Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud

[Jefferson23]

From Democracy Now:

snip* Well, our first guest is one of the many people who have participated in Occupy Kansas City. William Black is a white-collar criminologist, former financial regulator, worked in the Reagan administration, and is author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. He is associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

William Black, welcome to Democracy Now!, as we broadcast here in Kansas City.

WILLIAM BLACK: Thank you so much.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s very good to have you with us. What does it mean to be a white-collar criminologist?

WILLIAM BLACK: It means Rodney Dangerfield: we get no respect. Virtually all the funding goes to blue-collar. Virtually all the resources go to it. So it’s a thin group of folks that look at the most elite criminals who cause most of the property and most of the physical damage in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to happen now? And what does this have to do with the Occupy Wall Street protests that have expanded here in Kansas City and across the globe? There are more than a thousand demonstrations that have been held in the last weeks.

WILLIAM BLACK: Well, we have companion problems. We’ve got to stop this dynamic that’s producing recurrent, intensifying crises. I mean, this one has devastated the nation. The next one would probably be equivalent to the Great Depression. And part of that answer—but only part of it—is to hold the folks accountable, especially the most elite, who caused this crisis. And they did it through fraud, and they did it through fraud in what we call the "C-suites" —the CEOs, the COOs — so, the absolute top.

in full: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/19/former_financial_regulator_william_black_occupy

on edit for clarity.

[Fuddnik]

1. Watch that, then read his blog entry from today.

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/10/not-with-bang-but-whimper-bank-of.html

[Jefferson23]

3. Thank you for the link. Worse than the Mob imo:

snip* Acquiring Merrill Lynch: the Lure of Liar’s Loans


Merrill Lynch is the quintessential example of why it was common for the investment banks to hold in portfolio large amounts of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Some observers have jumped to the naïve assumption that this indicates that the senior managers thought the CDOs were safe investments. The “recipe” for an investor maximizing reported income differs only slightly from the recipe for lenders.


Grow rapidly by
Holding poor quality assets that provide a premium nominal yield while
Employing extreme leverage, and
Providing only grossly inadequate allowances for future losses on the poor quality assets

[PETRUS]

2. K&R nt

[chill_wind]

4. K & R.

And I really hope someone takes him up on his suggestion at the end of his blog piece today:

"Please find out who within the Fed approved this deal and the exact composition of the assets and liabilities that were transferred."