Wall Street’s greatest enemy: The man who knows too much

[n2doc]

What Michael Winston knows about corporate crimes will horrify you. That's why financial giants want to destroy him
BY DAVID DAYEN

You may know Michael Winston’s story from a series of articles by Gretchen Morgenson in the New York Times, or from a celebrated Frontline episode, “The Untouchables,” about the lack of prosecutions on Wall Street. He was a Ph.D. who rose to the corporate elite, with stints at Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Motorola and Merrill Lynch. He was recruited to mortgage originator Countrywide Financial with the promise that it wanted to become the “Goldman Sachs of the Pacific,” a full-service global financial corporation.

“They talked about the importance of ethics and principles, and they said they heard I was a high-integrity guy,” Winston tells Salon, noting his father had a vanity plate that read “HONOR.” Winston initially succeeded as enterprise chief leadership officer at Countrywide, getting promoted twice in 14 months and building a team of 200 working on corporate strategy.

But he could not ignore the rot at the heart of the company’s profitmaking approach.

So now, a successful high-level executive for 30 years, he has been embroiled in seven years of lawsuits with Countrywide and the company that bought it, Bank of America. His determination to speak out against multiple violations of law at Countrywide earned him retaliation, and eventually, he was frozen out of corporate boardrooms, unable to find a new job. He won a jury verdict in his case, but after two and a half more years of fighting, an appellate court reversed the ruling in highly unusual circumstances.

“I keep hearing about whistle-blower protections,” he tells Salon, exasperatedly. “It certainly didn’t happen for me.”

more

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/28/wall_streets_greatest_enemy_the_man_who_knows_too_much/

[Autumn]

1. It's obscene that those who expose wrong doing pay such a high price.

Rec

[mikeysnot]

2. Going forward

it would behoove the whistle blower to remain embedded and anonymous ala Deep Throat during Nixon's term.

[Autumn]

3. I'm not even sure that would be possible with them going after journalists sources

the way they are now.

[mikeysnot]

14. even the journalists didn't know who he/they were...

[Waiting For Everyman]

4. What happened to him is the same thing that is done to homeowners

Every kind of legal standard is violated: statutes, rules, common practice, precedent, everything. A deal as to who is going to win is made in the back rooms, and any ridiculous way of justifying it is accepted, no matter how illegal it is, that is ignored. End of case.

The law is completely subverted now. It's only about who has the most influence -- that's who wins almost every time.

[Egalitarian Thug]

5. +1 And that's the bottom line.

[avaistheone1]

6. Chilling, so much systemic dishonesty and corruption with no real refuge.

[Civilization2]

7. The truth is buried,. intentionally obscured, hidden from sight, covered over, and blacked out.

Money wins in the current system, and the banksters have an endless supply.

We must change the system or give up.

[L0oniX]

9. Everyone has been paid off. n/t

[Dustlawyer]

8. They have stacked the Courts of Appeals with "their" Justices and now appeal any adverse

verdict, no matter how well settled the underlying principles of law are. I have a 1.2 million dollar Judgement against a well known life insurance company who have done everything not to pay on a policy, (it's been 8 years since the death). Texas law on the issue on appeal has been upheld by the Texas Supreme Court for over 100 years. Opposing counsel is a huge fundraiser for Texas Republicans, including most of the Texas Supreme Court. Their current settlement offer is $15,000.
Does he know something we don't?
The US Chamber of Commerce has been working behind the scenes to get their Judges on the bench, and state and local politicians in office. This has been going on since Reagan and now it is paying huge dividends! They even started Courthouse and online newspapers which are placed outside where people go to report for jury duty. They do not indicate that they own the papers and go so far as to put fake ads to make them appear legitimate. Check out one which is in my hometown, the www.Southeasttexasrecord.com. The stories featured on the front page and Opinions page are usually targeted at upcoming trials to influence the jury against the Plaintiffs.
DEMAND PUBLICLY FUNDED ELECTIONS!!!

[bhikkhu]

10. The man who knows too much votes with his wallet

and supports those companies which support his own best interests.

