For the less conspiracy-minded, the deaths again raise a troubling question: Is the already-difficult job of working in finance even tougher in the aftermath of the financial crisis?

After all, Bernanke’s two signature achievements -- bailing out the bankrupt financial system and serving as the architect of the cheap-money policy known as quantitative easing -- have done the very things the wealthy hoped they would. They re-established the status quo on Wall Street after the 2008 financial crisis, and reignited the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is more than 140 percent higher than its March 2009 nadir of 6,500.

No, what is most appalling about the state of play on Wall Street in September 2013 is how much it resembles the state of play on Wall Street in September...]]> Mon, 08 Jul 2013 00:00:00 -0500 The highly compensated Wall Street spin machine never ceases to amaze me. Case in point: defending the indefensible Jon S. Corzine. As soon as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued the embattled former chairman and chief executive officer of MF Global Inc., the now liquidated brokerage, the spinmeisters mobilized.

The CFTC’s gutsy June 27 lawsuit claimed that Corzine failed to “diligently supervise” MF Global and, as the firm’s “control person,” allowed lower-level employees to illegally use more than $1 billion of customer funds to try to stave off MF Global’s Halloween 2011 bankruptcy filing.

It’s tempting to trust this sweet-talking British banking executive, still in the flush of his new appointment to run the scandal-ridden institution. He is understandably anxious to distance himself and his bank from the atrocious behavior rampant at Barclays during the absolute monarchy of his predecessor, Robert Diamond.

Not only was Rubin secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton, but the next three secretaries in Democratic administrations -- Lawrence Summers, Tim Geithner and (assuming he is confirmed) Jacob Lew -- have Rubin's fingerprints on them. This is a cause for grave concern -- assuming, of course, you care about whether it's right for Rubin to have such a long stretch of political influence. 

"Dock2," as he is known -- to distinguish him from his father, also named Dock -- graduated from the University of Miami four years ago with a bachelor's degree in business administration, focusing on finance.

Instead of taking a job at a big Wall Street investment bank, he returned home to Toledo, Ohio, and joined, as a partner, his father's tiny investment-advisory firm, Treece Investment Advisory Corp., and the family broker-dealer, Treece Financial Services Corp. The two companies have five employees: Dock2 Treece, his father, his younger brother and two administrators.

The regulators that allow it to do business in the U.S. -- the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency -- should see that the line in the sand was crossed last week. On Dec. 19, the bank paid $1.5 billion to global regulators -- including $700 million paid to the CFTC, the largest fine in the agency's history -- to settle claims that for six years, the company's traders and managers, specifically at its Japanese securities...]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0600 Perhaps we should no longer be surprised by the arrogance of Wall Street executives. Still, the level of hubris and bullying displayed by Jon Corzine during his 19-month tenure as chairman and chief executive officer of MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MFGLQ) -- as described in a recent congressional report about the company's 2011 collapse -- stands out for sheer offensiveness.

The 97-page report prepared by the staff for Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee panel on oversight and investigation pulls no punches when it comes to blaming Corzine for the MF Global disaster, which wiped out thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of customers' and creditors' money. "Jon...]]> Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0500 Getting what should be public information about major Wall Street firms can be maddeningly difficult.

Bloomberg News discovered this in its ultimately successful effort to get information on the $1.2 trillion in “secret loans” the Fed doled out during the financial crisis. And I’ve had no small experience of it myself.

As I started each of my three books -- about Lazard Freres, Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) -- I submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the appropriate government agencies (the Securities Exchange Commission, the State Department and the Federal Reserve) to obtain whatever documents,...]]> Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0600 America has been learning a lot lately about “the Bain way.” The damning 28-minute video “When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” put out by a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC, and the new book “The Real Romney,” by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, have shed light on the strategies that Mitt Romney’s old private-equity firm, Bain Capital, used to generate outsize returns for its investors.

Last month, thanks to Bloomberg Markets magazine, we were treated to the excellent story about how former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met with a bunch of bankers and hedge fund managers in New York during the summer of 2008 and shared with them some of his early thinking on the futures of the mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

His disproportionately reckless $6.3 billion bet on the credit quality of a few European nations bankrupted MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF) over the course of three dramatic days after the short-term credit markets quickly lost confidence in him and his firm. His gamble will cost MF’s shareholders and creditors billions of dollars and, virtually overnight, put the careers of MF’s almost 3,000 employees in jeopardy.

One of the unintended consequences of the rescue of the banks in 2008 was to restore many of the most heinous aspects of Wall Street’s culture, thus exponentially increasing the inherent risks in the system. Indeed, while Main Street continues to suffer from high unemployment and plunging home prices, the financial industry is dancing a jig after paying itself about $150 billion in compensation in 2010.

There is ample evidence in the detritus left behind by the ebb tide of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. There are the thorough -- and thoroughly damning -- reports (along with thousands of pages of accompanying internal Wall Street documents) produced by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. More was exposed by Anton Valukas, the chairman of the...]]> Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0500 As we head into the 2012 presidential election cycle, the new, official Obama administration policy on Wall Street is crystalline: Hands off the bad guys.

Consider what Sheila Bair, the outgoing chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said at a Council on Foreign Relations event on June 9 about whether Wall Street bank executives should be held accountable for the criminal negligence that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The thinking seemed to be that the sooner the surviving big banks got back on their feet and returned to providing the grease that keeps the wheels of capitalism churning, the sooner the broader economy beyond Manhattan would recover from its serious malaise and businesses would take the steps necessary to hire new workers — reducing a stubborn 10 percent unemployment rate — and to invest capital in new plants and equipment.

Asness--intense, bald, and bearded, with a $500 million fortune and a doctorate in finance--was reflecting on the dark days of 2008, when capitalism seemed to be imploding, when Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers had collapsed and the government had hastily arranged bailouts of Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman...]]> Wed, 05 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0600 Can Goldman Sachs, the profit-seeking missile of high finance, really make money by investing $450 million in Facebook, at a vertigo-inducing price that values the social-networking company at $50 billion?

On first blush, the answer would appear to be no. After all, in May 2009, the company was valued at $10 billion. Last August, Facebook was valued at $27 billion and now it’s $50 billion — for a company with a reported $2 billion in revenue and negligible profits.

We continue to shower them with riches, prestige and glory. We make movies about them. We write books about them. We seriously overpay and then envy them. This year alone, while millions of others suffer from the Great Recession, bankers and traders are expected to be paid — incredibly — another estimated $144 billion in compensation and benefits. Accordingly, Wall Street remains the No. 1 destination for our best and brightest.

But wait a second. Does the punishment fit the alleged crime?

“Are we suffering from hindsight bias?” wondered Peter Henning, a professor at Wayne State University Law School and a former lawyer at the S.E.C., after reading the commission’s complaint. Has the fact that we are all looking for someone to blame for the financial crisis — and haven’t found anyone yet — influenced the ...]]> Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600