Financial News Articles

Financial News Articles
Excerpts of Key Financial News Articles in Media

Below are highly revealing excerpts of important banking and finance news articles from
the major media suggesting a cover-up. Links are provided to the full news articles for
verification. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These banking and finance news
articles are listed by order of importance. You can also explore the articles listed by order of the
date of the news article or by the date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread
the word, we can and will build a brighter future.
Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of
engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever
published.
How can it be that you pay more to the IRS than General Electric?
2010-04-01, Forbes magazine
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corpora...
Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do-that is, if they pay taxes at all. The most egregious example is General Electric. Last year the
conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam.
In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion. How did this happen? It's complicated. GE in effect
consists of two divisions: General Electric Capital and everything else. The everything else--maker
of engines, power plants, TV shows and the like--would have paid a 22% tax rate if it was a
standalone company. It's GE Capital that keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years,
GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S. (posting a $6.5
billion loss in 2009), and make lots of money overseas (a $4.3 billion gain). Not only do the
U.S. losses balance out the overseas gains, but GE can defer taxes on that overseas
income indefinitely. It's the tax benefit of overseas operations that is the biggest reason why
multinationals end up with lower tax rates than the rest of us.
Note: Can you believe that GE not only pays no taxes, they actually get credit from the US
government? They ship US jobs overseas and then reap huge tax benefits as a result. What's
wrong with this picture? For a wealth of media news articles on the hidden manipulations of major
financial corporations, click here.
Where'd the Bailout Money Go? Shhhh, It's a Secret

2008-12-22, Fox News/Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,470824,00.html
It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money
going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they
can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it. "We've lent
some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing
it,"' said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in
emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to." The
Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money
and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is
being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest? None of the banks provided specific
answers. "We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for
Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars. The answers
highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which earmarked $700
billionabout the size of the Netherlands' economyto help rescue the financial industry. There
has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. "It is entirely appropriate for the
American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry," said
Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout. But, at least for
now, there's no way for taxpayers to find that out.
Note: For more key information that the bankers don't want you to know, click here. For many
revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Five big banks agree to pay more than $5 billion to settle regulatory
charges
2015-05-20, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/five-big-banks-agree-to-pay-more-than-...
Five of the worlds largest banks have agreed to pay more than $5 billion in fines to settle charges
made by regulatory agencies and the Justice Department that the banks had acted in concert to
manipulate international interest and foreign currency exchange rates. Attorney General Loretta
E. Lynch said the banks had engaged in brazenly illegal behavior on a near-daily basis.
The scale of the price-fixing scandal is hard to grasp. It touched ... almost every company and
individual in the financial markets. By tweaking global benchmarks used to set foreign exchange
and interest rates for a staggering number of transactions a day, the banks over several years
bilked billions of dollars of extra profits by altering rates in their favor. Critics complained that the
Justice Department had failed to prosecute any additional individuals. Wall Street watchdog group
Better Markets called it a slap on the wrist, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in an email: Thats not accountability for Wall Street. Its business as usual, and it stinks. Barclays,
along with JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Citigroup, will plead guilty
to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. currency and euros, authorities said. JPMorgan
Chase said it had agreed to plead guilty to a single antitrust violation and pay a fine of $550
million. Under the resolution with the Fed, the firm will pay a fine of $342 million. The bank said it
had previously set aside reserves for these settlements.
Note: When it comes to international banking, it appears that almost everything is rigged. For
more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the
systemically corrupt financial industry.
Gold price rigging fears put investors on alert

2014-02-23, Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d5e00172-9b14-11e3-946b-00144feab7de.html
Global gold prices may have been manipulated on 50 per cent of occasions between January
2010 and December 2013, according to analysis by Fideres, a consultancy. The findings come
amid a probe by German and UK regulators into alleged manipulation of the gold price, which is
set twice a day by Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Barclays, Bank of Nova Scotia and Socit Gnrale in
a process known as the London gold fixing. Fideres research found the gold price frequently
climbs (or falls) once a twice-daily conference call between the five banks begins, peaks (or
troughs) almost exactly as the call ends and then experiences a sharp reversal, a pattern it alleged
may be evidence of collusive behaviour. [This] is indicative of panel banks pushing the gold
price upwards on the basis of a strategy that was likely predetermined before the start of
the call in order to benefit their existing positions or pending orders, Fideres concluded.
The behaviour of the gold price is very suspicious in 50 per cent of cases. This is not
something you would expect to see if you take into account normal market factors, said
Alberto Thomas, a partner at Fideres. Alasdair Macleod, head of research at GoldMoney, a dealer
in physical gold, added: When the banks fix the price, the advantage they have is that they know
what orders they have in the pocket. BaFin, the German regulator, has launched an investigation
into gold-price manipulation and demanded documents from Deutsche Bank. The UKs Financial
Conduct Authority is also examining how the price of gold and other precious metals is set as part
of a wider probe into benchmark manipulation following findings of wrongdoing with respect to
Libor and similar allegations with respect to the foreign exchange market.
Important Note: The above article was removed from the Financial Times website just two days
after it was posted. How strange. To read the full article on another website, click here. And for a
BBC article which shows how the Rothschilds fixed gold prices in the past, click here. For more on
financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available
here.
IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers

2012-10-21, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9623863/IMFs-epic-plan-to-conjure-...
One could slash private debt by 100pc of GDP, boost growth, stabilize prices, and dethrone
bankers all at the same time. It could be done cleanly and painlessly, by legislative command, far
more quickly than anybody imagined. The conjuring trick is to replace our system of private bankcreated money -- roughly 97pc of the money supply -- with state-created money. Specifically, it
means an assault on "fractional reserve banking". If lenders are forced to put up 100pc
reserve backing for deposits, they lose the exorbitant privilege of creating money out of
thin air. The nation regains sovereign control over the money supply. There are no more
bank runs, and fewer boom-bust credit cycles. That at least is the argument [in] the IMF study,
by Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof, which came out in August and has begun to acquire a cult
following around the world. Entitled "The Chicago Plan Revisited", it revives the scheme first put
forward by professors Henry Simons and Irving Fisher in 1936 during the ferment of creative
thinking in the late Depression. Benes and Kumhof argue that credit-cycle trauma - caused by
private money creation - dates deep into history. The original authors of the Chicago Plan were
responding to the Great Depression. They believed it was possible to prevent the social havoc
caused by wild swings from boom to bust, and to do so without crimping economic dynamism. The
benign side-effect of their proposals would be a switch from national debt to national surplus.
Note: This article is an incredible breakthrough in real reporting on the banking sector. It is most
highly recommended to read the entire article and then explore our powerful Banking Corruption
Information Center.
Bilderberg mystery: Why do people believe in cabals?

2011-06-07, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13682082
The secretive Bilderberg Group ... is bringing together the world's financial and political elite this
week. Conspiracy theories abound. It's only recently that the media has picked up on the
Bilderbergers. Meetings are closed to the public and the media, and no press releases are issued.
In the manner of a James Bond plot, up to 150 leading politicians and business people are
to gather in a ski resort in Switzerland for four days of discussion about the future of the
world. Meetings often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household
names. Under the group's leadership of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and onetime EU vice president, Viscount Davignon, the aim is purportedly to allow Western elites to share
ideas. But conspiracy theorists have accused it of everything from deliberately engineering the
credit crunch to planning to kill 80% of the world population. Denis Healey, co-founder of the
group, told the journalist Jon Ronson in his book Them that ... "The confidentiality enabled people
to speak honestly without fear of repercussions." Secret cabals extend beyond the Bilderberg
Group. The Illuminati ... is alleged to be an all powerful secret society. The Freemasons [is
another] secret fraternity society. The conspiracy theorists may get overexcited, but they have a
point, says Prof Andrew Kakabadse. The group has genuine power that far outranks the World
Economic Forum, which meets in Davos, he argues. And with no transparency, it is easy to see
why people are worried about its influence. The theme at Bilderberg is to bolster a consensus
around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe, he says. "There's a very
strong move to have a One World government in the mould of free market Western capitalism."
Note: Why is there so little reporting on this influential group in the major media? Thankfully, the
alternative media has had some good articles. And a Google search can be highly informative. For
many other revealing news articles from major media sources on powerful secret societies, click
here. And for reliable information covering the big picture of how and why these secret societies
are using government-sponsored mind control programs to achieve their agenda, click here.
A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives

2010-12-12, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/business/12advantage.html
On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in
Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in
the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable and controversial fields in
finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their
identities, have been strictly confidential. Drawn from giants like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman
Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the bankers form a powerful committee that helps oversee trading in
derivatives, instruments which, like insurance, are used to hedge risk. In theory, this group exists
to safeguard the integrity of the multitrillion-dollar market. In practice, it also defends the
dominance of the big banks. The banks in this group ... have fought to block other banks from
entering the market, and they are also trying to thwart efforts to make full information on prices and
fees freely available. Banks influence over this market, and over clearinghouses like the one this
select group advises, has costly implications for businesses large and small. The size and reach of
this market has grown rapidly over the past two decades. Pension funds today use derivatives to
hedge investments. States and cities use them to try to hold down borrowing costs. Airlines use
them to secure steady fuel prices. Food companies use them to lock in prices of commodities like
wheat or beef.
Note: To explore highly revealing news articles on the powerful secret societies which without
doubt back these top bankers, click here. For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources
detailing the amazing control of major banks over government and society, click here.
IRS: 400 richest averaged $345M in '07 income, 16% tax rate
2010-02-18, USA Today
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/02/irs-400-riche...
The [IRS] reports that the nation's 400 highest-earning households reported an average income of
$345 million in 2007 up 31% from 2006 and that their average tax bill fell to a 15-year low.
Bloomberg writes that the elite 400's average income more than doubled that year from
$131.1 million in 2001, the year Congress adopted tax cuts urged by then-President George
W. Bush. Each household in the top 400 of earners paid an average tax rate of 16.6 percent,
the lowest since the agency began tracking the data in 1992. Their average effective tax rate
was about half the 29.4 percent in 1993, the first year of President Bill Clinton's administration. The
top 400 earners received a total $138 billion in 2007, up from $105.3 billion a year earlier. On an
inflation-adjusted basis, their average income grew almost fivefold since 1992. Almost threequarters of the highest earners' income was in capital gains and dividends taxed at a 15 percent
rate set as part of Bush-backed tax cuts in 2003.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on income inequality, click here. And for a
powerful summary of 10 top corporations which avoided taxes in most egregious ways, see the
excellent list compiled by independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders at this link.
The $700 trillion elephant

2009-03-06, MarketWatch (Wall Street Journal Digital Network)
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/The-700-trillion-elephant-room/story.as...
There's a $700 trillion elephant in the room and it's time we found out how much it really weighs on
the economy. Derivative contracts total about three-quarters of a quadrillion dollars in "notional"
amounts, according to the Bank for International Settlements. These contracts are tallied in
notional values because no one really can say how much they are worth. But valuing them
correctly is exactly what we should be doing because these comprise the viral disease that has
infected the financial markets and the economies of the world. Try as we might to salvage the
residential real estate market, it's at best worth $23 trillion in the U.S. We're struggling to save the
stock market, but that's valued at less than $15 trillion. And we hope to keep the entire U.S.
economy from collapsing, yet gross domestic product stands at $14.2 trillion. Compare any of
these to the derivatives market and you can easily see that we are just closing the windows as a
tsunami crashes to shore. The total value of all the stock markets in the world amounts to less than
$50 trillion, according to the World Federation of Exchanges. To be sure, the derivatives market is
international. But much of the trouble we're in began with contracts "derived" from the
values associated with U.S. residential real estate market. These contracts were engineered
based on the various assumptions tied to those values. Few know what derivatives are
worth. I spoke with one derivatives trader who manages billions of dollars and she said she
couldn't even value her portfolio because "no one knows anymore who is on the other side of the
trade."
Note: Banks and financial firms deemed "too big to fail" were bailed out worldwide at taxpayers'
expense. But what will happen if losses in the derivatives market skyrocket? No government in the
world has the resources to save financial corporations from a collapse in their derivatives trading.
For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources detailing the amazing control of major banks
over government and society, click here.
Western Europe: New Elan in an Old Clan

1963-12-20, Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,938990,00.html
For seven generations, one European family has dominated an incredible part of all that money
can buy. From its London and Paris banks, the family's millions have been sent forth to ... business
enterprises on six continents. Some of its stately dwellings are the kind of mansions that mere San
Simeons hoped to imitate. This ancient and unusual banking dynasty shields itself from the
curious eye of the public, but the map and history of Europe have been changed by its
action and etched with its name: the House of Rothschild. Seldom unimaginative in the use of
their money, Rothschild gold has powered the ambitions of prime ministers, princes and popes. It
has financed wars and reparations treaties, changed the course of politics and bailed out armies
and nations. The Rothschilds strung railroads across the Continent, gained control of the Suez
Canal [and] carved diamond mines in the African veld. The British Rothschilds [are still] the world's
most important bullion dealers. No modern family ... has been so important for so long in European
business. Newer dynasties such as the Rockefellers and the Fords have made more millions, but
... ledgers cannot reflect the Rothschild lands, their possessions and influence accumulated over
the generations, their priceless collections of art. Today, the legend is very much aliveand being
added to. The Rothschilds are striking out in many new directions behind a silver curtain of
discretion. Rather than run companies by themselves, the Rothschilds often prefer to start or join
syndicates, placing their men on boards to exert maximum influence with minimum investment
risk. [They rely on] a far spreading network of agents, who seldom even admit that they are
employed by the Rothschilds.
Note: To read the full, fascinating article, click here. The major media have very rarely exposed the
power and wealth of the Rothschilds as in this article. Note that the article was written less than a
month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Could it be because of some anger at the elite
who killed Kennedy that this highly revealing article was actually published? For more on secret
societies which command huge hidden power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
media sources available here.
What Ever Happened to Antitrust?

2015-05-25, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Antitrust-laws-have-lost-all-effe...
The May 20 settlement between the Justice Department and five giant banks reveals the appalling
weakness of modern antitrust. The banks had engaged in the biggest price-fixing conspiracy
in modern history. It was a "brazen display of collusion" that went on for years, said
Attorney General Loretta Lynch. But there will be no trial [and] no executive will go to jail.
The fines ... will be treated by the banks as costs of doing business. America used to have
antitrust laws that permanently stopped corporations from monopolizing markets. No longer. The
result has been higher prices for the many, and higher profits for the few. It's a hidden upward
redistribution from the majority of Americans to corporate executives and wealthy shareholders.
Similar upward distributions are occurring elsewhere in the economy. The four largest food
companies control 82 percent of beef packing, 85 percent of soybean processing, 63 percent of
pork packing, and 53 percent of chicken processing. Monsanto alone owns the key genetic traits to
more than 90 percent of the soybeans planted by farmers in the United States, and 80 percent of
the corn. Big Agribusiness wants to keep it this way. The list goes on, industry after industry,
across the economy. Antitrust has been ambushed by the giant companies it was designed to
contain. The market is rigged. And unless government unrigs it through bold antitrust action to
restore competition, the upward distributions hidden inside the "free market" will become even
larger.
Note: The above article was written by former US Secretary of Labor and current professor of
public policy at UC Berkeley Robert Reich. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of
deeply revealing news articles about the systemically corrupt financial industry and the income
inequality that this contributes to.
The Coin of the Realm

2014-12-16, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/sns-201412161030--tms--amvoices...
The Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 banned insider trading but left it up to the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the courts to define it. Which they have -- in recent decades so broadly
that confidential information [is now Wall Street's] "coin of the realm." If a CEO tells his golf buddy
that his company is being taken over, and his buddy makes a killing on that information, no
problem. If his buddy leaks the information to a hedge fund manager and doesn't say where it
came from, the hedge fund manager can also use the information to make a bundle. CEOs and
other top executives ... routinely use their own inside knowledge of when their companies
will buy back large numbers of shares from the public -- thereby pumping up share prices -in order to time their own personal stock transactions. That didn't used to be legal. Until
1981, the Securities and Exchange Commission required companies to publicly disclose the
amount and timing of their buybacks. But Ronald Reagan's SEC removed those restrictions. Then,
George W. Bush's SEC allowed top executives, even though technically company "insiders" ... to
quietly cash in their stock options without public disclosure. Now it's normal practice. Many CEOs
are making vast fortunes not because they're good at managing their corporations but because
they're good at using insider information.
Note: Is the trend to relax the rules on insider trading related to the revolving door between big
banks and government? For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply
revealing articles about widespread corruption in government and banking and finance.
The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it
2014-03-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/truth-money-iou-bank-of-...
In the 1930s, Henry Ford is supposed to have remarked that it was a good thing that most
Americans didn't know how banking really works, because if they did, "there'd be a revolution
before tomorrow morning". Last week, something remarkable happened. The Bank of England let
the cat out of the bag. In a paper called "Money Creation in the Modern Economy", co-authored by
three economists from the Bank's Monetary Analysis Directorate, they stated outright that most
common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong, and that the kind of populist,
heterodox positions more ordinarily associated with groups such as Occupy Wall Street are
correct. It's [an incorrect] understanding that allows us to continue to talk about money as if
it were a limited resource like bauxite or petroleum, to say "there's just not enough money"
to fund social programmes, to speak of the immorality of government debt or of public
spending "crowding out" the private sector. To quote from its own initial summary: "Rather
than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending
creates deposits" When banks make loans, they create money. This is because money is really
just an IOU. The role of the central bank is to preside over a legal order that effectively grants
banks the exclusive right to create IOUs of a certain kind, ones that the government will recognise
as legal tender by its willingness to accept them in payment of taxes. There's really no limit on how
much banks could create. The Bank's job is to actually run the system, and of late, the system has
not been running especially well.
Note: For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking
Corruption Information Center.
100 Years Later, The Federal Reserve Has Failed At Everything It's Tried
2013-12-20, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendrickson/2013/12/20/100-years-later-the-fe...
On Dec. 23, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Owen Glass Act, creating the Federal
Reserve. As we note its centennial, what has the Fed accomplished during the last 100 years?
The stated original purposes were to protect the soundness of the dollar and banks and also to
lessen the jarring ups and downs of the business cycle. Oops. Under the Feds supervision, boom
and bust cycles have continued. Three of them have been severe: the Great Depression, the
stagflationary period of 1974-82, and the current Great Recession. Bank failures have occurred
in alarmingly high numbers. Depending on what measurements are used, the dollar has lost
between 95 and 98 percent of its purchasing power. (Amazingly, the Feds official position today is
that inflation is not high enough, so the erosion of the dollar continues as a matter of policy.)
Having failed to achieve its original goals, the Fed also has had a miserable record in
accomplishing later goals. The 1970 amendments to the Federal Reserve Act stipulated that the
Fed should promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate
long-term interest rates. In baseball parlance, the Fed has been 0-for-three. So, what has the
Fed accomplished during its century of existence? Well, it has become adept at bailing out
mismanaged banks. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed orchestrated the
big bailout of Wall Street. Politically, the Fed is repugnant. Its chairman is commonly referred to
as the second most powerful person in the country. In a democratic republic, should the second
most powerful policymaker be unelected?
Note: How remarkable for Forbes to publish an article chastising the Fed! The times are a
changin'! For an essay by noted financial researcher Ellen Brown on this occasion, click here. For
more on the collusion between government and the biggest banks, see the deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Here's why Wall Street has a hard time being ethical

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/25/wall-street-hard-time-ethical
My first year on Wall Street, 1993, I was paid 14 times more than I earned the prior year and three
times more than my father's best year. For that money, I helped my company create financial
products that were disguised to look simple, but which required complex math to properly
understand. That first year I was roundly applauded by my bosses, who told me I was clever, and
to my surprise they gave me $20,000 bonus beyond my salary. When I did ask, rather naively, if
this was all kosher, I would be assured multiple times that multiple lawyers and multiple managers
had approved the sales. One senior trader, consoling me late at night, reminded me, You are
playing in the big leagues now. If a customer wants a red suit, you sell them a red suit. If that
customer is Japanese, you charge him twice what it costs. Being paid very well also helped ease
any of my concerns. Feeling guilty, kid? Here take a big check. I was, for the first time in my life,
feeling valued for my math skills. Ego and money are nice salves for any potential feeling of guilt.
After a few years on Wall Street it was clear to me: you could make money by gaming
anyone and everything. The more clever you were, the more ingenious your ability to
exploit a flaw in a law or regulation, the more lauded and celebrated you became. Nobody
seemed to be getting called out. No move was too audacious. Traders got more and more
audacious, and corruption became more and more diffused through the system. By 2006 you
could open up almost any major business, look at its inside workings, and find some wrongdoing.
Note: For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
sources available here.
The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis

2013-06-19, Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-c...
It's long been suspected that ratings agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's helped trigger
the meltdown. A new trove of embarrassing documents shows how they did it. Everybody else got
plenty of blame: the greed-fattened banks, the sleeping regulators, the unscrupulous mortgage
hucksters. But what about the ratings agencies? Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a
pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, ... we
now know that the nation's two top ratings companies, Moody's and S&P, have for many
years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating
in exchange for cash. In incriminating e-mail after incriminating e-mail, executives and analysts
from these companies are caught admitting their entire business model is crooked. Ratings
agencies are the glue that ostensibly holds the entire financial industry together. Their primary
function is to help define what's safe to buy, and what isn't. But the financial crisis happened
because AAA ratings stopped being something that had to be earned and turned into
something that could be paid for. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission published a case
study in 2011 of Moody's in particular and discovered that between 2000 and 2007, the agency
gave nearly 45,000 mortgage-backed securities AAA ratings. One year Moody's doled out AAA
ratings to 30 mortgage-backed securities every day, 83 percent of which were ultimately
downgraded. "This crisis could not have happened without the rating agencies," the commission
concluded.
Note: This is another great, well researched article by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. Why isn't the
major media coming up with anything near the quality of this man's work? For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.
Traders Said to Rig Currency Rates to Profit Off Clients

2013-06-11, Bloomberg News
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-11/traders-said-to-rig-currency-rates-t...
Traders at some of the worlds biggest banks manipulated benchmark foreign-exchange rates
used to set the value of trillions of dollars of investments, according to five dealers with knowledge
of the practice. Employees have been front-running client orders and rigging WM/Reuters rates by
pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when the benchmarks are set,
said the current and former traders, who requested anonymity because the practice is
controversial. Dealers colluded with counterparts to boost chances of moving the rates, said
two of the people, who worked in the industry for a total of more than 20 years. The
behavior occurred daily in the spot foreign-exchange market and has been going on for at
least a decade, affecting the value of funds and derivatives, the two traders said. The
Financial Conduct Authority, Britains markets supervisor, is considering opening a probe into
potential manipulation of the rates, according to a person briefed on the matter. The $4.7-trilliona-day currency market, the biggest in the financial system, is one of the least regulated. The
inherent conflict banks face between executing client orders and profiting from their own trades is
exacerbated because most currency trading takes place away from exchanges. The WM/Reuters
rates are used by fund managers to compute the day-to-day value of their holdings. While the
rates arent followed by most investors, even small movements can affect the value of [the] $3.6
trillion in funds including pension and savings accounts that track global indexes.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click
here.
Cypriot Bailout Sends Shivers Throughout the Euro Zone

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/business/global/facing-bailout-tax-cypriots...
Europes decision to force depositors in Cypriot banks to share in the cost of the latest
euro zone bailout has sparked outrage in Cyprus and fears that a run on deposits over the
weekend might spread to larger countries at risk like Spain and Italy. Under an emergency deal
reached early Saturday in Brussels, a one-time tax of 9.9 percent is to be levied on Cypriot bank
deposits of more than 100,000 euros, or $130,000, effective [March 19]. That will hit wealthy
depositors mostly Russians who have put vast sums into Cypruss banks in recent years. But
smaller deposits will also be taxed, at 6.75 percent, meaning that the banks will be confiscating
money directly from retirees and ordinary workers to help pay the tab for the 10 billion euro
bailout or $13 billion. Most of the 10 billion euros will go to bail out Cypriot banks, which took a
blow when their substantial holdings of Greek government bonds were written down as part of that
countrys second bailout. The islands banks are also laden with loans made to Greek companies
and individuals, which have turned sour as Greece endures its fourth year of economic and
financial crisis. The "deposit tax", which is expected to raise 5.8 billion euros, was part of a bailout
agreement ... among finance ministers from euro countries and representatives of the International
Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. The Cypriot bailout follows those for Greece,
Portugal, Ireland and the Spanish banking sector and is the first where bank depositors will be
touched.
Note: What gives anyone the right to seize the deposits of ordinary bank account holders? Is this
the first step towards establishing a precedent for governments to seize anything they want from
ordinary citizens? For a report indicating that the Cypriot people may not take this attack lying
down, click here.
HSBC, too big to jail, is the new poster child for US two-tiered justice
system
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/12/hsbc-prosecution-fine-mon...
The US is the world's largest prison state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any nation
on earth, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. It imprisons people for longer periods of
time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west. This
sprawling penal state has been constructed over decades, by both political parties, and it punishes
the poor and racial minorities at overwhelmingly disproportionate rates. But not everyone is
subjected to that system of penal harshness. It all changes radically when the nation's most
powerful actors are caught breaking the law. With few exceptions, they are gifted not
merely with leniency, but full-scale immunity from criminal punishment. Thus have the most
egregious crimes of the last decade been fully shielded from prosecution when committed by those
with the greatest political and economic power: the construction of a worldwide torture regime,
spying on Americans' communications without the warrants required by criminal law by

government agencies and the telecom industry, an aggressive war launched on false pretenses,
and massive, systemic financial fraud in the banking and credit industry that triggered the 2008
financial crisis. This two-tiered justice system was the subject of [the] book, With Liberty and
Justice for Some. On Tuesday, not only did the US Justice Department announce that HSBC
would not be criminally prosecuted, but outright claimed that the reason is that they are too
important, too instrumental to subject them to such disruptions.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption,
click here.
Goldman Sachs' Global Coup D'etat

2012-11-27, Truthout
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12996-goldman-sachs-global-coup-de-tat.html
When the people of Greece saw their democratically elected Prime Minister George Papandreou
forced out of office in November of 2011 and replaced by an unelected Conservative technocrat,
Lucas Papademos, most were unaware of the bigger picture of what was happening. Most of us in
the United States were [equally] ignorant when, in 2008, [Congress] voted yes at the behest of
Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen and jammed through the biggest bailout of Wall Street in
our nations history. But now, as the Bank of England ... announces that former investment banker
Mark Carney will be its new chief, we cant afford to ignore whats happening around the world.
Steadily and stealthily Goldman Sachs is carrying out a global coup detat. Theres one
tie that binds Lucas Papademos in Greece, Henry Paulsen [and Timothy Geithner] in the
United States, and Mark Carney in the U.K., and thats Goldman Sachs. All were former
bankers and executives at the Wall Street giant, all assumed prominent positions of power, and
all played a hand after the global financial meltdown of 2007-08, thus making sure Goldman Sachs
weathered the storm and made significant profits in the process. As Europe descends [into]
economic crisis, Goldman Sachs's people are managing the demise of the continent. As the British
newspaper The Independent reported earlier this year, the Conservative technocrats currently
steering or who have steered post-crash fiscal policy in Greece, Germany, Italy, Belgium, France,
and now the UK, all hail from Goldman Sachs. In fact, the head of the European Central Bank
itself, Mario Draghi, was the former managing director of Goldman Sachs International.
Note: Once again truth-out.org carries this important article and vital information which no major
media has covered. Strangely, the entire website went down for a while not long after the article
was published. If the article cannot be found at the link above, click here. For deeply revealing
Libor: They all knew and no one acted

2012-07-14, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/libor-they-all-knew--and-no-o...
Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic failed to act on clear warnings that the Libor interest rate
was being falsely reported by banks during the financial crisis, it emerged last night. A cache of
documents released yesterday by the New York Federal Reserve showed that US officials had
evidence from April 2008 that Barclays was knowingly posting false reports about the rate
at which it could borrow in order to assuage market concerns about its solvency. An
unnamed Barclays employee told a New York Fed analyst, Fabiola Ravazzolo, on 11 April 2008:
"So we know that we're not posting, um, an honest Libor." He said Barclays started underreporting Libor because graphs showing the relatively high rates at which the bank had to borrow
attracted "unwanted attention" and the "share price went down". The verbatim note of the call
released by the Fed represents the starkest evidence yet that Libor-fiddling was discussed in high
regulatory circles years before Barclays' recent 290m fine. The New York Fed said that,
immediately after the call, Ms Ravazzolo informed her superiors of the information, who then
passed on her concerns to Tim Geithner, who was head of the New York Fed at the time. Mr
Geithner investigated and drew up a six-point proposal for ensuring the integrity of Libor which he
presented to the British Bankers Association, which is responsible for producing the Libor rate
daily. Mr Geithner, who is now US Treasury Secretary, also forwarded the six-point plan to the
Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on regulatory and financial
corruption and criminality, click here. For our highly revealing Banking Corruption Information
Center, click here.
Was the petrol price rigged too?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fuel/9401934/Libor-scandal-Was-the-pe...
Motorists may have been paying too much for their petrol because banks and other traders are
likely to have tried to manipulate oil prices in the same way they rigged interest rates, an official
report has warned. Concerns are growing about the reliability of oil prices, after a report for the
G20 found the market is wide open to manipulation or distortion. Traders from banks, oil
companies or hedge funds have an incentive to distort the market and are likely to try to report
false prices, it said. Petrol retailers use oil price benchmarks to decide how much to pay for future
supplies. The rate is calculated by data companies based on submissions from firms which
trade oil on a daily basis such as banks, hedge funds and energy companies. However,
like Libor ... the market is unregulated and relies on the honesty of the firms to submit
accurate data about all their trades. This is one of the major concerns raised in the G20 report,
published last month by the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). In the
study for global finance ministers, including George Osborne, the regulator warns that traders have
opportunities to influence oil prices for their own profit. It points out that the whole market is
voluntary, meaning banks and energy companies can choose which trades to make public.
IOSCO says this creates opportunity for a trader to submit a partial picture in order to influence
the [price] to the traders advantage.
corruption and criminality, click here.
Bank rate rigging scandal widens; Diamond fights on

2012-06-29, Chicago Tribune/Reuters
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-libor-banksbre85s0p4-2012062...
A scandal over the rigging of key interest rates could plunge the global banking industry into a
legal morass for years, analysts said. The head of the Bank of England said there needed to be
"real change" in the industry's culture. Referring to what he called the "deceitful manipulation" of
rates, Mervyn King told a news conference [that] the London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) should
be reformed to reflect actual market transactions. U.S. and British authorities fined Barclays
$453 million on Wednesday for manipulating LIBOR, which underpins some $360 trillion of
loans and financial contracts around the world - and analysts forecast more banks would
soon be named for collusion. Others predicted Barclays and other banks could face billions in
costs from litigation, especially in the United States, in much the same way that oil major BP ran
into drawn-out legal rows over its oil spill. Barclays was the first bank to settle in an investigation
which is looking at other large financial institutions in Europe, Japan and North America.
Note: This article states that LIBOR underpins some $360 trillion of loans and financial contracts
around the world. That's $50,000 for every man, woman, and child on this planet. And it is being
hugely manipulated. For more vitally important information on this, learn about the huge amounts
of derivatives being manipulated at this link and explore the excellent, reliable information in our
Banking Corruption Information Center available here.
Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html
Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of
advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet [and] five of the largest asset managers in
the United States. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. After almost 12
years at the firm ... I believe I have worked here long enough to understand ... its culture, its
people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive
as I have ever seen it. To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue
to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Today, if you make
enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a
position of influence. What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm's
"axes," which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other
products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential
profit. b) "Hunt Elephants." In English: get your clients -- some of whom are sophisticated, and
some of whom aren't -- to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. c) Find yourself
sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym. I
attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions
about how we can help clients. It's purely about how we can make the most possible money
off of them.
Note: The author of this article, Greg Smith, was a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of
the firms United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. For an
excellent compilation of news articles and government documents showing the huge risk of the
derivatives bubble being manipulate by Goldman Sachs and others, click here.
OCCs Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities:

Third Quarter 2011
2011-12-00, OCC (U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Administrator of
National Banks)
http://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/trading/derivativ...
The OCCs quarterly report on trading revenues and bank derivatives activities is based on Call
Report information provided by all insured U.S. commercial banks and trust companies, reports
filed by U.S. financial holding companies, and other published data. The notional amount of
derivatives held by insured U.S. commercial banks decreased $1.4 trillion, or 0.6%, from the
second quarter of 2011 to $248 trillion. Notional derivatives are 5.7% higher than at the same time
last year. Derivatives activity in the U.S. banking system continues to be dominated by a small
group of large financial institutions. The five banks with the most derivatives activity hold 96%
of all derivatives. Insured commercial banks have more limited legal authorities than do their
holding companies.
Note: Graphs in this OCC report (pg. 25 & 26) show that five U.S. banks, JPMorgan Chase,
Citibank, BofA, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, hold $235 of the $248 trillion above, while
their holding companies control an additional $311 of the $326 trillion in derivatives held by holding
companies. So these five banks and their holding companies combined hold $546 trillion in
derivatives, 95% of the U.S. derivatives market, nearly 80% of the global market, and equivalent
to over $75,000 for every person on the planet. If the above link fails, click here. For quarterly
derivative reports by the OCC going back to 1995, click here.
Lobbying firm's memo spells out plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street
2011-11-19, MSNBC
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/19/8884405-lobbying-firms-memo...
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an
$850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the
protests, according to a memo obtained by [MSNBC]. The proposal was written on the letterhead
of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGCs clients, the
American Bankers Association. CLGCs memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to
conduct opposition research on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct negative
narratives about the protests and allied politicians. Two of the memos authors, partners
Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, ROhio. The memo outlines a 60-day plan to conduct surveys and research on OWS and its
supporters so that Wall Street companies will be prepared to conduct a media campaign in
response to OWS. Wall Street companies likely will not be the best spokespeople for their own
cause, according to the memo. A big challenge is to demonstrate that these companies still have
political strength and that making them a political target will carry a severe political cost.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on the reasons why people nationwide are occupying
their city centers in protest against the collusion between powerful corporate and government
elites, click here.
The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-m...
It's the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally
unaccountable. But I doubt that one in 10 British people has any idea of what the Corporation of
the City of London is and how it works. As Nicholas Shaxson explains in his fascinating book
Treasure Islands, the Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls which
govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over
which parliament has no authority. This is ... an official old boys' network. In one respect at least
the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called
the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker's chair and ensures that,
whatever our elected representatives might think, the City's rights and privileges are protected.
The mayor of London's mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. The City has
exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy
jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK's crown
dependencies and overseas territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a
position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons.
It has also made the effective regulation of global finance almost impossible.
Note: To understand how democracy is easily circumvented, read this full article. For lots more
from reliable sources on the hidden background to the control over governments held by financial
powers, click here.
Citigroup to Pay $285 Million to Settle Fraud Charges

2011-10-20, Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204618704576640873051858568.html
Wall Street's total price tag on settlements with U.S. securities regulators for allegedly misleading
investors about mortgage bonds churned out ahead of the financial crisis surged past $1 billion
with a deal by Citigroup Inc. to pay $285 million ... to end civil-fraud charges by the Securities and
Exchange Commission. The SEC claimed Citigroup sold slices of the $1 billion mortgagebond deal without disclosing to investors that the bank was shorting $500 million of the
deal, or betting its assets would lose value. Several Wall Street firms have settled similar
claims by the SEC, which has generally stuck to the strategy used by the agency to get a $550
million settlement last year with Goldman Sachs Group Inc.. And the SEC's investigation of the
Wall Street mortgage machine isn't over yet. Lorin Reisner, deputy enforcement director at the
SEC, said civil mortgage-related cases against Goldman, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Countrywide
Financial Corp., New Century Financial Corp. and other companies "read like an index to unlawful
conduct in connection with the financial crisis." The SEC has collected a total of $1.03 billion
through mortgage-bond-deal settlements. In addition to Citigroup, the total includes Goldman, J.P.
Morgan, Royal Bank of Canada, Wells Fargo & Co. and Credit Suisse Group AG.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the illegal profiteering of major financial
corporations, click here.
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Loans

2011-08-22, Businessweek/Bloomberg News
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-08-22/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-t...
Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home
prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with
$104 billion of profits. By 2008, the housing markets collapse forced those companies to take
more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The
loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now
the full amounts have remained secret. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernankes [actions] included
lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same
amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The
largest borrower, Morgan Stanley, got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion
and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained
through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. It wasnt
just American finance. Almost half of the Feds top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances,
were European firms. Data gleaned [under the Freedom of Information Act] make clear for
the first time how deeply the worlds largest banks depended on the U.S. central bank to
stave off cash shortfalls. Even as the firms asserted in news releases or earnings calls that
they had ample cash, they drew Fed funding in secret.
Note: For a treasure trove of information from reliable sources on the government transfer of
public assets to private banks and financial corporations, click here.
The Fed Audit

2011-07-21, Official Government Website of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how
the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign
banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Among
the [Government Accountability Office] investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally
provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from
South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. The [report] also determined that the Fed
lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for
abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees
and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and
corporations that were given emergency loans. For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served
on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390
billion in financial assistance from the Fed. The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced
most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients
of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.
Note: We don't normally use the website of a member of the U.S. Senate as a source, but as
amazingly none of the media covered this vitally important story other than one blog on Forbes, we
are publishing this here. The GAO report to back up these claims is available for all to see at this
link. For how the media is so controlled, don't miss the powerful two-page summary with reports by
many award-winning journalists at this link. For another good article on the Fed's manipulations,
click here.
Top lobbying banks got biggest bailouts: study

2011-05-26, MSNBC/Reuters News
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=OBR&date=20110526&id=136...
The more aggressively a bank lobbied before the financial crisis, the worse its loans
performed during the economic downturn -- and the more bailout dollars it received,
according to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research this week. The
report, titled "A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis," said that banks' lobbying
efforts may be motivated by short-term profit gains, which can have devastating effects on the
economy. "Overall, our findings suggest that the political influence of the financial industry
played a role in the accumulation of risks, and hence, contributed to the financial crisis,"
said the report, written by three economists from the International Monetary Fund. Data collected
by the three authors -- Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra and Thierry Tressel -- show that the most
aggressive lobbiers in the financial industry from 2000 to 2007 also made the most toxic mortgage
loans. They securitized a greater portion of debt to pass the home loans onto investors and their
stock prices correlated more closely to the downturn and ensuing bailout. The banks' loans also
suffered from higher delinquencies during the downturn.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For lots more from reliable sources on corruption in the
government bailouts of the biggest banks, click here.
Food speculation: 'People die from hunger while banks make a killing
on food'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jan/23/food-speculation-ban...
Just under three years ago, people in the village of Gumbi in western Malawi went unexpectedly
hungry. Not like Europeans do if they miss a meal or two, but that deep, gnawing hunger that
prevents sleep and dulls the senses when there has been no food for weeks. Oddly, there had
been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa, and there was
plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason the price of staple foods such as maize and
rice nearly doubled in a few months. Unusually, too, there was no evidence that the local
merchants were hoarding food. It was the same story in 100 other developing countries. There
were food riots in more than 20 countries and governments had to ban food exports and subsidise
staples heavily. A new theory is emerging among traders and economists. The same banks,
hedge funds and financiers whose speculation on the global money markets caused the
sub-prime mortgage crisis are ... taking advantage of the deregulation of global commodity
markets [to make] billions from speculating on food and causing misery around the world.
As food prices soar again to beyond 2008 levels, it becomes clear that everyone is now being
affected. Food prices are now rising by up to 10% a year in Britain and Europe. What is more, says
the UN, prices can be expected to rise at least 40% in the next decade.
Note: Remember that speculation is behind almost all of the economic bubbles and busts. The
price of oil spiked a couple years ago almost purely because of speculators, while the oil
companies raked in record profits. It looks like the speculators are now driving food prices as high
as they can. For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources investigating the many different
strategies used by financial corporations to enrich themselves at the expense of common people,
click here.
What if growth had been equal?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/what_if_growth_had_been_e...
"The Conehead economy" [is] the idea that if the economy were a person, its growth over the past
few decades would've turned it from a normal-looking individual into a conehead. Jacob Hacker
and Paul Pierson get at this idea slightly differently [in their book Winner-Take-All Politics]. They've
got a table showing how incomes would look if growth had been equally shared from 1979 to 2006
-- much as it was in the decades before 1979. If growth had been equally shared, the middle
quintile would be making $64,395 today. Instead, they're making $52,100. That's a 23 percent
raise those folks didn't get -- and that I'm sure they would've noticed. The top 1 percent ... made,
on average, $1,200,300 in 2006. If growth had been equally shared in the three decades before
that, however, their incomes would've been cut by more than half, down to $506,002. That's real,
serious money we're talking about. The top 1 percent now accounts for 23.5 percent of the
national income if you include capital gains. In 1979, they only had 9.8 percent of the
nation's earnings. During that same period, tax rates on the richest Americans have
actually dropped. So as the economy went one way -- toward more money going to the rich
-- the tax system went the other.
Note: For lots more on income inequality from reliable sources, click here.
Speedy New Traders Make Waves Far From Wall Street

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/speedy-new-traders-make-waves-fa...
Inside the humdrum offices of a tiny trading firm called Tradeworx, workers ... tend high-speed
computers that typically buy and sell 80 million shares a day. But on the afternoon of May 6, as the
stock market began to plunge in the flash crash, someone here walked up to one of those
computers and typed the command HF STOP: sell everything and shutdown. Across the country,
several of Tradeworxs counterparts did the same. In a blink, some of the most powerful players in
the stock market high-frequency traders went dark. The result sent chills through the
financial world. After the brief 1,000-point plunge in the stock market that day, the growing role of
high-frequency traders in the nations financial markets is drawing new scrutiny. Over the last
decade, these high-tech operators have become sort of a shadow Wall Street from New Jersey
to Kansas City, from Texas to Chicago. Depending on whose estimates you believe, highfrequency traders account for 40 to 70 percent of all trading on every stock market in the
country. Some of the biggest players trade more than a billion shares a day. These are shortterm bets. Very short. The founder of Tradebot, in Kansas City, Mo., told students in 2008 that
his firm typically held stocks for 11 seconds. Tradebot, one of the biggest high-frequency
traders around, had not had a losing day in four years, he said.
Note: For key reports on the dubious practices which underlay the financial crisis and the
impoverishment of the public treasury, click here.
Battle Over the Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/nyregion/14fed.html
Mark Pittman, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News ... filed a Freedom of Information Act
request with the Federal Reserve Board, seeking the details of its unprecedented efforts to funnel
money to the collapsing banks of Wall Street. That was in September 2008. Just more than a year
later, Mr. Pittman ... died unexpectedly at age 52. But his cause has persevered. It is now known
as Bloomberg L.P. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, an attempt to unlock the vault of
the largest Wall Street rescue plan in decades or, as the legal briefs put it, to break down a wall
of secrecy that the Fed has kept in place for nearly two years in its controversial use of public
money to prop up financial institutions. The Federal Reserve has wrapped itself in secrecy
since the turn of the 20th century, when a select group of financiers met at the private
Jekyll Island Club off the eastern coast of Georgia and, forgoing last names to preserve
their anonymity among the staff, drafted legislation to create a central bank. Its secrecy, of
course, persists today, with Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, refusing to tell even
Congress which banks received government money under the bailout. There is also a heated
battle to force the Fed to disclose its role in the controversial attempt to save the insurance giant
American International Group.
Note: Isn't it interesting that Pittman died at age 52 while trying to expose manipulations of the big
bankers? For a one-minute video proving the existence of a secret weapon which can cause an
undetectable heart attack, click here. For a concise, excellent background on the hidden role of the
Federal Reserve, click here.
G30, Ripe for Conspiracy Theorists

2009-12-04, Wall Street Journal blog
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/12/04/g30-ripe-for-conspiracy-theorists
If you want to encourage the kind of conspiracy theories that have prospered in the wake of
last years financial crisis those that describe a secret cabal of elites running the world
try doing the following: Have a group of 30 high-powered economists, government officials
and bankers meet under the auspices of an international group that shares ideas on how to run the
global financial architecture. Have your Board of Trustees led by an influential former Federal
Reserve chairman whos now working as a senior advisor to the president of the United States.
Name the former vice chairman of bailout behemoth AIG as the groups Chairman and CEO (It
helps that he [is] former governor of the Bank of Israel). Ensure that membership includes the likes
of these: A former Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard who also now works as a top
presidential economic advisor; Citigroups senior vice chairman; a former IMF deputy managing
director and the current governor of the Bank of Israel; and top representatives of the worlds four
most important central banks. Hold two days of closed-door meetings at the New York Fed. Do not
publicize a list of attendees and leave everyone guessing about the agenda. These were the
circumstances surrounding Fridays start to the 62nd plenary meetings of the Group of 30,
whose formal name is The Consultative Group on International Economic and Monetary Affairs,
Inc.
Note: The article interestingly then goes on to claim that this secret meeting of the world's top
bankers is not really anything to worry about, that they are really working for the public good. If so,
why not have the meeting open and widely covered by the press? For many other revealing
articles from major media reports on secret societies and secret meetings of the most rich and
powerful people in our world, click here.
Public servants on $20m a year

2009-12-03, BBC News blog
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2009/12/public_servants_...
Twice a year, the chairmen and chief executives of Europe's biggest banks gather in secret.
They meet under the auspices of a hush-hush club formed after World War II, whose
operations are so mysterious that even the grandees who attend it seem unclear what it's
really called. One bank supremo told me its name was the Instituts d'Etudes Financieres ...
another that it went by the moniker IIEB. Either way, what I can tell you is that it attracts a pretty
high calibre of banker - and that its last meeting was just a few weeks ago at the plush London
hotel, Claridges, where the main item on the agenda was the topical question of bankers' bonuses.
Present were ... Stephen Green of HSBC, Philip Hampton of RBS, Marcus Agius of Barclays and
David Mayhew of JP Morgan Cazenove, and their counterparts from Germany, Italy, France and so
on. Now, let's be clear: the idea that banks would ever collude to solve a mutual problem would be
an outrageous and unwarranted slur. That said, they would dearly love a collective agreement to
cease hostilities on bankers' pay, because they know there is a one-to-one correlation between
each million pound bonus they pay and damage to their reputations. But although they explored
whether they could reach an entente on capping bankers' pay, they abandoned the ambition as a
hopeless cause. Why? Because they can't get the Americans into the room. So what is the going
rate for RBS's top profit generators? Last year, when the bonus pool was 900m [over $1.3 billion]
for the investment bank, several hundred of its executives earned more than a million pounds
each. [This year] quite a number of its top traders will be expecting $10m plus.
Note: You can bet that the money for this year's bonuses is coming out of taxpayers' pockets
through the huge bailouts. So here is yet another secret meeting of the world's top bankers not
being reported in the major media except for this BBC blog. For many other revealing articles from
major media reports on secret societies and secret meetings of the most rich and powerful people
in our world, click here.
Senate Blocks Bid to Audit Federal Reserve

2009-07-09, Fox News
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO, HOST: Despite growing pressure from the House and ordinary
people, the Senate decided not to increase scrutiny on the Federal Reserve. They actually blocked
a bid on procedural grounds to have the Government Accountability Office audit the Federal
Reserve and issue a report. Here is Republican Senator Jim DeMint. Senator DeMint, ... Why
should the Federal Reserve be audited? DEMINT: Well, the value of our dollar, our whole
economic system, rides on [this] unelected, secret agency called the Federal Reserve. We're not
sure what they're doing right now. And Ron Paul in the House with over half of the House signing
up as cosponsors, and me and Bernie Sanders in the Senate are pushing the idea of a complete
audit of the Federal Reserve, because frankly, a lot of us here in this country and around the world,
are concerned that we're going to destroy the American dollar and the worldwide reserve currency.
NAPOLITANO: How is it that legislation that has more than half the members of the House
behind it and is proposed by a staunch conservative Republican like you and then
independent socialists like Bernie Sanders is stopped on the floor of the Senate cold before
you can even formally introduce it, before you can make a speech in favor of it? DEMINT:
Well, if we could get the Federal Reserve under control, it would make it more difficult for the
Obama administration, I think, to carry out the continued spending and growing of debt. Because
one thing we're concerned about is the Federal Reserve ... will do what we call monetize the debt,
basically print money, buy our own debt as a country, and devalue the dollar that way.
Note: For two powerful, short videos revealing efforts to expose the intriguing secrets of the
Federal Reserve, click here and here. If you care about the financial health of the U.S. and its
implications in our world, these are both must watch videos.
'Bailout psychology' destroying the economy

