Charges may come against ex-Bear Stearns execs: report

Charges may come against ex-Bear Stearns execs: report

www.reuters.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges against managers of two Bear Stearns hedge funds whose collapse helped kick off the credit crisis last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Brooklyn, New York will conclude interviews this week and has indicated to lawyers that indictments may follow, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the case.

Former bond portfolio managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin could be charged with securities fraud within the next week, according to one of people familiar with the matter.

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Good. These Wall Street executives need to understand that they and their companies are subject to the law, not above it.

www.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Why isnt the CEO who went on national TV and said all was great and peachy and 2 days later the stock tanks why is he not getting charged. This sounds like these guys are taking the fall. These arent even execs they are hedge fund managers. The CEO needs to get smacked too.

I agree... these people need to be held accountable.

Take away their golden parachutes is my suggestion.

I believe that there is a lot more to the BS collapse than has been revealed so far. BS imploded due to the fact that other financial institutions suddenly refused to engage in any counter-party transactions with it after 'rumors' started flying around that BS was running out of cash. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy and this point has already been suggested in the major media so nothing new here so far. BUT, WHO STARTED THE RUMORS? The cash balances of a company that size are only know to a few, very senior executives. There's no incentive for them to put their own jobs in jeopardy by revealing BS's cash balance to anyone else. It's also unlikely that the rumors started from BS's bank or banks since that kind of information is supposed to be confidential and any bank that is found out to be revealing confidential info to unauthorized persons is liable for very serious legal repercussions not to mention the loss of a lot of clients.

My theory is that BS was targeted either for political reasons or for outright greed. Someone with deep pockets, saw an opportunity to engineer a short sellers dream by shorting BS stock and then starting these rumors. The stock drops from the 30's to $2 in a matter of a few days. Then to add insult to injury, millions of shares are bought at $2 from paniced BS employees and then a week or two later, the company that had agreed to buyout BS for $2 per share all of a sudden says...'gee you know what? Out of the goodness of our hearts, we'll pay $10 per share!' So whoever bought those millions of shares at $2 has suddenly made a 400% profit.

This was nothing less than the ultimate act of financial manipulation and in terms of the total amount of dollars that was 'destroyed' by the collapse of BS, this must rank as the biggest 'heist' in history.