Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Senator Carl Levin
The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, has disclosed that it is conducting an investigation into the ownership and warehousing of physical commodities by large Wall Street firms. Senator Levin has also announced that he will not run for reelection next year – meaning this could be one of his last major opportunities to save the country from the further ravages of Wall Street.
The Senate investigation comes four long years after 60 Minutes reported that Morgan Stanley had acquired the capacity to store 20 million barrels of oil. The report also showed that Goldman Sachs had taken stakes in companies owning oil storage terminals. The 60 Minutes report was in 2009. In 2008, during the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve had approved making Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs bank holding companies – giving them the ability to own banks holding insured deposits as well as to access emergency loan programs from the Federal Reserve, despite the fact that they were investment banks engaged in speculative securities trading.
With Congress and the public stunned at the time by 100-year old financial institutions collapsing before their eyes, this is what the Federal Reserve was able to get away with on September 21, 2008:
Press Release from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System: September 21, 2008
For release at 9:30 p.m. EDT
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