The New Robber Barons
WITH TRILLIONS ON THE TABLE NOBODY PLAYS FAIR, AND EVERYONE PLAYS FOR KEEPS.
The NEW ROBBER BARONS continues financial expert Janet Tavakoli’s on-going chronicle of the global financial crisis captured in her articles from the September 2008 meltdown through February 2012. Picking up where her previous book, Dear Mr. Buffett, ended, she exposes the criminogenic environment that enabled international oligarchs to solidify power.
In January 2009, Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, told Tom Brokaw: “the idea that people that move money around are some favored class…strikes me as getting pretty far away from where we should be.†Two years later he publicly excused apparent insider trading by one of his successor candidates, David Sokol.
Berkshire Hathaway officer Charlie Munger admonished law students that Americans shouldn’t be "bitching about a little bailout."
Shortly before Congress confronted him with Goldman Sachs’s profiteering during the financial crisis, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein quipped he was doing “God’s work.â€
CEO Jamie Dimon told shareholders that he didn’t think JPMorgan made a mistake when it came to potential foreclosure fraud: “maybe we’ll have to pay penalties eventually to some of the attorneys general but we really think we should just continue.†Meanwhile the bank scoured 115,000 mortgage affidavits and reserved $1.3 billion for legal costs.
After MF Global’s October 31, 2011, bankruptcy a U.S. Congressman told former CEO Jon Corzine: "You've got thousands of hard working people around this country that feel cheated."
Tavakoli serves up example after stunning international example of no-strings-attached socialization of losses and privatization of gains. In the words of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur: "I believe most of us would call that theft."
COMMENT FROM JANET TAVAKOLI
This is a compilation of articles from September 2008 to the present. The e-book includes the original reference links including links to some of my original public (non-client) analysis. This is unedited so that readers can see my original thought process and ultimate vindication when the truth was eventually revealed by Congressional investigations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Janet Tavakoli is the author of, STRUCTURED FINANCE & COLLATERALIZED DEBT OBLIGATIONS (John Wiley & Sons, 2003, 2008), CREDIT DERIVATIVES (Wiley, 1998, 2001), which revealed grave flaws in the methodology for rating structured financial products and abuses in the credit derivatives markets, and DEAR MR. BUFFETT: WHAT AN INVESTOR LEARNS 1,269 MILES FROM WALL STREET, (Wiley 2009) in which she explains the causes of the greatest credit bubble in the history of the world, how we could have avoided it and how we can prevent it from happening again.
Ms. Tavakoli is the founder president of Tavakoli Structured Finance, Inc. (TSF), a Chicago based consulting firm established in 2003 for clients including financial institutions, institutional investors, and hedge funds..
After more than 22 years of experience structuring, trading and selling derivatives and structured products while working for global Wall Street firms in New York and London, Tavakoli has received industry recognition as a global expert in finance. Ms. Tavakoli is a world renowned author and speaker on derivative products and securities.
Ms. Tavakoli is frequently published and quoted in financial journals including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, New York Times, The Economist, Business Week, Forbes and Fortune,
Frequent television appearances include CBS's 60 Minutes, CNN, C-Span, CNBC, Fox, CBS Evening News, Bloomberg TV, and BBC.
Ms. Tavakoli earned a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. She is a former adjunct associate professor of finance at the Booth School of Business.
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