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The lending ethics of JPMorgan has bankrupt Jeffco.  The city/county cannot continue to provide services, and the sheriff is discontinuing sending officers to traffic accidents along with going to a 32 hour work week.  The AlObama legislature prevented the county from instituting some revenue generation and a bankruptcy is all but inevitable. 

 

H***l, the money was so good, JP Morgan at one point even paid Goldman Sachs $3 million just to back the f*** off, so they could have the rubes of Jefferson County to fleece all for themselves.

 

More than 20 local officials and businessmen have been convicted of corruption in federal court. Last October, right around the time that Lisa Pack went back to work at reduced hours, Birmingham's mayor was convicted of fraud and money-laundering for taking bribes funneled to him by Wall Street bankers — everything from Rolex watches to Ferragamo suits to cash. But those who greenlighted the bribes and profited most from the scam remain largely untouched. "It never gets back to JP Morgan," says Pack.

 

By 2003, annual interest on the sewer deal had reached $90 million.

 

then Wall Street got really creative. Having switched the county to a variable interest rate, it offered commissioners a crazy deal: For an extra fee, the banks said, we'll allow you to keep paying a fixed rate on your debt to us. In return, we'll give you a variable amount each month that you can use to pay off all that variable-rate interest you owe to bondholders. In financial terms, this is known as a synthetic rate swap — the spidery creature you might have read about playing a role in bringing down places like Greece and Milan. On paper, it made sense: The county got the stability of a fixed rate, while paying Wall Street to assume the risk of the variable rates on its bonds. That's the synthetic part. The trouble lies in the rate swap. The deal only works if the two variable rates — the one you get from the bank, and the one you owe to bondholders — actually match.

 

Charles LeCroy and Bill Blount, the two principals in what would become the most important of all the corruption cases in Jefferson County. LeCroy was a banker for JP Morgan, serving as managing director of the bank's southeast regional office. Blount was an Alabama wheeler-dealer with close friends on the county commission.

 

 

The scheme they operated went something like this: LeCroy paid Blount millions of dollars, and Blount turned around and used the money to buy lavish gifts for his close friend Larry Langford, the now-convicted Birmingham mayor who at the time had just been elected president of the county commission. (At one point Blount took Langford on a shopping spree in New York, putting $3,290 worth of clothes from Zegna on his credit card.) Langford then signed off on one after another of the deadly swap deals being pushed by LeCroy. Every time the county refinanced its sewer debt, JP Morgan made millions of dollars in fees. Even more lucrative, each of the swap contracts contained clauses that mandated all sorts of penalties and payments in the event that something went wrong with the deal. In the mortgage business, this process is known as churning: You keep coming back over and over to refinance, and they keep "churning" you for more and more fees. "The transactions were complex, but the scheme was simple," said Robert Khuzami, director of enforcement for the SEC. "Senior JP Morgan bankers made unlawful payments to win business and earn fees."

 

As the SEC explained in a statement on the scam, JP Morgan "passed on the cost of the unlawful payments by charging the county higher interest rates on the swap transactions." In other words, not only did the bank bribe local politicians to take the sucky deal, they got local taxpayers to pay for the bribes. And because Jefferson County had no idea what kind of deal it was getting on the swaps, JP Morgan could basically charge whatever it wanted. According to an analysis of the swap deals commissioned by the county in 2007, taxpayers had been overcharged at least $93 million on the transactions.

 

For Jefferson County, the deal blew up in early 2008, when a dizzying array of penalties and other fine-print poison worked into the swap contracts started to kick in. The trouble began with the housing crash, which took down the insurance companies that had underwritten the county's bonds. That rendered the county's insurance worthless, triggering clauses in its swap contracts that required it to pay off more than $800 million of its debt in only four years, rather than 40. That, in turn, scared off private lenders, who were no longer ­interested in bidding on the county's bonds. The banks were forced to make up the difference — a service for which they charged enormous penalties. It was as if the county had missed a payment on its credit card and woke up the next morning to find its annual percentage rate jacked up to a million percent. Between 2008 and 2009, the annual payment on Jefferson County's debt jumped from $53 million to a whopping $636 million.

