Your first sentence is nonsense. The SEC indicted no-one. This is a civil suit. A warning to all who bother to read further that the author hasn't a clue about the subject of his post. The Bush Justice Department and SEC had no interest whatsoever in pursuing these cases. It has taken the Obama administration time to staff up and investigate. A little over a year is warp speed considering the fact the investigation and pursuit of these cases had been abandoned for eight years. These guys are just warming up. Where's the evidence that Obama is biased to Wall Street? All indications are that he's pissing them off big time. Is the sky blue in your world, or do you simply hate the current President so much, you cannot acknowledge that when his administration does a good thing, it is such?

The current SEC has been tepid, as I pointed out. Here's more on the evidence for that assertion. When a judge makes the SEC increase its fine from $30 million to $150 and says this, you know the SEC is doing a poor job. This is the current SEC, which apparently thought it was "warmed up" enough to act on Bank of America's behavior.

"While better than nothing, this is half baked justice at best," Judge Rakoff wrote.

But at the end of the day, he deferred to the SEC's conclusion that the "bank and its officers acted negligently, rather than intentionally" in the failure to disclose. Law.com

Read the full decision by the judge and you'll get a flavor of how scornful he is about the current SEC's handling of this case.

That's the president's SEC running the case, not the Bush SEC

Going from the particular to the general, in response to my assertion that the president favors Wall Street, you said: "he's pissing them off big time."

Was he "pissing them off' when he appointed Larry Summers as his chief economic adviser?

Was he "pissing them off" when he appointed Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury?

Was he "pissing them off" when he interrupted his campaign to come to DC and support the initial bailout after it was defeated according to the will of the people?

Was he "pissing them off" when he sat on his hands and failed to get even Sen. Durbin's modest foreclosure relief bill passed?

Was he "pissing them off" when he sat by and let Congress reject limits on credit card interest relief?

Was he "pissing them off" when he let "The total potential Federal Government support ... reach ... $23.7 trillion" for Wall Street while the millions unemployed and underemployed got scraps?

You are presumptuous to the point of defamation in stating that I "hate" Obama. That's entirely false. I think he's very talented and charming. In fact, I defended Obama here and elsewhereagainst what I saw as unfair allegations. I also see strong evidence that he's simply doing what a reasonable person could have anticipated based on the campaign and his initial moves with Geithner and Summers and other key appointments. I see Obama as another in the line of those who accommodate the great concentrations of wealth at the expense of the people.

No strategy. Do you ever listen or are you just so right about every thing all the time you don't have time for this nuisance thing called laws and democracy.

Don't you understand the strategy here? The suit has been laid out in a template and in a manner it can be replicated over and over. In any suit of this nature you go after the rock solid case and name a single individual. You lean on that person so that they will roll over and cooperate. Turn the guy into a cooperative witness and then they sing like a canary.

But then you never like anything that happens positive or negative. No volume.

I'm basing my interpretation on what the SEC did with BofA. They were "judged" to be inadequate by none other than the judge. I'll be happy if I"m wrong on this, btw. Cuomo charged the top dogs plus the corporation (BofA). The SEC is after a math whiz on the London trading desk and the corporation (Goldman). Why didn't they have Tourre plus others (as Cuomo has) lined up against the senior executives? Maybe they think that there's no problem with the top at GS? Or maybe it's like BofA, where they thought all the obvious deliberate deceptions were just "negligence?"

Check out Cuomo complaint, section entitled "Relevant Persons," pages 9-12. That is entirely intimidating. It shows where information was gathered, in part, and who just might testify. The SEC suit would scare me if I were Fabrice Tourre but the rest of them have little to worry about, it appears.

To see if it was as absurd as I thought it was. Maybe I missed something. Maybe it was satire.

Nope. You need to learn to understand the long game my man. The set up here is just amazing. I think folks here mostly see it. Numerian is the perfect layout. This is going to be big.

