The Senate Banking Committee Has Subpoena Power; So Why Has Senator Elizabeth Warren Been Left to Investigate on Her Own?

Gunnar Larson g at xny.io
Mon Dec 13 07:32:04 PST 2021


Yes, the rumors are true.

A new, fresh and clean international bank out of New York is prime, world's
best. The Bank of London vs. The Bank of London and the Middle East is
nuts.

You have to ask yourself, what are the other options? Suffering through
crazy Goldman Sachs? Totally unnecessary and not our problem, really.

Gunnar

------

For years now, *Wall Street On Parade* has been reporting on the probing
letters that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has sent to Wall Street firms
and their regulators in an effort to ferret out the details of systemic
corruption and the looting of the American people. (See “Related Articles”
below.)

Throughout this letter writing campaign, Senator Elizabeth Warren has been
a member of the powerful Senate Banking Committee – which has subpoena
power. The new Chair of that Committee, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), is
also a progressive, like Warren. So why isn’t the Senate Banking Committee
using its subpoena power instead of leaving Warren with nothing more than
an inquiring mind and a pile of Word documents?

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Senate Banking
Committee has adopted a rule that requires a majority vote
<https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R44247.pdf> to issue a subpoena for documents
or witnesses. And since it has too many members on the Committee who take
campaign funds from Wall Street and/or their law firms, we’ve yet to see
that subpoena power in action.

Today is the deadline that Senator Warren gave to Fed Chair Jerome Powell
to respond to her letter of last Tuesday
<https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Senator-Elizabeth-Warren-Letter-to-Fed-Chair-Jerome-Powell-re-Trading-Scandal-Dec-7-2021.pdf>,
in which she demanded “Full disclosure of all stock, bond, and other
investment trades by Fed governors and presidents from January 1, 2020 to
the present,” along with other related material.

Warren’s inquiry stems from the fact that the President of the Dallas Fed,
Robert Kaplan, and the President of the Boston Fed, Eric Rosengren, had to
step down in September over scandalous trading activity in 2020. Trading
questions have been raised about other Fed officials as well, including
Powell
<https://prospect.org/economy/powell-sold-more-than-million-dollars-of-stock-as-market-was-tanking/>
.

The Fed has stonewalled the media for months now on making full disclosures
of the details of these trades. For example, it appears from our reporting
that Goldman Sachs was involved in at least some of Kaplan’s trades and
Citigroup was financing at least some of Rosengren’s trades. Both Wall
Street mega banks are supervised by the Fed and it is unseemly for Fed
officials to be engaging in active trading with banks its variously
supervises and bails out. (See New Documents Show the Fed’s Trading Scandal
Includes Two of the Wall Street Banks It Supervises: Goldman Sachs and
Citigroup
<https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/10/new-documents-show-the-feds-trading-scandal-includes-two-of-the-wall-street-banks-it-supervises-goldman-sachs-and-citigroup/>
.)

Warren’s letter of last Tuesday to Powell also makes clear that the Fed has
been stonewalling her since her staff made a written request for
information on October 22, “despite numerous follow-ups over the last six
weeks.”

Clearly, both the Fed and the Wall Street mega banks believe they have
nothing to fear from the Senate Banking Committee being able to muster the
votes to use its subpoena power.

Powell’s answer to all of this has been to refer the matter to the Fed’s
Inspector General – who reports to the Board of the Fed – rather than
making a referral to the Justice Department or the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC).

On October 4, Warren sent a letter
<https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Senator-Elizabeth-Warren-Sends-Letter-to-SEC-Chair-Gary-Gensler-Asking-for-Insider-Trading-Investigation-of-Fed-Officials-October-4-2021.pdf>
to
Gary Gensler, Chair of the SEC, asking that the “SEC investigate trading in
securities by high-level Federal Reserve officials and determine if any of
these ethically questionable transactions may have violated insider trading
rules.” To date, the SEC has failed to indicate if it is investigating the
matter, which goes to the heart of the integrity of the central bank of the
United States.

Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) may well be one of the obstacles to the Senate
Banking Committee being able to effectively use its subpoena power. Toomey
sits as the Ranking Member of the Committee. According to the Center for
Responsive Politics, over the course of his political career, Toomey’s
largest donor to either his Campaign Committee and/or Leadership PAC has
been the Club for Growth, which has provided more than $1.26 million to
Toomey’s political campaigns.
<https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cycle=Career&type=I&cid=N00001489&newMem=N>
In
the same time span, Toomey’s second and third largest donors are the hedge
fund, Elliott Management, and Goldman Sachs, the mega Wall Street firm
where Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan worked for 22 years.

The Club for Growth is a dark money group that has pushed for the
privatization of Social Security; the destruction of workers’ rights and
unions
<https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/governor-scott-walker-puppet-2/>;
and the deregulation of dangerous industries. Toomey served as the
President of Club for Growth from 2005 to 2009.

Another group that has advanced Toomey’s political career is Freedom
Partners Action Fund. It funneled at least $4.3 million into running attack
ads against Toomey’s Democratic challenger, Katie McGinty, in the 2016
senate race in Pennsylvania.

Charles Koch, the billionaire Chairman and CEO of the fossils fuels
conglomerate, Koch Industries, and his trust, gave $14 million to the
Freedom Partners Action Fund Super Pac from 2014 through July 2018
according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Freedom Partners played an
outsized role in staffing up the Trump administration. (See How Did Koch
Industries’ Law Firm Grab Control at the White House?
<https://wallstreetonparade.com/2018/07/how-did-koch-industries-law-firm-grab-control-at-the-white-house/>
)

Charles Koch has more than just a passing interest in the regulation and
oversight of trading on Wall Street. That’s because Koch Industries owns a
sprawling trading conglomerate in addition to its fossil fuels interests.
(See The Kochtopus Is Betting Billions in the Stock Market: Is There a Case
for Systemic Risk?
<https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/03/the-kochtopus-is-betting-billions-in-the-stock-market-is-there-a-case-for-systemic-risk/>
)

Koch Industries also owns i360, an unprecedented invasion by a corporate
conglomerate into political campaign activities that rivals the Republican
Party’s database and operations. (See The Dangerous and Invisible Hand in
the 2020 Election: Charles Koch’s i360.)
<https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/11/the-dangerous-and-invisible-hand-in-the-2020-election-charles-kochs-i360/>

Until the American people raise their voices loud enough to achieve
meaningful campaign finance reform, Senator Warren – and so many others –
are left with few options.
-- 
*Gunnar Larson - xNY.io <http://www.xNY.io> | Bank.org <http://Bank.org>*
MSc
<https://www.unic.ac.cy/blockchain/msc-digital-currency/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Search&utm_campaign=MSc-Digital-Currency-North-America&utm_term=blockchain%20unic&gclid=Cj0KCQiAyJOBBhDCARIsAJG2h5ctwwMz0MRbVSk-LaYD-GMU5UgDSw7ynxbGr_a7SkaFAZzJc1-pzxEaAi4NEALw_wcB>
- Digital Currency
MBA
<https://www.unic.ac.cy/business-administration-entrepreneurship-and-innovation-mba-1-5-years-or-3-semesters/>
- Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip)

G at xNY.io
+1-646-454-9107
New York, New York 10001
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