GE Bid-Rigging Probe: Company to pay $70.4 million

GE Muni Bid-Rigging Probe: Company To Pay $70.4 Million To Resolve Investigations

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - General Electric Co acknowledged that three former traders at a finance unit engaged in bid-rigging of municipal bonds and agreed to pay $70.4 million to resolve probes into the matter.

The agreement was with GE Funding Capital Market Services, a discontinued GE business unit, and concerned actions that occurred between 1999 and 2004. It is one of five that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Justice Department and other state agencies have reached with financial institutions charged with bid-rigging.

GE, the largest U.S. conglomerate, said on Friday that it exited the business in question in April 2010 and that the three employees involved no longer work for it.

The director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, Robert Khuzami, said, "Our in-depth investigations have uncovered pervasive corrupt practices in the municipal securities reinvestment market, and we are requiring financial firms one by one to step up and pay the price for their misconduct."

Authorities had previously reached settlements worth more than $650 million with four other companies: Wachovia Bank , J.P. Morgan Securities , UBS Financial Services and Banc of American Securities . Eighteen people including the former GE staffers, have been indicted or pleaded guilty the SEC said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/2 ... 67722.html

Weeeellllllll..... You can hear the surprise in *MY* voice... Would that be the same GE that paid ZERO in federal taxes? Why, yes... It is....

Wow... and wasn't GE one of the largest contributers to President Obama?

BARACK OBAMA (D)
Top Contributors
This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2008 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Because of contribution limits, organizations that bundle together many individual contributions are often among the top donors to presidential candidates. These contributions can come from the organization's members or employees (and their families). The organization may support one candidate, or hedge its bets by supporting multiple candidates. Groups with national networks of donors - like EMILY's List and Club for Growth - make for particularly big bundlers.

University of California $1,648,685
Goldman Sachs $1,013,091
Harvard University $878,164
Microsoft Corp $852,167
Google Inc $814,540
JPMorgan Chase & Co $808,799
Citigroup Inc $736,771
Time Warner $624,618
Sidley Austin LLP $600,298
Stanford University $595,716
National Amusements Inc $563,798
WilmerHale LLP $550,668
Columbia University $547,852
Skadden, Arps et al $543,539
UBS AG $532,674
IBM Corp $532,372
General Electric $529,855
US Government $513,308
Morgan Stanley $512,232
Latham & Watkins $503,295

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contr ... =N00009638

Yea... I thought so.

Wasn't GE chairman Jeff Immelt given a nice plush job by Obama? Sounds like another FoO (Friend of Obama) taking advantage of the system.

Grady wrote: Wasn't GE chairman Jeff Immelt given a nice plush job by Obama? Sounds like another FoO (Friend of Obama) taking advantage of the system.

At a half a million campaign contribution, GE is certainly not an enemy. The whole Political Class is corrupt, alone with their criminal business friends.

Was that anything like the "Friend of Bush" who sold uninhabitable trailers with toxic amounts of formaldehyde the government? And the no-bid Halliburton contracts that wasted billions and in some cases KILLED U.S. service personnel with shoddy electrical work in the quarters in Iraq?...

You mean like THOSE kinds of "friends"?

Thanks for the predictable, and irrelevant deflection from the crimes of G.E.

Seems to me it is just one more argument for returning the federal government to the enumerated powers it was supposed to have. What do you say LJ, let's get rid of the seized power to promote the individual welfare of the citizens of the States at the federal level and get back to having a federal government instead of a central one whose purpose is to oversee the foreign and federal relations of the States which belong to the union.

Unless, that is, you are comfortable with the absolute corruption that is as inseparable from absolute power as your distaste for the Republican party is from your character; in which case I fail to understand why you would be in any way averse to the corruption which accompanies this government as Hamilton was to the corruption in the British one that he favored establishing here.

We don't need to necessarily get rid of those individual welfare programs mind you, we simply need to allow the States to exercise their sovereign authority over such matters and remove that sized power from the many that the general government in Washington fancies itself in possession of.

PS, I admire your persistence in trying to get a rational response, but I am not holding my breath.

PrintSmith wrote: Seems to me it is just one more argument for returning the federal government to the enumerated powers it was supposed to have. What do you say LJ, let's get rid of the seized power to promote the individual welfare of the citizens of the States at the federal level and get back to having a federal government instead of a central one whose purpose is to oversee the foreign and federal relations of the States which belong to the union.

Unless, that is, you are comfortable with the absolute corruption that is as inseparable from absolute power as your distaste for the Republican party is from your character; in which case I fail to understand why you would be in any way averse to the corruption which accompanies this government as Hamilton was to the corruption in the British one that he favored establishing here.

We don't need to necessarily get rid of those individual welfare programs mind you, we simply need to allow the States to exercise their sovereign authority over such matters and remove that sized power from the many that the general government in Washington fancies itself in possession of.

PrintSmith wrote: Seems to me it is just one more argument for returning the federal government to the enumerated powers it was supposed to have. What do you say LJ, let's get rid of the seized power to promote the individual welfare of the citizens of the States at the federal level and get back to having a federal government instead of a central one whose purpose is to oversee the foreign and federal relations of the States which belong to the union.

Unless, that is, you are comfortable with the absolute corruption that is as inseparable from absolute power as your distaste for the Republican party is from your character; in which case I fail to understand why you would be in any way averse to the corruption which accompanies this government as Hamilton was to the corruption in the British one that he favored establishing here.

We don't need to necessarily get rid of those individual welfare programs mind you, we simply need to allow the States to exercise their sovereign authority over such matters and remove that sized power from the many that the general government in Washington fancies itself in possession of.

PS, I know how much you would like to return to an 18th-century republic, with blacks counted as 3/5 of a human, and the only people allowed to vote are rich, white, Male, land-owners, and only Ten Amendments. We've progressed... Get over it.

The only corruption I'm seeing lately is the absolute corruption of the money in the system buying our government. So, take your "sovereign citizen" crap and shove it. You think if you generate hundreds of lines of regurgitated 18th century, Sovereign Citizen buzz-phrases, bullsh*t and claptrap from your silly websites it gives you some sort of creedence... I'm really not interested in your Constitution Party, LawAndLiberty, ReasonOfFreedom, PoliticsOfLiberty, TeaPartyPatriot excursions into what you THINK the Constitution says, or should have said.

You're as big a liar as Viking...You just use longer sentences and the same silly phrases over and over.

Obama and the dems sucked GE's butt for the $$$. Political whores.

LadyJazzer wrote: You just use longer sentences and the same silly phrases over and over.

rofllol Now that's funny.