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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Is There Proof of a Financial Elite?

As you know, I have been writing for sometime about the possibility of a ruling financial elite - a hegemony (see Here, Here and Here).

I said, some may have said I was simply paranoid, but as I said, paranoid until proof shows the facts true.




In a story at Zero Hedge, Hank Paulson Tipped Off The Goldman-Led "Plunge Protection Team" About Fannie Bankruptcy 7 Weeks In Advance, Zero Hedge may have just come out with the smoking gun.
From
Zero Hedge:
Today, BusinessWeek's Michael Serrill and Jonathan Neumann have released a blockbuster report based on a FOIA response by the Treasury, which proves that in America rules are only for little people, that this country has been a banana republic for years, that Animal Farm was spot on, and gives excruciating detail of how Hank Paulson tipped off a select group of Goldman diaspora hedge fund managers about the eventual failure of Fannie and Freddie 7 weeks ahead of this information becoming public knowledge. The report basically is a summary of a meeting that took place at the offices of Eton Mindich's Eton Park headquarters on July 21, 2008, 7 days after his famous '“If you have a bazooka, and people know you have it, you're not likely to take it out," speech and 7 weeks before both GSEs effectively filed for bankruptcy and were put into conservatorship. Now if it only ended there it would have been fine - a case of potential criminal collusion between the government (although nothing specific against Paulson as he didn't actually trade: he just made sure his former Goldman colleagues made money), and the 0.00001% in the face of a few multi-billionaires who most certainly did trade on material non-public information sourced by Hank. Where it however gets worse is when one considers the actual role of one Eric Mindich in the hierarchy of the Asset Managers' committee of the President's Working Group on Capital Markets, better known of course as the PPT: a topic we discussed first back in September 2009 when we asked "What Is Goldman Alum Eric Mindich's Role As Chair Of The Asset Managers' Committee Of The President's Working Group?" Back then we did not get an answer. Luckily, courtesy of a fewanswered FOIA requests, some real investigative journalism, and not reporting for the sake of brown-nosing just so one can get soundbites for their next name dropping "blockbuster" and straight to HBO movie, we are starting to get the full picture of just how high in US government the Goldman Sachs controlled "crony capitalist" administration truly runs.***The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” -- a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets." The gathering comprised some of Wall Street's most storied investors. Mindich, a former chief strategy officer of New York- based Goldman Sachs, started Eton Park in 2004 with $3.5 billion, at the time one of the biggest hedge-fund launches ever. [Dinakar] Singh, a former head of Goldman's proprietary-trading desk, also began his fund in 2004, in partnership with private- equity firm Texas Pacific Group Ltd. Lone Pine's [Stephen] Mandel worked as a retail analyst at Goldman before joining Julian Robertson's Tiger Management LLC, one of the most successful hedge funds of the 1980s and 1990s. He started his own firm in 1997. [Daniel] Och was co-head of U.S. equity trading at Goldman before founding Och-Ziff in 1994. The publicly listed firm managed $28.9 billion in November. One other Goldman Sachs alumnus was at the meeting: Frank Brosens, founder and principal of Taconic Capital Advisors LP, who worked at Goldman as an arbitrageur and who was a protege of Robert Rubin, who went on to become Treasury secretary.
***
No mention?
What a shocker. Perhaps it may have to do with this:
The fund manager who described the meeting left after coffee and called his lawyer. The attorney's quick conclusion: Paulson's talk was material nonpublic information, and his client should immediately stop trading the shares of Washington- based Fannie and McLean, Virginia-based Freddie.The manager who described the Eton Park meeting says he also discussed it with an investigator from the FCIC. The discussion was confirmed by a former FCIC employee. 
***
It is safe to say that whatever the committee's true mission was, its stated one was an unmitigated failure. For reference purposes, the full committee consists of the following: Eric Mindich, Chair, Eton Park Capital Management Anne Casscells. AETOS Capital, LLC James S. Chanos, Kynikos Associates Anne Dinning, D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P. Jonathon S. Jacobson, Highfields Capital Management Marc Lasry, Avenue Capital Group Edward A. Mulé, Silver Point Capital Daniel S. Och, Och-Ziff Capital Management Daniel H. Stern, Reservoir Capital Group William Von Mueffling, Cantillon Capital Michael Vranos, Ellington Management Group LLC.
Pardon our hypocrisy, but virtually all of these funds (with the likely exception of Kynikos) would have gotten destroyed had Bernanke, the Chairman of the PWG and the President, decided not to intervene. Zero Hedge concludes that, while they have also been called paranoid "we have a sinking feeling we will have been proven absolutely spot on in our 'paranoid conspiracy theorism' all over again..."
It pays to have friends in high places!

The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin... Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again... Take this great power away from them, or if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit. 
“I ... place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared... And to preserve (our) independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. - Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Governor Plumer, July 21, 1816.”
Welcome to servitude!

1 comment:

  1. Without question, I agree there is a very top 1% ruling class who create a reality they want the masses to see. R.M.

    ReplyDelete