tv The Whistleblowers RT November 4, 2023 3:30pm-4:01pm EDT
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the soonest human rights organizations dislikes the nigerian armies. a recent claim that is successfully prevented the task vibe. oklahoma. i'm assuming that since you're right is what i'm, i'm with the international se civilians are increasingly being killed or obstructed from the is also risk of salvation with a shoulder and just food affecting more than 2 and a half 1000000 people in separate reports, reduced law suite what would i say his no, to the conflict had intensified in recent months, failed to peace initiative, ang, twos, in countries such as the routine of fast. so and molly were blamed, i'm going to say international also said that the gang was of been a doctor to add, murdering women and children and damaging essential infrastructure. reengaged lowe, who reaction to the situation? i it was my uncle in my friend to she back. hi baby. so the,
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the way she's the only san diego shooter for the chest of to be in the back. you know, the name is susanna. both of them, the dates that we lose a for a family and be a bus, or will you numerous? yeah. use for the sheep i lost in i lose one of my bro dogs. so for that is when bo, quite on to when the size of days up when the, all those 62 dash shooting supreme bullets. if you're just throwing them out from nowhere, you will see blood coming from. i thought you of this what top one is the most good though in that time truly, before we lose many of filed a lovely people, especially that my best friend whites. i used to work with you all the things and so that is about $5.00. i incorporate the resolution and the crisis of security situation in the fire, reagan is complicated due to many reasons,
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including corruption. the problem we have really, i can tell you this for free, is that i've seen some search on the part of the federal government and doing what they can work right on the ground. very few things i would object to some of the charge of these efforts um project page would be that it would among the military and some of the people who have a brand new 5, a warrant itself is big business fraction. terrorism is big business. and so, when is corruption in the system? there are those, for instance, who would prefer that is situational gratitude is, and the reason is because it is profitable for as a guarantee you they these as care longest. oh would um, i mean as a souvenir, because you might say if it but if your mind tells you, look, the situation is bad with nitro. includes a budget be of course you would want to do that. you want to grow that situation
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and that is not the case. sometimes you find singers why the some of the guys, i'm just to create a credit card, scare mongering, and then the increased budgets. all of these are also corruption entries. c on a good a. this is vain home to town was find king scandals over the case of mex, don't curio go to so, so, so both an inch. so we'll be back the top of the, the we're all keenly attuned to the issue of bank fraud here on the show. we've spoken to numerous lots of lowers who have told us about money laundering, income, tax evasion, and illegal offshoring of assets. that's all complicated enough to make matters worse. imagine having to do so with little support in the policy and regulatory
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communities for even in congress. that's what our next guest has found himself up against. i'm john kerry ok. welcome to the whistle blowers the . 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 in the united states has been home to countless banking scandals over the decades from the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s to the great recession of 200820092 the collapse of lehman brothers bear stearns and others. there seems to be a cycle where bankers go hog wild, they allow their agreed to get the better of them. their banks and investment firms collapse. congress expresses shock info, outrage. new regulations are implemented and then retracted. and then the entire cycle just starts over again. this is the system that we've given ourselves. it's one that fosters and rewards corruption in the name of free market capitalism. but
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sometimes the good guys actually when our next guest is one of those good guys, he was a central figure and exposing congressional corruption, including among some of the most powerful figures in the body during the savings and loan crisis, which he brought to national attention. he correctly called the collapse of the us housing market in 200820098 ponzi scheme and said that the bank programs to provide loans to people not able to pay them, was a criminal act. and he testified before congress that the collapse of major us investment houses was not a result of poor investment decisions. but instead, the result of fraud. bill black is an associate professor of economics and law at the university of missouri at kansas city where he teaches white collar crime, public finance, anti trust law and economics, as well as latin american development. he's a former executive director of the institute for fraud prevention. he has taught at
