The Joke of the Day: Donald Trump Actually Said ‘No One Should Be Judged By Their Race Or Their Color’

It must have been the Trumpster’s evil twin brother who has been ranting racism remarks about Judge Gonzalo Curiel….lol! Yes, really the Donald said this…

Crooks and Liars:

Donald Trump spoke today at Ralph Reed’s cash cow, the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference, and boy, was it a doozy.

After a few opening remarks the speech turned into reading a list of Evangelical buzzwords off a teleprompter. This is the new improved “on message” Donald Trump.

You can tell when he starts to improvise because he breaks away and says “so important, so important,” as he juts his chin outward to the crowd.

After telling the audience that the only really happy rich people are the ones that have that “great religion feel and marriage,” suddenly, as if the teleprompter had a mind of its own, he said this:

“Freedom of any kind means no one should be judged by their race or their color and the color of their skin — should not be judged that way. And right now we have a very divided nation. If I win, we’re going to bring our nation together.”

NO, REALLY. He actually mouthed those words. After months and months of impugning the religious freedom of Muslim refugees trying to find a safe haven in America and bad mouthing undocumented workers from Mexico at every turn, he had the audacity to say those words.

And who is the Donald’s cash cow Ralph Reed?: Took laundered money in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

 

WALL STREET WHISTLE-BLOWER GETS $17 MILLION FOR SPILLING THE BEANS

Wall Street bonuses aren’t what they used to be, bankers are going to need to get creative if they want to buy a whole new casual wardrobe and afford a trip to St. Barth’s at Christmastime. There is, of course, one easy, legal way to make big money, which doesn’t require much more than a little bit of soul-selling and loosening of lips.

Just ask the former company employee who was just awarded $17 million for coming to the Securities and Exchange Commission with information that helped the agency further an investigation. This was the second-biggest award in history, behind the $30 million paydayshelled out in 2014 to an individual who brought the S.E.C. information about an ongoing fraud.

Whistle-blowers are eligible for an award, ranging from 10 to 30 percent of the money collection when sanctions exceed $1 million, if they voluntary give regulators dirt that leads to a successful enforcement of action.

In this case, the S.E.C. said in a statement that the individual provided information and assistance that “enabled our enforcement staff to conserve time and resources and gather strong evidence supporting our case.”

A lawyer for the whistle-blower told Bloomberg that his client was the only person who received an award in this case, which involved a “major player in the financial-services industry.” The S.E.C. did not elaborate on who this individual was, and it is required to keep the identity of the whistle-blower anonymous.

Read on.

Germany Waves ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ to Costly Wall Street Tax Scheme

The German Parliament voted Thursday to end a trading strategy that helps foreign investors, many of them Americans,avoid an estimated $1 billion or more a year in taxes on dividends paid by German companies.

The trades were exposed in a joint ProPublica investigation last month with The Washington Post and German news outlets Handelsblatt and Bayerischer Rundfunk. The report prompted widespread outrage among German lawmakers, some of whom called the maneuver “criminal.”

This week’s vote effectively shuts down the transactions in Germany, which had been the biggest market for such trades. They live on in more than 20 other countries across Europe and other nations where authorities attempt to collect taxes on dividends.

While German lawmakers closed the spigot on future tax losses, it remains unclear if tax officials there will be able to recoup billions of lost revenues from previous years.

Prior to Thursday’s vote, experts in Germany were divided over whether the transactions — engineered by large multinational banks to benefit institutional investors at the expense of German taxpayers — were illegal under existing law.

The new legislation does not ban the transactions but it makes them impossible to execute the way they’ve been traditionally done — as a riskless short-term transaction to avoid taxes.

Read on.

Monarch Mortgage ex-CEO arrested on charge of fraud

Concealed $1 million in assets

The Monarch Mortgage former president and CEO was indicted on charges of concealing over $1 million in assets several years ago when he declared bankruptcy, according to an article by Scott Daugherty and Cindy Clayton for The Virginian Pilot.

After declaring bankruptcy in 2011 and 2012, Edward Yoder was arrested Thursday, then released on a $5,000 bond, according to the article. June 22 he will return to the U.S. District Court to be arraigned on one count of bankruptcy fraud and two counts of each concealment of assets, false oaths and false declarations.

From the article:

The indictment alleges Yoder sold 132,950 shares of Sirius stock in October 2012 between the two filings. It also claims he wired the proceeds of that sale –$339,660.19 – to an acquaintance, as well as another $25,000 in a separate transaction.

Court documents said Yoder did not disclose the sale of the stock and wire transfers in his second petition. He also didn’t disclose that the woman, Susan Spearman, returned to him at least $310,000 by Jan. 24, 2014.

The indictment alleged Yoder also concealed more than $55,000 in federal and state tax refunds and more than $664,000 in property.

Read on.

Fidelity snubs Jamie Dimon’s ‘code of best practice’ group

lol!

Fidelity has walked out of a Jamie Dimon-led effort to create a code of best practice for US boardrooms, underscoring the divisions among asset managers over corporate governance.

Mr Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, has led a months-long series of discussions to draw up a blueprint for how boards should conduct themselves and engage with shareholders.

The effort, revealed by the Financial Times in February, involves the leaders of the largest asset management companies and investors such as Warren Buffett. More recently it has expanded to include several big US companies, including General Electric, General Motors and Verizon.

Read on.

No Privilege for BoA-Countrywide Merger Docs

(CN) — An insurer can compel Bank of America to release 400 pages of documents from its merger with Countrywide Financial that may shed light on whether it considered its liability for alleged pre-merger fraud, New York’s high court ruled.
Ambac Assurance Corporation sued Countrywide Home Loans, a subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corp., when mortgage-backed loans Countrywide issued were exposed as worthless in the 2008 financial crisis.
Ambec claimed that Countrywide fraudulently misrepresented the quality of the loans, and deceptively induced it to guarantee them.
It named Bank of America as a defendant when it merged with Countrywide in 2008, seeking to hold it liable for the alleged fraud as Countrywide’s successor-in-interest.
As a result of the merger, Countrywide sold almost all of its assets to Bank of America, and became a wholly-owned subsidiary called Red Oak Merger Corporation.
In its discovery responses, Bank of America withheld approximately 400 communications that took place between Bank of American and Countrywide in the months before the merger’s close, claiming they are protected by attorney-client privilege.

Read on.

Here is the court document. Click here.