August 7, 2008: 5:19 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Thursday that American Indian plaintiffs are entitled to $455 million in a long-running trust case, a fraction of the $47 billion they wanted.
But U.S. District Judge James Robertson did not say how the government should award the money, writing that his opinion "leaves for another day the question of how and to whom the award should be distributed."
Robertson's final number is close to government estimates and far from the billions sought by plaintiffs in the 12-year trial. The lawsuit - filed on behalf of a half-million American Indians and their heirs - claims they were swindled out of billions of dollars in oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887.
The judge said he will have to hold another proceeding to decide how the money will be awarded, hinting that he hopes for a settlement between the two parties before then.
"Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the announcement in this memorandum of a hard number will give rise to some off-line conversation between the parties in the meantime," Robertson wrote.
At issue was how much of the royalty money was withheld from the Indian plaintiffs over the years, and whether it was held in the U.S. Treasury at a benefit to the government.
Robertson said in the opinion that plaintiffs did not successfully argue that the money was of benefit to the government over the years, significantly reducing his final estimate of what the American Indians were owed.
Because many of the records have been lost or destroyed, it has been up to the court to decide how to best estimate how much the individual Indians - many of whom are nearing the end of their lives - should be paid.
During the course of the trial, plaintiffs reduced the amount they said they were owed based on documents that became available in the proceedings. They settled on $47 billion, down from their estimate going into the trial, which was $58 billion. Earlier estimates were as high as $100 billion.
Filed by Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell, the lawsuit deals with individual Indians' lands. Several tribes have sued separately, claiming mismanagement of their lands.
Native American Advisors, Inc.
- Dean Parisian
- CHIPPEWA PARTNERS is a Registered Investment Advisor and provides investment management to private investors, retirement plans and Native American tribal entities. Founded in 1995 as a fee-only money manager we are about doing the right things the right way and our expertise developed over 25 years balances financial acumen with absolute integrity. Dean Parisian is a former NASD and NYSE arbitrator and very successful trader who started his career on Wall Street in 1982 with Kidder Peabody and then with Drexel Burnham Lambert. The firm is a Life Member of the National Congress of American Indians and adheres to fiduciary standards. As a private, unbiased firm we know what to do and are prepared to do it. We invite your inquiry to manage your assets. ChippewaPartners@aol.com. Office: 877-772-1621 www.chippewapartners.com
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Monday, August 04, 2008
Thain on CNBC today
Every day the Merrill Lynch bull runs across the screen on CNBC. They tell the world how to invest and why the world should invest with them. Investing with a firm that has eradicated billions and billions of shareholder wealth isn't a bright idea. They have shown the world they can't manage their own finances.
They need to make that money up somewhere and they will make it up alright. Every day the firm seems to be writing down more assets. They have diluted existing shareholders to the tune of 615,000,000 shares, to the point they have little opportunity to make up any earnings shortfalls in the near term.
They will make it up in the hidden commissions and fees from the legions of investors who use the brokers for buying or selling their investments. Brokers are not fiduciaries.
Invest at your own peril.
They need to make that money up somewhere and they will make it up alright. Every day the firm seems to be writing down more assets. They have diluted existing shareholders to the tune of 615,000,000 shares, to the point they have little opportunity to make up any earnings shortfalls in the near term.
They will make it up in the hidden commissions and fees from the legions of investors who use the brokers for buying or selling their investments. Brokers are not fiduciaries.
Invest at your own peril.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Wall Streets "VOMITORIUM"
Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Four days before Merrill Lynch & Co. stopped supporting the auction-rate securities market and left thousands of individual investors stuck with securities they couldn't sell, the firm's analysts recommended clients buy.
"Reports of the imminent demise of the auction market seem to be greatly exaggerated, again,'' analyst Kevin Conery wrote in a Feb. 8 research note. ``We continue to be impressed by the auction market's resiliency.''