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the lyndon b johnson school of public affairs at the university of texas at austin as well as at santa clara university. the professor black was litigation director at the federal home loan bank board, deputy director of the savings and loan oversight body. the f s l i see general counsel of the federal home loan bank of san francisco, and senior deputy chief council of the office of thrift supervision. he's the author of many books and his book, the best way to rob a bank is to own one, which was published in 2005 is considered to be a classic in the genre. professor black, welcome back to the show. we're happy to have you. you have been a leading voice for smart banking regulation for decades. indeed, you are the person who exposed one of the biggest governmental scandals since watergate tell us how you got involved in the issue of banking, banking regulation and the investigation of bank fraud. sure, the heroes in the story are the least powerful folks in the organization. the
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bank examiners, in our case, the thrift examiners. these are the folks that actually go into the field and look at the loans. and they also look at what you claim is your underwriting standard. and then they look at a sample of loans to see whether you actually do these things. and one of the, we did the examiner's early on pebble to the queue. you were inside the insight, was this the worst of savings and loans. ultimately there were 300 of these rod schemes are making loans in a way that is certain to cause them massive losses and you're going, well, that's crazy, right. and then the, the insight was yes, but it will make the ceo incredibly wealthy. because the c e o is
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looting and the best way to loot is a to control the bag and be to use accounting and see typically making bad loans works far better in terms of the accounting. so that's principally how they tend to do it. now sometimes they add in coordination, and this in the united states context tends to be aimed against blacks, hispanics particularly those who sleep primarily spanish, up and the elderly. and you can combine these 2 things, looting, and prediction. let's walk through these scandals. one at a time. one of the biggest was called the kidding 5. the kidding 5 were 5 us senators including john mccain and john glenn, who were involved in a bang scandal that was a part of the savings and loan collapse. you had such
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a major impact on the revelation of and on the investigation into this scandal that charles keating, after whom the scandal was named, said in a memo, quote, get black, kill him, dead, unquote. tell us about the heating 5 and about the aftermath. right, so 1st it isn't just the eating 5 working with the cheating. 5 was speaker of the house. jim. right. and the speaker, the house is the answer to the trick question. who was the 2nd most powerful elected official in america? the vice president? it's the speaker of the house under our constitution and the rules of the house. right. and so these folks up, and by the way, that means 5 of the 6 were democrats. you know, all of this, including that you said some very prominent democrats, including to war heroes, as you mentioned,
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john glen and the son of that moment day. right? you know, all of this. so the really isn't that they use the senators is the other things have fail. so this one you really love, they use trading crap. i am not exaggerating. charles keating literally got a mole appointed by president reagan to one of the 3 presidential slots. his name was lee hankle and i blew that's the 1st person i believed was a lot. right, so he's one of our 3 bosses presidential pin point. he's running the agency and that is only because the other guy that, that it regular ministration also agree to a point. but miracle,
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a miracle was blocked by weird political stuff involving yet another war here of bob. all right, so otherwise cheating. but for the weird miracle of bob dole blocking this other cheating, the pointy, the agency was run by 3 people who would have given the majority to charles, getting the most notorious fraud. so i blow the whistle on hankle and the f. b, i begins an investigation and he, he hankle had actually been bought and paid for. right. they had them just dead to rights. but they agreed and they being the justice department to allow him to resign and avoid prosecution. and then
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a host of things happened, and as i said, they're using all these opt the accountants. they had not one, but ultimately 3 of the big 8 audit firms. and they would get these in man, in kind of criminal letters from the audit firm, saying that they've never seen anything like these regulators. we were out of control. we were felt mean at them out, you know, the type of thing. we had all kinds of hospitals here age we have. # a majority of the house of representatives at the behest of charles keating. a majority of the house of representatives co sponsored a resolution saying do not re regulate the industry as we were doing. and that majority included every senior member of the leadership of both the republicans and
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the democrats in the house of representatives. the reagan administration, the office of management and budget threatened to make a criminal referral against the head of our agency. and the grounds for the criminal referral was that we were supposedly closing too many in solvents, savings and low. now our job is closing and solve it, sir. and so they weren't going to have to keep the man for that bill. you've been a regular presence on capitol hill over the years, testifying before myriad committees on these issues, and you've never pull any punches. i know from my own time on capitol hill that it's regular practice for outside experts to write most of the legislation, whether it's lobby as attorneys or substantive experts. you certainly fit that bill . have congressional leaders ask you for your expertise in crafting legislation to