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/04/INR316Q4F5.DTL
President Obama must stop the bailouts and start the prosecutions. It's time to focus on antipoverty programs to protect the growing unemployed from hunger and homelessness. Stealth
payments to billionaire bondholders must cease immediately. Since the mid-1970s, average
Americans' wages have stayed flat when adjusted for inflation. Productivity rose, profits
rose, but not wages. To compensate for stagnant wages and the desire to consume more
each year, Americans worked more, retired later, spouses went to work, and many burned
savings. Then they started borrowing. Debt became America's growth industry. The scheme
collapsed because Americans' wages weren't sufficient to pay the interest on existing debts. The
administration and the banks keep talking about a credit crisis, but there isn't one. Banks are
lending. If you want a mortgage and can afford to pay it back, you can borrow at low rates today.
But most Americans don't want more debt because it is a debilitating path to poverty. The average
American family already pays 14 percent of annual income in interest to banks. To fix this fake
crisis, there are fake discussions about what the government must do. The endlessly recycled plan
to buy "troubled" assets isn't to get banks lending again, because they haven't stopped lending.
The plan seeks for taxpayers to buy worthless assets at high prices to absorb rich investors'
losses. That's it. It keeps coming back as a different plan, but with that same goal. There is no goal
beyond that one goal: keep rich people from taking losses.
Note: For an extensive archive of key reports on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout,
click here.
The Madoff Economy

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&...
The revelation that Bernard Madoff brilliant investor (or so almost everyone thought),
philanthropist, pillar of the community was a phony has shocked the world, and understandably
so. The scale of his alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme is hard to comprehend. Yet ... how different,
really, is Mr. Madoffs tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole? The financial
services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of the nations income over the past
generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet, at this point, it looks as if
much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it. And its not just a matter of
money: the vast riches achieved by those who managed other peoples money have had a
corrupting effect on our society as a whole. Last year, the average salary of employees in
securities, commodity contracts, and investments was more than four times the average salary in
the rest of the economy. Earning a million dollars was nothing special, and even incomes of $20
million or more were fairly common. The incomes of the richest Americans have exploded over the
past generation, even as wages of ordinary workers have stagnated. High pay on Wall Street was
a major cause of that divergence. Wall Streets ill-gotten gains corrupted and continue to
corrupt politics, in a nicely bipartisan way. From Bush administration officials ... who looked the
other way as evidence of financial fraud mounted, to Democrats who still havent closed the
outrageous tax loophole that benefits executives at hedge funds and private equity firms ...
politicians have walked when money talked. The pay system on Wall Street lavishly rewards
the appearance of profit, even if that appearance later turns out to have been an illusion.
Note: This entire, penetrating article is well worth a read at the link above. For many revealing
reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
US diluted loan rules before crash

2008-12-01, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/business&id=6532267
The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interestonly mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of
the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold
the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch
wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a
job. Bowing to aggressive lobbying - along with assurances from banks that the troubled
mortgages were OK - regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were
released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was
under way. The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing
philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in
the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since
the 1930s. Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now
either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they
insisted would never come. In 2005, faced with ominous signs the housing market was in jeopardy,
bank regulators proposed new guidelines for banks writing risky loans. Those proposals all were
stripped from the final rules.
Note: For many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from reliable sources, click here.
All Fall Down

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26friedman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...
I spent Sunday afternoon brooding over a [New York Times] front-page article, entitled ["Citigroup
Saw No Red Flags Even as It Made Bolder Bets]. In searing detail it exposed ... how some of our
countrys best-paid bankers were overrated dopes who had no idea what they were selling, or
greedy cynics who did know and turned a blind eye. But it wasnt only the bankers. This
financial meltdown involved a broad national breakdown in personal responsibility,
government regulation and financial ethics. So many people were in on it: People who had
no business buying a home, with nothing down and nothing to pay for two years; people who had
no business pushing such mortgages, but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business
bundling those loans into securities and selling them to third parties, as if they were AAA bonds,
but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business rating those loans as AAA, but made
fortunes doing so; and people who had no business buying those bonds and putting them on their
balance sheets so they could earn a little better yield, but made fortunes doing so. Citigroup was
involved in, and made money from, almost every link in that chain. And the banks executives,
including ...the former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, were ... so ensnared by the cronyism
between the banks risk managers and risk takers (and so bought off by their bonuses) that they
had no interest in stopping it. These are the people whom taxpayers bailed out on Monday to the
tune of what could be more than $300 billion.
Note: For many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from major media sources, click here.
So When Will Banks Give Loans?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/business/25nocera.html?partner=rssuserland&...
Chase recently received $25 billion in federal funding. What effect will that have on the business
side and will it change our strategic lending policy? It was Oct. 17, just four days after JPMorgan
Chases chief executive, Jamie Dimon, agreed to take a $25 billion capital injection courtesy of the
United States government, when a JPMorgan employee asked that question [during] an employeeonly conference call. The JPMorgan executive who was moderating the employee conference call
didnt hesitate to answer. What we ... think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on
the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. I think there are
going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an
opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way. Read that answer as many times as you want
you are not going to find a single word in there about making loans to help the American economy.
On the contrary: It is starting to appear as if one of Treasurys key rationales for the
recapitalization program namely, that it will cause banks to start lending again is a fig
leaf, Treasurys version of the weapons of mass destruction. In fact, Treasury wants banks
to acquire each other and is using its power to inject capital to force a new and wrenching round
of bank consolidation. Treasury would even funnel some of the bailout money to help banks buy
other banks. And, in an almost unnoticed move, it recently put in place a new tax break, worth
billions to the banking industry, that has only one purpose: to encourage bank mergers. As a tax
expert, Robert Willens, put it: It couldnt be clearer if they had taken out an ad.
Note: Was the real purpose of the "bailout" to strengthen the biggest banks by enabling them to
gobble up the smaller ones at the public's expense? No wonder the legislation was rushed through
without discussion! For lots more highly revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Davos: Wealth, power and a sprinkling of stardust

2008-01-22, The Independent (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/davos-wealth...
For a few days an obscene proportion of the world's wealth and clout will be concentrated
in one normally obscure Alpine town, [Davos, Switzerland]. Some 27 heads of state or
government; 113 cabinet ministers; hundreds of chief executives, bankers, sovereign
wealth fund managers, economists and the media: about 2,500 participants in all. So who's
coming and what will they be chattering about? The official co-chairs of the Forum are mostly wellknown names: Tony Blair, of JP Morgan; James Dimon, chairman and CEO of JP Morgan; KV
Kamath, MD and CEO of India's ICICI Bank; Henry Kissinger, chairman of Kissinger Associates;
Indra K Noovi, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo; David J O'Reilly, chairman and CEO of Chevron
Corporation; and Wang Jianzhou, CEO of China Mobile Communications Corporation. The
prominent role allotted to Mr Wang, while not entirely novel, is nonetheless significant. In 2008, for
the first time, China will contribute more to the growth of the world economy than the United
States. Double-digit growth in China should still just be possible this year, and it alone seems to
stand between the world and a full-blown recession. Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) from China
and elsewhere have already been busy re-capitalising the West's stricken banks. The recycling of
trillions of dollars of trade surpluses and petro dollars means that such deals will become more
prevalent.
Note: Yet these meetings are kept largely secret. Why isn't the media giving lots more coverage to
this gathering of some of the most powerful people on the planet? For other reliable, verifiable
reports on secret meetings of the power elite of the world, click here.
Global Derivatives Market Expands to $516 Trillion

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a58EF32GpHeg
The market for derivatives grew at the fastest pace in at least nine years to $516 trillion in
the first half of 2007, the Bank for International Settlements said. Credit-default swaps,
contracts designed to protect investors against default and used to speculate on credit
quality, led the increase, expanding 49 percent to cover a notional $43 trillion of debt in the
six months ended June 30, the BIS said in a report published late yesterday. Derivatives of debt,
currencies, commodities, stocks and interest rates rose 25 percent from the previous six months,
the biggest jump since the Basel, Switzerland-based bank began compiling the data. Investors
have been turning to credit derivatives as a way to speculate on a growing risk of defaults amid
record U.S. mortgage foreclosures. The money at risk through credit-default swaps increased 145
percent from last year to $721 billion, the report said. The amount at stake in the entire derivatives
market is $11.1 trillion, according to the BIS, which was formed in 1930 to monitor financial
markets and regulate banks. Derivatives are financial instruments derived from stocks, bonds,
loans, currencies and commodities, or linked to specific events like changes in interest rates or the
weather. The report is based on contracts traded outside of exchanges in over-the- counter
market.
Note: Like most reporting in the major media, this article trivializes the massive size of the
derivatives market. $516 trillion is equivalent to $75,000 for every man, woman, and child in the
world! Do you think the financial industry is out of control? For lots more powerful, reliable
information on major banking manipulations, click here. For a powerful analysis describing just
how crazy things have gotten and giving some rays of hope by researcher David Wilcock, click
here.
Class Struggle
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009246
The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's
steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th
century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years.
Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our
wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the
economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national
income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate
America, through a vast system of loopholes. Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve
compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic's range. As this
newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million
a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been
raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20
times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much. Trickle-down
economics didn't happen. Wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the
national wealth. This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries.
A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris.
Note: For some reason the Wall Street Journal has removed this article. You can read it on the
website of the article's author at this link.
The Rothschild story: A golden era ends for a secretive dynasty

http://web.archive.org/web/20070115044040/http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/th...
The news that the bankers Rothschild are to withdraw from the gold market, in which they have
been a major player for two centuries, has been hailed as the end of an era. In one sense, of
course, it is. But in another way it marks out the continuation of an even older tradition - the ability
of the family which has founded one of the world's largest private banking dynasties to
sustain their secretive fortune, which industry insiders count not in billions but in trillions,
and keep it within the family. Secrecy has been a hallmark of the Rothschilds from the
outset. The Rothschilds created the world of banking as we know it today. [They] invented, or
at any rate popularised, the government bond, which allowed investors, big and small, to buy bits
of the debts of sovereign states by purchasing fixed-interest bearer bonds. It brought investment in
railways, the industrial revolution and ventures like the Suez Canal. The Rothschilds got a cut of
everything. They made billions in the 1980s from Margaret Thatcher's privatisations of state-owned
industries on which they advised. In France after their bank was nationalised by the Socialist
president Francois Mitterrand they slowly built a new business which, under Baron David de
Rothschild, has risen to the top ranks of the merger and acquisition league tables. They have
pulled out of retail fund management - into which they went with much fanfare only three years
back - and now they are pulling out of oil and gold in favour of the higher-margin areas of private
banking and wealth management
Note: For some reason this article was removed from the website of the Independent, which is
why the above link takes you to a cached version of this revealing article. For more on financial
corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Military waste under fire: $1 trillion missing

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/18/MN251738.DTL
The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a toilet seat...couldn't account
for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles
and planes. The nonpartisan General Accounting Office has raised the volume of its perennial
complaints about the financial woes at Defense, which recently failed its seventh audit in as many
years. "Overhauling DOD's financial management operations represent a challenge that goes far
beyond financial accounting," GAO chief David Walker told lawmakers. Recent government reports
suggest the Pentagon's money management woes have reached astronomical proportions. A
GAO report found Defense inventory systems so lax that the U.S. Army lost track of 56
airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. When military leaders
were scrambling to find enough chemical and biological warfare suits to protect U.S.
troops, the department was caught selling these suits as surplus on the Internet "for
pennies on the dollar," a GAO official said. "We are overhauling our financial management
system," said Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's chief financial officer. "The Pentagon has failed to
address financial problems that dwarf those of Enron," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles.
Gregory Kutz, director of GAO's financial management division [said] "I've been to Wal-Mart. They
were able to tell me how many tubes of toothpaste were in Fairfax, Va. And DOD can't find its
chem-bio suits." Opposition to defense spending is portrayed as unpatriotic. Legislators are often
more concerned about winning Pentagon pork than controlling defense waste.
Note: You can read the GAO Report (Page 17 on missing planes). Page two states, "To date, no
major part of DOD has yet been able to pass the test of an independent audit." For an intriguing
Online Journal article exposing the deep role of the Pentagon's former CFO (Chief Financial
Officer) Zakheim in this corruption, click here. Why wasn't and isn't this front page headlines? Why
are newspaper editors keeping this most vital information from the public?
IMF's four steps to damnation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2001/apr/29/business.mbas
Joseph Stiglitz, ex-chief economist of the World Bank, ... was in Washington for the big confab of
the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. From sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we
obtained a cache of documents marked, 'confidential' and 'restricted'. Stiglitz helped translate one,
a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed,
says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the
Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It
concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring
agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature. The Bank hands every minister the same
four-step programme. Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the selloffs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics happily flogged their electricity and water companies. After privatisation, Step Two is capital market
liberalisation. Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate
and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days. And
when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF
demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%. Step Three: market-based
pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. Step Four: free trade. This
is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens
to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said.
Note: For an essay by John Perkins, an insider who was directly involved in these severe
manipulations, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on
government collusion in financial corruption, click here.
Ford Sees Wealth in Muscle Shoals: Edison Backs Him Up

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=3&res=9C04E0D7103EEE3ABC4E53...
Henry Ford [is] convinced that if Congress will complete and lease to him the water-power
developments [at Muscle Shoals], he can make this whole section of the South more prosperous.
Thomas A. Edison indorsed Mr. Fords views. He is very earnest in his support of Fords [proposal]
to finance Muscle Shoals by an issue of currency ... directly by the Government. "If our nation can
issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill," said Mr. Edison. "[When Congress authorizes] an
issue of bonds, it must go out to the money brokers. We then must pay interest to the money
brokers for the use of our own money. In all our great bond issues, the interest is always greater
than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost on that
account. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money
brokers collect twice the amount of the bond ... whereas the currency pays nobody but
those who directly contribute. Both are promises to pay: but one promise fattens the
usurer, and the other helps the people. It is the money broker, the money profiteer, the private
banker, that I oppose. It is a terrible situation when the Government ... must go into debt and
submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the [issuance of currency]. The
people must pay any way: why should they be compelled to pay twice as the bond system
compels them? [If] Government will adopt this policy of increasing its national wealth without
contributing to the interest collector ... you will see an era of progress and prosperity in this country
such as could never have come otherwise. Mr. Edison reiterated his belief [that if] the currency
method is tried in raising money for public improvements, the country will never go back to the
borrow method.
Note: If the above link fails, you can read the a copy of the full, fascinating article at this link or this
one. The entire article contains lots of amazing revelations of how big bankers keep us in debt.
How fascinating that Ford and Edison, both ultra-wealthy businessmen, here are arguing strongly
against the privately owned Federal Reserve system through which private bankers print US
money and charge interest on it, and for the US government printing its own money. This would
avoid US citizens having to pay the big bankers all of the interest on much of the national debt. For
lots of evidence to support this way of thinking, click here.
U.S. probes banks over metals markets

2015-02-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/02/24/us-probes-metals-market-manipu...
U.S. authorities are investigating major banks over potential manipulation of the precious metals
market, the latest development in a series of probes related to major financial benchmarks. HSBC
is among at least 10 major banks being investigated by U.S. authorities for possible rigging
of the price-setting process for gold, silver, platinum and palladium, The Wall Street Journal
reported late Monday. The report said other banks being scrutinized include: Goldman Sachs;
JPMorgan Chase; Britain-based Barclays; Swiss banking giants UBS and Credit Suisse; Bank of
Nova Scotia; Germany-based Deutsche Bank; France-based Socit Gnrale; and South Africabased Standard Bank Group. U.S. authorities declined to comment. Goldman Sachs, HSBC,
Deutsche Bank and Barclays, HSBC, UBS and Bank of Nova Scotia have been named as
defendants in various putative class-action lawsuits in U.S. federal courts over suspected
manipulation of precious metals pricing. The complaints contend that bank traders conspired
to manipulate the price of metal derivatives in a bid to reap profits on proprietary trades.
The new U.S. investigations follow separate bank probes launched earlier over suspected
manipulation of the $5.3-billion-a-day foreign exchange currency trading market, along with rigging
of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), which is used to set rates on billions of dollars in
loans, credit cards and mortgages.
Note: When it comes to international banking, it appears that almost everything is rigged. For
more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the
systemically corrupt financial industry.
A Whistleblower's Horror Story

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/a-whistleblowers-horror-story-20150218
One man's story in particular highlights just about everything that can go wrong when you give
evidence against your bosses in America: former Countrywide/Bank of America whistleblower
Michael Winston. Two years ago this month, Winston was being celebrated in the news as a hero.
He'd blown the whistle on Countrywide Financial, the bent mortgage lender that ... nearly blew up
the global economy. Today, Winston [has] spent over a million dollars fighting Countrywide (and
the firm that acquired it, Bank of America) in court. At first, that fight proved a good gamble, as a
jury granted him a multi-million-dollar award for retaliation and wrongful termination. But
after Winston won that case, an appellate judge not only wiped out that jury verdict, but
allowed Bank of America to counterattack him. The bank eventually beat him for nearly
$98,000 in court costs. That single transaction means a good guy in the crisis drama, Winston,
had by the end of 2014 paid a larger individual penalty than virtually every wrongdoer connected
with the financial collapse of 2008. When Winston protested his preposterous punishment on the
grounds that a trillion-dollar company recouping legal fees from an unemployed whistleblower was
unreasonable and unnecessary, a California Superior Court judge denied his argument get this
on the grounds that Winston failed to prove a disparity in resources between himself and Bank
of America! Four years later, we're still waiting for the first criminal conviction against any individual
for crisis-era corruption. There's been no significant reform. What we've seen instead is a series of
cash deals with the most corrupt companies.
Note: Countrywide bought political influence to more effectively defraud institutional investors and
taxpayers. Thanks to Winston, they were caught and proven guilty. But Bank of America
purchased Countrywide, and has been paying off officials in secret deals to continue skirting the
law without admitting wrongdoing. And Michael Winston now has to pay Bank of America for their
trouble.
Wall Street's threat to the American middle class

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/sns-201501271130--tms--amvoices...
The middle class can't be saved unless Wall Street is tamed. Yet most presidential
aspirants don't want to talk about taming the Street because Wall Street is one of their
largest sources of campaign money. Six years ago ... the financial collapse crippled the
middle class and poor, consuming the savings of millions of average Americans and causing 23
million to lose their jobs, 9.3 million to lose their health insurance and some 1 million to lose their
homes. A repeat performance is not unlikely. Wall Street's biggest banks are much larger now
than they were then. Five of them hold about 45 percent of America's banking assets. In 2000,
they held 25 percent. Meanwhile, the Street's lobbyists have gotten Congress to repeal a provision
of Dodd-Frank curbing excessive speculation by the big banks. The language was drafted by
Citigroup and personally pushed by Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. It's nice that
presidential aspirants are talking about rebuilding America's middle class. But to be credible, the
candidates have to [propose] to limit the size of the biggest Wall Street banks, to resurrect the
Glass-Steagall Act (which used to separate investment banking from commercial banking), to
define insider trading the way most other countries do (using information any reasonable person
would know is unavailable to most investors), and to close the revolving door between the Street
and the U.S. Treasury. It also means not depending on the Street to finance their campaigns.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about
corruption in government and the financial industry.
The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-9-billion-witness-20141106
[Alayne] Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in
American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid
$9 billion ... to keep the public from hearing. In 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank,
Fleischmann first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as "massive criminal securities
fraud." This past year she watched as Holder's Justice Department struck a series of historic
settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these
deals was cash for secrecy. The idea that Holder had cracked down on Chase was ... fiction.
The settlement, says Kelleher, "was ... crafted to bypass the court system. The DOJ and JP-
Morgan were trying to avoid disclosure of their dirty deeds." Chase emerged with barely a scratch.
The settlement put you, me and every other American taxpayer on the hook. Chase was allowed
to treat some $7 billion of the settlement as a tax write-off. The bank's share price soared six
percent on news of the settlement. Chase actually made money from the deal. What's more,
to defray the cost of this and other fines, Chase last year laid off 7,500 lower-level employees. But
no one made out better than [Chase CEO Jamie] Dimon. The board awarded [him] a 74 percent
raise. The people who stole all those billions are still in place. And the bank is more untouchable
than ever. Mary Jo White and Andrew Ceresny, who represented Chase for some of this case,
have since been named to the two top jobs at the SEC.
Note: Read this entire, fascinating article to understand just how corrupt both the banks and our
government are. For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing
articles about widespread corruption in government and banking and finance. For additional
information, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information
Center.
Citigroup to pay $7 billion for egregious misconduct leading up to

financial crisis
2014-07-14, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/citigroup-pay-7-billion-egregious-misconduct-l...
JUDY WOODRUFF: We should start praying. I wouldnt be surprised if half of these loans went
down thats what a trader at Citigroup wrote in an e-mail in 2007, after reviewing thousands of
mortgages bought and sold by the bank. Today, the Justice Department cited those very words as
it announced a $7 billion settlement with the bank. The government said Citi committed
egregious misconduct in the lead-up to the financial crisis. Of the $7 billion, Citigroup will
pay $4 billion to the Justice Department. More than $2.5 billion is set aside for whats
described as consumer relief. Tony West is associate attorney general. And he was the
governments lead negotiator in this case. Lay out for us, what was this egregious conduct and
how many people at Citigroup were engaged in it? TONY WEST: Citibank packaged securities,
packaged loans, mortgage loans into these securities, which they sold to investors. What they
didnt tell investors was what the actual quality of those loans were. And so you had these
mortgage bond deals that had quality that was far less than what Citi was representing to investors
that they were. JUDY WOODRUFF: And how many people knew about this, and did the
knowledge go all the way to the top? TONY WEST: We know from the evidence that bankers were
warned that the quality of the loans that they were packaging into these securities wasnt what they
were telling investors they were, but they ignored those warning signs. They ignored that due
diligence. Certainly enough ... bankers knew that we felt that we could demand a very high, in fact,
an historically high, penalty from Citibank.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing financial corruption news
articles from reliable major media sources.
Elizabeth Warrens A Fighting Chance: An exclusive excerpt on the

foreclosure crisis
2014-04-26, Boston Globe
http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/04/26/elizabeth-warren-new-memoir-ex...
In fall 2009, Secretary Timothy Geithner invited people working on TARP oversight to a meeting.
After we had listened to the secretary go on and on about his departments cheery projections for
recovery, I finally interrupted with a question about a new topic. Why, I asked, had Treasurys
response to the flood of foreclosures been so small? The Congressional Oversight Panel had been
sharply critical of Treasurys foreclosure plan. We thought that the program was poorly designed
and poorly managed and provided little permanent help, and we worried that it would reach too few
people to make any real difference. The secretary ... quickly launched into a general discussion of
his approach to dealing with foreclosures, rehashing the plan that the Congressional Oversight
Panel had already reviewed. Next, he explained why Treasurys efforts were perfectly adequate.
Then he hit his key point: The banks could manage only so many foreclosures at a time, and
Treasury wanted to slow down the pace so the banks wouldnt be overwhelmed. And this was
where the new foreclosure program came in: It was just big enough to foam the runway for them.
There it was: The Treasury foreclosure program was intended to foam the runway to protect
against a crash landing by the banks. Millions of people were getting tossed out on the
street, but the secretary of the Treasury believed the governments most important job was
to provide a soft landing for the tender fannies of the banks.
Note: Adapted from A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren. For more on the government's
collusion with the big banks before, during and after the 2008 financial crisis brought about by
fraudulent mortgage sales, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
Canadian Brad Katsuyama in spotlight over 'rigged' markets allegation

2014-04-01, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-brad-katsuyama-in-spotlight-over-rig...
A Canadian who works on Wall Street is emerging in some quarters as a hero for revealing the
inner workings of high frequency traders who critics have accused of rigging the stock market and
taking investors for billions. Brad Katsuyama now runs IEX the Investors Exchange a new Wall
Street trading platform he founded. But it was in his former capacity as the head trader in New
York for RBC Capital Markets that he caught the attention of popular financial writer Michael Lewis.
Katsuyama gets star billing in Lewiss new book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. Katsuyama told
Lewis that he had uncovered the methods high frequency traders use to get what he considers to
be an unfair advantage over other investors. Katsuyama noticed that when he would send a large
stock order to the market, it would only be partially filled, and then he would have to pay a higher
price for the rest of the order. When he investigated, he found that his orders travelled along fibreoptic lines and hit the closest exchange first, where high frequency traders would use their speed
advantage to buy the shares he wanted and then sell them to him at a slightly higher price all in
milliseconds. "They are able to identify your desire to buy shares in Microsoft and buy them in front
of you and sell them back to you at a higher price," Lewis told 60 Minutes. The United States
stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism, is rigged. The main thrust of
Lewiss new book is that high-frequency traders use their speed advantage in predatory
ways that end up cheating market participants small and large.
Is the U.S. stock market rigged?

2014-03-30, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-us-stock-market-rigged/
In the last two weeks, the New York attorney general and the Commodities Futures Trading
Commission in Washington have both launched investigations into high-frequency computerized
stock trading that now controls more than half the market. The probes were announced just ahead
of a much anticipated book on the subject by best-selling author Michael Lewis called Flash Boys.
In it, Lewis argues that the stock market is now rigged to benefit a group of insiders that have
made tens of billions of dollars exploiting computerized trading. The story is told through an
unlikely cast of characters who figured out what was going on and have devised a plan to correct
it. It could have a huge impact on Wall Street. Tonight, Michael Lewis talks about it for the first
time. Steve Kroft: What's the headline here? Michael Lewis: Stock market's rigged. The United
States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism is rigged. Steve Kroft: By
whom? Michael Lewis: By a combination of these stock exchanges, the big Wall Street
banks and high-frequency traders. Steve Kroft: Who are the victims? Michael Lewis:
Everybody who has an investment in the stock market. If it wasn't complicated, it wouldn't be
allowed to happen. The complexity disguises what is happening. If it's so complicated you can't
understand it, then you can't question it. Steve Kroft: And this is all being done by computers?
Michael Lewis: All being done by computers. It's too fast to be done by humans. Humans have
been completely removed from the marketplace. The insiders are able to move faster than you.
Note: For an amazing story of greed and manipulation exposed on Wall Street, see the New York
Times article on Flash Boys at this link.
The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam
Yet
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-again-the...
It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. Most observers on the Hill thought the Financial
Services Modernization Act of 1999 also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was just the
latest and boldest in a long line of deregulatory handouts to Wall Street that had begun in the
Reagan years. Wall Street had spent much of that era arguing that America's banks needed to
become bigger and badder, in order to compete globally with the German and Japanese-style
financial giants. Bank lobbyists were pushing a new law designed to wipe out 60-plus years of
bedrock financial regulation. The key was repealing or "modifying," as bill proponents put it the
famed Glass-Steagall Act separating bankers and broker. Now, commercial banks would be
allowed to merge with investment banks and insurance companies, creating financial megafirms
potentially far more powerful than had ever existed in America. The [bill] additionally legalized
new forms of monopoly, allowing banks to merge with heavy industry. A tiny provision in
the bill also permitted commercial banks to delve into any activity that is "complementary
to a financial activity and does not pose a substantial risk to the safety or soundness of
depository institutions or the financial system generally." Today, banks like Morgan Stanley,
JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs own oil tankers, run airports and control huge quantities of
coal, natural gas, heating oil, electric power and precious metals. They likewise can now be found
exerting direct control over the supply of a whole galaxy of raw materials crucial to world industry
and to society in general, including everything from food products to metals like zinc, copper, tin,
nickel and ... aluminum.
Note: For more on government collusion with the biggest banks, see the deeply revealing reports
from reliable major media sources available here.
Pope Francis 'is mafia target after campaigning against corruption'

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/13/pope-francis-mafia-target-corrup...
Pope Francis's crusade against corruption has made him a target for Italy's all-powerful mafia
clans, a leading anti-mob prosecutor has warned. Nicola Gratteri, who has battled Calabria's
shadowy 'Ndrangheta mafia, said [that] Francis's attempt to bring transparency to the Vatican was
making the white collar mobsters who do business with corrupt prelates "nervous and agitated".
He told the Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano: "Pope Francis is dismantling centres of economic
power in the Vatican. If the bosses could trip him up they wouldn't hesitate. I don't know if
organised criminals are in a position to do something, but they are certainly thinking about
it. They could be dangerous." Francis, who has called for "a poor church", has backed reform at
the Vatican's bank, which has been suspected for years of being a channel for the laundering of
mob profits. This week police impounded a luxury hotel on Rome's Janiculum hill formerly a
monastery which the 'Ndrangheta allegedly purchased from a religious order. "The mafia that
invests, that launders money, that therefore has the real power, is the mafia which has got
rich for years from its connivance with the church," said Gratteri. "Priests continuously visit the
houses of bosses for coffee, which gives the bosses strength and popular legitimacy," he said. A
bishop in Locri in Calabria had excommunicated mobsters after they damaged fruit trees owned by
the church, he said. "But before that episode, the bosses had killed thousands of people" without
being sanctioned, he added.
Note: For more on secret societies, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
Rigging currency markets

2013-10-12, The Economist
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21587824-are-foreign-exch...
[Banks] have rigged LIBOR, an interest rate used to peg contracts worth trillions. Its equivalent in
the world of derivatives, ISDAfix, has also come under question. Commodities prices from crude oil
to platinum have been the subject of allegations and inquiries. Now prices in global currency
markets, where turnover is $5 trillion a day, are being scrutinised by authorities, who suspect
bankers have tampered with those too. Switzerlands financial watchdog announced on October
4th that it was investigating a slew of banks it thinks have manipulated currencies. Britain and the
European Union also have probes under way. Concerns reportedly centre around abnormal
movements ahead of a widely-used daily snapshot of exchange rates, known as the 4pm London
fix. It represents the average of prices agreed during 60 seconds trading, and is used as a
reference rate to execute a much larger set of currency deals. Bankers, who are big participants in
the market, have huge incentives to nudge the price of a given currency pairing ahead of the fix.
With billions of dollars changing hands, a difference of a fraction of a cent can add a tidy sum to
the bonus pool. If proven, the charge would amount to banks fleecing their clients. Banks
know the big trades they are about to execute on others behalf, and are often themselves
the counterparty. By moving the markets ahead of the fix, they could alter the rate to their
profit and their clients loss. One suspected method is banging the close: submitting a quick
succession of orders just as the benchmark is set, to distort its value.
Former Bank of America workers allege lies to homeowners

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/sns-bank-of-america-workers-a...
Six former Bank of America Corp. employees have alleged that the bank deliberately denied
eligible home owners loan modifications and lied to them about the status of their mortgage
payments and documents. The bank allegedly used these tactics to shepherd homeowners into
foreclosure, as well as in-house loan modifications. Both yielded the bank more profits than the
government-sponsored Home Affordable Modification Program, according to documents recently
filed as part of a lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court. The former employees, who worked at
Bank of America centers throughout the United States, said the bank rewarded customer
service representatives who foreclosed on homes with cash bonuses and gift cards to retail
stores such as Target Corp and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. At the same time, the bank punished
those who did not make the numbers or objected to its tactics with discipline, including firing. About
twice a month, the bank cleaned out its HAMP backlog in an operation called "blitz," where it
declined thousands of loan modification requests just because the documents were more than 60
months old, the court documents say. The testimony from the former employees also alleges the
bank falsified information it gave the government, saying it had given out HAMP loan modifications
when it had not. Borrowers filed the civil case against Bank of America in 2010 and are now
seeking class certification.
here.
What Goldman Sachs should admit: it drives up the cost of food

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/23/goldman-sachs-agm-drive-f...
[In 2012,] financial speculator Goldman Sachs, the archetypal villain of the global economic
meltdown, bailed out by US taxpayers to the tune of $5.5bn ... made an estimated $400m from
speculating on food. The World Bank estimated in 2010 that 44 million people were pushed into
poverty because of high food prices, and that speculation is one of the main causes. Since
Goldman led the drive to deregulate commodity markets in the 1990s ... they've been at the
vanguard of creating and promoting complex commodity instruments, from which they've raked in
huge profits. Wallace Turbeville, a former vice president and the inventor of commodity index
funds, has been outing the company's methods. He says that in his time at Goldman, investment
increased from $3bn in 2003 to $260bn in 2008, and commodity prices rose dramatically
during the same period, increasing from 2006 to 2008 by an average of 71%. In 1996,
speculators held 12% of the positions on the Chicago wheat market, with most of the market being
made up of the legitimate users of food from farmers to producers. But the legitimate hedging
element of commodity markets has virtually disappeared in the intervening years. By 2011, pure
speculators made up a staggering 61% of the market. Of course, Goldman Sachs isn't the
only player, but it is certainly the largest. For several years, it was hotly debated whether
speculation in food commodities drives up prices. But the evidence now firmly says it does, and
that there's little correlation between rising prices and actual supply and demand. There are now
well over 100 studies which agree.
here.
The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street

from prosecutions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/23/untouchables-wall-street-...
PBS' Frontline program on [January 22] broadcast a new one-hour report on one of the greatest
and most shameful failings of the Obama administration: the lack of even a single arrest or
prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the
2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering.
What this program particularly demonstrated was that the Obama justice department, in
particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the highlevel criminals accountable. What Obama justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in
the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to
protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious
criminality. Worst of all, Obama justice officials both shielded and feted these Wall Street oligarchs
... as they simultaneously prosecuted and imprisoned powerless Americans for far more trivial
transgressions. As Harvard law professor Larry Lessig put it two weeks ago when expressing
anger over the DOJ's persecution of Aaron Swartz: "we live in a world where the architects of the
financial crisis regularly dine at the White House." As [documented in the] 2011 book on America's
two-tiered justice system, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy
Equality and Protect the Powerful, the evidence that felonies were committed by Wall Street is
overwhelming.
Note: To watch this highly revealing PBS documentary, click here or here. For deeply revealing
reports from reliable major media sources on the collusion between government 'regulators' and
the financial powers they 'regulate', click here.
Too Big to Indict

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/hsbc-too-big-to-indict.html
It is a dark day for the rule of law. Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC,
the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal
prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system. They also
have not charged any top HSBC banker in the case, though it boggles the mind that a bank could
launder money as HSBC did without anyone in a position of authority making culpable decisions.
Clearly, the government has bought into the notion that too big to fail is too big to jail. When
prosecutors choose not to prosecute to the full extent of the law in a case as egregious as this, the
law itself is diminished. The deterrence that comes from the threat of criminal prosecution is
weakened, if not lost. In the HSBC case, prosecutors may want the public to focus on the $1.92
billion settlement. But even large financial settlements are small compared with the size of
international major banks. More important, once criminal sanctions are considered off limits,
penalties and forfeitures become just another cost of doing business, a risk factor to consider on
the road to profits. If banks operating at the center of the global economy cannot be held
fully accountable, the solution is to reduce their size by breaking them up and restricting
their activities not shield them and their leaders from prosecution for illegal activities.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government collusion
with financial corruption, click here.
German man locked up over HVB bank allegations may have been
telling truth
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/28/gustl-mollath-hsv-claims-fraud
A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating
a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence
has emerged proving the validity of his claims. Gustl Mollath, 56, was submitted to the secure
unit of a psychiatric hospital seven years ago after court experts diagnosed him with
paranoid personality disorder following his claims that staff at the Hypo Vereinsbank (HVB)
including his wife, then an assets consultant at HVB had been illegally smuggling large
sums of money into Switzerland. Mollath was tried in 2006 after his ex-wife accused him of
causing her physical harm. He denied the charges, claiming she was trying to sully his name in the
light of the evidence he allegedly had against her. He was admitted to the clinic, where he has
remained against his will ever since. But recent evidence brought to the attention of state
prosecutors shows that money-laundering activities were indeed practiced over several years by
members of staff at the Munich-based bank, the sixth-largest private financial institute in Germany.
A number of employees, including Mollath's wife, were subsequently sacked following the bank's
investigation. The "Mollath affair", as it has been dubbed by the German media, has taken on such
political dimensions that it now threatens to bring down the government of Bavaria.
here.
HSBC Investigation: clients of Britain's biggest bank exposed

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9665741/HSBC-...
Britains biggest bank is at the centre of a major ... investigation after it opened offshore accounts
in Jersey for serious criminals living in this country. Tax authorities have obtained details of every
British client of HSBC in Jersey after a whistleblower secretly provided a detailed list of names,
addresses and account balances earlier this week. Among those identified on the list are Daniel
Bayes, a drug dealer who is now in Venezuela; Michael Lee, who was convicted of possessing
more than 300 weapons at his house in Devon; three bankers facing major fraud allegations and a
man once dubbed Londons number two computer crook. The disclosures raise serious
questions about HSBCs procedures in Jersey, with the bank already preparing to pay fines of
around $1.5 billion in America for breaking money laundering rules. The bank is legally obliged to
report to the authorities any suspicions about the source of money deposited in its accounts. The
list identifies 4,388 people holding 699 million in offshore current accounts and they are also likely
to have billions of pounds more in investment schemes. Several celebrities and other well-known
figures are understood to be identified in the client data. The HSBC Jersey client list is
understood to be heavily dominated by senior figures in the City. Dozens of bankers are
understood to have deposited six-figure sums offshore with some institutions said to have
clusters of employees taking advantage of the accounts. Doctors, mining and oil executives
and oil workers are also heavily represented in the list.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption and
criminality, click here.
Fighting Recession the Icelandic Way

2012-09-26, Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-26/is-remedy-for-next-crisis-buried-in-...
Few countries blew up more spectacularly than Iceland in the 2008 financial crisis. The local stock
market plunged 90 percent; unemployment rose ninefold; inflation shot to more than 18 percent;
the countrys biggest banks all failed. Since then, Iceland has turned in a pretty impressive
performance. It has repaid International Monetary Fund rescue loans ahead of schedule. Growth
this year will be about 2.5 percent, better than most developed economies. Unemployment has
fallen by half. Icelands approach was the polar opposite of the U.S. and Europe, which
rescued their banks and did little to aid indebted homeowners. Nothing distinguishes
Iceland as much as its aid to consumers. To homeowners with negative equity, the country
offered write-offs that would wipe out debt above 110 percent of the property value. The
government also provided means-tested subsidies to reduce mortgage-interest expenses: Those
with lower earnings, less home equity and children were granted the most generous support. In
June 2010, the nations Supreme Court gave debtors another break: Bank loans that were indexed
to foreign currencies were declared illegal. Because the Icelandic krona plunged 80 percent during
the crisis, the cost of repaying foreign debt more than doubled. The ruling let consumers repay the
banks as if the loans were in krona. These policies helped consumers erase debt equal to 13
percent of Icelands $14 billion economy. Now, consumers have money to spend on other things.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the collusion of most
major governments with the financial sector whose profiteering contributed to the global economic
crisis, click here.
Big Banks: No Crime, No Punishment

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/no-crime-no-punishment.html
When the Justice Department recently closed its criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs,
it became all but certain that no major American banks or their top executives would ever
face criminal charges for their role in the financial crisis. Justice officials and even
President Obama have defended the lack of prosecutions, saying that even though greed and
other moral lapses were evident in the run-up to the crisis, the conduct was not necessarily illegal.
But that characterization of the financial industry's actions has always defied common sense - and
all the more so now that a fuller picture is emerging of the range of banks' reckless and lawless
activities, including interest-rate rigging, money laundering, securities fraud and excessive
speculation. The financial crisis, fomented over years by big banks and presided over by
executives, involved reckless lending, heedless securitizations, exorbitant paydays and illusory
profits, all of which led to government bailouts and economic calamity. Is it plausible that none of
that broke the law and that none of the people in positions of power and authority knew what was
going on? The statute of limitations, generally five years for securities fraud and most other federal
offenses, is running out, precluding the possibility of bringing many new suits dating from the
bubble years. The result is a public perception that the big banks and their leaders will never have
to answer fully for the crisis. The shameless pursuit of Wall Street campaign donations by both
political parties strengthens this perception, and further undermines confidence in the rule of law.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the collusion between
government and the big banks, click here.
Bank scandals: Somebody must go to jail

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Bank-scandals-Somebody-must-go-to-jail-...
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing
armies." - Thomas Jefferson, 1816. When Thomas Jefferson spoke those words, banks were
local and very small compared with the financial behemoths of today. Banks are more dangerous
now than in Jefferson's time, and they are totally out of control. During the Depression of
the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt referred to banks as the "money changers in the
temple of our civilization," and little has been done since. It is well past the time that people on
Wall Street live by the rule of law - not just pay fines - and some executives go to jail for their
conduct. In 2008, the much-publicized Troubled Assets Relief Program bailed out banks and Wall
Street to the tune of $700 billion with taxpayer money. While the banks were bailed out of the
trouble they caused, they continued to pay out enormous executive bonuses with taxpayers'
money in multimillion-dollar year-end gifts. JPMorgan received $25 billion from the government in
2008 and gave out nearly $9 billion in bonus money that year. When the derivative-driven housing
market collapsed in 2008, Citigroup and Bank of America, the major banks in that market, and
eight other top Wall Street firms got $1.2 trillion in then-secret loans of taxpayer money from the
Federal Reserve. The Fed even went to court in an attempt to hide the identities of those banks
from the public. Regulating the banks and bringing the rule of law to Wall Street banks is
necessary now. Sending a few Wall Street banksters to jail would stop some of the abuse as well.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the corrupt relationship
between government and the financial sector, click here.
The unrepentant and unreformed bankers

2012-08-18, San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/The-unrepentant-and-unreformed-bankers-...
Money laundering. Price fixing. Bid rigging. Securities fraud. Talking about the mob? No,
unfortunately. Wall Street. These days, the business sections of newspapers read like rap sheets.
GE Capital, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Wells Fargo and Bank of America tied to a bid-rigging
scheme to bilk cities and towns out of interest earnings. ING Direct, HSBC and Standard
Chartered Bank facing charges of money laundering. Barclays caught manipulating a key interest
rate, costing savers and investors dearly, with a raft of other big banks also under investigation.
Not to speak of the unprecedented wrongdoing that precipitated the financial crisis of 2008. Yet, it's
clear that the unrepentant and the unreformed are still all too present within our banking system. A
June survey of 500 senior financial services executives in the United States and Britain turned up
stunning results. Some 24 percent said that they believed that financial services
professionals may need to engage in illegal or unethical conduct to succeed, 26 percent
said that they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace,
and 16 percent said they would engage in insider trading if they could get away with it. That
too much of Wall Street remains unchanged is not surprising. Simply stated, the banks and their
leaders have paid no real economic, legal or political price for their wrongdoing and thus have not
felt compelled to change.
Note: The author of this article, Phil Angelides, is a former state treasurer of California and the
chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. For deeply revealing reports from reliable
major media sources on the corrupt relationship between government and the financial sector,
click here.
Democracy falling prey to big money

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Democracy-falling-prey-to-big-mon...
Who's buying our democracy? Wall Street financiers, the Koch brothers, and casino
magnates Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn, among others. And they're doing much of it in
secret. It's a perfect storm - the combination of three waves that are about to drown
government as we know it. The first is the greatest concentration of wealth in America in more
than a century. The 400 richest Americans are richer than the bottom 150 million Americans put
together. The trend started 30 years ago, and it's related to globalization and technological
changes that have stymied wage growth for most people, "trickle-down economics," ... tax cuts
and the steady decline in the bargaining power of organized labor. The second is the wave of
unlimited political contributions, courtesy of ... one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history,
Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 ruling that held that corporations are
people under the First Amendment, [meaning] that virtually any billionaire can contribute as much
to a political campaign as he wants. The third is complete secrecy about who's contributing how
much to whom. Political fronts posing as charitable, nonprofit "social welfare" organizations ...
don't have to disclose their donors. As a result, outfits like the Chamber of Commerce and Karl
Rove's Crossroads GPS are taking in hundreds of millions from corporations that don't even tell
their own shareholders what political payments they're making. Separately, any one of these three
would be bad enough. Put the three together, and our democracy is being sold down the drain.
Note: The author of this article, Robert Reich, is a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and
former U.S. secretary of labor, and author of the newly released Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone
Wrong With Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It.
Wall Street Legend Sandy Weill: Break Up the Big Banks

2012-07-25, CNBC
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48315170
Former Citigroup Chairman & CEO Sanford I. Weill, the man who invented the financial
supermarket, called for the breakup of big banks in an interview on CNBC Wednesday. What
we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit
takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something thats
not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, thats not too big to fail, Weill told CNBCs Squawk Box. He
added: If they want to hedge what theyre doing with their investments, let them do it in a way
thats going to be mark-to-market so theyre never going to be hit. He essentially called for the
return of the GlassSteagall Act, which imposed banking reforms that split banks from
other financial institutions such as insurance companies. He said banks should be split off
entirely from investment banks, and they should operate with a leverage ratio of 12 times to 15
times of what they have on their balance sheets. Banks should also be completely transparent,
Weill said, with everything on balance sheet. There should be no such thing as off balance sheet,
he said.
Note: For deeply revealing and reliable major media reports on corruption and criminality in the
operations and regulation of the financial sector, click here.
Regulators and HSBC Faulted in Report on Money Laundering

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/scathing-report-details-money-launderi...
The global bank HSBC has been used by Mexican drug cartels looking to get cash back into
the United States, by Saudi Arabian banks that needed access to dollars despite their
terrorist ties and by Iranians who wanted to circumvent United States sanctions, a Senate
report says. The 335-page report released [on July 16] also says that executives at HSBC and
regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ignored warning signs and failed to stop
the illegal behavior at many points between 2001 and 2010. The problems at HSBC, Europe's
largest financial institution, [are] indicators of a broader problem of illegal money flowing through
international financial institutions into the United States. The report on HSBC is the latest of
several scandals that have recently rocked global banks and highlighted the inability of regulators
to catch what is claimed to be widespread wrongdoing in the financial industry. The British bank
Barclays recently admitted that its traders tried to manipulate a crucial global interest rate, and
multiple major banks are under investigation. JPMorgan Chase disclosed last week that its
employees may have tried to hide trades that are likely to cost the bank billions of dollars. The
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has come under particularly harsh criticism for showing
too much deference to the banks it regulates.
corruption and criminality, click here. For our highly revealing Banking Corruption Information
Center, click here.
Time for Banksters to be prosecuted

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-time-for-bankste...
Once more the big banks are exposed in systematic fraudulent activity. When Barclays agreed to a
$450 million fine for trying to rig the Libor, its CEO offered the classic excuse: Everyone does it.
Once more the question remains: Will CEOs and CFOs, as well as traders, be prosecuted? Or
will they depart with their multimillion dollar rewards intact, leaving shareholders to pay the
tab for the hundreds of millions in fines? The Barclays settlement exposed that traders
colluded to try to fix the Libor rate. This is the rate used as the basis for exotic derivatives as well
as mortgages, credit card and personal loan rates. Almost everyone is affected. Fixing the rate
even a few hundredths of a percentage point could make Barclays millions on any single day
money taken out of the pockets of consumers and investors. Once more the banks were rigging
the rules; once more their customers were their mark. The collusion was systematic and routine.
Investigations are underway not only in the United Kingdom but also in the United States, Canada
and the European Union. Those named in the probes are all the usual suspects: JPMorgan Chase,
Citibank, UBS, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, UBS and others. This wasnt rogue trading, ... it was
more like a cartel. The Economist writes that what has been revealed here is the rotten heart of
finance, a culture of casual dishonesty.
Note: For key investigative reports on the criminality and corruption in the financial industry and
biggest banks, click here.
Guilty bankers should clean toilets

2012-07-05, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/05/opinion/quest-libor-analysis/index.html
The Libor scandal has confirmed what many of us have known for some time: There is something
smelly in the London financial world and the stench is now overwhelming. The Financial Services
Authority report [made it] clear just how widespread, how blatant was the fixing of the benchmark
interest rate Libor and Euribor by Barclays. Brazen is the only word for it. The emails and phone
calls reveal that on dozens of occasions those who stood to gain by the decisions asked
for favors (and got them) from those who helped set the interest rates. And all the time the
world believed Libor was somehow a barometer of what banks were lending to each other. It
wasn't. It was the rate at which a bank was prepared to corrupt the money markets for its own
narrow, venal gain. It is the way the traders, the rate submitters -- everyone involved in this cesspit
-- [were] running to do wrong which makes it so egregious. With one or two feeble exceptions, no
one ever seemed to stop and say "this is against the rules." Or, heaven forbid, "this is wrong." I
have no doubt that Barclays wasn't the only one up to this. The FSA report makes it clear that
other traders were putting pressure on their rate setters too. Libor and its cousin Euribor are the
rates used to determine hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of highly specialized financial
contracts called derivatives. Businesses and household loans are set by this benchmark. It is the
backbone of the financial world and now it has been proven to be bent and crooked.
Note: For an incredibly incisive interview between Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi, and a top banking
expert on how the LIBOR scandal undermines the integrity of all banking, click here. For
astounding news on the $700 trillion derivatives bubble, click here. For a treasure trove of reliable
reports on the criminality and corruption within the financial and banking industries, click here.
Joseph Stiglitz: Man who ran World Bank calls for bankers to face the
music
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/joseph-stigl...
The Barclays Libor scandal may have shocked the British public, but Joseph Stiglitz saw it
coming decades ago. And he's convinced that jailing bankers is the best way to curb
market abuses. [Former World Bank Chief Economist] Stiglitz wrote a series of papers in the
1970s and 1980s explaining how when some individuals have access to privileged knowledge that
others don't, free markets yield bad outcomes for wider society. That insight (known as the theory
of "asymmetric information") won Stiglitz the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001. And he has
leveraged those credentials relentlessly ever since to batter at the walls of "free market
fundamentalism". It is a crusade that [includes] his new book The Price of Inequality. When traders
working for Barclays rigged the Libor interest rate and flogged toxic financial derivatives using
their privileged position in the financial system to make profits at the expense of their customers
they were unwittingly proving Stiglitz right. "It's a textbook illustration," Stiglitz said. "Where there
are these asymmetries a lot of these activities are directed at rent seeking [appropriating resources
from someone else rather than creating new wealth]. That was one of my original points. It wasn't
about productivity, it was taking advantage." He argues that breaking the economic and political
power that has been amassed by the financial sector in recent decades, especially in the US and
the UK, is essential if we are to build a more just and prosperous society. The first step, he says, is
sending some bankers to jail.
Libor scandal: How I manipulated the bank borrowing rate

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9368430/Libor...
An anonymous insider from one of Britain's biggest lenders ... explains how he and his colleagues
helped manipulate the UK's bank borrowing rate. Neither the insider nor the bank can be identified
for legal reasons. It was during a weekly economic briefing at the bank in early 2008 that I first
heard the phrase. A sterling swaps trader told the assembled economists and managers that
"Libor was dislocated with itself". What the trader told us was that the bank could not be seen to
be borrowing at high rates, so we were putting in low Libor submissions, the same as
everyone. How could we do that? Easy. The British Bankers' Association, which compiled
Libor, asked for a rate submission but there were no checks. The trader said there was a
general acceptance that you lowered the price a few basis points each day. According to the
trader, "everyone knew" and "everyone was doing it". There was no implication of illegality. After
all, there were 20 to 30 people in the room from management to economists, structuring teams
to salespeople and more on the teleconference dial-in from across the country. The discussion
was so open the behaviour seemed above board. In no sense was this a clandestine gathering.
Libor had dislocated with itself for a very good reason to hide the true issues within the bank.
Note: For an incredibly incisive interview between Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi, and a top banking
expert on how the LIBOR scandal undermines the integrity of all banking, click here. For a treasure
trove of reliable reports on the criminality and corruption within the financial and banking industries,
click here.
Heist of the century: Wall Street's role in the financial crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/may/20/wall-street-role-financial-crisis
Wall Street bankers could have averted the global financial crisis, so why didn't they? In this
exclusive extract from his book Inside Job: The Financiers Who Pulled Off the Heist of the
Century, Charles Ferguson argues that they should be prosecuted: The Securities and Exchanges
Commission has been deservedly criticised for not following up on years of complaints about
[Bernard L.] Madoff. But not a single bank that had suspicions about Madoff made such a call.
Instead, they assumed he was probably a crook, but either just left him alone or were happy to
make money from him. It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global
financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even
encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial
crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind
of economic accident. This behaviour is criminal. We are talking about deliberate concealment
of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and large-scale tax
evasion; assisting in major financial frauds and in concealment of criminal assets; and committing
frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression.
And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corruption and criminality in the finance industry, click
here.
Does the Federal Reserve Have Too Much Power?

