Post by hundredtoone on Jul 28, 2008 8:52:56 GMT -5
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This paper describes, exposes and then systematically demolishes the credibility and relevance of the so-called ‘Paulson’ proposals, a.k.a. the mish-mash of convoluted notions brought forth by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets at the end of March 2008.
In passing, it questions the basis upon which expectations of repayment by some US participants in ‘humanitarian’, Omega and other often unregistered, and therefore usually (in the United States) illegal, Ponzi schemes are predicated, shows why these schemes are illegal by comparing them to what the US securities and other relevant US legislation requires, and presents inexpensive and constructive proposals to replace ‘Paulson’s’ dog’s dinner – which, incidentally, would call for the establishment of no less than SEVEN expensive new US bureaucratic agencies, whereas the Plan, devised by the securities expert Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., which is advanced here, would require just ONE new agency instead. Further, Mr Cottrell's scheme could be up and running within a few months, whereas the 'Paulson' dog's dinner is phased over an indeterminate timeframe.
OFFICIAL PROPOSALS ARE MISCHIEVOUS
On investigating this matter, we were quite surprised at the ease with which the Working Group’s spurious obfuscation operation could be shown to be a glaringly false prospectus that has been jumbled together in order to disguise what can only be described as its underlying mischievous intent. For these proposals dishonestly seek to convey an impression of regulatory reform (in response to the chaos in the financial markets which has been brought about exclusively by the serial criminality of holders of high office) – whereas their actual purpose is to mask the objective of precluding meaningful reform in favour of cosmetic adjustments consistent with an even more permissive and crime-friendly environment than exists today.
Indeed a pattern of nefarious US official behaviour has become clear since the deregulation of the Savings and Loan Associations in 1982. It can be summarised as follows. Far from entertaining any clear intention of curbing excesses and seeking to contain financial sector crises and instability brought about by organised financial fraud condoned at the highest levels of American power, the participating US authorities typically allow the prevailing crisis of confidence and its real economic consequences to escalate until, as happened at the end of the 1980s with the messy ‘responses’ developed by Congress to the ‘hollowing out’ (enronisation) of the thrifts, the problems become so huge that radical departures are agreed upon ‘under duress’ which, in turn, provide the intended basis for a proliferation of fraudulent financial operations ‘by other means’.
FOLDING THE CRIMINALISTS' CRISIS INTO A 'UNIVERSAL SOLUTION'
This is exactly what these cynical ‘Paulson’ proposals are predicated to achieve. The underlying motive here is to ‘fold’ the contemporary financial and economic crisis into a ‘ universal solution’ which will, if this Treasury has its way, give the arch-planners of fraudulent finance practices, carte blanche to proliferate their scams and aberrations for many years to come.
Accordingly, the fraudulent prospectus disgorged by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets needs to be consigned forthwith to the trash can. This report will help to achieve that.
As indicated, we present a simple, straightforward, constructive, inexpensive and quickly and easily implemented alternative Plan to replace it. Its author, Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., one of the United States’ foremost securities markets experts, argues that no further attention should be paid to the dishonest and discredited ‘Paulson’ proposals, which have in any case more or less run into the sand; and that the straightforward measures advocated below should be adopted, instead.
They would immediately inject the necessary discipline into the marketplace, precluding scope for securities scamming models to which the notorious American kleptocracy has become accustomed.
This paper is supplemented by an extensive Glossary of securities environment terms, for the benefit of the lay reader. The Editor has incorporated several appropriate new terms in the list.
SELF-SERVING PLAN TO ‘CLEAN UP’ MESS THE CRIMINALISTS THEMSELVES CREATED
Among the most distasteful characteristics of the world-class financial criminals exposed through our reports is their habit of advising the Rest of Us how the distasteful consequences of their own glaring criminality are to be overcome. The flip-side of the accomplished US financial criminalist is typically an unimpressive ‘angel of light’, who preaches the virtues of sound finance, in order to mask the fact of his endless reprobate financial misbehaviour.