 

On a sewer project that was originally supposed to cost $250 million, the county now owed a total of $1.28 billion just in interest and fees on the debt.

http://www.rollingstone.com/po...reet-20100331?page=6

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Stop the presses!!!

Here is the real truth.  It is not JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, nor any other wall street lending service that caused the problems in Jefferson County.  It is the corrupt politicians and the over spending which has bankrupted the city and county coffers.  The Jefferson County sewer debacle is one of the biggest domestic utility failures in the history of the US, surpassing even some of the great con jobs performed in California.

As long as there are companies out there willing to lend money there will be crooked politicians who are willing to gamble and steal from their constituents.  It is costing them nothing and besides all they have to do to pay it back is raise your taxes.

Stop blaming companies who are playing by the rules, albeit they are pushing the moral boundaries in some cases, but at least they were for the most part staying within the legal allowances.  The responsibility really lies on the people who Jefferson county who continued to support and elect these greedy corrupt politicians. 

Originally Posted by teyates:

Stop the presses!!!

Here is the real truth.  It is not JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, nor any other wall street lending service that caused the problems in Jefferson County.  It is the corrupt politicians and the over spending which has bankrupted the city and county coffers.  The Jefferson County sewer debacle is one of the biggest domestic utility failures in the history of the US, surpassing even some of the great con jobs performed in California.

As long as there are companies out there willing to lend money there will be crooked politicians who are willing to gamble and steal from their constituents.  It is costing them nothing and besides all they have to do to pay it back is raise your taxes.

Stop blaming companies who are playing by the rules, albeit they are pushing the moral boundaries in some cases, but at least they were for the most part staying within the legal allowances.  The responsibility really lies on the people who Jefferson county who continued to support and elect these greedy corrupt politicians. 

 

The politicians are criminals, hence the indictments.  The people at JPMorgan that bribed them are also criminals.  The initial crime was that Jeffco employees were allowed to make financial decisions concerning loan instruments that they had no idea of how they function or what the possible repercussions might be from utilizing them.  Its like when Huntsville city employees tried to build a jail...

It is a 'rare bird, indeed' that sees the local sheriff's department 'working traffic accidents'. 99% of all traffic accidents are worked by CITY officers or the Highway Patrol/State Police.  Most sheriff's departments even discourage their officers from writing traffic citations. So for a sheriff to say that .....'he is advising his officers to stop working accidents.....' is just so much political 'smoke being blown up someone's rear end'.

During a press conference and in a letter to Governor Dr. Robert Bentley, Sheriff Hale said deputies worked approximately 5,600 wrecks in unincorporated Jefferson County; each wreck averaged 45 minutes of a deputy's time. Hale also said 86 percent of the the office's budget goes to personnel, and that 145 deputies would have to be cut by October to make up the $3 million missing in this quarter's budget.

 

So it is the wall street lending companies fault that a politician or government officer borrowed money from them, and did not understand the terms of the contract which they were signing?  Talk about blaming someone else for your inadequacies but that pretty much sums up "shirking your responsibilities" right there.  It is nice to blame someone else when you find your azz in a crack, but I am sorry.  If you signed an agreement with a floating interest rate you screwed yourself.  They should have known what they could or could not pay for.  It is not the fault of the lending company.

 

It has been established in court that bank officers bribed Jeffco officials, so yes, they do get part of the blame.  Maybe you heard of Larry Langford???  But JPMorgan will not face any criminal prosecution as the head of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus(R) the AL representative from Birmingham, has prevented any further investigation by the SEC.  JPMorgan is Bachus' largest campaign contributor, but that must just be a coincidence. 

Originally Posted by Mr.Dittohead:

It has been established in court that bank officers bribed Jeffco officials, so yes, they do get part of the blame.  Maybe you heard of Larry Langford???  But JPMorgan will not face any criminal prosecution as the head of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus(R) the AL representative from Birmingham, has prevented any further investigation by the SEC.  JPMorgan is Bachus' largest campaign contributor, but that must just be a coincidence. 


You have any back up for the above, or just your opinion?

Have you guys heard of the Gooogle?