It has always mystified me how w-mart has become so universally popular, why people shop there so much (I work a few blocks from one, and the traffic in their parking lot is always incredible, even on slow days)? Even in our medium-small town there are much better options and even cheaper places to go. Its main competition costs about the same and has about the same range of products but is a union store. Why do people shop in a place where the employees are treated like crap and paid dirt?

Banking is no less of a question mark; everyone knows how obnoxious wells fargo and chase and so forth have been over the years, yet those banks wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they didn't have so many depositors. I switched all of my banking to a credit union years ago, where the people are nice and my deposits support our local community. It cost me nothing and it was easy to do.

You can look at any us corporation as the result of the sum of people's choices; if people didn't give them money, most of them wouldn't last out the month. Every dollar you spend is like a vote, and every day people vote for the corporations they want to stick around, and for the behavior they are willing to accept. Why things are as they are, why the election consistently goes to the worst offenders, has always been a mystery to me.

[prairierose]

11. Thank you for saying this. bhikku....

I have been saying the same thing for years. I try to explain it to people and they look at me like I am crazy. Yet, it is really very simple. Do business with local businesses. Put your money in a local credit union that will loan the money locally. If we do not work on building local sustainable economies, we will have nothing when wall st crashes again.

[truedelphi]

19. The problem is that even if people didn't give corproations another red cent,

The government gives these bastards whatever they want.

Why do you think we are going to war against Syria right now? Same reason as always - war is very profitable for the inner circle.
It also has a handy dandy way of initially fluffing up the President's polling numbers; a maneuver he has needed since pesky Ed Snowden made his revelations.

The welfare doled out by the Federal Government to the top corporations exceeds social programs in this country by ten billion bucks - each and every year.

And when the banks and financial firms were circling the toilet they got bailed out by the Paulson/Bernanke/Geithner trio. Fifteen tot sixteen trillions of dollars - at least.

This is an amount equivalent to one year of the nation's GDP. And yet we citizens would not even know abut it if Bernie Sanders had not insisted on an audit of the Federal Reserve.
Ostensibly it was "loans" - but experts state that some 4.7 trillions of dollars will not ever be paid back.

So even if we all boycotted everything, and just sat home staring at the walls and eating acorn stew, the big corporations would just get more Bailouts!

[bhikkhu]

20. Oh please....

That 16 trillion dollars is one of the most bogus numbers trotted around on the internet. The sum that was "in play" at any given time during the TARP program (which the number comes from) was about $500 million. That $500 million was loaned out and repaid back many times in various sums totalling about 21,000 transactions; short-term loans at very low or zero interests to unfreeze the credit markets. Total all the loans and you get some trillions of dollars, total the repayments and you also get some trillions of dollars.

Most of the real arguments about how it was a hand-out objected to the lack of interest, and pointed to the loss of $50 million or so in interest that would have been collected if it were charged at market rates. There's a brief summary of it here: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/12/tarp-4-years-later.asp but its not hard to find more in-depth information. Its also pretty easy to find ridiculous distortions, as the teabaggers have been running lies about it for years, the repugs distorted it for every sound bite they could in the last two elections, and certain elements here have been setting their own hair on fire about it regularly, in the absence of good information.

To me, that baloney is just an excuse to stay angry and uninformed, and to continue to promote the idea that nothing anybody does makes a difference.

I'll stick by what I said in the beginning - a well-informed person votes with his or her wallet, and makes a real difference every day. If you don't like a bank, don't give them your money. If you don't like a corporation, don't give them your money. If you look at the balance sheets or the cash-flow of any corporation or bank, they are almost entirely dependent on people voting for them, giving them money, every single day. If you don't like it, STOP, and tell others to do the same. I'd make a good argument that its the only way to make the kind of difference most people want to see.

[truedelphi]

24. OPh please, yourselfr.

Matt Taibbi makes a good case of how screwn we have been by the Big Policies that Help Out the Criminal bankers. It will take a while to read all his articles, but they are spot on. (Google Matt Taibbi + Rolling Stone)

Also the following sources:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans/

http://www.projectcensored.org/5-first-federal-reserve-audit-reveals-trillions-loaned-to-major-banks/

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/28-3

Although sometimes the money gets paid back, then there are further TARP monies that have kicked in as a reward. (Nice system if you or I could get this in our lives: pay off the massive student debt, and get a tax write off equal to the amount paid. Doesn't happen. The last year this household paid off a student loan, some $ 7,200 worth of payments were made, and there was something like a $ 1,500 refund on account of that.)

