[THS] America`s Ten Most Corrupt Capitalists

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America's Ten Most Corrupt Capitalists

Thursday 13 May 2010

by: Zach Carter  |  AlterNet

The financial crisis has unveiled a new set of public villains—corrupt corporate
capitalists who leveraged their connections in government for their own personal
profit. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, many of these schemers were
worshiped as geniuses, heroes or icons of American progress. But today we know
these opportunists for what they are: Deregulatory hacks hellbent on making a profit
at any cost. Without further ado, here are the 10 most corrupt capitalists in the U.S.
economy.

1. Robert Rubin

Where to start with a man like Robert Rubin? A Goldman Sachs chairman who
wormed his way into the Treasury Secretary post under President Bill Clinton, Rubin
presided over one of the most radical deregulatory eras in the history of finance.
Rubin's influence within the Democratic Party marked the final stage in the
Democrats' transformation from the concerned citizens who fought Wall Street and
won during the 1930s to a coalition of Republican-lite financial elites. Rubin's most
stunning deregulatory accomplishment in office was also his greatest act of
corruption. Rubin helped repeal Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that banned
economically essential banks from gambling with taxpayer money in the securities
markets. In 1998, Citibank inked a merger with the Travelers Insurance group. The
deal was illegal under Glass-Steagall, but with Rubin's help, the law was repealed in
1999, and the Citi-Travelers merger approved, creating too-big-to-fail behemoth
Citigroup.

That same year, Rubin left the government to work for Citi, where he made $120
million as the company piled up risk after crazy risk. In 2008, the company collapsed
spectacularly, necessitating a $45 billion direct government bailout, and hundreds of
billions more in other government guarantees. Rubin is now attempting to rebuild his
disgraced public image by warning about the dangers of government spending and
Social Security. Bob, if you're worried about the deficit, the problem isn't old people
trying to get by, it's corrupt bankers running amok.

2. Alan Greenspan

The officially apolitical, independent Federal Reserve chairman backed all of Rubin's
favorite deregulatory plans, and helped crush an effort by Brooksley Born to regulate
derivatives in 1998, after the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management went bust.
By the time Greenspan left office in 2006, the derivatives market had ballooned into a
multi-trillion dollar casino, and Greenspan wanted his cut. He took a job with bond
kings PIMCO and then with the hedge fund Paulson & Co.—yeah, that Paulson and
Co., the one that colluded with Goldman Sachs to sabotage the company's own
clients with unregulated derivatives. Incidentally, this isn't the first time Greenspan
has been a close associate of alleged fraudsters. Back in the 1980s, Greenspan went
to bat for politically connected Savings & Loan titan Charles Keating, urging
regulators to exempt his bank from a key rule. Keating later went to jail for fraud,
after, among other things, putting out a hit on regulator William Black. ("Get Black –
kill him dead.") Nice friends you've got, Alan.

3. Larry Summers

During the 1990s, Larry Summers was a top Treasury official tasked with overseeing
the economic rehabilitation of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. This project,
was, of course, a complete disaster that resulted in decades of horrific poverty. But
that didn't stop top advisers to the program, notably Harvard economist Andrei
Shleifer, from getting massively rich by investing his own money in Russian projects
while advising both the Treasury and the Russian government. This is called "fraud,"
and a federal judge slapped both Shleifer and Harvard itself with hefty fines for their
looting of the Russian economy. But somehow, after defrauding two governments
while working for Summers, Shleifer managed to keep his job at Harvard, even after
courts ruled against him.

That's because after the Clinton administration, Summers became president of
Harvard, where he protected Shleifer. This wasn't the only crazy thing Summers did
at Harvard—he also ran the school like a giant hedge fund, which went very well until
markets crashed in 2008. By then, of course, Summers had left Harvard for a real
hedge fund, D.E. Shaw, where he raked in $5.2 million working part-time. The next
year, he joined the the Obama administration as the president's top economic
adviser. Interestingly, the Wall Street reform bill currently circulating through
Congress essentially leaves hedge funds untouched.

4. Phil and Wendy Gramm

Summers, Rubin and Greenspan weren't the only people who thought it was a good
idea to let banks gamble in the derivatives casinos. In 2000, Republican Senator from
Texas Phil Gramm pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which
not only banned federal regulation of these toxic poker chips, it also banned states
from enforcing anti-gambling laws against derivatives trading. The bill was lobbied
for heavily by energy/finance hybrid Enron, which would later implode under
fraudulent derivatives trades. In 2000, when Phil Gramm pushed the bill through, his
wife Wendy Gramm was serving on Enron's board of directors, where she made
millions before the company went belly-up.

When Phil Gramm left the Senate, he took a job peddling political influence at Swiss
banking giant UBS as vice chairman. Since Gramm's arrival, UBS has been embroiled
in just about every scandal you can think of, from securities fraud to tax fraud to
diamond smuggling. Interestingly, both UBS shareholders and their executives have
gotten off rather lightly for these acts. The only person jailed thus far has been the
tax fraud whistleblower. Looks like Phil's earning his keep.

5. Jamie Dimon

J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has done a lot of scummy things as head of
one of the world's most powerful banks, but his most grotesque act of corruption
actually took place at the Federal Reserve. At each of the Fed's 12 regional offices,
the board of directors is staffed by officials from the region's top banks. So while it's
certainly galling that the CEO of J.P. Morgan would be on the board of the New York
Fed, one of J.P. Morgan's regulators, it's not all that uncommon.

But it is quite uncommon for a banker to be negotiating a bailout package for his
bank with the New York Fed, while simultaneously serving on the New York Fed
board. That's what happened in March 2008, when J.P. Morgan agreed to buy up
Bear Stearns, on the condition that the Fed kick in $29 billion to cushion the company
from any losses. Dimon-- CEO of J.P. Morgan and board member of the New York
Fed-- was negotiating with Timothy Geithner, who was president of the New York
Fed-- about how much money the New York Fed was going to give J.P. Morgan. On
Wall Street, that's called being a savvy businessman. Everywhere else, it's called a
conflict of interest.

6. Stephen Friedman

The New York Fed is just full of corruption. Consider the case of Stephen Friedman
(expertly presented by Greg Kaufmann for the Nation). As the financial crisis
exploded in the fall of 2008, Friedman was serving both as chairman of the New York
Fed and on the board of directors at Goldman Sachs. The Fed stepped in to prevent
AIG from collapsing in September 2008, and by November, the New York Fed had
decided to pay all of AIG's counterparties 100 cents on the dollar for AIG's bets—even
though these companies would have taken dramatic losses in bankruptcy. The public
wouldn't learn which banks received this money until March 2009, but Friedman
bought 52,600 shares of Goldman stock in December 2008 and January 2009, more
than doubling his holdings.

As it turns out, Goldman was the top beneficiary of the AIG bailout, to the tune of
$12.9 billion. Friedman made millions on the Goldman stock purchase, and is yet to
disclose what he knew about where the AIG money was going, or when he knew it.
Either way, it's pretty bad—if he knew Goldman benefited from the bailout, then he
belongs in jail. If he didn't know, then what exactly was he doing as chairman of the
New York Fed, or on Goldman's board?

7. Robert Steel

Like better-known corruptocrats Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, Steel joined the
Treasury after spending several years as a top executive with Goldman Sachs. Steel
joined the Treasury in 2006 as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, and proceeded
to do, well, nothing much until financial markets went into free-fall in 2008. When
Wachovia ousted CEO Ken Thompson, the company named Steel as its new CEO.
Steel promptly bought one million Wachovia shares to demonstrate his commitment
to the firm, but by September, Wachovia was in dire straits. The FDIC wanted to put
the company through receivership—shutting it down and wiping out its shareholders.
But Steel's buddies at Treasury and the Fed intervened, and instead of closing
Wachovia, they arranged a merger with Wells Fargo at $7 a share—saving Steel
himself $7 million. He now serves on Wells Fargo's board of directors.

8. Henry Paulson

His time at Goldman Sachs made Henry Paulson one of the richest men in the world.
Under Paulson's leadership, Goldman transformed from a private company ruled by
client relationships into a public company operating as a giant global casino. As
Treasury Secretary during the height of the financial crisis, Paulson personally
approved a direct $10 billion capital injection into his former firm. But even before
that bailout, Paulson had been playing fast and loose with ethics rules. In June 2008,
Paulson held a secret meeting in Moscow with Goldman's board of directors, where
they discussed economic prognostications, market conditions and Treasury rescue
plans. Not okay, Hank.

9. Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett used to be a reasonable guy, blasting the rich for waging "class
warfare" against the rest of us and deriding derivatives as "financial weapons of mass
destruction." These days, he's just another financier crony, lobbying Congress against
Wall Street reform, and demanding a light touch on—get this—derivatives! Buffet
even went so far as to buy the support of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, for a
filibuster on reform. Buffett has also been an outspoken defender of Goldman Sachs
against the recent SEC fraud allegations, allegations that stem from fancy products
called "synthetic collateralized debt obligations"—the financial weapons of mass
destruction Buffett once criticized.

See, it just so happens that both Buffet's reputation and his bottom line are tied to an
investment he made in Goldman Sachs in 2008, when he put $10 billion of his money
into the bank. Buffett has acknowledged that he only made the deal because he
believed Goldman would be bailed out by the U.S. government. Which, in fact,
turned out to be the case, multiple times. When the government rescued AIG, the
$12.9 billion it funneled to Goldman was to cover derivatives bets Goldman had
placed with the mega-insurer. Buffett was right about derivatives—they are WMD so
far as the real economy is concerned. But they've enabled Warren Buffett to get even
richer with taxpayer help, and now he's fighting to make sure we don't shut down his
own casino.

10. Goldman Sachs

No company exemplifies the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington
more than Goldman Sachs. The four people on this list are some of the worst
offenders, but Goldman's D.C. army has includes many other top officials in this
administration and the last.

White House:

Joshua Bolton, chief of staff for George W. Bush, was a Goldman man

Regulators:

Current New York Fed President William Dudley is a Goldman man

Current Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler has been a
responsible regulator under Obama, but he was a deregulatory hawk during the
Clinton years, and worked at Goldman for nearly two decades before that.

A top aide to Timothy Geithner, Gene Sperling, is a Goldman man

Current Treasury Undersecretary Robert Hormats is a Goldman man

Current Treasury Chief of Staff Mark Patterson is a former Goldman lobbyist

Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt is now a Goldman adviser

Neel Kashkari, Henry Paulson's deputy on TARP, was a Goldman man

COO of the SEC Enforcement Division Adam Storch is a Goldman man

Congress:

Former Sen. John Corzine, D-N.J., was Goldman's CEO before Henry Paulson

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., was a Goldman Vice President before he ran for Congress

Former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., now lobbies for Goldman

And the list goes on.

Zach Carter is an economics editor at AlterNet and a fellow at Campaign for America's
Future. He writes a weekly blog on the economy for the Media Consortium and his
work has appeared in the Nation, Mother Jones, the American Prospect and Salon.