it creates products and jobs as well as international sales. Of course the destruction these products cause is never calculated in but that's if they are actually used, or more explicitly how they are used.
Material and products that are purchased by the military and the government for war purposes, are mixed in the GDP, and I believe, in the industrial production figures.
What kind of wealth is built with military ordnance? And does that really reflect a positive element of recovery?
We'd/I'd like to say that what you are doing is a great service.
We are experiencing as a small business all the corruption you are speaking about -- thank you for providing a voice that we -- not being the media- have a hard time voicing to a significant enough audience -- so thank you.
A few additional comments.
1. Regarding tackling fraud and waste in the system. The biggest federal fraud is happening at the State level through -- a. the State awarding themselves federal funds to provide services that compete with private enterprise without consideration for price or quality; 2. State administrators awarding no-bid contracts that are eligible for Federal reimbursement to vendors without consideration of price or quality.
We have a 30 million dollar Federal Fraud complaint (complaint is public Northern Dist. NY 1:04-cv-1505 - in 2004 6 million actual fraud - parties despite suit are still continuing the fraud - amount currently estimated $10 million x 3 for FCA statutory penalties) sitting at DOJ where DOJ has not intervened. This is a case we might not have standing to bring on our own so the DOJ is willing to lose $30 million in this instance. We also identified $175 million in no-bid contracts going to one vendor whose agreement with NY is that this vendor will do everything to "maximize federal funding." So NY can offset its payment and obligations to the Federal taxpayer.
If Obama was really serious about cracking down on fraud, the first thing he would do is close the loophole in the current False Claims Act Law that does not allow a private person to bring an action for fraud against a state agency.
See, VERMONT AGENCY OF NATURAL RESOURCES V.UNITED STATES EX REL. STEVENS (98-1828) 529 U.S. 765 (2000), 162 F.3d 195, reversed.
Under the False Claims Act (FCA), a private person (the “relator”) may bring a qui tam civil action “in the name of the [Federal] Government,” 31 U.S.C. § 3730(b)(1), against “[a]ny person” who, inter alia, “knowingly presents … to … the … Government … a false or fraudulent claim for payment,” §3729(a). The relator receives a share of any proceeds from the action. §§3730(d)(1)—(2). Respondent Stevens brought such an action against petitioner state agency, alleging that it had submitted false claims to the Environmental Protection Agency in connection with federal grant programs the EPA administered. Petitioner moved to dismiss, arguing that a State (or state agency) is not a “person” subject to FCA liability and that a qui tam action in federal court against a State is barred by the Eleventh Amendment. The District Court denied the motion, and petitioner filed an interlocutory appeal. Respondent United States intervened in the appeal in support of respondent Stevens. The Second Circuit affirmed.
Held: A private individual may not bring suit in federal court on behalf of the United States against a State (or state agency) under the FCA. Pp. 4—21.
In case you don't know how it works. Many state agencies act as a funnel for federal funds. For instance each state agency is responsible for the distribution and reimbursement of federal funds for different programs. For instance the State Department of Health is generally responsible for the distribution of Medicare and Medicaid, Department of Environmental Protection would be for EPA or green clean up, Office of Children & Families - Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Food Stamps, social services block grants, child welfare. So these State agencies are the gatekeepers for billions in federal reimbursements. These State agencies award grants to preferred vendors pursuant to no bid contracts -- there's no audit or oversight over these contracts. In NYC Department of Education alone there are ** billion no-bid contracts. The papers only reported 340 million, but a Columbia journalist found **billion (I can't disclose how much) and I could provide her direct contact. This is NYC department of education alone.
We found one vendor with $175 million in no-bid. There are others. There are about 14 agencies and 14 shadow agencies. Then the agencies set up sub-agencies i.e. mental hygiene research inc which then gets money for research and the money from the Federal government moves about like a 3-card monty game where you have to guess which state account the money is getting kicked back into. NYS has "ghost employees" where the State agency gives a private vendor a contract and in payback the private vendor pays for State employees expenses.
NY just got caught in a $500 million fraud scheme. This is not the first time NY has scammed the Feds out of hundreds of millions. The Feds are supposed to charge a penalty to disincentivize the frauder from continuing the fraud. In fact NY has a settlement agreement that if they misbilled the feds again they would be subject to trebel.