2012-03-26, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2012/03/does-the-federal-reserve-hav...
Question: A group proposing a change in monetary policy based on the writings of Stephen
Zarlenga (monetary.org) [argues] that the government should print the money, not the Fed or any
other private body. H.R. 2990 proposed by Dennis Kucinich is based on these ideas. Are they
reasonable to you? Paul Solman: As the Treasury borrows more and more money by issuing
bonds and selling them to all comers, it commits itself, "with the full faith and credit" of the United
States, to pay back its creditors in full. That means it will either raise taxes in the future or -- and
this is the relevant point -- get the Fed to create more money by purchasing bonds on the open
market. This is called "monetizing the debt." There's a legitimate case that the Fed has too
much power, is insufficiently beholden to the people in what's supposed to be a democracy,
since no one on the Fed is chosen by popular election and private bankers are heavily
represented on its board. This has long been the argument of financial journalist William Greider,
author of a major book on the Fed, "The Secrets of the Temple." Greider: "The idea of giving the
Federal Reserve still greater power [is] dangerous. First of all it rewards failure. But secondly, it
puts them in the position as arbiter of who shall fail and who shall succeed. It asks to be able to
choose what are the 30 or 40 or 50 banks and industrial firms that it regards as systemic risks for
the society and ... it will protect those from failure. The government stands behind them and the
rest of us are on our own."
Note: If you look at the top of any U.S. currency bill, you will see the words "Federal Reserve
Note." Thus, though U.S. dollars are printed by the Treasury, they are issued and controlled by the
Federal Reserve, which is privately owned, though subject to minimal federal oversight. To see just
how much control the Federal Reserve has over the issuance of U.S. currency, see their webpage
at this link. For lots more on hidden manipulations of the Federal Reserve, click here.
Too Big To Bank There

We have finally reached the point in our financial history where even bankers hate bankers. Last
week, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas issued its 2011 annual report with a 34-page essay,
"Why We Must End Too Big To FailNow." The report [dubs the nation's largest banks] "a clear
and present danger to the U.S. economy." It begins with a letter from regional Fed president
Richard Fisher. "More than half of banking industry assets are on the books of just five
institutions," he complains. "They were a primary culprit in magnifying the financial crisis, and their
presence continues to play an important role in prolonging our economic malaise." This is a
member of the Federal Reserve itself an institution that bears responsibility for our
banking system devolving into an untenable oligarchy that buys off politicians, captures
regulators and eats up our money. This is a member of the establishment saying Too-BigTo-Fail, or TBTF, must die. "The term TBTF disguised the fact that commercial banks holding
roughly one-third of the assets in the banking system did essentially fail, surviving only with
extraordinary government assistance," the essay reads. Their executives paid themselves fortunes
to execute failed mergers and acquisitions and accumulate unimaginable piles of toxic debts. We
saved them to save the financial system. But now we must break them up so they don't put us in
this ridiculous situation again.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the criminal practices of the biggest banks and
financial firms and the collusion of government agencies, see our "Banking Bailout" newsarticles.
The extra dollars you're paying at the pump are going to Wall Street
speculators
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-201202280930--tms--amvoicesctnav-a20120228f...
The current surge in gas prices has almost nothing to do with energy policy. It doesn't even have
much to do with global supply and demand. It has most to do with America's continuing failure to
adequately regulate Wall Street. Oil supplies aren't being squeezed. Over 80 percent of America's
energy needs are now being satisfied by domestic supplies. In fact, we're starting to become an
energy exporter. Demand for oil isn't rising. Oil demand in the U.S. is down compared to last year
at this time. The American economy is showing only the faintest signs of recovery. Meanwhile,
global demand is still moderate. Europe's debt crisis hasn't gone away. China's growth continues
to slow. But Wall Street is betting on higher oil prices. Hedge-fund managers and traders assume
that mounting tensions in the Middle East will hobble supplies later this year. Wall Street
speculators also assume global demand for oil will rise in the coming year. These are just
expectations, not today's realities. But they're pushing up oil prices just the same, because Wall
Street firms and other big financial players now dominate oil trading. Where there's money to be
made, Wall Street will find a way of making it. And when it comes to oil, so much money is at
stake that gigantic sums can be made if the bets pay off. Speculators figure they can hedge
against bad bets. Financial speculators historically accounted for about 30 percent of oil
contracts, producers and end users for about 70 percent. But today speculators account for
64 percent of all contracts.
Note: This article was written by Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, professor of public
policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy
and America's Future. He blogs at www.robertreich.org. For lots more reliable information from the
major media on energy manipulations, click here.
Foreclosure abuse rampant across U.S., experts say

2012-02-17, MSNBC/Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46424973/ns/business/t/foreclosure-abuse-rampant-...
A report this week showing rampant foreclosure abuse in San Francisco reflects similar levels of
lender fraud and faulty documentation across the United States, say experts and officials who
have done studies in other parts of the country. The audit of almost 400 foreclosures in San
Francisco found that 84 percent of them appeared to be illegal, according to the study
released by the California city. "The audit in San Francisco is the most detailed and
comprehensive that has been done - but it's likely those numbers are comparable nationally,"
Diane Thompson, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, told Reuters. Across the
country from California, Jeff Thingpen, register of deeds in Guildford County, North Carolina,
examined 6,100 mortgage documents last year, from loan notes to foreclosure paperwork. Of
those documents, created between January 2008 and December 2010, 4,500 showed signature
irregularities, a telltale sign of the illegal practice of "robosigning" documents. Robosigning
involves the use of bogus documents to force foreclosures without lenders having to
scrutinize all the paperwork involved with mortgages. The practice was at the heart of the
foreclosure scandal that led to a $25 billion settlement between the U.S. government and five
major banks last week.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the illegal foreclosures made by the biggest
banks and financial firms, the collusion of government agencies, and more, see our "Banking
Bailout" news articles.
Wall Street shenanigans fuel public distrust

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/17/IN5N1MBT60.DTL
Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It's busily shredding new regulations and making the public
more distrustful than ever. The Street's biggest lobbying groups have just filed a lawsuit against
the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, seeking to overturn its new rule limiting speculative
trading in food, oil and other commodities. The Street makes bundles from these bets, but they
have raised costs for consumers. In other words, a small portion of what you and I pay for
food and energy has been going into the pockets of Wall Street. Just another redistribution
from the middle class and the poor to the top. The Street argues that the commission's costbenefit analysis wasn't adequate. Putting the question into the laps of federal judges gives the
Street a huge tactical advantage because the Street has almost an infinite amount of money to
hire so-called "experts" who will say benefits have been exaggerated and costs underestimated.
But when it comes to regulating Wall Street, one big cost doesn't make it into any individual
weighing: the public's mounting distrust of the entire economic system, generated by the Street's
repeated abuse of the public's trust. Wall Street's shenanigans have convinced a large portion of
America that the economic game is rigged. Wall Street has blanketed America in a miasma of
cynicism.
Note: The author of this analysis, Robert Reich, is a former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of
public policy at UC Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's
Future. He blogs at www.robertreich.org.
Derivatives industry eyes UK Lehman appeal ruling

2011-12-14, Reuters News Agency
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/14/britain-derivatives-idUSL6E7NE1YQ20...
Regulators and the world's $700 trillion derivatives industry are closely watching a legal
battle that began in Britain ... and which will fuel a sea change in swaps payouts. Four
cases, including one involving a unit of collapsed U.S. bank Lehman Brothers, are being presented
in a five-day hearing at the UK Court of Appeal. All revolve around payouts under the derivatives
industry's "master agreement", a framework contract. A bank that trades swaps with another bank
typically has one master agreement which sets the terms for millions of transactions between
them. The master agreement ... covers around 90 percent of off-exchange derivatives
transactions. Under the agreement, Lehman's bankruptcy is considered a default. However, in the
four cases before the court this week, the other party in the contracts elected not to terminate them
because they would have had to pay out to the defunct bank.
Note: Like most reporting in the major media, this article trivializes the massive size of the
derivatives market. $700 trillion is equivalent to $100,000 for every man, woman, and child in
the world! Do you think the financial industry is out of control? For lots more powerful, reliable
information on major banking manipulations, click here. For a powerful analysis of just how crazy
things have gotten and with some rays of hope by researcher David Wilcock, click here.
What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/what-price-t...
The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than
it is possible to count. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, [Italy] has suspended the normal
rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman
Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an
investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic. The European
Central Bank ... is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank's alumni hold sway
in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout
the financial crisis. Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living
down its nickname as "the Vampire Squid", and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the
eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. Simon Johnson, the former
International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the
Next Financial Meltdown, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so
close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At
least European politicians aren't "bought and paid for" by corporations, as in the US, he says.
"Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the
bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions." This is The Goldman
Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close.
Note: For revealing major media articles on key secret societies which manipulate global politics,
click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption,
click here.
Should You Join the Credit Union Boom?

2011-11-08, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/WorldNews/credit-unions-54-percent-increase-me...
As a result of Bank Transfer Day, in which consumers were encouraged to switch to credit unions,
54 percent of credit unions reported an increase in share growth, according to a survey from the
National Association of Federal Credit Unions sent to 10,000 respondents. At least 650,000
people have switched to credit unions since Sept. 29, according to the Credit Union
National Association. About 80 percent of credit unions offer at least one free checking account
with no minimum balance requirement and no monthly or activity fee, according to Moebs
Services. About 64 percent of the largest U.S. banks offer the same. Credit unions can help
consumers save money because they are non-profit, and can pay higher interest rates on
savings accounts, and offer lower loan and credit card rates. The National Association of
Federal Credit Unions ... has a web tool that allows people to search by address, credit union
name or company/affiliation. The site had the highest traffic ever on Saturday, Bank Transfer Day.
In October visits to the website were more than five times its monthly average. Visitors to the
website last month increased by more than 700 percent compared to October 2010.
Note: To find a good credit union near you, click here. For key reports from reliable sources
showing that the biggest banks have too much power, click here and here.
BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Contracts

2011-10-18, Bloomberg/Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-18/bofa-said-to-split-regulators-ove...
Bank of America Corp., hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its
Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits. Derivatives are financial instruments
used to hedge risks or for speculation. Theyre derived from stocks, bonds, loans, currencies and
commodities, or linked to specific events such as changes in the weather or interest rates. Keeping
such deals separate from FDIC-insured savings has been a cornerstone of U.S. regulation for
decades, including last years Dodd-Frank overhaul of Wall Street regulation. Three years after
taxpayers rescued some of the biggest U.S. lenders, regulators are grappling with how to protect
FDIC-insured bank accounts from risks generated by investment-banking operations. The
concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured
institution, said William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of MissouriKansas City and a former bank regulator. We should have fairly tight restrictions on that. Bank of
Americas holding company -- the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch
securities unit -- held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June. That compares
with JPMorgans deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99
percent of the New York-based firms $79 trillion of notional derivatives.
Note: Remember that the GDP of the entire world is estimated at around $60 trillion, less
than JPMorgan or BofA own in derivatives. For an excellent article laying out the incredible risk
this creates of a major economic collapse, click here. For more on the high risk and cost to
taxpayers of BofA moving its massive amount of derivatives to its subsidiary, click here. For lots
more from major media sources on the illegal profiteering of major financial corporations enabled
by lax government regulation, click here.
Megabanks growing even more dominant

2011-09-08, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44426180/ns/business-local_business/t/megabanks-g...
The American banking sector apparently is going to be vastly different when it finally emerges from
the financial crisis that took hold more than three years ago. It is going to be significantly smaller,
and the domination of a relative handful of behemoth institutions is going to increase. At the end of
June, there were 7,522 commercial banks, down from 8,542 on Dec. 31, 2007. That is a decline of
nearly 12 percent in just three and a half years. Of the more than 1,000 banks that disappeared,
about 370 failed. But the rest of the decrease came through mergers and acquisitions as a
decades-long pattern of consolidation continued. Most banks in the United States still are fairly
small. The median size of a bank at the end of June, according to an analysis of statistics from the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was about $155 million in assets. Thats about an 18 percent
increase since the end of 2007. But those numbers seriously skew the nature of the industry. Of
the more than $13.6 trillion in assets held by banks at the end of June, nearly $9.4 trillion is in
the hands of just 37 institutions, each with more than $50 billion in assets. And of that, $5.5
trillion is held by just four banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank and Wells
Fargo. Each of those have more than $1 trillion in assets. In other words, the U.S. banking
industry resembles a tall cake, with a very thick layer of icing on top.
Note: To learn how these same four banks and their holding companies hold over 90% of the $700
trillion derivatives market, click here. For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the
concentration and centralization of financial power by a few megabanks, click here.
SEC accused of dumping records

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sec-accused-of-dumping-records...
The SEC has violated federal law by destroying the records of thousands of enforcement cases
in which it decided not to file charges against or conduct full-blown investigations of Wall Street
firms and others initially suspected of wrongdoing, a former agency official has alleged. The
purged records involve major firms such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America,
Morgan Stanley and hedge-fund manager SAC Capital. At issue were suspicions of actions
such as insider trading, financial fraud and market manipulation. A file closed in 2002
involved Lehman Brothers, the investment bank whose collapse fueled the financial meltdown of
2008, according to the former official. A file closed in 2009 involved suspected insider trading in
securities related to American International Group, the insurance giant bailed out by the
government at the height of the financial crisis. The allegations were leveled in a July letter to Sen.
Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) from Gary J. Aguirre, a former SEC enforcement lawyer now
representing a current SEC enforcement lawyer, Darcy Flynn. Flynn last year began managing
SEC enforcement records and became concerned that records that were supposed to be
preserved under federal law were being purged as a matter of SEC policy, Aguirre wrote.
Note: For more on this important news by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, click here. For lots more
from reliable sources on the criminal practices of Wall Street corporations which led to global
economic recession and massive government bailouts, click here.
Dont Get Caught Holding Dollars When The U.S. Default Arrives
2011-07-23, Forbes.com blog
http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/07/23/dont-get-caught-holding-...
By some measures, the United States is even more deeply in hock than Greece. Greeces debt-toGDP ratio is 143%. Americas is officially 97%. But the $14.3 trillion national debt, stacked up
against a $14.7 trillion economy, doesnt tell the whole story. [It] doesnt count the black box of
bailouts. We know how much the Federal Reserve doled out in emergency loans: $16.1
trillion between Dec. 1, 2007, and July 21, 2010. We know that because yesterday the
Government Accountability Office completed its first-ever audit of the Fed, made possible
largely through the persistence of Rep. Ron Paul (R.-Tex.) making that audit, however incomplete,
the law. What we dont know is how much of that has been paid back. We have literally injected
about $5.3 trillion, said Dr. Paul earlier this month during his questioning of Fed chief Ben
Bernanke, and I dont think we got very much for it. The national debt went up $5.1 trillion.
Bernanke did not challenge those figures. Even now, Americans are turning to their credit cards to
pay for groceries and gas. According to First Data Corp., the volume of gasoline purchases put on
credit cards jumped 39% over the last 12 months. You dont want to be the average American in a
default scenario, whenever it arrives. Ray Dalio, the head of Bridgewater Associates, the worlds
biggest hedge fund, puts that day in late 2012 or early 2013.
Note: A careful Internet search reveals that no one in the major media except this Forbes blog
even mentioned the astonishing results of the first ever audit of the Federal reserve - $16 trillion in
secret loans. To understand how the media is controlled from reporting vitally important information
like this, click here. For another revealing article showing what is happening from a historical
perspective and its relationship to gold prices, click here. For an article detailing who received
these trillions and links to the official GAO report, click here. For critical information on the financial
system kept hidden from the public, click here.
Goldman Sachs faces contentious AGM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/06/goldman-sachs-set-contentious-agm
Goldman Sachs is bracing itself for what may be the most contentious annual meeting in the
embattled investment bank's 142-year history. Angry shareholders, including a coalition of religious
groups, are planning to call on Goldman's executives to justify the combined $69.6m (42.4m)
payday its top five executives received in 2010 and to answer questions about allegations that the
bank misled clients and lied to Congress. The meeting comes amid mounting pressure on the
bank. Earlier this week Eric Holder, the US attorney-general, confirmed that the justice department
was investigating Goldman's role in the financial crisis following a withering report on the bank's
role led by senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn. The 650-page report "Wall Street and the
Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse," gave Goldman its own section titled "Failing to
Manage Conflicts of Interest: A Case Study of Goldman Sachs." In July the bank paid $500m to
settle charges brought by financial regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that
it misled customers over complex sub-prime mortgage products it sold in 2007. The spotlight on
executive pay could not come at a more sensitive moment for the bank. The bank's top five
executives received cash and stock last year that was 13 times greater than the year before.
Goldman's 2010 net revenues fell 13% and profits fell 37%. Goldman paid Blankfein close to
$19m in compensation for 2010, almost double his award for the previous year.
Note: For lots more on the financial chicanery of Goldman Sachs and other major financial
corporations that led to the global economic crisis and massive taxpayer bailouts of the firms, click
here.
Report: Market share drove faulty credit ratings decisions

2011-04-13, Kansas City Star/McClatchy News
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/04/13/2798570/report-market-share-drove-faulty...
Analysts who reviewed complex mortgage bonds that ultimately collapsed and ruined the U.S.
housing market were threatened with firing if they lost lucrative business, prompting faulty ratings
on trillions of dollars worth of junk mortgage bonds, a Senate report said [on April 13]. The 639page report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations confirms much of what
McClatchy Newspapers first reported about mismanagement by credit ratings agencies in 2009.
Credit rating agencies are supposed to provide independent assessments on the quality of debt
being issued by companies or governments. Traditionally, investments rated AAA had a probability
of failure of less than 1 percent. But in collusion with Wall Street investment banks, the Senate
report concludes, the top two ratings agencies - Moody's Investors Service and Standard &
Poor's - effectively cashed in on the housing boom by ignoring mounting evidence of
problems in the housing market. Profits at both companies soared, with revenues at market
leader Moody's more than tripling in five years. Then the bottom fell out of the housing market, and
Moody's stock lost 70 percent of its value; it has yet to fully recover. More than 90 percent of
AAA ratings given in 2006 and 2007 to pools of mortgage-backed securities were
downgraded to junk status.
Note: For many key reports from major media sources illuminating how major financial
corporations knowingly brought about the global financial crisis and profited from it, click here.
Unfair investment practices by wives of business bigs

2011-04-12, New York Daily News
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-04-12/gossip/29426543_1_matt-taibbi-stud...
Christy Mack, the wife of Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack, and Susan Karches, the widow of
the company's former investment-banking division president, Peter Karches, are among the chief
investors in a company that received $220 million in low-interest loans. The funds came from a
federal bailout program that "virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income," according to
the article ... "The Real Housewives of Wall Street," which appears in [Rolling Stone]. In 2009,
Christy Mack and Susan Karches launched Waterfall TALF Opportunity, a company with a Cayman
Islands address, although the two women did not seem "to have any experience whatsoever in
finance." TALF stands for "Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility." The federal aid they
received "falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives designed" by Federal Reserve chief
Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. With an initial upfront investment of
$15 million, Waterfall TALF received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which it
used to purchase "student loans and commercial mortgages." The loans were set up so
that the investors "would keep 100% of any gains on the deal while the Fed and the
Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90% of the losses."
Note: We don't usually quote the New York Daily News, but as they were the only major media to
report this important story, we've included it here. Why are the major media silent on this powerful
information uncovered by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders? For the full story on this, click here. For
lots more from reliable sources on corruption in the government bailouts of the biggest banks, click
here.
Mortgage mess: Who really owns your mortgage?

2011-04-03, CBS News 60 Minutes Overtime
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20049744-10391709.html
Do you know who really owns your mortgage? That question has become a nightmare for many
homeowners since the invention of mortgage-backed securities. Yes, those were the exotic
investments that sparked the financial collapse in this country. And they're still causing problems.
As it turns out, Wall Street cut corners when it bundled homeowners' mortgages into securities that
were traded from investor to investor. Now that banks are foreclosing on people, they're
finding that the legal documents behind many mortgages are missing. So, what do the
banks do? Some companies appear to be resorting to forgery and phony paperwork in what
looks like a nationwide epidemic. Even if you're not at risk of foreclosure, there could be legal
ramifications for a homeowner if the chain of title has been lost.
Note: Don't miss at the link above the most excellent, six-minute CBS video explaining more on
this blatant deception and manipulation by many banks. You have to put up with a one-minute
commercial shortly after the video starts. For lots more from reliable sources on the criminal
practices of mortgage lenders, click here.
G.E.s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html
General Electric, the nations largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company
reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its
operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of
$3.2 billion. That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and
households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company
has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for
years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies. Its extraordinary
success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and
innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.s giant tax
department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often
referred to as the worlds best tax law firm. Indeed, the companys slogan Imagination at Work
fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also
from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress. While General Electric is
one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at
this as well.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click
here and here.
A Conspiracy With a Silver Lining

2011-03-02, New York Times blog
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/a-conspiracy-with-a-silver-li...
In the past six months, the value of [silver] has increased nearly 80 percent, to more than $34 an
ounce. [This] is reminiscent of ... the Hunt Brothers. When the Hunts started buying silver in 1973,
the price of the metal was $1.95 an ounce. By early 1980, the brothers had driven the price up to
$54 an ounce before the Federal Reserve intervened, changed the rules on speculative silver
investments and the price plunged. When JPMorgan Chase bought Bear Stearns in March 2008, it
inherited Bear Stearns large bet that the price of silver would fall. The international bank HSBC
got into the market heavily on the bear side as well. These actions artificially depressed the price
of silver dramatically downward, according to a class-action lawsuit ... filed against both banks in
November. The conspiracy and scheme was enormously successful, netting the
defendants substantial illegal profits in the billions of dollars between June 2008 and
March 2010, according to the suit. In November 2009, [Andrew Maguire] ... a former employee
of Goldman Sachs and a 40-year industry veteran, [related] tales of how the silver traders at
JPMorgan were bragging about all the money they were making as a result of the manipulation,
which entailed flooding the market with short positions every time the price of silver started to
creep upward. In March 2010, Maguire released his e-mails publicly. Then came the cloak and
dagger element: [On March 26th] Maguire was involved in a bizarre car accident in London. The
Commodity Futures Trading Commissions investigation is still unresolved, and at least one
commissioner Bart Chilton after interviewing more than 32 people and reviewing more than
40,000 documents, [says] there has been enough investigating and not enough prosecuting.
Chilton said ... that one participant in the silver market still controlled 35 percent of the silver
market.
Note: Gold and silver have been intensely manipulated for many years. The price of gold has risen
500% in the last 10 years, while silver prices have rocketed 700% in the last eight years. Yet the
media consistently underreports this amazing news. Few media gave more than a passing
mention to gold passing the $1,000 mark in 2008, which was a historic event. Read the full article
to understand this important topic. For lots more quality information on this from a former US
assistant secretary for HUD, click here.
Trustee: J.P. Morgan Abetted Madoff

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. ignored or dismissed warning signs about the Madoff fraud even as it
earned hundreds of millions of dollars from its relationship with his firm, according to a lawsuit
unsealed [on February 3]. The $6.4 billion lawsuit ... claims that bankers at J.P. Morgan
discussed the possibility that Bernard Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme, worried that a
firm of such size was audited by a storefront accountant and called his returns "too good to
be true." "While numerous financial institutions enabled Madoff's fraud, JPMC was at the
very center of that fraud, and thoroughly complicit in it," according to the 115-page lawsuit, filed
under seal in December by Irving Picard, the trustee seeking to recover money for Mr. Madoff's
victims. The complaint seeks the return of nearly $1 billion in J.P. Morgan's profits and fees, and
$5.4 billion in damages. It goes into great detail about the bank's alleged efforts, starting in about
2006, to make money by offering products tied to Mr. Madoff through investment funds that fed
money to him. The lawsuit offers a detailed account of the more than two decade relationship
between J.P. Morgan and Mr. Madoff. The lawsuit claims that the bank didn't pay attention to
billions of dollars passing through the Madoff firm's main J.P. Morgan account, much of it by handwritten check, or to discrepancies in the account balance and unreported obligations.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the criminal practices of the biggest financial
institutions, click here.
Deregulation of derivatives set stage for collapse

http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-01-30/business/27091349_1_otc-derivatives-otc...
"We certainly applaud the efforts of the commission," said White House press secretary Robert
Gibbs, referring to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report. "Frankly, I'm not sure much has changed,"
said one of commissioners, Byron Georgiou. "The concentration of assets in the nation's 10
biggest banks is bigger now than it was five years ago, from 58 percent in 2006 to 63
percent now." Referring to executives who remain at the head of those banks that almost ran
aground, Georgiou said ... "Either they knew and didn't want to tell us, or they really didn't know.
Either way, they put their institutions at risk." And have yet to be held accountable. Commissioner
Brooksley Born can enjoy a certain sense of vindication. Not only had "over-the-counter
derivatives contributed significantly to this crisis," ... but the enactment of legislation in 2000 to ban
their regulation "was a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis." As head of the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the 1990s, Born was aware of the damage the largely
unregulated instruments had already caused. Born suggested some more regulation. [She] was
squashed like a bug by Clinton administration heavyweights, including Lawrence Summers and
Robert Rubin, [and] Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. One of the results: The
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 eliminated government oversight of the OTC
market. As the report documents, the use of such derivatives ... helped bring the entire
financial system to its knees. Born hasn't seen much change in terms of accountability. One
thing the report makes clear ... is just how preposterous were the "Who knew?" and "Who could
have predicted?" statements offered up by chief executives and top government officials.
Note: So the 10 biggest banks now control 63% of total U.S. bank assets. The total for these
banking assets as of the second quarter of 2010 were calculated at $13.22 trillion. Yet four of
these megabanks also control an astounding 95% of the $574 trillion derivatives market, a sum
over 40 times the amount of bank assets! Do you think there might be a problem with a derivatives
bubble?
Fed aid in financial crisis went beyond U.S. banks to industry, foreign
firms
2010-12-02, The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR20101201068...
New disclosures show the Federal Reserve rushed trillions of dollars in emergency aid not just to
Wall Street but also to ... foreign-owned banks in 2008 and 2009. The central bank's aid programs
also supported U.S. subsidiaries of banks based in East Asia, Europe and Canada. The biggest
users of the Fed lending programs were some of the world's largest banks, including Citigroup,
Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Swiss-based UBS and Britain's Barclays, according to more
than 21,000 loan records released [December 1] under new financial regulatory legislation. The
data reveal banks turning to the Fed for help almost daily in the fall of 2008 as the central bank
lowered lending standards and extended relief to all kinds of institutions it had never assisted
before. The extent of the lending to major banks - and the generous terms of some of those deals heighten the political peril for a central bank that is already under the gun for a wide range of
actions, including a recent decision to try to stimulate the economy by buying $600 billion in U.S.
bonds. "The American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of
the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America," said Sen. Bernard
Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime Fed critic whose provision in the Wall Street regulatory overhaul
required the new disclosures. "Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out
foreign private banks and corporations." The Fed launched emergency programs totaling $3.3
trillion in aid, a figure reached by adding up the peak amount of lending in each program.
Note: The figure of $3.3 trillion cited in this article was simply the peak amount lent at one moment
in time; the total amount lent by the Fed over the years covered by the data exceeded $20 trillion.
For analysis of this data release, click here.
"Inside Job" rigorously shows how financial crisis happened

2010-10-29, Denver Post (Denver's leading newspaper)
http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_16451155
Somebody owes us $20 trillion. "Inside Job," a riveting, eye-opening, infuriating documentary
about the financial collapse of 2008, coolly presents a prosecutor's brief against the culprits who
engineered the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. They occupy both sides of
the legislative aisle, corporate boardrooms, Ivy League faculty lounges and bank headquarters.
They made money sometimes obscene amounts of it while rigging a monetary
meltdown that left middle-class taxpayers holding the bag, and thousands of less-fortunate
former homeowners holding cardboard signs beside freeway on-ramps. This is no dry
economics lesson; it is a vital wakeup call. The presentation is articulate and rigorously factual,
presented in six chapters, from "How We Got There" to "Accountability." The financial earthquake
was not only entirely avoidable, but was utterly predictable given the steady erosion of scrutiny of
financial markets here and abroad. Reducing state monitoring under the Reagan administration set
the stage for the savings-and-loan crisis and the collapse of the junk-bond market. But that was a
luau compared with what lay ahead. Successive administrations, Democratic and Republican
alike, heeded advisers pushing for further deregulation, leading to WorldCom, Enron, the dot-com
bubble and the 2008 panic. Many of those laissez-faire advocates were prominent academics
receiving sizable consulting fees to testify in antitrust cases and in Congress on Wall Street's
behalf.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the long history of criminal and corrupt practices of
major financial powers and regulatory bodies, click here.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission judge says colleague biased

against complainants
As George H. Painter was preparing to retire recently as one of two administrative law judges
presiding over investor complaints at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, he issued an
extraordinary request: Please don't assign my pending cases to the other judge. [The CFTC
oversees trading of the nation's most important commodities, including oil, gold and cotton.]
Painter said Judge Bruce Levine ... had a secret agreement with a former Republican chairwoman
of the agency to stand in the way of investors filing complaints with the agency. "On Judge
Levine's first week on the job, nearly twenty years ago, he came into my office and stated
that he had promised Wendy Gramm, then Chairwoman of the Commission, that we would
never rule in a complainant's favor," Painter wrote. "A review of his rulings will confirm that
he fulfilled his vow. Judge Levine ... forces pro se complainants to run a hostile procedural
gauntlet until they lose hope, and either withdraw their complaint or settle for a pittance, regardless
of the merits of the case." Levine was the subject of a story 10 years ago in the Wall Street
Journal, which said that except in a handful of cases in which defunct firms failed to defend
themselves, Levine had never ruled in favor of an investor. Gramm [wife of former senator Phil
Gramm (R-Tex.)], was head of the CFTC just before president Bill Clinton took office. She has
been criticized by Democrats for helping firms such as Goldman Sachs and Enron gain influence
over the commodity markets. After leaving the CFTC, she joined Enron's board.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
How Goldman gambled on starvation

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how...
This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the
traders at Merrill Lynch, and more have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in
the world. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and
stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per
cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people mostly children couldn't
afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than
30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices
just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on
the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions." Through
the 1990s, Goldman Sachs and others lobbied hard and the regulations [controlling
agricultural futures contracts] were abolished. Suddenly, these contracts were turned into
"derivatives" that could be bought and sold among traders who had nothing to do with
agriculture. A market in "food speculation" was born. The speculators drove the price through
the roof.
Note: Some researchers speculate that the global elite are aware that alternative energies will
eventually replace oil, which has been a prime means of control and underlying cause of many
wars in recent decades. So as a replacement for oil, the elite and their secret societies are
increasingly targeting control of the world's food supply through terminator crops which produce no
seed, and through the patenting of seeds.
Stock market time bomb?

2010-05-10, Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/10/stock-market-time-bomb/?page=all
Even the worlds most savvy stock-market giants (e.g., Warren E. Buffett) have warned over the
past decade that derivatives are the fiscal equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. And the
consequences of such an explosion would make the recent global financial and economic crisis
seem like penny ante. But generously lubricated lobbyists for the unrestricted, unsupervised
derivatives markets tell congressional committees and government regulators to butt out.
While banks all over the world were imploding and some $50 trillion vanished in global
stock markets, the derivatives market grew by an estimated 65 percent, according the Bank
for International Settlements. BIS convenes the worlds 57 most powerful central bankers in Basel,
Switzerland, for periodic secret meetings. Occasionally, they issue a cry of alarm. This time,
derivatives had soared from $414.8 trillion at the end of 2006 to $683.7 trillion in mid-2008 - 18
months time. The derivatives market is now estimated at $700 trillion. Whats so difficult to
understand about derivatives? Essentially, they are bets for or against the house - red or black at
the roulette wheel. Or betting for or against the weather in situations in which the weather is critical
(e.g., vineyards). Forwards, futures, options and swaps form the panoply of derivatives. Credit
derivatives are based on loans, bonds or other forms of credit. Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives
are contracts that are traded and privately negotiated directly between two parties, outside of a
regular exchange. All of this is unregulated.
Note: Though not from one of the top U.S. newspapers, this incisive article lays bare severe
market manipulations that greatly endanger our world. The entire article is highly recommended.
$700 trillion is equivalent to $100,000 for every man, woman, and child in the world! Do you think
the financial industry is out of control? For lots more powerful, reliable information on major
banking manipulations, click here. For a powerful analysis describing just how crazy things have
gotten and giving some rays of hope by researcher David Wilcock, click here.
Learning From Lehman

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/opinion/14sun3.html
On top of everything Lehman Brothers did before it collapsed in 2008, nearly toppling the financial
system, it now seems that it was aggressively massaging its books. A new report on the Lehman
collapse, released last week ... would leave anyone dumbstruck by the firms audacity
and reminded of the crying need for adult supervision of Wall Street. The 2,200-page report
[finds that] Lehman engaged in transactions that let it temporarily shift troubled assets off its books
and in so doing, hide its reliance on borrowed money. The maneuvers ... made the firm appear
healthier than it was. [The author, Anton R. Valukas, a former federal prosecutor,] wrote that
Richard S. Fuld Jr., Lehmans former chief executive, was at least grossly negligent, and that
Lehman executives engaged in actionable balance sheet manipulation. According to the report,
rating agencies, government regulators and Lehmans board of directors had no clue about the
gimmicks. The result is that we were all blindsided. And we could be blindsided again. Congress
is not even close to passing meaningful regulatory reform. The surviving banks have only
gotten bigger and more politically powerful. If the Valukas report is not a wake-up call, what
would be?
Note: The Lehman report is described in detail here. For revealing information showing how the
US Treasury Department continues to fight against a much-needed audit of the Federal Reserve,
click here. For a great collection of revealing reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities
behind the financial crisis and government bailouts of the biggest financial corporations, click here.
Greece to Make All Large Cash Transactions Illegal

2010-02-16, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/The-Daily-Reckoning/2010/0216/Greece-to-Make-A...
Embroiled in its debt crisis and looking for any avenue to bolster tax receipts [Greece] has done
the unthinkable it has made [cash, in euros] illegal for transactions over 1,500 euros. Of course,
larger credit- or debit-based electronic transactions over 1,500 will still be denominated in euros.
However, electronic transactions clearly require infrastructure and limit personal freedom. From
Reuters: From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons
and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash.
Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards. It seems wrong for the
Greek state to dictate how cash euros can be used. In fact, its surprising that the EU-endorsed
plan would allow Greece to control euro usage at that level. Despite the fact that the reform bill is a
piece of an approved EU plan to help improve Greek tax revenue and reduce deficit, it seems to
go too far in curtailing personal liberty. How much is a government willing to punish its own citizens
for using too much of their own legal tender in an otherwise legal transaction?
Note: What gives any government the right to limit cash transactions? And why is the EU
approving this unusual measure? Could this be part of a hidden agenda to push the public towards
a cashless society?
Fed Struggles with Perceptions of Transparency

2009-07-30, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec09/federalreserve_07-30.html
PAUL SOLMAN, NewsHour economics correspondent: As the Federal Reserve moved rapidly and
radically last year to prevent what it feared was an economic meltdown, it bailed out some
institutions, but not others, forced mergers, [and] created hundreds of billions of dollars. The net
result: increased suspicion of the Fed itself. That's nothing new. The 1913 act of Congress that
established America's central bank was ... a compromise between government ... and
private banking interests, which owned the 12 regional Fed branches. [All along,] some
Americans have been suspicious of the Fed for operating above politics, too close to bankers, and
behind closed doors. Simply Google "Federal Reserve." You encounter everything from skepticism
to fear of conspiracy. NARRATOR: With the power to regulate the money supply is also the
power to bring entire economies and societies to its knees. DONALD KOHN, Federal Reserve
vice chairman: We bring information to bear from the private sector, from foreign governments and
foreign central banks that they tell us in confidence about what's going on in their businesses.
WILLIAM GREIDER, author, "Secrets of the Temple": You could say, "We have to have our
meetings in secret because things will be said that are national security secrets, but we'll vet the
transcript and release it four weeks later." Why not do that? SOLMAN: A House bill ... would give
the Government Accountability Office the right to audit the Fed's interest rate decisions. Chairman
Bernanke opposes it as compromising the Fed's independence.
Note: If you look at the top of any U.S. currency, you will see the words "Federal Reserve Note."
U.S. dollars are issued and controlled by the Federal Reserve, which is privately owned, though
subject to minimal federal oversight. To see just how much control the Federal Reserve has over
the issuance of U.S. currency, see their webpage at this link. For lots more on hidden
manipulations of the Federal Reserve, click here.
New Fed powers not matched with accountability

2009-06-25, Reuters News
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE55O6EZ20090625
President Barack Obama's proposal for a regulatory overhaul of the financial industry vastly
expands the reach of the Federal Reserve, yet fails to make policy-makers more accountable for
their actions. Critics argue that the new legislation fundamentally misses the problems that led to
the financial crisis. It was a lack of enforcement by supervisors, they say, not insufficient rules, that
fostered a cowboy culture of rampant risk-taking on Wall Street. "Obama is letting the Fed and
everyone else off the hook by saying that the problem was with the regulations and not the
regulators," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research in
Washington. "If regulators know that even if they totally fail on the job, they will face no career
consequences, then at some future point, when there is a choice between confronting the financial
industry or just going along, the regulators will just go along," said Baker. Some feel uncomfortable
with a broader role for the Fed primarily because of the Fed's closeness to the banking sector. The
Fed is not technically a public entity. Each of the Fed's 12 branches are overseen by a ninemember board of directors, two-thirds of whom are elected by the bankers in the district. "The
Federal Reserve has massive conflicts of interest that make it ill-suited for its present
regulatory functions and certainly for an expanded regulatory reach," said Robert Auerbach,
a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. "The officials leading the Fed
today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the bankers they
regulate."
Note: For empowering insight into the historic roots of the Federal Reserve's unaccountability,
click here.
Fed Would Be Shut Down If It Were Audited, Expert Says

2009-06-10, CNBC News
The Federal Reserve's balance sheet is so out of whack that the central bank would be shut down
if subjected to a conventional audit, Jim Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, told
CNBC. With $45 billion in capital and $2.1 trillion in assets, the central bank would not withstand
the scrutiny normally afforded other institutions, Grant said. "If the Fed examiners were set upon
the Fed's own documents ... to pass judgment on the Fed's capacity to survive the
difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down," he said. "The Fed is
undercapitalized in a way that Citicorp is undercapitalized." Grant said he would support
legislation currently making its way through Congress calling for an audit of the Fed. Moreover, he
criticized the way the Fed has managed the financial crisis, saying the central bank's target rate
should not be around zero. "I think zero is the wrong rate for almost any economy," Grant said,
adding the Fed has "embarked on a vast experiment in moral hazard. Interest rates are the traffic
signals in a market economy, and everything's green. ... You have to wonder whether these
interest rates are the right clearing rate or rather they are the imposition of a central bank." Amid a
disparity between analysts predicting there will be no rate hikes soon and the fed funds futures
indicating tightening by the end of the year, Grant said he thinks the Fed indeed will begin raising
rates as inflation creeps into the picture. Fed funds futures have fully priced in as much as a half-
point rise in the target rate from its current range of zero to 0.25 percent. "If the hairs on the back
of your neck stand up when there's too much unanimity of opinion, then one begins to worry about
this," he said. "The Fed proverbially has been late."
Note: For an astonishing five-minute video clip of a Congressional hearing where the Inspector
General of the Fed acknowledges she knows almost nothing about trillions of dollars missing from
the Fed, click here. For many more important reports shedding light on the hidden realities of the
economic crisis, click here.
JPMorgan's Dangerous Derivatives

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_20/b4131069034013.htm
Gillian Tett [is the author of] Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was
Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe. Tett is a respected business
journalist at the Financial Times. Tett successfully pieces together the colorful backstory of
the bank's work to win acceptance in the market for its brainchild, turning credit derivatives
"from a cottage industry into a mass-production business." With the benefit of hindsight, we
know that while these inventions were intended to control risk, they amplified it instead. This novel
idea turned noxious when applied broadly to residential mortgages, a game that the rest of Wall
Street later entered into with gusto. We learn in deep detail about not only how collateralized debt
obligations are assembled but also their many iterations. Perhaps it's noteworthy that Tett's book
begins when JPMorgan had the face-value equivalent of $1.7 trillion in derivatives on its
books. Today that number has jumped to a mind-boggling $87 trillion. Part of that portfolio
includes almost $8.4 trillion in credit derivatives, more than Bank of America's (BAC), Citi's, and
Goldman Sachs' (GS) holdings combined.
Note: So JP Morgan has $87 trillion in derivatives, a mass market it helped to create. That is
greater than the GDP for the entire world! To verify this, click here. For a New York Times
review of this revealing book, click here.
Fed Shrouding $2 Trillion in Bank Loans in Secrecy, Suit Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aS89AaGjOplw
U.S. taxpayers need to know the risks behind the Federal Reserves $2 trillion in lending to
financial institutions because the public is now an involuntary investor in the nations banks,
according to a court filing by Bloomberg LP. The Fed refuses to name the borrowers, the amounts
of loans or assets banks put up as collateral under 11 programs, arguing that doing so might set
off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders. The largest U.S. banks have tapped more than
$125 billion in government aid under the Troubled Asset Relief Program in the past seven months.
Assets, including loans and securities, on the Fed balance sheet totaled $2.09 trillion as of April 9.
Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal weakness and spur shortselling or a run by depositors, the Fed argued in its March 4 response. The release of the
information can fuel market speculation and rumors, including a drop in stock price and a run on
the bank, the Fed said. Bloomberg replied yesterday that these speculative injuries relate only to
the reactions of customers, shareholders and other members of the public, not to competitors use
of the borrowers proprietary information to their advantage, the exception to disclosure under the
FOIA law. Government loans, spending or guarantees to rescue the U.S. financial system
total more than $12.8 trillion since the international credit crisis began in August 2007,
according to data compiled by Bloomberg as of March 31. The total includes about $2
trillion on the Feds balance sheet.
click here.
No-Risk Insurance at F.D.I.C.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/business/07sorkin.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&...
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was set up 76 years ago with the important but simple
job of insuring bank deposits. Now, because of what could politely be called mission creep, its
elbowing its way into the middle of the financial mess as an enabler of enormous leverage. In the
fine print of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithners plan to lend as much as $1 trillion to
private investors to help them buy toxic assets from our nations banks, youll find some
details of how the F.D.I.C is trying to stabilize the system by adding more risk, not less, to
the system. Its going to be insuring 85 percent of the debt, provided by the Treasury, that private
investors will use to subsidize their acquisitions of toxic assets. These loans, while controversial,
were given a warm welcome by the market when they were first announced. And why not? The
terms are hard to beat. They are, for example, nonrecourse, which means that if an investor
loses money, he owes taxpayers nothing. Its the closest thing to risk-free investing with
leverage! around. But, as weve learned the hard way these last couple of years, risk-free
investing is an oxymoron. So where did the risk go this time? To the F.D.I.C., and ultimately, to us
taxpayers. A close reading of the F.D.I.C.s statute suggests the agency is using a unique some
might call it plain wrong reading of its own rule book to accomplish this high-wire act. Somehow,
in the name of solving the financial crisis, the F.D.I.C. has seemingly been given a blank check,
with virtually no oversight by Congress.
Note: For a powerfully revealing archive of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of
the financial bailout, click here.
Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=apx7XNLnZZlc
The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more
than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is
accepting as collateral. Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act
requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest
financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying its allowed to
withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information.
If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government
may take and thats what they dont want us to know, said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing
director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC. The Fed stepped into a rescue role that was the
original purpose of the Treasurys $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The central bank
loans dont have the oversight safeguards that Congress imposed upon the TARP. Total Fed
lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time Nov. 6. It rose by 138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the
12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept
securities that werent rated AAA. There has to be something they can tell the public because we
have a right to know what they are doing, said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington,
Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Financial Bailout Balloons to the Trillions

2008-11-25, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=6332892
The government's financial bailout will be the most expensive single expenditure in American
history, potentially costing around $7.5 trillion -- or half the value of all the goods and services
produced in the United States last year. In comparison, the total U.S. cost of World War II adjusted
for inflation was $3.6 trillion. The bailout will cost more than the total combined costs in
today's dollars of the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the Korean War, the Vietnam
War and the entire historical budget of NASA, including the moon landing, according to data
compiled by Bianco Research. It remains to be seen whether the government's multipronged
approach to bail out banks, stimulate spending and buy up mortgages will revive the economy, but
as the tab continues to grow so does concern over where the government will find the money.
Monday the government guaranteed an additional $306 billion to bail out Citigroup, and today
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pledged $800 billion to make credit more available to
consumers and small businesses, and to buy up mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Congress last month allocated $700 billion for an emergency bailout of some of Wall Street's most
storied firms by purchasing their troubled assets. The funds allocated through the Troubled Assets
Relief Program are but a small part of the government's overall bailout spending. Bailout programs
also include a Federal Reserve plan to buy as much as $2.4 trillion in short-term notes called
commercial paper that began Oct. 27, and an FDIC plan to spend $1.4 trillion to guarantee bankto-bank loans that commenced Oct. 14, according to Bloomberg News, which first compiled the
total cost of the bailout.
Note: $7.5 trillion amounts to about $25,000 for every person in the U.S. What's going on here?
For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Paulson makes it clear: He's in charge

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/13/BUUK1439IF.DTL
Henry Paulson's speech Wednesday made it pretty clear: The Treasury secretary has seized
control of the financial system. "He is absolutely the most powerful person in the country.
Maybe the world," says Wall Street accounting expert Robert Willens. The most telling line in
his speech came when Paulson was explaining why he did a 180-degree turn with money
approved by Congress under the $700 billion bailout bill. Instead of using it to buy troubled
mortgage assets from banks, as clearly envisioned, he scrapped that idea and used it to make
equity investments in banks. "In consultation with the Federal Reserve, I determined that the most
timely, effective step to improve credit market conditions was to strengthen bank balance sheets
quickly through direct purchases of equity in banks," he said. If Paulson bothered consulting with
President Bush, he didn't mention it. In fact, he didn't even mention the president until the tail end
of his speech, when he talked about the global summit Bush is hosting this weekend. I can
understand why Paulson wants to distance himself from an unpopular president, especially one
who has little facility for complex financial matters. But Bush is [the] president and even Presidentelect Barack Obama knows there can be only one president at a time. And his last name is not
Paulson. In September, when Paulson asked for a $700 billion blank check from Congress to fix
the financial markets, he got a lot of blowback. By the time Congress was done with his
proposal, it had grown from 2 1/2 pages to more than 450. Yet it now appears that Paulson
got the blank check he wanted.
Note: Why doesn't Congress have some say in what is done with this $700 billion? That's over
$3,000 for every taxpayer in the U.S. which is being spent with practically no accountability. Is this
what democracy looks like? For many key articles revealing the hidden realities of the bailout, click
here.
Warning: King Henry's bailout like Rummy's Iraq

