Anyone interested in supporting relief efforts in Haiti should check out Project MediShare.

Established by a pair of Miami doctors 15 years ago to improve healthcare in Haiti, the nonprofit has emphasized lasting, local collaboration and this partnership has proven vital the past week.

After the earthquake struck, PM physicians were the first responders in a country that does not have the kind of emergency services most Americans take for granted. Below, is PM’s mission statement and a recent blog entry from one of their project coordinators

Our Mission

MISSION:Project Medishare for Haiti, Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit registered in the State of Florida, was founded in 1995 by Dr.’s Barth Green and Arthur Fournier from the University of Miami School of Medicine. It is an organization dedicated to sharing its human and technical resources with its Haitian partners in the quest to achieve quality healthcare and development services for all. This mission is accomplished in several ways:

A continuing commitment to rural communities by establishing and funding sustainable programs;

Training of Haitian physicians, nurses and allied health professionals; and

Providing technology, supplies and equipment to our clinic in Thomonde and other affiliated programs throughout Haiti.

Project Medishare/UM Global Institute wants to assure all donors that funds collected since Tuesday are being used immediately and for earthquake relief.

Project Medishare, partnering with University of Miami Global Institute for Community Health and Development, were the first medical team on the ground in Haiti after the 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti. Project Medishare/UM Global Institute on Wednesday brought in U.S. doctors along with medical supplies. The have been rotating teams and supplies in and out of Haiti since then.

Right now Project Medishare/UM Global Institute has 87 doctors on the ground working in two makeshift trauma units at UN Headquarters at the Port-au-Prince airport.

Project Medishare Executive Director Ellen Powers is currently coordinating Project Medishare/UM Global Institute efforts on ground in Haiti. She has asked for doctors wishing to come help the Project Medishare team, to not arrive today.

”We have 87 medical professionals on ground,” Powers said. “But there is  no place to sleep, nor is there  food or water so wait until we send the green light to send more doctors down. There will be need for long time to come, but we are not able to take more doctors today

Commodities Bubble? What Commodities Bubble?

Was having a telephone conversation with trader-blogger (and former Trader Monthly contributor) Michael Martin and I happened to refer, flippantly, to the current commodities bubble, whether energy funds would fall to earth in the years ahead the way technology funds did after the 1990s (setting the stage possibly for a new ETF that is short energy/long tech) and Martin, who is based in L.A., stopped me politely and pointed out that the jury is out on whether there is or isn’t a commodities bubble, and furthermore, he said, there isn’t one.

On an inflation-adjusted basis, Martin said, neither gold nor crude are presently anywhere near all-time highs.

The 1980 peak price for gold, in today’s dollars, would be $2,189. January COMEX gold futures are $1,140 today.

The June 2008 monthly average oil price would be $125 in today’s dollars. The 1979 peak price for crude oil, in today’s dollars, would be approximately $107.

The February NYMEX crude oil contract is $79.62 today.

Martin is currently working on an interesting gold versus platinum thesis. I encourage people to check him out and assuming he is finished with it.

Scenes from an Inquisition, Part II: The Regulators

Bad guy: “Who are you?”

Charles Bronson: “Death.”

Before there was Showtime’s purpose-driven serial killer Dexter there was Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey, architect by day, vigilante by night. The Kersey character’s righteous gunshot killings were almost always preceded by a classic, coldblooded one liner, such as when Bronson, the son of a Pennsylvanian coal miner, asks, in Death Wish II, a crucifix-wearing hoodlum whether he believes in Jesus.

“Yes, yes, I do,” the petrified hippie-thug replies.

Bronson, firearm brandished and cocked: “Well, you’re going to meet him.”

The entire Death Wish franchise was based on bad guys getting theirs. In today’s climate, scores of Wall Street villains could be shot, stabbed and nailed to crosses fashioned from the finest mahogany and the public and media bloodlust will likely not be sated.

Testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission last Thursday, a day which featured testimony from SEC and FDIC chiefs Mary Schapiro and Sheila Bair, the nation’s top justice seeker, Attorney General Eric Holder, was asked about whether the war on terror cut into the FBI’s ability to go after mortgage fraud which by 2004 was well established as being rampant.

Holder is going to have to get back to the commission on that one but he was able to point out that currently the FBI is investigating 2,800 mortgage fraud cases. That is welcome news. Anyone who helped undocumented workers making $12 an hour forge documents saying that they were marketing consultants who made $110,000 per year should be sent to prison, and this kind of thing, way off Wall Street, certainly helped bring down the mortgage market as much as ABS CDOs.

Endless corruption is not being uncovered on Wall Street. A quick scan of Justice Department press releases from the past few months reveals a slew of announcements tied to all sorts of misdeeds against humanity. Illegal ginseng exporting. Bear gall bladder distribution. Miscellaneous tax fraud. The Christmas Day underwear bomber’s indictment news is there. There’s a couple of child pornography cases. There’s bid rigging, medical fraud, cross burning, a Vegas-based vehicle emissions falsification scheme, and even a case involving an Army major who smuggled cash home from Iraq.

Apart from one new development in the Allen Stanfordcase there is little else tied to finance, though clearly hedge fund insider trading probe appears to be widening.

Maybe there’s so little Wall Street crime being uncovered by the Feds because being suspicious of Wall Street and actually proving criminality are vastly different propositions. The first two post-crisis, non-Madoff defendants, the two Bear Stearns Asset Management credit fund PMs, were both recently acquitted.

Charles Bronson once told an interviewer that the Death Wish films were so successful because of the simple fact that people love to see the bad guy get their comeuppance. Political success has worked the same way.

After the Nasdaq bubble and Enron and corporate accounting scandals in the early part of the last decade there were plenty of heads being served up on platters. “Socks On” Spitzer became New York State’s governor for a brief time because he took on Wall Street.

Andy Cuomo’s HUD tenure is seen by some pro-Street, anti-government people, including this loud, angry old-timer holding court in Central Park the other day, as sowing some of the earliest most potent seeds of the entire financial crisis. Yet Cuomo is sure to try to advance his own gubernatorial ambitions by bringing some fat cats to justice in his current role as New York State Attorney General.

Still, it’s one thing for Wall Street and hedge fund managers to have a state AG on their tail, but the full force of the United States federal government? This next year could bring an assault the likes of which the Street has not seen since the Pecora commission.

If bad guys are found and sent away that will be good for the financial system, a weeding out of bad apples can’t hurt. If the fat cat dragnet turns up a light catch, well, considering what is coming at the industry, such a lack of wrongdoers could be seen as validating for the Street.

Either way, the hunt is on.

From the Associated Press: Holder hopes to have 50 new FBI agents and 155 new attorneys working financial-crimes cases in the coming year. Still, Holder said, “our resources, even given those additions, are relatively limited, and these cases are complex ones. They take time and money in order to bring to fruition.”

Holder’s full prepared remarks

“Chairman Angelides and Vice Chairman Thomas, thank you for inviting me to address you and the other distinguished Members of this Commission. These inaugural hearings mark a critical step forward in better understanding the root causes of the financial crisis that has held our economy in its grip over the last two years. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this Commission’s work and to assist your inquiry.

“This morning, I am joined by Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Lanny spearheads many of our key efforts in investigating, prosecuting and punishing financial crimes. He has submitted written testimony, which provides a comprehensive overview of the Department’s work in these areas, and he will be available to answer any additional questions you may have.

“We must be vigilant in our efforts to safeguard and strengthen the American economy. Our efforts to fight economic crime are a vital component of our broader strategy - a strategy that seeks to foster confidence in our financial system, integrity in our markets, and prosperity for the American people.

“In carrying out this strategy, the Justice Department has long focused its efforts on combating financial fraud. Across numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, the Department has worked hard to combat fraud and to recover ill-gotten gains for the benefit of fraud victims. Despite these efforts, however, we know that financial fraud persists. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that ‘crisis and fraud in the securities and investment banking industries are at their highest levels since records began.’ The current economic crisis has brought these challenges to the forefront.

