David C. Farmer, Trustee vs. Harmon

David C. Farmer, Successor-Trustee vs. Harmon

(Formerly Woo vs. Harmon & Nicholson vs. Harmon)

U.S. District Court For the District of Hawaii

—

DEFENDANT’S WITNESS

PHIL GRAMM

Phil Gramm, a former Texas senator, is a lobbyist and former co-chair for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign. His wife Wendy Gramm is from Hawaii and is a graduate of Punahou School.

~ ~ ~

Feb. 12, 2009

Phil Gramm

As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995 through 2000, Gramm was Washington's most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation. He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html

www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1877351,00.html

~ ~ ~

The Legacies of Phil and Wendy Gramm

by Karen Hedwig Backman

Mon Sep 15, 2008

The costly collapse of Enron. Not to mention WorldCom, Global Crossing, etc.

The costly collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The costly collapse of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, possibly Washington Mutual, etc.

The 300 point plunge on this morning's Wall Street stocks.

Plummeting bank stocks in Europe.

All, it would seem, the bastard children of Professors Phil and Wendy Gramm who have been so wonderfully kind to the U.S. economy. And to working-class Americans who are going to pay the bills to clean up the Phil and Wendy messes.

Karen Hedwig Backman's diary

Did it all begin with a little tryst between the corporation Enron and the professorial wife of then Senator Phil Gramm of Texas?

In an apparent response to a 1992 plea from Enron, Dr. Wendy Gramm, then chair of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, moved to exempt the company's energy-swap operation from government oversight. By then, the Houston-based Enron was a major contributor to Senator Gramm's campaign.

A few days after she got the ball rolling on the exemption, Wendy Gramm resigned from the commission. Enron soon appointed her to its board of directors, where she served on the audit committee, which oversees the inner financial workings of the corporation. For this, the company paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in stocks and dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary, and $176,000 in attendance fees, according to a report by Public Citizen, a group that has relentlessly tracked Enron, which in turn has called the report unfair.

Meanwhile Enron had become Phil Gramm's largest corporate contributor—and according to Public Citizen, the largest across-the board donor in its industry. Between 1989 and 2001, the company tossed Gramm just under $100,000.

http://www.villagevoice.com/...

The frosting on the cake for corporate fraud and nonsense was the crowning glory of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, (November 12, 1999), courtesy of Republican Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa and Republican Congressman Tom Bliley of Virginia, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

Phil Gramm, McCain's top economic adviser, sponsored a bill that made the Glass-Steagall act much less than it was, by making it possible for large brokerage firms to act like banks, without the Glass-Stiegel regulations, leading to the chaos we have today.

http://www.mydd.com/...

A brief history of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933:

In 1933, a few years following the stock market crash, Congress passes the Glass-Steagall Act, in hopes that regulating banks will help prevent market instability, particularly amongst Wall Street banks. The purpose of the act is to separate commercial banks that focus on consumers from investment banks, which deal with speculative trading and mergers.

The Glass-Steagall Act provided the proper oversight and entity separation that would prohibit banks and other financial companies from merging into giant trusts (conflict of interests) -- giant trusts or corporations being more powerful, naturally, and having the seemingly limitless capital to lobby their corporate interests, however, with a very myopic scope (particularly when it comes to factoring in potential losses -- most banks, as seen in contemporary times, chose not to anticipate losses in the mortgage market; they presumed home prices would continue to appreciate).

In 1999, former Senator Phil Gramm ... set out to completely gut the Glass-Steagall Act, and did so successfully, replacing most of its components with the new Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act: allowing commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers to merge (which would have violated antitrust laws under Glass-Steagall). Sen. Gramm ... had received over $4.6 million from the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate donations) over the previous decade, and once the Act passed, an influx of "megamergers" took place among banks and insurance and securities companies, as if they had been eagerly awaiting the passage of Gramm's Act. Everything in between Glass-Steagall and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (i.e. Savings and Loan crisis/bust) was, in large part, the incubation period for what would take place over the nine years that would follow the passage of Gramm's Act: an experiment in deregulation.

