President
Obama this week signed the badly misnamed JOBS Act, a bill pushed by
House Republicans that loosens important investor protections. Before
the bill became law, federal regulators and business advocates warned
that it would simply be an invitation to financial fraud. “This would be
better known as the bucket-shop and penny-stock fraud reauthorization act of 2012,” said former Securities and Exchange Commission official Lynn Turner.But if her word isn’t enough, perhaps we should listen to a convicted financial fraudster, who told Bloomberg News’ Susan Antilla that guys like him should love the JOBS Act:
[Mark] Morze, 61, hung his hat for 4 1/2 years at federal prisons in Lompoc and Boron, California, after pleading guilty to two counts of fraud for cooking the books at the infamous carpet-cleaning company ZZZZ Best (ZBSTQ) in the 1980s.Antilla called the JOBS Act a “slapdash attempt at securities-law deregulation, plain and simple.” An analysis done for the Wall Street Journal shows that 104 companies that have had issues with their anti-fraud procedures since 2004 would have been exempt from audit under the JOBS Act.
He says he’s baffled that President Barack Obama plans to sign a law today that amounts to an open invitation for fraud. “I wish legislators would consult with people like me before they write something like this,” he says, sounding dead serious about the offer. “I could tell them, ‘I know what your intent was with this wording, but we can get around it so easily, it cracks me up.”’
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http://www.maskofzion.com/2010/10/brightsource-obamas-latest-gift-to.html
Friday, October 8, 2010
BrightSource: Obama’s Latest Gift To Israel
Just when it seemed that war criminal Barack Obama had reached the zenith of subservience to the Zionist entity, he takes his sycophancy to the next level. Obama has already signed a deal with Israel that granted it $30 billion in military aid alone over the next decade (1), and he has proudly declared that his administration has given more security assistance to the Zionist entity than any other administration in history (2). He has restored Israel’s ‘Qualitative Military Edge,’ which is an Orwellian phrase that translates to the US providing Israel with weapons, munitions, vehicles and other technologies to uphold the genocidal occupation of Palestine (3). He has gladly granted Israel $205 million for its Iron Dome missile defense system, which coincidentally, doesn’t work (4). He supports the internationally condemned, criminal, and inhumane blockade of Gaza (5).
Despite the courageous efforts of Mordechai Vanunu that exposed Israel’s secret nuclear program to the world (6), Obama refuses to acknowledge Zionist nukes and has promised to maintain ambiguity about the illegal nature of the program, as well as defend Israel’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (7). He has increased American-Israeli military cooperation through joint training exercises, most notably Operation Juniper Cobra, which was designed to provoke Iran (8). All of Obama’s high-ranking intelligence officials have traveled to the usurping Zionist regime to discuss US-Israeli collaborative plans for the future of the Middle East (9). Obama has prepared to provide the Zionist air force with the F-35, the latest Lockheed Martin fighter jet equipped with stealth technology; and has even gone a step further to appease his close friends in Tel Aviv by offering $4 billion to Israeli defense contractors to supply parts for the F-35 (10).
Made In Israel
But these impassioned displays of solidarity with the barbaric Israeli entity weren’t enough. In his most recent public address, Obama decided to present Israel with yet another gift though he didn’t admit it openly. His speech was centered around ‘clean energy’ policies and their grave importance to the new global economy. He trashed India, the occupier of Kashmir, as well as China, and boasted that the world’s largest solar energy plant was located in the US, in the state of California. The plant was operated by a firm named BrightSource (11). Obama authorized the Department of Energy to issue a loan to BrightSource worth $1.37 billion (12). Despite Obama’s nationalistic rhetoric to galvanize environmentalists and his Democratic base, the plant wasn’t Californian. It wasn’t even American. BrightSource is a company founded by a Zionist, operated by Israelis, and based out of occupied lands in Jerusalem and Al Naqab (13).
