Lendle

From Janet Tavakoli: This is a compilation of my articles and (non-client) reports from September 2008 to February 2012. The target audience for The New Robber Barons has a background in finance and some awareness of the events and PR spin in the years following the financial crisis. Events unfold in real time and are organized by topic. Readers can see my original thought process and analysis in the face of misinformation foisted on the public. My conclusions were eventually confirmed by Congressional investigations.

WITH TRILLIONS ON THE TABLE—NOBODY PLAYS FAIR, AND EVERYONE PLAYS FOR KEEPS.

The New Robber Barons continues financial expert Janet Tavakoli’s on-going chronicle of the global financial crisis captured in her articles from the September 2008 meltdown through February 2012. Picking up where her previous book, Dear Mr. Buffett: What an Investor Learns 1,269 Miles from Wall Street, ended, she exposes the criminogenic environment that enabled international oligarchs to solidify power.

In January 2009, Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, told Tom Brokaw: “the idea that people that move money around are some favored class…strikes me as getting pretty far away from where we should be.” Two years later he publicly excused apparent insider trading by one of his successor candidates, David Sokol. He later retreated from this stance at his annual shareholder meeting in the wake of public criticism.

Berkshire Hathaway officer Charlie Munger admonished law students that Americans shouldn’t be “bitching about a little bailout.”

Shortly before Congress confronted him with Goldman Sachs’s profiteering during the financial crisis, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein quipped he was doing “God’s work.”

CEO Jamie Dimon told shareholders that he didn’t think JPMorgan made a mistake when it came to potential foreclosure fraud: “maybe we’ll have to pay penalties eventually to some of the attorneys general but we really think we should just continue.” Meanwhile the bank scoured 115,000 mortgage affidavits and reserved $1.3 billion for legal costs.

After MF Global’s October 31, 2011, bankruptcy a U.S. Congressman told former CEO Jon Corzine: “You’ve got thousands of hard working people around this country that feel cheated.”

Tavakoli serves up example after stunning international example of no-strings-attached socialization of losses and privatization of gains. In the words of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur: “I believe most of us would call that theft.”


Praise for Janet Tavakoli

“Tavakoli makes for an attractive pundit—she knows her stuff, has strong
opinions, and turns a colorful quote.”
Financial Times
“Janet Tavakoli warned that the biggest credit bubble in world history
was coming well in advance.”
Jim Rogers, author of A Bull in China, Hot Commodities, Adventure Capitalist,
and Investment Biker
” [Tavakoli has] been railing against emperors wearing no clothes in the
credit derivatives markets forever. If only people had listened.”
Andrew Tobias, author of The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need
“[Janet Tavakoli] writes in a clear, sprightly way.”
ADAM SMITH (George J. W. Goodman), author of The Money Game and Supermoney
“[Janet Tavakoli is] an intelligent analyst whose command of the
arcane world of securitization mixed with a brutally honest analytical
framework makes it a pleasure to hear and read her work.”
Asia Times Online