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prevent future bank schedules? tom frank, uh, you know, the great the, a journalist just story and he has a ph. d. history. i often talk to me about during the great financial crisis about this any and he and the obama administration building the video in the living room of our home in kansas city. a . yeah. which they set out to 6000000 folks allegedly because john virginia of course, was one of the feeding 5. and the point i was making is john mccain was still making the same mistakes or, you know, supporting st kind of bad policies that had led to that kind of disaster. so tom frank knew that things going, so you know, when you're going to get the senior position and i, and 3 minutes later when i can start up laughing, i said, you know,
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basically 70000000 people would have to died or take of a having me and they would certainly never make the regulators the head of the national commission, you know, to investigate the causes of the great financial crisis. why did you make me the chief investigator? but of course it knew that there was no way the republicans would allow that to to happen. so, uh, i have, i do it from the outside. i mean, i do have a 10 top with 1600000 to get uh on uh, some of these things uh it and um, many journalists, they have uh asked me about it as you say, a different than that. um, i'm very blunt. thank you. bill we're speaking with bill black, a law professor and banking whistleblower about his experiences examining corrupt
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[000:00:00;00] the, the welcome back to the suppliers. i'm john kerry. i could, were speaking with professor bill black about corruption in the banking industry. bill, it's good to have you with us. thanks again. bill, you've made something of a cottage industry of providing warnings in the banking sector. what are you currently seeing? and several regional banks failed across the us earlier this year. that sent shock waves through the industry. but should we have been shocked? should we expect more failures? the terrible thing about this is one. we did the significant parts of the law based on lies and based on the scam that we were
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helping little institutions, women had nothing to do with it. it was all about helping institutions in the $100000000.00 and above range off and up to $250000000000.00. the really scary thing about these failures is they're the equivalent of a big sailing ship capsizing because there was an 8 not wind economic times in the united states. yeah. there been pressures. oh, there was some inflation for a, you know, a time. but you know, pretty modest by any historical stuff. okay, so what this,
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these recent failures show you 261, the incentives for the managers, the senior managers of the bags are still incredibly perverse. which is the biggest stress what i've been saying for 2530 years. and the 2nd thing is the regulators have largely collapsed as effective courses, right? we read it and we have to re establish the effective examiners again. the heroes of the piece to be able to deal with this because the l. i'll start with the regular tory part 1st. you never made sense to allow these institutions to make the kind of risk that they were taking. here's why. the risk were in jargon, a symmetrical. in other words, if things went bad,
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we all settings would pay for it. if things went good, then the ceo and the senior managers would make a ton of money. but on top of that, they did it in circumstances when things were almost certainly going to go bad in the sense that there, it was clear that the fed was pushing up interest rates. it is the fed pushes of interest rates aggressively interest rates will go up. and so if you've been taking a bath, the interest rates will fall. you will lose money. but your bonus will go up as a c, e o and as a cfo. and so that's what they did and they didn't just deliberately took interest rate risk if you're going to take interest rate risk. so a run is it like pneumonia, right?
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pneumonia is often the thing that kills you at 1st, but something underlying major, really sick. and often put you in the hospital, right. and then pneumonia can kill you in 24 hours to opportunistic disease. well, the same thing there, the most analogous thing in finance is a run liquidity problems. and the thing you want to do absolutely, to minimize, that is to make sure your depositors are fully insured. and in the united states that was over well, we leave the nor this is very different than europe, as you may well know. where many large banks have money that is primarily uninsured, and therefore it makes a whole lot of sense for depositors tavern stage to run on the bank. but in the united states, traditionally, even very large banks have been over whelming li,
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ensure the banks that got in trouble and failed were ones that decided, hey, let's bring in on, on uninsured money by the federal government. not protected by the f b. i see there is no upside for society to one piece of legislation that came out of congress in the early 2. thousands was something called sarbanes oxley that had to do with compliance. and by all accounts, it worked with that said bankers hated it. they seem to hate. most regulations. sarbanes oxley has now lapsed. is the making industry better off with it? or without it? sharpens actually quite accurately was does at get on. right? said you need good internal control. so that's what it's all about in internal controls, are you actually know what's happening at your institution?