Shortly after George W. Bush was elected president, Congress and President Clinton were trying to pass a $384 billion omnibus spending bill, and while the debates swirled around the passage of this bill, Senator Phil Gramm clandestinely slipped a 262-page amendment into the omnibus appropriations bill titled: Commodity Futures Modernization Act. It is likely that few senators read this bill, if any. The essence of the act was the deregulation of derivatives trading (financial instruments whose value changes in response to the changes in underlying variables; the main use of derivatives is to reduce risk for one party).

The legislation contained a provision -- lobbied for by Enron, a major campaign contributor to Gramm -- that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight. Basically, it gave way to the Enron debacle and ushered in the new era of unregulated securities. Interestingly enough, Gramm's wife, Wendy, had been part of the Enron board, and her salary and stock income brought in between $900,000 and $1.8 million to the Gramm household, prior to the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/15/114017/631/577/599447

~ ~ ~

Reference:

The Catbird Seat - Part II: The Nests: Commodities Futures Trading Commission

~ ~ ~

June 24, 2008

DOJ Missed Two Mortgage Crisis Culprits:
Phil and Wendy Gramm

By Paul Peete

The Department Of Justice arrested the two principle Bear Stearns investment executives and about 300 others in the Real Estate Foreclosure fiasco recently. While this makes the Justice Department appear to be addressing the problem, it is merely a dog and pony show designed to distract public attention and avoid going after the real culprits of the disaster.

Phil and Wendy Gramm, two central conservative movement players, are as much to blame for creating the conditions that removed safeguards and federal oversight from energy and credit banking instruments as those who took advantage of their deregulatory loopholes.

David Corn in Mother Jones points out Gramm's maneuvering in his article "Foreclosure Phil",

"Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown."

Phil himself profited from the moves becoming a highly paid shill for UBS. It is poetic justice that UBS took a bath on its exposure to the unregulated financial instruments called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). Lisa Lerrer in Politico pointed out Gramm's effect on banking regulations as a Senator and as a lobbyist since his Senate retirement.

"The general co-chairman of John McCain's presidential campaign, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), led the charge in 1999 to repeal a Depression-era banking regulation law that Democrat Barack Obama claimed on Thursday contributed significantly to today's economic turmoil."

"Gramm's role in the swift and dramatic recent restructuring of the nation's investment houses and practices didn't stop there. A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS's new investment banking arm."

Wendy Gramm, Phil's wife, as chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Presidents Regan and George H.W. Bush pushed deregulation of financial packaging for energy traders. This deregulation allowed Enron to set up many of the schemes it used to defraud California energy consumers and after its collapse, its employees and investors.

The two most influential advisors to McCain at present are Phil Gramm and Charlie Black. From the day Gramm arrived at the nadir of McCain's presidential bid and righted his financial ship, using federal matching funds as loan collateral then rejecting those funds, McCain has seemed to morph into a typical right wing demagogue. That type of financial manipulation has a Gramm-like slickness to it, and exploiting the Federal Election Commission vacancy, which prevented ruling against the finance abuse, smacks of Charlie Black savvy.

On an issue vital to our very survival, the economy, Senator McCain defers to Phil Gramm. CNN in February stated.

"If McCain follows Gramm's counsel, and most of his current positions are vintage Gramm indeed, his policies as president would represent not just a sharp departure from the Bush years, but an assault on government growth that Republicans have boasted about, but failed to achieve, for decades."

McCain uses the same rhetoric the Republicans have always employed, diminution of big government while they set up and control the private firms the federal government subcontracts to. While CNN attempts to give McCain cover from Bush's Economic strategy, or lack of one, they expose the linkage to Gramm.

Gramm in an OpEd piece from last year, forwards McCain's military expertise as the critical factor qualifying McCain for election, going so far as to state,

"He might not be the right president for all times, but he is the right president for these times."

I believe that instead of a future as Treasury Secretary Phil Gramm should get a long vacation in the Federal Penitentiary, with him and Wendy occupying adjoining cells.