2008-11-10, MarketWatch (A Wall Street Journal Digital Network Website)
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/reagonomics-hides-sleeper-cells-harbori...
So you thought Barack Obama's victory signaled the death of Reaganomics? Wrong, wrong:
Reaganomics is very much alive. In a subtle, bloodless coup, the Reaganomics ideology magically
pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat in the meltdown. The magic happened fast and quietly, in
the shadows, while you were in a trance, distracted by the election drama. Recently Naomi Klein,
author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, framed the issue perfectly: "Has
the Treasury partially nationalized the private banks, as we have been told? Or is it the
other way around?" The question was rhetorical, the answer painfully clear. In a few weeks
Wall Street did the old bait and switch, emerging from an economic and market disaster
with new powers, in total control of America. And thanks to Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson's brilliant bailout coup, Reaganomics is now the new "sleeper cell" quietly hidden inside
the Obama White House and America's Treasury, where it will be for a long time to come. Listen
closely folks: You and your government are and will continue being conned out of trillions. Klein
further exposed this insanity in a recent Rolling Stone article, "The New Trough: The Wall Street
bailout looks a lot like Iraq, a 'free-fraud zone' where private contractors cash in on the mess they
helped create." Paulson's privatization, outsourcing and management of the $700 billion bailout
has the exact same Reaganomics ideological, strategic and deceptive footprints that President
George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to privatize, outsource and
mismanage the costly Iraq War blunder.
Note: For the powerfully revealing article by Naomi Klein mentioned in the article above, click
here. Speaking on Tulsa Oklahomas 1170 KFAQ, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma
(Republican) has revealed that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was the source of the threat of
martial law in the US if the $700 billion bailout bill was not passed that was exposed on the House
floor by Rep. Brad Sherman. For many key articles revealing the hidden realities of the bailout,
click here.
Bernanke Is Fighting the Last War

"Nothing," [famed economist] Anna Schwartz says, "seems to have quieted the fears of either the
investors in the securities markets or the lenders and would-be borrowers in the credit market."
The credit markets remain frozen, the stock market continues to get hammered, and deep
recession now seems a certainty -- if not a reality already. [Recently, according to Schwarz,
Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson has] shifted from trying to save the banking system to
trying to save banks. These are not, Ms. Schwartz argues, the same thing. In fact, by keeping
otherwise insolvent banks afloat, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have actually
prolonged the crisis. "They should not be recapitalizing firms that should be shut down."
Rather, "firms that made wrong decisions should fail," she says bluntly. "You shouldn't
rescue them. Everything works much better when wrong decisions are punished and good
decisions make you rich." How did we get into this mess in the first place? As in the 1920s, the
current "disturbance" started with a "mania." But manias always have a cause. "In every case, it
was expansive monetary policy that generated the boom in an asset. The particular asset varied
from one boom to another. But the basic underlying propagator was too-easy monetary policy and
too-low interest ratest. And then of course if monetary policy tightens, the boom collapses."
Today's crisis isn't a replay of the problem in the 1930s, but our central bankers have responded
by using the tools they should have used then. They are fighting the last war. The result, she
argues, has been failure.
Note: Anna Schwarz and Nobel-winner Milton Friedman authored A Monetary History of the
United States. It's the definitive account of how misguided monetary policy turned the stock-market
crash of 1929 into the Great Depression. The excellent article above mentions that Fed Reserve
Chairman Bernanke once said "I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great
Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. We won't do it again." Top bankers and their
cronies have been aware of what causes the boom/bust cycle for over 100 years and taken full
advantage of it. Try to find one top banker who lost significant money in any bust cycle.
A Few Speculators Dominate Vast Market for Oil Trading

Regulators had long classified a private Swiss energy conglomerate called Vitol as a trader that
primarily helped industrial firms that needed oil to run their businesses. But when the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission examined Vitol's books last month, it found that the firm was in fact
more of a speculator, holding oil contracts as a profit-making investment rather than a means of
lining up the actual delivery of fuel. Even more surprising to the commodities markets was the
massive size of Vitol's portfolio -- at one point in July, the firm held 11 percent of all the oil
contracts on the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange. The discovery revealed how an
individual financial player had gained enormous sway over the oil market without the knowledge of
regulators. Other CFTC data showed that a significant amount of trading activity was concentrated
in the hands of just a few speculators. The CFTC ... now reports that financial firms
speculating for their clients or for themselves account for about 81 percent of the oil
contracts on NYMEX, a far bigger share than had previously been stated by the agency.
That figure may rise in coming weeks as the CFTC checks the status of other big traders. Some
lawmakers have blamed these firms for the volatility of oil prices, including the tremendous run-up
that peaked earlier in the summer. "It is now evident that speculators in the energy futures markets
play a much larger role than previously thought, and it is now even harder to accept the agency's
laughable assertion that excessive speculation has not contributed to rising energy prices," said
Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.).
Investors' Growing Appetite for Oil Evades Market Limits

Hedge funds and big Wall Street banks are taking advantage of loopholes in federal trading
limits to buy massive amounts of oil contracts, ... helping to push oil prices to record highs.
The federal agency that oversees oil trading, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,
has exempted these firms from rules that limit speculative buying. The CFTC has also
waived regulations over the past decade on U.S. investors who trade commodities on some
overseas markets, freeing those investors to accumulate large quantities of the future oil supply by
making purchases on lightly regulated foreign exchanges. Over the past five years, investors have
become such a force on commodity markets that their appetite for oil contracts has been equal to
China's increase in demand over the same period, said Michael Masters, a hedge fund manager
who testified before Congress on the subject last month. The commodity markets, he added, were
never intended for such large financial players. Commodities have become especially enticing to
investors as the credit crisis has roiled other investment opportunities such as stocks and debtrelated securities. The recent flood of investment money has transformed the markets for oil, as
well as uranium, wheat, cotton and other goods, into a volatile realm that some insiders call the
Wild West of Wall Street. Michael Greenberger, a professor at the University of Maryland and
former CFTC commissioner, said there were loopholes the agency could close without much effort.
"There's smoke here, and the CFTC hasn't wanted to look if there's a fire," he said. "But these are
dark markets. They don't even know who's doing the trading."
Note: For revealing reports on financial corruption and criminality from major media sources, click
here.
The Global Ruling Class: Billion-dollar Babies

2008-04-24, The Economist magazine
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11081878
Who rules the world? The rise of nation states produced national ruling classes. It would be odd if
the current integration of the world economy did not produce new global elites business people
and financiers who run global companies and global politicians who steer supra-national
organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund. David
Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that these
elites constitute nothing less than a new global superclass. They have all the clubby
characteristics of the old national ruling classes, but with the vital difference that they
operate on the global stage, far from mere national electorates. They attend the same
universities. They are groomed in a handful of world-spanning institutions such as Goldman
Sachs. They belong to the same clubs the Council on Foreign Relations in New York is a
particular favourite and sit on each other's boards of directors. Many of them shuttle between
the public and private sectors. They meet at global events such as the World Economic Forum at
Davos and the Trilateral Commission or for the crme de la crme the Bilderberg meetings or
the Bohemian Grove seminars that take place every July in California. Mr Rothkopf is anything but
a crank, and he is right when he says that, these days, the most influential people around the
world are also the most global people. He is also admirably ambivalent about his subject. He
worries about surging inequality the richest 1% of humans own 40% of the planet's wealth
and about the rumbling backlash against so much unaccountable power.
Note: For reliable, verifiable information the secret societies of which the global elite are a part,
click here. Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making by David Rothkopf
is available here.
What Power Looks Like

2008-04-14, Newsweek magazine
http://www.newsweek.com/id/130637
[In] speaking [with New York Federal Reserve Bank president Timothy] Geithner while I was doing
the research for my recently published book Superclass, he sketched in fascinating detail how the
world's power elite rallies when the markets quake. Recalling an earlier crisis in global securities
markets that he helped to manage, Geithner said the Fed brought together the leaders of the
world's 14 major financial firms, from five countries, representing 95 percent of all the activity in
global markets. The Swiss were there, the Germans were there, the British were there. Goldman
Sachs chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein "jokingly called them 'the 14 families,' like in 'The
Godfather'," says Geithner. "And we said to them, 'You guys have got to fix this problem. Tell us
how you are going to fix it and we will work out some basic regime.' You ... need a critical mass of
the right players. It is a much more concentrated world." Geithner's description of the financial elite
in crisis mode came many months before the recent meltdown of Bear Stearns, yet foreshadowed
[it] in an uncanny way. The people ... described by Geithner, plus a few thousand more like
them, not only in business and finance, but also politics, the arts, the nonprofit world and
other realms, are part of a new global elite that has emerged over the past several decades.
I call it the "superclass." They have vastly more power than any other group on the planet. Each
of the members is set apart by his ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people in
multiple countries worldwide. Each actively exercises this power, and often amplifies it through the
development of relationships with other superclass members.
Note: For many revealing stories from reliable sources on secret societies of the world's most
powerful people, click here.
Derivatives the new 'ticking bomb'

2008-03-10, MarketWatch (Part of the Wall Street Journal's digital network)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/derivatives-are-the-new-ticking-time-bomb
"In our view, however, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers
that, while now latent, are potentially lethal." That warning was in [Warren] Buffett's 2002 letter to
Berkshire shareholders. He saw a future that many others chose to ignore. Wall Street didn't listen
to Buffett. Derivatives grew into a massive bubble, from about $100 trillion to $516 trillion by 2007.
Despite Buffett's clear warnings, a massive new derivatives bubble is driving the domestic and
global economies, a bubble that continues growing today parallel with the subprime-credit
meltdown triggering a bear-recession. Data on the five-fold growth of derivatives to $516 trillion in
five years comes from the most recent survey by the Bank of International Settlements, the world's
clearinghouse for central banks in Basel, Switzerland. Keep in mind that while the $516 trillion
"notional" value (maximum in case of a meltdown) of the deals is a good measure of the market's
size, the 2007 BIS study notes that the $11 trillion "gross market values provides a more accurate
measure of the scale of financial risk transfer taking place in derivatives markets." The fact is,
derivatives have become the world's biggest "black market," exceeding the illicit traffic in
stuff like arms, drugs, alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, stolen art and pirated movies. Why?
Because like all black markets, derivatives are a perfect way of getting rich while avoiding
taxes and government regulations. And in today's slowdown, plus a volatile global market, Wall
Street knows derivatives remain a lucrative business.
Note: $516 trillion is equivalent to $75,000 for every man, woman, and child in the world! Do you
think the financial industry is out of control? For lots more powerful, reliable information on major
banking manipulations, click here. For a powerful analysis describing just how crazy things have
gotten and giving some rays of hope by researcher David Wilcock, click here.
Bill Moyers talks with [NY Times reporter] David Cay Johnston about
Free Lunch
2008-01-08, PBS Bill Moyers Journal
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01182008/transcript1.html
BILL MOYERS: Why do some of the most powerful and privileged people in the country get a free
lunch you pay for? You'll find some of the answers [in]: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans
Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill). The theme of the book
as I read it is that not that the rich are getting richer but that they've got the government rigging the
rules to help them do it. DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: That's exactly right. And they're doing it in a way
that I think is very crucial for people to understand. They're doing it by taking from those with
less to give to those with more. We gave $100 million dollars to Warren Buffett's company
last year, a gift from the taxpayers. We make gifts all over the place to rich people. Donald
Trump benefits from a tax specifically levied by the State of New Jersey for the poor. Part of
the casino winnings tax in New Jersey is dedicated to help the poor. But $89 million of it is being
diverted to subsidize Donald Trump's casino's building retail space. George Steinbrenner, like
almost every owner of a major sports franchise, gets enormous public subsidies. The major sports
franchises [make] 100 percent of their profits from subsidies. In fact, if it weren't for these
subsidies, the baseball, football, hockey, and basketball enterprises as a whole would be losing
hundreds of millions of dollars a year. George Bush owes almost his entire fortune to a tax
increase that was funneled into his pocket and into the use of eminent domain laws to essentially
legally cheat other people out of their land for less than it was worth to enrich him and his fellow
investors.
Note: Watch part of this amazingly revealing interview online at this link. Johnston is a prolific
writer with the NY Times; to see a list of his many articles there, click here. For deeply revealing
1934: The Plot Against America

2007-07-28, Harper's magazine
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000651
In November 1934, federal investigators uncovered an amazing plot involving some two dozen
senior businessmen, a good many of them Wall Street financiers, to topple the government of the
United States and install a fascist dictatorship. An alert FDR shut it down but stopped short of
retaliatory measures against the plotters. A key element of the plot involved [Smedley Butler], a
retired prominent general who was to have raised a private army of 500,000 men from
unemployed veterans and who blew the whistle when he learned more of what the plot entailed.
The plot was heavily funded and well developed and had strong links with fascist forces abroad. A
story in the New York Times and several other newspapers reported on it, and a special
Congressional committee was created to conduct an investigation. The records of this committee
were scrubbed and sealed away in the National Archives, where they have only recently been
made available. The Congressional committee kept the names of many of the participants under
wraps and no criminal action was ever brought against them. But a few names have leaked out.
And one is Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the incumbent president. Prescott Bush was ...
deep into the business of the Hamburg-America Lines, and had tight relations throughout
this period with the new Government that had come to power in Germany a year earlier
under Chancellor Adolph Hitler. It appears that Bush was to have formed a key liaison for the
group with the new German government. The role of the most powerful political dynastic family in
the nations history in this whole affair is shocking.
Note: You can listen to the highly revealing BBC Radio broadcast on Bush/Nazi ties by clicking
here. And to watch an eye-opening History Channel documentary on the coup plot, click here. U.S.
Marine Corps General Smedley Butler was the author of the landmark book "War is a Racket,"
summarized here.
Government Accountability Office Report

2006-12-15, Comptroller General of the United States
http://fms.treas.gov/fr/06frusg/06gao2.pdf
The Secretary of the Treasury ... is required annually to submit financial statements for the U.S.
government to the President and the Congress. GAO is required to audit these statements. Certain
material weaknesses in financial reporting and other limitations on the scope of our work resulted
in conditions that continued to prevent us from expressing an opinion on the accompanying
consolidated financial statements for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2006 and 2005. The
federal government did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting. While we are
unable to express an opinion ... the following key items deserve emphasis. The U.S.
governments total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal
exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing
approximately four times the Nations total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about
$20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000. The retirement of thebaby boom generation
is [also] closer to becoming a reality with the first wave of boomers eligible for early retirement
under Social Security in 2008. It seems clear that the nations current fiscal path is unsustainable
and that tough choices by the President and the Congress are necessary in order to address the
nations large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance. Other material weaknesses were the federal
governments inability to: determine the full extent to which improper payments exist; identify and
resolve information security control weaknesses; and effectively manage its tax collection
activities.
Note: The full 172-page report is available here. Why didn't any of the media cover this eyeopening report? Is the fact that the national debt has risen 150% since 2000 not news? For a
possible answer, click here. To learn of the trillions of unaccounted for dollars in the military, click
here.
Insiders' stock sale-purchase ratio widens

2006-12-07, Chicago Tribune/Bloomberg
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0612070153dec07,0,3801935.story
Stock sales by America's corporate leaders exceeded purchases last month by the widest ratio in
nearly 20 years. Executives sold $63.18 of shares for every $1 they bought in November, the
largest ratio since at least January 1987. U.S. securities laws require company executives and
directors to disclose stock purchases or sales within two business days. Insiders sold $8.4 billion in
shares last month, according to data compiled from SEC filings. Buying was ... $133 million. The
overall insider-selling amount was the fifth-highest since 1987. Selling peaked at $13.9 billion in
March 2000. The data have "value for investors," said Wayne Reisner at Carret Asset
Management in New York. "It's people who are very familiar with their company and their stock."
Insiders executed 6.34 sales transactions for each purchase transaction in the eight weeks ended
Dec. 1. That's up from 2.45 in the period ended Aug. 4 and above the ratio of 2.25 he considers
neutral for the market. Microsoft ranked first among U.S. companies, with $594.2 million in sales
by insiders in November. Seagate Technology and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. ranked
second and third, at $311.8 million and $224.2 million, respectively. Google Inc. was fourth, at
$182.1 million.
Note: Isn't it interesting that the NASDAQ stock index reached it's all-time high in March 2000,
the exact month executive stock selling hit its record, and just prior to the huge NASDAQ
crash. Is it possible that corporate executives knew something the rest of us didn't?
World's wealth gap grows; poorest half has 1% of assets

2006-12-05, Denver Post (Denver's leading newspaper)
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_4785148
The richest 2 percent of adults still own more than half of the world's household wealth,
perpetuating a yawning global gap between rich and poor, according to research published
Tuesday. The report from the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research
shows that in 2000 the richest 1 percent of adults - most of whom live in Europe or the
United States - owned 40 percent of global assets. The richest 10 percent of adults
accounted for 85 percent of assets. By contrast, the bottom 50 percent of the world's adult
population owned barely 1 percent of the world's wealth. "Income inequality has been rising
for the past 20 to 25 years, and we think that is true for inequality in the distribution of wealth," said
James Davies, a professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario, one of the report's
authors. But ... there are some hopeful signs: China and India, which are developing rapidly, are
gaining wealth, and in countries such as Bangladesh, the spread of microcredit institutions is
helping people increase their personal wealth.
Note: If you are interested in a secure vehicle in which to place your investments which helps to
directly pull families out of poverty in a big way through microcredit and microloans, click here.
Getting closer to Uncle Sam

2006-09-20, Toronto Star (One of Canada's top newspapers)
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Articl...
Public kept in dark as business leads talks about North American integration. Away from the
spotlight, from Sept. 12 to 14, in Banff Springs, Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day and
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor met with U.S. and Mexican government officials and business
leaders to discuss North American integration at the second North American Forum. The guest list
included such prominent figures as U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Mexican Secretary
of Public Security Eduardo Medina Mora and Canadian Forces chief General Rick Hillier. The
event was chaired by former U.S. secretary of state George Schultz, former Alberta premier, Peter
Lougheed and former Mexican finance minister Pedro Aspe. Organizers did not alert the media
about the event. Our government ... refuses to release any information about the content of
the discussions or the actors involved. The event was organized by the Canadian Council
of Chief Executives. The media have paid little attention to this far-reaching agreement, so
Canadians are unaware that a dozen working groups are currently "harmonizing" Canadian
and U.S. regulations on everything from food to drugs to the environment and even more
contentious issues like foreign policy. This process ... is about priming North America for better
business by weakening the impacts of such perceived obstacles as environmental standards and
labour rights. This is why the public has been kept in the dark while the business elite has played a
leading role in designing the blueprint for this more integrated North America.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Why has the U.S. media not covered this key topic? For a
second article discussing this secret meeting on a top Canadian TV website, click here. To learn
about other secret meetings of the power elite, click here
Sustained Improvement in Federal Financial Management Is Crucial to

Addressing Our Nation's Financial Condition and Long-term Fiscal
Imbalance
2006-03-01, Government Accountability Office (GAO) Website
http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-06-406T
GAO is required by law to annually audit the consolidated financial statements of the U.S.
government. Until the problems discussed in GAO's audit report on the U.S. government's
consolidated financial statements are adequately addressed, they will continue to...hinder the
federal government from having reliable financial information to operate in an economical, efficient,
and effective manner. For the ninth consecutive year, certain material weaknesses in internal
control and in selected accounting and financial reporting practices resulted in conditions
that continued to prevent GAO from being able to provide the Congress and American
people an opinion as to whether the consolidated financial statements of the U.S.
government are fairly stated in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting
principles. Major impediments to an opinion on the consolidated financial statements continued to
be (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense. The federal
government's fiscal exposures now total more than $46 trillion, representing close to four times
gross domestic product (GDP) in fiscal year 2005 and up from about $20 trillion or two times GDP
in 2000.
Note:For the official .pdf version on the GAO website click here. Why didn't this become headline
news? Why isn't anyone being assigned to seriously investigate these continually unresolved core
issues and report to the public that the largest, most powerful country in the world is a long way
from being able to track its own finances. For lots more major media articles on major government
corruption, click here. You can help to build a better world by sharing this vital information with your
friends and colleagues and contacting members of the media and your government
representatives asking them to address this pervasive problem. Thanks for caring.
Defense Department drops $100M on unused airline tickets

2004-06-09, USA Today/New York Times/Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2004-06-09-pentagon-flights_x.htm
The Defense Department spent an estimated $100 million for airline tickets that were not used
over a six-year period and failed to seek refunds even though the tickets were reimbursable,
congressional investigators say. The GAO estimated that between 1997 and 2003, the Defense
Department bought at least $100 million in tickets that were not used or used only partially by a
passenger who did not complete all legs of a flight. The waste went undetected because the
department relied on individuals to report the unused tickets. They did not do so. "The millions of
dollars wasted on unused airline tickets provides another example of why DOD financial
management is one of our high-risk areas, with DOD highly vulnerable to fraud, waste and
abuse," the GAO said. Two of the three lawmakers who asked for the study were Republicans,
and both were highly critical of the Pentagon's lack of financial control. Sen. Charles Grassley, RIowa, said, "It's outrageous that the Defense Department would be sending additional federal tax
dollars to the airlines by way of unused passenger tickets." While one GAO report focused on the
unused tickets, the second investigation found potential fraud. It said the department paid travelers
for tickets the department already bought and reimbursed employees for tickets that had not been
authorized. It is a crime for a government employee knowingly to request reimbursement for goods
and services he or she did not buy. To demonstrate how easy it was to have the Pentagon pay for
airline travel, the investigators posed as Defense employees, had the department generate a ticket
and showed up at the ticket counter to pick up a boarding pass.
Note:To read this astonishing article on the New York Times website, click here.
The BCCI whitewash

1991-11-06, Baltimore Sun
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-11-06/news/1991310167_1_bcci-sununu-whi...
Relax, everybody -- the White House counsel has "investigated" the case of the departing
Sununu aide with no legal experience who was hired for $600,000 by a BCCI figure, and
rendered this verdict: Nobody did anything wrong. Influence peddling? An attempt by
intermediaries to obstruct justice? Forget it. Sununu's man agrees to give back the money;
case closed. Much relieved, the Republican Justice Department hastily announces it accepts the
predetermined result of the White House "inquiry" and will not investigate. To date, nobody has
been asked a single question under oath. Let's see what Sheik Kamal Adham, the ex-Saudi
spymaster at the center of the BCCI conspiracy, thought he would get by hiring the person closest
to Bush's chief of staff. Since late spring, Plato Cacheris, Kamal's legitimate criminal defense
lawyer, has been trying to get various prosecutors to ... come to a place of the sheik's choosing,
where he cannot be arrested and extradited, to listen to an unsworn proffer of evidence that will
deflect prosecution from him. Nothing doing, said Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau,
the only lawman getting real results in the BCCI swindle; bring him in -- we'll get his story in front of
a grand jury. Then Sununu's right-hand man departs the White House and is immediately retained,
reportedly paid $136,000 in advance. Justice suddenly has a change of heart; though Ed Rogers'
hand doesn't show, David Eisenberg, an assistant U.S. attorney, is dispatched from Washington to
Cairo to meet Kamal on the sheik's terms.
Note: For more on the huge scandals of the powerful BCCI, click here. For lots more from reliable
sources on government corruption, click here.
Moore Asks Inquiry Into Charges on Preparedness Campaign

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9504E7DA1538EE32A25757C1A9649C...
A demand for an investigation of charges printed in the Congressional Record by Representative
Oscar Callaway of Texas, a pacifist Democrat, that the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel
shipbuilding, and powder interests had purchased control of twenty-five great newspapers to
further the preparedness campaign, was made in the House today by Representative J. Hampton
Moore, a Pennsylvania Republican. Mr. Callaways speech, as inserted in The Record charged: In
March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding and powder interests, and
their subsidiary organizations got together twelve men high up in the newspaper world and
employed them to select from the most influential papers in the United States in sufficient
numbers of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States. They
found it was only necessary to purchase the control of twenty-five of the greatest newspapers. [An]
editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the
questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies and other things of national and
international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers. The policy also included the
suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served."
Note: For more showing how the media is controlled by carefully selected people placed by big
money and the power elite, click here and here. For a short video of Congressional testimony from
the 1970s proving CIA media manipulation, click here. The full text of this revealing article is
available free at this link.
Upset by Warren, US banks debate halting some campaign donations

2015-03-27, CNBC/Reuters
Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for
them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate
Democrats in symbolic protest. Representatives from Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and
Bank of America, have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio
Senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party's tone toward Wall Street. Citigroup has decided to
withhold donations for now to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee over concerns that
Senate Democrats could give Warren and lawmakers who share her views more power, sources
inside the bank told Reuters. The Massachusetts senator's economic populism and take-noprisoners approach has won her a strong following. Warren, a former Harvard Law professor who
joined the Senate Banking Committee after taking office in 2013, has accused big banks and other
financial firms of unfair dealings that harm the middle class and help the rich grow richer. In a Dec.
12 speech, she mentioned Citi several times as an example of a bank that had grown too large,
saying it should have been broken apart by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. In January,
Warren angered Wall Street when she successfully blocked the nomination of a banker Antonio
Weiss to a top post at the Treasury Department. She argued that as a regulator he would likely be
too deferential to his former Wall Street colleagues.
Note: Read Sen. Warren's response in this Boston Globe article. For more along these lines, see
concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the systemically corrupt banking
industry.
Stock market rigging is no longer a conspiracy theory

2015-03-25, New York Post
http://nypost.com/2015/03/25/us-stock-market-is-just-way-too-riggin-easy/
The stock market is rigged. With stock prices rushing far ahead of economic reality over
the last six or so years, more experts in the financial markets are coming to the same
conclusion. Ed Yardeni, a longtime Wall Street guru ... said flat out last week that the market was
being propped up. These markets are all rigged, and I dont say that critically. I just say that
factually, he asserted on CNBC. Yardenis claim is the most basic one: that the Federal Reserve
wont do anything that will upset Wall Street and, in fact, is doing all it can to help the stock market.
The Bank of Japan [has been] aggressively purchasing stock funds. The benefits, Japans central
bank believes, will then trickle down to the rest of the economy. One American exchange has
made intervention in rigging foreign governments easier and cheaper to accomplish. CME
Group, the Chicago exchange that trades options and commodities, had an incentive program
under which foreign central banks could buy stock market derivatives like the Standard & Poors
futures contracts at a discount. S&P futures contracts are the vehicle of choice for rigging the
market. Theres another kind of market rigging ... being done by companies themselves. Since
corporate profits and revenues arent growing enough to justify current high stock prices,
companies have been aggressively buying back massive quantities of their own shares. By doing
this, companies reduce the number of their shares owned by the public [to boost] the calculation of
profit-per-shares. Todays markets arent fair [and] stock prices are artificially inflated.
Note: Don't forget that Bernie Madoff was once the head of the NASDAQ exchange. When it
comes to international banking, it appears that almost everything is rigged. For more along these
lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the systemically corrupt
financial industry.
'God's Bankers,' by Gerald Posner

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/books/review/gods-bankers-by-gerald-posner....
"God's Bankers" provides an exhaustive history of financial machinations at the center of the
church in Rome. The final unification of Italy in 1870 ... deprived the church of its lands and feudal
income, leading to several decades of acute financial insecurity. Popes of this period ... publicly
denounced lending money at interest (usury) while at the same time accepting massive loans from
the Rothschilds and making their own interest-bearing loans to Italian Catholics. Beginning with
Bernardino Nogara, appointed by Pius XI in 1929, the church also empowered a series of often
shady financial advisers to engage in financial wheeling and dealing around the globe. "So long as
the balance sheets showed surpluses," [author of God's Bankers Gerald] Posner writes, "Pius and
his chief advisers were pleased." That pattern would continue through the rest of the 20th century.
The American archbishop Paul Marcinkus, [who] ran the Vatican Bank from 1971 to 1989 ...
ended up implicated in several sensational scandals. The biggest by far was the collapse of
Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano, in 1982 - an event preceded by mob hits on
a string of investigators looking into corruption in the Italian banking industry. Marcinkus ...
also served as a spy for the State Department, providing the American government with
"personal details" about John Paul II, and even encouraging the pope "at the behest of embassy
officials" to publicly endorse American positions on a broad range of political issues.
Note: The Vatican Bank was implicated in a scheme to smuggle tens of millions of euros out of
Switzerland in 2013, and was used to launder money for the mafia as recently as 2012. For more
along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing financial industry corruption news
Senior London Telegraph Writer Peter Oborne Quits Over HSBC

Allegations
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/peter-oborne-resignation-senior...
A senior writer at the Daily Telegraph has dramatically quit the newspaper after accusing its
owners, the Barclay Brothers, of suppressing reports about the HSBC scandal out of fear of
losing advertising revenue. Peter Oborne, the papers chief political commentator and an awardwinning author, announced his resignation [and] accused the Telegraph of committing a fraud on
readers. Mr Oborne detailed a series of investigations about HSBC, and other financial scandals,
which he said executives at the newspaper had closed down. Mr Oborne wrote: From the start of
2013 onwards stories critical of HSBC were discouraged [because] HSBC [had] suspended its
advertising with the Telegraph. Its account ... was extremely valuable. HSBC, as one former
Telegraph executive told me, is the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend. Winning back
the HSBC advertising account became an urgent priority. It was eventually restored after
approximately 12 months. Executives say that Murdoch MacLennan [chief executive of Telegraph
Media Group] was determined not to allow any criticism of the international bank. As a result of a
2012 investigation into accounts held by HSBC in Jersey, he claimed: Reporters were ordered
to destroy all emails, reports and documents related to the HSBC investigation. I [resigned]
as a matter of conscience. The past few years have seen the rise of shadowy executives who
determine what truths can and what truths cant be conveyed across the mainstream media."
Note: Oborne's online resignation provides a unique window into some of the ways that big money
is used to manipulate the media. Read lots more on HSBC's empire of corruption in a Rolling
Stone article by Matt Taibbi. HSBC was founded to service the international drug trade in the 19th
century, and launders money for mobsters and terrorists on a massive scale.
HSBC files show how Swiss bank helped clients dodge taxes and hide
millions
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/08/hsbc-files-expose-swiss-bank-...
HSBCs Swiss banking arm helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars
of assets, doling out bundles of untraceable cash and advising clients on how to circumvent
domestic tax authorities, according to a huge cache of leaked secret bank account files. HSBC
was headed during the period covered in the files by Stephen Green now Lord Green who
served as the global banks chief executive, then group chairman until 2010 when he left to
become a trade minister in the House of Lords for David Camerons new government. The files
show how HSBC in Switzerland keenly marketed tax avoidance strategies to its wealthy
clients. The bank proactively contacted clients in 2005 to suggest ways to avoid a new tax
levied on the Swiss savings accounts of EU citizens, a measure brought in through a treaty
between Switzerland and the EU to tackle secret offshore accounts. The documents also show
HSBCs Swiss subsidiary providing banking services to relatives of dictators, people implicated in
African corruption scandals, arms industry figures and others. HSBC is already facing criminal
investigations and charges in France, Belgium, the US and Argentina as a result of the leak of the
files, but no legal action has been taken against it in Britain.
Note: Read lots more excellent information in a Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi. US Senator
Elizabeth Warren is working hard to bring justice in this case. HSBC was founded to service the
international drug trade following the 19th century opium war, and continues to launder money for
drug cartels and terrorists on a massive scale. Now we learn that HSBC also provides financial
services related to conflict diamonds, weapons trafficking, political corruption, and other organized
criminal activities. Perhaps these criminal bankers are tolerated because the global economy
might collapse without their cash.
Too Big to Tax: Settlements Are Tax Write-Offs for Banks

2014-10-27, Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/07/giant-penalties-are-giant-tax-write-offs-w...
At the Justice Department, senior officials like to congratulate themselves on the headlinemaking, big bucks settlements they have imposed upon banks and lenders. Those
settlement figures are not quite what they seem, because settlements can be deducted from
tax liabilities. For nearly every dollar a bank or lender has pledged to pay ... up to 35 cents will
find its way back into bank coffers. Under Attorney General Eric Holder, whose agency has not
prosecuted a single major bank or executive in the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown, the Justice
Department has [allowed] windfall tax deductions [to be] set against the civil settlements imposed.
[These may] total more than $44 billion. Astonishingly, for an economic crisis estimated to have
cost the U.S. economy anywhere from $6 trillion to $14 trillion in lost output and value if not
twice that, according to a September 2013 study by the Dallas Federal Reserve bank tracking
the settlements and the deductions against taxes via government websites is almost impossible.
Theres [a] self-serving reason for the Justice Department to hike civil settlement payments while
allowing for most of the sum to be tax-deductible. The agency receives a cut of up to 3 percent of
its share of the total settlements for its Working Capital Fund, a slush fund common across major
government agencies. The Justice Departments slush fund ... signals an institutional interest in
getting big numbers.
Note: For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing articles about
widespread corruption in government and banking and finance.
Study asserts startling numbers of insider trading rogues

2014-06-17, CNBC
There is often a tip. Before many big mergers and acquisitions, word leaks out to select investors
who seek to covertly trade on the information. Stocks and options move in unusual ways that
aren't immediately clear. Then news of the deals crosses the ticker, surprising everyone except for
those already in the know. Sometimes the investor is found out and is prosecuted, sometimes not.
That's what everyone suspects, though until now the evidence has been largely anecdotal. Now, a
groundbreaking new study finally puts what we've instinctively thought into hard numbers and
the truth is worse than we imagined. A quarter of all public company deals may involve some
kind of insider trading, according to the study by two professors at the Stern School of Business
at New York University and one professor from McGill University. The study, perhaps the most
detailed and exhaustive of its kind, examined hundreds of transactions from 1996 through the end
of 2012. The professors examined stock option movements when an investor buys an option to
acquire a stock in the future at a set price as a way of determining whether unusual activity took
place in the 30 days before a deal's announcement. The professors are so confident in their
findings of pervasive insider trading that they determined statistically that the odds of the
trading "arising out of chance" were "about three in a trillion." But, the professors conclude,
the Securities and Exchange Commission litigated only "about 4.7 percent of the 1,859 ... deals
included in our sample."
IMF chief says banks haven't changed since financial crisis

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/27/imf-chief-lagarde-bankers-eth...
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, told an audience in London that
six years on from the deep financial crisis that engulfed the global economy, banks were resisting
reform and still too focused on excessive risk taking to secure their bonuses at the expense of
public trust. She said: "The behaviour of the financial sector has not changed fundamentally
in a number of dimensions since the crisis. The industry still prizes short-term profit over
long-term prudence, today's bonus over tomorrow's relationship. Some prominent firms
have even been mired in scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms - Libor and
foreign exchange rigging, money laundering, illegal foreclosure." Lagarde warned the toobig-to-fail problem among some of the world's largest financial institutions was still unresolved and
remained a major source of systematic risk, with implicit subsidies of $70bn (42bn) in the US, and
up to $300bn in the eurozone. Lagarde said international progress to reform the financial system
was too slow. Lagarde told [the] conference that rising inequality was also a barrier to growth, and
could undermine democracy and human rights. The issue has risen up the agenda in recent
months with the publication of the French economist Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the TwentyFirst Century. "One of the leading economic stories of our time is rising income inequality, and the
dark shadow it casts across the global economy," Lagarde said.
Europe's Secret Success

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/26/opinion/krugman-europes-secret-success.html
European economies, France in particular, get very bad press in America. Our political discourse is
dominated by reverse Robin-Hoodism the belief that economic success depends on being nice
to the rich, who wont create jobs if they are heavily taxed, and nasty to ordinary workers, who
wont accept jobs unless they have no alternative. And according to this ideology, Europe with
its high taxes and generous welfare states does everything wrong. So Europes economic
system must be collapsing, and a lot of reporting simply states the postulated collapse as a fact.
The reality, however, is very different. Yes, Southern Europe is experiencing an economic crisis
thanks to [a money muddle caused by Europe's premature adoption of a single currency]. But
Northern European nations, France included, have done far better [than America]. French adults
in their prime working years (25 to 54) are substantially more likely to have jobs than their
U.S. counterparts. Frances prime-age employment rate overtook Americas early in the
Bush administration. Other European nations with big welfare states, like Sweden and the
Netherlands, do even better. On the core issue of providing jobs for people who really should be
working, at this point old Europe is beating us hands down despite social benefits and regulations
that, according to free-market ideologues, should be hugely job-destroying.
Note: For more on the collusion of the US government with financial corporations to maintain their
profitability, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Londons silver price fix dies after nearly 120 years

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/db3188b8-db46-11e3-94ad-00144feabdc0.html
It was born in the late 19th century when a handful of London bullion dealers agreed to meet daily
under a cloud of cigar smoke to set the price for the devils metal. But now, after 117 years of
operation, the London silver fix an integral part of the citys $1.6tn-a-year silver market is on its
deathbed. The three banks that arrange silvers global benchmark said on [May 14] that prices
would be fixed for the final time at noon on August 14. The move comes on the heels of
increased scrutiny by European and US regulators into precious metals price-setting following the
Libor scandal and probe into possible forex market abuse. Deutsche Bank last month resigned its
seats on the silver and gold fixes, after failing to find buyers, leaving just HSBC and Bank of Nova
Scotia on the silver fix. The three banks said there would be discussions to explore whether the
market wishes to develop an alternative to the benchmark. The regulatory attention has
removed the lustre from the once-prestigious precious metals fixes, while legal action in
the US has been an additional deterrent for potential new members. US lawyers have filed
at least 20 class lawsuits alleging manipulation by the banks responsible for the gold fix.
The demise of the silver fix will raise questions about the future of the other precious metals
benchmarks platinum, palladium and, especially, gold. Following Deutsche Banks withdrawal,
the gold fix can continue to operate effectively with four member banks, but critics say the process
is old-fashioned and opaque, and needs to be overhauled.
Fed knew about Libor rigging in 2008

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/libor-scandal/10654977/Fed-knew-about-Libo...
The US Federal Reserve knew about Libor rigging three years before the financial scandal
exploded but did not take any firm action, documents have revealed. According to newly published
transcripts of the central banks meetings in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the collapse
of Lehman Brothers, a senior Fed official first flagged the issue at a policy meeting in April 2008.
William Dudley expressed fears that banks were being dishonest in the way they were
calculating the London interbank offered rate a global benchmark interest rate used as the
basis for trillions of pounds of loans and financial contracts. Three years after his remarks, it
emerged that traders at more than a dozen banks, including Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and
Barclays, had routinely been trying to fix the official Libor rate in order to boost their own bonuses
and profits. The transcript of the Feds April 2008 meeting raises questions about why the
central bank did not move to properly tackle the scandal. There was no official regulator for
Libor at the time, and officials at the US Federal Reserve tried to blame British authorities for
allowing the benchmark interest rate to get out of control in the first place. The Fed declined to
comment on the transcripts or why it had not taken firm action..
Bank of England 'knew about' forex markets price fixing

2014-02-07, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/07/bank-england-forex-price-fixing
The Bank of England has been dragged into the mounting controversy over allegations of price
fixing in the 3tn-a-day foreign exchange markets after it emerged that a group of traders had told
the Bank they were exchanging information about their clients' position. The latest twist in the
unfolding saga ... puts the focus on a meeting between key officials at the central bank and leading
foreign exchange dealers in April 2012, when they discussed the way they handled trades ahead
of the crucial setting of a benchmark in the prices of major currencies. This benchmark is used to
price a wide variety of financial products and is the subject of regulators' attention amid allegations
that traders at rival banks were sharing information about their orders from clients to manipulate
the price. The Bank of England has previously released brief details of the April 2012 meeting, but
Bloomberg reported that a senior trader who attended the meeting had made notes showing
that officials did not believe it was improper to share customer orders. There had been a 15minute conversation on currency benchmarks during which traders said they used
chatrooms ... to trade ahead of the volatile period when the benchmarks were set. The Bank
would not provide any additional information. Martin Wheatley, chief executive of the FCA, told
MPs on the Treasury select committee ... that the allegations were "every bit as bad" as those
surrounding Libor. The chairman of that committee ... said the allegations were "extremely
serious". The scrutiny of the foreign exchange markets has put a fresh focus on dealers leaving
banks. More than 20 traders at banks around the world are said to have been suspended or left
roles in connection with the forex investigations.
Note: For more on huge financial manipulations and corruption, see the deeply revealing reports
Let Banks Fail Is Iceland Mantra as 2% Joblessness in Sight

2014-01-27, Washington Post/Bloomberg News
http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-MZURR66S973B01-76OMQ0EAA8SI8FK...
Iceland let its banks fail in 2008 because they proved too big to save. Now, the island is finding
crisis-management decisions made half a decade ago have put it on a trajectory thats turned 2
percent unemployment into a realistic goal. While the euro area grapples with record joblessness,
led by more than 25 percent in Greece and Spain, only about 4 percent of Icelands labor force is
without work. Prime Minister Sigmundur D. Gunnlaugsson says even thats too high. The islands
sudden economic meltdown in October 2008 made international headlines as a debt-fueled
banking boom ended in a matter of weeks when funding markets froze. Policy makers
overseeing the $14 billion economy refused to back the banks, which subsequently
defaulted on $85 billion. The governments decision to protect state finances left it with the
means to continue social support programs that shielded Icelanders from penury during
the worst financial crisis in six decades. Of creditor claims against the banks, Gunnlaugsson
says this is not public debt and never will be. Successive Icelandic governments have forced
banks to write off mortgage debts to help households. The governments 2014 budget sets aside
about 43 percent of its spending for the Welfare Ministry, a level that is largely unchanged since
before the crisis. Inflation, which peaked at 19 percent in January 2009, ... was 4.2 percent in
December. To support households, Gunnlaugsson in November unveiled a plan to provide as
much as 7 percent of gross domestic product in mortgage debt relief. The government intends to
finance the plan, which the OECD has criticized as being too blunt, partly by raising taxes on
banks.
Note: Why is Iceland's major success in letting banks fail getting so little press coverage? For a
possible answer, click here. For more on government responses to the banking crisis and their
impacts on people, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available
here.
China's princelings storing riches in Caribbean offshore haven

http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/jan/21/china-british-vir...
More than a dozen family members of China's top political and military leaders are making
use of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, leaked financial documents
reveal. The brother-in-law of China's current president, Xi Jinping, as well as the son and son-inlaw of former premier Wen Jiabao are among the political relations making use of the offshore
havens, financial records show. The documents also disclose the central role of major
Western banks and accountancy firms ... in the offshore world, acting as middlemen in the
establishing of companies. The Hong Kong office of Credit Suisse, for example, established the
BVI company Trend Gold Consultants for Wen Yunsong, the son of Wen Jiabao, during his father's
premiership while PwC and UBS performed similar services for hundreds of other wealthy
Chinese individuals. The disclosure of China's use of secretive financial structures is the latest
revelation from "Offshore Secrets", a two-year reporting effort led by the International Consortium
of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which obtained more than 200 gigabytes of leaked financial data
from two companies in the British Virgin Islands, and shared the information with the Guardian and
other international news outlets. In all, the ICIJ data reveals more than 21,000 clients from
mainland China and Hong Kong have made use of offshore havens in the Caribbean. Between
$1tn and $4tn in untraced assets have left China since 2000, according to estimates.
Note: Read the ICIJ's full report of the latest offshore links. For more on financial corruption, see
the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
EU fines banks record $2.3B over Libor

2013-12-04, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/04/news/companies/libor-europe-fines
The European Union has levied a record antitrust fine of 1.71 billion ($2.3 billion) on six European
and U.S. banks and brokers for rigging benchmark interest rates. Deutsche Bank was hit with the
single biggest penalty of 725.4 million for participating in illegal cartels to manipulate the Euro
Interbank Offered Rate, or Euribor, and London interbank offered rate, or Libor. "What is
shocking about the Libor and Euribor scandals is ... the collusion between banks who are
supposed to be competing with each other," said Joaquin Almunia, Europe's top antitrust
official. Other banks fined [were] Societe Generale (446 million), Royal Bank of Scotland (391
million), JP Morgan (79.9 million) and Citigroup (70 million). U.K.-based broker RP Martin was
fined 247,000 for facilitating one infringement. EU investigators said the Euribor cartel operated
for nearly three years between 2005 and 2008, as traders discussed submissions used to
calculate the benchmark rate, and compared trading and pricing strategies. They also discovered
illegal collusion in the setting of Libor in Japanese yen between 2007 and 2010. UBS and
Barclays, [which] have already been fined by regulators in the U.K. and U.S. for Libor rigging, were
spared further punishment because they cooperated with the European Commission investigation.
They dodged new fines of 2.5 billion and 690 million respectively. The scandal broke in the
middle of 2012 when Barclays admitted trying to manipulate Libor, which together with related
rates is used to price trillions of dollars of financial products around the world.
Note: Notice that no one is going to jail and no one is being personally fined for these incredibly
outrageous manipulations. For an analysis that argues the "record fines" are really just a "slap on
the wrist" for the big banks, click here. For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing
The lies behind this transatlantic trade deal

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/02/transatlantic-free-trade...
[The European Commission's] plans to create a single market incorporating Europe and the United
States, progressing so nicely when hardly anyone knew, have been blown wide open. All over
Europe people are asking why this is happening; why we were not consulted; for whom it is being
done. The Commission insists that its Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership should
include a toxic mechanism called investor-state dispute settlement. Where this has been forced
into other trade agreements, it has allowed big corporations to sue governments before secretive
arbitration panels composed of corporate lawyers, which bypass domestic courts and override the
will of parliaments. This mechanism could threaten almost any means by which governments
might seek to defend their citizens or protect the natural world. Already it is being used by
mining companies to sue governments trying to keep them out of protected areas; by
banks fighting financial regulation; by a nuclear company contesting Germany's decision to
switch off atomic power. No longer able to keep this process quiet, the European commission
has instead devised a strategy for lying to us. The message is that the trade deal is about
"delivering growth and jobs" and will not "undermine regulation and existing levels of protection in
areas like health, safety and the environment". Just one problem: it's not true. From the outset, the
transatlantic partnership has been driven by corporations and their lobby groups, who boast of
being able to "co-write" it.
Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
JPMorgan settlement is a payout to victims

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/editorials/article/JPMorgan-settlement-is-a-pay...
When the fires from the 2007-08 financial crisis were still being fought, JPMorgan Chase looked
like a winner. Not only was JPMorgan Chase able to scoop up former rivals Washington Mutual
and Bear Stearns for bargain basement prices, but its stock value shot up by nearly 31 percent
over the past 4 1/2 years. But this year has been a little less kind to JPMorgan Chase. On
[November 20) JPMorgan Chase agreed to a $13 billion settlement with the federal government
over selling toxic mortgage investments. It also admitted to wrongdoing in knowingly peddling the
instruments. Both settlements are for the "incomplete information" JPMorgan Chase gave to the
pension funds for their purchases of toxic securities during the years 2004 to 2008. Even for a
colossus such as JPMorgan Chase, $13 billion is a lot of money - about half of its annual profit.
Forcing JPMorgan to admit wrongdoing - a rare concession - may open the door to more
headaches for the company, especially because the government is continuing a criminal probe into
its mortgage prices. The scale of the devastation is still so enormous that the only question left
for the Justice Department to answer is why no one from any of the big banks has yet to go
to jail. Wall Street's wrongdoing was about more than a dollar cost - it was about the
widespread human suffering that remains with us today. Jail time would be more than
appropriate, but so far the banks have been able to pay their way out of it.
Note: Because JP Morgan Chase can write off $11 billion of the fine as tax deductible, the real fine
is actually reduced by $4 billion to about $7 billion, just one-third of Chase's $21 billion profit in the
year 2012. For more on financial fraud, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
Tax the rich? IMF sparks a mini revolution

2013-10-11, Yahoo!/Agence France Presse
http://news.yahoo.com/tax-rich-imf-sparks-mini-revolution-020128173.html;_ylt...
Tax the rich and better target the multinationals: The IMF has set off shockwaves this week in
Washington by suggesting countries fight budget deficits by raising taxes. Guardian of financial
orthodoxy, the International Monetary Fund, which is holding its annual meetings with the World
Bank this week in the US capital, typically calls for nations in difficulty to slash public spending to
reduce their deficits. But in its Fiscal Monitor report, subtitled "Taxing Times", the Fund advanced
the idea of taxing the highest-income people and their assets to reinforce the legitimacy of
spending cuts and fight against growing income inequalities. "Scope seems to exist in
many advanced economies to raise more revenue from the top of the income distribution,"
the IMF wrote, noting "steep cuts" in top rates since the early 1980s. According to IMF
estimates, taxing the rich even at the same rates during the 1980s would reap fiscal revenues
equal to 0.25 percent of economic output in the developed countries. "The gain could in some
cases, such as that of the United States, be more significant," around 1.5 percent of gross
domestic product, said the IMF report, which also singled out deficient taxation of multinational
companies. In the US alone, legal loopholes deprive the Treasury of roughly $60 billion in receipts,
the global lender said. The IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, kept up the sales pitch for a
more just fiscal policy. "It's clearly something finance ministers are interested in, it's something that
is necessary for the right balance of public finances," said Lagarde, a former French finance
minister.
Note: Yahoo! was the only major media in the US to pick up this eye-opening news, with the
possible exception of a Forbes article which shows how afraid they are of this development. For
more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
Greg Palast: Potential Fed Chair Summers at Heart of Global Economic

