News Release

• Carpetbagger 'Rangers' Could Be Gunning for Empire State Lawman.

“Why would Big-Apple bankers travel 1,700 miles to nosh barbecue under a hot Texas sun?” asked Texans for Public Justice Director Craig McDonald. “Are they recruiting help for their showdown with New York’s top cop? Are the New York bankers who dominate Bush’s Pioneer and Ranger team paying tribute in hopes the Administration will help take Spitzer off the beat?”

Hounded by Spitzer, top investment bankers--including new Bush Ranger Stanley O’Neal of Merrell Lynch and new Pioneer James Cayne of Bear Stearns--hosted Bush’s most lucrative fundraiser in New York in June. Then 18 financiers made their industry Bush’s No. 1 financial supporter last month when Bush disclosed the first 68 elite fundraisers of his reelection campaign. A Texans for Public Justice analysis reveals that the finance industry accounts for one-third of Bush’s 32 all-new Pioneers and Rangers who were not part of this elite team in 2000.

Lawyers and lobbyists surpassed financiers during Bush’s 2000 Pioneer stampede. But this time the bankers have serious issues with Attorney General Spitzer, who released internal documents last year that reveal that analysts publicly promoted stocks that they privately scorned in order to land investment-banking business for their firms. Bush’s failed first pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Harvey Pitt, belatedly joined Spitzer’s probe, which yielded a record $1.4 billion settlement with 10 top investment banks in December. Since 1999, 14 executives affiliated with eight of these banks have answered Bush’s Pioneer cattle call.

Federal prosecutors and the SEC recently announced that J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup agreed to pay $300 million to settle charges that they helped hoodwink investors by manipulating $6.4 billion in loans to Enron to disguise this debt as energy-trading earnings. But that settlement, which the banks can deduct from future class-action lawsuit settlements, excluded other banks involved in dubious Enron deals such as Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB). Bush’s Justice Department recently boasted that it obtained more than 250 corporate-fraud convictions or guilty pleas in the past year. Yet, except for ImClone’s Sam Waksal, the corporate crooks are still walking the streets.

With officials in other states investigating bankers’ roles in recent corporate scandals, the finance industry wants to take state cops off the beat. On the day that Bush unveiled his bank-heavy list of new Pioneers, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin charged Morgan Stanley with misleading investors about the pressure it put on its brokers to sell the firm’s own mutual funds. This state probe irked new Bush SEC Chair William Donaldson, who said, “I do not believe that we can have 50 state regulators coming up with remedies organizing the marketplace.” Donaldson then endorsed federal legislation to slash the states’ securities powers by centralizing such enforcement in the hands of this former investment banker. The powerful Securities Industry Association (SIA) denied responsibility for this legislation—even as it endorsed it. New Bush Pioneer Stephen Lessing of Lehman Brothers took control of SIA’s political action committee late last year.

Two other volunteers for Bush’s first Pioneer effort in 2000 come from banks that reportedly have lobbied the Bush administration for a contract to issue letters of credit on billions of dollars of Iraqi oil deals (J.P. Morgan Chase’s Alan Buckwalter and Deutsche Bank’s Jeff Amling). The administration is expected to award this lucrative contract soon.

Bush brands supporters “Pioneers” if they raise at least $100,000 for his campaign. He dubs those who raise twice this amount “Rangers,” evoking the name of the Texas baseball team that personally made him a millionaire 15 times over.

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