Bush DOJ Is Now Filene's Basement for Corporate Crooks
The fire sale by the Bush Administration in a last gasp to coddle corporate polluters, crooks and malefactors (i.e. friends and family) is on at the Department of Justice. From Carrie Johnson at the Washington Post:
The Justice Department has reached more than a dozen business-related settlements since the presidential election, with more in the pipeline for January, prompting lawyers and interest groups to assert that companies are seeking more favorable terms before the new administration arrives.
…
A review of 15 agreements involving corporations since early November suggests that much of the alleged misconduct dates back five years or more, provoking questions about why the cases took so long to mature and why resolutions are coming with only weeks left in President Bush’s term.
Johnson’s article discusses, among several, the case of United States v. Siemens. This case sticks out like a sore thumb. There are actually four different cases consolidated against Siemens – against their home company in Germany, and against each of their subsidiaries in Bangladesh, Venezuela and Argentina. How deep, pervasive and criminal was the conduct of Siemens in their worldwide bid to defraud the US Government and others? Glad you asked; it was so bad that:
The company hired a law firm and accounting experts to probe its problems, ultimately paying more than $776 million to advisers who reviewed millions of documents and interviewed 1,750 employees…
So what basement bargain settlement did Siemens get?
"Under the terms of the plea agreement announced today, first, Siemens AG will plead guilty and has pled guilty to one count of failure to maintain internal controls and a one-count books and records violation. In addition, three Siemens subsidiaries, those located in Bangladesh, Venezuela and Argentina, have pled guilty to conspiring to violate provisions of the FCPA.
"Second, Siemens will pay a criminal fine to the United States in the amount of $450 million.
Here is the kicker: Siemens retains full rights to keep on contracting with the US Government and its agencies; no debarment, which should be a given for fraud of this scale. The Bushies are always ready willing and able to let big corporate criminal right back in the door to rape, pillage and plunder again.
The Bush Basement Sale is on for another eighteen days, step right up and get yer bargains!
Have you see the latest New Yorker cover “The End is Near Sale”
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz…..c_20081229
Kind of goes with your piece
lol. Poifect.
That reminds me too of our dearly beloved prime minister, who opined last fall, just as everyone else was becoming seriously frightened about the oncoming recession/depression, that recessions are a great time to invest — you can get some real bargains.
Another nice little gift to the crazies is to let people with concealed loaded weapons into the National Parks.
THE DEATH OF TRUST
http://72.167.56.43/content.ph….._item_id=0
But look at Richter’s prescription: a market-driven gold standard.
How can the ’solution’ to allowing the financial industry to hide the tarnish on all its superficially shiny objects, each with limited but UNverifiably intrinsic value, be for us all to resort to a single shiny object with verifiably limited intrinsic value?
As a practical matter, how could his advice possibly extend to every individual in a nation of 330 million, on a planet of 20 times that?
And to take a narrow example of the fly in the ointment, what commodity does one use to place a bet on the future price of gold?
Calling out the entire financial industry as Ponzi schemes built on Ponzi schemes is of course accurate – NOW – but simplistic.
There have been ventures and business plans in the past which were essentially or were based in some critical way on a Ponzi scheme, or a pyramid scheme [eg. Amco], or a monopoly position, or a monopsony position, or a price-fixing cartel, or a ‘just in time’ delivery system [eg. Walmart], or a ’skeletal’ support system, or illusions contrived by ‘creative accounting’ [e.g. Enron], or anti-efficient cronyism, or bubbles, all of them having or carrying the potential to have an corrosive effect on the viabilty of the overall system of supposing the intrinsic value in a single currency.
What allowed the system to repair and adjust and carry on was the trust that, before those got too far they would be identified, and addressed.
Instead, the Bush administration has occupied the 6th and 7th four-year cycles of dismantling the early warning systems – – and has gone further than any of the previous five in nurturing, protecting and even encouraging the worst schemes, to the point that somewhere the advantages in following those practices drove out too high a percentage of the ventures and business plans which did not follow those practices, simply on the basis of that declining to do so meant being unable to compete for investment and credit.
So it appears we’ve already agreed to take step one: end the Bush administration. And even that obvious step was expensive and hard and not only isn’t over, it hasn’t begun.