BrightSource’s founder and chairman emeritus is Arnold J. Goldman, a staunch Zionist who was honored with the ‘Builder of Jerusalem’ award (14) by Aish HaTorah, a radical Zionist organization that operates rabbinical schools for Israeli occupation forces, spreads pro-Israel propaganda through its Hasbara Fellowship programs, and supports the building of illegal Zionist settlements (15). Goldman describes himself as a ‘serious’ Kabbalist (16), a student of ‘Jewish’ mysticism that is deeply rooted in racism and xenophobia (17), and he also is one of the founding members of the International Board of Governors of the Jerusalem College of Technology, which produces advisors for the Israeli Defense Ministry, trains vehicle and aircraft mechanics for IOF, and prepares students to enter the Israeli Communications Corps and Intelligence Corps (18).
The chief operating officer of BrightSource is Israel Kroizer, who also heads Israel Cleantech Ventures, a company that according to its website, receives research and development support from Israeli governmental entities. BrightSource’s vice presidents, Yoel Gilon, Jose Barak, Gabriel Kaufman, and Shmuel Huss all worked for Arnold Goldman at his previous company Luz International Ltd., which had constructed the world’s largest Solar Electric Generating Systems with the full backing of the Tel Aviv regime in occupied Al Naqab (19).
An Initiative Covered In Oil and Blood
Obama has touted BrightSource as a part of his clean energy initiative, but there is nothing clean or environmentally safe about the Zionist firm, especially its investors. BrightSource has raised $160 million in operating capital through several energy companies, including BP and Chevron (20). BP, as it is widely known, is responsible for the gulf oil disaster, which has been fully covered up by Obama’s administration (21). Obama has assigned Zionist asset Kenneth Feinberg to ensure minimal liability for BP and lobby aggressively for victims of the oil spill to take out-of-court settlements, eliminating government culpability (22). In a recent study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity, BP has been discovered to have produced 97% of the refinery violations in the US (23). Chevron is responsible for an even more devastating disaster in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the corporate entity has dumped 37 million gallons of crude oil and wastewater between 1964 and 1990 (24). Chevron is also complicit in the atrocities being committed in Nigeria and has directly contributed to the ungodly oil spill that has ravaged the African nation for a disgraceful 50 years (25).
BrightSource will be building its 370-megawatt power plant in California’s Mojave Desert, and it has already faced objections and protests from 8 environmental groups and several Native American tribes, due to the threat it poses to the endangered desert tortoise and many rare native plants (26). Representatives from the Colorado River Indian Tribe and the Mojave Indian Tribe have said that BrightSource threatens their tribal heritage, their homes, their religious freedom as the plant will be built directly on top of their places of worship, and the habitat of several federally-protected (and tribally-sacred) animals including bighorn sheep, mountain lions, snakes and hawks (27).
In 2008, BrightSource launched the Negev Solar Development Center at the Rotem Industrial Park, near the Zionist entity’s illegal nuclear facility in Dimona (28). It is Dimona, where Israeli nuclear scientists and intelligence officials dump nuclear waste which has created an atmosphere of cancer and other radiation-related diseases in the southern regions of occupied Al Khalil and Al Naqab. While the Tel Aviv regime approved the distribution of iodine tablets to ‘protect’ people living near the Dimona reactor, it has never admitted to its illegal disposal of nuclear waste and materials. Palestinian physicians like Mahmoud Sa’ada, the co-founder of Palestinian Medical Relief, have determined that there is no plausible cause for the growing cancers and mutations in Al Naqab and Al Khalil except Israeli radioactivity (29).
Israel has engaged in a malicious campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian Bedouins of Al Naqab since Al Nakbah of 1948, and has stepped up its racist, destructive policies considerably since the summer of this year, destroying one village, Al Araqib, four times in less than a month (30). To offset the increased coverage on international solidarity activism efforts to end the razing of homes in Al Naqab, and to cover up its horrific crimes of ethnic cleansing, the Israeli government approved a deal between Arava Power Company, owned by Yosef Abramowitz, and collaborationist Bedouins of the Tarabin and Abu Karinath clans (31).