Note how Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia (or was it Washington Mutual?) without paying a single red cent - and various tax provisions for doing this helped even more.

[bhikkhu]

25. If you read through to the GAO audit summary at the end of Taibbi's article

you'll find a list of the programs and assistance, showing the "peak dollar amounts outstanding" and the "Balance as of 6/29/11". I would think, reasonably, that the balances would be the main concern or at least an issue. Almost all the balances are $0, almost all the program funds have been repaid and closed out. "Sometimes the money gets paid back" and "further TARP monies have kicked in as a reward" means you haven't read the GAO audit; its right here: http://www.gao.gov/assets/650/649913.pdf

The only big thing remaining is some of the mortgage purchases, which are still being unbundled and sold off. And the purchase of General Motors stock, which is still being sold down.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-05/u-s-treasury-says-it-intends-to-sell-30-million-more-gm-shares.html

AIG was a big government bailout under a different program, but even that worked out well in the end: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323339704578172960483282372.html

As far as Wells Fargo acquiring Wachovia for "free", what do you think Wachovia was worth? In 2008 Wachovia was named the "worst run bank in America", and its balance sheet was a mess. It was worth less than zero dollars, counting assets against liabilities. Like some cities will sell run-down properties for $1 that need far more work than they will ever have in value, Wachovia was a "fixer-upper" that probably cost more to fix than it was ever worth.

[raouldukelives]

22. Exactly!

[zipplewrath]

26. Tryanny of the plurailty

What you are discussing is that a corporation doesn't need the majority of the market. It just needs a slice, and that slice can be really thin. A vast majority of the people don't have a Wells Fargo account of any kind. But it is still a major bank and that major bank can affect alot of peoples lives.

[Octafish]

12. KRB

Thank you for the heads-up, n2doc.

[WillyT]

13. HUGE K & R !!!

[Hydra]

15. Yet another example of how we're unravelling

This "two sets of laws" thing never ends wells. In the end, there's only 1 set of laws: "Whoever is left, is Right."

[gopiscrap]

16. I totally agree with you

other than fucking over the unions, this is one of the reasons why the repukes have gone after public education with such a vengeance!

[HumansAndResources]

23. Union-Busting had a Lot Of Help from the DLC wing.

NAFTA et al would never have been possible except under the fake-left-cover of Bill Clinton. That's why the Koch Brothers created the DLC and made him its first director.

The Rethuglicans want "cheap" public education or, better (sic) yet, "for profit" education (with compulsory-payment profits, like auto and health insurance). But believe me you - they DO want every child thoroughly conditioned to "respect hierarchical authority"with 15,000 hours of day-prison torture, incorporating a historical fairy-tale, to ensure blind-obedience to "the system."

http://www.noogenesis.com/malama/discouragement/helplessness.html

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. If I were him, I'd stay off small planes.

[Initech]

18. The people who expose actual crimes are the ones who get punished.

Like Chelsea Manning for instance. And the people who actually committed the crimes, like the Bush administration don't get punished. Justice, there ain't no such thing.

[truedelphi]

27. Hi Initech -

haven't seen you in a while...

Please accept a warm calif morning

[Initech]

30. Warm? That's an understatement!

It's more like "Fry an egg on the sidewalk hot".

[Amonester]

21. "It's a big club, and you ain't in it."

But if you're in it, if you turn your back on it once, it's buh-bye...

[truedelphi]

28. Andno one knows this more than the whistleblowers and the real scientists:

One day they are giving you twelve million bucks to examine a situation.

And then you find a problem. Suddenly, overnight you have gone from being the world's top expert in field X&Y, to a pariah, suffering from a mental affliction, and never to work in your field again.

George Carlo And Pusztai both became members of that club.

[Quantess]

29. K & R