If NY is just fined, what it owes -- where's the disincentive. It would make sense for NY to defraud as much as possible. If 10% of the fraud is uncovered and NY only has to pay back 10% it's worth it for NY (and other states) to continue the fraud.
We're on a gag order from our attorney so keep us anonymous for the time being or clear it with us first. You're welcome to use the case -- it's public, and if you want the back up for the $175 million in no-bids or the billions in NYC DOE no bids -- that information is public as well, and we can show you where it is.
Thanks.
...So, when we can expect the end of financial crisis? I think that US debt is to huge. Guess that Europe will first go out from crisis... I am confused with all this financial mess.
It's the CPI that has been changed dramatically int he last 26 years. Unemployment is still calculated mostly the same. The minor changes that have been made only push down the number, not up.
Ya all, I can't get to it but if someone wants to take it on, & write up a blog or Instapopulist post with some of the overviews, results, plus comment....there is a new GAO report (see right hand column, scroll down to their news feed) on Fannie/Freddie w/ one rec. to plain terminate them both.
A lot of really good information on not only what the GAO found but also implications of what to do with them.
Really hints that the entire "homeownership for certain subgroups" is a sham from first pass scan.
Over at the Naked Capitalism site they have an article on the attempt to unwind the derivatives/counterparties positions from their undocumented software --- please note Lehman's derivatives amount in the excerpted para. below:
"Unwinding derivatives is a complex task at the best of times. In the case of Lehman, one of the biggest dealers in some of the most complex derivatives markets, this has been even more so. Lehman’s global derivatives book included contracts with a notional face value of $39,000bn and deals with 8,000 different counterparties when it went bust. The derivatives business was actually split into multiple strands, backed up by between 20 and 30 different systems."
That sure appears to read $39 trillion if I'm not mistaken. And that is why the consumer won't be any help whatsoever in the infinite layers of securitization (I believe someone once counted up to over 3,200 some securitized instruments now extant!)
[Bretton Woods Committee update: I did come across one brief listing of a small number of those counterparties and they all appeared in the membership pages of the Bretton Woods Committee, everyone's favorite lobbyist group for the ultra-rich.]
Well said. I would qualify the statement by a previous poster that the dominant theme wasn't "deregulation" so much as it was back to the same transference of wealth and concentrated wealth that existed in the early 1900s.
Beginning with Carter, and continuing through EVERY president (Reagan, Bush(1), Clinton, Bush(2), and now Obama) the socialist plutocracy we presently live in has an inexorable drive to consume and control everything to a pathological degree. The most amazing fact is that if one compares legislation (of course, this requires the populace to actually read the legislation) going back to Nixon, we find that Richard frigging Nixon has been the most liberal president of the present and previous eight presidents! Unbelievable to any but those paying attention. [Note: I voted for McGovern with the mailed in ballot from a combat zone.]
Corporate America has consistently worshipped communism, as witnessed by their chronic need to justify themselves by proclaiming that the only way they can "compete" or remain "competitive" is by offshoring American jobs to Communist China and Communist Vietnam (as well as elsewhere). [Imagine that! The only way a quasi-capitalist company can exist is by depending upon communist orgnizations! Ain't that a hoot!!!!]
And one hears that constant refrain from neocon Republicans and neolib Democrats - thus leading any self-aware creature to ascertain we live in a country with NO true political parties.
As that ancient Washington Post columnist Drew Pearson once observed, our "democracy" works by "controlled greed" - but it has long since devolved to uncontrollable greed!
Regulators are imperfect and corruptible. Just look at the recent record of the SEC, and the fact that they won't enforce the laws that are currently on the books.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have regulations. What it means is that the regulations should be simple to understand and enforce. Gray areas are unacceptable.
That's why the New Deal regulations worked so well, and also why the current regulations don't. The current proposals also won't work.
We need to make new/old regulations that are structural and simple: don't go over state lines. Don't mix banking and insurance. Don't charge interest rates over a certain percent.
Any regulatory scheme will never be perfect simply because of the fact humans are involved - same goes for this notion that "free markets" can solve all problems. Markets are just as imperfect as regulations because of the participation of humans.
The dominate policy regime since 1980 was less regulation. Just look at the graph above (re: wages). One of the basis for de-regulation was this notion of market fundamentalism - leave the markets alone they are self-correcting blah, blah, blah. Bullshit. And one of the leading market fundamentalists, Alan Greenspan, admitted the flaws in this theory in congressional testimony.
