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Cuomo Subpoenas 100 Hedge Funds, Enlists 36 States In Mushrooming Pension Probe
What did we tell you? The New York state pension fund scandal is starting to look pretty national. New York AG Andrew Cuomo just issued 100 subpoenas to investment firms in his expanding investigation of pay-to-play schemes that defraud public employee retirement funds, and announced the participation of 100 officials in 36 states' attorney general offices in the probe.
Who are the 14 holdouts? We suspect they're states that already regulate placement agents or ban them altogether, as New York did last week.
Back in 1999 the SEC proposed comprehensive regulation of pension fund placement agents and other potential conflicts-of-interest, but the stock market was in the headiest stretch of an epic bull market and the proposal died on the vine. Not so much the case these days.

















I would put my bet on Florida as being a hold out.
The politicians in Florida would never allow an investigation,
especially an investigation of themselves!
May 1, 2009 10:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Meanwhile, all these scumbags are busily hiding their ill-gotten fortunes so we'll never be able to seize them and return them to their rightful owners.
May 2, 2009 9:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
And what of the private pensions for those who are not public employees..where did their pensions go...?
May 2, 2009 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are there any projections on the bottom line, here? Do we have any estimates how much was lost? It seems, as the economic slowdown squashed any value these bad-debt packages once may have held, solvent sources were sought out to pillage - and cover the plummeting value of these "instruments". If those funds have been used to underwrite the "insurance" capacity of swaps, how much is gone? We know these "bundles" were wildly overvalued. How much has been squandered?
May 2, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some estimates run as high as a Quadrillion dollars. That is a thousand trillion.
May 4, 2009 9:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Please tell me you're kidding...
May 4, 2009 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink