Obama Puts Fox In Charge of Henhouse By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

[wilsonbooks]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/15711-focus-obama-puts-fox-in-charge-of-henhouse



I was shocked when I heard that Mary Jo White, a former U.S. Attorney and a partner for the white-shoe Wall Street defense firm Debevoise and Plimpton, had been named the new head of the SEC.

I thought to myself: Couldn't they have found someone who wasn't a key figure in one of the most notorious scandals to hit the SEC in the past two decades? And couldn't they have found someone who isn't a perfect symbol of the revolving-door culture under which regulators go soft on suspected Wall Street criminals, knowing they have million-dollar jobs waiting for them at hotshot defense firms as long as they play nice with the banks while still in office?

I'll leave it to others to chronicle the other highlights and lowlights of Mary Jo White's career, and focus only on the one incident I know very well: her role in the squelching of then-SEC investigator Gary Aguirre's investigation into an insider trading incident involving future Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack. While representing Morgan Stanley at Debevoise and Plimpton, White played a key role in this inexcusable episode.

As I explained a few years ago in my story, "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?": The attorney Aguirre joined the SEC in 2004, and two days into his job was asked to look into reports of suspicious trading activity involving a hedge fund called Pequot Capital, and specifically its megastar trader, Art Samberg. Samberg had made suspiciously prescient trades ahead of the acquisition of a firm called Heller Financial by General Electric, pocketing about $18 million in a period of weeks by buying up Heller shares before the merger, among other things.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Again

and again and...

[HowHasItComeToThis]

17. FOX IS A PROPAGANDA MACHINE, WHEN WILL IT BE TREATED AS SUCH

THE WHOLE US WAS GOING ALONG FINE TIL ALLES MADE THE SCENEhttps://www.google.com/search?q=ROGER+ALLES&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US fficial&client=firefox-a

[FiveGoodMen]

20. "Fox in charge of Henhouse" is an expression.

Matt wasn't reporting on Faux News.

[Blanks]

22. Clearly we've gotten too far away from an agrarian society. eom

[Uncle Joe]

32. It's all tied to this thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022272568

[Blanks]

33. Thanks for the link. I decided not to wade into that. eom

[Doctor_J]

28. Huh?

Are you OK?

[gateley]

30. Yes, again. Just as I was eagerly waving buh bye to Geithner. Sigh.

[xocet]

2. Amazing... n/t

[kath]

3. Hey, don'cha know that putting a fox in charge of the henhouse is a bad thing only when someone like

Dubya does it?

[idwiyo]

4. K&R

[Demo_Chris]

5. I am guessing Matt will be back on the hated list now

[trumad]

7. Truth is like Kyrptonite some here

[UnrepentantLiberal]

15. They're on the case down thread.

Wilfully delusional as always.

[Demo_Chris]

21. hehe

[Dragonfli]

27. I knew he would be back under the bus, he hasn't learned to ONLY PRAISE authority

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2252400

[dballance]

6. So thoroughly disappointing

We have Holder, Geithner, now this one. All from the appropriately labeled "golden revolving door" between government and the people they're supposed to be regulating and prosecuting. It just really makes me sad to see such blatant examples of how the Democrats are no better than the Republicans in this manner.

[coldbeer]

8. Off the subject, but didn't Colen's son

get a cushy job after Colen bent over and dropped his drawers?

Wht is the definition of politics?

[Zen Democrat]

9. Taibbi forgets that there's a distinction between being a defense lawyer and a prosecutor.

She's been both. Defense lawyers work for their clients, guilty or innocent. That's our form of government. Prosecutors are looking for convictions. She's been on both sides. As head of the SEC she'll be in prosecutorial mode.

What's wrong with Matt Taibbi? I thought he was smarter than that.

[phleshdef]

10. Taibbi is plenty smart enough. He just likes to talk shit and enjoys being a cynic.

Notice how he said he would leave it to others to talk about the good things she has done. He isn't interested in a fair story, he is interested in criticizing and nothing more.

[Cha]

11. no he's not. He likes the cutesy headlines that

suck people in so they can start taking cheap shots at the President.

Obama Puts Wall Street’s Worst Nightmare In Charge Of SEC

She has experience in white-collar crimes as well, leading major busts of penny stock manipulation schemes in 2000 which resulted in the arrest and convictions of over 100 people, one of the largest crackdowns on white-collar crime in US history. White’s office has won billions in restitution from major banking institutions for defrauding investors. When she retired from the US Attorney’s office in 2002, it was a major sigh of relief from the business worlds more corrupt elements.