As for risk and failure, sadly failure has been introduced into the system but at the bottom - foreclosures and delinquencies are at record highs. But the financial oligarchy has been spared for now.
The illusion that I see in many comments on this matter is the belief that we can trust any government with the job of "regulating" the financial system without being corrupted by the money they hold in their hands through laws they enact.
The government, of corse, has a role to play, and exactly what that role is will be hashed out in the comming years.
The greatest flaw that becomes evident to me in this debacle is that we have not allowed the failures to fail. One example of this can be seen in Freddie and Fannie. The implication that became reality, that no matter how badly they ran their business they were immune from failure and apparently from prosecution. Whether they were leading the pack of bad lending practices or just a cohort, there was not enough fear of failure because of the governments promises i.e. too big to fail.
The pain of collapse would have been extreme. Many would have suffered, but, the lesson learned would have been invaluable. And those who are still running this show would have been crushed under the weight of their own failures instead of continuing the mess.
My proposition is that this mess would have never happened without the influence of our government, they perpetuated a little problem until it became a world altering problem.
And now to top it all off, as others have stated above, the underlying problem still exists. Banks, individuals, and the country itself are in debt to our ears, and we are doing all we can to avoid the inevitable. Failure. Failure is the one thing that stops destructive behavior before it infects everyone else. Risk must be reintroduced into the equation.
Feel free to call me an idiot. I'm just interested to hear, understand, and hopefully learn from the comments that follow.
i.e. be offline for the afternoon, but I saw this, good news and you might check out the middle column of title feeds to see what some of the other trade groups, economists focused heavily on trade, manufacturing have to say on this one for more insight.
I have to look at this (as well as probable fiction document claiming the Stimulus saved 2M jobs and so on, sorry but with 10% unemployment I'm having a hard time believing that one)
it creates products and jobs as well as international sales. Of course the destruction these products cause is never calculated in but that's if they are actually used, or more explicitly how they are used.
Material and products that are purchased by the military and the government for war purposes, are mixed in the GDP, and I believe, in the industrial production figures.
What kind of wealth is built with military ordnance? And does that really reflect a positive element of recovery?
We'd/I'd like to say that what you are doing is a great service.
We are experiencing as a small business all the corruption you are speaking about -- thank you for providing a voice that we -- not being the media- have a hard time voicing to a significant enough audience -- so thank you.
A few additional comments.
1. Regarding tackling fraud and waste in the system. The biggest federal fraud is happening at the State level through -- a. the State awarding themselves federal funds to provide services that compete with private enterprise without consideration for price or quality; 2. State administrators awarding no-bid contracts that are eligible for Federal reimbursement to vendors without consideration of price or quality.
We have a 30 million dollar Federal Fraud complaint (complaint is public Northern Dist. NY 1:04-cv-1505 - in 2004 6 million actual fraud - parties despite suit are still continuing the fraud - amount currently estimated $10 million x 3 for FCA statutory penalties) sitting at DOJ where DOJ has not intervened. This is a case we might not have standing to bring on our own so the DOJ is willing to lose $30 million in this instance. We also identified $175 million in no-bid contracts going to one vendor whose agreement with NY is that this vendor will do everything to "maximize federal funding." So NY can offset its payment and obligations to the Federal taxpayer.
If Obama was really serious about cracking down on fraud, the first thing he would do is close the loophole in the current False Claims Act Law that does not allow a private person to bring an action for fraud against a state agency.
See, VERMONT AGENCY OF NATURAL RESOURCES V.UNITED STATES EX REL. STEVENS (98-1828) 529 U.S. 765 (2000), 162 F.3d 195, reversed.
Under the False Claims Act (FCA), a private person (the “relator”) may bring a qui tam civil action “in the name of the [Federal] Government,” 31 U.S.C. § 3730(b)(1), against “[a]ny person” who, inter alia, “knowingly presents … to … the … Government … a false or fraudulent claim for payment,” §3729(a). The relator receives a share of any proceeds from the action. §§3730(d)(1)—(2). Respondent Stevens brought such an action against petitioner state agency, alleging that it had submitted false claims to the Environmental Protection Agency in connection with federal grant programs the EPA administered. Petitioner moved to dismiss, arguing that a State (or state agency) is not a “person” subject to FCA liability and that a qui tam action in federal court against a State is barred by the Eleventh Amendment. The District Court denied the motion, and petitioner filed an interlocutory appeal. Respondent United States intervened in the appeal in support of respondent Stevens. The Second Circuit affirmed.