Thus, having presided over and orchestrated the stealing of colossal sums of other people’s money, the US intelligence operative calling himself Henry M. Paulson Jr. [but see Memorandum below], as advertised, promulgated, in March 2008, a set of goofy and confused proposals for the ostensible ‘reorganisation’ of the way the US financial markets are regulated, which amounts to a pre-planned ‘new regulatory order’ – but the purpose of which, on investigation, turns out NOT to be improved financial sector discipline, but rather the cynical and surreptitious institutionalisation of market conditions that will facilitate replication of the abuses and fraudulent finance that have so far been exposed, but on a far broader scale, in the years to come.
A prerequisite for understanding what follows, and the prevailing financial days of reckoning and their origination generally, is to recognise the subversive reality of the ‘angels of light’ deception model. The financial sector traditionally clothes itself in a mantle of assumed righteousness, which is reinforced by generational layers of perception yielding a belief that financial institutions are, generally speaking, models of rectitude which cannot deviate from the strict codes of conduct that are presumed to surround them, and therefore from the Rule of Law.
BELATED, GRUDGING REALISATION THAT WHAT HAS BEEN REPORTED IS ACCURATE
Because this general lazy presumption is rarely, even today, called into question, it took, to our certain knowledge, certain British and American circles over two years to reach the staggered conclusion that what we have been reporting was accurate, both in general terms and more often than not, in terms of specifics as well.
By the same token, the underlying assumption that the exotic Treasury proposals developed by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, which will be demolished here, are of beneficial and enlightened intent, has no basis in reality, as will now be examined. On the contrary, as might have been expected, they represent ANOTHER pathetic scam, a deception, a diversion, a PLOY.
We will begin with a ‘straight’ summary of the 'Paulson' proposals, which will then be exposed as representing a false and deceitful prospectus.
THE FALSE PROSPECTUS AS ANNOUNCED
Following our exposures of financial fraud between June 2006 and the same month a year later, tensions rose to such a pitch behind the financial sector scenes that the US authorities felt the sudden need to be seen to be ‘doing something’ – an urge that resulted in the establishment of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
But by ‘doing something’, the criminalists actually meant leveraging the financial crisis which has developed as a direct consequence of their criminality through the advocating of false ‘reforms’ under cover of which they intended to institutionalise a permissive US environment which would guarantee that their addiction to manufacturing liquidity out of thin air through untaxed high yield investment programs (out of bounds to ordinary mortals because outside the officially protected corruption zone, they are lethally risk Ponzi scams: see below), would be OK'd without recourse.
The phrase ‘Working Group’ is a designation used by Israeli intelligence to describe an operation inside the Israeli Government structures (viz., intelligence), with a focus on developing a modus operandi to achieve an instructed objective, according to Robert Littell [‘Vicious Circle’, Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, New York, 2006].
After ‘labouring’ for eight months, the Working Group brought forth a convoluted, fragmented and opaque ‘THREE-STAGE plan’ to ‘reform’ US regulation of the very financial institutions with which the now disgraced ruling kleptocracy has been collaborating to scam ordinary American citizens, mortgage ‘holders’, the US Government itself, and foreigners who fail to do their ‘due diligence’.
The overall effect of the regulatory fragmentation plan put forward in bad faith (as we demonstrate below) by the Working Group would be to place the control of all financial markets wholly under the power of the President of the United States – which, given the criminality of the present and recent incumbents, would be a recipe for the institutionalisation of fraudulent finance, the elimination of all remaining checks and balances, and consequently for a corrosive financial market environment leading to a financial meltdown in a few years’ time which would make the present crisis look like a pleasant afternoon by the seaside.
Before we go any further, we must summarise the Working Group’s proposals without commenting in any detail immediately on their implications:
STAGE ONE, AS PROMULGATED BY THE PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP:
• The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets would be expanded to add banking sector regulators not hitherto participating in its deliberations, in order to broaden the Working Group‘s supposed focus to incorporate the whole of the US financial sector, rather than just the financial markets as such (begging the question: what was the problem? Why the delay?).
