Conspiracy of Banks Rigging States Came With Crash

[IScreamSundays]

Source: Bloomberg

May 18 (Bloomberg) -- A telephone call between a financial adviser in Beverly Hills and a trader in New York was all it took to fleece taxpayers on a water-and-sewer financing deal in West Virginia. The secret conversation was part of a conspiracy stretching across the U.S. by Wall Street banks in the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market.

The call came less than two hours before bids were due for contracts to manage $90 million raised with the sale of West Virginia bonds. On one end of the line was Steven Goldberg, a trader with Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd. On the other was Zevi Wolmark, of advisory firm CDR Financial Products Inc. Goldberg arranged to pay a kickback to CDR to land the deal, according to government records filed in connection with a U.S. Justice Department indictment of CDR and Wolmark.

West Virginia was just one stop in a nationwide conspiracy in which financial advisers to municipalities colluded with Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Wachovia Corp. and 11 other banks.

They rigged bids on auctions for so-called guaranteed investment contracts, known as GICs, according to a Justice Department list that was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24 and then put under seal. Those contracts hold tens of billions of taxpayer money.

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Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=axH24KWxjVDE&pos=10

[Wilms]

1. They wouldn't!

:sarcasm:

[truedelphi]

2. This is the 2nd article that I have been reading about this pervasive type of scam

Too bad that Obama didn't keep his pledge to us circa (October 2008) to see to it that reform of the Bailouts and that regulation of the financial sector came into play during his very first year.

We are basically letting the financial Big Boys do to us what Halliburton did to the Iraqi people.

So you have a project, any project - say a bridge that needs rebuilding. Maybe it should cost 3 million, or thirty million, but these guys will see to it that it costs 300 million.

But then again, the 300 million is small change, so why not round it up to three billion?

And people wonder why this "recovery" will not last too long? Oh boy, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for that crowd. (A mere three billion dollar bike path on a bridge there.)

[No Elephants]

3. K & R