Held: A private individual may not bring suit in federal court on behalf of the United States against a State (or state agency) under the FCA. Pp. 4—21.
In case you don't know how it works. Many state agencies act as a funnel for federal funds. For instance each state agency is responsible for the distribution and reimbursement of federal funds for different programs. For instance the State Department of Health is generally responsible for the distribution of Medicare and Medicaid, Department of Environmental Protection would be for EPA or green clean up, Office of Children & Families - Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Food Stamps, social services block grants, child welfare. So these State agencies are the gatekeepers for billions in federal reimbursements. These State agencies award grants to preferred vendors pursuant to no bid contracts -- there's no audit or oversight over these contracts. In NYC Department of Education alone there are ** billion no-bid contracts. The papers only reported 340 million, but a Columbia journalist found **billion (I can't disclose how much) and I could provide her direct contact. This is NYC department of education alone.
We found one vendor with $175 million in no-bid. There are others. There are about 14 agencies and 14 shadow agencies. Then the agencies set up sub-agencies i.e. mental hygiene research inc which then gets money for research and the money from the Federal government moves about like a 3-card monty game where you have to guess which state account the money is getting kicked back into. NYS has "ghost employees" where the State agency gives a private vendor a contract and in payback the private vendor pays for State employees expenses.
NY just got caught in a $500 million fraud scheme. This is not the first time NY has scammed the Feds out of hundreds of millions. The Feds are supposed to charge a penalty to disincentivize the frauder from continuing the fraud. In fact NY has a settlement agreement that if they misbilled the feds again they would be subject to trebel.
If NY is just fined, what it owes -- where's the disincentive. It would make sense for NY to defraud as much as possible. If 10% of the fraud is uncovered and NY only has to pay back 10% it's worth it for NY (and other states) to continue the fraud.
We're on a gag order from our attorney so keep us anonymous for the time being or clear it with us first. You're welcome to use the case -- it's public, and if you want the back up for the $175 million in no-bids or the billions in NYC DOE no bids -- that information is public as well, and we can show you where it is.
Thanks.
...So, when we can expect the end of financial crisis? I think that US debt is to huge. Guess that Europe will first go out from crisis... I am confused with all this financial mess.
It's the CPI that has been changed dramatically int he last 26 years. Unemployment is still calculated mostly the same. The minor changes that have been made only push down the number, not up.
Proposal to restructure our housing finance system.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Ya all, I can't get to it but if someone wants to take it on, & write up a blog or Instapopulist post with some of the overviews, results, plus comment....there is a new GAO report (see right hand column, scroll down to their news feed) on Fannie/Freddie w/ one rec. to plain terminate them both.
A lot of really good information on not only what the GAO found but also implications of what to do with them.
Really hints that the entire "homeownership for certain subgroups" is a sham from first pass scan.
Over at the Naked Capitalism site they have an article on the attempt to unwind the derivatives/counterparties positions from their undocumented software --- please note Lehman's derivatives amount in the excerpted para. below:
"Unwinding derivatives is a complex task at the best of times. In the case of Lehman, one of the biggest dealers in some of the most complex derivatives markets, this has been even more so. Lehman’s global derivatives book included contracts with a notional face value of $39,000bn and deals with 8,000 different counterparties when it went bust. The derivatives business was actually split into multiple strands, backed up by between 20 and 30 different systems."
That sure appears to read $39 trillion if I'm not mistaken. And that is why the consumer won't be any help whatsoever in the infinite layers of securitization (I believe someone once counted up to over 3,200 some securitized instruments now extant!)
[Bretton Woods Committee update: I did come across one brief listing of a small number of those counterparties and they all appeared in the membership pages of the Bretton Woods Committee, everyone's favorite lobbyist group for the ultra-rich.]
Well said. I would qualify the statement by a previous poster that the dominant theme wasn't "deregulation" so much as it was back to the same transference of wealth and concentrated wealth that existed in the early 1900s.
Beginning with Carter, and continuing through EVERY president (Reagan, Bush(1), Clinton, Bush(2), and now Obama) the socialist plutocracy we presently live in has an inexorable drive to consume and control everything to a pathological degree. The most amazing fact is that if one compares legislation (of course, this requires the populace to actually read the legislation) going back to Nixon, we find that Richard frigging Nixon has been the most liberal president of the present and previous eight presidents! Unbelievable to any but those paying attention. [Note: I voted for McGovern with the mailed in ballot from a combat zone.]
