Pam Martens writes about the Segarra Tapes released last week. These tapes show how the regulation of Wall Street is a complete failure, a farce, with only punishment waiting for those who speak out as Carmen Segarra did.
William D. Cohan noted that the Segarra Tapes didn’t reveal much we didn’t already know. Sadly, this is true. Carmen Segarra provided solid evidence to what we probably suspected anyway (Why the Fed Will Always Wimp Out on Goldman). However, solid evidence may mean something still.
In spite of our jaded attitude that corruption at the “regulating authority” New York Fed is well-known, and won’t be fixed, EVER (because that’s how powerful the bankers and regulators are!), perhaps there is hope. The tapes contain clear-cut, understandable proof of conflicts, regulatory capture and self-dealing.
With some luck, the tapes could prompt a little public fury, further investigations (by entities other than the NY Fed…), greater oversight and some real reforms to our Wall Street managed banking system. As a start, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are calling for Senate Banking hearings on the conflicted dealings of the New York Fed.
Carmen Segarra: Wall Street’s Spy Vs Spy
Courtesy of Pam Martens
If you missed our coverage in 2012 of the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center where Wall Street sleuths from those serially charged firms like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan dunk donuts alongside New York’s finest in a $150 million spy center, keeping tabs on the comings and goings of their own Wall Street employees as well as innocent pedestrians, then you may not fully appreciate why Carmen Segarra has been celebrated all weekend for her temerity in taping her boss and colleagues at the New York Fed, as well as employees inside the cloistered bowels of Goldman Sachs.
While Wall Street was spying on everyone else in lower Manhattan in a high tech center funded by the taxpayer, Segarra strolled over to a Spy Store, plunked down a modest sum and walked out with a tiny tape recorder. She then proceeded to capture the essence of the quintessential captured regulators who didn’t see the 2008 crash coming and won’t see the next one coming either – because their job is not to see too much. (We called the Spy Store on Saturday to ask if they had experienced an upsurge in sales of the tiny recorder. We were informed that sales were brisk but not unusual.)
