SEC Proposes Ban on Magnetar-Like Deals
by Lois Beckett ProPublica
The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday unveiled proposed rules to ban hedge funds and banks from assembling risky securities, marketing them to investors and then immediately betting against their own creations, reaping profits when they fail. The rule would also ban firms from setting up risky securities for the benefit of an undisclosed third party.
As we detailed last year, exactly those kinds of questionable deals helped fuel the financial crisis [1] and resulted in huge losses for investors.
Goldman Sachs [2] and JP Morgan Chase [3] have already paid millions of dollars 2014 a relatively small sum for both banks 2014 to settle SEC charges they misled investors. Several other banks [4], including Citigroup and Mizuho of Japan, are being investigated [5] by the SEC for similar deals.
201CIt was as if a car dealer sold a car with bad brakes, then bought insurance that paid off when the car crashed,201D Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of a Senate committee that investigated such deals [6], said in a statement yesterday.
The SEC2019s new rule [7] is designed to target two potential conflicts of interest:
For instance, a firm might package an asset-backed security, sell that security to an investor, and then short the security to potentially profit as the investor incurs a loss.
Or a firm might allow a third party to help assemble an asset-backed security in a way that creates an opportunity for the third party to short the security and reap a profit.
The rule would ban any party who participates in the creation of a security from betting against the security. The ban would remain in effect for one year, and would also apply to the affiliates or subsidiaries of the participants.
As we reported last year, the hedge fund Magnetar often pushed for riskier assets [1] to be included in deals and placed bets against many of the same investments. Its deals helped create more than $40 billion in the securities known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, and pumped more hot air into the housing bubble [1]. When the housing market finally collapsed, nearly all of those securities became worthless, but Magnetar2019s bets against them reaped handsome profits.
Magnetar was involved in the Merrill Lynch and Mizuho deals that the SEC is now investigating, as well as the deal that cost JP Morgan Chase $154 million in a settlement [8] with the SEC. (Magnetar has always maintained that it did not have a strategy to bet against the housing market. The hedge fund has not been accused of wrongdoing as part of the SEC probes.)
Anticipating criticism, including from one of its own commissioners, that its new rules could stifle the free flow of capital [9], the SEC noted in a press release that the rule 201Cis not intended to prohibit traditional securitization practices.201D SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro said the rule 201Cwould provide exceptions for risk-mitigating hedging activities, as well as activity consistent with liquidity commitments and bona fide market-making.201D
The rule was created to fulfill the demands of the Dodd-Frank Reform Act [10], and will be finalized after a 90-day period for public comment.
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We need The CriminalBankster Act to strip them of ALL their assets, not just a “cost of doing business” fine.
wait…you can create a toxic product, sell it as non-toxic, then double down on it demise.. Why didnt I think of that? I must be in a dream world…Isnt this insider trading?…DAY 1333 and no criminalbanksters are in jail.
never mind, wrong droids… business as usual, move along….
@deadnote got one for you, i have been dealing with wells fargo fro 2 years now. last year during a modification review they moved my file ? so in jan 2011 i receive 2 letters from 2 different deptartments wanting different information. i send a fed ex package. when i was denied the hamp loan i was told that they never received my package. now that i complained to the occ all of a sudden it appeared but not everything was includes? so fastfoward to 9/21/2011 …yesterday. i sent all my info to marco rubios orlando office for assistance. i now received from wells fargo 3 letters from 3 different departments. i faxed the letters to his office. this is scary that they are doing this to people. i have already had my “file” sent to their lawyer in orlando” so they want to reapply for hamp while they have me in foreclosure? isnt that dual tracking. i am so confused. and they are in charge of money ? peopel should find a credit union because this is scary times
They dual track you because……they want ONLY to foreclosure…so they try to gather info on you with all the useless paperwork….someone in a large bank tells me in this large bank that they lost something…..is a methane stinking fraud to cover up the real facts….no foreclosure….no big payoff on the credit default swap! Also, it’s a cover-up to fool the investors…..who, like us, are entirely screwed!
to late, day late and a dollar short. umm fix what has already been done. come on appraisal frau, application fraud. come on
.No doubt part of the plot.to cover up their crimes…When they run out of plots to cover up what will the next trick be that they will pull out of their evil trick bag is anyones guess though there are clues……Will it be what Max Keiser said, they will gas us all in our own homes, a pandemic,evil injections, an alien invasion where they try to zap all of us with their big huge laser or will they call it solar flares……? They are truly evil, maniacal and diabolical……
This wasn’t their strategy but they named the fund Magnetar?