Corporate America has consistently worshipped communism, as witnessed by their chronic need to justify themselves by proclaiming that the only way they can "compete" or remain "competitive" is by offshoring American jobs to Communist China and Communist Vietnam (as well as elsewhere). [Imagine that! The only way a quasi-capitalist company can exist is by depending upon communist orgnizations! Ain't that a hoot!!!!]
And one hears that constant refrain from neocon Republicans and neolib Democrats - thus leading any self-aware creature to ascertain we live in a country with NO true political parties.
As that ancient Washington Post columnist Drew Pearson once observed, our "democracy" works by "controlled greed" - but it has long since devolved to uncontrollable greed!
my question is now....do all of these smaller bank failures add up to more than the TARP recipient potential failures?
what was that expression about a bunch of small twigs bundled together is stronger than the largest branch?
Regulators are imperfect and corruptible. Just look at the recent record of the SEC, and the fact that they won't enforce the laws that are currently on the books.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have regulations. What it means is that the regulations should be simple to understand and enforce. Gray areas are unacceptable.
That's why the New Deal regulations worked so well, and also why the current regulations don't. The current proposals also won't work.
We need to make new/old regulations that are structural and simple: don't go over state lines. Don't mix banking and insurance. Don't charge interest rates over a certain percent.
Any regulatory scheme will never be perfect simply because of the fact humans are involved - same goes for this notion that "free markets" can solve all problems. Markets are just as imperfect as regulations because of the participation of humans.
The dominate policy regime since 1980 was less regulation. Just look at the graph above (re: wages). One of the basis for de-regulation was this notion of market fundamentalism - leave the markets alone they are self-correcting blah, blah, blah. Bullshit. And one of the leading market fundamentalists, Alan Greenspan, admitted the flaws in this theory in congressional testimony.
As for risk and failure, sadly failure has been introduced into the system but at the bottom - foreclosures and delinquencies are at record highs. But the financial oligarchy has been spared for now.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
I'm so used to rhetoric and absolutely zero happens on anything.
good friday news.
Maybe.
BREAKING: Obama Imposes Tariffs on $1.7 billion in Chinese Tire Imports
According to Robert Gibbs' email statement:
We will see what kind of bite this has.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
and you might check out the admin forum, where I try to document whatever goodie I added to the site.
The illusion that I see in many comments on this matter is the belief that we can trust any government with the job of "regulating" the financial system without being corrupted by the money they hold in their hands through laws they enact.
The government, of corse, has a role to play, and exactly what that role is will be hashed out in the comming years.
The greatest flaw that becomes evident to me in this debacle is that we have not allowed the failures to fail. One example of this can be seen in Freddie and Fannie. The implication that became reality, that no matter how badly they ran their business they were immune from failure and apparently from prosecution. Whether they were leading the pack of bad lending practices or just a cohort, there was not enough fear of failure because of the governments promises i.e. too big to fail.
The pain of collapse would have been extreme. Many would have suffered, but, the lesson learned would have been invaluable. And those who are still running this show would have been crushed under the weight of their own failures instead of continuing the mess.
My proposition is that this mess would have never happened without the influence of our government, they perpetuated a little problem until it became a world altering problem.
And now to top it all off, as others have stated above, the underlying problem still exists. Banks, individuals, and the country itself are in debt to our ears, and we are doing all we can to avoid the inevitable. Failure. Failure is the one thing that stops destructive behavior before it infects everyone else. Risk must be reintroduced into the equation.
Feel free to call me an idiot. I'm just interested to hear, understand, and hopefully learn from the comments that follow.
Top shelf article, BTW. Proud to contribute to it.
I'll spend some time learning the site better. I have a vast chart collection at this point. Hope to make more use of it here.
i.e. be offline for the afternoon, but I saw this, good news and you might check out the middle column of title feeds to see what some of the other trade groups, economists focused heavily on trade, manufacturing have to say on this one for more insight.
I have to look at this (as well as probable fiction document claiming the Stimulus saved 2M jobs and so on, sorry but with 10% unemployment I'm having a hard time believing that one)
Commerce Puts Duties on Chinese Steel Pipes - Looks like this was issued today (9/11/09).
But we wait for the President's decision on tires.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
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