The remarks show Merrill's researchers were "co-opted'' during a seven-month drive by the New York-based firm's sales force to prevent a meltdown in the $330 billion market, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin alleged yesterday in an administrative complaint filed in Boston. As the sales desk pushed analysts to publish upbeat notes, managers used gallows humor to complain about a ``collapsing'' market and the end of $2,000 dinners.
"Come on down and visit us in the vomitorium!!'' the auction-rate desk's managing director, Frances Constable, wrote to a co-worker in August, as demand began to dry up. "Market is collapsing,'' another executive cited in Galvin's complaint said in a November 2007 personal e-mail. "No more $2K dinners at CRU,'' a Manhattan restaurant where the wine list includes dozens of bottles for more than $1,000.
Galvin, 57, wants the third-largest U.S. securities firm to ``make good'' on sales of now-frozen holdings, compensate investors who disposed of their bonds or shares at a loss and pay an unspecified fine. He has already filed a related claim against Zurich-based UBS AG, and is still probing Bank of America Corp.
`Significant Danger'
"Research analysts routinely soft-pedaled significant negative events affecting liquidity in the auction markets,'' he said in the complaint. At the same time, managers knew ``the auction markets were not functioning properly and were in fact in significant danger of collapsing,'' he said.
Conery, 47, received a ``six-figure'' bonus for 2007 after his year-end review credited him for "proactive and timely interchange'' with the sales desk and clients, according to the complaint. "Ultimately, his work contributed to better liquidity and lower inventory levels in the marketplace,'' the reviewer said.
"The influence that the supposedly independent research analysts were subjected to was extraordinary,'' said Philip Aidikoff, a partner with Aidikoff, Uhl & Bakhtiari, a Beverly Hills, California-based law firm that represents investors in complaints against firms over auction-rate sales.
Second Complaint
Merrill denied that its analysts acted improperly in recommending auction-rate securities, also known as ARS.
The analysts mentioned in Galvin's complaint "are men of integrity and intellectual honesty. They called the ARS market as they saw it, not the way anyone else did,'' Merrill spokesman Mark Herr said. ``Nothing the sales desk could do or couldn't do affected how much these analysts earned or their standing in our research department.''
Auction-rate securities are long-term bonds or preferred shares with interest rates adjusted typically every seven, 28 or 35 days through a dealer-run bidding process, providing them with the characteristics of money-market investments. Firms historically supported the auctions, without contractual obligation, when demand waned.
Merrill is the second bank to face a complaint by Galvin after brokers stopped supporting the auctions in mid-February as losses from securities tied to subprime mortgages mounted. Massachusetts last month filed a complaint against UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank.
Separate Settlement
UBS said it will contest the allegations. The bank agreed July 30 to pay $1 million to settle a separate complaint filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley over the marketing of auction-rate securities to 20 towns and public agencies in the state. UBS also agreed to pay $38.5 million to the municipalities.
February's meltdown began in July 2007, when MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., the two largest insurers of auction- rate debt, reported lower profits because of losses on securities backed by subprime mortgages. Losses at the insurers prompted auctions for $1.8 billion of their own securities to fail, according to Fitch Ratings.
That month, Constable, 51, objected to an analyst's report, which noted auction-rate bonds lack a so-called ``hard put,'' like some other variable-rate securities, which obligate the issuer to arrange a purchaser for any unwanted securities when rates reset.
Misplaced' Concerns
The reference was misleading, she said, because the report focused on municipal bonds and those instruments weren't yet failing. When the analyst, Martin Mauro, refused to retract the note, Constable sent an e-mail to colleagues within the firm.
"I HAD NOT SEEN THIS PIECE UNTIL JUST NOW AND IT MAY SINGLE HANDEDLY UNDERMINE THE AUCTION MARKET,'' she wrote in capital letters, according to Galvin's claim.
The research department withdrew the report a day later, Galvin said. While a revised version still included information on the hard put, it also recommended auction-rate securities, saying concerns were ``misplaced'' and they may offer good value.
"The same facts contained in the first report were all retained in a longer, fuller and clearer version,'' Herr said. Constable, Conery and Mauro, all located in New York, have no comment, he said, declining to make them available. They aren't named as defendants in Galvin's complaint.
