Financial Manipulation
As I've mentioned previously, today is the day the administration issued its new recommendations to remove the protections of Sarbanes-Oxley, which followed the excesses of Enron, Tyco, etc. Here are a few to start you off. but they get pretty technical so I'm only citing a few points.
The new concessions focus on the sensitive issue of when prosecutors can force companies to waive their legal rights to protect e-mail messages and other internal communications, essentially instructing government lawyers that they must jump through additional hoops before winning access to information they desire. Previously, prosecutors could consider the failure to waive those rights in deciding whether to charge a company with a crime.
Under the revisions, prosecutors who seek information about suspected wrongdoing must first win approval from the top official in their home offices before asking a business to waive its attorney-client privilege. Government lawyers who want to review contacts between a company and its attorneys under a privilege waiver must go all the way to the Justice Department in Washington for permission from its second-highest-ranking official.
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In the short term, however, the revisions will buy Justice additional time before Congress takes up more far-reaching legislation proposed by Specter last week. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who will lead the Judiciary panel come January, said the government had curtailed "its most excessive practices" but expressed reservations about how the changes would work over time.
The move carries potent symbolic value in a climate in which business has been emboldened in its efforts to return to a pre-Enron regulatory environment.
"The tide has turned," said Craig Margolis, a defense lawyer for a former executive at the audit firm KPMG, which waived its legal rights last year to help prosecutors build a case against more than a dozen former officials. "It should restore needed balance to the investigation of business entities and their employees."
There is an encouraging loss of support for the criminal activities of holders of high offices, and the unexpected victory in the 23rd District of Texas for Ciro Rodriguez is one of the signs. Of course, in that district, the faux vote for a wall to keep out illegal immigrants is particularly rejected - but so is the party capable of such low tactics.
Voters bombarded with huge propaganda efforts on the part of the GOP are not accepting the concept that the party that's done all the damage it can is qualified to have leadership positions in congress. We need to straighten out the mess we're in.
The financial manipulations working to renew corporate irresponsibility remind me pretty much of the era of the WWII military complexes that President Eisenhower warned against. The following is taken from an immensely long background article on the Bush family manipulations, but provides some of the interlocking directorates that gave them a fortune from that war.
After Pearl Harbor, S&C unsuccessfully defended American I.G., the U.S. holding of I.G. Farben, from seizure by the federal Enemy Alien Property Custodian. Another S&C client at the time was the Silesian-American Corporation, for years managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, until November 17, 1942, when its assets belonging to Nazi Germany were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The Hamburg-America Line, on whose board Bush also sat, was seized as a Nazi company. The Hamburg-America Line, on whose board Bush also sat, was seized as a Nazi company. Indeed, the steamer line had long been one of the principal conveyances by which the German Abwehr intelligence service moved agents into the United States, and transported stolen military technology back to the Fatherland.
Riding on the coattails of Brown Brothers Harriman, the Rockefeller brothers, and the Dulles brothers, whose interests they had served on various boards, neither Prescott Bush nor George Herbert Walker were ever held personally or politically accountable for their roles in financing and directing Nazi-controlled enterprises.
The times are 'interesting', and we can hope that the complicated manipulations of these financial empires will not succeed in embedding more protections agains the public interest under intense scrutiny from a savvy new congress.
I am very encouraged by the awakened sense of responsibility the new congress is showing, and hope that the renewed Congressional role of oversight will prevent the evils that happen when they're deliberately cut out of the decision-making process.
The new concessions focus on the sensitive issue of when prosecutors can force companies to waive their legal rights to protect e-mail messages and other internal communications, essentially instructing government lawyers that they must jump through additional hoops before winning access to information they desire. Previously, prosecutors could consider the failure to waive those rights in deciding whether to charge a company with a crime.
Under the revisions, prosecutors who seek information about suspected wrongdoing must first win approval from the top official in their home offices before asking a business to waive its attorney-client privilege. Government lawyers who want to review contacts between a company and its attorneys under a privilege waiver must go all the way to the Justice Department in Washington for permission from its second-highest-ranking official.
***********************************************************
In the short term, however, the revisions will buy Justice additional time before Congress takes up more far-reaching legislation proposed by Specter last week. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who will lead the Judiciary panel come January, said the government had curtailed "its most excessive practices" but expressed reservations about how the changes would work over time.
The move carries potent symbolic value in a climate in which business has been emboldened in its efforts to return to a pre-Enron regulatory environment.
"The tide has turned," said Craig Margolis, a defense lawyer for a former executive at the audit firm KPMG, which waived its legal rights last year to help prosecutors build a case against more than a dozen former officials. "It should restore needed balance to the investigation of business entities and their employees."
There is an encouraging loss of support for the criminal activities of holders of high offices, and the unexpected victory in the 23rd District of Texas for Ciro Rodriguez is one of the signs. Of course, in that district, the faux vote for a wall to keep out illegal immigrants is particularly rejected - but so is the party capable of such low tactics.
Voters bombarded with huge propaganda efforts on the part of the GOP are not accepting the concept that the party that's done all the damage it can is qualified to have leadership positions in congress. We need to straighten out the mess we're in.
The financial manipulations working to renew corporate irresponsibility remind me pretty much of the era of the WWII military complexes that President Eisenhower warned against. The following is taken from an immensely long background article on the Bush family manipulations, but provides some of the interlocking directorates that gave them a fortune from that war.
After Pearl Harbor, S&C unsuccessfully defended American I.G., the U.S. holding of I.G. Farben, from seizure by the federal Enemy Alien Property Custodian. Another S&C client at the time was the Silesian-American Corporation, for years managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, until November 17, 1942, when its assets belonging to Nazi Germany were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The Hamburg-America Line, on whose board Bush also sat, was seized as a Nazi company. The Hamburg-America Line, on whose board Bush also sat, was seized as a Nazi company. Indeed, the steamer line had long been one of the principal conveyances by which the German Abwehr intelligence service moved agents into the United States, and transported stolen military technology back to the Fatherland.
Riding on the coattails of Brown Brothers Harriman, the Rockefeller brothers, and the Dulles brothers, whose interests they had served on various boards, neither Prescott Bush nor George Herbert Walker were ever held personally or politically accountable for their roles in financing and directing Nazi-controlled enterprises.
The times are 'interesting', and we can hope that the complicated manipulations of these financial empires will not succeed in embedding more protections agains the public interest under intense scrutiny from a savvy new congress.
I am very encouraged by the awakened sense of responsibility the new congress is showing, and hope that the renewed Congressional role of oversight will prevent the evils that happen when they're deliberately cut out of the decision-making process.
Labels: Budget; Economy, Dirty Tricks
posted by Ruth at 10:48 AM
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