He as remanded to prison immediately. Now he awaits sentencing.

Yet another alleged case of massive fraud has been uncovered. This case is all the buzz in the financial sector. If the claims are proven true, fingers will point to the laissez-faire, deregulatory environment of the recent past as a contributing factor.
Some investors put their entire live savings in Stanford CDs. They [...]

A recent note from Time Magazine’s blog, Swampland:
This looks real bad, both for Roland Burris and his country.
First a quick recap: Burris gets appointed to the Senate by Rod Blagojevich, a self-made cartoon of political ineptness and alleged corruption. The U.S. Senate won’t seat Burris until he testifies under oath that he is unblemished by [...]

This comes from Chapter VIII of Galbraith’s classic volume, “The Great Crash 1929.” Given the recent announcement of fraud at Satyam in India and the monstrous Madoff scandal, it is a quote and concept to remember.

This is a very sad tale.

Back in November, Bloomberg News was forced to sue the Federal Reserve to gain greater disclosure on how emergency loans were being made to financial institutions and on what collateral was being used. I have followed this story closely and will continue to update you on its progress.

This video is a good laugh given what we now know about the alleged criminal activity going on in Illinois Governor Blagojevich’s office. Here is Blogojevich yesterday at a press conference. The man is smug and obnoxious. Now, he is going to jail. The question is what impact will this have on President-elect Obama.

I have seen this all over the political blogosphere.  Blagojevich is reputed to have been under investigation for corruption and wire-tapping charges for quite a while.  They finally decided to pull the trigger and arrest him over this.
Here is a very good account by Michael Scherer from Swampland. Note the reference to a story I [...]

Back on November 7th, I posted a story on how Bloomberg News was compelled to sue the Federal Reserve under the Freedom of Information Act in order to find out what type of assets the Federal Reserve was accepting as collateral for loans to banks. Bloomberg has provided the latest update in that saga and it is not good. The Fed continues to stonewall and it seems apparent that it will only reveal how U.S. taxpayer money is being spent if forced to do so by law.

Many will suffer at the hands of Lehman Brothers. That is the verdict by white-shoe law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz – a firm I had the pleasure of working with during my previous life in finance. They are very good. Apparently, the bankruptcy laws will not be a protection for [...]