and one of their attorney heads testified in the case regarding the convention center hotel that city provided bond funding would not amount to city assistance violative of the ordinance banning city assistance for a convention center hotel.

Wonder which law firm will be involved in any bond deals regarding the much balleyhooed hotel across the street from the convention center.

And is the community really better off with this mega peanut eating white elephant draped around city taxpayers year after year after year? Those millions could have been used to attract new business and industry to the community rather than sinking it into a surplus facility which does nothing but cat shows, weddings, bar mitzvahs, occassional business meetings, or fundraisers for Republican politicians if the Haslam family is supporting them.

part of the problem here is that no one in the legislative branch understood swaps, and they were getting guidance and reassurance from the Swaps and Derivatives Association (which Phil Gramm's wife was connected to), and we were told that this was insurance and really wasn't necessary, blah blah blah.

You're reinforcing the point. The state abdicated its fiduciary role under the assumption that Morgan Keegan would operate in good faith when educating the state about the instruments it had a financial stake in selling.

That is prima facie conflict of interest and the comptroller, as a guardian of the public trust and as a public official bound by state ethics law, should have put an immediate stop to it. MK was sole-sourcing the inception of these plans, the administration of these plans, and the education of these plans.

And, if you remain unmoved, let me throw this out there: the basis for evaluating what constitutes conflict of interest (or, if you peek at TN ethics statutes, potential conflict of interest) is the appearance of impropriety. MK can say it did nothing wrong, but as they were the "educator" as well as the prominent stakeholder in closing these sales, that definitely has the appearance of and potential for conflict of interest.

I don't know if you've ever conducted business with the state as a vendor. I have. Understanding Tennessee ethics regulations was mandatory annual training for me, and it was made very clear what the penalties would be if I ran afoul of them (job termination at a minimum, punitive measures such as fines and jail time were also outlined in stark relief).

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Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!

I don't think you can really blame Morgan Keegan's guidance

ORLY?

Investors in six Regions Morgan Keegan (“RMK”) bond funds lost $2 billion in 2007. This paper explains how extraordinary and undisclosed risks allowed these funds to generate higher returns than their competitors for many years but ultimately caused the funds’ collapse in 2007.

The investors’ losses were not the result of a “flight to quality” or a “mortgage meltdown.” Diversified portfolios of high yield bonds and mortgage-backed securities did not suffer significant losses as the RMK funds suffered massive losses. The RMK funds collapsed because they held concentrated holdings of low-priority tranches in structured finance deals backed by risky assets.

RMK did not disclose in its Securities and Exchange Commission filings the risks it was exposing investors to by investing the majority of its portfolio in subordinated tranches of asset-backed securities until after the losses had occurred. RMK also misrepresented hundreds of millions of dollars of asset-backed securities as corporate bonds and preferred stocks in its SEC filings thereby making the funds seem more diversified and less risky than they were.

RMK further misled investors in its SEC filings and marketing materials by comparing its funds to the Lehman Brothers Ba Index. This index contains only corporate bonds - no asset-backed securities which dominated the RMK funds’ portfolios and which resulted in virtually all the investors’ losses. RMK also misled investors by claiming that its funds were diversified.

Six RMK bond funds – four closed-end funds (RMH, RHY, RMA and RSF) and two open-end funds (MKHIX and MKIBX) - collapsed spectacularly in 2007. The six funds had higher returns and yields than their peers in years prior to 2007, but lost 62% on average in 2007 while their peers had positive returns or only modest losses.

Maybe Regions Morgan Keegan demonstrably displays a pattern of egregious conduct as it comes to disclosure...

According to investor complaints, Regions Morgan Keegan marketed and sold the bond funds as “relatively conservative” investments. Investors never knew about the hidden risks of the funds or the fact that mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations comprised more than 50% of each fund’s portfolio.

So far, FINRA has returned awards totaling more than $600,000 for investor claims over losses suffered in the RMK bond funds. The most recent awards were decided in March 2009 by FINRA arbitration panels in Indiana and Alabama.

And

In almost every case, the asset-backed securities held by the RMK funds were virtually always the most risky tranches in asset-backed securities deals, according to the SLCG paper. As an example, SLCG examined the portfolio of the RMK Multi-Sector High Income Fund (RHY), and identified whether the tranches held were senior or subordinated for 147 of its 161 asset and mortgage-backed securities. Only nine of the 147 tranches were senior; 138 of the 147 were subordinated.

Morgan Keegan always has been keen on letting investors know that it performs “in-depth and detailed evaluations” on all of the bond funds recommended to retail clients. The company’s so-called due diligence is supposedly one of the hallmarks of its operations. If that were the case, however, any evaluation that had been performed on the six RMK bond funds would have uncovered RMK’s misrepresentation of risky asset-backed securities as corporate bonds and preferred stocks, as well as disclosed the highly leveraged credit risk in the low-priority asset-backed securities held in the funds.

The bottom line: The catastrophic losses suffered by investors in the RMK funds did not have to happen. From the outset, Morgan Keegan failed to fully or accurately inform investors in its bond funds of the risks regarding the subordinated tranches that the funds held. Only after massive losses occurred did RMK reveal this critical detail.

But sure, maybe those investments had some risk. Do you actually believe that it was ethical for the state to have the firm that stood to reap financial gains in fees for selling these instruments to be explaining the "ins-and-outs" of the program? The state used taxpayer money to finance sales seminars on behalf of Morgan Keegan.

But hey, let's not stand in your way of grandstanding for your favored candidate.

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Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!

Where can I find this evidence that Ward Cammack voiced concerns 10 years ago? Just exactly what did go wrong and how does one make it right. Maybe Ward should forget about the Governor's seat and go straight to DC for a cabinet seat. I am sure President Obama would love to talk to someone that new something 10 years prior and also knows how to fix it.