• Lending by the Federal Reserve: Because non-bank financial institutions have, since December 2007 (thanks to the chaos brought about by fraudulent finance operations over which this ‘Paulson’ himself presided) had access to the US Federal Reserve, the Fed would be able to conduct on-site examinations of such borrowers and impose conditions on their operations.
• Establish a Mortgage Origination Commission to consist of six Board Members, taken mainly from Federal structures. The new entity would proceed to establish minimum licensing standards and testing criteria, and would gauge and grade the adequacy of each State’s mortgage control system. This would be accompanied by clarification of which Federal body is to enforce mortgage lending legislation (which, for some unexplained reason, the Working Group could not manage to do).
STAGE TWO, AS PROMULGATED BY THE PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP:
• Federal Oversight of State-Chartered Banks: It was reported that the US Treasury recommended a study to determine whether the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) should have oversight of State-chartered banks. (Great! So we need a 'study'. Why didn't the Group perform that study, then? Why the 'need' for further delay while the 'study' is carried out?).
• Thrift Charter to be eliminated: The following banking sector regulator was categorised as ‘past its sell-by date’: The Office of Thrift Supervision. This entity, which oversees US Savings and Loan Associations (so-called ‘Thrift Institutions’) should be closed down and folded into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which has oversight of National Banks. (No reason given).
• A new (optional) Federal Insurance Charter: The US Treasury proposed the creation of a Federal regulator to cover the insurance sector, which is extremely corrupt in the United States. The first step would be to ask Congress to create an Office of Insurance Oversight within the US Treasury, to focus on international issues and to advise the Treasury on insurance sector affairs. This would be the first step towards the creation of step two, namely the creation of a new Federal Insurance Charter. (Notice that everything is 'spaced out', laid-back, confused and overlapping).
• Revised payments and settlement arrangements: Under the eccentric proposals brought forward by ‘Paulson’, it was suggested that the Federal Reserve Board should be given oversight and rule-making authority over the payment and settlement systems for the processing of payments and the transfer of securities between financial institutions and their clients. (Hence, de facto regulation of the securities markets would devolve into the hands of the untrustworthy Federal Reserve).
• Futures and Securities markets: The US Treasury used this report to call for the merger of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC), neither of which has been doing its job properly, given the sheer scale of the bribery and corruption behind the scenes, plus reports that the SEC has itself been engaged in trading on own account (see below).
In particular, the Treasury proposed that the Securities and Exchange Commission, which operates (or should operate) on the basis of precise rules and regulations backed by rigorous enforcement, should ‘preserve’ the modus operandi of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is that business should instead be conducted in accordance with stated ‘principles’.
In other words, the Treasury wanted to scrap the rules-based system (required under the 1933 and 1934 Securities Acts) and to replace it by a vague ‘principles- based’ system’, which would mean that enforcement would be almost impossible – because a régime of relativism would prevail and key terms would remain undefined.
Securities professionals are taught and intensively trained to operate exclusively on the basis of the SEC’s ‘rules-based’ system, which precludes any deviation whatsoever from the established rules (provided the regulations are enforced, which has not been the case for years because of corruption within the Securities and Exchange Commission itself).
STAGE THREE, AS PROMULGATED BY THE PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP:
A new US regulatory structure would be imposed over the longer term, under which US financial institutions would be asked to choose between one of three Federal Charters:
• Federally Insured Depository Institution:
This would be applicable to all lenders with Federal deposit insurance.
• Federal Insurance Institution:
Applicable to all insurers offering retail ‘products’ which entail some degree of Federal guarantee.
• Federal Financial Services Provider:
This charter would cover all other categories of financial services firms.
Under this regime, the following SEVEN NEW FEDERAL AGENCIES, each with its own hyper-expensive self-serving bureaucracy would 'regulate' US financial institutions:
• The Market Stability Regulator: Under this vague proposal, the Federal Reserve was to ‘look out’ for threats to the stability of the United States’ diverse financial system, whether they originated with banks, insurance corporations, mortgage lenders, investment banks, hedge funds, or with any other type of financial institution.