But determining to build it on yet another shiny object is going to make things worse, not better – repair and adjustment more difficult, not easier – and recovery take far longer, if at all.
civilization itself is a ponzi scheme
it’s all based on bullshit
I should write a book about it …
And I’d read it, as long as the chapters are short enough to read during a powder room break.
But you first have to consider whether it might already have been written. A father and son team of Finnish scientist propose that the reason we have so much differentiation and speciation on this planet – IOW the answer to eternal questions like: Why am I here? and Why are some fish so wierd? and Why do we have limestone caves with stalamites that get metled down snotite drip by snotites drip of sulphuric acid until they are crystalized and eventually get so rigid and frail they collapse on themselves? and What’s the deal with us homonid saps anyway? is Mother Earth is engaged in experiments to achieve absolute entropy.
Thus we Wheelies are here to assist fearless leader emptywheel in drawing out not just our own enervating bursts of exasperation and frustration at the snotite-like actions of Bushies and Republicans and other manifestations of r-thoritarian misanthropic mischief-makers, but to force them into expending increasing resources of energy to continue in their quest to dissolve everything in a vast malodorous vat.
Might that be your book, in a wingnutshell?
And I would point to my own rickety, duct-taped abomination of a second paragraph as being in the nature of a template for what contributes to precisely that purpose and no other.
naw, I don’t go for the “why am I here” stuff
I’m more a “I’m here, so deal with it” kinda guy
I judge by results-outcomes
I’m just not sure if the world can handle the truth, that’s all that’s holding me back
well, that an laziness
an apathy maybe …
but you WANT me on that wall …
(wink)
The organization of individuals into a civil society is not necessarily entropic unless,of course, entropy is a given. Even so, I’m more concerned about this billion year spectrum. Yes we can!
Denigre @ KOS has a post up regarding what seems to be progressing DOJ Abramhoff investigation.
Lately, even more than before, w/all the DOJ “issues” either stonewalled or unaddressed… not to mention my previously expressed frustration w/BO for not defining stuff (econ meltdown especially)… seems to me Dem leadership does not understand all these scandals are fundamentally constitutional issues first, political issues 2nd. I am numbingly amazed Reid, Pelosi & BO seem unwilling to take a stand on clear constitutional principles.
Aside from current Justice/econ debacles, even bigger concern for me is that Nothing has been done to prevent a reoccurrence of all this stuff, no matter how badly people have been hurt. Whether DOJ’s civil rights abuses, torture & it’s legalities, Abramhoff or all these bones W’s admin has thrown to corrupt corp. America, in my view if, ultimately, fed gov’s complicity in all this is not called/spotlighted/detailed, sooner or later we’ll have a repeat performance. BO’s reticence in committing to this process, whether in ME policy or W’s DOJ foibles, in my opinion… big, big mistake.
The repub effort to pre-define him is already well under way. I really don’t get why all these folks sitting on their hands.
Sadly good title bmaz.
Shocking, though, about Blagojevich negotiating to sell the Senate seat. Apparently DOJ was truly truly torn – indict him or hire him as a consultant.
Tough call.
4 – Abramoff, Cunningham – they’ve slow walked everything to where statutes have run and evidence is destroyed – – – either by the targets or by DOJ and the Exec branch in its race to cover molten breats and fleshy asses. When your crown jewel is sending Safavian to jail for a golf trip, shame is extinct.
The only thing that gets any modest eyebrow lift from the lawyers at DOJ is when the “injured” are their personal friends. It’s why the firings of the USAs was the only thing to get even a smidgen of response. Torture someone to death and the DOJ response is to help destroy evidence. DO a pal out of his political job – they’ll come after you.
Safavian. Yep, and they had to do that pissant stupid little case twice to get it right. And, who knows, they may have screwed the pooch a second time; he has not even appealed yet (not sure he has even been sentenced).
LMAO
Thanks for snapping me back to reality Mary, as your posts always do (I always read everything you do here for long time now, and really appreciate it). I imagine I’ll need a few more “snappings” in coming months, as I haven’t entirely purged my sense of “hope” and “change” quite yet… am working on it though.
yep, that definately helps my purge acceleration… thanks.
