Source – ragingbullshit.com

– “…Blankfein’s answer is flatly false and he knows it – top lawyers of the biggest Wall Street banks had been meeting secretly for two decades with their counterparts at international banks”:

(Goldman Sachs Top Lawyer Is Part of a Secret Banking Cabal as CEO Blankfein Denies One Exists – By Pam Martens and Russ Martens)

There’s a new mantra making the rounds of Washington and Wall Street. No matter how big the lie you’re caught in, no matter how much documented evidence exists against you, just deny, deny, deny. That’s how Democratic National Committee Interim Chair Donna Brazile handled the email released by WikiLeaks showing that she leaked a debate question to Hillary Clinton; that’s how Hillary Clinton handled revelations about sending classified government material over an unclassified server in the basement of her home; and that’s how Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is handling the widespread public perception that there’s a banking cabal meeting in secret to plot its continued dominance over the interests of the average U.S. citizen.

Yesterday, CNBC’s David Faber interviewed Blankfein and asked about the suggestion that Donald Trump had made on October 13 in a speech in West Palm Beach, Florida that there is an international banking conspiracy undermining the sovereignty of the United States. Faber asked Blankfein: “So am I to take it that you weren’t meeting in secret with international banks and Hillary Clinton to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty?” Blankfein responded: “We could parse that clause by clause, but to every clause, the answer is no, we weren’t doing it. We weren’t meeting in secret and we certainly weren’t plotting destruction.”

The first half of Blankfein’s answer is flatly false and he knows it. The big Wall Street banks do meet in secret and have been doing it for decades. His own General Counsel,Gregory Palm, part of the Management Committee at Goldman Sachs, is part of the secret cabal.

Just five days before Blankfein made his false denial, Bloomberg News’ reporters Greg Farrell and Keri Geiger had landed the bombshell report that the top lawyers of the biggest Wall Street banks had been meeting secretly for two decades with their counterparts at international banks. At this year’s secret May meeting at a posh hotel in Versailles, the following were among the big bank lawyers in addition to Palm according to the Bloomberg report: Stephen Cutler of JPMorgan (a former Director of Enforcement at the SEC); Gary Lynch of Bank of America (also a former Director of Enforcement at the SEC); Morgan Stanley’s Eric Grossman; Citigroup’s Rohan Weerasinghe; Markus Diethelm of UBS Group AG; Richard Walker of Deutsche Bank (again, a former Director of Enforcement at the SEC); Robert Hoyt of Barclays; Romeo Cerutti of Credit Suisse Group AG; David Fein of Standard Chartered; Stuart Levey of HSBC Holdings; and Georges Dirani of BNP Paribas SA.

The Bloomberg report indicates that the meetings are secret and that this is the first time their existence has been reported to the public. But this is hardly the first time there have been reports of Wall Street banks huddling in secret.

Just this past July we raised the question as to whether the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, was violating anti trust law by meeting secretly with competitors following a February 1 report in the Financial Times of  “secret summits.” As we reported at the time:

According to guidelines published by various trade associations and law firms, the following rules must be followed when conducting meetings between competitors to avoid the perception, or actual charges, of antitrust violations:

– Meetings must be regularly scheduled and should never be secret.

– A properly designated Chairman shall prepare and follow a formal agenda which should be reviewed in advance by legal counsel.

– Legal counsel should be present at all meetings.

– Formal written minutes of meetings should be taken and archived.

– Properly instituted bylaws should be followed.

– A Board of Directors should be properly instituted.

– Any company meeting the requirements of the bylaws should be allowed membership in the group.

Secret summits that are by invitation-only, have no boards or bylaws, no public minutes would certainly appear to be both violations of anti trust law as well as fueling the public perception of conspiratorial meetings.

The top Federal regulator of the Wall Street bank holding companies, the Federal Reserve, has also fueled the perception of banking cartels by allowing the New York Fed to sponsor its own bank groups like the Foreign Exchange Committee, which has been operating for the past 38 years and whose members, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, each pleaded guilty on May 20, 2015 to a felony count brought by the U.S. Justice Department for – wait for it – engaging in rigging foreign exchange markets. The New York Fed-sponsored group, among other things, writes best practices rules for Wall Street.

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Goldman Sachs Top Lawyer Is Part of a Secret Banking Cabal as CEO Blankfein Denies One Exists