Scandal outrage keeps growing

[Spazito]

Regulators are turning over every rock in the mutual fund industry, and they don't like what's seeping out. "It's a cesspool," says New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

<snip>

Monday's hearings were no one-day ritual congressional flogging, after which it's all business as usual. Mutual fund trading abuses are more widespread than first suspected. Proposed new laws will be tough. And the crackdown on funds and fund executives is just starting. "I can safely predict that many more enforcement actions will follow," says Stephen Cutler, the SEC's chief enforcement officer.

<snip>

Ever since Spitzer rocked the fund world in early September with allegations of trading abuses, new revelations just keep coming.


Most recent: Massachusetts securities regulators today will file civil securities fraud charges against five former Prudential Securities employees, a source close to the investigation says. The regulators will accuse three former Prudential brokers and two former branch managers of engaging in a fraudulent market-timing scheme to make money for themselves and offshore hedge fund clients at the expense of mutual fund shareholders.

more

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20031104/bs_usatoday/11936466

[stickdog]

1. New canceled miniseries:

Rich Fund, Poor Fund

[Tansy_Gold]

2. So, tell me. Is this just another way the rich have been . . . . .

. . . . getting richer at the expense of the working and middle classes, the folks who don't have the spare cash to invest in the market directly but try to set some aside for retirement through a mutual fund, which may even be the cache for their 401K?


Tansy Gold, the investment challenged

[Spazito]

7. In a word, yes!

After hours trading, insider trading, usurious fees, you name it, they have been ripping off the average investor.

[Beetwasher]

3. Yet the market is up up UP!

Go figure :eyes:

Eliot Spitzer is Da Bomb!

[annxburns]

4. I love Eliot Spitzer

... some smart dem presidential candidate should praise him and say he would make a good Attorney General.

Can you imagine having someone like that instead of Asscroft.

Sigh.

[gratuitous]

5. Yeah, and why isn't Crisco Johnny looking into this?

Too busy finding hookers in New Orleans to protect the nation's investors?

[JHB]

6. Laugh it up wiseguy, but He happens to know...

...the Tommy Chong was operating for the COMINTERN under Direct Orders from Moscow!

Like some rambunctious businessmen are more important than that! Sheesh!

</sarcasm> :evilgrin:

[Grins]

8. He's got my vote!

Spitzer as Attorney General? - You Bet! Right on! And I'd have Palast be his investigator of the energy industry. If not there, then make him head of the SEC. What better person could there be after BushCo put in that corporate weasel Harvey Pitt?

And for Treasury Secretary - Krugman.

The fund scandal is astounding, and there is not enough media coverage and outrage.
We've been through the S&L crisis, Michael Milkin and the greed of his ilk, the frauds of WorldCom, Enron, Global Crossing, Sunbeam, Tyco, all endorsed by “trusted” gatekeepers like Arthur Anderson and PriceWaterhouse, followed by the damn board of the NY Stock Exchange patting each other on the back for a job well done as they each stuff the pockets of the other to look the other way, and on-and-on-and-on- and now this! The one place you thought your money should (might?) be safe turns out to be another colossal fraud on the public.

And we have a President that believes in industry self-policing and codes of ethics! What a joke. “Markets are a great way to organize economic activity, but they need adult supervision.” (From, believe it or not, the Wall St. Journal, 28 Aug 03, by David Wessel.)

The years of Reagan, Bush, and Bush have proven to be the largest transfer of wealth from the many to the well-off few in the history of the republic. And no one notices. I'm just seething. (Sorry for venting.)

[reprobate]

9. So far our entire economic financial system .................

...has been shown to be crooked, gamed in a way to bring the insiders huge profits, while bilking the small investor.

And still there has been no reaction from the sheeple. Effectively, almost no one has been punished for this debacle, and still the sheeple go about their day to day business without a thought to how they have been used to feather the pockets of the very rich.

You really have to wonder just how long we as a nation can put up with being treated like cattle led to the slaughter by the butchers of wall street. One day, perhaps, we will wake up, and when that happens, this time the revolution WILL be televised.

By now I have lost most hope that peacefull change is possible anymore.

[Grins]

10. Well said!

"..."our entire economic financial system has been ...gamed in a way to bring the insiders huge profits.

Perfect!

The other comment I heard was, "We make money the old fashion way - insider trading."

(Sorry for the second posting.)

[Octafish]

11. BFEEconomics

Socialize the risk for the in-crowd and privatize the gains. This is capitalism at its worst for the rest of us, who are left to fight over the crumbs.