~ ~ ~

May 27, 2008

John McCain’s and Phil Gramms’ Own Personal Mortgage Crisis, by James Myers

McCain housing policy shaped by lobbyist

Swiss bank paid McCain co-chair to push
agenda on U.S. mortgage crisis

By Jonathan Larsen, producer, with Keith Olbermann

MSNBC

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's national campaign general co-chair was being paid by a Swiss bank to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis at the same time he was advising McCain about his economic policy, federal records show.

"Countdown with Keith Olbermann" reported Tuesday night that lobbying disclosure forms, filed by the giant Swiss bank UBS, list McCain's campaign co-chair, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, as a lobbyist dealing specifically with legislation regarding the mortgage crisis as recently as Dec. 31, 2007.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/feb/19/ubs-taxavoidance

Gramm joined the bank in 2002 and had registered as a lobbyist by 2004. UBS filed paperwork deregistering Gramm on April 18 of this year. Gramm continues to serve as a UBS vice chairman.

News of Gramm's involvement as a paid advocate for the banking industry, simultaneous with his unpaid work on McCain's economic policies, comes as McCain's campaign continues to reel from the purge of four other lobbyists. Two weeks ago, McCain banned lobbyists from advising him on the same subjects covered by their lobbying work.

As early as October, 2006, www.RealClearPolitics.com reported that Gramm was advising McCain on economic issues. Politico.com quoted McCain advisors saying that Gramm had input on McCain's March 26 policy speech about the mortgage crisis. McCain himself has often cited Gramm's influence as a way to establish his bona fides with economic conservatives.

When Gramm chaired the Senate Banking Committee, he wrote and passed deregulatory legislation in more than one industry, establishing himself as a pre-eminent foe of government regulation. McCain's March 26 speech recommended further deregulation of the banking industry as his response to the mortgage crisis.

McCain and Gramm have been friends for more than a decade. McCain chaired Gramm's 1996 presidential run and Gramm says the two men speak every day. McCain reportedly has hinted Gramm might serve as his Treasury secretary.

Last summer, Gramm was widely credited with saving McCain's presidential campaign.

But even before lobbying emerged as an issue, some of his own advisors told the Washington Post last month that they questioned how Gramm's legislative record might affect McCain's campaign.

After Gramm passed a law easing regulation of energy-commodity trading, California experienced a sharp run-up in energy costs. The energy-trading company Enron was blamed and soon collapsed.

In 1999, Gramm successfully undid the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, removing the decades-old wall between commercial banking, which was heavily regulated, and investment banking, which was not. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act did not extend significant new regulation to investment banking.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said that Gramm is "not benefitting from John McCain's plan." He also said that McCain preferred to focus on homeowners "truly in need" and opposed bailouts for affected banks, an aspect of the crisis that was not addressed in "Countdown"'s report.

Some economists fault Gramm's deregulatory successes, as well as lax enforcement of remaining oversight powers, not just for the subprime mortgage crisis, but for its spread to other sectors of finance. Even Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has expressed interest in toughening regulations.

Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute told the Washington Post, "McCain is counting on people having very short memories and not connecting some pretty obvious dots here."

The final UBS form listing Gramm's work as a lobbyist says he was lobbying the Senate in the second half of 2007 regarding the Helping Families Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act. The bill would have let bankruptcy judges rewrite mortgage terms for Americans facing foreclosure so they could repay their loans and keep their homes.

The banking industry opposed this measure. The bill failed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24844889/

http://www.squidoo.com/politicalblog5

~ ~ ~

February 18, 2009

UBS to pay $780M, open secret Swiss bank records

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Banking giant UBS has agreed to pay $780 million and turn over once-secret Swiss banking records to settle allegations it conspired to defraud the U.S. government of taxes owed by big clients.

As part of the deal struck in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., UBS has made the unprecedented step of agreeing to immediately turn over to the U.S. government account information for U.S. customers of the bank's cross-border business.

In doing so, federal authorities have struck a big crack in Switzerland's vaunted bank secrecy laws.

