Here Is a Copy of the Court Examiner’s Report On Lehman Brothers

By Michael Corkery

The report totals 2,200 pages. The table of contents alone is 45 pages.

It is long, but Judge James M. Peck of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan said the recently released report on the causes for the Lehman Brothers Holdings bankruptcy reads like a “best seller.”

It was written by Court-appointed examiner Anton Valukas of Jenner&Block.

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/03/11/lehman-brothers-heres-a-copy-of-the-court-examiners-report/?mod=e2tw

A Five-Step Guide To Real Financial Reform

Reid Cramer, Mother Jones

The next big battle in Washington—one that will heat up fast if the health care tussle is ever resolved—will be fought over reform of the financial sector. In recent weeks, President Barack Obama has gone on the offensive, calling for new restraints on Wall Street wheeling and dealing and vowing to veto weak legislation. In December, the House passed a robust package of reforms. The action has now shifted to the Senate Banking Committee, and chairman Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has pledged to push a comprehensive package over the finish line before he retires at the end of the year. But it won’t be easy. The big banks and their lobbyists are vigorously resisting a rewrite of their operating rules and working hard to insert loopholes and exclusions that would gut the legislation. Obama can prevent that from happening by spelling out the benchmarks the legislators must meet to avoid his veto pen. The details of financial reform can be complicated. But it’s not hard to come up with the must-have provisions. Here are five that the White House should insist upon to make sure we get financial reform that works, not just window dressing.

1) Fix the big picture, not just individual firms.

We learned the hard way that the possibility of failure is an essential pillar of a stable financial system. When firms become “too big to fail,” they take excessive risks, crowd out smaller firms, and are costly to bail out—and the failure of one can threaten the whole economy. Successful financial reform would include a mechanism to survey the balance sheets of particular firms according to the risks they pose to others, not just to their shareholders or depositors. Currently, no single entity is assigned to ensure system-wide stability and detect excessive risk taking. There must be an agency with the authority to monitor threats to the marketplace and prevent the failure of any individual firm from having a cascading effect. Europe is on a path to create a Systemic Risk Board, comprised of the national central banks, to perform this function, and the United States ought to follow suit.

Read more here:  http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/obamas-financial-reform-do-list

Financial Reform Endgame

Paul Krugman, NY Times

So here’s the situation. We’ve been through the second-worst financial crisis in the history of the world, and we’ve barely begun to recover: 29 million Americans either can’t find jobs or can’t find full-time work. Yet all momentum for serious banking reform has been lost. The question now seems to be whether we’ll get a watered-down bill or no bill at all. And I hate to say this, but the second option is starting to look preferable.

The problem, not too surprisingly, lies in the Senate, and mainly, though not entirely, with Republicans. The House has already passed a fairly strong reform bill, more or less along the lines proposed by the Obama administration, and the Senate could probably do the same if it operated on the principle of majority rule. But it doesn’t — and when you combine near-universal Republican opposition to serious reform with the wavering of some Democrats, prospects look bleak.

How did we get to this point? And should reform advocates accept the compromises that might yet produce some kind of bill?

Many opponents of the House version of banking reform present their position as one of principle. House Republicans, offering their alternative proposal, claimed that they would end banking excesses by introducing “market discipline” — basically, by promising not to rescue banks in the future.

Read more here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/opinion/01krugman.html?src=twt&twt=NytimesKrugman

Whistleblower says he was prepared to murder Bernard Madoff

Jerry Kronenberg, Boston Herald

The Boston financial whiz who tried for years to expose Bernard Madoff reveals in an explosive new memoir that he made plans to murder the Ponzi schemer if necessary.

“If (Madoff) contacted me and threatened me, I was going to go down to New York and take him out,” Whitman resident Harry Markopolos writes in “No One Would Listen,” due in bookstores Tuesday. “At that point, it would have come down to him or me, (and) I felt I had no other options: I was going to kill him.”

“No One Would Listen” tracks Markopolos’ eight-year odyssey to warn the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that Madoff was running the largest investment scam in history.

Working for a Boston financial firm in 2000, Markopolos discovered the $65 billion Ponzi scheme while trying to reproduce Madoff’s unbelievable investment returns.

However, the SEC ignored Markopolos’ numerous warnings, and the scam only collapsed when Madoff turned himself in on Dec. 11, 2008. The global market meltdown had left the crook unable to come up with money his clients were clamoring to get back.

Markopolos, who skewered the SEC in televised testimony before Congress last year, has previously said he feared for his life during his long quest.

After all, Madoff faced years in prison if caught, and Markopolos thinks the scam’s victims included mobsters and drug dealers he believes laundered money through Madoff.

But in his book, Markopolos reveals for the first time just how far he went to protect himself.

http://bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1236008&position=0

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