In December 2002 ten investment banks settled the case for a total of 1.4 billion dollars and promised to mend their ways. ibid.
Since deregulation began the world’s biggest financial firms have been caught laundering money, defrauding customers and cooking their books again and again and again. ibid.
Using derivatives, Bankers could bet on virtually anything ... A fifty trillion unregulated market. ibid.
In the early 2000s there was a huge increase in the riskiest loans called subprimes. ibid.
The investment banks actually preferred subprime loans because they carried higher interest rates. ibid.
Lehman brothers was the top underwriter of subprime lending. ibid.
The Securities and Exchange Commission conducted no major investigations of the investment banks during the bubble. ibid.
Credit Default Swaps worked like an insurance policy ... Speculators could also buy Credit Default Swaps from AIG in order to bet against CDOs they didn’t own. ibid.
According to a Bloomberg article business entertainment represents 5% of revenue for New York derivatives traders and often includes strip clubs, prostitutes and drugs. ibid.
Goldman Sachs sold at least $3.1 billion of these toxic CDOs in the first half of 2006. ibid.
By late 2006 Goldman had taken things a step further: it didn’t just sell toxic CDOs it started actively betting against them at the same time. ibid.
The three ratings agencies – Moody’s, S & P [Standard & Poor] & Fitch made billions of dollars giving high ratings to risky securities. ibid.
As early as 2004 the FBI was already warning of an epidemic of mortgage fraud. ibid.
The market for CDOs collapsed. ibid.
In March 2008 the investment bank Bear Stearns ran out of cash and was acquired for $2 a share by J P Morgan Chase. The deal was backed by $30 billion in emergency guarantees from the Federal Reserve. ibid.
Neither Lehman nor the federal government had done any planning for bankruptcy. ibid.
The AIG bailout cost taxpayers over $150 billion. ibid.
The men who destroyed their own companies and plunged the world into crisis walked away from the wreckage with their fortunes intact. ibid.
It has corrupted the study of economics itself. ibid.
Even after the crisis many of them opposed reform. ibid.
Mid 2010 not a senior financial executive had been criminally prosecuted or even arrested. ibid.
The financial system turned its back on society, corrupted our political system and plunged the world economy into crisis. ibid.
The eccentric aspect of British capitalism is how poorly its business owners discharge their responsibilities. Will Hutton, The State to Come
This is the story of the biggest financial catastrophe in living memory. An unprecedented boom has morphed into bust. It’s the story of how a desperate government fought to prevent a banking meltdown. Will Hutton, Dispatches: Crash: How Long Will It Last? Channel 4 2009
It turned banks into branches of a gigantic global betting shop. ibid.
The bankers sold trillions of dollars of complex new financial products. But their values depended on real things like US house prices. ibid.
Summer 2007 saw the first financial earth tremors. ibid.
Northern Rock had been a dramatic example of how banks ran out of cash when the money markets froze on them. It was not heeded. ibid.
By 2008 RBS had leant more than Britain’s annual gross domestic product, but its balance sheet was a high risk mess of subprime mortgages and bad loans. ibid.
Brown’s faith in the city had betrayed him. ibid.
Brown had combined decisiveness with weakness. He’d shied away from taking a stake in all of the banks, and for the £37 billion he’d handed over, he demanded no direct control or restructuring. Even bonuses were not directly capped. ibid.
Britain’s lead was now being followed in Washington. ibid.
It came at an awesome price. Worse, the banks were now the walking dead. ibid.
Around a quarter of all bank loans are so dodgy they have had to be insured: an astonishing indictment of the banks’ lending practices. ibid.
£1.3 trillion in guarantees, loans and investments to the banks. ibid.
What bankers do with our money is of vital public interest. ibid.
Finance picks up the profits, the taxpayer picks up the risks. ibid.
We look at the businesses and businessmen looking to take over our public services ... A handful of companies are set to make a fortune out of the spending cuts. Dispatches: Britain’s Secret Fat Cats, Channel 4 2011
Ordinary people are feeling the squeeze, but not the men whose companies are taking over the public sector. ibid.
We’re handing over significant chunks of our public services to private companies. And we the taxpayer are paying for those services. But we have absolutely no say in what those companies pay to their chief executives. ibid.
The truth is shareholders have shown little appetite in holding companies to account over the amounts they pay their chief executives. ibid.
Questions have been raised about the process by which some outsourcing companies are awarded contracts. They often hire former government employees to work for them. ibid.
Power is shifting – not to individuals, but to big business. ibid.
2001: the largest bankruptcy to that date in US history was filed. 10,000 people lost their jobs. The Crooked E 2003 starring Brian Dennehy & Christian Kane & Mike Farrell & Shannon Elizabeth & Cameron Bancroft & Nancy Anne Sakovich & Natalie Brown & Ambert St Pierre et al, director Penelope Spheeris, opening commentary, CBS 2003
April 1, 2001: Enron stock: $55.70. ibid. caption
Enron’s the wild west. ibid. boss bloke to hero
Traded thousands of partnerships to hide the debt but in the end it wasn’t enough. ibid.
Any half-assed diligence will dig up can after can of worms. ibid. boss bloke to hero
They were all a part of it … I call it goddamned greed. ibid.
We are the bad guys. We are the criminals. ibid.
As right now you’re all laid off and you have thirty minutes to clear out. ibid. bird boss
Nothing is illegal if one hundred well-placed businessmen decide to do it. Andrew Young
It is a business of some heat. William Shakespeare, Othello I ii 40
We will proceed no further in this business. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth I vii 31, Macbeth
To business that we love we rise betime,
And go to‘t with delight. William Shakespeare, Anthony & Cleopatra IV iv 20
Business first; pleasure afterwards. William Makepeace Thackeray
Nothing went right. I invested a lot of money in a company that made ladies’ bonnets. Then the government cancelled Easter. Les Dawson
How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Shepherd Mead, title of book 1952 & musical
My business is all my delight. Samuel Pepys
The first rule of business: protect your investment. Etiquette of the Bankers, 1775
The chief business of the American people is business. Calvin Coolidge
Men in business are in as much danger from those that work under them, as from those that work against them. George Saville, 1633-95, English politician & essayist, ‘Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections’, 1750
The Biggest Game in Town is of major importance to every American. This program is a comprehensive disclosure of governmental financial operations that have been deliberately concealed and kept from the American people by the governmental financial agencies as well as by the syndicated media. The scope is huge, the personal financial impact of vital concern to us all. Walter Burien, The Biggest Game in Town