Jon Corzine's Relationship with CFTC Chair Gary Gensler Probed

This is from Matt Taibbi, who could screw up a report of the Second Coming, even if it happened right in front of him, so with that caution, I report what he thinks he has:

Getting a lot of calls about Jon Corzine [of MF Global] and his relationship with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman Gary Gensler.

Both Corzine and Gensler worked at Goldman back in the day, and the word is that Corzine personally lobbied Gensler to delay the implementation of new rules that would have helped prevent Corzine from raiding his own clients' funds.

This whole issue smacks of the improper communications between other former Wall Street co-workers like Hank Paulson and Lloyd Blankfein. More and more, it appears that, as a matter of routine, federal regulators like Paulson (in 2008) and, later, Gensler reach out to old friends on Wall Street to negotiate/discuss the timing and the form of various policy changes, bailouts, and other regulatory matters.

Bottom line: If you create power centers (like the CFTC)the unscrupulous will attempt to influence the power centers. Bernie Madoff was close to the SEC and now this possible Corzine relationship with Gensler.

Even Taibbi seems to get the problem with power centers:

This is one of those issues where there's no point in calling for more regulations. No matter what laws we have, we can't have regulatory heads breezily chatting about their enforcement plans with former co-workers who have huge financial interests resting upon their decisions

BTW, Goldman recruited Gensler hard, when he was getting his MBA at Wharton. Back in 2009, I reported:

A friend who attended Wharton with Gensler tells me he was the smartest student in the class. When Goldman visited the campus the year Gensler graduated, Gensler was the only student that they wanted to talk to.

True Grift: Matt Taibbi Tells Some Stories

There has probably never been a more appropriately titled book than Matt Taibbi's Griftopia. That's what the book is, total grift.

Taibbi has been running for some time a sort of  long-con, a grift, if you will, on America's intelligentsia. The intelligentsia, naturally, don't have the time to study, excess reserves, the regression theorem or praxelology, or anything else that might enlighten them as to what is currently going on in the economy. But they sure can picture Goldman Sachs as a vampire squid sucking money out of their pockets. Taibbi did paint this picture for them and, thus, Taibbi, the financial expert was born. It's doubtful he understands excess reserves, the regression theorem or praxelology, either, but by borrowing from a web site here, and a web site there, he does put together a string of paragraphs in a form the intelligentsia can appreciate, by also borrowing from the writing style of Hunter S. Thompson.

Consider: If I am in a bookstore browsing through books, the first thing I do is look through the index of a book to get a sense for the topics that are covered. I picked up Griftopia in a bookstore to browse. I looked for the index, but much like Bernie Madoff back up statements, Griftopia  has no index.

After the index, I usually turn to the acknowledgements to see who the author thanks, as kind of an indication as to who the author has been hanging with. In Taibbi's book, I eagerly turned to the acknowledgments, since it has been rumored that what Taibbi really does is, as I said before, simply borrow themes from other web sites, without attribution. Finally, I thought, he would disclose his sources that remarkably track the information on some web sites. But, alas, this would not be the case.

Griftopia has the most unusual acknowledgements I have ever seen in a book. It is really more of an explanation as to why Taibbi doesn't need to acknowledge anyone. And now, I recount from memory, because I didn't buy the book. Taibbi does acknowledge some guy whose name I think is Dave, and that's it. After that, Taibbi tells us his sources are secret. You know, the way Bernie Madoff told investors that his investment methods were secret. Then Taibbi tells us that well maybe they aren't all secret, but the names are in the chapters, so there is no reason to mention them in the acknowledgements. And that's it. No thanking of any muse, of any friends. No thanking of a wife, a brother, a sister, a colleague, a girl friend, a mistress, a dominatrix. No one else. Yikes, if it wasn't for the fact that it might be seen as a cheap attempt to get more hits, I might wonder if Taibbi is a damn deep-sea cephalopod of some sort, thousands of feet deep in the ocean having no contact with humans. 

From there, I did move on and read the first chapter of the book, it's about Sarah Plain. It's written in the tone of a man who desperately wants to sound like Hunter S. Thompson, but who clearly doesn't want to be cremated and have his ashes blown out of a canon, after he dies.

Let me tell you something. You can't write like Hunter S. Thompson unless you are perfectly willing to be cremated and have your ashes blown out of a cannon, or better yet have your remains eaten by a cephalopod of some sort. And thus, when all is said and written, we are left with nothing in Griftopia but the facts in each chapter.

The facts presented in this first chapter, presumably a strong chapter designed to entice the reader to read on, are as follows : John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate when he ran as the Republican candidate for president in 2008.

I did not read on. I did not buy the book.

In thinking about the book, the only people I think could find the book useful would be the miners in Chile who were trapped for 69 days, but only if they would have been trapped for 6.9 years, instead. It would have brought them up-to-date in an almost picture book like way.

So thus, we have another book we can throw on that pile, i.e., buy it only if you are in a position where you must buy a gift for a person you hate. Trust me, the person won't get past the first chapter and will find the book of no value at all.

The SEC Has No Chance of Winning Their Case Against Goldman Sachs

Even Matt Taibbi has figured out (or read somewhere) that the case is a dumb one to bring. He writes:

Goldman Sachs... has been sued for fraud by the...Securities and Exchange Commission. Legally, the case hangs on a technicality.

Actually, it's less than a technicality. It's no case, but the point here is that even Taibbi gets it's a weak case,  that said, after noting the SEC's problem with the case,  Taibbi then goes on to babble that the case is a moral referendum. I think this means he is saying something idiotic like, Goldman isn't guilty, but the jury should find them so anyway. Kind of a reverse jury nullification notion, i.e., something more like twelve angry men.