When you have books and newspaper reports by decent reporters detailing torture deaths with bodies tossed in unmarked graves as “government acts” and disappeared children used for torture enhancement – I get a little jaundiced over the devotion of resources to a golf trip. OTOH, it’s nice window dressing – see, we investigated and investigated and looky what we came up with! Bad plaids and mulligans.
Our Reps, media, others have their priorities. The value of all human life is not one of those priorities. More important issues to investigate like spending millions investigating lies under oath about Bj’s.
Happy New Year everyone.
George Bush has never been truer to form. Spending $776 million on outside lawyers and forensic accountants to uncover internal fraud suggests that Siemens has a systemic, “bet the company” problem. If the company doesn’t fix, it could go under or lose its most lucrative clients, and the Geschaefstfuehrer and his favorite board members might lose their jobs.
Not to worry. Georgie will wave his magic pinky and all those nightmares will go away. Not the troubling, possibly criminal conduct, mind, just the threat that there be consequences for it.
I can’t wait for the WSJ OpEd balm that tells us such leniency will deter similar future conduct. Wanna bet? As for that guy who stole the church candlesticks and loaf of bread, send him to the galleys. Our ships of war must patrol the seas, keeping threats to commerce at bay.
The one that worries me is the one that stole the rudder. *g*
431 hrs & 29 min
Not to put too fine a point on it, but WTF reads them anymore?
Yeah, sure… some people still do.
But contrast today’s readership with the people reading them ten years ago.
Just spent part of New Year’s Day hearing about the absolute terror of elderly residents in my parent’s ‘assisted living’ place — people who have seen 50 years of ’savings’ and ‘investments’ go sidewise. Okay, that’s only one place, but it’s also not isolated from the rest of the US and quite a high portion of the people who live there have moved to it from around the US.
Now consider that ripple effect among millions of people, all of us anxious about whether Mom, Dad, Aunt, or whomever can still afford their retirement — while the rest of us look at our ‘portfolios’ and want to smack some bastard right across the room.
Maybe it’s only me, but my attitude about the WSJ is that they are nice, compliant, well-meaning fools who need to take off their rose colored glasses. Ten years I read them. Now, I don’t give much of a damn what they say — most of my time online is spent at EW’s and her links, and things that people put here. Because the info here has far more explanatory power than whatever pablum the WSJ OpEds want to dish up today.
If I’m listening to the lower bass volumes of the conversation that I heard yesterday, the smartest thing the WSJ could do is some ferocious investigative reporting. Or pay Vanity Fair to reprint the articles by Stiglitz and Bethany McClean (who just wrote a fantastic article on Fannie Mae — a ‘must read’ for those of us on EW’s finance-related threads).
Don’t mean to be a grump, EOH.
But from what I can tell, the WSJ has lost value in approximate relationship to the diminishing value of the dollar. Sad for them. Sad for the rest of us, too.
Maybe it wouldn’t have turned out this way if they’d started a CRIME section back about 20 years ago. But they didn’t.
Another lost opportunity.
Have spent the last year in and out of hospitals, assisted living facilities and nursing homes with my WWII Vet dad. What a rat maze for our seniors. Folks who have paid into the system their whole lives, played by the rules, payed their own ways plus more and then get royally fucked and confused by the system in their golden years
I keep thinking Micheal Moore will do Sicko 2 (3,4,5 etc) on our health care system for our seniors and others. Met a couple in the nursing home last month who were getting a divorce in their 80’s (married for close to 60 years) so that she could hold onto their savings because they would lose it paying for his coverage in the nursing home. Many unbelievable stories in these facilities. Pathetic, sad stories
Sicko 2, 3, 4 etc. Micheal Moore where are you?
With all due respect to Michael Moore, I’d rather point the spotlight at Congress.
There are many complications from the social shifts of ‘extended longevity’ and changing demographics (smaller family size). I don’t see that a legislative institution in a nation our size can even begin to keep up with the issues; then add on ‘cloture’ and GOPers who still think it’s 1952, and problems accumulate at record speed.
These are problems that frankly, I don’t believe that even 100 super-effective Senators and 435 in the nation’s House of Reps — in a nation of 300,000,000 — can address in a timely fashion.
