Saturday, December 27, 2008

Taxpaying STOOPIDS - The NonBelievable Scam (The Madoff Double Bluff)

Three Stooges in 'Disorder in the Court' Larry, Curly and Moe circa 1935 Columbia

And, as can be seen at the Daily Mail, the investors in this fund only get to litigate the fund directors against Lloyds insurers in London for even more compensation. Done properly the compensation could end up paying out far more than the original fund returns (yes this is sarcasm, it was bound to creep in eventually in yet another swindle like this). Would that I could believe that Madoff were a good guy who slipped and then became repentant. But given the facts, this simply cannot be true.
So, you already know (emphasis needed here) that the U.S. taxpayers are universally viewed now as chumps and likely to swallow anything (and pay out their entire GDP for the next decade or so in penance for their stoopidity - sort of a malfeasance tax for their bad behavior), right? After all, though lots of angst occurred among the sheeple before the first $750 billion payoff (bailout) to the banksters even began to hit their cash registers, they didn't take to the streets or anything serious, so the next step - the fleecing of the lambs is taking place on schedule. Move along. Nothing to see here. Heck, it only took me (and I'm not a tax attorney or CPA - and no, I don't play one on TV either) a few minutes after I saw the list of bigtime victims before I thought, "Come on - no one in charge of real assets would have been fooled by the Madoff "Made-up on the Run" Ponzi Scam; how was the due diligence performed even once (let alone dozens of times by top moneylender institutions) on this nonsensical scheme?" Lots of people have now jumped on the UNABLE TO BE BELIEVED team, and perhaps he had a small Ponzi scheme originally, but when you look at the claimed victims, it smells like day-old fish immediately. (And then we have his "confession." Now that is totally unbelievable - and he had no help!) (Emphasis marks and some editing was inserted - Ed.)
This again is absolute nonsense. Any company that I have ever worked for would have known internally that such business was being done, because they are all involved. For instance, a trader goes on buying equities from the world's stock exchanges that go down in price for 5 continuous years, but the company just keeps giving him more money to top up the trading, continues paying his salary and even annual bonus. Absolute rubbish. But assuming this actually did happen, the market risk team would have been watching these losses, as would have the accountants. It is not possible to hide things like this internally for very long, months at the most; 20+ years, NEVER.
And here's where the rationale really breaks down into chocolate-flavored pudding (you know you like this goop - they know you like this goop):
I have acted as a professional consultant to major EC and US financial institutions on corporate and institutional credit risk and the idea that anyone in HSBC or Santander could authorise large investment without the internal checks and controls being employed is almost impossible. To try and believe that EVERY institution that invested in Madoff circumvented their internal control procedures IS impossible. Why is this important? Simple. If someone approaches the HSBC credit risk team, for instance, with a view to making a loan or investing a sum as large as £600m to what is ultimately a single institution (therefore a single counterparty credit exposure) a significant number hoops would have to be jumped through. Firstly there is the credit officer competence limit, which is the maximum amount that a single credit officer may be allowed to authorise. More than his/her limit must be referred up the credit approval food chain. In an institution like HSBC or Santander etc, £600bn or US$1bn will have been referred to the very top of the food chain, the banks' credit committees at the board level. This is an enormous sum and no lacky is going to be able to approve this by themselves, ever. When the credit committee are called together to review an application, everything is ready prepared for them, so they can cut to the chase. The lower levels of the credit-approval process will have prepared a summary of all the application documentation, included in the meeting bundle, with the strengths, weaknesses, and other important credit risk points. This application will usually contain a set of audited accounts going back a minimum of 3 years and most likely 5 years. There will be a full credit breakdown of the investment profile of the business, Madoff's hedge fund, looking at how the fund obtains its returns; investment assets and investment methodology. After the committee is satisfied that all the issues and concerns have been addressed they will vote on the approval or otherwise. So there is no way that Madoff could have been pulling a scam. It would have stood out as clear as day to professional financial analysts, whose only job in life is to examine the management of companies and their reports and accounts, to make sure that all is in order. Its their job, its what they do. They are the world experts in spotting anomalies. The idea that all these professionals in all these companies were all duped is absolute nonsense. It is highly improbable that one such evaluation process could have been fooled, but all of them, never. A Ponzi scheme is easy to spot when you have the audited accounts and the full range of investment assets and investment metodologies employed. Also, this scam avoided the attention of all the funds employees; accountants, traders, auditors and the US regulators, all of whom are also financial professionals.
So how does it benefit the moneyboys to have this "scam" judged a fraud? Easy, TAXPAYERS PAY OFF (again!)!!!!!!
So why plead guilty? The answer is simple. Look on the net and you will see that because this case is being labelled a fraud, it would appear that investors are going to be able to claim their investment back under the US government's financial fraud protection scheme. A judge has already given his approval in principle for compensation, without any evidence having been presented and financial fraud being demonstrated in a court of law. And it would appear that there will never be such a demonstration in a court of law. Why? It would appear that all the funds financial records are mostly "missing" (rather like Dov Zakheim's US$1.4tn) and those few records that do survive are in a terrible mess. However, since the guy has pleaded guilty we do not need to demonstrate the fraud, because he says he is guilty. And look further on the net and you will see that these "victims" have also been told by the US tax authorities that they will probably also be entitled to claim back some taxes on these defrauded sums. Rather than saying this hedge fund has gone bust, due to its choice of investment assets and investment methologies, a scenario which is highly probable in the current financial paradigm, since all the professionals are predicting that at least 30% of all hedge funds are about to fail, more than 700 of them, the CEO chooses to fess up to fraud. If the CEO admits the fund has gone bust, then all those wealthy members of the Jewish community get nothing, but if the CEO admits to fraud they get their money back as compensation from the US tax payer, just as they are also drawing money back from the tax payers with the other hand.
And you thought they were going to have an unhappy Christmas/Hanukkah. Suzan _____________________

2 comments:

Serving Patriot said...

Suzan,

Compelling! Thanks for making me think about this escapade in a whole new light.

One of my favorite sayings is that "the stoopid shale be punished." Looks like at least 95% of us taxpayers are indeed, "stoopid" and most definitely being punished.

Maybe we can get the IRS to publish the names and amounts of the back tax refund" they are going to give out to the so-called ponzi victims. Maybe then, the stoopid will have a few names when the stabby sticks finally make their long overdue appearance?!

SP

Cirze said...

Thus the need for the gated communities (and the new Halliburton-constructed prisons), eh?

You're my kind of quick-thinking guy, SP! Just don't put any money down on the IRS' coming through with any names. They know who they are already. Special customers.

Let the games begin?

S