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> WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2011
> Obama Road Tests Hopey-Changey Big Lie 2.0: He’ll Reincarnate as
> Teddy Roosevelt if You Are Dumb Enough to be Fooled Twice
> Wow, I have to hand it to Obama’s spinmeisters. They’ve managed to
> find a way to resurrect his old hopium branding by calling it
> something completely different that still has many of the old
> associations.
> And we have a twofer in Obama’s launch of his new branding as True
> Son of Teddy Roosevelt. Never mind that Teddy, unlike Obama, was
> accomplished in many walks of life and had meaningful political
> accomplishments (such as reforming the corrupt New York City police
> department) before becoming President at the tender age of 42. The
> second element of this finesse is that Obama is using the
> Rooseveltian imagery to claim he will pass legislation to get tough
> on Big Finance miscreants. That posture, is of course meant to
> underscore the idea that you just can’t get the perps with the
> present, weak set of laws.
> Team Obama may have planned to wheel this new, improved image out
> later, with the timing accelerated by Judge Jed Rakoff’s decision
> against a proposed $285 million settlement between the SEC and
> Citigroup over a bum CDO in which Citi allegedly wielded
> considerable influence over its contents so it could bet against it.
> The SEC has gone on a full bore media offensive against Rakoff, with
> enforcement chief Robert Khuzami’s becoming uncharacteristically
> accessible to the media and also using scheduled speaking
> engagements to take issue with Rakoff’s ruling. And on top of
> Khuzami’s own efforts, the media has taken up some other dubious
> plants by the SEC. The biggest howler is a story in the Wall Street
> Journal earlier this week. Titled “Financial Crimes Bedevil
> Prosecutors,” not one of the sources for the story is a prosecutor!
> The centerpiece of the piece is one David Cardona, who just joined
> the SEC. Gee, you think he is going to do anything other than sell
> the party line? And what was his last job? At the FBI, investigating
> financial crimes, which by the way, resulted in pretty much no
> criminal cases, except, curiously, Taylor Bean. But doesn’t count,
> since the wronged parties were even bigger fish.
> Now why is Cardona’s opinion on these matters worthless? He was a
> cop, not an attorney. He is not a legal expert, and any opinion he
> has on the legal issues would come from the lawyers he worked with.
> And since neither the last nor the current DOJ has the slightest
> interest in getting tough on bank execs, you can be sure all he
> heard were persuasive rationalizations as to why all sorts of dirt
> he turned up just was not sufficient. It’s plenty easy to justify
> failure and timidity.
> And who were the other sources for this dictation masquerading as
> reporting? Well, there was a lone dissenting comment by Phil
> Angelides of the FCIC, noting that the FBI investigations of
> mortgage fraud were inadequate. That’s one paragraph out of 24.
> Khuzami is quoted, as well as a Department of Justice in-house flack.
> While we have the Feds insisting that it’s just too hard to go after
> miscreants in finance, this week we have Nevada Attorney General
> Catherine Cortez Masto continuing with her step-by-step, classic
> prosecution strategy of going after low level organization members
> to roll the higher ups. As we’ve indicated, she has targeted Lender
> Processing Services and is going after more mid level employees. Her
> effort has the potential to bust open bad conduct across all major
> servicers. LPS has among other things, allegedly engaged in escrow
> abuses and charging other impermissible fees, as well as foreclosure
> related abuses. LPS maintains that everything it did was with the
> full knowledge and approval of its clients, meaning the big servicers.
> And the reach of Masto’s effort, and the potential damage to the
> Administration’s credibility has just grown considerably. Yesterday,
> California attorney general Kamala Harris joined the Masto effort.
> This strongly suggests that Harris will also be seeking indictments.
> And remember, California, unlike Nevada, has a major bank
> headquartered in state (Wells) as well as other substantial banking
> operations (the legacy Countrywide units). For Harris, who is
> reputed to be, shall we say it politely, sensitive to the political
> winds, to make a shift like this, suggests a real change in the
> political climate is underway.
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