The Federal Reserve could require corrective measures to be taken to address current risks or to curb future risk-taking, but these powers could only be exercised if overall financial stability was threatened. In other words, this entity would essentially achieve nothing at all, leaving the financial markets alone (until it was too late), thereby passively facilitating a progressive repetition of the near-catastrophe experienced since the mid-1980s, but on a far larger scale.
• Prudential Financial Regulatory Agency: This new entity would regulate US financial institutions buttressed by explicit Government guarantees associated with their operations, such as Federal deposit insurance. The new US agency would assume the rôles of the current Federal prudential regulators, including the Office of the US Comptroller of the Currency and the Treasury's Office of Thrift Supervision. Yet another (subsidiary) regulator would focus on the hitherto unrestrained and unregulated off-off-budget Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) which, though established by the Federal Government, were placed (on creation) into the ‘private’ sector and have implicit Government backing, such as the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) and the Federal Home Loan Bank System. See our report dated 26th December 2007 for insights into how Fannie Mae, for instance, has been used to perpetrate fraudulent financial transactions in the US mortgage sector [Archive].
• Conduct of Business Regulatory Agency: This new regulator would be charged with ‘consumer protection’ with respect to all categories of financial entities. The agency would watch disclosures and business practices, and would supervise the licensing of certain types of financial firm.
It would absorb many of the functions of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and would undertake some responsibilities that are currently handled by the Fed, state insurance regulators, and the Federal Trade Commission.
• Federal Insurance Guarantee Corporation: This new agency would replace the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, charging premia to guarantee bank deposits and insurance payouts.
• Corporate Finance Regulator: This new entity would take over other functions of the Securities and Exchange Commission, such as the oversight of corporate disclosures, governance issues, accounting, and other matters.
In other words, SEVEN NEW BUREAUCRACIES would regulate everything and achieve nothing.
www.worldreports.org/news/150_u.s._financial_market_revamp_is_false_prospectus
...Flying Moose(cmkxunofficial)
This paper describes, exposes and then systematically demolishes the credibility and relevance of the so-called ‘Paulson’ proposals, a.k.a. the mish-mash of convoluted notions brought forth by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets at the end of March 2008.
In passing, it questions the basis upon which expectations of repayment by some US participants in ‘humanitarian’, Omega and other often unregistered, and therefore usually (in the United States) illegal, Ponzi schemes are predicated, shows why these schemes are illegal by comparing them to what the US securities and other relevant US legislation requires, and presents inexpensive and constructive proposals to replace ‘Paulson’s’ dog’s dinner – which, incidentally, would call for the establishment of no less than SEVEN expensive new US bureaucratic agencies, whereas the Plan, devised by the securities expert Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., which is advanced here, would require just ONE new agency instead. Further, Mr Cottrell's scheme could be up and running within a few months, whereas the 'Paulson' dog's dinner is phased over an indeterminate timeframe.
OFFICIAL PROPOSALS ARE MISCHIEVOUS
On investigating this matter, we were quite surprised at the ease with which the Working Group’s spurious obfuscation operation could be shown to be a glaringly false prospectus that has been jumbled together in order to disguise what can only be described as its underlying mischievous intent. For these proposals dishonestly seek to convey an impression of regulatory reform (in response to the chaos in the financial markets which has been brought about exclusively by the serial criminality of holders of high office) – whereas their actual purpose is to mask the objective of precluding meaningful reform in favour of cosmetic adjustments consistent with an even more permissive and crime-friendly environment than exists today.
Indeed a pattern of nefarious US official behaviour has become clear since the deregulation of the Savings and Loan Associations in 1982. It can be summarised as follows. Far from entertaining any clear intention of curbing excesses and seeking to contain financial sector crises and instability brought about by organised financial fraud condoned at the highest levels of American power, the participating US authorities typically allow the prevailing crisis of confidence and its real economic consequences to escalate until, as happened at the end of the 1980s with the messy ‘responses’ developed by Congress to the ‘hollowing out’ (enronisation) of the thrifts, the problems become so huge that radical departures are agreed upon ‘under duress’ which, in turn, provide the intended basis for a proliferation of fraudulent financial operations ‘by other means’.