Crisis
2013-09-03, Truthout
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18555-revealed-potential-fed-chair-summers...
Investigative journalist Greg Palast has obtained a secret memo authored by then deputy Treasury
secretary Larry Summers and his protg Timothy Geithner detailing their plans to roll back
financial regulation. In the piece, titled "The Confidential Memo at the Heart of the Global Financial
Crisis", [Palast] writes: "The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak's fantasy: that in the late
1990s, the top U.S. Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to
rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3 percent unemployment in
Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to
this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears." [Palast:] This is really important right
now because Larry Summers is President Obama's top choice to become head of a Federal
Reserve Board. He would take Ben Bernanke's place. And what this memo is--they call it the "end
game memo". Geithner calls it the "end game". And what's the game being played? The memo
asks Summers to get back to the five biggest, most powerful bankers in the United States to act on
and determine what our policy should be for world governance of the banking system. Basically,
there were secret calls going between Larry Summers and the head of Bank of America, the
head of Goldman Sachs, the head of Citibank and Merrill, the five big boys, to find out what
should happen to the world financial policing order. And the answer was: smash it.
Summers was holding secret meetings with the big bankers to come up with a scheme to
eliminate financial regulation across the planet.
Note: Greg Palast is a New York Times-bestselling author and a freelance journalist for the British
Broadcasting Corporation as well as the British newspaper The Observer. He is one of the few
journalists uncovering the deepest layers of secrecy in our world. For a key past report of his on
elections corruption, click here.
California duped on energy buys again

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/California-duped-on-ene...
JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay federal regulators $410 million to settle allegations that
the giant bank manipulated energy markets in California and Michigan. About $285 million of the
settlement will go to the U.S. Treasury for civil penalties, and about $124 million will be refunded to
California ratepayers. The remainder will be refunded to Michigan ratepayers. If this story sounds
familiar, that's because it is. Californians who remember the Enron energy debacle of 2000-01
won't be surprised to learn that JPMorgan's traders have been accused of fraudulent
behavior. Once again, the fraud was performed by manipulating the auction system that was
developed by a quasi-state agency, the California Independent System Operator, to handle
California's electricity needs. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found that JPMorgan
engaged in 12 manipulative bidding strategies, which wound up forcing ratepayers to pay
higher amounts than they should have - all because the bank wanted to find a cheap way to
profit off of aging power plants in Southern California. JPMorgan used a variety of bait-andswitch strategies - duping Cal-ISO into paying exorbitant fees for running the plants at a low level,
for instance, or manipulating the bidding system so that Cal-ISO was forced to pay rates that were
many times higher than market rate. The fact that this kind of manipulation is still happening is
upsetting. And while $410 million is a record settlement for the FERC, it's a drop in the bucket to
JPMorgan, which reported $6.5 billion in quarterly profits this month.
Note: Remember Enron, which scammed millions and then went bankrupt, wiping out pensions of
its many employees? To read CBS reports on how Enron purposely shut down power plants so
they could cause and then cash in on the energy crisis, click here.
Sen. Warren Leads Charge to Break Up Big Banks

2013-07-07, CNBC
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?play=1&video=3000182337
CNBCs BRIAN SULLIVAN: Is there anyone else in the Senate that is a professor? ELIZABETH
WARREN: I don't think so. ... We had the big crash in 2008. What does everyone say about it?
They say too much concentration in financial services creates too big to fail. It puts us at bigger
risk. And what's happened since 2008? The four biggest financial institutions are now 30%
bigger than they were in 2008. The central premise behind a 21st century Glass-Steagall is
to say if you want to get out there and take risks, go ahead and do it. But ... you can't get
access to FDIC insured deposits when you do. That way ... at least one portion of our
banking sector stays safe. From 1797 to 1933, the American banking system crashed about
every 15 years. In 1933, we put good reforms in place, for which Glass-Steagall was the
centerpiece, and from 1933 to the early 1980s, thats a 50 year period, we didnt have any of that
none. We kept the system steady and secure. And it was only as we started deregulating, [you hit]
the S&L crisis, and what did we do? We deregulated some more. And then you hit long-term
capital management at the end of the 90s, and what did we do as a country? This country
continued to deregulate more. And then we hit the big crash in 2008. You are not going to defend
the proposition that regulation can never work, it did work. SULLIVAN: I didnt say regulation never
worked, Senator. By far and away, and I agree, there were fewer bank failures in that time after
Glass-Steagall. ELIZABETH WARREN: Fewer, as in, of the big ones, zero.
Note: Sen. Warren is one of the few bright lights in Congress. Watch this interview to see why. To
read about later censorship of this interview by NBC, click here.
Rigged-Benchmark Probes Proliferate From Singapore to UK

2013-06-16, Bloomberg Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-16/rigged-benchmark-probes-prolifera...
The probe of Libor manipulation is proving to be the tip of the iceberg as inquiries into assets from
derivatives to foreign exchange show that if theres a chance to rig benchmark rates in world
markets, someone is usually willing to try. Singapores monetary authority last week censured 20
banks for attempting to fix interest rate levels in the island state and ordered them to set aside as
much as $9.6 billion. Britains markets regulator is looking into the $4.7 trillion-a-day currency
market after Bloomberg News reported that traders have manipulated key rates for more than a
decade, citing five dealers. Its happened time and again: all of these markets have been
influenced by major market-makers, which is a polite way of saying theyve been rigged,
Charles Geisst, a finance professor at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York, said. While the
indexes under scrutiny are little known to the public, their influence extends to trillions of
dollars in securities and derivatives. Barclays, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland have been
fined about $2.5 billion in the past year for distorting the London interbank offered rate, which is
tied to $300 trillion worth of securities. Regulators are also probing ISDAfix, a measure used in the
$370 trillion interest-rate swaps market, as well as how some oil products prices are set. Inquiries
are broadening into the transparency of benchmarks whose levels can be determined by the same
people whose income they affect. In the case of Libor, traders who stood to profit worked with bank
employees responsible for submissions for the benchmark to rig the price.
Note: To read highly revealing major media articles showing just how crazy and unregulated the
derivatives market is, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on
financial corruption, click here.
Top economist Jeffrey Sachs says Wall Street is full of 'crooks' and
hasn't changed since the financial crash
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/top-economist-jeffrey-sachs-...
One of the world's most respected economists has said Wall St is full of "crooks" and hasn't
reformed its "pathological" culture since the financial crash. Professor Jeffrey Sachs told a highpowered audience at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve earlier this month that the lack of reform
was down to a docile president, a docile White House and a docile regulatory system that
absolutely cant find its voice. Sachs, from Columbia University, has twice been named one of
Time magazines 100 Most Influential People in the World, and is an adviser to the World
Bank and IMF. What has been revealed, in my view, is prima facie criminal behavior, he
said. Its financial fraud on a very large extent. Theres also a tremendous amount of
insider trading. We have a corrupt politics to the core, I am afraid to say, and . . . both parties
are up to their neck in this. This has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans." Sachs
described an environment of Wall Street influencing politicians with growing campaign
contributions. In the 2012 election cycle, political contributions by the securities and investment
sector hit $271.5 million, compared with $176 million in 2008, according to the Center for
Responsive Politics. I am going to put it very bluntly: I regard the moral environment as
pathological. They have no responsibility to pay taxes; they have no responsibility to their clients;
they have no responsibility to people, to counterparties in transactions, he said. They are tough,
greedy, aggressive and feel absolutely out of control in a quite literal sense, and they have gamed
the system to a remarkable extent.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on criminal practices of Wall
Street corporations, click here.
Billionaires Flee Havens as Trillions Pursued Offshore

2013-04-29, Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-04-29/billionaires-flee-as-tax-district...
Billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, Russias 14th-richest person, and his wife, Elena Rybolovleva, have
been brawling for almost five years in at least seven countries over his $9.5 billion fortune. In a
divorce complaint originated in Geneva in 2008, Rybolovleva accused her husband of using a
multitude of third parties to create a network of offshore holding companies and trusts to place
assets -- including about $500 million in art, $36 million in jewelry and an $80 million yacht -beyond her reach. She has brought legal action against the 48-year-old Rybolovlev in the British
Virgin Islands, England, Wales, the U.S., Cyprus, Singapore and Switzerland, and is seeking $6
billion. The suits provide a window into the offshore structures and secrecy jurisdictions the worlds
richest people use to manage, preserve and conceal their assets. According to Tax Justice
Network, a U.K.-based organization that campaigns for transparency in the financial system,
wealthy individuals were hiding as much as $32 trillion offshore at the end of 2010. Fewer
than 100,000 people own $9.8 trillion of offshore assets. More than 30 percent of the worlds
200 richest people, who have a $2.8 trillion collective net worth ...control part of their
personal fortune through an offshore holding company or other domestic entity where the
assets are held indirectly. These structures often hide assets from tax authorities or provide legal
protection from government seizure and lawsuits.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on failure of governments to
regulate great accumulations of wealth, click here.
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-fi...
Conspiracy theorists of the world, ... we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The world is
a rigged game. The world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.
You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which ... perhaps as many as 16 ... banks have been
manipulating global interest rates, in the process [manipulating] the prices of upward of $500
trillion ... worth of financial instruments. Now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out
that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being
investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess.
Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have
worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark
number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps. Interest-rate
swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage
their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. [It's] a $379 trillion market,
meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the
United States federal budget. It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this
scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks including Barclays,
UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland that serve on the Libor
panel that sets global interest rates.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the criminal practices of
the financial industry, click here.
Big banks 'more dangerous than ever', IMF's Christine Lagarde says
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9985280/Big-b...
Europe needs to recapitalise, restructure or shut down its banks as part of a vital clean-up of the
industry, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde said as she warned
that the threat from worlds biggest lenders was more dangerous than ever. Speaking in New
York ahead of next weeks IMF Spring meeting, Ms Lagarde launched a broadside against the
financial services industry for resisting urgent reform. In too many cases from the United States
in 2008 to Cyprus today we have seen what happens when a banking sector chooses the quick
buck ..., backing a business model that ultimately destabilizes the economy. We simply cannot
have pre-crisis banking in a post-crisis world. We need reform, even in the face of intense
pushback from an industry sometimes reluctant to abandon lucrative lines of business.
Almost five years since Lehman Brothers collapsed, she claimed: The 'oversize banking
model of too-big-to-fail is more dangerous than ever. We must get to the root of the problem
with comprehensive and clear regulation. Regulators have forced banks to increase significantly
their loss-absorbing capital buffers since the crisis, but are still working on "resolution"
mechanisms that will allow giant lenders to fail without hitting the taxpayer and threatening
financial stability. Regulators must also work together, she added, amid evidence that some
countries are caving into pressure from the banking lobby.
here.
Elizabeth Warren Wants HSBC Bankers Jailed for Money Laundering

2013-03-07, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/elizabeth-warren-wants-hsbc-bank...
Elizabeth Warren has a question: How much money does a bank have to launder before people go
to jail? Warren ... posed that question numerous times to financial regulators at a Senate Banking
Committee hearing [on] banks and money laundering. In December, U.S. Justice Department
officials announced that HSBC, Europes largest bank, would pay a $1.92 billion fine after
laundering $881 million for drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia. The two regulators, Under
Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen and Federal Reserve Governor
Jerome H. Powell, deflected Warrens questions, saying that criminal prosecutions are for the
Justice Department to decide. An exasperated Warren said, as she wrapped up her questioning,
If youre caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good youre going to jail. If it
happens repeatedly, you may go to jail for the rest of your life. But evidently, if you launder
nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your
company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night every single
individual associated with this and I just think thats fundamentally wrong.
government and finance, click here.
Iceland president: Letting banks fail helped recovery

2012-12-13, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/13/business/iceland-recovery
Four years after the country let its debt-ridden banks fail, and as the country's growth looks set to
far outpace the eurozone, [Iceland's president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson] said the decision not
to save the banks was "the most difficult I ever had to make," but maintained it was the
right one. "Allowing the banks to fail is one of the fundamental reasons Iceland is now in a
strong recovery with respect to other European countries," he said. Now, according to
Grimsson, "Iceland is better placed to benefit by maintaining our present position, rather than to let
the EU speak on our behalf." The 69-year-old president pointed to Norway and Greenland -- two
other Arctic economies and non-European Union members -- as role models. However, Grimsson
said he was not sure whether Iceland's strategy with its banks could have been replicated by other
countries with similar problems, such as Ireland. "Being part of the eurozone, they couldn't devalue
their currency. But they could have adopted our policy with respect to the banks," he said. The
Icelandic krona fell sharply as a result of the financial collapse, helping the country recover by
increasing demand for exports. "There are still scars," Grimsson said, "but on the whole, the will of
the Icelandic people has enabled us to recover and move confidently towards the future."
Note: Watch a great video interview of Iceland's president discussing this matter. Iceland has gone
through tremendous transformation that has greatly supported both the people and the economy of
this nation. Why is this getting so little press coverage?
Trans-Pacific Partnership: The biggest trade deal youve never heard of

2012-10-23, Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/everything_you_wanted_to_know_about_the_trans...
A huge but little-known trade agreement could transform America's foreign relations. The TransPacific Partnership [could] be the most significant foreign and domestic policy initiative of the
Obama administration. More than any other policy, the trends the TPP represents could restructure
American foreign relations, and potentially the economy itself. On the core question of these trade
agreements, the parties basically agree. The Trans-Pacific Partnership ... would be the largest
one since the 1995 World Trade Organization. It would link Australia, Brunei, Chile,
Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico and Canada into a free trade
zone similar to that of NAFTA. The subject matter being negotiated extends far beyond
traditional trade matters. TPPs 29 chapters would set binding rules on everything from servicesector regulation, investment, patents and copyrights, government procurement, financial
regulation, and labor and environmental standards, as well as trade in industrial goods and
agriculture. As with other such agreements, Congress must vote to approve it, most likely under a
Fast Track provision that prohibits any amendments and limits debate. The public has no
access to the text [of the agreement]. Congress has extremely limited access. Trade, though
constitutionally a congressional prerogative, is now firmly in the hands of the executive branch.
And trade negotiations have become a venue for rewriting wide swaths of domestic non-trade
policy traditionally determined by Congress and state legislatures.
click here.
Once-jailed banker gets $104 million whistleblower payout

2012-09-11, NBC News
http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/11/13804631-once-jailed-banker-ge...
Attorneys for jailed former Swiss banker Bradley Birkenfeld announced [on September 11] that the
IRS will pay him $104 million as a whistleblower reward for information he turned over to the US
government. The information Birkenfeld revealed detailed the inner workings of the secretive
private wealth management division of the Swiss bank UBS, where the American-born Birkenfeld
helped his US clients evade taxes by hiding wealth overseas. Tuesday's announcement
represents an astonishing turn of fortune for Birkenfeld, who was released from federal prison in
August after serving 31 months on charges relating to his efforts to help a wealthy client avoid
taxes. Birkenfeld attorney Stephen Kohn said the information the former Swiss banker turned over
to the IRS led directly to the $780 million fine paid to the US by his former employer, UBS, as well
as leading over 35,000 taxpayers to participate in amnesty programs to voluntarily repatriate their
illegal offshore accounts. That resulted in the collection of over $5 billion dollars in back
taxes, fines and penalties that otherwise would have remained outside the reach of the
government. Birkenfeld's disclosures also led to the first cracks in the legendarily secretive
Swiss banking system, and ultimately the Swiss government changed its tax treaty with the
United States. UBS turned over the names of more than than 4,900 U.S. taxpayers who held
illegal offshore accounts. Investigations into those accounts are ongoing.
financial corporations and government regulators, click here.
Why Goldman Sachs, Other Wall Street Titans Are Not Being Prosecuted
2012-08-14, The Daily Beast/Newsweek
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/14/why-goldman-sachs-other-wall...
On [August 9] the Department of Justice announced it will not prosecute Goldman Sachs or any of
its employees in a financial-fraud probe. Despite the Obama administrations promises to
clean up Wall Street in the wake of Americas worst financial crisis, there has not been a
single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite
financial institutions. Why is that? In a word: cronyism. Take Goldman Sachs, for example. In
2008, Goldman Sachs employees were among Barack Obamas top campaign contributors, giving
a combined $1,013,091. [Attorney General] Eric Holders former law firm, Covington & Burling,
also counts Goldman Sachs as one of its clients. Furthermore, in April 2011, when the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a scathing report detailing Goldmans
suspicious Abacus deal, several Goldman executives and their families began flooding Obama
campaign coffers with donations, some giving the maximum $35,800. The individuals the DOJs
Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force has placed in its prosecutorial crosshairs seem
shockingly small compared with the Wall Street titans the Obama administration promised to bring
to justice. To be sure, financial fraud of any kind is wrong and should be prosecuted. But locking up
pygmies is hardly the kind of financial-fraud crackdown Americans expected in the wake of the
largest financial crisis in U.S. history. Increasingly, there appear to be two sets of rules: one for the
average citizen, and another for the connected cronies who rule the inside game.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corporations'
control over government, see our Banking Bailout archive here.
French Lawmakers Pass Trading Transaction Tax

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-31/french-lawmakers-pass-budget-bill...
Frances parliament passed President Francois Hollandes revised 2012 budget, including a 0.2
percent transaction tax on share purchases that takes effect today. The bills passage into law
marks the first step toward fiscal reform and a move toward justice, Finance Minister
Pierre Moscovici said in a statement. With the vote, France becomes the first European
country to impose a transaction tax on share purchases. The Hollande government is
doubling the levy to 0.2 percent from the 0.1 percent tax initially advocated by former President
Nicolas Sarkozy. Many institutional investors may escape the tax using so-called contracts for
difference, or CFDs, offered by prime brokers that let them bet on a stocks gain or loss with
owning the shares. The transaction tax, aimed at curbing market speculation, will be paid on the
purchase of 109 French stocks with market values of more than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion),
including Pernod Ricard SA and Vivendi SA. The new budget law will be applied to transactions
resulting in a transfer of property of companies trading in Paris, regardless of where the buyer or
seller is based, and may be expanded next year along with some European partners. France
estimated that the doubling of the tax will bring in an additional 170 million euros in 2012 and 500
million euros next year. The state will start collecting the tax in November, Budget Minister Jerome
Cahuzacs press office said. The government estimated that the doubling of the tax will cut the
volume of stock purchases to 800 billion euros from 1.05 trillion euros with a 0.1 percent levy and
1.3 trillion euros with no transaction tax.
Note: This exciting news is one of the most underreported events of the year. A universal FTT
would stop much of the craziness in the derivatives market. The EU is also seriously considering
implementing an FTT. Click here for more.
Court Papers Undercut Ratings Agencies' Defense

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/business/documents-seem-to-endanger-ratings...
For years, the ratings agencies have contended that the grades they assign debt securities are
independent opinions and therefore entitled to First Amendment protections, like those afforded
journalists. But newly released documents in a class-action case ... cast doubt on the
independence of the two largest agencies, Moodys Investors Service and Standard & Poors. The
case, filed in 2008 by a group of 15 institutional investors against Morgan Stanley and the two
agencies, involves a British-based debt issuer called Cheyne Finance. Cheyne collapsed in August
2007 under a load of troubled mortgage securities. Even though Cheynes portfolio was bulging
with residential mortgage securities, some of its debt received the agencies highest ratings, a
grade equal to that assigned to United States Treasury securities. When the primary analyst at
S.& P. notified Morgan Stanley that some of the Cheyne securities would most likely receive
a BBB rating, not the A grade that the firm had wanted, the agency received a blistering email from a Morgan Stanley executive. S.& P. subsequently raised the grade to A. After the
institutions that bought Cheynes debt sued Morgan Stanley and the ratings agencies, Moodys
and S.& P. immediately mounted a First Amendment defense. But Shira A. Scheindlin, the federal
judge overseeing the matter ... argued that the ratings were not opinions but were
misrepresentations that were possibly a result of fraud or negligence.
here.
The Fate Of A World Bank Whistle-Blower

2012-06-27, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2012/06/27/the-sad-fate-of-a-world-b...
The World Bank is a place where whistle-blowers are shunned, persecuted and bootednot always
in that order. Consider John Kim, a top staffer in the banks IT department, who in 2007
leaked damaging documents ... after he determined that there were no internal institutional
avenues to honestly deal with wrongdoing. Sometimes you have to betray your country in
order to save it, Kim says. In return bank investigators probed his phone records and e-mails, and
allegedly hacked into his personal AOL account. After determining he was behind the leaks the
bank put him on administrative leave for two years before firing him on Christmas Eve
2010. With nowhere to turn Kim was guided into the offices of the Washington, D.C.-based
Government Accountability Projectthe only game in town for public-sector leakers. [They] helped
Kim file an internal case for wrongful termination (World Bank staffers have no recourse to U.S.
courts) and in a landmark ruling a five-judge tribunal eventually ordered the bank to reinstate him
last May. Despite the decision, the bank retired him in September after 29 years of service.
Note: For the video of another major World Bank whistleblower, Karen Hudes, click here. For
deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.
Jamie Dimon, welfare recipient

2012-06-19, MSN
http://money.msn.com/investing/jamie-dimon-welfare-recipient-bloomberg.aspx
When JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified in the U.S. House today, he presented himself
as a champion of free-market capitalism in opposition to an overweening government. His position
would be more convincing if his bank weren't such a beneficiary of corporate welfare. JPMorgan
receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by
the International Monetary Fund. The money helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses. More
important, it distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the
sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy. In
recent decades, governments and central banks around the world have developed a consistent
pattern of behavior when trouble strikes banks that are large or interconnected enough to threaten
the broader economy: They step in to ensure that all the bank's creditors, not just depositors, are
paid in full. With each new banking crisis, the value of the implicit subsidy grows. JPMorgan's
share of the subsidy is $14 billion a year, or about 77% of its net income for the past four
quarters. In other words, U.S. taxpayers helped foot the bill for the multibillion-dollar
trading loss that is the focus of today's hearing. When Dimon pushes back against capital
requirements or the Volcker rule, it's worth remembering that he's pushing for a form of corporate
welfare that, left unchecked, could lead to a crisis too big for the government to contain.
Note: For more vitally important information on this, explore the excellent, reliable information in
our Banking Corruption Information Center available here. For other key major media articles
showing blatant financial corruption, click here.
Rothschild and Rockefeller families team up for some extra wealth

creation
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9300784/Roths...
The Rothschild and Rockefeller families have teamed up to buy assets from banks and other
distressed sellers in a union between two of the best-known names in financial history. RIT Capital
Partners, which is chaired by Lord Rothschild, has taken a 37pc stake in Rockefeller Financial
Services, the familys wealth advisory and asset management wing. It has snapped up the holding
from French bank Socit Gnrale for less than 100m. The transatlantic alliance cements a
five-decade acquaintance between the now ennobled Jacob Rothschild, 76, and David
Rockefeller, 96, the grandson of the ruthlessly acquisitive American oilman and
philanthropist John D Rockefeller. The two patricians now plan to capitalise on their family
names to buy other asset managers or their portfolios, using their networks of top-notch contacts
to ensure they get a seat at the table for any deal. The Rockefeller group goes back to 1882, set
up to invest the family money made by John D Rockefellers Standard Oil, the forerunner for
todays Exxon Corporation, which he built with a Darwinian aggression. Do you know the only
thing that gives me pleasure? Its to see my dividends coming in, he once said. The Rothschild
banking dynasty has its roots in the 18th century when Mayer Amschel Rothschild set up a
business in Frankfurt. That sprang to fame in 1815 when it bought government bonds in
anticipation of Napoleons defeat at Waterloo.
Note: Why is that these two hugely wealthy families get so little press coverage? Could it be that
their wealth and influence exerts control over the major media? For more on secret societies which
command huge hidden power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
Tycoon arrests rock Hong Kong

2012-03-30, CNN International
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/30/business/hong-kong-tycoon-arrest-explainer
Brothers at the helm of a company that helped build Hong Kong's skyline and the man who
once was the city's number two official were arrested in an investigation of a bribery case
[that] has shocked the former British colony. Thomas Kwok, 60, and Raymond Kwok, 58, and their
families control Sun Hung Kai Properties, which built the city's three tallest skyscrapers. The
billionaires were taken into custody by the city's Independent Commission Against Corruption
[ICAC]. According to local media, the ICAC also arrested Rafael Hui, 64, who was Hong Kong's
Chief Secretary from 2005 to 2007, and a former advisor to Sun Hung Kai. In a city where property
is king, the sight of local royalty being taken into the ICAC headquarters riveted Hong Kong media,
and comes at a time where the city's reputation for transparency has been tainted by a number of
scandals. The Kwok brothers and their family are the 27th richest in the world, with an
estimated wealth of $18.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine. The family has controlling
interest of Sun Hung Kai Properties, the world's second largest property developer by market
capitalization.
Note: This is stunning news! The fact that two of the richest people in world were arrested is
unprecedented. Could this be a part of the prediction of David Wilcock and others coming true
about major arrests? To see a verifiable list of literally hundreds of high level resignations from
financial firms in the last few months, click here. A recent Fiscal Times article at this link also dives
further into this question.
Vatican Leaks Raise Questions Over Finances

2012-03-29, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149614995/vatican-leaks-raise-questions-over-fi...
The Vatican has launched a rare criminal investigation to uncover who is behind leaks of highly
sensitive documents that allege corruption and financial mismanagement in Vatican City. The
documents also shed light on purported infighting over the Vatican Bank's compliance with
international money-laundering regulations. A television show in late January on an independent
network first revealed letters addressed last year to Pope Benedict XVI from the then-deputy
governor of Vatican City, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. Vigano complained of corruption within
the church and protested orders to remove him from his post and send him to be the papal nuncio,
or ambassador, to Washington. Under Vigano's watch, the Holy See balance sheet went from $10
million in the red to almost $45 million in the black in just 12 months. By being kicked upstairs,
Vigano wrote, his efforts to clean up the Vatican would be stopped and would also tarnish the
pontiff's image by bringing into question his resolve to establish transparency inside the Vatican.
Italian authorities are investigating the origin of $33 million in Vatican funds deposited in
Italian banks. The Italian media have reported that JP Morgan Chase is closing the Vatican
Bank's account with its Milan branch because it felt the Holy See had failed to provide
sufficient data on money transfers.
Note: The fact that JP Morgan is closing it's Vatican accounts is a major sign of the intense
changes happening behind the scenes.
Vatican bank image hurt as JP Morgan closes account

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46784687/Vatican_bank_image_hurt_as_JP_Morgan_closes_a...
JP Morgan Chase is closing the Vatican bank's account with an Italian branch of the U.S. banking
giant because of concerns about a lack of transparency at the Holy See's financial institution,
Italian newspapers reported. The move is a blow to the Vatican's drive to have its bank included in
Europe's "white list" of states that comply with international standards against tax fraud and
money-laundering. The bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), enacted
major reforms last year in an attempt to get Europe's seal of approval and put behind it scandals
that have included accusations of money laundering and fraud. The IOR, founded in 1942 by Pope
Pius XII, handles financial activities for the Vatican, for orders of priests and nuns, and for other
Roman Catholic religious institutions. The IOR was entangled in the collapse 30 years ago of
Banco Ambrosiano, with its lurid allegations about money-laundering, freemasons, mafiosi
and the mysterious death of Ambrosiano chairman Roberto Calvi - "God's banker". The IOR
then held a small stake in the Ambrosiano, at the time Italy's largest private bank and investigators
alleged that it was partly responsible for the Ambrosiano's fraudulent bankruptcy. Several
investigations have failed to determine whether Calvi, who was found hanging under Blackfriars
Bridge near London's financial district, killed himself or was murdered. The IOR denied any role in
the Ambrosiano collapse but paid $250 million to creditors in what it called a "goodwill gesture".
Note: The fact that JP Morgan is closing it's Vatican accounts is a major sign of the intense
changes happening behind the scenes.
MF Global Still Set to Pay Bonuses

Three top executives of MF Global Holdings Ltd. when it collapsed could get bonuses of as much
as several hundred thousand dollars each under a plan by a trustee overseeing the securities
firm's bankruptcy case. Louis Freeh, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director now in
charge of unwinding what is left of the New York company, is expected to ask a bankruptcy-court
judge as soon as this month to approve performance-related payouts for the chief operating officer,
finance chief and general counsel at MF Global. Under the expected pay plan, the three
executives and as many as 20 other MF Global employees working for Mr. Freeh would get the
bonuses only if they hit specified targets such as increasing the value of MF Global's estate for
creditors. The bonus plan could face fierce resistance. One reason: Criminal and civil
investigators are scrutinizing the role of top executives and others at MF Global in money
transfers that resulted in a $1.6 billion shortfall in customer accounts. So far, many hedge
funds, farmers and other investors who bought and sold through MF Global have gotten about 72
cents out of every $1 held by the firm when it collapsed. Hopes for additional recoveries have
dimmed as the probe grinds on. Neal Wolkoff, a former executive at the New York Mercantile
Exchange who now works as a consultant, said it "is shocking" that Messrs. Abelow and
Steenkamp still work at MF Global and could earn bonuses "because it represents a conflict of
interest."
Note: For an abundance of major media articles revealing major financial manipulations, click
here.
Icelandic Anger Brings Debt Forgiveness in Best Recovery Story

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-28/icelandic-anger-brings-debt-forgi...
Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer
for the countrys economic and financial collapse are reaping the benefits of their anger. Since the
end of 2008, the islands banks have forgiven loans equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic
product, easing the debt burdens of more than a quarter of the population, according to a report
published this month by the Icelandic Financial Services Association. You could safely say that
Iceland holds the world record in household debt relief, said Lars Christensen, chief
emerging markets economist at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. Iceland followed the textbook
example of what is required in a crisis. Any economist would agree with that. Most polls now show
Icelanders dont want to join the European Union, where the debt crisis is in its third year. The
islands households were helped by an agreement between the government and the banks,
which are still partly controlled by the state, to forgive debt exceeding 110 percent of home
values. On top of that, a Supreme Court ruling in June 2010 found loans indexed to foreign
currencies were illegal, meaning households no longer need to cover krona losses.
Note: The amazing story of the Icelandic people demanding bank reform is one of the most
underreported stories in recent years. Why isn't this all over the news? To see what top journalists
say about news censorship, click here. For blatant manipulations of the big banks reported in the
major media, click here.
Rothschild loses libel case, and reveals secret world of money and
politics
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rothschild-loses-libel-case-an...
Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty and friend of seemingly everyone in the
spheres of finance, business and politics, ... has lost his libel case against the Daily Mail, which he
sued for "substantial damages" over its account of his and [Lord] Mandelson's extraordinary trip to
Russia in January 2005. Mr Rothschild claimed he was subjected to "sustained and unjustified"
attacks in the May 2010 article, which portrayed him as a "puppet master", dangling his friend Lord
Mandelson in front of the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to ease the passage of colossal
business deals. It began on Mr Rothschild's private jet from the World Economic Forum in Davos
to Moscow, where they met Mr Deripaska, the aluminium plant manager who became the richest
oligarch of them all, and continued on Mr Deripaska's private jet to his chalet in Siberia. The judge
rejected the notion that Mr Rothschild and Mr Mandelson had flown out as friends, not business
associates, and said Mr Rothschild's behaviour had in part been "inappropriate". "That conduct
foreseeably brought Lord Mandelson's public office and personal integrity into disrepute," the judge
said. That leading politicians, bankers and businessmen associate with each other in
fashions that blur the boundaries between work and pleasure is a secret too great to be
maintained with any success, but it doesn't make the details, on the rare occasions they
actually emerge, any more palatable.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click here
and here.
Wild Old Women Close San Francisco Bank Of America Branch

2012-01-05, KCBS (CBS News San Francisco Affiliate)
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/01/05/wild-old-women-close-san-francisc...
It was a slow-moving Occupy Wall Street protest, but it was an effective one. A dozen senior
citizens calling themselves the wild old women succeeded in closing a Bank of America branch in
Bernal Heights Thursday. The women, aged 69 to 82, who live at the senior home up Mission
street from the Bernal Heights Bank of America branch, decided to hold their own protest by doing
what they called a run on the bank. Tita Caldwell, 80, who led the charge of women with walkers
and wheelchairs, said that theyre demanding the bank lower fees, pay higher taxes, and stop
foreclosing on, and evicting, homeowners. Were upset about what the banks are doing,
particularly in our neighborhood and neighboring areas, in evicting people and foreclosing on their
homes, said Caldwell. Were upset because the banks are raising their rates because it really
affects seniors who are on a fixed income. As they arrived, Bank of America closed and
locked its doors, to the surprise and delight of the elderly protestors, who said that they
had no intention of storming the bank. The women waved signs, but didnt march or chant,
with one woman on supplemental oxygen adding that the group was too old for that.
Congress, legislate thyself on insider trading

http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-11-28/opinion/30453157_1_insider-trading-laws...
It ought to be illegal for members of Congress to buy and sell based on inside information
... but it is not illegal because Congress has exempted itself from insider-trading laws. In 2006,
when Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., introduced the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge or STOCK - Act to prohibit members of Congress and their staff from trading stocks based on
nonpublic information, her bill attracted only 14 co-sponsors. Peter Schweizer, a fellow at
Stanford's Hoover Institution, believes that some in Congress see the public trust as a "venture
opportunity" that allows them to leverage information not available to the general public.
Slaughter's STOCK Act would not stop members or staffers from dabbling in the markets. The
legislation, however, would make Capitol Hill insiders subject to prosecution if they buy or sell
securities based on nonpublic information. It also would cut into K Street's latest boutique business
practice - "political intelligence" - that allows lobbyists to gather inside financial information which
they can give to hedge-fund clients.
Note: Congress exempts itself from all kinds of laws which apply to the remainder of US citizens. If
you don't believe this, read the Time magazine article at this link. It's time for a change.
The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth...
The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of
our political class's venality. US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of
unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities
across the nation this past week. But just when Americans thought we had the picture was this
crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? the picture
darkened. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked,
shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. In
New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in
Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The
Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an
18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests. I noticed
that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all
on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed
lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this
kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. As the puzzle pieces fit together,
they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.
elites, click here.
News Organizations Complain About Treatment During Protests

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/news-organizations-complain-...
A cross-section of 13 news organizations in New York City lodged complaints ... about the New
York Police Departments treatment of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Separately, ten press clubs, unions and other groups that represent journalists called for an
investigation and said they had formed a coalition to monitor police behavior going forward. [The]
actions were prompted by a rash of incidents on Nov. 15, when police officers impeded and even
arrested reporters during and after the evictions of Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti
Park, the birthplace of the two-month-old movement. The news organizations said in a joint
letter to the Police Department that officers had clearly violated their own procedures by
threatening, arresting and injuring reporters and photographers. The letter said there were
numerous inappropriate, if not unconstitutional, actions and abuses by the police against
both credentialed and noncredentialed journalists in the last few days. The letter was written by
George Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel for The New York Times Company,
and signed by representatives for The Associated Press, The New York Post, The Daily News,
Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones & Company, and three local television stations, WABC, WCBS and
WNBC. It was also signed by representatives for the National Press Photographers Association,
New York Press Photographers Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and
the New York Press Club.
elites, click here.
Retired Supreme Court Judge shoved up against a wall and threatened

by NYPD at Occupy Wall Street clashes
2011-11-20, Daily Mail (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063716/You-want-arrested-lady-The-re...
A retired New York Supreme Court judge has claimed she was manhandled by a policeman after
watching him beat a woman at the Zuccotti Park raids. Karen Smith was working as a legal
observer when she saw a distressed woman pushed to the ground and beaten by an officer,
she said. When she demanded he [stop], the unidentified cop pushed her against a wall and
threatened her with arrest. Ms Smith had attended the raids ... to note down the names of people
arrested as the Occupy Wall Street camp was cleared. She was wearing a fluorescent green
baseball cap bearing the words 'National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer' to show she was not
taking part in the protests. Ms Smith, who was also carrying a pad and pen, said the incident
happened at around 1.30am on Tuesday at Dey Street and Broadway Street in New York City.
Speaking to Democracy Now, she described the scene as a paramilitary operation if there ever
was one. It was what we call a stealth eviction, she added. Ms Smith explained her son had
participated in Occupy Wall Street and she had been very concerned about his safety.
Note: We don't normally use the UK's Daily Mail as a reliable source, but as no other major media
are reporting this story, we felt it warranted inclusion. The judge gives her own testimony in a video
near the bottom of the article.
OTC derivatives market activity in the first half of 2011

2011-11-16, Bank for International Settlements (Intergovernmental organization of
central banks)
http://www.bis.org/press/p111116a.htm
After an increase of only 3% in the second half of 2010, total notional amounts outstanding of
over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives rose by 18% in the first half of 2011, reaching $708
trillion by the end of June 2011.
Note: The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an intergovernmental organization of central
banks which "fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for
central banks." It is not accountable to any national government. Their accounting shows a total
global derivatives market controlled by the banks of over $700 trillion. That's $100,000 for every
man, woman, and child on the planet. As reported in Reuters, the derivatives market is largely
unregulated. Do you think there is any manipulation going on here? BIS helps the bankers to work
together to keep their hidden power.
Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/friedman-did-you-hear-the-on...
Citigroup had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank
sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers
securities that it knew were likely to go bust and, with the other hand, shorted the same
securities that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust. It doesnt get any more
immoral than this. James Stewart, a business columnist for The [New York] Times, noted that
Citigroups flimflam made Goldman Sachs mortgage traders look like Boy Scouts. This gets to
the core of why all the anti-Wall Street groups around the globe are resonating. Our financial
industry has grown so large and rich it has corrupted our real institutions through political
donations. Our Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. One consumer group using
information from Opensecrets.org calculates that the financial services industry, including real
estate, spent $2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to 2010, which was more
than the health care, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Why are
there 61 members on the House Committee on Financial Services? So many congressmen want
to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the collusion between financial interests and
government, click here.
'Occupy Wall Street' -- It's Not What They're for, But What They're
Against
2011-10-14, Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/14/understanding-occupy-wall-street/
Critics of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement complain that the protesters dont have a
policy agenda and, therefore, dont stand for anything. They're wrong. The key isnt what
protesters are for but rather what theyre against -- the gaping inequality that has poisoned our
economy, our politics and our nation. In America today, 400 people have more wealth than the
bottom 150 million combined. Thats not because 150 million Americans are pathetically
lazy or even unlucky. In fact, Americans have been working harder than ever -- productivity
has risen in the last several decades. Big business profits and CEO bonuses have also
gone up. Worker salaries, however, have declined. Most of the Occupy Wall Street protesters
[want] an end to the crony capitalist system now in place, that makes it easier for the rich and
powerful to get even more rich and powerful while making it increasingly hard for the rest of us to
get by. The question is not how Occupy Wall Street protesters can find that gross discrepancy
immoral. The question is why every one of us isnt protesting with them. According to polls, most
Americans support the 99% movement, even if theyre not taking to the streets.
Note: For lots more on the reasons why people all over the world are occupying their city centers,
check out our "Banking Bailout" news articles.
Can Liberals and Libertarians Find Common Ground?

2011-10-12, Forbes.com
http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2011/10/12/can-liberals-and-libe...
The Occupy Wall Street movement has the potential to turn into a political firestorm. We have
become so divided as a nation that it is very difficult to prognosticate if anything good will come out
of these protests from a political perspective. Lets examine a number of issues that have been
raised by Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party and liberals and libertarians and see where
there is agreement. Get Corporate Money Out Of Politics This is the issue that really kick
started Occupy Wall Street. Americans are sick and tired of mega-corporations and Wall Street
banks being in bed with our politicians in Washington D.C. End the Federal Reserve The
Federal Reserve is directly responsible for the Too Big To Fail banking cartel, the U.S. debt, the
perpetual deficits, and ... the Fed has also robbed the poor and working class blind as a result of
their inflationary policies. End The Wars The American people are fed up with these conflicts,
and even large percentages of the military believe that the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan were
not worth fighting in the first place. It is time for our troops to come home. End The Drug War The drug war is an absolute failed policy. The U.S. incarcerates a higher percentage of its
population than any country on Earth, yet we call ourselves The Home of the Free. Repeal The
Patriot Act The assault on our civil liberties in the wake of 9/11 has been swift and draconian.
These are the types of things that go on in totalitarian states, and now, apparently the United
States as well.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the reasons why people worldwide are
occupying the financial centers of their cities, check out our "Banking Bailout" news articles.
Goldman Sachs let off paying 10m interest on failed tax avoidance
scheme
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/11/goldman-sachs-interest-tax-avo...
Britain's tax authorities have given Goldman Sachs an unusual and generous Christmas present,
leaked documents reveal. In a secret London meeting last December with the head of Revenue,
the wealthy Wall Street banking firm was forgiven 10m interest on a failed tax avoidance scheme.
HM Revenue and Customs sources admit privately that the interest-free deal is "a cock-up" by
officials, but refuse to say who was responsible. Documents leaked to Private Eye magazine
and published in full by the Guardian record that Britain's top tax official, HMRC's
permanent secretary Dave Hartnett, personally shook hands on a secret settlement last
December. Hartnett also refused to give the facts about Goldman Sachs to MP Jesse Norman on
the Treasury committee last month, claiming disclosure would be illegal. He also refuses to brief
ministers on the details. The 10m Christmas gift for Goldman was the culmination of a prolonged
attempt by the US firm to avoid paying national insurance on huge bonuses for its bankers working
in London. The sum was pocket change to Goldman, whose employees received $15.3bn (9.5bn)
in pay and bonuses last year.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and
here.
World facing worst financial crisis in history, Bank of England Governor

says
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8812260/World-facing-worst...
The world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s if not ever, the Governor of
the Bank of England said last night. Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Banks
Monetary Policy Committee to put 75billion of newly created money into the economy in a
desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession. Economists said the Banks
decision to resume its quantitative easing [QE] showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy,
and predicted more such moves ahead. Sir Mervyn said the Bank had been driven by growing
signs of a global economic disaster. This is the most serious financial crisis weve seen, at least
since the 1930s, if not ever. Were having to deal with very unusual circumstances, but to act
calmly to this and to do the right thing. Announcing its decision, the Bank said that the
eurozone debt crisis was creating severe strains in bank funding markets and financial
markets. Financial experts said the committees actions would be a Titanic disaster for
pensioners, savers and workers approaching retirement. Under QE, the Bank electronically
creates new money which it then uses to buy assets such as government bonds, or gilts, from
banks. By increasing the demand for gilts, QE pushes down the interest rate yields paid to holders
of these and other bonds. Critics of the policy say it pushes up inflation and drives down sterling.
Note: For lots more on the global financial crisis from reliable sources, click here.
Senate panel concludes Goldman Sachs profited from financial crisis

2011-04-14, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-crisis-probe-20110414,0,6709903.story
A Senate panel has concluded that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. profited from the financial
crisis by betting billions against the subprime mortgage market, then deceived investors
and Congress about the firm's conduct. Some of the findings in the report by the Senate's
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will be referred to the Justice Department and the
Securities and Exchange Commission for possible criminal or civil action, said Sen. Carl Levin (DMich.), the panel's chairman. The giant investment bank was just one focus of the subcommittee's
probe into Wall Street's role in the financial crisis. The 639-page report based on internal
memos, emails and interviews with employees of financial firms and regulators casts broad
blame, saying the crisis was caused by "conflicts of interest, heedless risk-taking and failures of
federal oversight." Among the culprits cited by the panel are Washington Mutual, a major mortgage
lender that failed in 2008, as well as the Office of Thrift Supervision, a federal bank regulator, and
credit rating firms. Asked if he was disappointed that no Wall Street figures had gone to jail in
connection with the crisis, Levin responded, "There's still time."
Note: For many key reports from major media sources illuminating how major financial
corporations knowingly brought about the global financial crisis and profited from it, click here.
How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug

gangs
2011-04-03, The Observer (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs
During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the
Internal Revenue Service and others [beginning in 2006], it emerged [that drug cartels had
laundered huge sums of money] through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia,
now part of the giant Wells Fargo. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought
under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's
"deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. The bank was sanctioned for
failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn a sum equivalent
to one-third of Mexico's gross national product into dollar accounts from ... currency exchange
houses with which the bank did business. [The case demonstrates] the role of the "legal" banking
sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars the blood money from the murderous drug trade
in Mexico and other places in the world around their global operations, now bailed out by the
taxpayer. At the height of the 2008 banking crisis, Antonio Maria Costa, then head of the United
Nations office on drugs and crime, said he had evidence to suggest the proceeds from drugs
and crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to banks on the brink of
collapse. "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade," he
said. "There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the illegal activities routinely engaged in by the
largest banks and financial corporations, click here.
Mortgage paperwork mess: Next housing shock?