She is someone who knows how to root out corruption, to find the information needed, and to get results. Wall Street had hoped for a business insider, but has instead gotten a vicious attack dog. This appointment comes on the heels of a newly empowered Securities and Exchange Commission, meaning that the administration has decided to get tough on big businesses who would seek to exploit people for profit

.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=280068

[Fumesucker]

24. To use another agrarian metaphor involving a fox

Please don't throw me in that briar patch br'er Fox.

[Zoeisright]

12. Um, WHAT?

Here's another story saying that Mary Jo White is Wall Street's worst nightmare.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251280068

Which one is it?

[UnrepentantLiberal]

14. One headline is bullshit, the other isn't.

Being a prosecutor on mafia trails doesn't guarantee she'll be "Wall Street's worst nightmare".

[rhett o rick]

16. The logic of some is unbelievable. Since she has shown to be tough, then she will be tough

against Wall Street. HUh? Wishful thinking. Maybe she will be tough supporting Wall Street.

[MannyGoldstein]

26. Given this White House's track record...

What's *your* guess?

[just1voice]

13. So she's a psychopath who works for "both sides"

She's probably pro-torture and anti-torture too, LOL.

[bvar22]

18. DURec,

Matt Taibbi has a pretty good track record.




You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their rhetoric, promises, or excuses.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
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[RiverNoord]

19. An absolute necessity for preserving the Republican form of government

The 'revolving door' culture is stark raving nuts. A government absolutely cannot take effective measures against those who break the law when those designated to initiate and prosecute the measures are former and future employees of the lawbreakers themselves.

There is nothing for it but a constitutional amendment - without that, we will sink even further into severe government corruption and become a pure feudal big business nation, with puppet state and national governments. It is inevitable.

This would work:

No person may hold an Office of Trust on behalf of the United States which involves, to any degree, prosecution of individual or corporate parties and/or pursuant or subsequent investigation of the activities of such parties for the violation of the criminal or civil laws of the United States governing commercial conduct, if said person has, at any time during a period of five full calendar years prior to the assumption of the office, received any pecuniary compensation for any services rendered to a party or parties involved in commercial behavior, the nature of which party or parties' commercial activities may be reasonably anticipated to bring said party or parties, or other parties engaged in substantially similar commercial behavior, within the extent of the person's prosecutorial or investigative authority as defined by the duties of the Office.

Additionally, no person holding or having held such an Office of Trust on behalf of the United States may receive any pecuniary compensation from nor hold any pecuniary interest in any party or parties whose commercial activities are or may reasonably anticipated to be subject to the person's prosecutorial or investigative authority as defined by the duties of the Office, during the person's term of said Office. Nor may such person, subsequent to departure from said office, for a period of 5 full calendar years, receive any such compensation or hold any such interest in such party or parties, even if the party or parties did not conduct any such commercial activity during the person's term of office, but began such activity subsequent to the departure of said person from the Office.

That's what you call government. Without it, we slowly cease to be a Republic.

[Blanks]

23. It took Joe Kennedy to stop the shenanigans on Wall Street.

You have to have someone familiar with the problem to fix the problem.

Kennedy got rich gaming the system, and he knew how to stop it.

[Dragonfli]

25. You do realize by your logic a pedophile would be ideal to head a child rape taskforce

to mirror paraphrase your reasoning:
"Kennedy got rich gaming the system, and he knew how to stop it."
"The pedophile raped children successfully, he will know how to stop it"


It is true that a stopped analog clock is right twice a day, that doesn't prove that the best way to tell time is to buy a watch with frozen hands.

[Blanks]

31. Not really.

Pedophiles that act on their impulses are breaking the law. Joe Kennedy wasn't breaking the law when he was making a killing on Wall Street. He knew which things that he was doing that should not have been allowed.

Additionally, there shouldn't be any problem using pedophiles to get profile information about pedophiles. That can be done without exposing them to children. You wouldn't want the pedophile's incentive to be 'time with a child' if they cooperated. Similar to the fact that you wouldn't want someone overseeing Wall Street with investments dependent upon their actions.

[Doctor_J]

29. The post-inaugural has been disappointing

No filibuster reform, refusal of Holder to intervene in election theft, and now this. Monday was great. The rest of the week has been more normal (disastrous)

[yurbud]

34. I wonder if Elizabeth Warren will vote to confirm her...

she would have to screw Obama or screw the rest of us.