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Apr 16, 2010

SEC accuses Goldman Sachs of Civil Fraud Apr 16, 2010

NPR BREAKING NEWS: SEC Accuses Goldman Sachs Of Civil Fraud

The government is accusing Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs & Co. of defrauding investors in its disclosures about securities it sold tied to subprime mortgage securities as the housing market was faltering.

More at NPR.org.#

Is this but another meander down a garden path...lovely, but meant to distract?

3 comments:

Kieron said...

Jude, I know this article doesn't really fit this post, but there's word that Congress screwed up their own health plan while trying to impose one on us. I don't know how long it will stay posted, so get it while it's hot.

Congress wipes out its own congressional health care insurance

link

"Legislate in haste, repent at leisure. Looks like Congress is having one of those "Holy S---!" moments; it appears they have royally mucked up their own health insurance - for all 535 members of Congress and untold congressional employees. In a hurry, they forgot to get it right and wrote it all wrong; now it's the law...

Now Congress is in the same boat they built for the rest of America, without a clue what the new health care reform will mean to them. The beauty of their delimma is pure poetic justice to some -they have written law requiring that they move into a system that doesn't yet exist.

How could that be? Simple, a scaled-down provision of Republic Senator Grassley's “Health Reform Accountability Act” - this one requiring all congress members and their employees, with the exception of Senate committee and leadership staffs, to get their health insurance through the same health insurance exchanges where the general public would get theirs was left in the bill, unopposed, and was signed into law by President Obama.

It appears that the poorly written law is so mangled that “It is unclear whether members of Congress and Congressional staff who are currently participating in F.E.H.B.P. may be able to retain this coverage,” the research service said in an 8,100-word memorandum. "

Some are concerned, and rightly so, that as written, the bill can be interpreted to mean that the second the bill went into law - their own insurance that they know and love - was wiped out. It's a long stretch to 2014, when health care exchanges go into effect and the law (as written) voids their insurance without providing a alternative. Whatever are they to do in the meantime?

Of course that was never their intent, their intent may have been to scrap the amendment altogether - or to revisit and firm up exactly how, when, and by whom all of this was to be handled- but, Oops! they forgot. Unfortunately, they were in rush to pass the bill and never looked back.

Now looking forward is full of panic and a scrambling effort to "fix" what may end up being decided in court. The courts are inclined to judge law as it is written, not by what the author intended to write. How do you even explain this to a judge? Dare they try to plead it is unfair to execute a law conceived in haste, poorly composed, legally illiterate, and signed into law - unread? We all know a few states who would like to try precisely that.

What a mess their insurance is in now; and these are the same buffoons who wrote ours - trust us, they said. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Obama - what a triumph of leadership!"

Silverseale said...

Kieron, this is one of those moments when the obsolescence of the old-style playing field (i.e., Republicans vs. Democrats, conservatives vs. liberals) becomes very apparent. And it went right over your head.

I'm not of a mind to criticize this development with the Congressional health plan. It's not about liberals or conservatives, Republicans or Democrats. I could list any number of Republican "buffoons"--your word, not mine. Mind you, I was a Republican for 20 years, now calling myself "Independent."

One thing any and all politicians are good at is telling us, "watch the big show over there, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" Republicans do not have any more moral high ground than do Democrats. The thing they all have in common is that they want to take money from your pocket and put it into their own.

What seems like a mistake is actually probably karma coming home, in this instance. I'm delighted that ALL of our Congresspersons may be forced onto the same playing field as the rest of us for their insurance.

To me it is just the righting of an existing wrong--because being a member of Congress shouldn't entitle anyone to have better healthcare than the rest of us do.

If you want to know the truth about anything at all, pay less attention to the politics and start following the money.

Kieron said...

Re: the dichotomy you speak of, it hardly went over my head as you say. The article simply caught my attention as an interesting parallel to the rx of Saturn back into Virgo, nothing more.