“Let me state at the outset what role the Department plays - and does not play - in addressing these challenges. Put simply, the Department of Justice investigates and prosecutes federal crimes. As I sit here today, prosecutors in Washington and in 94 U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country are hard at work investigating a wide array of financial fraud cases, from mortgage fraud, to Medicare and healthcare fraud, to securities fraud, to corporate malfeasance. I am proud that we have put in place a law enforcement response to the financial crisis that is and will continue to be aggressive, comprehensive, and well-coordinated.

“But while the reach of our investigative and prosecutorial function is broad, we do not purport to have all the answers. As a general matter, we do not have the expertise, nor is it part of our mission, to opine on the systemic causes of the financial crisis. Rather, the Justice Department’s resources are focused on investigating and prosecuting crime. It is within this context that I am pleased to offer my testimony and contribute to your review.

“The Department has a long history of prosecuting financial fraud - and we will continue to do so. Working in concert with our Federal, state, local, tribal and territorial partners, the Justice Department is using every tool at our disposal - including new resources, advanced technologies and communications capabilities, and the very best talent we have - to prevent, prosecute and punish these crimes. And by taking dramatic action, our goal is not just to hold accountable those whose conduct may have contributed to the last meltdown, but to deter such future conduct as well.

“The cornerstone of our work in this area is a new, interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which was established in November by Executive Order of the President and is led by the Justice Department. At the core of the Task Force’s mission is a more robust and strategic law enforcement effort, focused on combating four types of financial crime:

Mortgage fraud - from foreclosure rescue and loan modification frauds to systematic lending fraud in the nationwide housing market;

Securities fraud - from traditional insider trading, to Ponzi schemes, to accounting fraud, to misrepresentations to investors;

Recovery Act and rescue fraud - including the theft of federal stimulus funds and the illegal use of taxpayer dollars intended to shore up our financial institutions; and

Financial discrimination - including predatory lending practices in minority communities and the sale of financial products that exploit the elderly and disadvantaged.

“In combating financial crimes, we will aggressively leverage the criminal and civil enforcement resources of the federal government. We will tackle every fraud case with the aim of recovering stolen funds for victims. And we will enhance coordination and cooperation among the Federal, state, local, tribal and territorial authorities, so that the perpetrators of these crimes are brought to justice.

“On this last point, let me be clear: When we find businesses or individuals whose disregard for the law has hurt the pocketbooks of average Americans, we will use every available measure to hold them accountable.

“Even before the launch of the Task Force, the Department aggressively responded to the financial crisis by redoubling our fraud-fighting efforts. In addition to convicting Bernard Madoff, who perpetrated the largest Ponzi scheme in our nation’s history, last year we arrested the ringleaders of what has been described as the biggest hedge fund insider trading case in history. And we secured 30-year and 25-year sentences for two executives of National Century Financial Enterprises following their convictions on conspiracy, fraud, and money-laundering charges.

“We’ve also devoted substantial attention to preventing and prosecuting mortgage fraud. Right now, the FBI is investigating more than 2,800 such cases, up almost 400 percent from five years ago. The recently-enacted federal budget for 2010 will enhance these efforts, as will the enhanced legislative authorities Congress provided the Department last year in the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009.

“I’m confident that with new authorities, new resources, and a bold new plan of action, we can and will make measurable, meaningful progress. And, working together with our law enforcement and regulatory partners, we will succeed in restoring the integrity of our markets, preserving taxpayers’ resources and protecting the vast majority of hardworking Americans, investors and businesses who play by the rules and adhere to the law.

“Thank you again for the opportunity to participate in today’s hearing and to outline the Department’s ongoing efforts to address financial fraud in the wake of our economic crisis. I look forward to working with you and, along with Assistant Attorney General Breuer, would be happy to answer your questions.”

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 12:31 pm and is filed under The Offering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.