Seven People to Hate for Financial Crisis

Alan Greenspan

1. Alan Greenspan

The Federal Reserve chairman — an economist and a disciple of libertarian icon Ayn Rand — met his first major challenge in office by preventing the 1987 stock-market crash from spiraling into something much worse. Then, in the 1990s, he presided over a long economic and financial-market boom and attained the status of Washington's resident wizard. But the super-low interest rates Greenspan brought in the early 2000s and his long-standing disdain for regulation are now held up as leading causes of the mortgage crisis. The maestro admitted in an October congressional hearing that he had "made a mistake in presuming" that financial firms could regulate themselves.

Chris Cox

2. Chris Cox

The ex-SEC chief's blindness to repeated allegations of fraud in the Madoff scandal is mind-blowing, but it's really his lax enforcement that lands him on this list. Cox says his agency lacked authority to limit the massive leveraging that set up last year's financial collapse. In truth, the SEC had plenty of power to go after big investment banks like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch for better disclosure, but it chose not to. Cox oversaw the dwindling SEC staff and a sharp drop in action against some traders.

Bernie Madoff

3. Bernie Madoff

His alleged Ponzi scheme could inflict $50 billion in losses on society types, retirees and nonprofits. The bigger cost for America comes from the notion that Madoff pulled off the biggest financial fraud in history right under the noses of regulators. Assuming it's all true, the banks and hedge funds that neglected due diligence were stupid and paid for it, while the managers who fed him clients' money — the so-called feeders — were reprehensibly greedy. But to reveal government and industry regulators as grossly incompetent casts a shadow of doubt far and wide, which crimps the free flow of investment capital. That will make this downturn harder on us all.

Phil Gramm

4. Phil Gramm

As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995 through 2000, Gramm was Washington's most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation. He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.


5. Sandy Weill

      Sandy Weill

Who decided banks had to be all things to all customers? Weill did. Starting with a low-end lender in Baltimore, he cobbled together the first great financial supermarket, Citigroup. Along the way, Weill's acquisitions (Smith Barney, Travelers, etc.) and persistent lobbying shattered Glass-Steagall, the law that limited the investing risks banks could take. Rivals followed Citi. The swollen banks are now one of the country's major economic problems. Every major financial firm seems too big to fail, leading the government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to keep them afloat. The biggest problem bank is Weill's Citigroup. The government has already spent $45 billion trying to fix it.

Ian McCarthy

6. Ian McCarthy

Homebuilders had plenty to do with the collapse of the housing market, not just by building more homes than the country could stomach, but also by pressuring people who couldn't really afford them to buy in. As CEO of Beazer Homes since 1994, McCarthy has become something of a poster child for the worst builder behaviors. An investigative series that ran in the Charlotte Observer in 2007 highlighted Beazer's aggressive sales tactics, including lying about borrowers' qualifications to help them get loans. The FBI, Department of Housing and Urban Development and IRS are all investigating Beazer. The company has admitted that employees of its mortgage unit violated regulations — like down-payment-assistance rules —at least as far back as 2000. It is cooperating with federal investigators.  

7. Jimmy Cayne

Jimmy Cayne

Plenty of CEOs screwed up on Wall Street. But none seemed more asleep at the switch than Bear Stearns' Cayne. He left the office by helicopter for 3 ½-day golf weekends. He was regularly out of town at bridge tournaments and reportedly smoked pot. (Cayne denies the marijuana allegations.) Back at the office, Cayne's charges bet the firm on risky home loans. Two of its highly leveraged hedge funds collapsed in mid-2007. But that was only the beginning. Bear held nearly $40 billion in mortgage bonds that were essentially worthless. In early 2008 Bear was sold to JPMorgan for less than the value of its office building. "I didn't stop it. I didn't rein in the leverage," Cayne later told Fortune.

Content from from http://www.time.com

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DSK Conspiracy - The fastest way to become most hated

The short answer is: being the head of International Monetary Fund and standing in the way of international interests.