There's an easy way to settle this. Let's see what they do. I strongly suspect that that we'll see the same diligence out of Justice and the SEC as Justice showed with their "big" prosecutions of those responsible for implementing torture as a part of US tactics. Or maybe the "big" move to restore the constitutional rights stripped by Bush-Cheney. Or maybe that really "big" move to repeal the Patriot Act. How about the distinction of being the first president to "authorize" the killing of a U.S. citizen (without that pesky formality of a trial)? We're on a roll;)

Is why they went after a low level 31 year old.

From New York Times this morning.

According to these people, executives up to and including Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chairman and chief executive, took an active role in overseeing the mortgage unit as the tremors in the housing market began to reverberate through the nation's economy. It was Goldman's top leadership, these people say, that finally ended the dispute on the mortgage desk by siding with those who, like Mr. Tourre and Mr. Egol, believed home prices would decline.

You simply need to get your visceral hatreds out of your way to assess things in the light of day. Things do take time. But I am more of the opinion Obama was also concerned for health of the economy. They play a long game. This is a very important piece of litigation that is shaping up, and I give them credit. I don't think anyone here thought I would be supportive of this suit, and I looked at it skeptically from the standpoint of lots of companies hedging positions as a kind of insurance. I always have, and probably always will think that going after folks wages is a dumb strategy. Anyone who knows how banking works knows folks get a percentage of the business they bring in. But I am objective, and when I saw the case laid out - especially well laid out by Numerian - this is the real deal, and the way it was laid out, and the time taken and who they are going after. It is like the Star Wars movie where the little kid innoculously flies into the death star and 'accidentally' blows the whole f^*^&*^ thing to smithereens. So give credit where credit is due. And I am 100% behind this thing. I think a lot of folks see the strategy and long game here.

I like all hat no cattle but I like this dog don't hunt better. And it's Obama who says I'm not one to kick the can down the road.

Important. Please read. I don't have "visceral hatreds." I have … evidence of a pattern. Please stop with the "hatred" business. It's simply not accurate.

Louise Story got to the right people or they got to her. In either case, the sources are clear -- top management knew about the hedges against the sub prime market. Lets presume the SEC knew as much or more than the NYT. They'd have to show that the top management knew Abacus was designed to fail. Absent that, they can't be charged. OR the SEC has the goods on top management through Egol (Tourre's partner not named in the action) and is waiting, for some reason. We don't know yet.

If GS is getting a spanking from the Obama administration, they don't seem to be aware of it. They're lobbying for the financial reform bill, according to this commentator . They're also tossing in with the Democrats in 2010. If the SEC moves up the org chart and if Holder does something, at long last, then you're right.

One point you didn't make which is worth mentioning concerns the impact that the SEC filing has on the type of deal Paulson & Co. got from GS. By charging Tourre for a deal involving the worst features of the CDS market, there may be a chilling effect for further deals. The secrecy is no longer the case, at least for now, and people are speaking up.

It won't just be up to Holder. Europe is moving in a big way. They were in many instances the agrieved parties. I would bet the foreign investors were being targeted. This is not the only house doing this either. But like you say I want to see the legal apparatus doing a he'll of a lot more than this one case. If not I will be sorely disappointed.

The recent rumblings are an extension of what started a few weeks earlier. (click on the Stop sign for a treat). The Italian judiciary chimed in and then there was the French letter of March 11.

The real action is in New York State and Connecticut with the fraud charges against Bank of America, Moody's and Standard and Poors. The NY charges are civil now but, under the Martin Act used for the charges, the Attorney General can easily convert these to criminal charges as well with hefty jail terms.

Nevertheless, the impact of the SEC charges is the question that a few may find horrifying -- if this was accepted practice elsewhere, "When will they come after me?" That sort of reflection is never a bad thing.

You can't shut down the mortgage industry. Civil is the way to go here, and at a pace markets can handle. We are in a great position to let some air out of this balloon. Let em play it out. The President is the President. He's not going to go out and look like he's head of Justice, no way. He gets up and talks nuclear disarmament, Iran, Health Care when it needed passing, right now he is using all the energies passing Financial Reform. There are 1,000s of things going on and he doesn't have to lead the charge on ALL of them.

We will see. The more I look at this thing, the way Europe has obviously been brought up to speed. Europe, in fact, is probably the best forum to go after some of this stuff. Government money lost is Sovereign and they have claws and teeth that would never let go.