FOLDING THE CRIMINALISTS' CRISIS INTO A 'UNIVERSAL SOLUTION'
This is exactly what these cynical ‘Paulson’ proposals are predicated to achieve. The underlying motive here is to ‘fold’ the contemporary financial and economic crisis into a ‘ universal solution’ which will, if this Treasury has its way, give the arch-planners of fraudulent finance practices, carte blanche to proliferate their scams and aberrations for many years to come.
Accordingly, the fraudulent prospectus disgorged by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets needs to be consigned forthwith to the trash can. This report will help to achieve that.
As indicated, we present a simple, straightforward, constructive, inexpensive and quickly and easily implemented alternative Plan to replace it. Its author, Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., one of the United States’ foremost securities markets experts, argues that no further attention should be paid to the dishonest and discredited ‘Paulson’ proposals, which have in any case more or less run into the sand; and that the straightforward measures advocated below should be adopted, instead.
They would immediately inject the necessary discipline into the marketplace, precluding scope for securities scamming models to which the notorious American kleptocracy has become accustomed.
This paper is supplemented by an extensive Glossary of securities environment terms, for the benefit of the lay reader. The Editor has incorporated several appropriate new terms in the list.
SELF-SERVING PLAN TO ‘CLEAN UP’ MESS THE CRIMINALISTS THEMSELVES CREATED
Among the most distasteful characteristics of the world-class financial criminals exposed through our reports is their habit of advising the Rest of Us how the distasteful consequences of their own glaring criminality are to be overcome. The flip-side of the accomplished US financial criminalist is typically an unimpressive ‘angel of light’, who preaches the virtues of sound finance, in order to mask the fact of his endless reprobate financial misbehaviour.
Thus, having presided over and orchestrated the stealing of colossal sums of other people’s money, the US intelligence operative calling himself Henry M. Paulson Jr. [but see Memorandum below], as advertised, promulgated, in March 2008, a set of goofy and confused proposals for the ostensible ‘reorganisation’ of the way the US financial markets are regulated, which amounts to a pre-planned ‘new regulatory order’ – but the purpose of which, on investigation, turns out NOT to be improved financial sector discipline, but rather the cynical and surreptitious institutionalisation of market conditions that will facilitate replication of the abuses and fraudulent finance that have so far been exposed, but on a far broader scale, in the years to come.
A prerequisite for understanding what follows, and the prevailing financial days of reckoning and their origination generally, is to recognise the subversive reality of the ‘angels of light’ deception model. The financial sector traditionally clothes itself in a mantle of assumed righteousness, which is reinforced by generational layers of perception yielding a belief that financial institutions are, generally speaking, models of rectitude which cannot deviate from the strict codes of conduct that are presumed to surround them, and therefore from the Rule of Law.
BELATED, GRUDGING REALISATION THAT WHAT HAS BEEN REPORTED IS ACCURATE
Because this general lazy presumption is rarely, even today, called into question, it took, to our certain knowledge, certain British and American circles over two years to reach the staggered conclusion that what we have been reporting was accurate, both in general terms and more often than not, in terms of specifics as well.
By the same token, the underlying assumption that the exotic Treasury proposals developed by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, which will be demolished here, are of beneficial and enlightened intent, has no basis in reality, as will now be examined. On the contrary, as might have been expected, they represent ANOTHER pathetic scam, a deception, a diversion, a PLOY.
We will begin with a ‘straight’ summary of the 'Paulson' proposals, which will then be exposed as representing a false and deceitful prospectus.