UBS will pay $780 million in fines, penalties, interest and restitution for conspiring to create sham accounts to hide the assets of U.S. clients from the U.S. government.

"We accept full responsibility for these improper activities," Peter Kurer, chairman of Swiss-based UBS AG, said in a statement. He added that the bank was determined to abide by the terms of the deal with U.S. criminal and securities officials.

"Client confidentiality, to which UBS remains committed, was never designed to protect fraudulent acts or the identity of those clients, who, with the active assistance of bank personnel, misused the confidentiality protections," he said Wednesday.

According to U.S. officials, when an acquisition in 2000 of a U.S. company brought UBS a host of new, American clients, the bank set about to evade new reporting requirements for those clients. To do so, UBS executives helped U.S. taxpayers open new accounts in the names of sham entities.

Prosecutors contend that UBS executives used encrypted software and other counter-surveillance techniques to prevent anyone from detecting that they were actively marketing such Swiss bank secrecy — and tax evasion — to American taxpayers.

The clients, in turn, filed false tax returns that omitted the income they earned in their Swiss accounts, according to the court papers.

Federal officials said they had pulled aside a veil of secrecy that hid a corrupt international banking practice.

"This was not a mere compliance oversight, but rather a knowing crime motivated by greed and disrespect for the law," said Alexander Acosta, U.S. attorney for southern Florida.

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman warned U.S. taxpayers hiding money overseas that it was time to come clean with Uncle Sam.

"People who have hidden unreported income offshore need to get right with their government. They should come forward and take advantage of our voluntary disclosure process," Shulman said.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., has estimated that abusive tax shelters and hidden offshore accounts cost the U.S. government nearly $100 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

Prosecutors are still hunting for UBS executive Raoul Weil, who was indicted in November 2008 on charges he conspired to defraud the government for overseeing the bank's cross-border business.

In June 2008 former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld pleaded guilty to a similar charge.

If UBS fails to turn over the clients' information, or stops cooperating with authorities, federal prosecutors could refile charges against the bank.

Under the deal, UBS also will completely stop engaging in the type of cross-border banking business that got them into trouble.

On the Net: UBS AG: http://www.ubs.com

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090218/ap_on_bi_ge/ubs_secrets

* * * * *

ELIZABETH DOLE COMMITTEE

http://www.nndb.com/org/169/000168662/

* * * * *Letters - Topix

Regarding racial requirements for admission to Kamehameha, in Pauahi's will: The 3-judge panel of ..... You can thank Phil Gramm for that. You remember him? ...
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The name of one company in particular might have caught Wendy Gramm's attention: .... Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate was set up 115 years ago to educate ...
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At the time, Xerox was a Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate vendor. ..... Leach of the U.S. House Banking Committee and Chairman Phil Gramm of the U.S. Senate ...
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The second case is the admissions lawsuit against Kamehameha Schools. Under American law, Princess Bernice ... Phil Gramm to guide him in these matters. ...
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His economic adviser, Phil Gramm (husband of Waialua's Dr. Wendy Lee Gramm), recently said ... Kamehameha Schools should decide how to end lawsuits for good ...
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Finally, Wendy Gramm (wife of Senator Phil Gramm) joined Enron's Board of ...... have followed the scandals of Hawaii's Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate, ...
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One of the nine new Case Middle School buildings on the Punahou Campus. ..... William Philip Phil Gramm (born July 8, 1942, in Fort Benning, Georgia) served ...
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Aug 20, 2008 ... Phil Gramm touched off a firestorm when he accused Americans of being in a .... The recent Kamehameha Schools admissions controversy and ...
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Oct 24, 2007 ... Punahou School Alumni is a list of notable graduates, students who attended, ..... spouse of Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm; '62 Terrence O'Donnell (Air Force ..... Chairman of Board of Trustees, Kamehameha Schools ...
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9. Punahou School alumni - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

... spouse of Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm; '62 Terrence O'Donnell (Air ..... Polynesian diaspora, Chairman of Board of Trustees, Kamehameha Schools ..... The main reference for this page is the Punahou School Alumni Directory ...
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