Abramowitz has served on the board of the ultra-Zionist World Jewish Congress (32), and lives on the Kibbutz Ketura, in occupied Umm Rashrash (Eilat), home to scores of illegal Zionist settlers turned environmental entrepreneurs (33). Arava and BrightSource work together very closely in Al Naqab to accommodate the Zionist entity’s solar energy needs (34). Obama’s generous administration wasn’t happy with providing just one Zionist energy company with a loan, so it has provided Arava with a massive loan as well, worth $300 million (35). It is important to note that the deal between Zionist corporation Arava and the collaborationist Bedouins hasn’t pulled the wool over anyone’s eyes; the ethnic cleansing in Al Naqab desert continues. The Zionist entity destroyed rebuilt homes in Al Araqib for a fifth time just two weeks ago (36), and Israeli bulldozers demolished four homes belonging to Palestinian Bedouin families in Khashim Zema on Monday, October 4th (37). The alliance between Obama, Tel Aviv, BrightSource, and Arava is a genocidal existential threat to indigenous peoples from occupied Palestine to California.
Conclusion
With bloodstained operating capital money and a billion dollar Obama loan fresh in hand, BrightSource is now moving forward with an IPO in 2011. The Zionist firm has hired none other than Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, two of the criminal banking institutions bailed out by Obama’s administration, to handle the initial public offering. Goldman Sachs was the largest contributor to Obama’s presidential campaign (38).
Distinguished scholar, author, and activist Ali Abunimah, who first broke the story about BrightSource (39), commented in his follow-up piece regarding the BrightSource scandal that "Obama did not say anything about a BrightSource IPO, but nevertheless his boosterism about the company in a presidential address clearly has market implications. Obama's intervention on behalf of BrightSource seems particularly odd and inappropriate. He touted it as an example of creating American jobs with American technological ingenuity, and specifically warned against allowing jobs and ‘competitive advantage’ to flow to India, China or other foreign countries. But as an example of supporting domestic clean energy industries, BrightSource is at best a dubious case. Many of the jobs will be created and stay in Israel, and the high-tech benefits and patents are also being developed in Israel (40)."
While Israeli cleantech companies have taken a major hit and are unable to secure venture capital due to the slow recovery in the ‘green’ sector, BrightSource, Avara, and another Obama-funded company, Ormat Technologies, are thriving. Obama has guaranteed Ormat $350 million in loans for three geothermal power plants in Nevada (41). Ormat is also building a 120 megawatt solar power plant in Ashalim, an illegal Zionist settlement in Al Naqab, populated with Israeli students and entrepreneurs strengthening their relations through the Ayalim Association, founded by a group of IOF veterans in 2002 (42). Ormat is owned by the ardent Zionist husband and wife team of Lucien and Yehudit Bronicki. Lucien serves as a member of the Executive Council of the Weizmann Institute of Science, which has several interdisciplinary programs closely tied to Israeli intelligence; he has received the Rothschild Award for Innovation, which is handed out by the Zionist entity’s president; and in 2005, he received honors from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, a key research center for Israel’s nuclear program (43).
The BrightSource scandal has emerged during the latest round of fraudulent peace talks, this time between mass murderer Benjamin Netanyahu and the treasonous collaborationist Abbas-Fayyad Palestinian ‘Authority.’ It is just one more example that the parties involved have no interest in securing peace in the region, only perpetuating the unrelenting and illegal Zionist occupation. Additionally, it is an excellent example of Barack Obama showing his true colors once again: Israeli blue and white. Obama was designed by Zionists from the inception of his political career, and from the moment he was selected as President, he has done nothing but kowtow to Tel Aviv’s every whim. He is not a friend of the Palestinian people; he is their enemy’s willing partner, and their blood will stain his hands for the remainder of his existence.
Peace talks will be considered legitimate when the US stops sending billions in military aid to Israel. When the torturous blockade against Gaza is lifted. When Israeli planes stop dropping bombs on the coastal sliver. When Zionist occupation forces stop shooting innocent men to death on their way home from work (44). When illegal settlements stop being built. When Israel stops detaining, assaulting, and murdering activists in international waters with impunity. When ethnic cleansing stops. When lemon trees and olive trees stop being uprooted. When Gaza fishermen stop being shot at and killed. When thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including young children, are released. When Palestinian women stop being raped. When Palestinians can travel to their places of worship without being harassed or beaten, or both, or worse. When the people choose their own governments and aren’t subjected to collaborationist marionette regimes. When every single Israeli bulldozer is destroyed. When Israel’s murderous politicians are prosecuted for crimes against humanity. And when Zionist companies complicit in several of the aforementioned crimes like BrightSource, Avara and Ormat stop receiving billions in taxpayer monies under the guise of federal loans.
Palestine will know peace when the Zionist entity is completely dismantled and its racist ideology is buried beneath its ashes. Once Zionism ends, the occupation will end, Palestine’s lands will be liberated and the right of return for its people will be implemented. A steadfast commitment to this discourse, along with the dignified Resistance of Palestine’s magnificent people, and the BDS efforts of activists from all over the world, can make the Zionist regime’s demise a hastened reality. Any other option is co-opted by the occupier. And anyone adhering to such a crooked path, is dwelling in the realm of delusion.
~ The End ~
Sources:
(1) Israel To Get $30 Billion In Military Aid From U.S. by Steven Erlanger, The New York Times
(2) Interview Of The President by Yonit Levi, Israeli TV
(3) U.S.-Israeli Arms Cooperation Quietly Growing by Nathan Guttman, The Jewish Daily Forward
(4) Iron Dome May Not Be As Effective As IDF Thinks by Yossi Melman, Haaretz
(5) Obama Endorses Gaza Siege by Press TV
(6) The Woman From Mossad: The Story Of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program by Peter Hounam
(7) The State Of U.S. - Israel Relations July 6, 2010 by National Jewish Democratic Council
(8) The Obama Administration’s Approach To U.S.-Israel Security Cooperation: Preserving Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge by Andrew J. Shapiro
(9) US-Israel Cooperation Continues At The Highest Levels by David Streeter
(10) US Arms ‘Bonanza’ In Middle East by Jonathan Cook
(11) Obama Touts Israeli-Developed Solar Company BrightSource by Karin Kloosterman
(12) BrightSource Gets A Billion by Karin Kloosterman
(13) Meet BrightSource’s Arnold Goldman by Green Prophet Staff
(14) Guma Aguiar Honored As ‘Builder of Jerusalem’ By Aish HaTorah by Hana Levi Julian, Israel National News
(15) Rabbi Noah Weinberg, Founder of Aish HaTorah, Dies by Ben Harris, JTA
(16) Solar Power Pioneer, Arnold Goldman: How Our Electricity Can Become "Fuel For Life" by Jewish Climate Initiative
(17) Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight Of Three Thousand Years by Israel Shahak (rip)
(18) Haredim, Hi-Tech And The IDF by Judy Seigel Itzkovich, Jerusalem Post
(19) Solar Energy In Israel by Professor David Faiman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
(20) Reclaiming His Place In The Sun by Eric A. Taub, The New York Times
(21) Censorship And Cover-Up In The Gulf Oil Disaster by Tom Eley
(22) From Agent Orange, To 9/11, To BP: Kenneth Feinberg Is Master Of Disaster by Sander Hicks
(23) Study: BP Refineries Produce 97% Of Violations by CBS News
(24) Chevron’s Terrestrial Oil Spill: Less Media, More Insidious Than The Gulf Slick by Starre Vartan
(25) Oil Companies Complicit In Nigerian Abuses by Human Rights Watch
(26) BrightSource Energy Gets OK For 370-Megawatt Solar Plant In Mojave Desert by Dana Hull, Mercury News
(27) American Indian Tribes Protest Proposed Solar Power Complex by Kenneth Artz
(28) BrightSource Energy Raises $150 Million Series D Financing by Jonathan Shapira
(29) Dimona’s Buried Nuclear Waste Spreads Cancer And Sterility In Southern Hebron And Negev by International Press Center
(30) Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestinian Bedouin by Kim Bullimore
(31) Arava Power Company Signs Solar Deals With Negev Bedouins by Moshe Terdman
(32) Interview With Yosef Abramowitz, CEO Of Arava Power by Avner Warner
(33) Israel’s Kibbutzim Shift From Red To Green by David Wainer, Bloomberg News
(34) Green Business Double Book Review by Karin Kloosterman; Green Day For AJC by Sharon Udasin, The Jewish Week
(35) Arava Power Signs Land Deal With Bedouins To Build Solar Field by Ehud Zion Waldoks
(36) Israel Reportedly Razes Bedouin Village For Fifth Time by Ma’an News Agency
(37) Israel Razes Bedouin Homes In Negev by Press TV
(38) BrightSource Energy Quietly Moves Toward IPO In 2011 by Iris Kuo, Reuters; Goldman Sachs Was Top Obama Donor by Robert Yoon, CNN
(39) Obama Uses Weekly Address To Lobby For Israeli Firm BrightSource by Ali Abunimah
(40) Israel-Based Firm BrightSource That Obama Misleadingly Boosted Has Been ‘Quietly’ Planning For IPO by Ali Abunimah
(41) Global Investment Plummet Hits Israeli Cleantech Companies... Except BrightSource and Ormat by Lisa Damast
(42) Plant An Olive Tree In Israel by The Ayalim Association
(43) Lucien Bronicki: Executive Profile And Biography by Bloomberg Businessweek
(44) IOF Forces Shoot And Kill Another Palestinian Worker by The Palestinian Information Center
2 comments:
AnonymousOctober 9, 2010 10:35 AM
Thank
you for this clear documentation of this case. It is a fine example of
the larger problem of Israel insinuating itself into our State as a
preferred recipient of subsidies. There is a long history at this point.
I think one of the earlier ones was called BIRD, but the idea has been
established that the US government should always fund a piece for
Israel's business as a priority. The entire "green" field is compromised
this way.
Think of Obama as someone who built his career on the politics of expanding minorities' (everyone wrongly assumes "black") slice of the pie. For example, he never opposed the financial schemes; he only wanted a larger slice for minorities. Of course no one can ever compete with Goldman Sachs in that business, so basically all the other special interest groups are simply squabbling over who gets the most crumbs. Obama runs a franchise. The more he helps the home office in Tel Aviv, the more crumbs his gang gets.
Americans have been so eager to not be bigoted, that they have spent zero time asking themselves what rule book the rest of the world is playing by. The world is composed of familial-based crime families shaking down and taking over governments. Ours has just been the biggest tree to shake. Once the fruit is gone, Americans will be very surprised to find out how bigoted the rest of the world is.
.........................Think of Obama as someone who built his career on the politics of expanding minorities' (everyone wrongly assumes "black") slice of the pie. For example, he never opposed the financial schemes; he only wanted a larger slice for minorities. Of course no one can ever compete with Goldman Sachs in that business, so basically all the other special interest groups are simply squabbling over who gets the most crumbs. Obama runs a franchise. The more he helps the home office in Tel Aviv, the more crumbs his gang gets.
