Yves here. While I have trouble with that notion…”

That makes three of us. General deGaulle once said: “Cemeteries are full of indispensable men.”

The arrogance of the financial elite doesn’t seem to know any limit whasoever.

What what what? Am I reading this correctly- Richard Fuld was on the f-ing board of the Fed at the same time as he served as chairman of Lehman?

That cannot be legal. The chairman of one of the country’s largest financial firms can not possibly be allowed to serve as one of the country’s chief regulators at the same time.

I am either reading this incorrectly, or I am hopelessly naive about the strength of incestuous ties between the public and private sector. Please, please, please tell me that it is the former.

I work for a large fund manager with multiple investment operations. I have transactional authority and am considered a covered person under SEC regulations. my assistant, my junior analysts, hell, even my wife, can’t buy or sell any security (equity or fixed income) for which there are open buy/sell orders in any part of the company in any part of the world. in fact, they can’t place orders for any security that has been discussed on an investment call in any part of the company.

now you’re telling me that the Chair of the NY Fed is free to buy shares in a firm that is under his supervision upon which he is a member of the board – with no pre-clearance from compliance?

unbelievable.

This guy with his insider trading, Nancy Pelosi with her TUNA/Samoa connection, Chris Dodd and his Country Wide Loans, George Bush and his $100 million in Library Donations (Nobody liked him? Somebody did!) You could go on for days listing their sins!

When does it go from disheartened sheep to Civil Unrest and hanging them from an oak tree?

It’s called crony capitalism. It’s like Goldman alumnus Liddy at AIG. It’s like Summers getting millions from a hedge fund for doing nothing. It’s like Paulson risking the whole financial system to settle whatever vendetta or ill-feelings he had toward Lehman while making sure no matter what happened Goldman was taken care of. It’s how Madoff made off with billions for so long. It is how a system that has completely failed can act as if it only has a PR “confidence” problem.

“Steve Friedman is a very capable chairman,” said Tom Baxter, the New York Fed’s general counsel”

This reminds me of the obligatory interview the media do with the neighbors of axe murderers: “He was such a nice man when he wasn’t chopping people up. Very quiet.”

“New York Fed officials say that to have forced Mr. Friedman off the board while it sought a Geithner successor would have deprived it of two leaders at a crucial time.“Steve Friedman is a very capable chairman,” said Tom Baxter, the New York Fed’s general counsel, “and was the kind of person who we needed to head the search” for someone to succeed Mr. Geithner.

In Washington, the Fed’s general counsel, Scott Alvarez, also says Mr. Friedman was needed during the New York Fed’s transition.” - The banks where “to big” and “too important” to fail.
- Geithner was “too important” to the bank nationalization to let $40,000 in back taxes keep him from such an important post.
- Mr. Friedman was “too important” an asset at such a crucial time for the rules to apply to him. Everything & everyone is too important for the rules to apply to them.
The rules are for us “little people” who aren’t so crucial to the “system”.

I see the gold standard making a comeback.

Yves, maybe you’re being too subtle for me in the quotation above. But Steve Friedman as a director is most certainly a Goldman insider. And if he traded on the basis of material (”“Material.” Information has been defined as “material” for purposes of U.S. securities laws in
circumstances where: (i) there is a “substantial likelihood” that a “reasonable investor” would
consider the information important in making an investment decision; (ii) the disclosure of the
information would be “viewed by the reasonable investor as having significantly altered the ‘total
mix’ of information made available;”9 or (iii) the disclosure of the information is “reasonably
certain to have a substantial effect on the market price of the security.”) non-public information, that sounds an awful lot like insider trading to me.

Oh, wait a second, reading through the regs, I see a little-remarked-upon footnote, the “Goldman exclusion.”

Never mind.

YS:
I read this one too. A CPA cannot own shares in any company he audits. Why should the NY Fed not be subject to the same rules CPAs are. The conduct of these clowns is appalling.