Juggling Dynamite

Danielle was a guest today on The Financial Survival Network talking about recent developments in the world economy and markets. You can listen to an audio clip of the segment here.

The whole world was watching for the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States: Donald J. Trump. Because we realize it’s better for us to get along, we decided to introduce our tiny country to him. In a way that will probably appeal to him the most.  Here is a direct video link.

Wall Street (Bay Street, London’s ‘Square Mile’ et al) and their purchased political representatives take the rest of us for fools. And that approach continues to be very successful for them. Until the people insist on prosecution of individual offenders and the enforcement of ethics and conflict of interest rules, it will continue to enrich the protected class at the expense of everything else.

Far from leading needed change, Trump so far has solidified this status quo both in his personal business conflicts, lack of financial disclosure and key cabinet appointments.  Must read article:  Wall Street’s Revolving Money Door: Ceresney and Cohn take a spin:

It was announced yesterday that Andrew Ceresney, the head of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) since 2013, would be returning to Debevoise & Plimpton as co-head of its litigation department – a nice promotion.

In 2009, one year into the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression, Debevoise & Plimpton’s Ceresney was lead author, with two of his colleagues, of a lengthy article for the American Criminal Law Review titled: Regulatory Investigations and the Credit Crisis: The Search for Villains. Debevoise & Plimpton, both then and now, represents some of the largest Wall Street banks that have serially engaged in fraudulent conduct against the investing public. The article seemed to be suggesting that prosecuting these banks would be too labor intensive and the facts too hard to prove because the deals were too complex…

As Ceresney spins out of the Washington side of the revolving door and heads back to representing Wall Street, Gary Cohn is spinning in the other direction. Cohn recently stepped down as the President of Goldman Sachs in order to become Trump’s Director of the National Economic Council.

According to a Goldman Sachs filing with the SEC yesterday, Cohn’s new job has turned into a mega windfall for him. According to Goldman’s filing with the SEC, it has a “Conflicted Employment” provision that removes restrictions on stock awards to its executives “if the recipient accepted employment in the U.S. government.”