Right after the financial crisis, an SEC lawyer fought a lonely struggle to get his agency to crackdown harder on Goldman bankers. He lost.

Propublica:

In the late summer of 2009, lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission were preparing to bring charges in what they expected would be their first big crackdown coming out of the financial crisis. The investigators had been looking into Goldman Sachs’ mortgage-securities business, and were preparing to take on the bank over a complex deal, known as Abacus, that it had arranged with a hedge fund. They believed that Goldman had committed securities violations in developing Abacus, and were ready to charge the firm.

James Kidney, a longtime SEC lawyer, was assigned to take the completed investigation and bring the case to trial. Right away, something…

Letter from the Department of Justice to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists stating they have opened an investigation. Photograph: US Department of Justice.

A dark storm is brewing in the world of private pensions, and all hell could break loose when it finally hits.

As the Washington Post reports, the Central States Pension Fund, which handles retirement benefits for current and former Teamster union truck drivers across various states including Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, New York, and Minnesota, and is one of the largest pension funds in the nation, has filed an application to cut participant benefits, which would be effective July 1 2016, as it “projects” it will become officially insolvent by 2025. In 2015, the fund returned -0.81%, underperforming the 0.37% return of its benchmark.

Over a quarter of a million people depend on their pension being handled by the CSPF; for most it is their only source of fixed income.

Read on.

This video from the USA says about itself:

19 April 2016

Where does the progressive movement go after Bernie Sanders‘ loss in the New York Democratic primary election. Cenk Uygur, Jimmy Dore, Michael Shure and John Iadarola of The Young Turks discuss how progressives should move forward. Do you agree with TYT’s opinion? Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire Donald Trump won the Democratic and Republican primaries in New York State Tuesday, cementing their positions as the frontrunners for the presidential nominations of the two big business parties: here.

This video from the USA says about itself:

Millions of New Yorkers Disenfranchised from Primaries Thanks to State’s Restrictive Voting Laws

19 April 2016

Voters head to the polls today in New York for both the Democratic and Republican primary in one of the…

Rolling Stone’s Wall Street hatchet-man on the hidden truth of #FannieGate

Housingwire:

If Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi is to be believed, yes, there absolutely was a government conspiracy behind the bailout and subsequent takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

And now, the government is fighting tooth and nail to keep the evidence of that conspiracy a secret, all while plotting something far more insidious — the privatization of the government-sponsored enterprises.

Has the shock subsided?

In a long piece posted Monday, Taibbi, who’s made a career of taking on Wall Street, aims his sights on Fannie and Freddie bailout, the mountain of federal government documents pertaining to it, and efforts by the “most transparent administration in history” to keep those documents from seeing the light of day.

Some of those documents surfaced recently as part of lawsuits filed by a series of Fannie and Freddie shareholders, who 

Truthout:

Federal regulators announced Wednesday morning that Dodd-Frank-mandated resolution plans of five “too big to fail” banks were “not credible,” setting in motion a process that could see them broken up in thirty months.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced that plans outlined by the quintet — Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, New York Mellon, and State Street — were inadequate.

Because of the joint ruling, the firms are under pressure to revise their so-called “living wills.” The FDIC and Fed may subject the five banks to more strict regulations and reserve requirements on Oct. 1, if they fail to submit a satisfactory scheme by then. And if they haven’t submitted proper living wills by October 2018, the two agencies “may jointly require the firm to divest certain assets or operations to facilitate an orderly resolution of the firm in bankruptcy,”…

New York Daily News editorial board interviewed Clinton, Kasich, and Sanders. Interesting questions but different responses in regarding to Wall Street reform and why there are no prosecutions from DOJ to bank execs. Kasich, who was interviewed on 4/7/16 was not asked any questions on Wall Street. Here is the link to Kasich’s interview:

TRANSCRIPT: JOHN KASICH MEETS WITH NEWS EDITORIAL BOARD 

Here is snippet from Sanders’ interview on April 1:

Daily News: Okay. Staying with Wall Street, you’ve pointed out, that “not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy.” Why was that? Why did that happen? Why was there no prosecution?

Sanders: I would suspect that the answer that some would give you is that while what they did was horrific, and greedy and had a huge impact on our economy, that some suggest that…that those activities were…

An email message from Virginia from Deadly Clear website:

Blast this out to everyone you know – it might be the last time to obtain their New Century file. There is valuable information in these files –and since they are files that deal with the homeowner and where their collateral may be located – even if you are not in foreclosure it maybe imperative that you know in the future what happened to your file.  I did a post the last time – See: http://wp.me/p1H9BR-TN and it has all of the pertinent information. I’ll try to get another one up but in the meantime please share this with your email lists so that we can get the alert out!  Thanks to Anita Carr for keeping us briefed.

And here is the recently filed in the bankruptcy proceedings of New Century TRS Holdings, Inc, Jointly Administered under Case No. 07-10416 (District of…

The financial industry looms large in the coming primary – and some bankers say they’ll push for the Vermont senator even if his policies could hurt their careers.

A few months ago, Democratic party leaders attended a meeting in New Yorkwith some of the titans of Wall Street, among them heads of brand-name hedge funds and top private equity firms. The gathering was billed not as the usual high-dollar fundraiser but as a bridge-building exercise in which powerful financiers could vent their opinions privately to Democratic bosses.

Two US senators who formed part of the Democratic delegation kicked off the meeting by inviting the financiers to air their concerns about party policy. One of the big name Wall Street figures stood up, proclaimed grandly that he was speaking on behalf of every financial person in the room, and then slammed into the Democratic lawmakers for having had the audacity…