Not Prohibited
Former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2003 won $1.4 billion in settlements from 10 firms including Merrill he accused of misusing analyst research to win investment-banking deals. The probe uncovered e-mails showing former Merrill analyst Henry Blodget touted stocks to clients while deriding them to colleagues, referring to one as a "piece of junk.''
That settlement barred contacts between investment bankers and equity analysts, and doesn't prohibit a sales employee from calling a fixed-income analyst to express opinions, Herr said.
Constable's objections had a lasting effect, according to Galvin. When an analyst drafted a report on the securities the following January, he asked his colleague for advice before publication.
"I want to make sure that research cannot be accused of causing a run on the auction desk,'' the analyst, who wasn't named, wrote in an e-mail.
To contact the reporter on this story: in New York at dscheer@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: August 1, 2008 11:11 EDT
"Reports of the imminent demise of the auction market seem to be greatly exaggerated, again,'' analyst Kevin Conery wrote in a Feb. 8 research note. ``We continue to be impressed by the auction market's resiliency.''
The remarks show Merrill's researchers were "co-opted'' during a seven-month drive by the New York-based firm's sales force to prevent a meltdown in the $330 billion market, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin alleged yesterday in an administrative complaint filed in Boston. As the sales desk pushed analysts to publish upbeat notes, managers used gallows humor to complain about a ``collapsing'' market and the end of $2,000 dinners.
"Come on down and visit us in the vomitorium!!'' the auction-rate desk's managing director, Frances Constable, wrote to a co-worker in August, as demand began to dry up. "Market is collapsing,'' another executive cited in Galvin's complaint said in a November 2007 personal e-mail. "No more $2K dinners at CRU,'' a Manhattan restaurant where the wine list includes dozens of bottles for more than $1,000.
Galvin, 57, wants the third-largest U.S. securities firm to ``make good'' on sales of now-frozen holdings, compensate investors who disposed of their bonds or shares at a loss and pay an unspecified fine. He has already filed a related claim against Zurich-based UBS AG, and is still probing Bank of America Corp.
`Significant Danger'
"Research analysts routinely soft-pedaled significant negative events affecting liquidity in the auction markets,'' he said in the complaint. At the same time, managers knew ``the auction markets were not functioning properly and were in fact in significant danger of collapsing,'' he said.
Conery, 47, received a ``six-figure'' bonus for 2007 after his year-end review credited him for "proactive and timely interchange'' with the sales desk and clients, according to the complaint. "Ultimately, his work contributed to better liquidity and lower inventory levels in the marketplace,'' the reviewer said.
"The influence that the supposedly independent research analysts were subjected to was extraordinary,'' said Philip Aidikoff, a partner with Aidikoff, Uhl & Bakhtiari, a Beverly Hills, California-based law firm that represents investors in complaints against firms over auction-rate sales.
Second Complaint
Merrill denied that its analysts acted improperly in recommending auction-rate securities, also known as ARS.
The analysts mentioned in Galvin's complaint "are men of integrity and intellectual honesty. They called the ARS market as they saw it, not the way anyone else did,'' Merrill spokesman Mark Herr said. ``Nothing the sales desk could do or couldn't do affected how much these analysts earned or their standing in our research department.''
Auction-rate securities are long-term bonds or preferred shares with interest rates adjusted typically every seven, 28 or 35 days through a dealer-run bidding process, providing them with the characteristics of money-market investments. Firms historically supported the auctions, without contractual obligation, when demand waned.
Merrill is the second bank to face a complaint by Galvin after brokers stopped supporting the auctions in mid-February as losses from securities tied to subprime mortgages mounted. Massachusetts last month filed a complaint against UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank.
Separate Settlement
UBS said it will contest the allegations. The bank agreed July 30 to pay $1 million to settle a separate complaint filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley over the marketing of auction-rate securities to 20 towns and public agencies in the state. UBS also agreed to pay $38.5 million to the municipalities.
