what’s that sound?
International banking firms are reporting billions of dollars lost to the self-described Ponzi scheme of Wall Street trader Bernard Madoff.
“The allegations made appear to point to a systemic failure of the regulatory and securities markets regime in the US” said London investment firm Bramdean in a statement reported by the BBC.
The bigger picture is that not just financial oversight, but all US federal regulatory agencies have been systematically defanged and redirected by Bush-appointed heads to “ease up” on their ostensible missions over the past eight years. For agencies where such tactics were less feasible — the FBI, for instance — budgets were cut to assure that the agencies had insufficient resources to adequately perform their job. This ‘fox in every chickenhouse’ strategy was entirely intentional and consistent with this administration’s goals, and was probably viewed by them as a great success.
What’s sad is the degree to which this story has been under-reported by the domestic US media. (Could increasingly concentrated ownership of the mass media by a few corporations play a part? Might media owners benefit from less regulation and oversight — obtaining bigger, less competitive markets perhaps?)
That grinding sound emanating from the Potomac is coming from those federal directors with half a clue, trying to see how many documents they can shred before leaving office to slow down the discovery of more potential scandals.