Yea, Judge.

I think that Federal Judge Jed Rakoff should be applauded for not approving the settlement in the SEC case against Citi. It pisses people off to see big banks paying big settlements without ever admitting guilt. The SEC says that guilt is implied. But you know how it is, memories fade and they can just scoot down the road and say that they were never convicted of anything.

Rakoff blasted the settlement as chump change and faulted the lack of transparency by the enforcement agency. "The deal is neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest."

The SEC proposed a similar fix in October in a deal where Citi sold its marks a whole bunch of trashy paper, built to crash and then bet against it, with Citi bringing in $170 million and the investors losing 700 million. Rakoff also questioned an SEC, Bank of America deal where B of A allegedly misled its investors about its plans to buy Merrill Lynch. He ultimately signed off, but grudgingly. I think that he has had enough.

Goldman Sachs paid $500 million last year to settle charges that it had misled its clients about the quality of its mortgages while J.P.Morgan Chase & Co kittied up 153 million.

Citigroup is also accused of misleading investors. Don't think that they would have been willing to pay $285 million to the feds if they did not have the thought that they might be the least bit complicit. Now they say they are going to fight. These banks view these pathetic handslap enforcement actions on the part of the SEC as merely the cost of doing business. In the last 15 years, banks involved in S.E.C. enforcement actions had at least 51 cases of repeat offenses, including six by Citigroup.

The lily livered patsy in charge of enforcement for the SEC, Robert Khuzami, says that the judges actions will "eat up agency resources and time and divert resources away from the investigation of other frauds and the recovery of losses suffered by other investors." As in, we don't want to hassle with the big boys and their slick legal teams, can you find us somebody a little smaller and weaker? It is time that we had an Elliot Ness, somebody with balls cracking heads at the SEC instead of these callow pantywaists. Do your freaking job, Khuzami or we will find somebody who can.

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Herman Cain is going to have a lot of 'splaining to do about those 61 calls on his phone to the mistress he has never met. As his wife repeated last week, it's just not in his character. This year's John "Freaking" Edwards. Fella's, it always comes out.

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Word today that Hank Paulson spilt a lot of privileged and advance inside market dope on Fannie and Freddie during the financial crisis to a bunch of astounded hedge fund managers. Now there's a guy who should be hanging from a yardarm.

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Can you imagine how many millions of dollars it has cost for the police, janitors and firemen to babysit the OWS crowd? And its not like the 1% are picking up the tab, it will unfortunately be your typical 99% taxpayer. You've had your Woodstock, now do it on your own dime, kids.