 

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Charles E. LeCroy and Douglas W. MacFaddin, two former directors of J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. with fraud in connection with an unlawful payment scheme which allowed J.P. Morgan Securities to obtain $5 billion in Jefferson County, Alabama municipal bond offerings and swap agreement transactions.

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/...ses/2009/lr21280.htm

Originally Posted by Mr.Dittohead:

Have you guys heard of the Gooogle?

 

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Charles E. LeCroy and Douglas W. MacFaddin, two former directors of J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. with fraud in connection with an unlawful payment scheme which allowed J.P. Morgan Securities to obtain $5 billion in Jefferson County, Alabama municipal bond offerings and swap agreement transactions.

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/...ses/2009/lr21280.htm


Go back look at my comment again, see the bold.  Do you have anything to back up your assertion or is it just your assumption/opinion? 

Originally Posted by LE89:
Originally Posted by Mr.Dittohead:

It has been established in court that bank officers bribed Jeffco officials, so yes, they do get part of the blame.  Maybe you heard of Larry Langford???  But JPMorgan will not face any criminal prosecution as the head of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus(R) the AL representative from Birmingham, has prevented any further investigation by the SEC.  JPMorgan is Bachus' largest campaign contributor, but that must just be a coincidence. 


You have any back up for the above, or just your opinion?

Why do so many people want others to do their work for them? If you are interested enough in a subject to read this crap, educate yourself. We have far too many folks on here who are clueless about what they are ranting about.

Originally Posted by Mr.Dittohead:

"In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks,"--Spencer Bachus

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-th...should-qserveq-banks

 


Ditto,

 

Let me make this much simpler, maybe Jimi boy can help you with the magical gooogle machine you both enjoy so much:


ORIGINAL STATEMENTS BY YOU DITTO:

 

It has been established in court that bank officers bribed Jeffco officials, so yes, they do get part of the blame.  Maybe you heard of Larry Langford???  But JPMorgan will not face any criminal prosecution as the head of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus(R) the AL representative from Birmingham, has prevented any further investigation by the SEC.  JPMorgan is Bachus' largest campaign contributor, but that must just be a coincidence.


Now Ditto, you make some valid points which are facts and I will point those out below:

 

Maybe you heard of Larry Langford??? - Yes I have

JPMorgan will not face any criminal prosecution

Head of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus(R)

He is representative from Birmingham

 

Now here is what I question, which you have sidestepped at least twice:

 

He has prevented any further investigation by the SEC - Where did you get this info?

It has been established in court that bank officers bribed Jeffco officials - Where did you get this info?

JPMorgan is Bachus' largest campaign contributor. - Where did you get this info?

 


Now Ditto, I do see Morgan Stanley anywhere from 11th - 38th top contributor.

 

I have never seen any article where he prevented further investigation by the SEC.

 

"Established in court" - howso?

 

Thus far your links have provided nothing to answer any of the above three questions.

 

If you change "established in court" to "testified in court", now that I can believe, but then again if testifying in court makes something "established", then good ole Larry Langford would be innocent now wouldn't he?

 

So, either answer the questions, or at least admit they are your opinion only, or shut the frig up about it.

Ditto,

 

"Your" rational thought is in left field.  However, this is a perfect opportunity for you to put me in my place by answering the two or three simple questions I had put to you, but fact is you can't because you either made them up as you typed, or copied and pasted from your "trusted" source of news, or both.  Do you have a brain?  "Prevented", "Largest Campaign Contributor", do you spew this out and think it will become true merely by writing it?

Originally Posted by JimiHendrix:
Originally Posted by LE89:
Originally Posted by Mr.Dittohead:

It has been established in court that bank officers bribed Jeffco officials, so yes, they do get part of the blame.  Maybe you heard of Larry Langford???  But JPMorgan will not face any criminal prosecution as the head of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus(R) the AL representative from Birmingham, has prevented any further investigation by the SEC.  JPMorgan is Bachus' largest campaign contributor, but that must just be a coincidence. 


You have any back up for the above, or just your opinion?

Why do so many people want others to do their work for them? If you are interested enough in a subject to read this crap, educate yourself. We have far too many folks on here who are clueless about what they are ranting about.

 

 

 

So, in other words, it's just opinionated blather...that you can't back up.

Thought so. As usual for you.

Originally Posted by teyates:

So it is the wall street lending companies fault that a politician or government officer borrowed money from them, and did not understand the terms of the contract which they were signing?  Talk about blaming someone else for your inadequacies but that pretty much sums up "shirking your responsibilities" right there.  It is nice to blame someone else when you find your azz in a crack, but I am sorry.  If you signed an agreement with a floating interest rate you screwed yourself.  They should have known what they could or could not pay for.  It is not the fault of the lending company.

 

------

Considering the convoluted terms, probably made that way deliberately so as to confuse anyone not a financial expert, it was like taking candy from a baby. So we blame the baby?

So everyone in America who has borrowed money on an item and decides they cannot afford it, should claim ignorance of their contractual obligations and have the government write off the debt???  I mean, we did that partially for some homeowners in the first housing market crisis, we might as well extend that courtesy to everyone else who is too ****ed stupid to read what they are signing.....geesh...no wonder this country is in such a mess.

Originally Posted by teyates:

So everyone in America who has borrowed money on an item and decides they cannot afford it, should claim ignorance of their contractual obligations and have the government write off the debt???  I mean, we did that partially for some homeowners in the first housing market crisis, we might as well extend that courtesy to everyone else who is too ****ed stupid to read what they are signing.....geesh...no wonder this country is in such a mess.

 

--------

If you have ever been to a real estate closing, if you sit there and read every word of every document you sign, and there are many, you would be there all week. I don't know anybody who has done that.

 

I do wonder where their lawyer was, though. Did they even consult one? If not, then their ignorance is their own fault. On the other hand, the IRS doesn't fully understand its own tax code, either. If you ask a question to five different offices, it is doubtful they would all agree. I guess some things just aren't meant to be understood even by those who are supposed to be the "experts."

Originally Posted by The Propagandist:
Originally Posted by teyates:

So everyone in America who has borrowed money on an item and decides they cannot afford it, should claim ignorance of their contractual obligations and have the government write off the debt???  I mean, we did that partially for some homeowners in the first housing market crisis, we might as well extend that courtesy to everyone else who is too ****ed stupid to read what they are signing.....geesh...no wonder this country is in such a mess.

 

--------

If you have ever been to a real estate closing, if you sit there and read every word of every document you sign, and there are many, you would be there all week. I don't know anybody who has done that.

 

I do wonder where their lawyer was, though. Did they even consult one? If not, then their ignorance is their own fault. On the other hand, the IRS doesn't fully understand its own tax code, either. If you ask a question to five different offices, it is doubtful they would all agree. I guess some things just aren't meant to be understood even by those who are supposed to be the "experts."

Yes.  When I am signing my name to a legal document you can bet I am either going to be sure I read and understand it, or have someone explain it to me. Of course I am also an advocate of personal repsonsibility. You should never....and I repeat NEVER....sign something that you do not understand in a situaion such as this.  If the people representing JeffCo did not understand the terms then they are responsible to the people of JeffCO for putting them in that situation.  It is not the lender's responsibility.

Originally Posted by teyates:
 "they are pushing the moral boundaries in some cases, but at least they were for the most part staying within the legal allowances. "

So you think THAT is okay? Is it okay to push moral boundaries and to stay within legal allowances "for the most part" when billions of dollars of public money are involved--or in any other circumstances when business, public or private, is being conducted?

In your personal dealings, are these the criteria you salute?  If so, I want no dealings with you or your ilk.

It takes two groups to push the moral boundaries.  If you go to a pawn broker who is charging 20% interest and take out a loan so you can go to the casino, and then when you realize that 20% is too high and you could have gotten it somewhere else for a better rate, who do you blame?  Is it the broker's fault that he is charging a ridiculous amount of interest? or are you the fool who took out the loan, nowing what he charged, but being deperate to get that money to go to the casino?

Yes the broker is pushing the moral boundaries by asking such a ridiculous amount of interest, BUT if you knowingly (and if you read the contract you knew what he was charging) accept the terms, and then later refuse to pay for the loan on moral issue, you are just as guilty if not more so, and I have no sympathy for you.

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