I don’t see how any culture can go through this kind of emotional upheaval and remain stable or prosperous. Underlying structures really need to be completely rehauled IMHO.
But those seniors seem to attribute the Great Depression to corruption: both economic and political. They’ve seen this dynamic before and frankly, they’d throw more than their shoes at George Dubya Bush if he was dumb enough to go meet with them.
(Actually, I just had a funny image of false dentures, pointy umbrellas, scorn, contempt, earrings, teevee remotes, knitting needles, and Large Print novels being hurled by ancient grannies at GWBush. My Lordy, if he had to spend one hour with some of those seniors, he would probably be so shocked at their wrath he’d forget his own name. And it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they fist-bumped each other afterwards while he crawled in a daze out of the room… )
yeah but I would like to see Micheal Moore do 2 and a half hours on the messy maze our seniors find themselves in these place due to the Insurance fiasco. Most of the seniors I am talking with had no idea it was such a maze until they are too weak, needy and in the maze wondering what will be covered and what will not that they lose their homes, savings and integrity in the process
My father is with a private insurance company and during his recovery they were letting us know he could he cut off at any time if he did not improve. Kept hearing the term “plateau” with a company called Secure Horizons who I now refer to as UnSecure Horizons
Oh-hoooo! I know women in their 50s and 60s with about 35 years of ‘professional experience’ under their belts now going to bat for their frail, elderly parents. Anyone who is elderly in this nation needs a personal advocate. That often turns out to be a child, niece, or nephew. It’s at least a part-time job, and during periods ramps into F/T.
If the smart, articulate women that I see dealing with these problems are as completely shocked as you and I… well, Michael Moore would have quite an audience! And if we ever get organized, whoa — get outta the way!
And what is the GOP doing to help us out?
Oh, pissing all over Eric Holder, and bleating about not seating Al Franken.
Evidently, they don’t think we cannot distinguish between ‘Bleeper Blago’, his toady Burris, and a comedian who actually won a Senate election.
That’s how stupid the GOP is: they’ll continue to politicize and offer us economic cannabalism.
Jesus, Mary, Joesph, and all the saints and angels!
if they’re anything like my aunt, we’re in good hands (she fits the profile perfectly)
during my brief glimpse into the maze, my aunt was the only person who understood what was happening, and how to insist on better treatment
most of the time, my aunt was the person who provided the “better treatment” for my mother. but when the doctors started having their discussions, and when the insurance companies started figuring costs, my aunt was the only person at my mother’s side who understood the options the doctors and insurance companies didn’t tell us about
My aunt has pretty much helped everybody in the family at some point or other (she’s an RN)
I don’t participate much in health care debates, but I do suggest that everyone have an independent advocate-service provider, either personal or professional. I’ve always had access to a person who gave me independent opinions about my medical conditions and helped with treatments, and it makes a world of difference (I’ve had some nasty burns and wounds over the years)
so I figure that what we need is a universal health care plan where everybody has access to an “Ombudsman” or some non-doctor and non-insurance agent advocate
is that a part of anyone’s plan ??? (cuz my aunt is gonna be busy takin care of me an Grandma)
Wow, is that ever one insightful comment.
I think your idea of a Medical Ombudsman is brilliant, and it’s an idea whose time really has arrived.
And like you, I’ve observed that people with family members in one of the health care professions do seem to be able to find their way through the maze more adeptly than people without that kind of guidance.
Which underscores what a great point you make about Ombudsmen.
Wow… anyone know how to get that idea to Obama’s administration…?
I have literally talked with 30 some professionals within the system who all repeat the same chorus “we have a hard time figuring out the system, so we know how difficult it is for family members”. Seriously I have not talked with one professional in the health care system including nurses, aides, doctors, physical therapist, etc who supports the way the health care system is set up. Not one over this past year.
The last nurse assessor for the nursing home my father is in recently said that she is going to put everything in her children’s names when she turns 50 (she is 44) due to what she has witnessed with folks losing their homes, savings and integrity after they have spent a lifetime paying into the present system. Tens of thousands of seniors in these systems with no allies or support. Micheal Moore where are you?