Mr Putin, the Russian prime minister, has suggested that Dominique Strauss-Kahn may be the victim of a conspiracy to force him from the head of the IMF.


Vladimir Putin said that he finds it hard to believe that the sex charges against the Frenchman are real and that he may have fallen victim to a shadowy plot to discredit him.

"It is hard for me to evaluate the real political underlying reasons and I do not even want to get into that subject, but I cannot believe that everything is as it seems and how it was initially presented," he said. "It does not sit right in my head."
Mr Strauss-Kahn was apprehended at JFK airport in New York on May 14 for allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel chambermaid.
Russian's prime minister public support for DSK comes days after a French politician alleged that the former IMF chief had said before his arrest that he thought Mr Putin was actively plotting his downfall.


The french politician, Claude Bartolone, stated: "He said the Russians and notably Mr. Putin had formed an alliance with France to try to have him fired from the IMF to stop him running for (French) president."


The Russian prime minister's support for the embattled former IMF boss could be seized upon by his critics who suspect that he is a male chauvinist, a claim Vladimir Putin rejects.
He sparked uproar in 2006 however when he was overheard joking about rape allegations against then Israeli President Moshe Katsav. The Russian was quoted as saying: "What a mighty man he turns out to be! He raped 10 women. I would never have expected this from him. He surprised us all - we all envy him!" Kremlin's spokesman claimed the sense of the controversial(practical) joke had been lost in translation. Mr Katsav was later convicted of rape and is now serving out a seven-year prison sentence.

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The eight most greedy people in history

Greed, selfishness, and avarice, or scrupulousness, are some of the most common defects among people in the world. But history of mankind produced some really greedy, rapacious  characters. They reached the paroxysm of greed, forgetting the simple fact that life on this earth is just ephemeral ...

Let's see a top of the most greedy people in history:
1) Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 BC - 53 BC)

While Marcus Crassus was still a young man became obsessed with wealth which will make the main feature of his character. He rented land and bought slaves just to trade them later on a better price. An inexhaustible source of enrichment for Crassus was offered by Rome's difficulty in providing housing for everyone. Ancient Rome was overcrowded and buildings extremely exposed to fire which was one of the most frequent causes for having entire neighborhoods destroyed. But this situation was favorable for speculation. Crassus had organized teams of firefighters, saving the houses from fire and then he bought the burned houses for a small price and after some reparations he rented them. Greed proved fatal to him as Crassus got killed during a disastrous military campaign when he wanted to conquer the Kingdom of Parthia, famous for its wealth.


2) Ghenghis Khan (1162-1227)




Great Mongol Khan wanted to hold everyone, and was about to achieve his dream.Before his death, his empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Adriatic.


3) Pope Sixtus IV (1414-1484)



The Pope was greatly enriched by the fact that he imposed taxes to the brothels and claimed that the souls in purgatory can go to paradise if indulgences for the dead are bought by their living relatives.


4) William H. Vanderbilt (1821-1884)



Vanderbilt was an american rich man of the nineteenth century who was perhaps the richest and most powerful man of his times. He controlled the largest rail network in the world and became famous with his famous words: "The public be damned.! I only care about my property. "


5) William M. Tweed (1823-1878)



Tweed was a land owner in New York but also had banks, railways and hotels. His fortune, in terms of value today would be around 8 billion dollars so far. But he was famous for his avarice and greed, many cartoons of the time being made on the subject of this "flaw" of his.


6) The Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908)




Although she started her "career" as the whore of the Chinese Emperor, meanwhile she managed to become "de facto" the head of this large Asian country for nearly 50 years. She became famous for the 3,000 boxes of jewelry she owned and used the money of the Chinese Navy to build a marble boat where she was dining using 150 golden chop sticks.


7) Charles Ponzi (1882-1949)




He was one of the greatest American crooks of all time. He was the creator of so-called "Ponzi schemes" which doubles the money originally deposited in 3 months. Greedy to make money from whatever was immeasurable.