THE FALSE PROSPECTUS AS ANNOUNCED
Following our exposures of financial fraud between June 2006 and the same month a year later, tensions rose to such a pitch behind the financial sector scenes that the US authorities felt the sudden need to be seen to be ‘doing something’ – an urge that resulted in the establishment of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
But by ‘doing something’, the criminalists actually meant leveraging the financial crisis which has developed as a direct consequence of their criminality through the advocating of false ‘reforms’ under cover of which they intended to institutionalise a permissive US environment which would guarantee that their addiction to manufacturing liquidity out of thin air through untaxed high yield investment programs (out of bounds to ordinary mortals because outside the officially protected corruption zone, they are lethally risk Ponzi scams: see below), would be OK'd without recourse.
The phrase ‘Working Group’ is a designation used by Israeli intelligence to describe an operation inside the Israeli Government structures (viz., intelligence), with a focus on developing a modus operandi to achieve an instructed objective, according to Robert Littell [‘Vicious Circle’, Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, New York, 2006].
After ‘labouring’ for eight months, the Working Group brought forth a convoluted, fragmented and opaque ‘THREE-STAGE plan’ to ‘reform’ US regulation of the very financial institutions with which the now disgraced ruling kleptocracy has been collaborating to scam ordinary American citizens, mortgage ‘holders’, the US Government itself, and foreigners who fail to do their ‘due diligence’.
The overall effect of the regulatory fragmentation plan put forward in bad faith (as we demonstrate below) by the Working Group would be to place the control of all financial markets wholly under the power of the President of the United States – which, given the criminality of the present and recent incumbents, would be a recipe for the institutionalisation of fraudulent finance, the elimination of all remaining checks and balances, and consequently for a corrosive financial market environment leading to a financial meltdown in a few years’ time which would make the present crisis look like a pleasant afternoon by the seaside.
Before we go any further, we must summarise the Working Group’s proposals without commenting in any detail immediately on their implications:
STAGE ONE, AS PROMULGATED BY THE PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP:
• The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets would be expanded to add banking sector regulators not hitherto participating in its deliberations, in order to broaden the Working Group‘s supposed focus to incorporate the whole of the US financial sector, rather than just the financial markets as such (begging the question: what was the problem? Why the delay?).
• Lending by the Federal Reserve: Because non-bank financial institutions have, since December 2007 (thanks to the chaos brought about by fraudulent finance operations over which this ‘Paulson’ himself presided) had access to the US Federal Reserve, the Fed would be able to conduct on-site examinations of such borrowers and impose conditions on their operations.
• Establish a Mortgage Origination Commission to consist of six Board Members, taken mainly from Federal structures. The new entity would proceed to establish minimum licensing standards and testing criteria, and would gauge and grade the adequacy of each State’s mortgage control system. This would be accompanied by clarification of which Federal body is to enforce mortgage lending legislation (which, for some unexplained reason, the Working Group could not manage to do).
STAGE TWO, AS PROMULGATED BY THE PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP:
• Federal Oversight of State-Chartered Banks: It was reported that the US Treasury recommended a study to determine whether the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) should have oversight of State-chartered banks. (Great! So we need a 'study'. Why didn't the Group perform that study, then? Why the 'need' for further delay while the 'study' is carried out?).
• Thrift Charter to be eliminated: The following banking sector regulator was categorised as ‘past its sell-by date’: The Office of Thrift Supervision. This entity, which oversees US Savings and Loan Associations (so-called ‘Thrift Institutions’) should be closed down and folded into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which has oversight of National Banks. (No reason given).
• A new (optional) Federal Insurance Charter: The US Treasury proposed the creation of a Federal regulator to cover the insurance sector, which is extremely corrupt in the United States. The first step would be to ask Congress to create an Office of Insurance Oversight within the US Treasury, to focus on international issues and to advise the Treasury on insurance sector affairs. This would be the first step towards the creation of step two, namely the creation of a new Federal Insurance Charter. (Notice that everything is 'spaced out', laid-back, confused and overlapping).
• Revised payments and settlement arrangements: Under the eccentric proposals brought forward by ‘Paulson’, it was suggested that the Federal Reserve Board should be given oversight and rule-making authority over the payment and settlement systems for the processing of payments and the transfer of securities between financial institutions and their clients. (Hence, de facto regulation of the securities markets would devolve into the hands of the untrustworthy Federal Reserve).