You forgot the walkers and canes
(just yesterday this topic was discussed at chez patriot, and a new rule was instituted as a result. Upon learning that a coach had once challenged the opposing coach to a fist fight before the rose bowl, on the field, we debated, and decided that JoePa would be allowed to use his cane in any pre-game fisticuffs with Pete Carrol. Therefore, a new rule was created: Anybody over the age of 70 gets to use his walker or cane as a weapon in a fight)
fyi, I know from personal experience, don’t mess with Grandma when she’s got the cane
That is an excellent rule.
I will adopt it at Chez rOTL, unless Mr Bush happens to come round — in which case, I will personally aid anyone in their 70s to be ‘fully armed’ with walkers and canes.
BTW: Someone at that Assisted Living center gets Vanity Fair, and as near as I can tell at least 3 other residents have already read it, and more await. And didn’t that issue only arrive in the mail last week…?
VF is just not quite the hotly-read title that I’d expected at an ‘Assisted Living’ address.
I’m pretty convinced it was the photos of Cate Blanchett (and Kate Winslett) that first caught the attention of my father; some things do not change. But wow, it’s amazing how fast those elderly readers evidently move from Kate Winslett’s bare ass to Stiglitz on economics, and Bethany McLean on the intricacies of Fannie Mae getting… ‘financially boinked’ as it were.
something for nothing:
http://globaleconomicanalysis……ecome.html
12, it seems that way, doesn’t it.
Bmaz, maybe you can use something like this for a follow up, Not Every Bargain Is A Good Buy aka Justice Wears It’s Swan Song – just not well.
Siemens porvides the Government with classified items that nobody else can provide. Even Obama would have to keep them. That’s how a lot of defense contractors avoid significant penalties.
$450M will sound like a lot of money to the 95% of folks who don’t know how bad it was.
Win/win for BushCo. They’ll actually be able to get away with bragging they did good, while Siemans pays a fine of about $1/shr. It’s currently trading at about 77.
Boxturtle (And the awful thing is, this will actually HELP their stock price)
Thanks bmaz
digg
AP reports Caroline is the NY senator.
That telco has near monopoly presence in the countries on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, seemingly vying with the French and Italians for preponderance in the nations which were colonies or near colonies, in the mid XX century. Information proscriptions, long waits, were the norm in the time I studied the region for some internet research entrepreneurs.
The way I remember Filene’s downstairs one found no utensils, but lots of discontinued styles of clothing. I think Colin Powell shopped local when college age, citing the controversy over the Pottery Barn war plan, but Woody wrote the palace history to soothe ruffled feathers.
Among the aisles in the BushCo BargainBasement is one aisle stocked with items like tins of lameduck with exceeded expiration date plainly visible on the side of the label.
Next to these insidious items are the cleanup supplies, where EPA has manufactured a widget long since made available to polluters, its gift of raising the minimum reportable toxic discharge; if you dump only a ton in the river, no problem, not reportable; it is when the company pumps millions of pounds into the stream that the ever-strict EPA will record the data.
Filene’s, to me, was one of those places the well dressed folks roamed the street level and above, but the stairwell to the basement was unobtrusively proximate to a fairly nondescript side entrance without the garish outdoor signs to draw customers. Though it was becoming a known and ever more popular way to furnish the dorm or apartment, and, clearly, entering from the side street and being studentishly garbed was a giveaway, together with one’s youthful appearance, that this customer was going down to purchase last year’s look, or the other odds and ends reduced 2/5 in price in the basement.
Today, I imagine some industrial medicine law expert pondering the bargain in BushCo basement described in an article this week about OSHA, that gremlin which haunts shoddily run businesses everywhere in the US; it seems with OSHA, too, in 2002 the rule du jour was to cease categorizing many workplace safety rule violations as transgressions. Then the OSHA director could boast that under Bush OSHA had been so effective that the number of violations had dropped, continuing in the proud tradition of US government oversight of workplace safety. Some wag at WaPo last week noticed BushCo’s OSHA issued only 2/10 of the average prior administration’s usual output of citations for workplace safety rule violations; the linked story describes a neat Bushco outsourcing of lab analysis for assessment of workplace risk handling toxics. The article describes ailments reported in dental technicians who must work with beryllium; OSHA’s career scientist’s report was squelched until the outsourced report returned rebutting some points but simply suggesting the science data be suppressed for the rest of the report; the outsource? A lobbying firm. The OSHA policy rewrite? Followed the lobbying outfit’s outline for refusing to categorize the substance a workplace threat.