Americans have been so eager to not be bigoted, that they have spent zero time asking themselves what rule book the rest of the world is playing by. The world is composed of familial-based crime families shaking down and taking over governments. Ours has just been the biggest tree to shake. Once the fruit is gone, Americans will be very surprised to find out how bigoted the rest of the world is.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06/D9VB5MSG0.htm
Fed reports how much recession shrank US wealth
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Great Recession shrank Americans' wealth so much that in 2010 median family net worth was no more than it had been in 1992 after adjusting for inflation, the Federal Reserve reported Monday.
Median net worth declined from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010, a Fed survey of family finances found. The median marks the point where half had more and half had less. The recession officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.
Net worth is the value of assets like homes, bank accounts and stocks, minus debts like mortgages and credit cards
The Fed's findings are in its latest Survey of Consumer Finances, a comprehensive review of household finances that the Fed has done every three years dating to 1989.
The Fed's survey of consumer finances contains information only through 2010. A separate survey the Fed released last week showed that total family net worth climbed 4.7 percent in the January-March quarter to $62.9 trillion, about 28 percent above its recession low. The increase was fueled by stock market gains.
Those gains put net worth about 5 percent below its pre-recession peak of $66 trillion. But since the first quarter ended, lower stock prices have eroded some household wealth.
The Fed's more detailed Survey of Consumer Finances is done every three years. The latest survey showed Monday that much of the drop in net worth from 2007 to 2010 reflected the collapse of the housing market, which drove down home values.
Among families that owned homes, the Fed survey found that their median home equity declined from $95,300 in 2007 to $55,000 in 2010, a drop of 42.3 percent. Home equity is the home's value minus how much is owed on the mortgage.
The Fed survey found that median incomes fell from $49,600 in 2007 to $45,800 in 2010, a drop of 7.7 percent.
The Fed survey found that the proportion of families carrying a credit card balance fell to 39.4 percent in 2010. That was down 6.7 percentage points from 2007. Among families with a credit card balance, the median balance fell from $3,100 in 2007 to $2,600 in 2010, a drop of 16.1 percent.
The proportion of families with debt that had a debt payment that was late by 60 or more days during 2010 rose to 10.8 percent, up from 7.1 percent in 2007.
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http://www.livetotry.com/2012/03/18/the-jobs-act-because-there-isnt-enough-government-enabled-fraud-already/
THE JOBS ACT:Because there isn't enough government enabled fraud already.
UPDATE: Unfortunately the JOBS Act passed the Senate, albiet with important amendments to the Crowdfunding section that added in important disclosures, and then the amended versionpassed the House. It awaits Obama’s signature. I am updating this post to reflect the problems that still remain with this bill, but to also explain the problems that were fixed by the Senate amendment.
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At a time when it’s is clear that Americans deeply want want more accountability, more justice, and more financial regulation, Congress is quickly and sneakily paving the way for less accountability, less financial records, and more potentials for investors to be completely exploited.
They are doing so with a new bill that flew through the House with bipartisan support and is set to his the Senate this Tuesday. It sounds great: the J.O.B.S Act (Jumpstart Our Business Startups). Except it’s not great, it’s absolutely egregious. It’s probably the worst roll-back of investor protections in decades. It risks putting us back into the wild west environment that led to the 1929 crash.
Worse still, they’re couching it in this JOBS language when really it’s about financial deregulation. And at a time when anti-bank, anti-fraud sentiment is so high, and people are talking about conflicts of interest (see: Greg Smith’s recent op-ed on why he left Goldman Sachs), here we have Congress passing a bill through the house with flying colors that will create the potential for more fraud, more conflicts of interest, and more scams.
So what is so bad about the JOBS Act?
- The bill is touted for helping startups, but if you actually read it, it defines a new class of company called an “Emerging Growth Company,” which is defined as a company with up to $1 billion in gross revenues per year. It proceeds to undo reporting and audit requirements for these new class of companies, which I’ll detail next.
