PRESS RELEASE
Toxic Waste Superfund for SIVs
`Fishy as Hell'
Oct. 20, 2007 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee.
While Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Bank of America maneuver to gather cash commitments for their proposed structured investment vehicle (SIV) superfund—the Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit (MLEC)—from U.S. and foreign banking suckers, there has been a flurry of counter-attacks by heavy hitters within the the financial sector.
Alan Greenspan made strong statements on Oct. 19, questioning the usefulness of the MLEC superfund. In an interview with Emerging Markets quoted in the Oct. 20 Financial Times, he commented: "What creates strong markets is a belief in the investment community that everybody has been scared out of the market, pressed prices too low and there are wildly attractive bargaining prices out there. If you intervene in the system, the vultures stay away. The vultures are sometimes very useful."
Warren Buffett gave an interview to Rupert Murdoch's new media outlet Fox Business Network in its debut on Oct. 18, where he declared that "pooling a bunch of mortgages, changing the ownership" would not change the viability of the mortgage instrument itself. "It would be better to have them on the balance sheet so everyone would know what's going on."
Bill Gross, CIO of Pimco called the superfund "pretty lame."
Financial commentators both in print and online media ranged from skeptical to outraged by the collusion of the banks and the so-called regulators, to bail out the rapidly devaluing SIVs by giving them a face-job and a new wardrobe, then lending money to "lure" suckers to buy the toxic wares. The Financial Times even blamed the plunge in the stock markets in recent days partly on investor "unease" exacerbated by news of the MLEC scheming.
Undaunted, Treasury Secretary Paulson declared at the Oct. 19 G-7 meeting, that the superfund would go forward, and be in place by the end of the year.
As Lyndon LaRouche said of the scam on Oct. 19, "The whole thing stinks. It's fishy as hell."