8) Imelda Marcos (1929)



Tagalog wife of President Ferdinand Marcos, is suspected of having stolen, along with her husband over 5 billion dollars of wealth Philippines. When she and her husband have been deposed from power in 1986, authorities found in Imelda's lockers in Malacañang (presidential palace) over 3000 pairs of shoes, size 37. Imelda's extravagance was beyond any acceptable limit. During an expedition to purchase real estate in New York, she decided to buy the Empire State Building, but eventually gave up. Evaluated at about $750 million, the building did not exceed her financial possibilities, but she said it was an acquisition too glaring. " Instead, she spent fifty-one to get Crown Building and sixty million for Herald Center and two other apartments in Manhattan.

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The Most Incompetent (hated) CEO's in America

When Sun Microsystems was swallowed by Oracle for 7.4 billion US dollars, Jonathan Schwartz, the hipster, blogging, horsetail wearing leader, had destroyed the company's prospects so badly that acquisition was its only way out.

In the early 80s, the firm was founded by few talented engineers and its first Chief Executive Officer, Scott Mc_Nealy.  During his leadership, Sun Microsystems became one of four industry leaders in the server and processor space next to Oracle, HP and IBM. Before Schwartz got chosen by McNealy, Sun Microsystems was a very profitable and attractive company.

Schwartz’s ramp up to Chief Executive Officer in April 2006 was shortly followed by a series of disasters. Despite its excellent position, Sun Microsystems began to decompose rapidly as it lost market share in its main server business to Hewlett Packard and IBM.  The firm’s shares decreased from 27$ to less than 4$ from 2007 to late 2008; Sun Microsystems also later fired nearly 6,000 employees, or about 18% of its people. That's how he became one of the most hated people in America. It is hard to be forgotten those who lost their jobs and careers.

In 2008, in an attempt to improve its offer on the market, Sun grabbed MySQL AB, the company providing the very popular open source software.This proved to be a very wrong move.  As Sun Microsystems share of the server market continued to shrink, Jonathan Schwartz Schwartz attempted to get better with market adoption of its Java software, which never generated much income.  In spite of some success, the issue was that Java is free and Sun never came up with a realistic model to monetize it.

Sun Microsystems had the chance to become one of the most important enterprise technology companies on the planet. Jonathan Schwartz made sure to blew that chance for ever.

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The 15 Worst Companies For The Health of Our Planet

For all the marketing around ecology, there's no escaping the fact that business wreaks havoc on our planet. As the following list of the 15 worst companies for the environment makes crystal clear, there's also not much consumers can do to avoid the worst offenders.


The worst companies for the planet, as determined by Newsweek, are mostly utilities. It's difficult to live without electricity. One of the few exceptions is ConAgra, the giant packaged food company. If you go to your kitchen right now odds are you'll find a ton of ConAgra stuff.


And it's not just our food and our energy that come from these environmentally unfriendly companies. Our pension funds and mutual funds are invested in them.


GreenBiz: An analysis of the publicly available data shows that the 50 largest investors in the companies receiving the lowest scores — those ranked 490 through 500 on Newsweek's list — include three leading public employee pension funds as well as major mutual funds that hold millions of Americans' retirement accounts, including (in alphabetical order) American Century, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, TIAA-CREF, and Vanguard Group. All told, the 50 largest investors have sunk more than $55 billion into those worst-rated firms.


As Joel Makower at GreenBiz reports, all the money tied up in these companies is with institutional investors. If people are really worried about the environment, then they have to pressure these groups, even more than the companies themselves to get something done.
Until then, enjoy destroying the world!



#15 Archer Daniels Midland

The agricultural giant isn't terribly green.
While it's working on many biofuels, it has faced hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lawsuits for various types of pollution. According to Newsweek, it has big environmental impact, and a below average reputation.


#14 AES

Utilities are just gross.
While AES joined the US Climate Action Partnership, the industry group that supports cap and trade in July, it's a huge polluter.