February's meltdown began in July 2007, when MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., the two largest insurers of auction- rate debt, reported lower profits because of losses on securities backed by subprime mortgages. Losses at the insurers prompted auctions for $1.8 billion of their own securities to fail, according to Fitch Ratings.
That month, Constable, 51, objected to an analyst's report, which noted auction-rate bonds lack a so-called ``hard put,'' like some other variable-rate securities, which obligate the issuer to arrange a purchaser for any unwanted securities when rates reset.
Misplaced' Concerns
The reference was misleading, she said, because the report focused on municipal bonds and those instruments weren't yet failing. When the analyst, Martin Mauro, refused to retract the note, Constable sent an e-mail to colleagues within the firm.
"I HAD NOT SEEN THIS PIECE UNTIL JUST NOW AND IT MAY SINGLE HANDEDLY UNDERMINE THE AUCTION MARKET,'' she wrote in capital letters, according to Galvin's claim.
The research department withdrew the report a day later, Galvin said. While a revised version still included information on the hard put, it also recommended auction-rate securities, saying concerns were ``misplaced'' and they may offer good value.
"The same facts contained in the first report were all retained in a longer, fuller and clearer version,'' Herr said. Constable, Conery and Mauro, all located in New York, have no comment, he said, declining to make them available. They aren't named as defendants in Galvin's complaint.
Not Prohibited
Former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2003 won $1.4 billion in settlements from 10 firms including Merrill he accused of misusing analyst research to win investment-banking deals. The probe uncovered e-mails showing former Merrill analyst Henry Blodget touted stocks to clients while deriding them to colleagues, referring to one as a "piece of junk.''
That settlement barred contacts between investment bankers and equity analysts, and doesn't prohibit a sales employee from calling a fixed-income analyst to express opinions, Herr said.
Constable's objections had a lasting effect, according to Galvin. When an analyst drafted a report on the securities the following January, he asked his colleague for advice before publication.
"I want to make sure that research cannot be accused of causing a run on the auction desk,'' the analyst, who wasn't named, wrote in an e-mail.
To contact the reporter on this story: in New York at dscheer@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: August 1, 2008 11:11 EDT
Jim Cramers 1 year anniversary
Today marks the 1 year anniversary of Jim Cramers rant against the Fed.
It's retarded to blame Bernanke, who never wrote a bad loan.
Cramer, you must have something on the heads of NBC because it is impossible they would keep an entertainment tout like you on the air. You are a terrible stock picker...a terrible market timer...and to boot, you lie out your ass on a daily basis.
Leave your ego at the door, you are doing a disservice to those who blindly follow you as you market your show business empire.
Jim Cramer. Beyond shame at this point.
It's retarded to blame Bernanke, who never wrote a bad loan.
Cramer, you must have something on the heads of NBC because it is impossible they would keep an entertainment tout like you on the air. You are a terrible stock picker...a terrible market timer...and to boot, you lie out your ass on a daily basis.
Leave your ego at the door, you are doing a disservice to those who blindly follow you as you market your show business empire.
Jim Cramer. Beyond shame at this point.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Ted Stevens.........
Just the tip of the iceberg on the shenanigans these bozo's in political office pull with lobbyists money.
Dorgan from North Dakota should be next.
Dorgan from North Dakota should be next.
T. Boone and Yahoo.........
One of the bigger mistakes T. Boone has made as of late.
One billionaire following another billionaire isn't a guaranteed profit.
Steve Ballmer is a happy camper.
One billionaire following another billionaire isn't a guaranteed profit.
Steve Ballmer is a happy camper.
Dilution and Merrill Lynch...........
The massive dilution that firms like Merrill Lynch bring to their long time shareholders reminds me of parasites I see in the natural world.
The host feeding everyone who needs to be fed at the moment to stay alive.
The parasites enjoying the "upside".
Typical Wall Street. And not a customers yacht in sight.
The host feeding everyone who needs to be fed at the moment to stay alive.
The parasites enjoying the "upside".
Typical Wall Street. And not a customers yacht in sight.
Friday, July 25, 2008
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