The financial scandal and the Great Recession that it caused have understandably captured the bulk of our attention, but we must not lose sight of the fact that “control frauds” continue to maim and kill enormous numbers of people and damage the environment and society throughout the world. Several examples of these frauds have led to recent press reports. I write to point out that control fraud is the common feature of these scandals.

All, this is beginning to look like democracy. This is the url to the website for this group. http://www.occupythesec.org/ Tadit

NEW YORK -- A handful of protesters at Occupy Wall Street are doing what
the authors of a complex piece of financial legislation may have hoped
no one would do. They are reading it.

The legislation is a draft of the so-called Volcker rule, a 298-page
regulatory document that came out of last year's Dodd-Frank financial
reform act. As originally proposed by Paul Volcker, then chairman of the

In today’s looming confrontation the ratings agencies are playing the political role of “enforcer” as the gatekeepers to credit, to put pressure on Iceland, Greece and even the United States to pursue creditor-oriented policies that lead inevitably to financial crises. These crises in turn force debtor governments to sell off their assets under distress conditions. In pursuing this guard-dog service to the world’s bankers, the ratings agencies are escalating a political strategy they have long been refined over a generation in the corrupt arena of local U.S. politics.

Readers, this is an important decision which is one of many such cases working through the legal system. The case was decided upon the fundamental lack of legal standing which is the result of multiple levels of fraud. To be a bit cynical, I am expecting some legislation out of the Federal level, aka Congress, which will legitimate retroactively the criminality routinely involved in the securitization related fraud. for now, Tadit Anderson

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
APPELLATE DIVISION : SECOND JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT
ANITA R. FLORIO, J.P.
THOMAS A. DICKERSON

Readers, perhaps I will return to make a comment on this article. Tadit Anderson

This article is part I of III, of Mr. Zarlenga's address at the Eastern Economic Association Annual Meeting in NYC on February 26th, 2011. Listen to it here.

One more thing I wanted to point about about Andrew Ross Sorkin’s story defending Goldman Sachs and Lloyd Blankfein the other day, in which it was posited that Goldman did not, in fact, have a “Big Short” in 2007. Sorkin says that according to Goldman, the firm’s net short position that summer may have been as low as $5 billion, and not $16 billion as claimed, therefore Lloyd Blankfein was not lying when he told the Senate, “We did not have a massive short bet.”

Readers, in my opinion there really hasn't been much notable published recently in the way of articles. This particular article is newsworthy. I have been also busy adapting Re-Imagining Economics as a concept in the context of cooperatives. As an aside fraud is as prevalent within the not-for-profit zone of finances and wishful thinking as anywhere in the two hemispheres. The notion that a lie in all of its forms, can be supported by more lies spoken forcefully is nearly universal, though more prevalent where financial literacy is weak or absent.

Readers, content-wise this article is not much new relative to William Black's typical articles. This doesn't mean that it is lacking in signifanct information that has generally been ignored by mainstream econo-sophistry. Consider it a refresher run. As we go, Tadit Anderson

Readers, The content of this essay makes the original time a bit of a lie, and this seems to be Black's major point, that MERS was created to defraud the exact system of property ownership which made capitalism possible. In effect that the fraud of the MERS process was intentional. This variety of economics destroyed the very basis of its success. This seems to indicate that financialized capitalism will not be able to restore itself until this foundational process is re-established and re-regulated under the rule of law. still busy otherwise, Tadit Anderson

In Washington, before lobbyists try hard to destroy something, they first spread a great deal of disinformation about it. Thus the “End Users’ Coalition” (a front for the derivatives dealers) promotes its lobbying points as fake research. And “fiscal conservatives” attempt to distract from the fact that our largest banks brought us to the brink of budget disaster – this is their preparation for demolishing all vestiges of financial reform.