2011-04-01, CBS News 60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/01/60minutes/main20049646.shtml
It's bizarre but, it turns out, Wall Street cut corners when it created those mortgage-backed
investments that triggered the financial collapse. Now that banks want to evict people, they're
unwinding these exotic investments to find, that often, the legal documents behind the
mortgages aren't there. Caught in a jam of their own making, some companies appear to be
resorting to forgery and phony paperwork to throw people - down on their luck - out of their
homes. This past January in Los Angeles, 37,000 homeowners facing foreclosure showed up to
an event to beg their bank for lower payments on their mortgage. In February in Miami, 12,000
people showed up to a similar event. For many that's when the real surprise comes in: these same
banks have fouled up all of their own paperwork to a historic degree. There were a million
foreclosures last year. And there will be another million this year - those lawsuits are forcing open
those bundled, mortgage-backed securities that Wall Street cooked up in the mid 2000s, and
exposing a lack of ownership documents all across the country. Banks are defensive because all
50 state attorneys general want to punish them: the states are seeking about $20 billion in
damages for what they say is the irresponsible, perhaps criminal way, that some mortgage
companies handled what is, for most folks, the most important investment of their lives.
Note: To watch the amazing 14-minute video of this article, click here. Learn how banks paid a
company which hired people off the streets to pretend they were bank vice presidents and sign
thousands of documents fraudulently. For lots more from reliable sources on the criminal practices
of mortgage lenders, click here.
The Michigan Monarchy Legislates Financial Martial Law -- Nation

Yawns
2011-03-18, Forbes blog
http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/03/18/the-michigan-monarchy-legislates...
This week, the Michigan legislature passed and the governor signed into law a bill that would
permit Governor Rick Snyder to push aside elected city officials and replace them with emergency
financial managers in any municipality or school district facing financial difficulties. The law would
include virtually every town and city in the state as those cities that arent bankrupt already soon
will be once the governors proposed budget which cuts billions in aid to municipalities and
school districts is approved by the legislature. One of the most shocking, Draconian, democracydestroying measures in the history of this country has became law and the nation has seemingly
slept through it. The new law, described by one of the GOP legislators sponsoring the bill as
financial martial law, empowers the governors appointees [referred to as Emergency
Financial Managers] to fire duly elected local officials, cancel labor contracts and even
dissolve entire communities and school districts. This is about so much more than collective
bargaining agreements and unions. This law gives an appointee of the governor which, by the
way, may be a corporation the authority to dismiss any or all of a municipalitys elected
government officials.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports by major media sources on the collusion between
government and financial powers against the public interest, click here.
Financial meltdown culprits seem too big to jail

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/06/EDPG1I481K.DTL
What's wrong with this picture: Years have passed since Wall Street's financial meltdown. Due to
the crisis, the economy tanked, the mortgage market has yet to recover, and millions of jobs were
lost. Many of those jobs losses will be permanent. The only person who went to jail for any of this
was Bernie Madoff. When he accepted his Academy Award for the documentary "Inside Job,"
Berkeley filmmaker Charles Ferguson reminded Americans that the lack of criminal prosecutions
for the financial crisis is, simply, "wrong." No matter what kinds of logical, legal explanations that
the Justice Department has trotted out to explain why all of these senior financial executives are
too big to jail, it's outrageous that there has not been and will not be any comeuppance for the men
who plunged the American economy into chaos. The fact that some of these executives have or
will receive some financial punishment in civil court is of little consequence - if ruining the economy
isn't worth a little jail time, then what is? The Obama administration has not made it a priority
to prosecute financial executives. Its reticence to punish was prominently on display last
month, when the Justice Department decided not to prosecute Angelo Mozilo, the former
CEO of Countrywide Financial. Mozilo left an e-mail trail detailing his feelings about
Countrywide's "toxic" mortgage products and negotiated a $67.5 million payout in a civil suit that
was brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission. If the feds don't go after
him, it's unlikely that they'll go after anyone else. It's a bitter contrast to the 1980s savings-andloan crisis, when the federal government threw enormous resources at criminal prosecutions and
sent even well-connected executives, like Charles Keating, to jail.
Note: For other highly revealing major media articles showing just how much control big bankers
have over government, click here.
America's favorite bankers have outdone themselves yet again

2011-01-30, CNN
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/30/money-for-nothing-at-goldman/
How might you compensate management for a year in which profits plunged, you spent
$550 million of shareholder money to settle a fraud investigation and your stock ended up more or
less exactly where it started? You might be tempted to nix raises or withhold bonuses to send a
responsible message about linking pay to performance. But if so, you wouldn't be Goldman Sachs.
It just had the year described above and responded by tripling everyone's base salary while
boosting bonuses by 40%. Is this a great country or what? Goldman said in a filing [on January 28]
that CEO Lloyd Blankfein will make $2 million this year, and his top lieutenants will each make
$1.85 million. Top Goldman brass had been making $600,000 annually in salary since the firm's
1999 initial public offering. All 470 of Goldman's partners will get higher salaries. The top five
officers will also get $12.6 million each in bonuses. That's up from $9 million each last year.
That may seem like a high price to pay for a pretty lousy year and one that ended with a Fedinspired reminder that Goldman, just in case anyone forgot, took billions upon billions of dollars in
bailout loans in 2008 and 2009.
Note: For key articles from reliable sources detailing the outrageous compensation awarded to the
highest officers of Wall Street financial corporations after they were bailed out by the government,
click here.
State Budgets: The Day of Reckoning

2010-12-19, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/19/60minutes/main7166220.shtml
There is [a] financial crisis looming involving state and local governments. In the two years since
the "great recession" wrecked their economies and shriveled their income, the states have
collectively spent nearly a half a trillion dollars more than they collected in taxes. There is
also a trillion-dollar hole in their public pension funds. The states have been getting by on
billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds, but the day of reckoning is at hand. The debt crisis
[could] cost a million public employees their jobs and require another big bailout package that no
one in Washington wants to talk about. "The most alarming thing about the state issue is the level
of complacency," Meredith Whitney, one of the most respected financial analysts on Wall Street. "It
has tentacles as wide as anything I've seen. I think next to housing this is the single most
important issue in the United States, and certainly the largest threat to the U.S. economy," she
[said]. California, which faces a $19 billion budget deficit next year, has a credit rating approaching
junk status. It now spends more money on public employee pensions than it does on the state
university system, which had to increase its tuition by 32 percent. Arizona is so desperate it sold
off the state capitol, Supreme Court building and legislative chambers to a group of investors
and now leases the buildings from their new owner. The state also eliminated Medicaid funding for
most organ transplants.
Note: For key reports from major media sources on the devastating consequences for Main Street
of the criminal bailout of Wall Street, click here.
Brooksley Born foresaw disaster but was silenced

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/05/BUHC1GLHFA.DTL
There's a brief scene in "Inside Job," the locally produced documentary on the Great Financial
Meltdown, in which a colleague of the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in
1997 describes how "blood drained from her face" after receiving a phoned-in tongue-lashing from
deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. The target of Summers' wrath was Brooksley Born, ...
the first female president of the Stanford Law Review and a recognized legal expert in the area of
complex financial instruments. Her crime: Born had the temerity to push for regulation of the
increasingly wild trading in derivatives, which, as we learned a decade later, helped bring
the U.S. economy, and much of the world's, to its knees. Summers, with 13 bankers in his
office, told Born to get off it "in a very grueling fashion," said the colleague. The story is told
in much more detail in All the Devils are Here, the latest, but eminently worthwhile, book on the
roots of the crisis, by Bethany McLean and ... Joe Nocera. It makes for dispiriting, even appalling,
reading. Responding to growing evidence of manipulation and fraud in unregulated derivatives
trading - "the hippopotamus under the rug," as Born and others referred to it - Born suggested the
commission should perhaps be given some sort of oversight. She had a 33-page policy paper
drawn up, full of questions and suggestions, like, for example, whether establishing a public
exchange for derivatives might not be a bad idea. Responding to the policy paper, Summers,
"screaming at her," according to the book, told Born the bankers sitting in his office "threatened to
move their derivatives business to London," if she didn't stop.
Note: For key reports on financial fraud from reliable sources, click here.
Senator Bernie Sanders on the War Between the Shrinking Middle Class
and the Wealthy
2010-11-30, U.S. Senate Testimony
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=c8f26b05-01e7-429f-a5e0-a9a6bd1a0f40
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, there is a war going on in this country, and I am not referring to the
wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I am talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and
most powerful people in this country against the working families of the United States of America,
against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The reality is, many of the
Nation's billionaires are on the warpath. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end,
and apparently there is very little concern for our country or for the people of this country if it gets
in the way of the accumulation of more and more wealth and more and more power. The
percentage of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled since the 1970s. In the mid1970s, the top 1 percent earned about 8 percent of all income. In the 1980s, that figure jumped to
14 percent. In the late 1990s, that 1 percent earned about 19 percent. And today, as the middle
class collapses, the top 1 percent earns 23 1/2 percent of all income--more than the bottom
50 percent. Today, if you can believe it, the top one-tenth of 1 percent earns about 12 cents
of every dollar earned in America.
Note: To see a video of this amazing speech by courageous Senator Bernie Sanders
(Independent), click here.
Winning the Class War

2010-11-27, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/opinion/27herbert.html
The class war that no one wants to talk about continues unabated. Even as millions of out-of-work
and otherwise struggling Americans are tightening their belts for the holidays, the nations elite are
lacing up their dancing shoes and partying like royalty as the millions and billions keep rolling in.
Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street
who are at the heart of the American aristocracy. They have waged economic warfare
against everybody else and are winning big time. The ranks of the poor may be swelling and
families forced out of their foreclosed homes may be enduring a nightmarish holiday season, but
American companies have just experienced their most profitable quarter ever. The corporate fat
cats are becoming alarmingly rotund. Their profits have surged over the past seven quarters at a
pace that is among the fastest ever seen, and they can barely contain their glee. On the same day
that The Times ran its article about [record corporate] profits, it ran a piece on the front page that
carried the headline: With a Swagger, Wallets Out, Wall Street Dares to Celebrate. Anyone who
thinks there is something beneficial in this vast disconnect between the fortunes of the American
elite and those of the struggling masses is just silly. Its not even good for the elite. The rich may
think that the public wont ever turn against them. But to hold that belief, you have to ignore the
turbulent history of the 1930s.
Note: For many reports from reliable souces on corporate profiteering, click here.
Wall Street Pay: A Record $144 Billion

Compensation on Wall Street is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive
year, as more than three dozen top banks and securities firms will pay $144 billion in salary
and benefits ... a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009. Compensation was
expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms. Overall, Wall Street is expected to pay 32.1% of its
revenue to employees, the same as last year, but below the 36% in 2007. Profits, which were
depressed by losses in the past two years, have bounced back from the 2008 crisis. But the
estimated 2010 profit of $61.3 billion for the firms surveyed still falls about 20% short from the
record $82 billion in 2006. Over that same period, compensation across the firms in the survey
increased 23%. "Until focus of these institutions changes from revenue generation to long-term
shareholder value, we will see these outrageous pay packages and compensation levels," said
Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance.
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on Wall Street's profiteering, click here.
Congressional Staffers Gain From Trading in Stocks

Chris Miller nearly doubled his $3,500 stock investment in a renewable-energy firm in 2008. It was
a perfectly legal bet, but he's no ordinary investor. Mr. Miller is the top energy-policy adviser to
Nevada Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who helped pass legislation that wound
up benefiting the firm. Mr. Miller isn't the only Congressional staffer making such stock bets. At
least 72 aides on both sides of the aisle traded shares of companies that their bosses help
oversee, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of more than 3,000 disclosure forms covering
trading activity by Capitol Hill staffers for 2008 and 2009. The Journal analysis showed that an aide
to a Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee bought Bank of America Corp. stock
before results of last year's government stress tests eased investor concerns about the health of
the banking industry. A top aide to the House Speaker profited by trading shares of Freddie Mac
and Fannie Mae in a brokerage account with her husband two days before the government
authorized emergency funding for the companies. The aides identified by the Journal say they
didn't profit by making trades based on any information gathered in the halls of Congress. Even if
they had done so, it would be legal, because insider-trading laws don't apply to Congress.
Unlike many Executive Branch employees, lawmakers and aides don't have restrictions on
their stock holdings and ownership interests in companies they oversee.
Note: Why is Congress exempt from so many of its own laws? Who is willing to start a movement
to stop this? For lots more on government corruption from major media sources, click here.
Insider Trading Inside the Beltway

2010-07-02, UCLA School of Law
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1633123
A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that
Senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on
average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat
the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some
Senators had access to and were using material nonpublic information about the
companies in whose stock they trade. Under current law, it is unlikely that Members of
Congress can be held liable for insider trading. The proposed Stop Trading on Congressional
Knowledge Act addresses that problem by instructing the Securities and Exchange Commission to
adopt rules intended to prohibit such trading. This article analyzes present law to determine
whether Members of Congress, Congressional employees, and other federal government
employees can be held liable for trading on the basis of material nonpublic information. It argues
that there is no public policy rationale for permitting such trading and that doing so creates
perverse legislative incentives and opens the door to corruption. The article explains that the
Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution is no barrier to legislative and regulatory
restrictions on Congressional insider trading.
Note: Do you think that these highly successful investors in the US Senate might have a vested
interest in protecting the existing financial and legal structure that makes their profits possible and
protects them from criminal charges?
U.S. banks' role in Mexican drug trade

2010-06-30, San Francisco Chronicle/Bloomberg News
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/29/BU2L1E6LV2.DTL
Wachovia [Bank] ... made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. San
Francisco's Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit
failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers - including the
cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine. The admission ... sheds
light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that
has convulsed Mexico for the past four years. Wachovia admitted it didn't do enough to spot
illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican currency exchange houses from 2004 to
2007. That's the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S.
history - a sum equal to one-third of Mexico's current gross domestic product. "Wachovia's
blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte
blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled
the case. "It's the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy," said Martin
Woods, director of Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods
says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were
funneling money through Wachovia's branch network. "If you don't see the correlation between the
money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you're missing the point," he
said.
Note: For abundant reports from reliable sources on the many dubious ways in which major
financial firms make their profits, click here.
What are the Bilderberg Group really doing in Spain?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/what-are-the-bilderberg-group-...
Ordinary citizens can only guess at the goings-on at the annual meeting of the secretive Bilderberg
Group, a media-barred pow-wow of the global elite that in the past has reportedly attracted former
US President Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and David Cameron, and US treasury secretary Timothy
Geithner. The heavyweight weekend retreat kicked off yesterday with hordes of police security and
a gag order for employees at the luxury Dolce. None of the illustrious guests posed for photos or
spouted prepared statements for the media. Instead, activists, journalists and bloggers attempted
to stake out positions in the surrounding hills to catch glimpses of this year's participants, guerrillawarrior style. The cloak-and-dagger theorists scored a point this week when ... Daniel Estulin
addressed the European Parliament on the invitation of an Italian member, Mario Borghezio. Mr
Estulin, an investigative journalist who has written two best-selling books on the subject, contends
that "the Bilderberg Club" is not a classic conspiracy but a potentially dangerous meeting
of minds with a common goal: to centralise global economic power to benefit corporations.
He defined it as "a virtual spider web of interlocking financial, political and industrial
interests". "It isn't a secret society," he said. "No matter how powerful they are, no group sits
around a table holding hands and deciding the world's future. It is an ideology."
Note: Why is there so little reporting on this influential group in the major media? Thankfully, the
alternative media has had some good articles. And a Google search can be highly informative. For
many other revealing news articles from major media sources on powerful secret societies, click
here. And for reliable information covering the big picture of how and why these secret societies
are using government-sponsored mind control programs to achieve their agenda, click here.
666: Goldman's latest bonus bears the mark of the beast

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/666-goldmans...
Something strange is afoot when Popbitch provider of a weekly email beloved of students,
stuffed full of celebrity tittle-tattle and links to the silliest miscellany of the web breaks off from
such glorious trivia to encourage readers to support GoldmanSachs666.com, a deadly serious
website measuring the political tentacles of the mighty investment bank. The credit-market
catastrophe that has plunged the world into recession is everywhere stirring new ways of thinking
about how banking relates to the wider world, but nowhere more so than among a generation
coming into political consciousness in these searing times. Something is brewing, some argue,
that could make the "regulatory-financial complex" something to rail against in the same way that
the military-industrial complex was in the Cold War. This should worry Goldman Sachs. More so
than any other firm, it exists at the intersection of politics and high finance. "It was listening to the
news coming out of AIG that got me fired up," says Mike Morgan, founder of
GoldmanSachs666.com. "While politicians were screaming about $165m paid out to AIG
executives in bonuses, $180bn was walking out the door." The Federal Reserve and the thentreasury secretary, Hank Paulson, decided to funnel public funds to AIG, and its counterparties
were paid in full. You don't have to scratch far into the internet to find conspiracy theories:
Mr Paulson was chief executive of Goldman before going into government; he appointed
Edward Liddy, formerly of Goldman, to run AIG; Goldman was AIG's biggest counterparty,
receiving $12.9bn from AIG after the bailout.
Note: For lots more on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Why Creditors Should Suffer, Too

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/business/economy/05view.html?partner=rss&em...
The Obama administrations proposals to reform financial regulation sound ambitious enough as
they aim to bring companies like A.I.G. under a broader umbrella of government rule-making and
scrutiny. But there is a big hole in these proposals, as there has already been in the governments
approach to bailing out failing financial companies. Even as they focus on firms deemed too big to
fail, the new proposals immunize the creditors and counterparties of such firms by
protecting them from their own lending and trading mistakes. This pattern has been evident
for months, with the government aiding creditors and counterparties every step of the way.
Yet this has not been explained openly to the American public. In truth, its not the shareholders of
the American International Group who benefited most from its bailout; they were mostly wiped out.
The great beneficiaries have been the creditors and counterparties at the other end of A.I.G.s
derivatives deals firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Socit Gnrale,
Barclays and UBS. These firms engaged in deals that A.I.G. could not make good on. The bailout,
and the regulatory regime outlined by Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, would give firms
like these every incentive to make similar deals down the road. In both the bailouts and in the new
proposals, the government is effectively neutralizing creditors as a force for financial safety. This
suggests a scary possibility that the next regulatory regime could end up even worse than the
last.
Big Bonuses at Fannie and Freddie Draw Fire

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/business/04bonus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two troubled companies at the heart of the nations mortgage
market, are set to pay their employees retention bonuses totaling $210 million, despite calls from
lawmakers to cancel the payments. The bonuses, which were made public on Friday, were
defended by the companies federal regulator, James B. Lockhart, who said he intended to let
them proceed. In a letter sent last week to Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, Mr.
Lockhart disclosed that 7,600 Fannie and Freddie workers were scheduled to receive payouts
aimed at retaining those employees most critical to keep and difficult to replace. Under the plan,
213 employees will receive retention bonuses worth more than $100,000 this year, and one
Freddie Mac executive will receive $1.3 million. Those figures drew sharp rebukes from Mr.
Grassley and other lawmakers, who noted that Fannie and Freddie had received pledges of $400
billion from taxpayers to offset huge losses since they were seized by the government in
September. Similar bonuses paid by the American International Group, which was also bailed out
by taxpayers, incited fiery attacks from the White House and legislators when they were revealed
last month. Its hard to see any common sense in management decisions that award
hundreds of millions in bonuses when their organizations lost more than $100 billion in a
year, Mr. Grassley said in a statement. Its an insult that the bonuses were made with an
infusion of cash from taxpayers.
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities behind the Wall Street bailouts, click here.
Obamas Ersatz Capitalism

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...
The Obama administrations $500 billion or more proposal to deal with Americas ailing banks has
been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a winwin-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win and taxpayers lose. Treasury hopes to get us
out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world
crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive
complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency. In theory, the administrations plan is based
on letting the market determine the prices of the banks toxic assets including outstanding
house loans and securities based on those loans. The reality, though, is that the market will not be
pricing the toxic assets themselves, but options on those assets. The two have little to do with
each other. The government plan in effect involves insuring almost all losses. Since the private
investors are spared most losses, then they primarily value their potential gains. This is exactly
the same as being given an option. Under the plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner,
the government would provide about 92 percent of the money to buy the asset but would
stand to receive only 50 percent of any gains, and would absorb almost all of the losses.
Some partnership! What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is
ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a partnership in which
one partner robs the other.
Note: The author of this analysis, Joseph E. Stiglitz, is a professor of economics at Columbia
University. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1997, and was
awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2001. For many revealing reports on the realities behind
the Wall Street bailouts, click here.
A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pag...
The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer
bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in
bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to
the brink of collapse last year. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the firm they were
unacceptable and demanded they be renegotiated, a senior administration official said. But the
bonuses will go forward because lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them.
The payments to A.I.G.s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously
scheduled bonuses for the companys senior executives and 6,400 employees across the
sprawling corporation. The payment of so much money at a company at the heart of the financial
collapse that sent the broader economy into a tailspin almost certainly will fuel a popular backlash
against the governments efforts to prop up Wall Street. A.I.G., nearly 80 percent of which is now
owned by the government, defended its bonuses, arguing that they were promised last year before
the crisis and cannot be legally canceled. Of all the financial institutions that have been propped up
by taxpayer dollars, none has received more money than A.I.G.. The bonuses will be paid to
executives at A.I.G.s financial products division, the unit that wrote trillions of dollars worth of
credit-default swaps that protected investors from defaults on bonds backed in many cases by
subprime mortgages. Seven executives at the financial products unit were entitled to receive more
than $3 million in bonuses.
Note: For many revelations of the amazing realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Some Banks, Feeling Chained, Want to Return Bailout Money

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/business/economy/11bailout.html?partner=rss...
Financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions
and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They must let shareholders vote on executive
pay packages. They must slash dividends, cancel employee training and morale-building
exercises, and withdraw job offers to foreign citizens. As public outrage swells over the rapidly
growing cost of bailing out financial institutions, the Obama administration and lawmakers are
attaching more and more strings to rescue funds. The conditions are necessary to prevent Wall
Street executives from paying lavish bonuses and buying corporate jets, some experts say.
Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to return the
bailout money. The list includes small banks ... as well as giants like Goldman Sachs and
Wells Fargo. They say they plan to return the money as quickly as possible or as soon as
regulators set up a process to accept the refunds. A senior Treasury official involved in the bailout
effort said the administration was carefully trying not to do anything that could harm the banks and
was giving financial incentives to modify mortgages. But by keeping weak banks operating, the
markets continue to sink and taxpayer costs are mounting, outside experts said. The current
policy is likely to result in weaker banks, Mr. Seidman said. And keeping insolvent banks in
operation does not benefit the system.
Note: Could it be that that the main reason top bank executives are now talking about giving
money back is that don't want to give up their lavish bonuses and corporate jets? What about all
the talk about how the whole world would go to pot if they didn't get this bailout money? Somehow
this is not surprising.
New Bank Bailout Could Cost $2 Trillion

Government officials seeking to revamp the U.S. financial bailout have discussed spending
another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to help restore banks to health, according to people familiar with the
matter. President Barack Obama's new administration is wrestling with how to stem the continuing
loss of confidence in the financial system, as it divides up the remaining $350 billion from the $700
billion Troubled Asset Relief Program launched last fall. The potential size of rescue efforts being
discussed suggests the administration may need to ask Congress for more funds. The
administration is expected to take a series of steps, including relieving banks of bad loans and
distressed securities. The so-called "bad bank" that would buy these assets could be seeded
with $100 billion to $200 billion from the TARP funds, with the rest of the money -- as much
as $1 trillion to $2 trillion -- raised by selling government-backed debt or borrowing from
the Federal Reserve. The administration is also seeking more effective ways to pump money into
banks, and is considering buying common shares in the banks. Government purchases so far
have been of preferred shares, in an effort to both protect taxpayers and avoid diluting existing
shareholders' stakes. Given the weakened state of the banking industry, with bank share prices
low and their capital needs high, economists say the government probably can't avoid owning at
least some banks for a temporary period.
Note: Note that the U.S. government has to borrow from the Federal Reserve, which most people
don't realize is privately owned by the richest banks. For more on this, click here. The $2 trillion of
taxpayer money for Wall Street's toxic assets revealed here is in addition to over $7 trillion already
committed according to CNN and others. Wouldn't government debt of this magnitude threaten a
broad range of government services and risk seriously weakening the dollar? For many other
revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Execs of bailed-out banks got $1.6B last year, AP finds

2008-12-21, USA Today/Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2008-12-21-bank-execs-bail...
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in
salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals. The
rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent
them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to
lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages. Benefits
included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home
security, country club memberships and professional money management. The total amount
given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that
have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines. The AP compiled total
compensation based on annual reports that the banks file with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. The 116 banks have so far received $188 billion in taxpayer help. Among the
findings: Lloyd Blankfein, president and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, took home
nearly $54 million in compensation last year. The company's top five executives received a total of
$242 million. The New York-based company on Dec. 16 reported its first quarterly loss since it
went public in 1999. It received $10 billion in taxpayer money on Oct. 28. John A. Thain, chief
executive officer of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses with $83 million in earnings last
year. Like Goldman, Merrill got $10 billion from taxpayers on Oct. 28.
Note: For many reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout from reliable sources, click here.
House Arrest for Madoff in $7 Million Apartment

2008-12-17, abcnews.com
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WallStreet/story?id=6480363
Bernard Madoff, accused of the largest fraud in U.S. history, will be allowed to remain in his $7
million Park Avenue apartment instead of being sent to jail, under terms of an agreement
announced today by federal prosecutors. Madoff was unable to meet the bond conditions set last
week by a federal magistrate which required him to get four people to sign his personal
recognizance bond. According to the U.S. Attorney's office, only Madoff's wife and brothers were
willing to sign the document. But instead of ordering him held in jail, prosecutors agreed to
home detention with electronic monitoring. Madoff and his luxury apartment on
Manhattan's upper east side will be fitted with an electronic monitoring device by the
court's pre-trial services and Madoff will be under a curfew of between 7 p.m. through 9
a.m. Madoff's wife agreed to post the mansions in her name in Palm Beach, Florida and in
Montauk on New York's Long Island. The Securities and Exchange Commission chairman said
today the agency has found "no evidence of wrongdoing by any SEC personnel" in connection with
Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme and that the SEC intends to get to the bottom of where
it may have gone wrong. "I was very concerned to learn this week that credible allegations about
Mr. Madoff had been made over nearly a decade and yet never referred to the commission for
action," Commissioner Christopher Cox said at a press conference. Yesterday, Cox acknowledged
what amounted to a generational failure on the part of the SEC to discover any hint of Madoff's
scheme, despite allegations dating back to 1999.
Note: Why is the criminal responsible for the largest single banking scandal in history given house
arrest rather than jail before his trial? Isn't it remarkable that the hands-off treatment Madoff
received over the years from the SEC seems to be continuing from the Federal prosecutors? For
more on Wall Street corruption, click here.
Why AIG Gets Billions, GM Gets Scorn

2008-12-12, U.S. News & World Report blog
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/flowchart/2008/12/12/why-aig-gets-billions-gm-get...
AIG, the huge insurance company, has so far gotten $173 billion worth of federal aid, because
traders at one small division made bets on exotic securities that were so calamitous they
threatened to bring down the whole company. So far, the amount of money the feds have pledged
to this one firm equals nearly one-third of the nations defense budget. General Motors,
Americas biggest automaker, has asked for a $10 billion federal loan, equal to oneseventeenth of what AIG has gotten and Congress has said no. There were no rogue
traders at GM, and the companys problems have intensified in plain view, over several months,
instead of coming from out of nowhere in a single, cataclysmic episode. Make sense? Doesnt to
me. So maybe if we look at each company a bit more closely, it will be clearer why the government
favors companies like AIG over ones like GM. Does have AIG have friends in high places? You
could say that. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke
both support the AIG bailout, and theyve steered money to the company without Congressional
approval. GMs most important friends in Washington have been the Michigan Congressional
delegation, which obviously doesnt have the clout it used to. Paulson has actually argued against
using part of the huge $700 billion financial bailout fund to help the automakers, because they
cant pass a viability test proving theyll stay in business long enough to pay back the loans. But
AIG hasnt passed a viability test either, and without federal help theres little doubt it would be in
bankruptcy.
Note: At least someone is asking the right questions! For many highly revealing reports from
reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Wall Street legend Bernard Madoff arrested over '$50 billion Ponzi
scheme'
2008-12-12, Times of London
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5331997.ece
Shock and panic spread through the country clubs of Palm Beach and Long Island after Bernard L
Madoff, a trading powerbroker for over four decades, allegedly confessed to a massive fraud that
will cost his wealthy investors at least $50 billion, perhaps the largest swindle in Wall Street history.
Mr Madoff, 70, a former Nasdaq stock chairman, was apparently turned in by his two sons and
arrested on Thursday morning at his Manhattan apartment by the FBI. The FBI claims that three
senior employees of Mr Madoff's investment firm - once a towering presence on Wall Street turned up at his apartment on Wednesday to ask questions about the company's solvency. Two of
them are believed to be his sons, Andrew and Mark, who have worked for their father for two
decades. Mr Madoff told them that he was "finished", that he had "absolutely nothing", and
that "it's all just one big lie". He said the investment arm of his firm was "basically a giant
Ponzi scheme," and that it had been insolvent for years. A Ponzi scheme, named after the
swindler Charles Ponzi, is a fraudulent investment operation that pays abnormally high returns to
investors paid from money put into the scheme by subsequent investors, rather from real profits
generated by share trading. The FBI complaint states that Mr Madoff told his sons he believed the
losses from his scheme could exceed $50 billion. If that is the case, his fraud would be far greater
than past Ponzi schemes and easily the greatest swindle perpetrated by one man.
Note: If a former Nasdaq chairman was committing this kind of blatant fraud while still the
chairman of Nasdaq, what does it say about the level of corruption on Wall Street? For a treasure
trove of reports from reliable sources exposing the realities of the Wall Street corruption, click here.
15 corporate chieftains each top $100 million in 5 years

2008-11-20, Denver Post/Wall Street Journal
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_11036514
The credit bubble has burst. The economy is tanking. Investors in the U.S. stock market have lost
more than $9 trillion since its peak a year ago. But in industries at the center of the crisis, plenty of
top officials managed to emerge with substantial fortunes. Fifteen corporate chieftains of large
home-building and financial-services firms each reaped more than $100 million in cash
compensation and proceeds from stock sales during the past five years, according to a Wall Street
Journal analysis. Four of those executives, including the heads of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
and Bear Stearns Cos., ran companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection or seen their share
prices fall more than 90% from their peak. The study ... showed that top executives and
directors of the firms cashed out a total of more than $21 billion during the period. The issue
of compensation and other rewards for corporate executives is front-and-center in the wake of the
financial meltdown. In the tech bubble of the late 1990s, more than 50 individuals each made
more than $100 million from selling shares just prior to the crash. Many had just founded
companies that had never turned a profit. "The system tends to reward people for participating in
bubbles," says Roy C. Smith, a finance professor at New York University's business school.
Panel grills credit raters over inflated ratings

2008-10-23, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27326652
Executives and employees at the major credit ratings agencies were often aware of problems in
the AAA grades awarded to thousands of mortgage-related securities whose downgrades helped
plunge the nation into a financial meltdown. The companies Standard & Poor, Moodys and
Fitch, Inc. made enormous profits as they evaluated a ballooning number of mortgage-backed
bonds, many of which were given top marks as long as housing prices went up. The story of the
credit rating agencies is a story of colossal failure, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The California Democrat said, Millions of
investors rely on them for independent, objective assessments. The rating agencies broke
this bond of trust, and federal regulators ignored the warning signs and did nothing to
protect the public. The result is that our entire financial system is now at risk. The
companies are important because their high assessments assured investors that their money
should be safe. The inflated ratings awarded to securities backed up by subprime loans led
investors to buy them in enormous numbers. But now, most of these securities have been
downgraded and the market for them has largely evaporated, contributing to the current crisis. The
panel also heard former ratings agency executives say theres an inherent conflict of interest in the
industry because theyre paid by bond issuers instead of investors who trust their ratings to make
smart investments.
Note: For many reports on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Wall Street's 'Disaster Capitalism for Dummies'

2008-10-21, MarketWatch.com (owned by Dow Jones)
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/14-reasons-main-street-loses/story.aspx...
Sorry to pop your bubble folks, but it no longer matters who's president. Why? The real "game
changer" already happened. Democracy has been replaced by Wall Street's new "disaster
capitalism." That's the big game-changer historians will remember about 2008, masterminded by
Wall Street's ultimate "Trojan Horse," Hank Paulson. Congress simply handed over voting power
and the keys to trillions in the Treasury to Wall Street's new "Disaster Capitalists" who now control
"democracy." We let it happen. In one generation America has been transformed from a
democracy into a strange new form of government, "Disaster Capitalism." Three decades of
influence peddling in Washington ... accelerated under Reaganomics and went into hyperspeed
under Bushonomics, both totally committed to a new disaster capitalism run privately by Wall
Street and Corporate America. No-bid contracts in wars and hurricanes. A housing-credit bubble -while secretly planning for a meltdown. Finally, the coup de grace: Along came the housing-credit
crisis, as planned. Press and public saw a negative, a crisis. Disaster capitalists saw a huge
opportunity. Yes, opportunity for big bucks and control of America. This end game was
planned for years in secret war rooms on Wall Street, in Corporate America, in Washington
and the Forbes 400. Naomi Klein summarizes the game in Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster
Capitalism. This "new economy" generates enormous profits feeding off other peoples' misery:
Wars, terror attacks, natural catastrophes, poverty, trade sanctions, subprime housing meltdowns
and all kinds of economic, financial and political disasters.
Note: The author of this highly critical commentary, Paul B. Farrell, is a well-known writer on
finance and investment and a long-time columnist at The Wall Street Journal's sister-site
MarketWatch.
Wealthy Americans Under Scrutiny in UBS Case

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/business/worldbusiness/06tax.html?partner=r...
One afternoon in April, six dozen wealthy Americans were entertained at a luncheon party in
Midtown Manhattan, along with a special guest from Paris: Henri Loyrette, the director of the
Louvre. The host of the exclusive gathering was the Swiss bank UBS, whose elite private bankers
built a lucrative business in recent years by discreetly tending the fortunes of American millionaires
and billionaires. But now, as the federal authorities intensify an investigation into offshore bank
accounts, the secrets of this rarefied world are being dragged into the open and UBSs
privileged clients are running scared. Under pressure from the authorities, UBS is considering
whether to divulge the names of up to 20,000 of its well-heeled American clients, according
to people close to the inquiry, a step that would have once been unthinkable to Swiss
bankers, whose traditions of secrecy date to the Middle Ages. Federal investigators believe
some of the clients may have used offshore accounts at UBS to hide as much as $20 billion in
assets from the Internal Revenue Service. Doing so may have enabled these people to dodge at
least $300 million in federal taxes on income from those assets, according to a government official
connected with the investigation. The case could turn into an embarrassment for Marcel Rohner,
the chief executive of UBS and the former head of its private bank, as well as for Phil Gramm, the
former Republican senator from Texas who is now the vice chairman of UBS Securities, the Swiss
banks investment banking arm. It also comes at a difficult time for UBS, which is reeling from $37
billion in bad investments, many of them linked to risky American mortgages.
Note: For an illuminating overview of the secret world of banking and finance, click here.
Lou Dobbs Tonight: NAFTA Superhighway

2008-05-28, CNN News
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0805/28/ldt.01.html
[News anchor LOU DOBBS:] Open borders advocates are refusing to acknowledge rising
evidence of plans for a NAFTA superhighway. Many in the mainstream media absolutely
refuse to acknowledge the reality. The plans could be a major step toward that North
American Union of the United States, Canada and Mexico. BILL TUCKER, CNN
Correspondent: There is no NAFTA superhighway. Not officially. In Texas planning a development
is under way for what are officially called transportation corridors. The Trans Texas Corridor, I-69, a
combination of rail lines, utility lines, car and truck lanes, [is planned] to be as wide as three
football fields laid end to end. It will be financed by a private foreign company ... who will then own
the lease on the road and the revenue generated by the tolls. Texas may use eminent domain to
lay claim to some of the land needed to build it. For an imaginary road there's a lot of money and
effort involved [and] some very real opposition. TERRI HALL, TEXASTURF.ORG: There's just no
doubt that this is happening. We've been to the public hearings. We've seen the presentations.
We've seen the documents. We waded through them and there's a whole lot more groups besides
just ours. And we've got Farm Bureau, Sierra Club, a whole host of groups from the left and the
right. TUCKER: In Kansas a resolution opposing the superhighway overwhelmingly passed the
State House.
Note: To watch a video of this Lou Dobbs Tonight segment, click here.
They Rule the World

David Rothkopf's Superclass [can be viewed] as a map of how the world really works. Rothkopf, a
former managing director of Kissinger Associates and an international trade official in the Clinton
Administration, has identified roughly 6,000 individuals who have "the ability to regularly influence
the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide" ... with a growing allegiance ... to
each other rather than to any particular nation. Rothkopf [cites] the Pareto principle of distribution,
or the "80/20 rule," whereby 20 percent of the causes of anything are responsible for 80 percent of
the consequences. That means 20 percent of the money-makers make 80 percent of the
money and 20 percent of the politicians make 80 percent of the important decisions. That
20 percent belongs to the superclass. Superclass ... is as much about who is not part of the
superclass as who is. As I read Rothkopf's chronicles of elite gatherings -- Davos, Bilderberg, the
Bohemian Grove (all male), Fathers and Sons (all male) -- I was repeatedly struck by the near
absence of women. When Rothkopf summarizes "how to become a member of the superclass,"
his first rule is "be born a man." Only 6 percent of the superclass is female. Superclass is written in
part as a consciousness-raising exercise for members of the superclass themselves. Rothkopf
worries that "the world they are making" is deeply unequal and ultimately unstable. But it's likely to
take more than exhortation. In the words of former Navy Secretary John Lehman, "Power corrupts.
Absolute power is kind of neat." Why would the superclass want to give it up?
Note: The website www.theyrule.net allows visitors to trace the connections between individuals
who serve on the boards of top corporations, universities, think thanks, foundations and other elite
institutions. For lots more on secret societies, click here.
The three trillion dollar war

2008-02-23, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/articl...
The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs
of the war. The president and his advisers [forecast] a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have
a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined. The cost of direct US military
operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already
exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean
War. And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the
cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of
the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when
16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars,
after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion. Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The
price in blood has been paid by our voluntary military and by hired contractors. The price in
treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised
to pay for it - in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen. Deficit spending gives the
illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter.
But of course the laws are not repealed. The costs of the war are real even if they have been
deferred, possibly to another generation. From the unhealthy brew of emergency funding, multiple
sets of books, and chronic underestimates of the resources required to prosecute the war, we have
attempted to identify how much we have been spending - and how much we will, in the end, likely
have to spend. The figure we arrive at is more than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on
conservative assumptions.
Note: For many reports from major media sources which reveal massive war profiteering, click
here.
Stimulus Plan a Scam to Benefit the Rich

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/IN8LUO095.DTL
Congress is about to sell us the biggest fraud in American history. It's been highly touted as an
economic stimulus bill that will help millions of Americans. As part of the bill, Congress is set to
rush through an increase in the mortgage loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and
Federal Housing Administration insurance, too) - from $417,000 to $729,750 - the first step toward
a massive financial disaster in which taxpayers will end up paying through the nose. Now, thanks
to Congress, junk bond investors will be able to pawn off their bad debt to Fannie and
Freddie. This shift will certainly doom Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so don't be surprised if
we, the taxpayers, have to bail out poor Fannie and Freddie - to the tune of more than $1
trillion. The irony here is that the collapse in housing prices could make Fannie insolvent even
without raising the loan limit. Increasing Fannie's limit is like going on a spending spree with your
credit cards because you know you are going to file for bankruptcy in a few months. Only here the
taxpayer is left holding the bag. Our children will pay interest on this debt in perpetuity. It is our
debt. It is inescapable. In the coming months, Fannie and Freddie will buy up mortgages based on
old, fraudulent appraisals and on loans with bogus inflated incomes. Unfortunately, many of these
loans will still default. Expansion of Fannie and Freddie's reckless lending is exactly what
Congress wants because it's plausibly deniable. Teary-eyed lawmakers can take to the airwaves a
year from now and declare: "We had no idea Fannie could go under, but we can't cut and run now.
Those same lawmakers won't mention the fact that they get paid far more by real estate lobbyists
than they do from our Treasury.
Note: The author wrote this article seven months before the collapse of Fannie Mae and eight
months before the huge banking bailout. For more news articles suggestion major manipulations to
transfer public tax monies to the banking sector, click here.
It's all Friedman's doing

2007-09-09, Toronto Star (Toronto's leading newspaper)
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/254550
[Naomi Klein in her new book The Shock Doctrine] argues persuasively that over the last 40 years,
no single thinker has shaped the economic and political policies of corporate CEOs, military
dictators, presidents, prime ministers and bankers more than [Milton] Friedman. His thesis was
simple: The job of governments is to facilitate the free flow of capital across national borders by
removing any impediments to trade [and establishing] a drastic regimen of market deregulation,
free trade treaties, spending cuts to social programs, the breaking of labour unions and mass
privatization of publicly owned resources and industries ... chiefly through the careful manipulation
of collective crises such as wars, military coups, natural disasters and economic recessions and
depressions. For Friedman's ideas to be implemented, a nation's existing economy and civic
society must first be reduced to a state of tabula rasa before being rebuilt according to the
[Chicago School] model. [Klein contends] that this capitalist doctrine also has its roots in a series
of mind-control experiments performed on often unwilling patients by psychiatrist Ewan Cameron,
working out of McGill University in the late 1950s. He imposed a sustained regimen of sensory
deprivation, isolation, enforced sleep and a cocktail of LSD, PCP, insulin and barbiturates [and] a
barrage of electroshock therapy. The CIA, which paid for Cameron's experiments, modified
these techniques for use in prisoner-interrogation sessions. The results were so good that
the CIA taught the methods to the Latin American security forces in charge of
reprogramming anyone who dared resist the devastating free market "reforms" that swept
through South and Central America after Augusto Pinochet's successful, Chicago-School inspired
(and CIA-sponsored) coup of populist leader Salvador Allende in 1973.
Special Note: For an incredibly revealing interview on the role of the Milton Friedman and the
Chicago school of economists in promoting radical change against democracy by using states of
public shock to push through unwanted changes, don't miss the powerful talk with Naomi Klein
available here.
Indebted
2007-03-18, Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20070317-113251-1533r.htm
The U.S. current-account deficit is the broadest measure of America's activity in international trade
and global finance. It totaled $857 billion last year, the Commerce Department reported last week.
For the fifth year in a row, the nation's current-account deficit set a record. As Federal Reserve
Chairman Ben Bernanke testified last year before Congress: "The immediate implication [of the
nation's soaring current-account deficit] is that the U.S. economy is consuming more than it's
producing, and the difference is being made up by imports from abroad, which in turn is being
financed by borrowing from abroad." Last year's current-account deficit meant that Americans
effectively borrowed $3.3 billion every single working day to fund the gap between their spending
and their income. The accumulation of ever larger current-account deficits over the past
quarter century has played an indispensable role in transforming the United States from the
world's largest creditor nation into the planet's biggest debtor nation. Specifically, in 1982,
America's net international investment position was a positive $236 billion. That meant that
foreigners owed us nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars more than we owed them. At the end of
2005 (the latest year for which data are available), the net international investment position of the
United States was a negative $2.55 trillion. In other words, we owed foreigners more than $2.5
trillion than they owed us. Since 1994 alone, America's net international investment position has
deteriorated by more than $2.4 trillion.
Note: The Washington Times was the only media source to report on this highly important story.
Why? For a possible answer, click here. For more underreported, yet massive government
corruption, click here.
To Fill His Shoes, Mr. Bernanke, Learn to Dance

In his 18 years as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Greenspan has occasionally drawn criticism,
but no one disputes his technical prowess or sniffs at his track record of low inflation and steady,
almost uninterrupted growth. Enter Ben S. Bernanke, President Bush's nominee to take
Greenspan's place. The former Princeton economics professor is currently the chairman of the
president's Council of Economic Advisers. The following are excerpts from [a speech] by Ben S.
Bernanke. "On Milton Friedman's Ninetieth Birthday," Nov. 8, 2002: "I first read 'A Monetary History
of the United States' early in my graduate school years at M.I.T. I was hooked, and I have been a
student of monetary economics and economic history ever since. Friedman and [his co-author
Anna J.] Schwartz made the case that the economic collapse of 1929-33 was the product of the
nation's monetary mechanism gone wrong. What I take from their work is the idea that monetary
forces, particularly if unleashed in a destabilizing direction, can be extremely powerful. "I would
like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it.
We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."
Note: The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board admits here that the Federal Reserve caused
the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve is owned by powerful private banks. It was created in
1913 largely in secrecy and fought by many who understood the dangers involved. For more
reliable information on this, click here.
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of
companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. Newly
discovered files in the US National Archives [confirm] that a firm of which Prescott Bush
was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business
dealings...continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the
Enemy Act. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it
inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year,
show that even after America had entered the war...he worked for and profited from companies
closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. Remarkably,
little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret
status of the documentation involving him. But now [a] multibillion dollar legal action for damages
by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books
on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue
for his grandson. Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily
available, thanks to the efficient US archive system. Like his son, George, and grandson, George
W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and
influential Skull and Bones student society.
Rothschild to leave gold market

2004-04-15, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3628971.stm
NM Rothschild, one of the City's oldest merchant banks, has decided that profit takes precedence
over history and is to withdraw from London's gold market. The move is part of Rothschild's plans
to halt all commodities trading out of London as it becomes less profitable. Last year, the business
generated just 2.2% of the bank's income, down from more than 8% five years earlier.
Rothschild's departure will leave a big gap, not least because it hosts the twice-daily gold
price fixing. Started in 1919, it is a prized and bizarre tradition. Every day at 1030 and 1500
local time, five representatives of investment banks meet in a small room at Rothschild's
London headquarters on St Swithin's Lane. They are charged by the London Gold Market to
agree a price for the bullion on offer. Each sits behind a desk and gets a phone and small Union
Jack. In the centre is the chairperson, who for the past 85 years has come from Rothschild. A price
is given and relayed via phone lines to customers. Then the haggling begins. When the price is
right and buyers are matched with sellers, the flags are lowered and the price is fixed. While the
whole process harks to a bygone age, the economics of the modern gold market are far less
quaint. Many producers are no longer hedging their exposure to both currency and commodity
price movements and that has taken a large chunk of business off the table. According to bank
chairman David de Rothschild, "our income from commodities trading in London has fallen as a
percentage of our total income in each of the past five years".
Note: For more on commodity price rigging, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.html
Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population,
that is more than $5,700 per person. This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting
economist in Washington. Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in
its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. The bill adds up to more than twice the cost of
the Vietnam War. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It has been getting $3 billion
a year for years. Israel has been given $240 billion since 1973, Stauffer reckons. In addition, the
US has given Egypt $117 billion and Jordan $22 billion in foreign aid in return for signing peace
treaties with Israel. Stauffer wonders if Americans are aware of the full bill for supporting Israel
since some costs, if not hidden, are little known. Other US help includes: Israel buys discounted,
serviceable "excess" US military equipment. Stauffer says these discounts amount to "several
billion dollars" over recent years. Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its $1.8 billion per year in
military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It
also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israelimade equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to
Israel. US help ... has enabled Israel to become a major weapons supplier. Weapons make up
almost half of Israel's manufactured exports. US defense contractors often resent the buy-Israel
requirements and the extra competition subsidized by US taxpayers. Stauffer [has] been assisted
in this research by a number of mostly retired military or diplomatic officials who do not go public
for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic.
Note: Israel has a population of 6.5 million. Yearly foreign aid to Israel has generally varied
between $2.5 to 3.0 billion for many years (it's difficult to locate these figures on U.S. government
websites). If you do the math, U.S. taxpayers are giving every man, woman, and child, in Israel
about $400/year -- over ten times the per capita rate paid to any other country. That's quite a tax
break, especially considering they are not Americans.
Coruscating criticism of the free market ideology of the IMF

2001-04-27, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1312942.stm
GREG PALAST: Protesters say that what we have here is a conspiracy - the World Bank, IMF and
World Trade Organisation don't help the poor of the world, they crush them. Well, the bosses are
here today, let's ask them. Joseph Stiglitz was chief economist of the World Bank - he should
know. He was in the meetings when the World Bank and IMF met to decide the fate of nations.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: They were making the countries worse off. They'll take a strong position on
petty larceny and petty theft, but on grand larceny, they'll look the other way. PALAST: The insider
says there's a "one-size-fits-all" plan. Every nation gets the same exact four-step
programme to the free market paradise. Step one - freedom for hot money. Step two freedom to increase prices. Step three - free trade for all. Step four, where it all begins,
freedom to privatise everything. Insiders saw how it worked in Russia. JOSEPH STIGLITZ:
That was the extreme case. You turned over these assets to these oligarchs at a time when the
government didn't have enough money to pay pensions to old people. It turned over billions of
dollars to a few oligarchs for a fraction of the value of those assets. When it comes to corruption in
Russia, they were willing to turn the other way. The IMF and the US Treasury actually almost
encouraged it.
Note: To watch the eight-minute video of this BBC clip, click here. For a powerful summary of John
Perkins book describing this process in detail, click here. Perkins say he was hired to use the big
international banks' money to corrupt dictators and enrich the coffers of the biggest multinational
corporations.
HSBC is 'cast-iron certain' to breach banking rules again, executive

admits
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/02/hsbc-cast-iron-certain-breach...
A senior HSBC executive has privately admitted that the bank is cast-iron certain to have
another major regulatory breach in the future. Global head of sanctions Lee Hale ... was
meeting with independent lawyers monitoring HSBC as part of a controversial 2012 deal
with the US Department of Justice, in which the bank avoided prosecution over sanctionsbusting and money-laundering in its Mexican branch in exchange for paying a $1.9bn fine and
receiving additional regulatory scrutiny for a period of five years. The deferred prosecution
agreement was signed by the then US attorney for the eastern district of New York, Loretta Lynch.
During a long exchange about HSBCs new policy on sanctions and internal breaches of company
rules, Hale told the regulator that given the size and scale of HSBC, in his view it is a cast-iron
certain[ty] this will happen, at some point in the future were going to have some big breach, some
regulatory breach. He added: I hope it doesnt happen, but it is likely. The recorded monitor
discussions also touched on problems in the banks US compliance team. Hale said: The internal
audit team have done a US review and its not great in terms of what theyve found. The findings,
according to Hale, prompted the bank to terminate the employment of one of the banks senior
compliance executives in New York, a former sanctions official at the US Treasury. In 2012, a US
Senate report noted that a high turnover of compliance staff at the banks US subsidiary had made
reforms difficult to implement.
Note: Read lots more on HSBC's sweetheart deal with U.S. officials in a Rolling Stone article by
Matt Taibbi. Is it even possible to root out corruption in a bank founded to service the international
drug trade? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles
about systemic corruption in government and the financial industry.
Swiss prosecutors are shocked by HSBC's tax scandal

2015-02-18, Fortune
http://fortune.com/2015/02/18/swiss-prosecutors-are-shocked-shocked-by-hsbcs-...
A scandal implicating HSBC in alleged tax evasion widened further Wednesday, as Swiss
prosecutors raided the Geneva headquarters of its private bank in Switzerland. The raid, in
connection with an investigation into aggravated money-laundering, marks the latest twist in a
saga that dates back 10 years. Materials leaked to the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists ... indicated that HSBC aggressively marketed schemes suitable
for tax evasion to rich clients across the world. The materials come from a stash of files
stolen from HSBC by Herv Falciani, a former employee and whistleblower. Falciani was
indicted in Switzerland in December for industrial espionage and for breaking the law on banking
secrecy. Falcianis files have already led to criminal investigations in France, Belgium and
Argentina. The Swiss authorities action Wednesday, however, is the first to suggest that they
regard tax evasion itself as a bigger crime than exposing it. [HSBC has also recently] been found
guilty of manipulating benchmark interest and foreign exchange rates, [and] desperately needs to
be able to prove that it has not aided or abetted tax evasion or money-laundering since December
2012. That was when it signed a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. after admitting to
helping Iran get round sanctions and laundering the profits of Mexican drug trafficking gangs. Any
evidence that it has broken that DPA could lead to it losing its all-important license to bank in the
U.S., destroying its status as a global bank overnight.
Note: Read lots more on HSBC's sweetheart deal with U.S. officials in a Rolling Stone article by
Matt Taibbi. US Senator Elizabeth Warren is working hard to bring justice in this case. For more
along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about systemic
corruption in government and the financial industry.
Betting on Default
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/03/opinion/betting-on-default.html?_r=0
Imagine a lender demanding that you miss a payment. That is the situation described in a recent
article in The Wall Street Journal. In 2013, GSO Capital Partners ... refused to renew a $122.3
million loan to the Spanish gambling company Codere unless it delayed paying interest on other
existing debt. Why? It turns out that GSO had placed a bet that Coderes existing debt would not
be paid on time. When, lo and behold, the payment was late, GSO collected on its bet. The bet in
this scenario was a credit default swap. Credit default swaps, a type of derivative, can be used to
hedge against losses on bonds that investors own, or to speculate on how the underlying
companies will perform. The Dodd-Frank financial reform law was supposed to curb
speculation in swaps. But ... hedge funds are increasingly using swaps to wager on
whether weak firms will live or die. RadioShack ... is one of several prominent examples. In
December, RadioShacks total debt came to about $1.4 billion, but swaps outstanding on the
performance of the debt totaled $23.5 billion. Similarly, J.C. Penney ... had total debt of some $8.7
billion, but swaps outstanding on the debt totaled $19.3 billion. Last month, Congress repealed an
anti-speculation provision of Dodd-Frank that would have prevented federally insured banks from
conducting several types of swap transactions. In addition, the Federal Reserve recently gave the
banks two extra years to meet [another important] Dodd-Frank provision. Sooner or later, poorly
regulated credit derivatives will again play a role in damaging the economy.
Note: Derivatives trading in the shadow banking system has produced a speculative bubble,
valued at nearly a quadrillion dollars, that has been described as a financial time bomb.
Fueled by Recession, U.S. Wealth Gap Is Widest in Decades, Study

