highest -- by far -- since February 2009, the month in which Congress passed a $787 billion stimulus bill in hopes of lifting the U.S. economy out the depths of the recession.

Job Creation: Improved From 2009-2010 Lows, but Far From Early 2008 Levels

The +13 Job Creation Index for August falls into the +10 to +15 range Gallup has measured since October 2010. The good news is that for nearly a year, Gallup has found consistently higher rates of net new job creation (the difference between hiring and letting go) than it did for the first two years after the global economic collapse. The not-so-good news is that the current rate of job creation is still just half of the +26 score Gallup found when it began tracking this metric in January 2008, when the nation was already technically in a recession.

Currently, 32% of workers say their employer is hiring and 19% say their employer is letting workers go, compared with 40% and 14%, respectively, in January 2008.

Underemployment and Employment: Stuck at Year-Ago Levels

Gallup found 18.5% of workers underemployed, including 9.1% unemployed, in August 2011. These figures are based on Gallup's measure of employment, which is not seasonally adjusted. Both of the current figures are statistically similar to what they were a year ago, meaning the employment situation in the U.S. is no better now than it was at that time.

Consumer Spending: Nowhere Near 2008 Levels

Americans' spending has remained essentially stagnant since it fell dramatically in January 2009. Spending in stores, restaurants, gas stations, and online has averaged $66 per day so far in 2011 -- similar to the $65 is 2010 and $64 in 2009. This compares with an average of $96 per day in 2008. That year, Americans' daily spending ranged from $81 to $114 per day in monthly averages. Since 2009, monthly spending averages have ranged between $58 and $75.

No Real Recovery

Clearly there has been no real recovery from the point of view of consumers. There was a financial recovery that is now crumbling, led by bank stocks.

BAC Bank of America



$BKX Banking Index



C Citigroup



Banks Stock fueled the decline in 2008 and have done so this year as well.

There was never a recovery in the real economy and now bank stocks signal the financial recovery is over as well.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com