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nytimes.com - 1/9/2009

Nationwide Inquiry on Bids for Municipal Bonds

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The authorities have been investigating what appears to be collusion in the multibillion-dollar municipal bonds market. >

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Muni-Bond Business Exposed For The Racket It's Always Been
The Agonist - thoughtful, global, timely — Anyone who has ever dealt with in the muni-bond market (and who has even half a brain) knows the market was all about collusion. So this comes as no surprise: Three federal agencies and a loose consortium of state attorneys general have for several years been gathering evidence of what appears to be collusion among the banks and other companies that have helped state and local governments take approximately $400 billion worth of municipal notes and bonds to market each year. E-mail messages, taped phone conversations and other court documents suggest that companies did not engage in open competition for this lucrative ...

Tentacles
Talking Points Memo — ... of Bill Richardson. Whether Richardson himself is in any trouble -- and there's no clear evidence he is -- there's a very big story in the background. That is widespread fraud, pay-to-play corruption and bid-rigging in the municipal bond business. Here's a piece from the Times today on the same topic. This is one of those stories that's weedy and a bit hard to understand. But it looks like a big deal -- a sort of broad ranging fraud in which the financial services industry was leeching cash away from city and state governments for years. ...

Nationwide Inquiry on Bids for Municipal Bonds
Democratic Underground Latest Breaking News — ... cases, they created exotic financial structures that blew up. People with knowledge of the evidence say investigators are not just looking at a few bad apples, but also at the way an entire market has operated for years. “It’s rare to sell a Senate seat, but it’s not rare to sell a bond deal,” said Charles Anderson, who retired as manager of tax-exempt bond field operations for the Internal Revenue Service in 2007. “Pay-to-play in the municipal bond market is epidemic.” Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/business/09insure.htm... The only reasonable conclusion is ...

New Mexico Probe Just the Tip Of the Iceberg On Municipal Bond Scams?
TPMMuckraker — ... Here at Muckraker, we've started looking into that larger ongoing story, and today the New York Times delivers a helpful takeout on the subject -- though many of the details still remain murky. ...