- For five years after an IPO, Emerging Growth Companies (EGCs) and not required to submit to Sarbanes Oxley internal control certifications–which were controls put in place post-Enron to put the CEO on the hook for accounting fraud. With the JOBS Act, these EGCs are not required to run audits to prove you’re not cooking the books for 5 years following the IPO.
- The approach to IPOs makes U.S. markets less transparent than Hong Kong. It will lower the required disclosure of core financial information to two years for these Emerging Growth Companies. Three years of financial statements have been required of all U.S. public companies for over 70 years.
- An Emerging Growth Company does not have to be a new company. A private equity firm could take a public company private, and as long as they had less than $1 billion in revenues, they’d qualify for treatment as an EGC. The Private Equity firm can now flip the company (i.e. sell it to another investor or facilitate a merger) with only two years of financial disclosures.
- It rolls back the wall between the investment bank and the research analysts. It used to be that if you were an investment bank underwriting a company’s IPO, you couldn’t create research touting the stock–that’d be a conflict of interest. With the JOBS Act, Emerging Growth Companies are exempt from this rule. Goldman Sachs can take a company public, and provide research to the market on why you should buy the stock, too.
- Currently, Regulation D prevents solicitation or advertising for what’s called a “private placement.” Hedge Funds, for example, cannot advertise. Now, that rule is gone. Solicitation is ok, as long as the only people who buy in to your hedge fund or private placement are “accredited investors” (i.e. have a net worth of $1 million or more). Accredited investors isn’t a new thing. What’s new is that the JOBS Act will now allow Hedge Funds and private placements to advertise. So, we could see things like investment banks posting billboards by senior citizen homes and cold calling seniors to try and get them to pump “private” investments.
- There is no SEC registration is required for websites engaged in crowdfunding. In fact, companies can raise up to $1 million while providing no financial information at all to potential investors. This is nothing more than a recipe for fraudulent activity. UPDATE: The Senate thoughtfully amended the Crowdfunding provisions, and now a number of important disclosures and SEC registrations are present
- And to top it off, investors can bet up to $10,000 (or 10% of their annual income, whichever is less) on a given company. There is no aggregate cap on investments, so an investor could in theory repeat this bet 100 times over across 100 different companies.UPDATE: This was also addressed in the Senate Amendment, and now individuals cannot invest more than $1 million in aggregate.
- There is also no prevention of, nor disclosure required for, a company hiring people to promote the stock. UPDATE: The Senate also fixed this with the amendment, requiring that if someone provides “promotional communication” and is paid to do it, they must “clearly discloses the receipt, past or prospective, of such compensation”
Sound bad to you? It should. This is being hyper-aggressively pushed as a bi-partisan jobs effort, but this is really a boon to Wall Street, Venture Capitalists eager for an easy exit on their investments, and an invitation to re-inflate the dot com bubble and bring back the Boiler Rooms.
If you care about investor protections, preventing fraud, you should contact your Senator as soon as possible and urge them to throw out the JOBS Act. There is an amendment, the INVEST Act, that builds investor protections into the bill, but the best thing to do would be to throw this bill out all together.
You can send a form letter here or here, but I urge you first thing on Monday to also call your Senator’s Office. You can simply call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be connected to your Senator’s Office: (202) 224-3121.
I think they are trying to fast-track this before the public can decipher what it’s truly about. I heard they may vote in the Senate on Tuesday. I find it truly alarming. It seems the Obama administration and Congress want a quick win that is bipartisan and has “jobs” in the title, but they are doing so with this sneaky piece of deregulation that will increase conflicts of interest, increase potential for fraud, and help all the wrong people.
Please note that this, and all content on my blog, represents only my personal view, not the view of any of the working groups I participate in at Occupy Wall Street.
Worse still, they’re couching it in this JOBS language when really it’s about financial deregulation. And at a time when anti-bank, anti-fraud sentiment is so high, and people are talking about conflicts of interest (see: Greg Smith’s recent op-ed o
