Warren Wants More Wall Street Regulation

A few days ago it was learned that another giant Wall Street bank, JPMorgan Chase, has been playing fast and loose with the money of their depositors -- and they lost about $2 billion. That's not enough to sink the financial giant, but it shows that the Wall Street banks are right back to doing the same thing that triggered the collapse of our economy in 2008. There used to be a law that prevented banks from making risky investments with depositor money (the Glass-Steagall Act), but it was repealed in 1999.

It is now obvious that the repeal of many Wall Street regulations by the Republicans was a bad mistake -- a mistake that was only partly rectified by Obama's new Wall Street regulations. One candidate has spoken out loudly and clearly about the need to re-instate many of the regulations abolished by the Republicans -- especially the Glass-Steagall Act. That candidate is Elizabeth Warren, who is running against Scott Brown for Ted Kennedy's old senate seat in Massachusetts. Here are a few statements about this from Professor Warren:

The Volcker Rule would help. We don’t know exactly the nature of these trades. But if the question is is the Volcker rule enough, or do we need more, look, I’m somebody who believes we really should have boring banking. That banking should be — the part that’s about savings accounts and checking accounts and our money system — should be separated from the kind of risk-taking that Wall Street traders want to take. That was originally what the Glass-Steagall Act was about, it was repealed in 1999. There was an effort to get it into Dodd-Frank in the 2010 bill. That effort failed. I think we really do need that kind of separation. We need to go back to boring banking. The people who want to take risks need to take risks with their own money and do it somewhere else.


I’d like to see some real accountability here. I’d like to see Jamie Dimon, for example, resign from his position as a Class A director of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.


Notwithstanding the fact that we are just coming out of this huge crisis, Jamie Dimon has been the one who has led the charge in order to say, nope, no more regulation, fight back against regulation, called the regulation un-American, and resist, tried to put loopholes into the regulation, hire an army of lobbyists. This has really got to stop.


What happened here is not just about JPMorgan Chase, it’s about the kind of attitudes, that the bank should be regulating themselves instead of having real oversight… we have to say as a country, no, the banks cannot regulate themselves. They are financial institutions that run the risk of taking down everyone’s job, run the risk of taking down everyone’s pension, run the risk of taking down the entire economy. And that means it’s appropriate to have some government oversight.

I sincerely hope the people of Massachusetts have the good sense to send Elizabeth Warren to the U.S. Senate -- and keep her there for a long time.

Writer Of "Powder" Letters Is Arrested

Last October, someone sent a total of 65 threatening letters to eleven different states. Most of the letters went to different Chase Bank addresses, but a few went to government organizations like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Many of the letters had a white powder in them, and all of them were mailed from Amarillo, Texas.

As a resident of Amarillo, this bothered me. No one wants this kind of nut in their own town. Well, yesterday the FBI arrested the perpetrator, and much to my relief, it turns out he wasn't a resident of Amarillo after all. He lives in Tijeras, New Mexico. He just drove to Amarillo to mail the letters in an effort to fool law enforcement.

The 47 year-old man, Richard Leon Goyette, had lost about $63,000 when Washington Mutual went under and was bought out cheaply by Chase Bank. He was a victim of the foolish mismanagement that ravaged our financial system and helped to kick off the current recession. But victim or not, that doesn't excuse his terroristic actions.

He is currently charged with one count of violating federal laws regarding false information and hoaxes, although he could later be charged with 64 more charges, since each letter could be a new charge. He is being brought to Amarillo, where he will be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney there.

For someone who went to great lengths to hide himself, he was caught by one stupid mistake. He had gone to Albuquerque and used the public computers (pictured above) at the University of New Mexico to get the Chase Bank and government addresses. Then he rented a car and drove to Amarillo to mail the letters. He probably thought he had covered his trail pretty well.

But while at UNM, he also sent a threatening e-mail along the lines of the letters. The FBI traced the e-mail back to the UNM computer where they found the address searches. He still might have been alright, but they found that he had checked his e-mail at yahoo.com at the same time. What a dummy!!

Oh well, I'm just glad they caught him.

Threatening Letters From Amarillo

It looks like someone here in Amarillo has gone off the deep end, and it's not something that makes the decent citizens of our fair city very proud. Some nut is mailing threatening letters containing a white powdery substance all over the country, and the letters were all postmarked from Amarillo.

So far, there have been dozens of the letters, and they have been sent to Texas, New York, New Jersey, District of Columbia, Arizona, Ohio, Illinois, Colorado, Oklahoma, Georgia, Virginia and California. And that may not be the end of it. More letters show up each day.

The sender seems to be upset by the banking crises. Most of the letters have been sent to Chase Banks, in addition to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of Thrift Supervision (both of whom oversee financial institutions).

Frankly this whole thing is a bit scary. Both my daughter and I do our banking at Chase Bank in Amarillo. What if this nut escalates his criminal behavior. I don't particularly want to be in the bank when he decides to drop off a bomb or decides to go postal on bank employees and customers.

That may sound silly, but who knows what a nut-job like this will decide to do? A $100,000 reward has been offered for his/her arrest, and the FBI is investigating. I hope the culprit is quickly apprehended and severely punished.