• Futures and Securities markets: The US Treasury used this report to call for the merger of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC), neither of which has been doing its job properly, given the sheer scale of the bribery and corruption behind the scenes, plus reports that the SEC has itself been engaged in trading on own account (see below).
In particular, the Treasury proposed that the Securities and Exchange Commission, which operates (or should operate) on the basis of precise rules and regulations backed by rigorous enforcement, should ‘preserve’ the modus operandi of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is that business should instead be conducted in accordance with stated ‘principles’.
In other words, the Treasury wanted to scrap the rules-based system (required under the 1933 and 1934 Securities Acts) and to replace it by a vague ‘principles- based’ system’, which would mean that enforcement would be almost impossible – because a régime of relativism would prevail and key terms would remain undefined.
Securities professionals are taught and intensively trained to operate exclusively on the basis of the SEC’s ‘rules-based’ system, which precludes any deviation whatsoever from the established rules (provided the regulations are enforced, which has not been the case for years because of corruption within the Securities and Exchange Commission itself).
STAGE THREE, AS PROMULGATED BY THE PRESIDENT'S WORKING GROUP:
A new US regulatory structure would be imposed over the longer term, under which US financial institutions would be asked to choose between one of three Federal Charters:
• Federally Insured Depository Institution:
This would be applicable to all lenders with Federal deposit insurance.
• Federal Insurance Institution:
Applicable to all insurers offering retail ‘products’ which entail some degree of Federal guarantee.
• Federal Financial Services Provider:
This charter would cover all other categories of financial services firms.
Under this regime, the following SEVEN NEW FEDERAL AGENCIES, each with its own hyper-expensive self-serving bureaucracy would 'regulate' US financial institutions:
• The Market Stability Regulator: Under this vague proposal, the Federal Reserve was to ‘look out’ for threats to the stability of the United States’ diverse financial system, whether they originated with banks, insurance corporations, mortgage lenders, investment banks, hedge funds, or with any other type of financial institution.
The Federal Reserve could require corrective measures to be taken to address current risks or to curb future risk-taking, but these powers could only be exercised if overall financial stability was threatened. In other words, this entity would essentially achieve nothing at all, leaving the financial markets alone (until it was too late), thereby passively facilitating a progressive repetition of the near-catastrophe experienced since the mid-1980s, but on a far larger scale.
• Prudential Financial Regulatory Agency: This new entity would regulate US financial institutions buttressed by explicit Government guarantees associated with their operations, such as Federal deposit insurance. The new US agency would assume the rôles of the current Federal prudential regulators, including the Office of the US Comptroller of the Currency and the Treasury's Office of Thrift Supervision. Yet another (subsidiary) regulator would focus on the hitherto unrestrained and unregulated off-off-budget Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) which, though established by the Federal Government, were placed (on creation) into the ‘private’ sector and have implicit Government backing, such as the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) and the Federal Home Loan Bank System. See our report dated 26th December 2007 for insights into how Fannie Mae, for instance, has been used to perpetrate fraudulent financial transactions in the US mortgage sector [Archive].
• Conduct of Business Regulatory Agency: This new regulator would be charged with ‘consumer protection’ with respect to all categories of financial entities. The agency would watch disclosures and business practices, and would supervise the licensing of certain types of financial firm.
It would absorb many of the functions of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and would undertake some responsibilities that are currently handled by the Fed, state insurance regulators, and the Federal Trade Commission.
• Federal Insurance Guarantee Corporation: This new agency would replace the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, charging premia to guarantee bank deposits and insurance payouts.
• Corporate Finance Regulator: This new entity would take over other functions of the Securities and Exchange Commission, such as the oversight of corporate disclosures, governance issues, accounting, and other matters.
In other words, SEVEN NEW BUREAUCRACIES would regulate everything and achieve nothing.
www.worldreports.org/news/150_u.s._financial_market_revamp_is_false_prospectus
...Flying Moose(cmkxunofficial)