I can scarcely express how much I despise these people.
But what their stupidity fails to recognize is that nothing in life is really ever ‘free’; the dental assistants ill from toxins may one day be unavailable to resolve the dental problems of the very asshats whose short term greed — ably aided and abetted by corrupt accounting practices and amoral tax codes — blinded them to their own complicit participation in their self-destruction.
Karma can be a hard-nosed, unsympathetic matron.
Rumor only so far it looks like.
Interesting that you chose Siemens. Of course it helps that they are nasty untrustworthy FOREIGNERS.This is an SEC investigation of events in third countries. However wrong, and bribery is wrong, of course, some of us find the US meddling in overseas business like a world cop a bit hard to take. So Siemens got a settlement. What I want to know is how the major US corporations do it, and believe me they do. Don’t see too many SEC investigations of them, settled or otherwise, do we?
I heard Siemens had allocated close to 4 bln to cover fines. That it turned out to be in total around 1.5 means happy days are here again over there.
Have you checked out TPM today? Some of the info over there about who’s getting paid to implement the bailout are pretty amazing.
For a company the size of Siemens, $4 billion in fines and penalties for systemic violations that required spending three-quarters of a billion on internal investigations sounds a lot closer to reasonable liability. The issue is fines and penalties and a de facto fee for continuing to do business at the Gubmint’s teat, as well as a Get Out of Jail card for senior executives. Four hundred fifty million, by contrast, is small change, not much incentive to deter future egregious conduct.
As for the unrelated question about who reads the WSJ anymore, the answer is all of senior corporate America and their counterparts offshore. Even under Murdoch’s ownership. Apart from its factual reporting, it still sets the tone, floats trial balloons for corporate arguments in contested issues. What no one really knows yet is what arguments will work with Obama/Holder. These settlements are in exchange for Wingnut welfare now and corporate funding for electoral bids tomorrow. For bidness, cheap at ten times the price.
There are a few peices missing from this as few know what criminal activity these companies have been involved in which supported their position. I know what it is considering that I was in a family for more then 26 years who are directly involved. Many should find it interesting that the DOJ hasn’t explained any of this but to me there weren’t expected to explain any of it. Our DOJ needs to be thrown out and something different that actually works needs to be installed. We’ve lost our judicial system to corruption and criminals and in the mean time, everyone is trying to smooth over the truth with ongonig lies. Sooner or later, something has to break and when it does, I’m afraid those who have shown everyone who they are, may be in for a huge surprise.
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
nice post, bmaz, despite the depressing news enabled, as usual, by our Dear Leader.
I have only one quibble. Filenes Basement (the original store on Washington St., Boston) is no bargain anymore–or else it’s a bargain in the derogatory sense of that term.
Traditionally in this store (maybe it is different in the spin-offs), all the price tags are stamped with the date they are placed on the floor for sale. If the clothing sits unsold for several days, the clothing qualifies for 10% off, then 25% if more days pass, etc. After more than 30 days (or thereabouts) that same clothing would qualify for over 75% off the ticket price or else it would be given to “charity.” And thus shopping at the original Filene’s basement was always a hunt for a bargain.
Several years ago I stopped shopping at the original Filenes basement, because I witnessed two employees (apparently under orders) methodically working through the wall of mens’ ties and removing to the back room any ties qualifying for a discount greater than 25% off. A different crew of workers was doing the same in the mens’ shirt bins.
It was a scam. So I left in disgust, but not before doing one more thing.
Stretching across the wall of the mens’ tie racks, above eye level, was a row of dress shirts matched up with a tie, the pair propped up for display purposes –but each with a valid price tag from a month earlier.
Like an angry leaping lemur I travelled the wall and collected two Armani ties, $20 each. I could have grabbed more, but beauty being in the eye of the beholder some things are too ugly to be a bargain, even at 75% off.
Actually it must have been more like 90% off if I only had to pay $20 per tie.
I lost connection to FDL…… did anyone else?
twas a brief hiccup but is all better now katymine
The Bush regime officials who approved this “fire sale” should be prosecuted and held accountable for the crime of selling justice.