Lehmangate Part 2: What Is the Rest of Wall Street Hiding?

THAT is the question that should be investigated at this point.  What other kinds of frauds are being perpetrated by the thieves on Wall Street and which highly placed public officials are enabling that fraud to continue?

Clearly, upon examing all of the evidence and connecting the dotted lines, Lehman committed Enron-esque fraud with its Repo 105 maneuvers and was aided and abetted by its accountant, Ernst & Young and by Federal Reserve officials, at the time, specifically Tim Geithner. At the very least all of the upper executive management team at Lehman, the board of directors at Lehman, all relevant professionals and senior management at E&Y should eventually be under indictment. I would settle for the forced resignation of Geithner, but he should be thoroughly investigated and indicted as well. Don't hold your breath for this, recall that current Attorney General Eric Holder is the guy who wrote the pardon letter for Marc Rich that Bill Clinton signed just before leaving the White House. Holder is no stranger to the enablement of criminal activity and tax evasion.

I'm starting to wonder if gold's unusual relative strength in the face of the aggressive, unmitigated manipulation attempts to get it lower over the past month is a signal that Lehman's fraud is just the tip of the iceberg. Ernst & Young signed off on a balance sheet accounting maneuver that was clearly and unequivocally illegal. Even an accounting 101 student could make that determination. It leads one to wonder "what the hell else is hiding in Wall Street's accounting closet that is being approved by our "trusted" accounting firms and ignored or enabled by the Fed? We know that Goldman is involved in all kinds of non-transparent, at a minimum unethical, and likely fraudulent OTC derivatives activities. They roll out their 10-K every quarter with their accountant's stamp of approval and Lloyd "I'm God" Blankfein smiling and pontificating at how great Goldman is at making profits and managing risk. But what is really going on behind the curtain. And even worse, to what extent are Bernanke, Geithner and even Obama aware of just how fraudulent and corrupt everything is on Wall Street - and the manner of accounting for it?

And now we have Banana Ben begging Congress, and the public, to sign-off on handing even MORE oversight and regulatory responsibilities to the Fed. Just today Bernanke is making the case that "the Fed’s 'wide range of expertise' makes it 'uniquely suited to supervise large, complex financial organizations and to address both safety and soundness risks and risks to the stability of the financial system as a whole'” Bloomberg link.

Set aside the fact that Bernanke never saw the housing bubble, mortgage bubble, toxic asset bubble, banking system collapse - his "uniquely suited" oversight abilities cost the Taxpayers of this country trillions.  Let's examine Bernanke's statement in the context of Lehmangate and Repo 105.

Where was Bernanke's oversight abilities while his team was in Lehman's office for two years with full access to all books and records?  Let me quote again from Andrew Ross Sorkin's statement yesterday:

Almost two years ago to the day, a team of officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York quietly moved into the headquarters of Lehman Brothers. They were provided desks, phones, computers — and access to all of Lehman’s books and records. At any given moment, there were as many as a dozen government officials buzzing around Lehman’s offices (link in the post below).

The Fed WAS in a position of unfettered and direct oversight at Lehman for two years leading up to Lehman's collapse and yet Lehman still pulled off massive fraud - right under your nose, Ben. Either you are a complete moron or you are a psychopathic liar. Which one is it Ben?

Now that Lehman has collapsed under a massive weight of fraud and corruption - and all of surviving Wall Street was allowed to feed greedily, with the help of TARP, off the carcass, the real question is just how much fraud is being currently covered up and papered over? It would seem to me that after Enron, and the ensuing series of massive, ever-larger financial collapses that have occurred (Refco,Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GMAC, etc), that our political leaders and those charged with regulations and oversight, including the Fed, would be interested in cleaning up this mess and putting those who created and participated in this mess in jail.

Will this ever happen? Not if the Fed is given greater powers, not if Geithner and Larry Summers remain in the White House and not if the current crooks leading Congress are allowed to remain in power. At the margin, it's up to the public to do something about this. If we allow this to continue, the problems will only grow larger and the U.S. will eventually collapse under the sheer weight of too much debt and fraud.  Otherwise, I hope everyone who understands this is accumulating as much gold and silver as they can.