This American Life: The Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra

[benjipwns]

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/536/the-secret-recordings-of-carmen-segarra

Transcript: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/TAL536_transcript.pdf

http://www.propublica.org/article/carmen-segarras-secret-recordings-from-inside-new-york-fed

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-26/the-secret-goldman-sachs-tapes

In early 2012, Segarra was assigned to regulate Goldman Sachs, and so was installed inside Goldman. (The people who regulate banks for the Fed are physically stationed inside the banks.)

The job right from the start seems to have been different from what she had imagined: In meetings, Fed employees would defer to the Goldman people; if one of the Goldman people said something revealing or even alarming, the other Fed employees in the meeting would either ignore or downplay it. For instance, in one meeting a Goldman employee expressed the view that "once clients are wealthy enough certain consumer laws don't apply to them." After that meeting, Segarra turned to a fellow Fed regulator and said how surprised she was by that statement -- to which the regulator replied, "You didn't hear that."

This sort of thing occurred often enough -- Fed regulators denying what had been said in meetings, Fed managers asking her to alter minutes of meetings after the fact -- that Segarra decided she needed to record what actually had been said. So she went to the Spy Store and bought a tiny tape recorder, then began to record her meetings at Goldman Sachs, until she was fired.

TL;DR: Public-Private Partnerships work and we need them in every industry.

[benjipwns]

I say kill everyone who's ever touched money its corruption (from its Jewish origins) likely seeped into their blood and corrupted them.

/moseshess

[Rufus]

Too big to fail, too big to jail.

[Kara]

Moses Hess name drop.

[I'm a Puppy!]

Hey guys, let's setup organizations and give them more rights than citizens and more resources than citizens. And here's the kicker, we're going to make it so making more money is their sole purpose, LEGALLY. What could go wrong?

[Kara]

Seems legit.

[benjipwns]

They could start dating those dangerous gang boys from across the tracks. They've even got matching jackets with acronyms on the back.

[Kara]

I like how we are powerless to affect any change despite glaring and profound structural problems in society of both a practical and moral kind and so sarcasm and irony are the only refuge we have left. Perhaps postmodernity does in fact exist.

[I'm a Puppy!]

I thought it wasn't debatable that Postmodernity exists?

[Kara]

No benji, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_modernity#Late_modernity_vs._postmodernity

[Rufus]

I like how we are powerless to affect any change despite glaring and profound structural problems in society of both a practical and moral kind and so sarcasm and irony are the only refuge we have left. Perhaps postmodernity does in fact exist.

Embrace nihilism.

[Human Snorenado]

History tells us change will come after we start cutting the heads off rich people. I'm ready!

[Rman]

At least people are realizing the sham called the Criminal Justice system, which mostly focuses on petty thieves, the poor, and a few deviants.  Sociopaths run society so most are largely immune.

[Great Rumbler]

50% of inmates in American prisons are serving time for drug offenses.

[I'm a Puppy!]

So I had the chance to finally listen to the episode.
Honestly, I know people are like "OMG! How could the fed be so bad?!!!"
But really, this is going to always be the case so long as money is involved. This is the default setting for all regulation. I mean you can just tell that they're thinking "Well, if we hammer them home on this they'll make less money for their shareholders and average investors could lose a ton of money simply because we're being asses. So maybe it's not that big a deal" Or at the very least they're thinking "This CEO is going to complain to the administration and maybe withhold political donations from them if we keep hammering on this."
I know, I know, people would like to think if the Fed just had some cajones this would be better, but it doesn't work like that. Sure some people are going to be sticklers on stuff but there is a huge amount of inertia and incentive to overcome. I think that believing that regulation will keep this stuff from happening is a bit of a pipe dream. That's not to say we don't need regulation, regulation catches the stupid criminals but so long as money is our motivating factor in society this will continue.

That all being said I was utterly flabbergasted that they didn't even have a conflict of interest policy.
I mean on several clients I've had to put my name on the list of people who are not allowed to make  stock trades during certain times because I have inside knowledge of stuff that would give me an insider trading advantage or I've been taken off projects where it could've been construed that I'd have a conflict of interest. And that's little old me, with an investment power of essentially nil compared to these institutions. It's beyond the pale that they don't even have policy. Really astounding.