#13 PPL

Allentown, PA-based electricity company PPL is hell on the world, but at least it's upfront about it.
On PPL's website is a good section on its carbon emissions. Alas, "PPL currently has no formal greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan in place." It blames the lack of coherent regulation.


#12 Progress Energy

Being ranked the 12th worst company in the world has to hurt Progress Energy a bit.
The company was named to Dow Jones sustainability Index for the fifth year in a row for being a leader at "managing economic, environmental and social issues." It even offers customers a chance to buy carbon offsets.


#11 Duke Energy

Jim Rogers is one of the most famous utility CEOs out there. He's been on 60 Minutes and The Colbert Report talking about clean energy. He's even said he doesn't see a future for coal in the US.
Despite all his clean energy talk, however, he's Mr. Carbon Emissions.


#10 FirstEnergy

You just can't generate electricity and not pollute.
As an aside, we saw that the CEO of FirstEnergy took a 25% pay cut as the recession took its toll on the utility. We don't know if this was up to him, but it seems like a decent thing to do.


#9 Southern

Wow. Southern really wants you to think it's green. Go to its website. First thing you see, "Exporting Clean Coal."
Undearneath that? Carbon capture, smart grid, corporate responsibility.
And below that? A link to the Mother Nature Network.
Nice try, Southern.


#8 Bunge

This agribuisiness doesn't have any sort of mention of the environment on its front page, so no wonder it has one of the lowest reputational ratings.
This company wrecks the planet, but at least it's not making bogus claims to the contrary.


#7 American Electric Power

The company is about to fire up the world's first carbon capture plant. Good thing.
Its coal plants are spewing lots and lots of carbon dioxide. If its clean coal plant works, maybe it will turn things around.


#6 Ameren

This utility serving Missouri and Illinois is better than many, since it uses natural gas and nuclear power.
But it's still really bad, says Newsweek..


#5 Consol Energy

As one of the country's biggest coal miners, Consol is one the worst environmental offenders.
Consol had the second most poltical donations in 2008 amongst miners. You can bet they'll be spending more to make sure cap and trade doesn't happen.


#4 ConAgra Foods

One of the biggest packaged food companies is also one of the worst for the earth.
In 2006, ConAgra was ripped by CERES for its lack of environmentally responsible behavior. It apparently didn't do much to fix that in the intervening years.


#3 Allegheny Energy

While it's obviously not doing well on this list, Allegheny appears to be taking some proactive steps, including spending $1.2 billion on clean air technology.
It's also measuring its carbon dioxide emissions, and looking at alternatives. 


#2 NRG Energy

NRG Energy is another hulking utility that belches pollution.  It's also tiptoeing its way into cleaner energy.
It's going to be testing clean coal, with the help of a big check from the DOE. It's also going to build solar and wind farms.

#1 Peabody Energy

Worst of the worst.
Peabody Energy (BTU) is a coal company, so this makes sense, but boy did they flame out on Newsweek's rankings.  Peabody's environmental impact is huge, says Newsweek, and its environmental policies are minimal.

NOTE: British Petroleum the chronic polluter of 2011 deserves a special dedicated article. Coming soon.

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How Hollywood Distorts Reality - most hated people become most loved people

Thievery is alive and well in Hollywood. The glamorization of crime invariably tickles the curiosity of the public. Most hated criminals have been portrayed as exciting, daring and cunning tantamount to hero status. They are the risk takers who should not be completely judged upon their criminal expression but rather looked at as individuals with some merit. They are cast sympathetically as their relationships are examined and ultimately lend credence to the justification, in their minds, of the criminal choices they have made. But worst of all, they are often shown as being cool, even as they hurdle towards the death of their freedom. 

Take, for example, the jewelry or art thief. Movies like the Italian Job, the Score and Ocean's Eleven display most hated criminals as generally model citizens, other than when they are committing crimes. There may be such criminals but are they so suave in their real lives? Are they seemingly morally upright in their relationships with others? Are they really just good guys who happen to commit crimes? In real life the majority of criminals are not suave, cool or sympathetic figures. They are cutthroat, ruthless and to a degree, sociopathic. Mob figures are the best example of the paradox between the glamorization of criminal life and reality of criminal behavior.


All agree that the Soprano's, a show about mob life in New Jersey, is a great show. The production value is high, the actors are skilled and the plot lines are well conceived. People get whacked, money gets laundered and criminals get promoted for good work. Yet, in order for the audience to tune in every week they must connect with the characters. Hence, the boss of the family, Tony Soprano is shown as a father, a husband and as attempting to improve his relationships with the outside world by visiting a therapist. This is a ploy to create sympathy for a ruthless murdering crime boss. And it works, as the Sopranos is a hit. What then are the real criminals doing?





True mob figures don't give a damn about the outside world. Their loyalty lies with their crime families. They lie, cheat and murder for riches and would stomp on the average person, literally, to further their gains. A true jewelry thief is usually a two bit criminal who robs the local family owned jewelry store, as can be verified by FBI criminal statistics. Real criminal life is fraught with betrayal, pain and stints in prison. Most criminals are caught at some point with over 13 million arrests made in the US in 2005 alone, according to the FBI. 

The business side of Hollywood is reactionary in nature. The glamorization of criminal life is partly in response to a demand by the public. Interest in stylized underworld figures comes from a public perhaps bored with their average daily existence. The idea that there are people who survive in a world where they ignore the law, fascinates us. But when the glamour is shaken off, and the dust clears, there is only an empty fancy suit left, where a thief once stood.

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Historic Criminals of Wall Street

Wall Street Sharks

Over the years Wall Street has had it's share of criminals, who left behind despair and loss. To fully understand what these criminals did we must examine the individuals themselves, what they did and what is the legacy that they leave behind as a result of their misdeeds. While no two are alike the lasting effects of their crimes can still be felt by Main Street to this very day. In the article below we will examine as well as gain a greater understanding of some of the largest Wall Street shar to include: Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Bernard Ebbers and Richard Whitney.

Criminals of Wall Street

A criminal is someone who has committed a crime and been found guilty in a court of law of committing that crime or others. Since the beginning Wall Street has always had the criminals trying to hide themselves among the honest business people. The crimes or scams that they have committed have been everything from insider trading to fleecing the companies they run and investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. Below are some of the most famous and unscrupulous Wall Street criminals.

Ivan Boesky 

Ivan Boesky in Time magazine

Ivan Boesky's career on Wall Street began in 1966 as a stock analyst. In 1975 he had started his own arbitrage firm. By the 1980's his net worth was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions. Ivan looked for companies that were the target of takeovers. He would then buy a stake in the company on speculation that news of a takeover was going to be announced and then sell the shares after the announcement for a profit. Throughout the 1980's corporate mergers and takeovers were enormous. It 1986 there was almost 3,000 mergers worth $130 billion. Before the deals were announced the price of the stocks were rising as a result of someone acting on inside information that a takeover or leveraged buyout was going to be announced. When something like this happens it a sign insider trading (where you are acting on information that is not made available to the public) and is illegal. This was indeed the case with the Pacific Lumbar three days before the deal was announced Boesky had purchase 10,000 shares. As result of these and other insider trading activities Boesky was charged with stock manipulation from inside information on November 14, 1986. He agreed to pay $100 million fine along with being banned from trading stock professionally for life and serve time in a federal prison . He cooperated with the SEC, taping his conversations with Junk Bond Firms and others. This led to both Drexel Burnham and Michael Milken being charged with securities fraud. The legacy that he leaves is one where greed at any cost does not work. If you break the law eventually you will be caught. As result of these actions of Boesky and others, Congress passed the Insider Trading Act of 1988. The act increases penalties for insider trading, provides cash rewards to whistle blowers, and allows individuals to sue for damages because of insider trading violations.




