Madoff had Connections With SEC Regulator, Mukasey's Family

In the SEC, one of the regulators, Eric Swanson, who investigated Madoff's investment business in 1999 and 2004 married his niece Shana in 2007, and the current Attorney General Mike Mukasey's son Marc is representing one of the main employees with the firm according to an AP report at biz.yahoo.com "AG recuses himself from Madoff fraud probe".

Excerpt:

Frank DiPascali, a top financial officer at Madoff's investment firm...

...

...was the Madoff employee who had the most day-to-day contact with his investors. Several described him as being the man they got on the phone when they had questions about the firm's investment strategy, or wanted to add or subtract money from their accounts.

Authorities have not said publicly whether DiPascali is suspected of any wrongdoing.

"We are trying to learn the facts like everybody else," Marc Mukasey said in a phone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. 

Luckily Congress will be investigating this.  They should be able to find a few members out of their 500+ crew who haven't slept with (romantically or financially) someone involved in it.

To be fair, the a spokesman for the SEC regulator claimed started "his relationship with Shana Madoff began years after the regulatory scrutiny in which he was involved" according to a Marketwatch report "Market Watch: House panel to examine Madoff, oversight" after a Wall Street Journal piece.  

 Well, with all the sources that can report every time a Hollywood starlet flushes the toilet, you wonder if the reality will come out here.  Or will they be afraid to mess with the big money folk?

Mark Penn (yes that Mark Penn) in the WSJ talks about the elites and how they only listen to other elites and are rather led around by the nose (the nasal organ being their own prejudice against the 'riff raff', I'd say, but he doesn't exactly say) in money matters.   You can read his piece at "The Impressionable Elites Get Snookered"

I'd call this similar to the crony capitalism that brought down Japan and kept it flat lining for a decade.  Any chance our debacles in finance created from the insularity and prejudice of the money group will open up America's economic system?  Don't hold your breath.  I doubt that Japan has even changed.  I'm betting they just found ways to exploit Chinese and Indian business opportunities (and underpaid labor resources) to regain some stature in the economic world.

Of course, all this is impossible without a tepid money hungry mainstream news media.  In fighting the real causes of terrorism or even in making sure a nation is ready to defends it's citizens or in protecting from financial meltdown due to greed and subterfuge the watchdogs have been overfed into lapdogs by their inclusion into the mid rungs of the rich and elite ladder, by the Big Money sponsors that own them.  

 Yeah, I'm still looking for that  "liberal mainstream media". 

Christopher Cox and other sources say that Madoff started his Ponzi scheme in 1999 implying that it's Clinton's baby too, but a Ponzi scheme needs more and more suckers or the same suckers to invest more and more as time goes by, so any damage done in less than two years during the Clinton years would be relatively minor compared to the rest.  conversely, the damage done in the nearly two years since January 9, 2007  when Mukasey took over as AG should be the worst.  I'm just going by the characteristics of a Pyramid scam (named Ponzi over a man who worked it earlier).  

 And, interestingly, the niece's boyfriend left the SEC  presumably after Mukasey became AG.  So there was technically no time in which someone who might have the means and desire to stop  a good investigation into El Ponzo Madoff's shenanigans wasn't in a position to do so.

The best time to figure out what was happening was in 2002 after the first Market meltdown.  Remember how, in late Spring and early Summer 2002 we were supposed to be working on fixing Wall Street oversight?

But somehow the Bushies turned that 'oversight' into self reporting and Congress suddenly was presented with WMDs in Saddamland so they couldn't keep their minds on the WMFDs.

Since the money elite tend to control the nation, I hope they remember the next time they go along with a government which wants a war, because war keeps people from effective oversight of their rights and the government's obligations to the people at home (like keeping their money safe).  

Former Senator John Warner even once repeated the Bushco talking points about the relationship between less than democratic or even effective governments and war, but no big name that I read or heard felt it necessary make a big deal about it as the Bushies pushed to invade Iraq.  Warner was implying that Saddam was likely to invade a neighboring nation if we didn't go "git him" (in Bush's vernacular) to cover up for lack of fairness at home. But the head smacking irony was nearly blinding.  

Now the Republicans are back to waging their verbal war at home against Democrats who are trying to help our nation.  It's kinda like having a Civil War in your back yard, except there is nothing civil about it.

Will we be able to fix things? Or will the whole nation become one big California?

tags: attorney general  mike mukasey  ponzi scheme  pyramid scheme  shana madoff  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit