He also took on Stan O'Neal's risks, a wee bit different than what you are talking about though. Absolutely. The investors' assumptions were wrong. But it's not fashionable to blame the investors is it? If I made money, it's all me. If I lose money it's somebody else's fault. Laugh all the way to the bank? My man Stan certainly did. But the key part is that he didn't commit fraud now did he? Who says they are not responsible? Stan is gone. Jimmy Cayne and Alan Schwartz are gone. Rick Fuld is gone. Angelo Mozilo is gone. Chuck Prince is gone. Robert Steel is gone. Ken Lewis should be gone but let John Thain take the fall for him. Kerry Killinger and his 3 week replacement who couldn't get it done (Alan Fishman) is gone. Martin Sullivan and his (another) fixer-upper replacement who couldn't get it done Robert Willumstad are done. And those are just the CEO's of major companies. Want to extend to other senior management and board members? Also, last time I checked, componsation on Wall Street was cut dramatically this year. As for deception, no I don't agree that absolutely no fraud occurred, nor do I think Icehouse did. But you made it a black and white, right or wrong issue. And based on a black and white right or wrong issue perspective, matters are a lot closer to Icehouse's claims than yours. Furthermore, there definitely isn't any cases of telling sub-prime mortgages were worth xyz dollars, and it is black and white like that. Nobody on Wall Street dealing with those things is stupid enough to quote a price on such things. They may present it in the best light such as saying "I think the worst part of the crisis is over," but that is hardly mispricing securities.
The investors aren't the ones filling out the form 10-K's and aren't legally obligated to enure their accuracy, and aren't the ones who sign them under possibility of criminal penalties....that's what being a fiduciary is all about....
My initial disclaimer is of course, I'm not Christian. Whether human greed is appropriate is a matter of perspective; and mine is that I'm perfectly fine with greed insofar as it is not illegal and outright immoral. I'm not sure about now, but last time I checked, Merrill had about 1.6 billion shares floating. $43 mil on 1.6 billion is... oh fiddlesticks, I don't have a financial calculator. Hmmmmm, Excel, 2.68 pennies a share. Now if Merrill went under instead of went to BoA, total value... zip. Versus if you sold at $28 a while back or was hoping for a prayer that didn't work out and sold now at $6... Nope, he definitely didn't deserve it.
I asked you before and I'll ask you now. Which Form 10-K's or any other filings do you find to be inaccurate and why? That's actuallly of interest for me. And investors ARE responsible to make sure they understand what they are buying and deciding how much to pay for them. The next thing you'll tell me is that the IRS is responsible for you making a mistake on your tax return.
Sorry but when you lose 90% of your market cap over your tenure as Chairman CEO it means that you are EPIC FAIL as a CEO.
So um, the US national debt, unemployment all went up. Economic growth, output and the market is down. Does that mean Obama is an epic fail as president?
If GDP goes down 90% while he is president and the country is bought by Canada - yes I would consider him to be an epic fail. Good thing we are barely paying him very much.
GDP isn't a market valuation. You can't short the GDP. If it's down 90% you should be in a bomb shelter. GDP is also by definition diversified, unlike Merrill. If you were gonna compare any institution to the GDP, it would be a market index, which isn't down 90%. So that's as sh1tty a comparison as they come. But you know what, the federal deficit for the first qurater of 2009 reached $485 billion, more than all of last year. And it'll keep going up reaching some say $1.2 trillion. That's close to 260% of what it was last year. By your definition, a diversified index getting increased to that extent, if that isn't epic failure then I don't know what is. What an absolutely normal person would have said is instead that you know what, nobody knowingly buys "crap." If Merrill didn't want them, who would, especially when half the potential buyers collapsed.
Read their form 10-K's and Q's from 2007...."Things are great, we'll be fine, we'll continue minting money!" and "whoops make that $3 billion more in losses than we had initially thought!" do not mix in the span of months.
Once again, you are changing the issue again, not that I'm surprised. I'm asking you specifically in which 10-K they mispriced those subprime mortgage deals. As for the company in general, you know what, nobody could tell you how much REALIZED LOSSES come in until they are actually REALIZED, what a shocker huh. As I mentioned already, the CEO may put it in a positive light, but that is NOT fraud. They just can't win can they? If they say things are fine and got hit by losses, they are "lying" and get sued. But if they come out and say "sorry guys, things are really sh1tty," there'll be a massive run on the company, devaluing it and they get sued. Absolutely. But then again, so are you.
Do you know what a Form 10-K is? It's an annual report - it's filed once a year. So when I say the one filed in 2007, I mean the one that was filed in 2007, which is out of a grand total of ONE. What more clarification do you need on that point? 10-Qs - do you know what these are? They are quarterly reports. They are filed once per quarter. So when I say the ones filed in 2007, I am talking about the four filed that year(actually just three I'm referring to since by the October 2007 they had begun to come clean on how they were screwed) Anyway look at the ones filed earlier in the year and the press releases, then look at the Q3 - notice anything different? LIke billions of dollars different?
You will excuse me for a moment while I laugh this one off. OK I'm good. I find it funny that you insist on talking about something that you know absolutely nothing about. Here's a Form 10-K for you: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1395009/000113699908000403/0001136999-08-000403-index.htm This one specifically relates to Merrill Lynch Morgage Investors Trust, Series 2007-HE3. It's a sub-prime first and second lien residential property deal. It is approximately $630 million in bonds backed by initially $669 million in collateral. As you can see, it files a 10-K, 10-D's (that's the monthly distribution report, 425(b)(5) (that's the prospectus), 433 aka FWP's, 8-K's and (unfortunately becoming more common) 15-15D's. Others you may see include 425(b)(3), 8-K amendments (8-K/A) etc etc etc. Those are just the required filings. Of course the servicer issues remittance reports every month, among other things. The servicer is LaSalle so if you want to see those, just go here: http://www.etrustee.net/ You know, it's kinda usual with this sorta things. Each and every deal comes with those things and the whole shebang. To find them all you to do is go to Edgar and do a search, which is how I randomly came up with this deal. Well, not completely random, I was looking for a Merrill deal. So want to tell me again how many 10-K's Merrill filed last year? That would involve you knowing how many deals they underwrote now wouldn't it? Of course, 10-K in this case refers to Section 13 and 15(d) but not S-K Item 405. With the conviction you had regarding your knowledge of mortgage backed securities I thought you'd know right away what I was talking about. Pity. Now I invite you the great lawyer to go through the documents with a fine teeth comb and find where in the filings there is a couple billion dollar difference. In fact, I invite you to find where there is a (let's call it) MSRP for those deals.
I'm talking about the one filed by the parent company, Merrill Lynch & Co Inc., dumbass. The one that O'Neal was the CEO of and that is publicly traded. You know, the one that files one ANNUAL report...on an ANNUAL basis, hence the name. There's only multi-hundred million dollar consolidated derivative, ERISA & securities fraud case going on about it in SDNY....lol, maybe you might have noticed it.
You know it's a funny thing, moron, the Form 10-K's specific to those MBS' are also called ANNUAL REPORTS, filed on an ANNUAL BASIS. Not that it should be a surprise, they do have the same "code" after all. And that fraud case? Don't make me laugh. If they bring it to court, and of course assuming the government doesn't favour the investors again, they'd lose. Having said that though, what I'd perfectly expect though is the change the terms again, because if they actually argued over the legality of it, they'd lose, kinda like what they did with Enron, which though highly immoral, wasn't illegal based on accounting rules at the time. Must be nice to be able to change the rules after the fact. But let's cut the crap and stop dancing around the issues altogether. Which subprime MBS deal in ANY filing mispriced the securities? Furthermore, I'd really like to know where you get the right "price" of those securities. I've dealt with those securities in the past and if you ask me how much I understand those sub-prime MBS', hmm hmm, not as much as I wanted to. And if I was to trade them, I would have senior level fixed income analysts prepare dozens of reports; use analytical tools like Intex and the Yield Book, the licensing and data tools such as Bloomberg, the licensing fees of which alone cost millions of dollars a year, not including usage and consulting fees. But apparently you can price them just like that. Boy, you should work on Wall Street. They'd pay tens of millions for a guy like you. However, you know what I suspect is the reality though? You don't understand those MBS'. That's right. You don't understand them, a junior analyst doesn't understand them, a finance major right out of school doesn't understand them and the average American CERTAINLY don't understand them.
Actually it's not, especially since the govt moved in quickly on Enron, AA and Worldcom. What's stupid is to think the govt would give a record number of taxpayer dollars to some firms that they believed were fradulent. That makes no sense. It's stupid to think that (not calling you stupid...but it defies all common sense that the govt would bail out firms they thought were shady).
The government moved quickly on worldcom and Enron with an entity prosecution? What was the docket number of the criminal cases - do you have access to PACER? Because I do and I can't find them....anywhere. Thanks in advance Icehouse.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (commonly known as the SEC) is an independent agency of the United States government which holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets. The SEC was created by section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (now codified as 15 U.S.C. § 78d and commonly referred to as the 1934 Act). In addition to the 1934 Act that created it, the SEC enforces the Securities Act of 1933, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and other statutes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Securities_and_Exchange_Commission You can google Worldcom, Enron and AA to see how fast the govt moved in on those companies. And you're welcome. Edit: FYI, if the govt were gonna bust these firms for fradulent behavior, they would probably get them for their internal controls being weak and creating an environment ripe for fraud. But again, we haven't heard about anything like that...and I surely don't see them giving them record bailouts if they were going to take that path. I don't need to be a lawyer or have docket numbers to come to that conclusion. I just need common sense. You still have yet to answer why the govt would give record bailouts to firms they thought were fradulent. How does that make any sense? Would you give a large sum of money to a crackhead, or anyone else you think is shady?