Finds
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/business/economy/us-wealth-gap-widest-in-at...
A report released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center found that the wealth gap
between the countrys top 20 percent of earners and the rest of America had stretched to its
widest point in at least three decades. Last year, the median net worth of upper-income families
reached $639,400, nearly seven times as much of those in the middle, and nearly 70 times the
level of those at the bottom. There has been growing attention to the issue of income inequality.
But while income and wealth are related ... the wealth gap zeros in on a different aspect of
financial well-being: how much money and other assets you have accumulated over time. The
Great Recession destroyed a significant amount of middle-income and lower-income families
wealth, and the economic recovery has yet to be felt for them, the report concluded. The median
household net worth last year for those in the middle was $96,500, only slightly above the $94,300
mark it hit in 1983 (after being adjusted for inflation). A poor household actually had a higher
median net worth 30 years ago ($11,400 in 1983) than it counted last year ($9,300). Compare
those results with the top fifth of income earners. In 1983, when the Fed began collecting the data,
that group had a median wealth of $318,000; in 2013 it owned more than twice that.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income inequality
news articles from reliable major media sources.
Where's the outrage? Congress changes savings accounts and

retirement funds, and America sleeps
2014-12-16, The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/dec/16/budget-sets-stage-for-next-meltdown
Congress has passed, and President Obama has said he would sign, a budget bill that
allows banks to use your savings when they make giant financial bets called derivatives.
Again. And because those savings are insured by the federal government, you, the taxpayer,
would be on the hook if those bets go south. Again. This isnt arcane financial stuff we can ignore.
These are the exact financial mechanisms that led to the global crisis just six (short!) years
ago. The Dodd-Frank reform law that was passed in the wake of that crisis forbade this from ever
happening. People in the personal finance field love to talk about how if we could just get more
Americans to save, if we could just get more Americans to learn the basics of the stock market, if
we could just convince Americans to forego that latte at Starbucks, if we could just put Americans
on a budget, then things would be OK. But how is any of that supposed to work when banks can
use peoples savings to play the roulette wheel that is the stock market and then when they lose,
they just order another cup of coffee and use the federal budget to make sure that the losses fall
not on them but on the people who just tried to save a little money in the first place? This one is
only on workers if they say nothing and fail to educate themselves on what is being plundered from
their futures. The powers that be are counting on you not to pay attention, or to feel so impotent
that you just give up.
Note: Read how literally hundreds of trillions of dollars are being recklessly gambled by the banks
using our savings and retirement. For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of
deeply revealing articles about widespread corruption in government and banking and finance.
The Fed Needs Governors Who Arent Wall Street Insiders

http://online.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-and-joe-manchin-the-fed-needs...
The Federal Reserve's Board of Governors and the New York Fed have been responsible for
supervising Wall Street banks. After the 2008 crisis and the regulatory lapses it revealed,
Congress gave the Fed even more oversight authority. Two recent reports highlight that the
Fed isnt very good at supervising certain banks. In September, Carmen Segarra, a former
bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, released secret recordings she had
made of meetings at the New York Fed in 2012. The recordings revealed that New York Fed
employees had identified concerns with a proposed Goldman Sachs deal. The New York Fed
didnt attempt to make Goldman address these concerns. The recordings also showed Ms.
Segarras superiors pressuring her to soften her finding that Goldman did not comply with federal
regulations on conflicts of interest. An October report from the Feds Office of Inspector General
provided additional confirmation that the Fed is failing to oversee the big banks. The report found
that the New York Fed had failed to examine J.P. Morgan Chases Chief Investment Office despite
a recommendation to do so in 2009. The report concluded that the New York Fed needed to
improve its supervision of the biggest, most complex banks. Were all counting on the Fed to
monitor the big banks and stop them from taking on too much risk, but evidence is mounting that
this faith in the Fed is misplaced.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. For more along these lines, see these concise summaries
of deeply revealing articles about widespread corruption in government and banking and finance.
For additional information, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking Corruption
Information Center.
Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-accounts-on-suspicion...
For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only
restaurant. She deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away until last year,
when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking
account. She has not been charged with any crime. The money was seized solely because she
had deposited less than $10,000 at a time. Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers ... the
government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as
an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money
without ever filing a criminal complaint. Richard Weber, the chief of Criminal Investigation at the
I.R.S., said in a written statement ... that making deposits under $10,000 to evade reporting
requirements, called structuring, is ... a crime. The Institute for Justice, a Washington-based public
interest law firm ... analyzed structuring data from the I.R.S., which made 639 seizures in 2012,
up from 114 in 2005. Only one in five was prosecuted as a criminal structuring case. Law
enforcement agencies get to keep a share of whatever is forfeited. This incentive has led to
the creation of a law enforcement dragnet, with more than 100 multiagency task forces combing
through bank reports, looking for accounts to seize. There are often legitimate business reasons
for keeping deposits below $10,000, said Larry Salzman, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice. For
example, he said, a grocery store owner in Fraser, Mich., had an insurance policy that covered
only up to $10,000 cash.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news
articles.
Nigeria Launches Electronic ID Cards

2014-08-28, BBC News
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28970411
Nigeria's president has formally launched a national electronic identity card, which all
Nigerians will have to have by 2019 if they want to vote ... the first biometric card which can
also be used to make electronic payments. MasterCard is providing the prepaid payment element
and it hopes millions of Nigerians without bank accounts will now gain access to financial services.
An attempt to introduce national ID cards in Nigeria 10 years ago failed. Analysts blame corruption
for its failure. MasterCard said combining an identity card with a payment card for those aged 16
and over was a significant move. "It breaks down one of the most significant barriers to financial
inclusion - proof of identity," MasterCard's Daniel Monehin said in a statement. The new cards
show a person's photograph, name, age and unique ID number - and 10 fingerprints and an iris
are scanned during enrolment. These details are intended to ensure that there are no duplicates
on the system. During the pilot phase, which began registering names last October, 13 million
MasterCard-branded ID cards will be issued. There are enrolment centres in all 36 states and
there is no fee to get the card, though people will be charged in the event that it needs to be
replaced. The Nigerian Identity Management Commission (NIMC), which is behind the
rollout, is trying to integrate several government databases including those for driving
licences, voter registration, health insurance, taxes and pensions.
Note: This identification scheme is underwritten by a major financial services company, and
directly connects a citizen's political identity, financial identity, and biological identity to a
centralized electronic database. To understand some of the dangers of this, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing microchip implant news articles from reliable major media sources.
WikiLeaks publishes 'secret draft' of world trade agreement

2014-06-19, CBC News (Canada's Public Broadcasting Network)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/wikileaks-publishes-secret-draft-of-world-trade-...
WikiLeaks has published what it calls "the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement
(TISA) Financial Services Annex," apparently covering 50 countries and most of the world's trade
in services. "The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the
expansion of financial multinationals mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris
and Frankfurt into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers," the website says in a
statement. The draft deal is seen as a way to prevent more regulation of financial services,
despite calls for tighter regulatory measures that followed the 2007-08 world financial crisis. That
market meltdown set the world's biggest banks up against critics who said governments needed to
rein them in. The last round of TISA talks took place April 28 to May 2 in Geneva. WikiLeaks also
[stated] that the U.S. is "particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow" and that this would
include personal and financial data. During his teleconference, [Assange] urged U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder to end a four-year-long grand jury investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks.
"National security reporters are required by their profession to have intimate interactions in order to
assess and verify and investigate the nature of the material that they are dealing with," he said.
"So I call on Eric Holder today to immediately drop the ongoing national security investigation
against WikiLeaks or resign."
Note: Why is this important release getting so little news coverage? For more on this, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media
sources.
Why both sides of the political aisle are turning against Wall Street
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2014/0507/Why-both-sides-of-th...
More Americans than ever believe the economy is rigged in favor of Wall Street and big business
and their enablers in Washington. Were five years into a so-called recovery thats been a bonanza
for the rich but a bust for the middle class. The game is rigged and the American people know
that. They get it right down to their toes, says Senator Elizabeth Warren. Which is fueling a new
populism on both the left and the right. While still far apart, neo-populists on both sides are
bending toward one another and against the establishment. And its not only the rhetoric thats
converging. Populists on the right and left are also coming together around six principles: 1. Cut
the biggest Wall Street banks down to a size where theyre no longer too big to fail. 2. Resurrect
the Glass-Steagall Act, separating investment from commercial banking and thereby preventing
companies from gambling with their depositors money. 3. End corporate welfare including
subsidies to big oil, big agribusiness, big pharma, Wall Street, and the Ex-Im Bank. 5. Scale back
American interventions overseas. 6. Oppose trade agreements crafted by big corporations. Two
decades ago Democrats and Republicans enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Since then populists in both parties have mounted increasing opposition to such agreements. Left
and right-wing populists remain deeply divided over the role of government. Even so, the
major fault line in American politics seems to be shifting, from Democrat versus
Republican, to populist versus establishment those who think the game is rigged versus
those who do the rigging.
Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

2014-04-17, BBC News
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite. So concludes a recent study by Princeton
University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page. Multivariate
analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have
substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based
interest groups have little or no independent influence. In English: the wealthy few move policy,
while the average American has little power. The two professors came to this conclusion after
reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy
issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain
income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted. "A proposed
policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is
adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (fourout-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time." When a majority of citizens disagrees
with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover,
because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly
large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it. They
conclude: "We believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a
small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are
seriously threatened."
Note: For more on the antidemocratic impacts of income inequality, see the deeply revealing
One-Percent Jokes and Plutocrats in Drag: What I Saw When I Crashed

a Wall Street Secret Society
2014-02-17, New York Magazine
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-s...
Recently, our nations financial chieftains have been feeling a little unloved. Venture capitalists are
comparing the persecution of the rich to the plight of Jews at Kristallnacht, Wall Street titans are
saying that theyre sick of being beaten up, and this week, a billionaire investor, Wilbur Ross,
proclaimed that the 1 percent is being picked on for political reasons. Ross's statement seemed
particularly odd, because two years ago, I met Ross at an event that might single-handedly explain
why the rest of the country still hates financial tycoons the annual black-tie induction ceremony of
a secret Wall Street fraternity called Kappa Beta Phi. It was January 2012, and Ross, ... the leader
(or Grand Swipe) of the fraternity, was preparing to invite 21 new members neophytes, as
the group called them to join its exclusive ranks. Id heard whisperings about the existence of
Kappa Beta Phi. It was a secret fraternity, founded at the beginning of the Great Depression, that
functioned as a sort of one-percenters Friars Club. Each year, the groups dinner features comedy
skits, musical acts in drag, and off-color jokes, and its groups privacy mantra is What happens at
the St. Regis stays at the St. Regis. For eight decades, it worked. No outsider in living memory
had witnessed the entire proceedings firsthand. The first and most obvious conclusion was that
the upper ranks of finance are composed of people who have completely divorced
themselves from reality. No self-aware and socially conscious Wall Street executive would
have agreed to be part of a group whose tacit mission is to make light of the financial
sectors foibles. Not when those foibles had resulted in real harm to millions of people in the form
of foreclosures, wrecked 401(k)s, and a devastating unemployment crisis.
Note: This article is adapted from Kevin Rooses new book Young Money. For more on secret
societies, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-20...
The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays. The U.S. Justice Department granted a
total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism moneylaundering case ever. They issued a fine $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit but they didn't
extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying
abuses. For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash
hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in
tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years. The bank also ... aided countless common
tax cheats in hiding their cash. That nobody from the bank went to jail or paid a dollar in individual
fines is nothing new in this era of financial crisis. What is different about this settlement is that
the Justice Department, for the first time, admitted why it decided to go soft on this
particular kind of criminal. It was worried that anything more than a wrist slap for HSBC
might undermine the world economy. "Had the U.S. authorities decided to press criminal
charges," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer at a press conference to announce the
settlement, "HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the
institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been
destabilized."
Note: For more on the collusion of government with the biggest, most corrupt banks, see the
deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
New York regulator demands bank documents as investigation widens

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/05/new-york-regulator-banks-trad...
New York states top financial regulator has demanded documents from more than a dozen banks
including Barclays, Deutsche, Goldman Sachs and RBS as a probe widened into trading practices
in the $5.3tn-a-day global foreign exchange markets. Benjamin Lawsky, New York's financial
services superintendent, made the move following the banks decision to fire or suspend at least
20 traders following reports that employees at some firms had shared information about their
currency positions with counterparts at other companies. Lawskys move marks the latest
escalation in a global investigation by regulators into the manipulation of benchmark rates.
The currency probe comes as regulators are still investigating the manipulation of the Libor
lending rate by traders at some of the worlds biggest banks. The Wall Street Journal reported
that Goldman Sachs Steven Cho, formerly global head of spot and forward foreign exchange
trading for major currencies, was retiring from the bank. His departure came a day after Citigroup
announced that Anil Prasad, its global head of foreign exchange, was leaving the company. It is
not know if his retirement is in any way linked to any investigation. Prasads exit comes a month
after Rohan Ramchandani, formerly Citis head of European spot foreign exchange trading, was
fired. Ramchandani had been a member of the Bank of Englands foreign exchange joint standing
committee.
Vatican Monsignor Arrested for Money Laundering

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/italy-police-arrest-vatican-monsignor-...
A Vatican monsignor already on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million)
from Switzerland to Italy was arrested ... for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder
money. Financial police in the southern Italian city of Salerno said Monsignor Nunzio Scarano,
dubbed "Monsignor 500" for his purported favored banknotes, had transferred millions of
euros in fictitious donations from offshore companies through his accounts at the Vatican's
Institute for Religious Works. Acting on evidence provided by the Vatican bank, police said they
seized 6.5 million euros in real estate and assets in Italian bank accounts Tuesday, including
Scarano's luxurious Salerno apartment, filled with gilt-framed oil paintings, ceramic vases and
other fancy antiques. Police said in all, 52 people were under investigation. The money involved in
both the Swiss smuggling case and the Salerno money-laundering case originated with one of
Italy's most important shipping families, the d'Amicos. Financial police said more than 5 million
euros had been made available to Scarano by the D'Amicos via offshore companies. Scarano
allegedly withdrew 555,248 euros from his Vatican account in cash in 2009 and brought it into Italy.
Since he couldn't deposit it in an Italian bank without drawing suspicion, he selected 50 friends to
accept 10,000 euros apiece in cash in exchange for a check or wire transfer in that same amount.
Even After Volcker, Banks Aren't Safe Enough

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2160950,00.html
Despite the hoopla over the approval of the Volcker rule, which restricts banks from making certain
types of speculative investments, our financial system isn't much safer than it was before 2008. A
major reason for the continued complexity and risk in the financial system is lobbying power. The
Volcker rule as it stands now has been turned into Swiss cheese by bank lobbyists, who
represent the second biggest corporate special-interest bloc after the health care complex,
spending nearly half a billion dollars a year on lobbying, according to the nonprofit,
nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. So while the rule limits federally insured banks from
trading for its own sake, they are still allowed to hedge their portfolios, which opens up a lot of gray
territory for trading. Certainly having more lenders rather than fewer would help other kinds of
businesses, and having trading walled off from lending would encourage that. The fact that the
five largest U.S. financial holding companies control 55% of industry assets--compared
with 20% in 1990--keeps competition low and credit constrained. In the next two to five years,
there will likely be another crisis or trading loss of the kind that reignites the debate over closing
trading loopholes and creating a truly safer financial system. Right now, banks complain about
rules that would require them to hold a mere 5% of their assets in high-quality, low-risk capital
(known as Tier 1 capital), despite the fact that in any other industry, doing business with less than
50% of your own cash would be considered extreme.
Trans-Pacific Partnership: a guide to the most contentious issues

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/trans-pacific-partnership-a-guid...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement is being negotiated in Singapore this
week between Australia, New Zealand, the US, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Singapore, Brunei,
Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan. The countries have a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of
US$28,136bn on 2012 figures, which represents almost 40% of the worlds GDP. There have been
many contentious issues around the TPP: critics are particularly concerned about the secrecy
around the agreement given it has the capacity to change many local laws and regulations.
The majority of public criticism has centred on arguments relating to intellectual property
and the cost of medicines, though many have concerns about environmental issues
including climate change, investment, e-commerce and labour laws. The US has been rigid in
its demands for stronger intellectual property protection to champion the rights of its global giants
such as IT companies and its film and music industries. The US position on [the] investor-state
dispute settlement provision ... grants foreign companies the right to sue [a] government under
international law. All countries accepted there needed to be agreement on privacy obligations with
regard to information-sharing, apart from the US, which reserved its position on privacy. The US
position has left people wondering whether the TPP will undermine privacy, particularly in the wake
of the NSA revelations from the Snowden documents. There appear to be deep divisions on
environment and climate change, with the US and Australia opposing any extension of the text on
climate matters.
Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans' personal debt

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m...
A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans' personal debt over
the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit.
Rolling Jubilee, set up by Occupy's Strike Debt group following the street protests that swept the
world in 2011, launched on 15 November 2012. The group purchases personal debt cheaply from
banks before "abolishing" it, freeing individuals from their bills. By purchasing the debt at
knockdown prices the group has managed to free $14,734,569.87 of personal debt, mainly
medical debt, spending only $400,000. "We thought that the ratio would be about 20 to 1," said
Andrew Ross, a member of Strike Debt and professor of social and cultural analysis at New York
University. "In fact we've been able to buy debt a lot more cheaply than that." The Rolling Jubilee
project was mostly conceived as a "public education project", Ross said. "Our purpose in doing
this, aside from helping some people along the way there's certainly many, many people who are
very thankful that their debts are abolished our primary purpose was to spread information about
the workings of this secondary debt market." The group has ... acquired the $14.7m in three
separate purchases, most recently purchasing the value of $13.5m on medical debt owed by 2,693
people across 45 states and Puerto Rico, Rolling Jubilee said in a press release. No one should
have to go into debt or bankruptcy because they get sick, said Laura Hanna, an organiser
with the group. Hanna said 62% of all personal bankruptcies have medical debt as a
contributing factor.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click
here.
Andrew Huszar: Confessions of a Quantitative Easer

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303763804579183680751473884
I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for
executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment
known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main
Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall
Street bailout of all time. Where are we today? The Fed keeps buying roughly $85 billion in bonds
a month, chronically delaying so much as a minor QE taper. Over five years, its bond purchases
have come to more than $4 trillion. Amazingly, in a supposedly free-market nation, QE has
become the largest financial-markets intervention by any government in world history. And the
impact? Even by the Fed's sunniest calculations, aggressive QE over five years has generated
only a few percentage points of U.S. growth. By contrast, experts outside the Fed, such as
Mohammed El Erian at the Pimco investment firm, suggest that the Fed may have created
and spent over $4 trillion for a total return of as little as 0.25% of GDP (i.e., a mere $40
billion bump in U.S. economic output). Both of those estimates indicate that QE isn't really
working. Unless you're Wall Street. Having racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in opaque Fed
subsidies, U.S. banks have seen their collective stock price triple since March 2009. The biggest
ones have only become more of a cartel: 0.2% of them now control more than 70% of the U.S.
bank assets. As for the rest of America, good luck.
Rabobank Fined $1.1 Billion Over Libor, Euribor Manipulation

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-10-29/rabobank-fined-1-dot-1-billion-ov...
Rabobank Groep, the co-operative formed in 1898 to lend to Dutch farmers, was fined 774 million
euros ($1.1 billion) and the chairman resigned as the scandal over the rigging of benchmark
interest rates ensnared a fifth firm. The Utrecht, Netherlands-based lender entered into an
agreement with the Justice Department to accept responsibility for manipulation of Libor and
Euribor to avoid prosecution. The fines are the largest-ever against the bank and second-largest
over manipulation of the London interbank offered rate. Global investigations into banks attempts
to manipulate the benchmarks for profit have led to fines and settlements for Barclays, Royal Bank
of Scotland, UBS and ICAP. Rabobank derivatives and money-market traders influenced the
lenders submissions to benefit their positions linked to Libor and conspired with
employees of other banks to rig rates from May 2005 to January 2011. More than 500
attempts were made by Rabobank to manipulate Libor, according to the regulator. Thirty
current and former employees of the Dutch lender were involved, Rabobank executive board
member Sipko Schat said today. Five of them were fired, he said, while 14 are still working for the
bank. The lender is also clawing back 4.2 million euros in bonuses, Rabobank said in a statement.
The manipulation directly affected the rates referenced by financial products held by and on
behalf of companies and investors around the world, Valerie Parlave, Assistant Director in Charge
of the FBIs Washington field office, said in a statement.
Finally, a Guilty Verdict for Wall Street

2013-10-24, US News & World Report
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/pat-garofalo/2013/10/24/bank-of-america-t...
"The Hustle." That's the name of a program run by Countrywide, the slimy subprime lender
purchased by Bank of America in 2008. Under the program, Countrywide brokers were paid
bonuses to originate loans, firing them off to borrowers with less than stellar credit in an attempt to
gin up quick profits. The loans were then sold to government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac, where they often went sour. This sounds like a fairly typical tale from the
financial crisis: Most of the nation's largest banks have, in one way or another, been accused of
formulating sloppy loans and dumping them off on the taxpayer or of selling toxic mortgage
securities to unwitting customers. But there's a new twist to the old story: Yesterday, a jury found
Bank of America guilty of fraud, the first time that a major U.S. bank has been held responsible by
a U.S. court for actions tied to the financial crisis. The jury also held a former Countrywide
manager liable for fraud. That we're still wondering whether the banks will face any
consequences for their actions more than five years after the financial crisis began in
earnest is a pretty damning indictment of the Obama administration's approach to the
matter. Can lawmakers summon the will to actually take on Wall Street or are a few good
headlines from DOJ all we can hope for? The Dodd-Frank financial reform law was a good
opening effort and, despite its imperfections, will make some difference in reining Wall Street. But
there is still a lot that the law either left unaddressed or up to the interpretation of regulators who
are bombarded by missives from Wall Street lobbyists.
Note: For more on the collusion of big banks and banking regulators, see the deeply revealing
Public Banks Are Key

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/01/should-states-operate-public-...
Banking is heavily subsidized and is monopolized by Wall Street, which has effectively bought
Congress. Banks have been bailed out by the government, when [they] would have gone bankrupt.
The Federal Reserve blatantly manipulates interest rates in a way that serves Wall Street, lending
trillions at near-zero interest and pushing rates so artificially low that local governments have lost
billions in interest-rate swaps. State and municipal governments already have public lending
programs. They exist because private banks are not lending in some sectors that need financing.
Globally, public banks lend countercyclically, providing credit when and where other banks
wont. Germany and Taiwan, which have strong public banking sectors, are among the most
competitive banking markets in the world. In North Dakota, the only state with its own mini-Fed,
the state-owned Bank of North Dakota routes its public lending programs through community
banks. Its deposit base is almost entirely composed of the revenue of the state and state agencies.
The North Dakota Bankers Association endorses the Bank of North Dakota, which has a mandate
to support the local economy. North Dakota has more banks per capita than any other state,
because they have not been forced to sell to their Wall Street competitors. Public banking is
not a radical idea but has been practiced in the U.S. with excellent results for decades, and
around the world for centuries.
The Stench of the Potomac

2013-08-01, New York Magazine
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/this-town-washington-lobbyists-2013-8/
The tale of how the Obama economic team was recruited en masse from Robert Rubin acolytes
who either facilitated Wall Streets pre-crash recklessness while in the Clinton administration or
cashed in on it later (or, like Rubin, did both) never loses its power to shock. Michael Froman,
Rubins chief of staff as Clinton Treasury secretary, not only served as the Obama transition teams
personnel director but moonlighted as a Citigroup managing director while doing so. Obama
essentially entrusted the repairing of the china shop to the bulls whod helped ransack it, [Jeff]
Connaughton writes [in The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins]. [In This Town Mark] Leibovich
updates the story of the tacky prehistory of the Obama White House with its aftermaththe steady
parade of Obama alumni who traded change we can believe in for cash on the barrelhead as soon
as they left public service. The starry list includes, among many others, Peter Orszag (director of
the White Houses Office of Management and Budget, now at Citi), Jake Siewert (the Treasury
Department counselor turned chief flack for Goldman Sachs), and David Plouffe (the campaign
manager and senior presidential adviser who did consulting for Boeing and General Electric).
When I am president, Obama had said in 2008, I will start by closing the revolving door
in the White House thats allowed people to use their administration job as a stepping-stone
to further their lobbying careers. Puzzling over how so many colleagues have strayed from this
credo, the former press secretary Robert Gibbs has theorized that either somehow we have all
changed or, alternatively, maybe Washington changed us.
A Money-Smuggling Scandal Threatens to Sink the Vatican Bank

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-02/a-money-smuggling-scandal-thr...
A Vatican cleric, a spy, and a financier are accused of conspiring to smuggle 20 million ($26
million) out of Switzerland aboard a private jet. In fact, its the latest scandal to hit the Vatican
bank, prompting Pope Francis to make sweeping management changes. The Holy See removed
the banks longtime director and deputy director on July 1, three days after Monsignor Nunzio
Scarano and two other men were arrested in connection with the alleged smuggling scheme.
Perhaps the most colorful twist in the saga was the arrest on June 28 of Monsignor Scarano. The
61-year-old cleric, a former banker for Bank of America (BAC) in Italy, joined the priesthood in
1986 and most recently headed a Vatican financial department called APSA. Italian media outlets
have dubbed him Don 500, because of a reported fondness for carrying large banknotes. John
Thavis, a longtime Vatican correspondent for the Catholic News Service, says that while Scarano
didnt work at the Vatican Bank, he had accounts there. His arrest appeared to confirm
suspicions that the bank, which oversees about 7.1 billion in assets, continues to be
used as an offshore haven, Thavis writes. Scarano is accused of conspiring with a
member of Italys secret services and a financial broker to move 20 million from
Switzerland to Italy. The latest scandal indicates that the bank may be irreformable, Vatican
journalist Thavis writes.
Note: Could Pope Francis be serious in his efforts to reform the corrupt Vatican Bank? For more
on financial scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available
here.
Why this is the worst economic recovery on record

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2013/0415/Why-this-is-the-wors...
Were now witnessing what happens when all of the economic gains go to the top. Four years into
a so-called recovery and were still below recession levels in every important respect except the
stock market. A measly 88,000 jobs were created in March, and total employment remains some 3
million below its pre-recession level. Labor-force participation is its lowest since 1979. The
underlying problem is the vast middle class is running out of money. They cant borrow
more and shouldnt, given what happened after the last borrowing binge. Real annual
median household income keeps falling. Its down to $45,018, from $51,144 in 2010. All the
gains from the recovery continue to go to the top. Widening inequality is not inevitable. If we
wanted to reverse it and restore middle-class prosperity, we could. We could award tax cuts to
companies that link the pay of their hourly workers to profits and productivity, and that keep the
total pay of their top 5 executives within 20 times the pay of their median worker. And impose
higher taxes on companies that dont. We could raise the minimum wage to half the average wage.
We could increase public investment in education, including early-childhood. We could eliminate
college loans and allow all students to repay the cost of their higher education with a 10 percent
surcharge on the first 10 years of income from full-time employment. And we could pay for all this
by adding additional tax brackets at the top and increasing the top marginal tax rate to what it was
before 1981 at least 70 percent.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the collapse of the global
economy assisted by speculation and profiteering by financial corporations, click here.
The corporate predator state

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-the-corporate-pr...
Bipartisan agreement in Washington usually means citizens should hold on to their wallets or get
ready for another threat to peace. Beneath all the partisan bickering, bipartisan majorities are
solid for a trade policy run by and for multinationals, a health-care system serving
insurance and drug companies, an energy policy for Big Oil and King Coal, and finance
favoring banks that are too big to fail. Economist James Galbraith calls this the predator
state, one in which large corporate interests rig the rules to protect their subsidies, tax dodges
and monopolies. This isnt the free market; its a rigged market. Wall Street is a classic example.
The attorney general announces that some banks are too big to prosecute. Despite what the FBI
called an epidemic of fraud, not one head of a big bank has gone to jail or paid a major personal
fine. Bloomberg News estimated that the subsidy they are provided by being too big to fail adds up
to an estimated $83 billion a year. Corporate welfare is, of course, offensive to progressives. But
true conservatives are or should be offended by corporate welfare as well. Conservative
economists Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales argue that it is time to save capitalism from the
capitalists, urging conservatives to support strong measures to break up monopolies, cartels and
the predatory use of political power to distort competition. Here is where left and right meet, not in
a bipartisan big-money fix, but in an odd bedfellows campaign to clean out Washington. For that to
happen, small businesses and community banks will have to develop an independent voice in our
politics.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the collusion between the
US government and corrupt financial corporations, click here.
Hot Money Blues

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/opinion/krugman-hot-money-blues.html
Whatever the final outcome in the Cyprus crisis ... the island nation will have to maintain fairly
draconian controls on the movement of capital in and out of the country. It will mark the end of an
era for Cyprus, which has in effect spent the past decade advertising itself as a place where
wealthy individuals who want to avoid taxes and scrutiny can safely park their money, no questions
asked. But it may also mark at least the beginning of the end for something much bigger: the era
when unrestricted movement of capital was taken as a desirable norm around the world. [With] the
rise of free-market ideology, the assumption [is] that if financial markets want to move money
across borders, there must be a good reason, and bureaucrats shouldnt stand in their way. But
the truth, hard as it may be for ideologues to accept, is that unrestricted movement of
capital is looking more and more like a failed experiment. Its hard to imagine now, but for
more than three decades after World War II financial crises of the kind weve lately become
so familiar with hardly ever happened. Since 1980, however, the roster has been impressive:
Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile in 1982. Sweden and Finland in 1991. Mexico again in 1995.
Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Korea in 1998. Argentina again in 2002. And, of course, the
more recent run of disasters: Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Cyprus. The best
predictor of crisis is large inflows of foreign money: in all but a couple of the cases ... the
foundation for crisis was laid by a rush of foreign investors into a country, followed by a sudden
rush out.
Realities Behind Prosecuting Big Banks

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/big-banks-go-wrong-but-pay-a-little-pr...
Are banks too big to jail? If there was any doubt about the answer to that question, Eric H. Holder
Jr., the nations attorney general, last week blurted out what weve all known to be true but few
inside the Obama administration have said aloud: Yes, they are. I am concerned that the size of
some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them
when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute if we do bring a criminal charge it will
have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy, Mr. Holder
told the Senate Judiciary Committee. I think that is a function of the fact that some of these
institutions have become too large. Mr. Holder continued, acknowledging that the size of banks
has an inhibiting influence. To put this in the proper perspective, Mr. Holder said, for the first
time, that he has not pursued prosecutions of big banks out of fear that an indictment could
jeopardize the financial system. Does this mean that our banks are still too big to fail?
Should we prosecute corporations? Should the size of an institution or its systemic
importance influence the decision of prosecutors? It has been almost five years since the
financial crisis, but the big banks are still too big to fail, [Senator Elizabeth] Warren, a Democrat,
said in a statement. Attorney General Holders testimony that the biggest banks are too-big-to-jail
shows once again that it is past time to end too-big-to-fail.
government and finance, click here.
Its time to tax financial transactions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-its-time-to-tax-...
On Friday at midnight, the sequester kicked in, triggering $85 billion in deep, dumb budget cuts
that sent nonessential personnel such as air traffic controllers packing. Not to worry, though:
Wall Streets day was pretty much like any other. Billions of dollars in profits were made off of
trillions of dollars in financial transactions. And the vast majority of those transactions were
conducted tax-free. We dont need a team of policymakers to tell us this isnt good policy, or that it
needs changing. Policymakers propose exactly that: a change. Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), along with Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-Ore.), unveiled a bill that would
place a light tax on all financial transactions three pennies on every $100 traded. Its so small,
Wall Street could easily afford it and the average E-Trade investor would barely notice it. This
insignificant tax raises a significant amount of revenue $352 billion over the next 10 years, or
enough to refund about one-third of what the sequester will slash from the federal budget. The
high-frequency traders that now dominate our markets would be hardest-hit by the tax.
Analysts fear that such mass trading strategies could lead to disaster if markets behave
unexpectedly. The new tax would discourage these kinds of trades, which would be a good
thing. Europe, at least, seems to agree. Eleven nations, led by the conservative German
government, are on track to start collecting the tax by January 2014. Expected revenues: $50
billion per year.
here.
Senator Elizabeth Warren grills regulators, ending quiet first month in

office
http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2013/02/14/senator-elizabeth-warr...
After campaigning last year as an outspoken consumer advocate and Wall Street critic, Senator
Elizabeth Warren was surprisingly quiet during her first month on Capitol Hill. But that changed on
[Feb. 14] at the Massachusetts senior senators first hearing, when she rebuked federal regulators
for settling civil cases with big banks instead of taking them to trial. Looking at the seven regulators
arrayed before the Senate Banking Committee, and noting that she had often sat at the same
witness table before becoming a senator, she used her new power to question why the federal
government has not been more aggressive. The question I really want to ask is about how tough
you are about how much leverage you really have, Warren said. Tell me a little bit about the
last few times youve taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to trial.
None of the witnesses representing the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission and others offered a response. Warren seized the hearing to
chide regulators for not taking legal stands against Wall Street, saying that the threat of trial
is an important tool in keeping big banks in line, despite the vast resources required to do
so. If a party is unwilling to go to trial either because theyre too timid or they lack
resources the consequence is they have a lot less leverage, Warren said. If [banks] can
break the law and drag in billions in profits and then turn around and settle paying out of those
profits, they dont have that much incentive to follow the law.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the corrupt regulation of
financial activities, click here.
11 EU nations to plan tax on financial transactions

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-11-eu-tax-financial-trans...
Pressing ahead where others have balked, 11 European countries received the green light ... to
plan a financial transaction tax that could generate billions of dollars in revenue for cash-strapped
governments. Led by Germany and France, the European Unions two heavyweights, the nations
will now work out how to introduce a levy on the buying and selling of stocks and bonds and on the
use of complex financial instruments known as derivatives. Advocates say such a tax is not only
necessary to help discourage risky transactions like those that precipitated the 2008 global
financial meltdown but also a fair way to make financial institutions pay to help clean up the
leftover mess. The U.S., at the urging of Wall Street, has opposed a financial transaction
tax; so has Britain, which is home to Europes largest financial trading hub. Hesitation in
London as well as some other European capitals stalled a proposal, made in September 2011, to
charge a unified financial transaction tax across the 27-nation EU. The 11 countries, all of which
share the euro as their currency, decided to forge ahead on their own, deepening integration
among a subset of EU members that together account for more than half of the regions economic
output. EU-wide, officials had estimated that a levy of just 0.1% on trades of stocks and bonds and
0.01% on derivatives could bring in $75 billion a year.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the profiteering of an
unregulated financial industry, click here.
Peer-to-Peer Lending: No Longer Just a Curiosity

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-20/peer-to-peer-lending-no-longe...
Peer-to-peer lending most immediately brings to mind the largely feel-good act of extending smalltime money to small businesses and individuals with quirky projectsa curiosity at best and no
threat to the lending hegemony of big banks. Whats less appreciated is how successful peer-topeer lending platforms such as Prosper and Lending Club have been in connecting wholesale
numbers of individual lenders and borrowers. Renaud Laplanche is the founder and chief
executive officer of Lending Club, which has been at least doubling its loan originations
every year since it started in June 2007 at the onset of the financial crisis. He says he came
up with the idea when he realized he was paying 18 percent on his credit-card debt while
the issuing bank was paying out 2 percent to depositors. Lending Club mitigates riskits
default rate has remained in the low single digits throughout the financial crisisby serving prime
and superprime borrowers and turning down 90 percent of loan applications. Prosper, perhaps
Lending Clubs main rival, has similarly posted nice risk-adjusted returns across its loan portfolio.
Its management and board are studded with venture capitalists and Wall Street names. The value
proposition to borrowers, obviously, is access not just to capital that the banks arent willing to lend
them, but capital at a lower cost should they make the grade.
The four business gangs that run the US

2012-12-31, Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-four-business-gangs-that-run-the-us-201212...
If you've ever suspected politics is increasingly being run in the interests of big business, ... Jeffrey
Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University, agrees with you - at least in
respect of the United States. In his book, The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue
and Prosperity, he says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop. ''Corporate wealth
translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the
revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates
into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between
government and industry. Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,'' he says. Sachs
says four key sectors of US business exemplify this feedback loop and the takeover of political
power in America by the ''corporatocracy''. First is the well-known military-industrial complex.
Second is the Wall Street-Washington complex, which has steered the financial system towards
control by a few politically powerful Wall Street firms, notably Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase,
Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and a handful of other financial firms. Third is the Big Oil-transportmilitary complex, which has put the US on the trajectory of heavy oil-imports dependence and a
deepening military trap in the Middle East, he says. Fourth is the healthcare industry, America's
largest industry, absorbing no less than 17 per cent of US gross domestic product.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate and
government corruption, click here and here.
The Peoples Bailout Was Just the Beginning: Whats Next for Strike
Debt?
2012-12-13, Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/peoples-bailout-just-the-beginning-wha...
Syracuse University art professor Thomas Gokey earned his Master of Fine Arts degree five years
ago, but remains chained to his alma mater by $49,983 of debt. Soon after he graduated, the grim
prospect of indefinite payments inspired its own art piece. Gokey put his debt up for sale in
reconstituted squares of shredded money from the Federal Reserve. This year, together with the
activist group Strike Debt, he helped organize a bold "People's Bailout" called the Rolling Jubilee,
which has raised over $465,000. Bringing that money to the marketplace where collections
companies buy and sell debt for pennies on the dollar, Strike Debt intends to purchase about $9
million of Americans' medical and educational debtand then cancel it. Strike Debt, which grew
out of Occupy Wall Street, wants to foment conversation about the debt we rack up in pursuit of
basic needs, and the industries that profit from that debt. Gokey is currently on a year-long unpaid
leave from teaching to help organize the Rolling Jubilee and upcoming Strike Debt projects.
Thomas Gokey: Since I'm an educator, I'm thinking about the ways in which my students and I
seem to be getting taken advantage of. We look at how much it's costing each one of my
students to take one of my classes, and how much I'm getting paid to teach the class. And
we look at each other and think, why don't we just go hold our classes at the public library?
Somebody's obviously making money off both of us, so can't we cut out that middleman
and focus on education?
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on income inequality, click
here.
The Economics of Being a U.S. Ambassador

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-13/the-economics-of-being-a-u-do...
To land a high-profile ambassadorship, it helps to have raised a ton of money for a successful
presidential candidate and know how to throw a good party. Thats one reason why President
Obama is considering Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour as the next U.S. ambassador to the
Court of St. Jamess in the U.K. Wintour raised more than $500,000 for Obama and inspired the
Runway to Win fashion line that brought in upwards of $40 million for his campaign. But thats
just the price of admission. The funds embassies receive from the U.S. Department of State
dont begin to cover the high costs of the frequent parties and dinners ambassadors are
expected to host. Some wind up paying more than $1 million a year out of their own
pockets, according to one of the presidents top donors who requested anonymity. This is why the
high-profile postings to places like France and Italy typically go to wealthy donors, rather than
career diplomats. The current ambassador to the U.K., Louis Susman, a former Chicago
investment banker, holds three to four social events a week, says an embassy spokeswoman, who
declined to give a cost estimate for these soirees. In exchange, appointees get perksbeginning
with the sought-after title of ambassador. In some Western European countries, they live in
sprawling estates such as Londons Winfield House. Its 12-and-a-half acres of private gardens are
exceeded only by those of Buckingham Palace. The ambassador to Italy can avail himself of a
three-story, 5,000-bottle wine cellar at the Villa Taverna in Rome.
click here.
HSBC to Pay $1.92 Billion to Settle Charges of Money Laundering

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/hsbc-said-to-near-1-9-billion-settleme...
State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a money-laundering case
over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the worlds largest banks and
ultimately destabilize the global financial system. Instead, HSBC announced ... that it had
agreed to a record $1.92 billion settlement with authorities. The bank, which is based in Britain,
faces accusations that it transferred billions of dollars for nations like Iran and enabled Mexican
drug cartels to move money illegally through its American subsidiaries. The case, officials say, will
claim violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and Trading with the Enemy Act. While the settlement
with HSBC is a major victory for the government, the case raises questions about whether certain
financial institutions, having grown so large and interconnected, are too big to indict. Four years
after the failure of Lehman Brothers nearly toppled the financial system, regulators are still wary
that a single institution could undermine the recovery of the industry and the economy. But the
threat of criminal prosecution acts as a powerful deterrent. If authorities signal such actions are
remote for big banks, the threat could lose its sting.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government collusion
with financial corruption, click here.
Report: Probe into Afghan bank scandal plagued by political

interference
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/report-afghan-probe-into-ban...
A scathing new report released [on November 28] details how high-level political interference and
institutional failures thwarted efforts to probe the 2010 collapse of Afghanistans largest bank,
recover hundreds of millions of dollars from fraudulent loans and prosecute the influential Afghans
who profited from a massive scheme to use depositors money as a private piggy bank. Without
naming names, an independent anti-corruption committee of Afghan and international experts
painted a damning portrait of foot-dragging, incompetence and blatant political manipulation
involving virtually every agency that was supposed to either investigate why the Kabul Bank failed
or take legal action against those responsible for looting it of more than $900 million. Kabul Bank
was nothing but a fraud perpetrated against depositors, and ultimately all Afghans, the
report says. Both the flagrant crimes and the repeated failures to pursue them, it said,
reflect an array of larger, worrisome problems that permeate Afghan society and
institutions, including incapacity, nepotism, entitlement and political interference. Over
and over, the report says, supposedly independent bodies such as the attorney generals office
deferred to higher political wishes. Earlier this year, about 20 bank associates were indicted on
charges including money laundering and using false documents or fictitious account names. The
report quotes sources as saying that a high-level committee, meaning a group of powerful
officials, decided which former bank associates would be charged with a crime and that
prosecutors were told to construct indictments to conform to the decisions.
here.
SEC Rocked By Lurid Sex-and-Corruption Lawsuit

2012-11-19, Rolling Stone blog
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/sec-rocked-by-lurid-sex-a...
Move over, adulterous generals. It might be time to make way for a new sexual rats' nest at
America's top financial police agency, the SEC. In a salacious 77-page complaint ... David Weber,
the former chief investigator for the SEC Inspector General's office, accuses the SEC of retaliating
against Weber for coming forward as a whistleblower. According to this lawsuit, Weber was made
a target of [retaliation] after he came forward with concerns that his bosses may have been
spending more time copulating than they were investigating the SEC. Weber claims that in recent
years, while the SEC Inspector General's office has been attempting to investigate the agency's
seemingly-negligent responses in such matters as the Bernie Madoff case and the less-well-known
(but nearly as disturbing) Stanford Financial Ponzi scandal, two of the IG office's senior officials
former Inspector General David Kotz and his successor, Noelle Maloney were sleeping
together. Weber also claims that Kotz was also having an affair with a lawyer representing a
key group of Stanford victims, a Dr. Gaytri Kachroo. Weber claims that Maloney last year
refused to meet with Kachroo as part of the Stanford investigation. By then, Kotz had stepped
down as SEC IG and Maloney had replaced him as Acting IG. Weber was fired on October 31st.
Apparently he has decided not to take the firing quietly. "When David Weber began to uncover the
depth of dysfunction at the SEC, they fired him," his attorney Cary Hansel said. "He has no
intention of being silenced by threats and false allegations."
Note: We don't normally use Rolling Stone as a source, but this important story has not been
covered elsewhere in the major media.
An Excerpt: 'Plutocrats'
2012-10-15, NPR
http://www.npr.org/books/titles/162800856/plutocrats-the-rise-of-the-new-glob...
Branko Milanovic is an economist at the World Bank. He first became interested in income
inequality studying for his PhD in the 1980s in his native Yugoslavia, where he discovered it was
officially viewed as a "sensitive" subject which meant one the ruling regime didn't want its
scholars to look at too closely. But when Milanovic moved to Washington, he discovered a curious
thing. Americans were happy to celebrate their super-rich and, at least sometimes, worry about
their poor. But putting those two conversations together and talking about economic inequality was
pretty much taboo. "I was once told by the head of a prestigious think tank in Washington,
D.C., that the think tank's board was very unlikely to fund any work that had income or
wealth inequality in its title," Milanovic ... explained in a recent book. "Yes, they would
finance anything to do with poverty alleviation, but inequality was an altogether different
matter." "Why?" he asked. "Because 'my' concern with the poverty of some people actually
projects me in a very nice, warm glow: I am ready to use my money to help them. Charity is a good
thing; a lot of egos are boosted by it and many ethical points earned even when only tiny amounts
are given to the poor. But inequality is different: Every mention of it raises in fact the issue of the
appropriateness or legitimacy of my income." When the discussion shifts from celebratory to
analytical, the super-elite get nervous.
Note: Excerpted from Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone
Else by Chrystia Freeland. For revealing major media articles showing the stark gap between the
uber-rich and the rest of us, click here.
Washington's Wall Street Sugar Daddies

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/washingtons-wall-street-sugar-daddies
How much is democracy worth to you? If youre like most people, its priceless. But for the hedge
funds and insurance companies on Wall Street, it does have a price tag: approximately $4.2 billion.
Thats how much the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (F.I.R.E.) sector has invested in political
influence through campaign contributions and lobbying since 2006. That comes to $1,331 a minute
spent on political power. The new report is called Meet the F.I.R.E. Sector: How Wall Street Is
Burning Democracy. It was developed by Elect Democracy, a nonpartisan effort ... to expose and
challenge the impact of corporate money in U.S. politics. The report ... analyzes exactly how
Wall Street has secured ... industry-loyal voting practices in Congress: by shoveling
stacks of campaign cash in the direction of Congressional hopefuls from both major
political parties. That money lets these industries get what they want in Washington. The
F.I.R.E. sector contributed $879 million to members of Congress since 2006, and took
positions on 383 bills during the 112th Congress. For instance, they supported Free Trade
Agreements with Korea, Panama, and Colombia in 2007, and backed the bailout in 2008. Bills they
opposed include the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, the
Limited Homeowner and Investor Loss in Foreclosure Act of 2010, and the Stop Student Loan
Interest Rate Hike Act of 2011. At every turn, the F.I.R.E. sector demands special treatment for
Wall Street while consumers, homeowners, and students get stuck with the bills.
Note: Though not a major media source, Yes! Magazine is one of the very few media working
towards positive, sustainable solutions to the problems of our world. For deeply revealing reports
from reliable major media sources on the corrupt relationship between government and the
financial sector, click here.
Wall Street sleaze keeps growing

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Wall-Street-sleaze-keeps-growing-...
Just when you thought Wall Street couldn't sink any lower - when its excesses are still causing
hardship to millions of Americans and its myriad abuses of public trust have already spread a
miasma of cynicism over the entire economic system - an even deeper level of public-be-damned
greed and corruption is revealed. Libor is the benchmark for trillions of dollars of loans worldwide mortgage loans, small-business loans, personal loans. It's compiled by averaging the rates at
which the major banks say they borrow. So far, the scandal has been limited to Barclays, a big,
London bank that just paid $453 million to U.S. and British bank regulators, whose top executives
have been forced to resign, and whose traders' e-mails give a chilling picture of how easily they
got their colleagues to rig interest rates in order to make big bucks. But Wall Street has almost
surely been involved in the same practice, including the usual suspects - JPMorgan Chase,
Citigroup and Bank of America - because every major bank participates in setting the Libor
rate, and Barclays couldn't have rigged it without their witting involvement. In fact, Barclays'
defense has been that every major bank was fixing Libor in the same way, and for the same
reason. And Barclays is "cooperating" (i.e., providing damning evidence about other big banks)
with the Justice Department and other regulators in order to avoid steeper penalties or criminal
prosecutions, so the fireworks have just begun.
Note: The author of this article, Robert Reich, is former U.S. secretary of labor, professor of public
policy at UC Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. He
blogs at www.robertreich.org.
Wells Fargo to pay $175 million to settle lending bias allegations