Michael Milken: In the 1980's Michael Milken was known as the junk bond king. A junk bond is nothing more than those corporations who have a high probability of not paying the money back. If you wanted to raise money through high yield or junk bonds Milken was the person to call. He used these bond to finance merger and acquisitions as well as leveraged buyouts (LBO's) for corporate raiders. What he was doing was nothing more than a complex pyramid scheme. When one company would default he would then refinance some more debt. In turn both Milken and the Drexel Burnham would continue to make their fees as a result of this action. Drexel Burnham had made at least half of it's profits from the work of Milken. Later on Milken also started purchasing stock in companies that he knew would become potential takeover targets. When Ivan Boesky was charged with insider trading in 1986 he helped implicate both the firm and Milken in several insider trading scandals. This led to criminal charges against the firm and over 70 charges against Milken. He plead guilty and was sentenced 10 years in prison and paid $1 billion in fines. It is argued that the Savings and Loan crisis in the late 1980's and early 1990's resulted because so many of the institutions held large of amounts of Milken junk bonds. This resulted in a huge government bailout. After he was released from prison he focused his attention on his foundation which supports cancer research, an economic think tank and education.




Bernard Ebbers


Bernard "Bernie" Ebbers was the CEO of a small long distance company called World Com. With in 17 years he had taken the company to a position of dominance in the telecommunications industry. By 2002 the company had filled the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. What happened is that over a six year period is the company had made 63 acquisitions the largest one was MCI in 1997. This created several problems for the company in that it can be difficult to integrate the old company with the new. Second it threw massive amounts of debt on the company's balance sheet. To keep earnings growing the company would write millions of dollars in losses of the company it acquired in the current quarter and then have smaller losses going forward so that there was the perception that the company was making more money than it really was. This gave World Com the ability to take smaller charges against its earnings every year and spread the large losses over decades. All of this worked great until the Justice Department denied the company's acquisition of Sprint in 2000. When the company filed for bankruptcy they admitted that it inappropriately booked these losses from previous acquisitions from the period of 1999 to 2002. Ebbers also took personal loans from the company and resigned as CEO in April 2002. He was convicted of fraud, conspiracy and filling false documents with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Ebbers legacy created tighter reporting standards with the creation of the Sarbanes Oxley Act in 2002 as well as the forbidding of personal loans to officers of the company and stiffer penalties for financial related crimes.

Richard Whitney 


Richard Whiteny was the President of the New York Stock Exchange from 1930 to 1935. On October 24, 1929 he bought shares in many companies and the market had dramatic turnaround. This allowed him to be viewed as a hero to the market but did little to prevent it's inevitable crash five days later. By 1930 he was made the President of the New York Stock Exchange. Whitney, was an unlucky gambler who played penny and blue chip stocks aggressively. To cover his losses he would borrow money from friends and business acquaintances. This would allow him to buy even more stock in a market that was collapsing, which made his problems even worse. In spite of all of this happening he continued to live a lavish lifestyle. When he could no longer borrow any more money he began to embezzle money from the from his customers as well as an organization to help widows and orphans. As time went on his fraud continued to become more perverse when he looted the New York Stock Exchange's Gratuity Fund of up to $1 million. This was fund was suppose to pay $20,000 to each members estate upon death, as treasurer he decided that it was proper for him to steal from it. After an audit discovered the embezzlement he was charged with two counts of embezzlement and sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison. The newly formed Securities and Exchange Commission required more frequent audits, it set caps on how much debt firms can have and customer accounts are now separate from the property of brokerage firms. This is the legacy that Richard Whitney left to Main Street.

Conclusion

Since Wall Street's earliest days there have been criminals who will try to disguise themselves as honest business people. Many of these crooks rose quickly to power only to have a hard crash landing in the end. This was exactly the case with Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Bernard Ebbers and Richard Whitney. While nothing will ever excuse what they did it, in Milken's case he has tried to do some good by having a foundation for the benefit of cancer patients, economics and education. What their examples show us is that in spite of all the regulations people will still try to find loop holes around them or simply disregard the law for one purpose greed at all costs. When these criminals have been exposed the government will then enact laws to protect the public from this happening again. This is the legacy that the criminals of Wall Street have on Main Street.

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