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According to this CNN/Money report, it would appear that Wall Street has a new favorite candidate in 2012 after candidate Barack Obama, back in 2008, raised more money from the financial services industry than any other candidate in history.
New boss, same as the old boss … and the ones before that.
Maybe we’ll get a good third party candidate this year…
The Understory reported that the Rainforest Action Network transformed about 85 Bank of America ATMs in San Francisco into Automated “Truth” Machines the other day using the overlay sticker shown below, one more sign that, though still quite popular in Washington D.C., big banks are increasingly unpopular in the rest of the country.
On a related note, according to this McClatchy report, BofA and other too-big-to-fail banks have settled on their pick for President this fall – Mitt Romney. Employees at the big banks gave the Romney campaign $600,000 through September of last year, dwarfing the $200,000 sent to the bankers’ second choice – President Barack Obama – virtually ensuring that there will be little change to the status quo, big-bank-wise, until 2017 or later.
Wishful thinkers can hope that the MF Global bankruptcy filing and the dubious actions that followed to protect the biggest interests involved (e.g., Jon Corzine and JP Morgan) might finally lead to the dismantling of the Washington-Wall Street connection that seems to be a key component in the nation’s downward spiral in recent years.
One step in that direction originates in this part of the country where, according to this Bloomberg story, farmers are suing MF Global in an attempt to recover their money.
The lawsuit filed today by three farmers and a cattle- raising operation in Montana seeks to represent a nationwide group of commodities futures customers whose money went missing amid the $41 billion bankruptcy of MF Global, parent of the futures brokerage that is being liquidated. A trustee is looking for $1.2 billion or more in money missing from commodity customers’ accounts.
Corzine, the former governor of New Jersey, and other executives at MF Global made “knowingly false statements” to induce the plaintiffs to enter into contracts with the brokerage, according to the complaint filed in federal court in Missoula, Montana.
The executives failed to disclose to customers that their money was used to finance MF Global’s bad bets on European sovereign debt, the farmers said in the complaint.
What’s really disturbing about the whole idea of farmers suing Wall Street futures trading firms is that, more than 100 years ago, futures markets were originally set up in the MidWest specifically for farmers and that system worked pretty well until the last decade or two when Wall Street began to really throw its money around.
Futures markets had always been a way for buyers (e.g., food manufacturers) and sellers (e.g., farmers) to lock in prices and add some predictability to their business while a relatively few number of speculators would bet on which way prices would go, adding liquidity to these markets in the process.
Now, you’ve got some well connected, ex-Goldman Sachs head who manages to run a futures trading firm into the ground and a billion dollars – some portion of it belonging to farmers all across the country – goes missing.
What a sad commentary on the direction the nation has been heading.
I’ve been meaning to dig through the European Central Bank’s balance sheet data in order to better understand how it has grown so fast in recent months (as indicated in red below) and why the Germans aren’t up in arms about it.
Someday I surely will, though there doesn’t seem to be any real urgency since the recent spurt of money printing is not likely to end anytime soon. Between now and then, this graphic from The Economist’s Central banks: Crazy aunt on the loose will have to do.
It is fairly remarkable to stop and think how far we’ve come since the world’s central bankers saved us (and, of course, the biggest and most dangerous banks) from sure annihilation three years ago. Who would have ever imagined back in 2005 or 2006 that nearly the entire globe would have “turned Japanese” by now.
Who imagines today that the chart above left might not change for another 10 or 20 years?
With just one day left to “save the euro” (as policymakers put it early last week), it appears that Lucy is about the pull the ball out from under Charlie Brown’s swinging foot one last time and, perhaps after this big miss, Charlie will wind up flat on his back and stay there.
Hopes were never very high for officials to accomplish much at tomorrow’s European Union summit (a meeting dubbed the most important gathering of this group in two years), but markets were instead placing their faith in the ECB (European Central Bank) to finally taking some sort of action to bolster credit markets.
But, after ECB President Mario Draghi spoke earlier today following the announcement that the bank had lowered short-term interest rates (a move that was widely expected) and offered banks long-term loans (a move that won’t make any difference over the near-term), markets appear to be quickly coming to the conclusion that Europe just doesn’t seem to care that they’re about to enter the abyss.
Word earlier today that the International Monetary Fund was riding to the rescue had raised the hopes of many and Bloomberg reports that European central banks are considering sending $200 billion to this group, which they’ll presumably “leverage up” somehow to a much higher amount before buying sovereign debt of spendthrift European governments.
We’ll see how that works out – it would appear to be the only hope at this point.
They’re starting to call tomorrow’s meeting the “No Second Chance Summit” after French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned that policymakers had better get it right this time, despite the fact that they’ve failed to get it right regularly over the last two years.
Something tells me that Lucy’s going to do what she always does…
By Tim Iacono, Since 2005
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