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and you're acting appropriately in light of that knowledge was the 2nd part. but the 2nd part was assumed, right? they assume that the bankers simply didn't know. whereas the top bankers were a problem. no. and they just wanted to hide it. so what is the bankers do when they implemented sarbanes oxley, they went to the most anal, most bureaucratic means of implementing it possible. they hired outside top audit firms, who here's a shock created a one size fits all document, which sometimes when they sold you, they hadn't even figured out that they hadn't erased the prior banks name in the form document. so we've got to sell the same thing. hundreds of times, it made a ton of money, but there was no real bargain at the bank. so, serbians actually is right. they,
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their internal controls stopped. but surveys actually assumed it was because they just didn't know how to make good controls. they know how to make good control for a 100 years. they have crappy controls because they don't want to alert the regulators to the problem. they want to perverse incentives because a perverse incentives turn it out. it assures thing for the managers economist still talk in terms of what the bank wants, what the banks, incentives are, what the bank is seeking to accomplish. banks are people, they have no incentives, they have no ability to protect themselves from managers. it's all about what the managers want and share the modern executive compensation according to the economist who created the concept as produce the disaster. is there any
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appetite on capitol hill to enact legislation to prevent future bank failures and tell us about the regulatory environment on capital hill? is the executive branch willing to stand up to the bankers we just in the savings of loan tobacco? bearable regulations often that we have inherited from our predecessors. and while much of what we did was to re regulate the industry much what we did was not even under the weeks stuff precisely because the fraudsters really, you know, they wrapped it up to the equivalent of a 150 miles an hour. so the frauds tend to get cruder because they can get away with it. so even though it's, you can be successful if you know of the 20, the equivalent of
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a jo selby and mike patriarch, it as a regulatory head despite everything that in today's, you know, it would be a combination of republican and democratic legislators tried to do you could have very effective regulation, but it would have to come for the president, the united states. he or she would have to actually appoint leaders that needed to do very thing. let me give you another example of them, right? by the way, 1st cousin of leg was appointed head of the 1st regulatory agency. after i blow the whistle and the head of our agency of to gave them to the king 5 and to speak right. had to resign and disgrace along with the remember, right. tim ryan then
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continued the if something he actually inherited the enforcement action against the son of the president, the united states of america. how timely huh. and as a result of that, the white house called the general counsel the f b i c and said, is there any way you can get this taken away this action taken away from the office of direct supervision, which is the federal thrift regulatory agency. the tim ryan was leading and the general counsel dining pepper. i went to bill shipment the head of the agency and said, yeah, i got this thing for the white house and statement said don't go, you know, close to it with a 20 foot pool. and the general counsel anyway, ignores his boss and calls tim ryan the head of the 1st regulatory agency and pictures this. we get this taken away from you. this action
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against the presidents on the right. god bless them. does an ethics referral? i'm the general counsel the up the i think and so that's why you don't see tim ryan, the who is the republican voters that professor william black. thank you so much for being with us. anyone who wants to tackle corruption has to be willing to go all the way. sometimes that means all the way to the top. there are no short cuts to ensuring honesty and transparency. and it is incumbent on people in positions of authority. whether the elected officials, business leaders, or anybody else, to ensure that the rules are followed and that there's respect for the rule of law . but that's not real life. greed is a powerful motivator, and that's why we need whistle blowers, whistle blowers light. can bill black? thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers i'm john kerry. aku,
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we have some more for someone who is this, we would show new people to the the the largest possible hill in gaza is said to be on the bring cooker taxes and fee was deals divide close to running out as well. so this is crucial energy device and what we allowed into the territory. these really is refusing a time for a choose that doesn't include the release of all hostages. israel will not able to and from school into got the cries that help pay taxes in kind of they belong to the return of the $200.00 plus
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