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-wells-bias-settlement-201207...
Wells Fargo & Co.'s settlement of allegations that it overcharged minorities for home loans
and wrongly steered them into subprime mortgages requires the bank to pay $125 million in
damages, including about $10 million to African Americans and Latinos in the Los Angeles
area. The settlement ... also requires the San Francisco company, by far the nation's largest home
lender, to provide $50 million in down-payment assistance to residents of areas where the alleged
discrimination had a significant effect. The $175-million total is the second-largest fair-lending
settlement by the civil rights arm of the Justice Department. The largest, reached in December,
requires Bank of America Corp. to pay $335 million to settle claims against Countrywide Financial
Corp., the aggressive Calabasas lender it acquired in 2008. Another former Wells Fargo unit the
now-defunct subprime storefront lender Wells Fargo Financial Inc. was the target of a separate
investigation by the Federal Reserve. Wells Fargo agreed last year to pay $85 million to settle
allegations that Wells Fargo Financial employees improperly pushed borrowers into more
expensive subprime loans and exaggerated income information on mortgage applications. The
agreement covers lending from 2004 through 2009 in the wholesale section of Wells Fargo Home
Mortgage, which made loans of all kinds, including prime and subprime mortgages, through
independent brokers.
JPMorgans black eye nears $6B as bank says traders may have tried to
conceal losses
2012-07-12, Washington Post/Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/jpmorgan-ceo-will-try-to-provide-clari...
JPMorgan Chase said Friday that its traders may have tried to conceal the losses from a soured
bet that has embarrassed the bank and cost it almost $6 billion far more than its CEO first
suggested. The bank said an internal investigation had uncovered evidence that led executives to
question the integrity of the values, or marks, that traders assigned to their trades. JPMorgan
also said that it planned to revoke two years worth of pay from some of the senior managers
involved in the bad bet, and that it had closed the division of the bank responsible for the mistake.
This has shaken our company to the core, CEO Jamie Dimon said. The bank said the loss,
which Dimon estimated at $2 billion when he disclosed it in May, had grown to $5.8 billion.
The investigation, which covered more than a million emails and tens of thousands of voice
messages, suggested traders were trying to make losses look smaller, the bank said. The
revelation could expose JPMorgan to civil fraud charges. If regulators decide that employee
deceptions caused JPMorgan to report inaccurate financial details, they could pursue charges
against the employees, the bank or both. JPMorgan could not necessarily hide behind the actions
of its employees. Regulators could decide that its oversight or risk management contributed to the
problematic statements.
Note: Yet will anyone go to jail for these shady activities? For key investigative reports on the
criminality and corruption in the financial industry and biggest banks, click here.
Lawmakers got loan deals from Countrywide

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48081344/ns/business-stocks_and_economy#.T_h445H4KNU
The former Countrywide Financial Corp., whose subprime loans helped start the nation's
foreclosure crisis, made hundreds of discount loans to buy influence with members of
Congress, congressional staff, top government officials and executives of troubled
mortgage giant Fannie Mae, according to a House report. The report ... said the discounts
from January 1996 to June 2008 were not only aimed at gaining influence for the company but
to help mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Countrywide's business depended largely on Fannie, which ...
was responsible for purchasing a large volume of Countrywide's subprime mortgages. "Documents
and testimony obtained by the committee show the VIP loan program was a tool used by
Countrywide to build goodwill with lawmakers and other individuals positioned to benefit the
company," the report said. "In the years that led up to the 2007 housing market decline,
Countrywide VIPs were positioned to affect dozens of pieces of legislation that would have
reformed Fannie" and its rival Freddie Mac, the committee said. The Justice Department has not
prosecuted any Countrywide official, but the House committee's report said documents and
testimony show that Mozilo and company lobbyists "may have skirted the federal bribery statute by
keeping conversations about discounts and other forms of preferential treatment internal. Rather
than making quid pro quo arrangements with lawmakers and staff, Countrywide used the VIP loan
program to cast a wide net of influence."
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable reports on the criminality and corruption within the financial
and banking industries, click here.
The Bank of England told us to do it, claims Barclays

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9374289/The-B...
The Deputy Governor of the Bank of England encouraged Barclays to try to lower interest rates
after coming under pressure from senior members of the last Labour government, documents have
disclosed. A memo published by Barclays suggested that Paul Tucker gave a hint to Bob
Diamond, the banks chief executive, in 2008 that the rate it was claiming to be paying to borrow
money from other banks could be lowered. His suggestion followed questions from senior figures
within Whitehall about why Barclays was having to pay so much interest on its borrowings, the
memo states. Barclays and other banks have been accused of artificially manipulating the Libor
rate, which is used to set the borrowing costs for millions of consumers, businesses and investors,
by falsely stating how much they were paying to borrow money. The bank claimed yesterday that
one of its most senior executives cut the Libor rate only at the height of the credit crisis after
intervention from the Bank of England. The memo, written on Oct 29, 2008, by Mr Diamond and
circulated to two other senior bank officials, said: Mr Tucker reiterated that he had
received calls from a number of senior figures within Whitehall to question why Barclays
was always toward the top end of the Libor pricing. Government sources suggested that
Baroness Vadera, one of Gordon Browns closest colleagues, was responsible for the contact with
the Bank of England.
Wall Street banks angling for Dodd-Frank loophole

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Wall-Street-banks-angling-for-Dod...
Wall Street has already watered down or delayed most of Dodd-Frank [financial reform act].
Now it wants to create a giant loophole, exempting its foreign branches from the law. Yet
the overseas branches of Wall Street banks are where the banks have done some of their
wilder betting. Four years ago, bad bets by American International Group's London office nearly
unraveled the U.S. financial system. When the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the main
regulator of derivatives (bets on bets), recently proposed extending Dodd-Frank to the foreign
branches of Wall Street banks, the banks screamed. "If JPMorgan overseas operates under
different rules than our foreign competitors," warned Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of
JPMorgan, Wall Street will lose financial business to the banks of nations with fewer regulations,
allowing "Deutsche Bank to make the better deal." This is the same Jamie Dimon who chose
London as the place to make highly risky derivatives trades that have lost the firm upward of $2
billion so far - and could leave American taxpayers holding the bag if JPMorgan's exposure to
tottering European banks gets much worse. JPMorgan's risky betting in London is added proof that
unless the overseas operations of Wall Street banks are covered by U.S. regulations, giant banks
will hide irresponsible bets overseas. Squadrons of Wall Street lawyers and lobbyists have been
pressing all the agencies charged with implementing Dodd-Frank to go easy on the Street.
Note: The author of this article, Robert Reich, is former U.S. secretary of labor, professor of public
policy at UC Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. He
blogs at www.robertreich.org.
Big banks craft "living wills" in case they fail

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-27/business/sns-rt-us-banks-bailou...
Five of the biggest banks in the United States are putting finishing touches on plans for
going out of business as part of government-mandated contingency planning that could
push them to untangle their complex operations. The plans, known as living wills, are due to
regulators no later than July 1 under provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law designed to
end too-big-to-fail bailouts by the government. The living wills could be as long as 4,000 pages.
Since the law allows regulators to go so far as to order a bank to divest subsidiaries if it cannot
plan an orderly resolution in bankruptcy, the deadline is pushing even healthy institutions to start a
multi-year process to untangle their complex global operations, according to industry consultants.
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are among
those submitting the first liquidation scenarios to regulators at the Federal Reserve and the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The liquidation plans are coming amid renewed questions about
the safety of big banks following JPMorgan's stunning announcement last month that a trading
debacle has cost it more than $2 billion.
Note: For other key major media articles showing blatant financial corruption, click here. For more
vitally important information on banking manipulations, explore the excellent, reliable information in
our Banking Corruption Information Center available here.
What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

2012-06-20, CBC News (Canada's public broadcasting system)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/06/20/f-trans-pacific-partnership-exp...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may soon be an acronym as recognizable as NAFTA but
this free trade venture could have much more economic strength and impact than its North
American predecessor. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a free trade deal aimed at further
expanding the flow of goods, services and capital across borders. Its four founding members
New Zealand, Chile, Singapore and Brunei soon caught the attention of five other nations: the
United States, Australia, Peru, Vietnam and Malaysia, who joined in 2008. The nine partners
currently have a combined GDP of more than $17 trillion. Canada and Mexico are now being
considered for membership, subject to the approval of the nine countries already involved. Add to
this the possibility that Japan could join the TPP, despite mounting protests in that country, and the
economic and political traction of the group increases. In fact, the TPP could become the world's
largest free-trade zone. "It's really a trade agreement for the one per cent and their corporate
interests," said Maude Barlow, the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, which
opposed and continues to criticize NAFTA. "This is not going to be a good deal for Canadians."
Note: A later Toronto Star article reveals that the agreements of the TPP are secret.
Why the U.S. Senate Sucks Up to Public Enemy Jamie Dimon

2012-06-20, Alternet
http://www.alternet.org/news/155962/why_the_u.s._senate_sucks_up_to_public_en...
When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank, appeared before the Senate Banking
Committee on June 13, he was wearing cufflinks bearing the presidential seal. Was Dimon trying
to send any particular message by wearing the presidential cufflinks? asked CNBC editor John
Carney. Was he . . . subtly hinting that hes really the guy in charge? The groveling of the
Senators was so obvious that Jon Stewart did a spoof news clip on it. JPMorgan Chase is the
biggest campaign donor to many of the members of the Banking Committee. Financial
analysts Jim Willie and Rob Kirby think it may be something far larger, deeper, and more ominous.
They contend that the $3 billion-plus losses in London hedging transactions that were the
subject of the hearing can be traced, not to European sovereign debt (as alleged), but to the
record-low interest rates maintained on U.S. government bonds. The national debt is growing
at $1.5 trillion per year. Ultra-low interest rates must be maintained to prevent the debt from
overwhelming the government budget. Near-zero rates also need to be maintained because even
a moderate rise would cause multi-trillion dollar derivative losses for the banks, and would remove
the banks chief income stream, the arbitrage afforded by borrowing at 0% and investing at higher
rates. The low rates are maintained by interest rate swaps, called by Willie a derivative tool which
controls the bond market in a devious artificial manner.
Note: We don't usually use alternet.org as a reliable source, but because the major media failed to
ask the hard, very important questions posed in this article, we've included it here. For powerful
reports on financial corruption, click here.
The Jamie Dimon Cufflinks Mystery

2012-06-14, CNBC
There's been a lot of speculation about the cufflinks [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon
wore during [his Congressional] testimony. They caught the eye of folks because they
seemed to bear some sort of official government stamp. As it turns out, they were
emblazoned with the seal of the President of the United States. CNN's Lizzie O'Leary first
confirmed the story last night over Twitter. They were, in fact, a gift from a resident of the White
House. But people close to the JPMorgan Chase CEO won't say which president gave them to
him. Dimon's got a bunch of official U.S. government cufflinks. Search for images of him and you'll
see FBI cufflinks, for example. Was Dimon trying to send any particular message by wearing the
presidential cufflinks? Was he, for instance, trying to remind the Democrats he supported Obama?
Or subtly hinting that he's really the guy in charge?
Note: For powerful reports on financial corruption, click here.
Family net worth plummets nearly 40%

2012-06-11, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/11/news/economy/fed-family-net-worth/
The average American family's net worth dropped almost 40% between 2007 and 2010,
according to a triennial study released [on June 11] by the Federal Reserve. The stunning
drop in median net worth -- from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010 -- indicates that the
recession wiped away 18 years of savings and investment by families. The results ... highlight
the marked deterioration in household finances brought on by the financial crisis and ensuing
recession. Much of the drop off in net worth -- to levels not seen since 1992 -- was attributable to a
sharp decline in housing values, the Fed said. In 2007, the median homeowner had a net worth of
$246,000. Three years later that number had fallen to $174,500, a loss of more than $70,000 on
average. Making matters worse, income levels also fell during the tumultuous three-year period,
with median pre-tax income falling 7.7% as earnings from capital gains all but disappeared. The
loss of income and net worth appears to have impacted savings rates, as the number of
Americans who said they saved in the prior year fell from 56.4% in 2007 to 52.0% in 2010 -- the
lowest level recorded since the early 1990s. Families in the top 10% of income actually saw their
net worth increase over the period, rising from a median of $1.17 million in 2007 to $1.19 million in
2010. Middle-class families who ranked in the 40th to 60th percentile of income earners reported
that their median net worth fell from $92,300 to $65,900 over the same time period.
Note: What this article fails to emphasize sufficiently is that while most people have lost vast
amounts of wealth, the wealthiest 1% has grown incredibly richer even through the recession. Is
something wrong here? For key reports from reliable sources on wealth inequality, click here.
JPMorgan's top-down role in risky investments

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/19/BUD41OJUG3.DTL
Congress gets into the JPMorgan Chase affair Tuesday with the first in a series of hearings into
how a federally insured bank incurred [huge] losses on the kind of risky bets some, mistakenly,
thought were a thing of the past. The losses, as suspected, look to be far higher than the $2 billion
initially estimated. As of Friday, the number was $5 billion. What did CEO Jamie Dimon know, and
when did he know it? "Dimon personally approved the concept behind the disastrous trades,"
according to the Wall Street Journal. Reportedly, similar trades, involving credit derivatives, date to
2006, ramping up with ever bigger bets as risk controls were eased in 2011.On the one hand,
JPMorgan and other U.S. corporations are banking record profits and ever-growing piles of
cash - $2 trillion at last count. On the other, U.S. unemployment remains unacceptably high,
people are still losing their homes, small businesses are screaming for credit, local
governments are cutting services left and right, and the nation's infrastructure is
crumbling. Tons of money [are] sloshing around, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, but banks and
corporations ... are hoarding it.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corruption and criminality in the finance industry, click
here.
JPMorgan losses look familiar to Phil Angelides

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/14/BUOO1OHO2G.DTL
What strikes Phil Angelides the most about the $2 billion (and counting) loss sustained by
JPMorgan Chase on a big trade gone bad, is how little has changed since the financial
crash of 2008. "The big banks continue to be casinos," said the chairman of the
government-appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which laid out how such trades,
referred to in some quarters as "bets," contributed to the crash that the country is still struggling to
pull itself out of. "It has to be stopped," he said. Trouble is - as Angelides, the former California
state treasurer, and others point out - no one is stopping them. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's CEO,
dismissed initial concerns about the trades last month as a "complete tempest in a teapot." His
main concern, he told analysts, was how the affair "plays right into the hands of a bunch of pundits
out there." Dimon was referring to those who have been pushing for regulations to prevent
federally insured banks like JPMorgan from indulging in such trades in the first place. "They've
been fighting a ferocious rear-guard, no-holds-barred action," said Angelides, referring to the army
of lobbyists hired and millions of dollars spent to beat back the regulations. The Securities and
Exchange Commission is investigating the trades, which involved the use of complex financial
instruments called credit default swaps as a hedge against the value of U.S. bonds.
Note: For a most excellent two-minute video of former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich
presenting five of the most urgent problems with the economy and an easy solution all in two
minutes, click here. For an enlightening five-minute TED talks video further showing how the rich
getting richer while they pay increasingly less taxes is at the root of most economic woes, click
here. For a treasure trove of revealing reports from reliable sources on the criminality and
corruption of major financial corporations and their "regulators" in government, click here.
Before Loss, JPMorgan Was One of Volcker Rule's Fiercest Foes

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/before-big-loss-jpmorgan-was-one-of-vo...
The $2 billion trading loss that JPMorgan Chase disclosed late on Thursday provided ample
ammunition for supporters of the Volcker Rule, which would restrict government-backed banks'
ability to conduct proprietary trading. But it also prompted a fair amount of finger-wagging toward
the company, given JPMorgan's stance as one of the rule's fiercest opponents. JPMorgan has
been among the most outspoken detractors of the proposed financial regulation that is
making its way through Washington. The firm has laid bare its feelings about the Volcker Rule
several times, including in a Feb. 13 comment letter to the Federal Reserve. In that document,
JPMorgan argued that the proposal would restrict its efforts to rein in risk-taking and would harm
the firm's ability to compete against foreign rivals that did not face the same restrictions. In the
letter, JPMorgan specifically mentions its chief investment office, the trading group which caused
the $2 billion trading loss. JPMorgan also happens to run one of the most active and bestfinanced lobbying operations within the commercial banking industry. In the first four months
of 2012, the firm has spent $1.92 million, barely trailing Wells Fargo in terms of banks' lobbying
expenses. Last year, JPMorgan spent $7.62 million; two years ago, it spent $7.41 million, the most
in its industry. And JPMorgan's chief, Jamie Dimon has been among the most frequent visitors to
Washington to press his case.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the corruption of major financial corporations,
click here.
Rothschilds to merge British and French banking operations to secure
control
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9189053/Roths...
The Rothschild dynasty is to merge its British and French banking operations to secure long-term
control of the business and to boost the firm's financial strength ahead of the introduction of
tougher capital requirements for banks. The 200-year-old banks will be reunited under a single
shareholding that will bring together the fortunes of the French and English sides of the
renowned family as they attempt to safeguard the business against the effects of new
regulation and the fallout from the global financial crisis. Paris Orleans, the Rothschild
Group's Paris-based holding company, will convert into a French limited partnership, securing the
families' control of the bank against potential takeovers. The new partnership will then buy out
minority investors in NM Rothschild & Sons, the UK business, as well as outstanding minority
interests in the French operations. Paris Orleans has a market value of more than 500m (415m)
and is about 30pc owned by outside investors. The Rothschild Group employs 3,000 people in 42
countries and is one of the world's leading independent investment banks, advising some of the
largest international companies on capital raisings and mergers and acquisitions. The bank also
remains a player in the private equity industry and operates several merchant banking operations
that invest directly in business across Europe and the rest of the world.
Note: Why is that these two hugely wealthy families get so little press coverage? Could it be that
their wealth and influence exerts control over the major media? For more on secret societies which
command huge hidden power, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources
available here.
U.S. adds Vatican to money-laundering concern list

2012-03-08, Toronto Sun
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/08/us-adds-vatican-to-money-laundering-conc...
The Vatican has for the first time appeared on the U.S. State Departments list of moneylaundering centres. It was added to the list because it was considered vulnerable to moneylaundering. To be considered a jurisdiction of concern merely indicates that there is a vulnerability
to a financial system by money launderers. With the large volumes of international currency that
goes through the Holy See, it is a system that makes it vulnerable as a potential money-laundering
center, Susan Pittman of the State Departments Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement, told Reuters. The Vatican Bank, founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII, has been in the
spotlight since September 2010 when Italian investigators froze 23 million euros ($33 million) in
funds in Italian banks after opening an investigation into possible money-laundering. The bank said
it did nothing wrong and was just transferring funds between its own accounts. The money was
released in June 2011 but the investigation is continuing. Two months ago, Italian newspapers
published leaked internal letters which appeared to show a conflict among top Vatican officials
about just how transparent the bank should be about dealings that took place before it enacted its
new laws. The Vatican Bank was formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR)
and was entangled in the collapse 30 years ago of Banco Ambrosiano, with its lurid
allegations about money-laundering, freemasons, mafiosi and the mysterious death of
Ambrosiano chairman Roberto Calvi - Gods banker.
Note: For more on the Vatican money-laundering scandal, click here. For speculation on the role
of secret societies in all of this, click here.
Brother, Can You Spare $6 Trillion?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/world/europe/italy-arrests-8-in-fake-us-tre...
The Italian police ... arrested eight people on charges related to the seizure of $6 trillion in fake
United States Treasury bonds, in a mysterious scheme that stretched from Hong Kong to
Switzerland to the southern Italian region of Basilicata. The value of the seized bonds is in the
neighborhood of half of the United States entire public debt of $15.36 trillion, but only the
uninitiated would have accepted them as real securities. Rather than counterfeit, they were
what officials call fictitious, printed in 6,000 units of $1 billion each, a denomination that does not
exist and the equivalent of $3 bills. The United States Embassy in Rome said its experts had
examined the bonds, which bore the date 1934, and determined that they were fictitious and
apparently part of a scheme intended to defraud Swiss banks. According to the Federal Reserve,
such fictitious instrument fraud is increasingly common, and unwitting investors have been
cheated of nearly $10 billion in recent years. In a common ploy, criminals present fictitious
financial instruments such as Federal Reserve notes, standby letters of credit, prime bank
guarantees or prime bank notes in order to fraudulently collateralize loans, the Federal Reserve
says on its Web site. In 2009, Italian police seized phony United States Treasury bonds with a face
value of $250 billion.
Note: There is a major problem with the claim that these are fake. If you were a counterfeiter and
wanted to fake bonds, you would have to be out of your mind to fake them in denominations of $1
billion. As reported here, no one would ever dream of cashing them. For excellent research by
David Wilcock suggesting that the bonds are real, and that this may be part of a huge, hidden
manipulation, click here.
Homeowners deserve protections afforded businesses

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/16/EDKF1N8M4N.DTL
[A] report from San Francisco auditors [shows] that 84 percent of foreclosures examined contained
at least one violation of the law by the foreclosing party. The report is only the latest in a series of
incidents involving bad actors in the foreclosure crisis. In fact, problems have been so rampant that
banks now require many buyers of foreclosed homes to sign contracts absolving the bank of
liability should irregularities appear with the original foreclosure. In light of these negligent
practices, the $26 billion settlement last week between the U.S. Department of Justice, state
attorneys general and the major banks raises as many questions as answers. For instance: If a
house is illegally foreclosed upon and subsequently sold by the bank, who owns the home? The
new buyer or the original owner? Untangling this mess might require new consumer protections,
not just a payout from the banks accused of wrongdoing. The best way to prevent foreclosure
problems, however, has always been to prevent foreclosures in the first place. Offering families
facing foreclosure the same bankruptcy protections enjoyed by business speculators is one place
to start. As it stands today, a single family that buys a home in a housing development is
treated differently in bankruptcy court than a businessman who bought 10 units in the
same project. If and when the housing bubble bursts, the underwater speculator is able to
seek bankruptcy relief on all 10 units, while the owner of the single home is left out in the
cold.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the impacts of the financial crisis on homeowners,
click here.
EU agrees rules to tame derivatives market

2012-02-09, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/eu-derivatives-idUSL5E8D969P20120209
European Union diplomats and the European Parliament agreed ... to overhaul regulation of the
roughly $700 trillion derivatives market, a move that will make it easier to control one of the most
opaque areas of finance. Under new EU laws, banks, hedge funds and other buyers and sellers of
derivatives will be encouraged to move away from the unregulated 'over-the-counter' market,
which accounts for almost 95 percent of all trades. In the past, it has been common for multimillion-euro contracts to be recorded by no more than a fax, with only the parties involved
aware of the details. This will change under the new law, which would standardise most
trading so it happens on open exchanges. Settlement of such deals will be cleared
centrally, making them easier to monitor. Those that do not shift to exchanges or a central
counterparty such as LCH Clearnet in London, which acts as an intermediary between buyer and
seller, will face higher capital charges to reflect the extra risk. Crucially, the new rules mean that all
deals must be recorded, whether conducted on or off an exchange. Supervisors hope that will
make it easier to monitor the market and intervene, if necessary, to avoid a repeat of the chaos
surrounding the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, where it proved difficult to assess exposure to
derivatives. By forcing increased transparency, the rules are likely to challenge the half a dozen or
so large banks that dominate the market now.
Note: For key reports on the grave risks posed by the unregulated derivatives market, click here.
George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War

2012-01-23, Newsweek Magazine
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/22/george-soros-on-the-coming-u...
I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as Ive experienced in
my career, [George] Soros tells Newsweek. We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable
in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in
the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The
best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the
financial system. Soros draws on his past to argue that the global economic crisis is as
significant, and unpredictable, as the end of Communism. To Soros, the spectacular
debunking of the credo of efficient markets the notion that markets are rational and can
regulate themselves to avert disaster is comparable to the collapse of Marxism as a
political system. Understanding, he says, is key. Unrestrained competition can drive people into
actions that they would otherwise regret. The tragedy of our current situation is the unintended
consequence of imperfect understanding. A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A
lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to. Still, Soros believes
the West is struggling to cope with the consequences of evil in the financial world just as former
Eastern bloc countries struggled with it politically. Is he really saying that the financial whizzes
behind our economic meltdown were not just wrong, but evil? Thats correct.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the criminal practices of the biggest banks and
financial firms and the collusion of government agencies, see our "Banking Bailout" newsarticles.
We must stop this corporate takeover of American democracy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/20/us-constitutio...
The corporate barbarians are through the gate of American democracy. Not satisfied with their allpervasive influence on our culture, economy and legislative processes, they want more. They want
it all. Two years ago, the United States supreme court betrayed our Constitution. In its now
infamous decision in the Citizens United case, five justices declared that corporations must be
treated as if they are actual people under the Constitution when it comes to spending
money to influence our elections, allowing them for the first time to draw on the corporate
checkbook in any amount and at any time to run ads explicitly for or against specific
candidates. What's next a corporate right to vote? When the supreme court says ... that
corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionallyprotected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable
restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, our democracy is in grave danger. Corporations
are not people with constitutional rights equal to flesh-and-blood human beings. Corporations are
subject to regulation by the people.
Note: For key reports on the overpowering influence of corporate money on the US political
system, click here and here.
L.A. calls for end to 'corporate personhood'
2011-12-06, Los Angeles Times blog

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/corporate-personhood-la-constit...
At a packed City Council meeting ... Los Angeles lawmakers Tuesday called for more regulations
on how much corporations can spend on political campaigns. The vote in support of state and
federal legislation that would end so-called "corporate personhood is largely symbolic.
The council resolution includes support for a constitutional amendment that would assert
that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights, and that spending money is not a
form of free speech. City Council President Eric Garcetti, the resolution's sponsor, said such
actions are necessary because big special interest money is behind much of the gridlock in
Washington. He blamed a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. the Federal
Election Commission, which rolled back legal restrictions on corporate spending on the grounds
that political speech by a business entity should receive the same 1st Amendment protections that
people do. It allows corporations and other groups to spend unlimited money on behalf of
candidates. Councilman Richard Alarcon, who also supported the resolution, said corporations are
trying to take over every aspect of our lives. Corporations are at the wheel of America, Alarcon
said. And they are driving us to destruction.
Note: Why was this key decision only reported in a blog and hardly covered by the media
elsewhere? To understand how the media controls public debate, as reported by top journalists,
click here.
Banking on the people

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/02/ED3B1LP64K.DTL
Why give our money to Bank of America, only to have it lend us our own money at high interest
rates or with ridiculous fees? We could hold onto our money, save quite a bit in fees, and lend it
back to ourselves and to the businesses and people ... at more affordable rates. In 2008, Ellen
Brown authored The Web of Debt, an analysis of the U.S. banking system that now is even more
pertinent in light of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The thesis is that the power to create
money has been usurped by a private international banking cartel [the Federal Reserve],
which issues our money as debt and lends it back to us at interest. The cartel makes it
appear that governments are creating our money, and governments get blamed when
things go wrong; but they are just pawns of the cartel. We ... can regain our government and
our republic only by reclaiming the power to create our own money. We can use the same credit
system that private banks use, but administer it as a public utility - that is, monitored and overseen
by public servants on the model of libraries and courts. To be a sustainable system, profits need to
be returned to the community rather than siphoned off into private coffers.
Note: Few people realize that money in the U.S. is created by an entity privately owned by the
largest banks the Federal Reserve. For lots more important information on this, click here. For
lots more from major media sources on the collusion between financial interests and government,
click here.
Faith in the 99 percent: What drives Occupy Wall Street?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/faith-in-the-99-percent-wha...
We are the 99 percent! The chant thunders through the streets, from Wall Street in New York
City, where the Occupy movement began, to K Street in Washington, where high-paid lobbyists
influence government, to streets in cities and small towns all across the nation. In hundreds of
Occupations, ordinary people have been moved to fill parks and streets and squares with signs,
tents, impromptu soup kitchens, intense conversations and lengthy meetings. Whats going on? All
share a common heart, a revulsion against an economy and a politics that increasingly say, You
dont count, except as something to exploit. Your voice is drowned out by money, your labor is
expendable, your needs must be sacrificed to the gods of profit. The Occupy movement
demonstrates a very different model of organizing: emergent, decentralized, without a command
and control structure. At its essence, the message of the Occupations is simply this: Here in the
face of power we will sit and create a new society, in which you do count. Your voice carries
weight, your contributions have value, whoever you may be. We say that love and care are
the true foundations for the society we want to live in. Well stand with the poor and sleep
with the homeless if thats what it takes to get justice. Well build a new world.
Note: Find your nearest occupation at: http://www.occupytogether.org/ . For lots more from major
media sources on the reasons why people worldwide are occupying the financial centers of their
cities, check out our "Banking Bailout" news articles.
Wall Street Protests Spread Globally as Rome Turns Violent

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LT1FUB1A1I4H01-651L...
The Occupy Wall Street protest against income disparity spread across Western Europe, Asia, the
U.S. and Canada today. Rome's demonstration turned violent, contrasting with peaceful events
elsewhere. The rallies started last month in New York's financial district, where people have been
staying in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park. They widened to 1,500 cities today, including
Sydney and Toronto, the organizers said, in a global day of action against Wall Street greed.
Protesters say they represent the 99 percent, a nod to a study by Nobel Prize-winning economist
Joseph Stiglitz showing the top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of U.S. wealth. In
Berlin, 6,000 took to the streets and 1,500 gathered in Cologne, ZDF television said. In Frankfurt,
5,000 marched by the European Central Bank headquarters. In New York, demonstrators marched
past a JPMorgan Chase & Co. branch urging clients to transfer accounts to a financial institution
that supports the 99 percent. They distributed fliers with a list of community banks and credit
unions. New York police arrested 24 at a Citigroup Inc. bank branch and 6,000 gathered in Times
Square. About 1,000 people gathered in Toronto's financial district carrying signs saying
Nationalize the Banks. Demonstrations turned violent in Italy, where the unemployment rate for
15-to-24-year-olds was 27.6 percent in August.
Occupy Wall Street, a primer

2011-10-03, Washington Post blog
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/occupy-wall-street-a-prim...
Occupy Wall Street, the growing, decentralized protest movement thats clashing with police in
New York City, spreading across the country, and grabbing headlines across the world ... is also,
somewhat unusually, a protest movement without clear demands, an identifiable leadership, or an
evident organizational structure. Decisions are made by the NYC General Assembly, which Nathan
Schneider describes as a horizontal, autonomous, leaderless, modified-consensus-based system
with roots in anarchist thought, and thus far, the General Assembly has decided against
yoking the movement to a particular set of goals, or even a particular ideology. Which is all
to say that its important to try and understand the movement on its own terms, rather than
the terms most of us are used to. Here are five places to start: - The ... Occupy Wall Street
blog, and in particular, the blogs forums. Here, for instance, is the movements Declaration of the
Occupation of New York City. - Nathan Schneiders Occupy Wall Street FAQ. Id perhaps
recommend this as the single best place to start. - Understanding the theory behind Occupy Wall
Streets approach, by Mike Konczal. Also see his post, 15 definitions of freedom from Occupy
Wall Street.
As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/world/as-scorn-for-vote-grows-protests-surg...
Their complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and joblessness, common
grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall
Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional
politicians and the democratic political process they preside over. They are taking to the
streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box. Economics have been one
driving force, with growing income inequality, high unemployment and recession-driven cuts in
social spending breeding widespread malaise. Alienation runs especially deep in Europe, with
boycotts and strikes. The protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike those that
have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and
Libya. Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly
hostile, toward traditional institutions of the elite. Youre looking at a generation of 20- and 30year-olds who are used to self-organizing, said Yochai Benkler, a director of the Berkman Center
for Internet and Society at Harvard University. They believe life can be more participatory, more
decentralized, less dependent on the traditional models of organization, either in the state or the
big company. Those were the dominant ways of doing things in the industrial economy, and they
arent anymore.
Note: For key insights from major media sources into the reasons why so many are protesting
worldwide, click here.
'Anyone can make money from a crash,' says market trader

2011-09-26, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15059135
Ministers from the world's richest nations are reportedly on the way to agreeing [to] a deal for
troubled eurozone countries. But one independent market trader - Alessio Rastani - told the BBC
the plan "won't work" and that people should be trying to make money from a market crash. Trader
Alessio Rastani: I'm fairly confident the Euro is going to crash, and it's going to fall pretty hard
because markets are ruled right now by fear. Investors and the big money, the smart money ...
don't buy this rescue plan. They know the stock market is finished. They don't really care. They're
moving their money away to safer assets like treasury bonds, 30-year bonds, and the U.S. dollar.
For most traders, we dont really care that much how they're going to fix the economy. Our
job is to make money from it. And personally, Ive been dreaming of this moment for three years.
I go to bed every night [and] I dream of another recession. When the market crashes if you
have the right plan set up, you can make a lot of money from this. Be prepared, and act now. The
biggest risk people can take right now is not acting. This economic crisis is like a cancer. In less
than 12 months, my prediction is that the savings of millions people is going to vanish, and this is
just the beginning. This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are
going to sort things out. The governments dont rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the
world.
Note: Part of the text above is not listed in the text at the link above, but in the BBC video on that
page. The video is a must watch for one expert's important view on an impending future economic
collapse. For lots more excellent information showing the incredible power of Goldman Sachs and
more on this important topic, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
sources on financial corruption, click here.
Being Like Soros in Buying Farm Land Reaps Annual Gains of 16%
2011-08-10, Businessweek/Bloomberg
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LPOB2G0D9L3501-5DC4...
Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and
Africa as global food prices soar. A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund
manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA. Hedge funds
Ospraie Management LLC and Passport Capital LLC as well as Harvard University's endowment
are also betting on farming. TIAA-CREF, the $466 billion financial services giant, has $2 billion
invested in some 600,000 acres (240,000 hectares) of farmland in Australia, Brazil and North
America and wants to double the size of its investment. The growth in demand for food, spurred by
the rising middle classes in China, India and other emerging markets, shows no signs of abating.
Food prices in June, as measured by a United Nations index of 55 food commodities, were just
slightly below their peak in February. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said in a June
report that it expects food costs to remain high through 2012. So many investors have rushed to
capitalize on food prices in the past three years that they may be creating a farmland
bubble. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which covers Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska
and other agricultural states, said in May that farmland prices had surged 20 percent in the first
quarter compared with a year earlier.
Note: This news is further clear evidence that the rapid increases in food prices is another ploy to
funnel money from the pockets of the public into the uber wealthy.
NY Fed Won't Say How Much Money Went to Iraq

2011-06-21, CNBC
The New York Fed is refusing to tell investigators how many billions of dollars it shipped to
Iraq during the early days of the US invasion there, the special inspector general for Iraq
reconstruction told CNBC [on June 21]. The Fed's lack of disclosure is making it difficult for
the inspector general to follow the paper trail of billions of dollars that went missing in the
chaotic rush to finance the Iraq occupation, and to determine how much of that money was
stolen. The New York Fed will not reveal details, the inspector general said, because the money
initially came from an account at the Fed that was held on behalf of the people of Iraq and financed
by cash from the Oil-for-Food program. Without authorization from the account holder, the Iraqi
government itself, the inspector general's office was told it can't receive information about the
account. The problem is that critics of the Iraqi government believe highly placed officials there are
among the people who may have made off with the money in the first place. And some think that
will make it highly unlikely the Iraqis will sign off on revealing the total dollar amount. It was one of
the largest shipments of cash in history. And the inspector general says that if the money was
stolen, that would represent the largest heist in history.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
Swiss, US in Talks on Tax Probe Settlement

2011-06-10, CNBC/Reuters News
http://classic.cnbc.com/id/43350415
The United States and Switzerland are in advanced talks on a multibillion-dollar deal that would let
several Swiss and European banks join a common settlement and avoid potential U.S. prosecution
for helping wealthy Americans dodge taxes. As part of the agreement under discussion, known as
a global resolution, U.S. government agencies would invite the banks to pay a fine, exit their
undeclared offshore banking businesses for Americans, and turn over client names to the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Justice Department. In exchange, the agencies
would drop an ongoing investigation into the banks. It could not immediately be determined
which banks could be invited to participate in the global resolution. The fines involved could
collectively total several billion dollars, they said. Banks that "opt out" of the deal could face
heightened scrutiny from U.S. authorities, including a possible legal summons for client names
from the IRS and tougher scrutiny by the Justice Department. A resolution would signal another
strong blow to the Swiss tradition of client confidentiality, whose laws date to 1934 but whose
tradition goes back centuries.
Note: For lots more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
U.S. Faulted on Failing to Catch Credit-Crunch Bandits'

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LKQQ2B0D9L3501-7O8F...
In November 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed before television cameras to prosecute
those responsible for the market collapse a year earlier, saying the U.S. would be relentless in
pursuing corporate criminals. In the 18 months since, no senior Wall Street executive has been
criminally charged. Prosecutions of three categories of crime that could be linked to the
causes of the crisis -- corporate, securities and bank fraud -- declined last fiscal year by 39
percent from 2003, the period after the accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom
Inc., Justice Department records show. You need a massive prosecutorial effort, said Solomon
Wisenberg, a white-collar defense attorney at Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Washington and a
former federal prosecutor. I don't see evidence that it's happening." The seizing up of credit
markets led to the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and sparked the
worst economic slump in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Much of the blame belongs to
banks that profited from selling products that imploded with the housing market.
Note: For undeniable evidence of fraud at the highest levels of Wall Street, click here.
Why Haven't Wall Streeters Gone to Jail?

2011-05-19, Time Magazine blog
http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/05/19/ny-ag-investigation-why-ha...
The New York Attorney General's office has been requesting information from Bank of America,
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on how they created and structured mortgage bonds at the
height of the credit boom. That investigation has reignited questions about why, nearly three years
after the financial crisis, no Wall Streeter has yet to face criminal charges directly related to the
mortgage bonds and other toxic deals that lead to the financial crisis. No one really knows the
answer, but there are a number of theories out there. Here are the best ones: Theory No. 1:
Prosecutors have been told to back off. In mid-April, the New York Times did a large investigative
piece that found a number of instances where prosecutors were told not to pursue Wall Street.
Theory No. 2: Wall Street is innocent. It may seem like the most bizarre answer, but it is getting
some traction. No one is really saying that Wall Street didn't do anything wrong. It's clear that
setting up risky mortgage bonds to sell to investors and then betting against them yourself is
wrong. But is it illegal? It's not quite clear. Theory No. 3: The cases are still in the works. There
seems to be some evidence that prosecutors are starting to be more aggressive in pursuing cases.
It's not clear what part of the mortgage process, or what potential wrong doing, the NY AG
Eric Schneiderman is investigating. The truth is that Wall Streeters rarely go to jail. Yes,
other bubbles and financial crises have resulted in numerous convictions, but generally not
of Wall Streeters.
Note: Remember that Elliot Spitzer probably got taken down for going after Wall Street. Now his
successor, Eric Schneiderman, is doing the same thing. For an excellent article on this brave man,
click here.
The Unwisdom of Elites

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/opinion/09krugman.html
The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has
mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europes single
currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong? The fact is that what were
experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess ... were, with
few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people in many cases, the
same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the
blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own
catastrophic mistakes. What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?
First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last
decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1
trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a
sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs. So who was
responsible for these budget busters? It wasnt the man in the street. We need to place the
blame where it belongs, to chasten our policy elites. Otherwise, theyll do even more
damage in the years ahead.
Note: For highly revealing major articles exposing secret gatherings of the global elite and their
activities, click here.
Fed to release bank loan data after Supreme Court rejects appeal
2011-03-21, Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg News
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/21/business/la-fi-fed-banks-20110321
The Federal Reserve will disclose details of emergency loans it made to banks in 2008, after the
U.S. Supreme Court rejected an industry appeal that aimed to shield the records from public view.
The justices ... left intact a court order that gives the Fed five days to release the records, sought
by Bloomberg News' parent company, Bloomberg. The order marks the first time a court has
forced the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed from its oldest lending program,
the 98-year-old discount window. "I can't recall that the Fed was ever sued and forced to
release information" in its 98-year history, said Allan H. Meltzer, the author of three books on
the U.S central bank and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The disclosures,
together with details of six bailout programs released by the central bank in December under a
congressional mandate, would give taxpayers insight into the Fed's unprecedented $3.5 trillion
effort to stem the 2008 financial panic. Under the trial judge's order, the Fed must reveal 231
pages of documents related to borrowers in April and May 2008, along with loan amounts. News
Corp.'s Fox News is pressing a bid for 6,186 pages of similar information on loans made from
August 2007 to November 2008.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from major media sources on the hidden activities of the Fed
and the biggest Wall Street and international banks, click here.
Rep. Paul renews uphill push to abolish Fed

2011-03-17, CNBC
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42135875/Rep_Paul_renews_uphill_push_to_abolish_Fed
Representative Ron Paul, a persistent critic of the Federal Reserve, [has] renewed his uphill fight
to abolish the U.S. central bank, warning it is on track to create an inflation that will hit lowerincome Americans especially hard. The Texas lawmaker has long championed dismantling the
Fed, but at a hearing on [March 17] slammed its $600 billion bond buying program, which he said
was creating inflation and undercutting the dollar. This week he introduced legislation abolishing
the Fed. Congress considered curbing Fed regulatory powers in legislation passed last year but
backed away, ultimately delegating more authority to the central bank to police the financial
system. Paul's criticism of the Fed and its bond buying program has struck a chord with
Republicans, particularly Tea Party activists. Other GOP lawmakers have introduced a
measure that would strip the Fed of its full employment mandate and require it to
concentrate exclusively on inflation. Rising energy and commodity prices have stirred inflation
worries around the world and criticism that the Fed's vast expansion of bank reserves to buy
Treasuries has stoked price rises.
Note: To understand why Rep. Paul is questioning the usefulness of the Fed, see reliable
information on Fed manipulations at this link.
Michigan bill would impose "financial martial law"

2011-03-11, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20042299-503544.html
Michigan lawmakers are on the verge of approving a bill that would enable the governor to appoint
"emergency managers" -- officials with unilateral power to make sweeping changes to cities facing
financial troubles. Under the legislation ... the governor could declare a "financial
emergency" in towns or school districts. He could then appoint a manager to fire local
elected officials, break contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services - and even
eliminate whole cities or school districts without any public input. The measure passed in the
state Senate this week; the House passed its own version earlier. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder
has said he will sign the bill into law. U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat who represents Detroit,
said in a statement that in a given city, the governor's new "financial czar" could "force a
municipality into bankruptcy, a power that will surely be used to extract further concessions from
hardworking public sector workers." He said the legislation raises "serious constitutional concerns."
Note: The bill was made law. For more, click here. For a treasure trove of reports from major
media sources exposing the control exerted by financial powers on government officials, click
here.
IMF calls for dollar alternative

2011-02-10, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/10/markets/dollar/index.htm
The International Monetary Fund issued a report Thursday on a possible replacement for the dollar
as the world's reserve currency. The IMF said Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, could help
stabilize the global financial system. SDRs represent potential claims on the currencies of IMF
members. They were created by the IMF in 1969 and can be converted into whatever currency a
borrower requires at exchange rates based on a weighted basket of international currencies. The
IMF typically lends countries funds denominated in SDRs While they are not a tangible currency,
some economists argue that SDRs could be used as a less volatile alternative to the U.S. dollar.
The goal is to have a reserve asset for central banks that better reflects the global economy
since the dollar is vulnerable to swings in the domestic economy and changes in U.S.
policy. In addition to serving as a reserve currency, the IMF also proposed creating SDRdenominated bonds, which could reduce central banks' dependence on U.S. Treasuries. The
Fund also suggested that certain assets, such as oil and gold, which are traded in U.S.
dollars, could be priced using SDRs. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for
International Economics, said at a conference in Washington that IMF member nations should
agree to create $2 trillion worth of SDRs over the next few years.
ConsumerWatch: Zero Percent Financing May Prove Costly

2011-02-03, KCBS (CBS San Francisco Affiliate)
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/02/03/consumerwatch-zero-percent-financ...
Zero-percent financing deals sound tempting when you are making a big purchase. But they can
have costly consequences. Justin Miller financed a new Tempur-Pedic bed through Citibank. Miller
said the deal was a credit plan offering 12 months interest free. Even though he had the
cash, he decided to finance $5,600. But after Miller made the last payment, he received a bill
from Citibank for $1,332.70. A years worth of interest Citibank calculated at 25 percent. I
thought this is crazy, either this is some kind of joke or some kind of scam, Miller said. But
according to the statement, the plan expired December 2nd. Millers payment was due four days
later, after the interest free deal expired on December 6th. The statement due date was different
from what they call the plan due date, Miller said. In fact Miller believes the due date was
intentional to fool customers into making their last payment after the interest rate expires. Jose
Quinonez with Mission Asset Fund said its a common practice. Quinonez adds banks rarely go
out of their way to tell customers about expiration dates on interest-free deals. My
recommendation to people is to make sure to pay off the whole balance completely in full by the
11th month, not wait till the 12th month to pay it off, he said. Citibank refused to discuss the
specifics of Millers case, but it told CBS 5 ConsumerWatch the terms of the deal are clearly
explained in the seven page contract.
On Street, Pay Vaults to Record Altitude

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704124504576118421859347048-sea...
When it comes to paychecks, Wall Street's law of gravity is back in full force: What goes down
must come back up. In 2010, total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street
banks and securities firms hit a record of $135 billion, according to an analysis by The Wall
Street Journal. The total is up 5.7% from $128 billion in combined compensation and
benefits by the same companies in 2009. At 25 large financial firms that have reported full-year
results, revenue rose to $417 billion, another all-time high. "Things are shifting back to where they
were before," said J. Robert Brown, a law professor at the University of Denver who studies
compensation and corporate-governance issues. Buried in the numbers, though, are signs of how
Wall Street's pay culture is bending in response to pressure from regulators and shareholders.
Last year, deferred compensation made up as much as half of total pay, up from about a third
previously, estimates Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates Inc., a New York
pay consultant. Banks and securities firms are deferring a larger percentage of compensation than
they used to, trying to counter criticism that yearly cash bonuses encourage unwise risk-taking by
executives, traders and other employees aiming for a big payday.
Note: For the NY State Comptroller's analysis of Wall Street bonuses in 2010, click here and here.
US foreclosures in new legal trouble

2011-01-07, BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12140877
Two of the US's biggest mortgage lenders have had mortgage foreclosures cancelled in a case
that could affect other banks. The Supreme Court in Massachusetts ruled against US Bancorp and
Wells Fargo in a widely watched case. Backing a lower court ruling made in 2009, it said two
foreclosure sales were invalid because the banks did not prove that they owned them at the time.
The decision is among the earliest to address the validity of foreclosures done without proper
documentation - so-called robo-loans because they were carried out by people who were
unqualified and who often did not check a single line in the paperwork. Marty Mosby, an analyst at
Guggenheim Securities said: "A ruling like this will slow down the foreclosure process. They're
going to have to be really precise and get everything in order. It doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room."
The case also applies retrospectively to people who have already been foreclosed. Glenn
Russell, a lawyer for one of the couples in the case said: "I'm ecstatic. The fact the decision
applies retroactively could mean thousands of homeowners can seek recovery for homes
wrongfully foreclosed upon." Analysts said the decision may also threaten banks' ability to
package mortgages into securities, and may raise the spectre that loans transferred improperly will
need to be bought back.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the criminal profiteering by the largest banks
and Wall Street financial firms, click here.
While Washington pursues CEOs, they snub U.S.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2010%2F12%2F25%2FINJV1...
America's big businesses are less and less American. They're going abroad for sales and
employees. That's one reason they've showed record-breaking profits in 2010 while
creating almost no American jobs. Consider one of the most popular products for Christmas
gifts of all time - Apple's iPhone. Researchers from the Asian Development Bank Institute have
dissected an iPhone, whose wholesale price is around $179, to determine where the money
actually goes. Only about $11 of that iPhone goes to American workers, mostly researchers and
designers. Even old-tech American companies made big money abroad in 2010 - and created
scads of jobs there. General Motors, for example, is now turning a nice profit, and American
investors are bullish about its future. That doesn't mean GM will be creating lots more blue-collar
jobs in America, though. 2010 was a banner year for GM's foreign sales - already two-thirds of its
total sales, and rising. In October, GM became the first automaker to sell more than 2 million cars
a year in China. The company is now making more cars in China than in the United States.
Meanwhile, back home in the United States, GM has slashed its labor costs. New hires are
brought in at roughly half the wages and benefits of former GM employees, under a two-tier wage
structure accepted by the United Auto Workers. Almost all of GM's U.S. suppliers have also cut
their payrolls.
Note: Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at UC Berkeley
and the author of the new book Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future. He blogs at
www.robertreich.org.
Cuomo lashes out at Ernst & Young

2010-12-21, Reuters blog
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/12/21/cuomo-lashes-out-at-ernst-yo...
Excerpts from complaint by New York State Attorney General (and Governor-Elect) Andrew
Cuomo: E&Y [Ernst and Young] substantially assisted Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., now
bankrupt, to engage in a massive accounting fraud, involving the surreptitious removal of tens of
billions of dollars of securities from Lehmans balance sheet in order to create a false impression of
Lehmans liquidity, thereby defrauding the investing public. As the financial crisis deepened in
2007 and 2008 and Lehmans liquidity problems intensified, E&Y ... assisted Lehman in defrauding
the public about the Companys deteriorating financial condition, particularly its leverage. As the
public auditor for Lehman, E&Y had the absolute obligation to ensure that Lehmans financial
statements ... did not mislead the public. Instead of fulfilling this obligation ... E&Y sat by silently
while Lehman deceived the public by concealing [fraulent] transactions and misrepresenting the
Companys leverage. By doing so, E&Y directly facilitated a major accounting fraud, and
helped Lehman mislead the public as to its true financial condition. E&Y, which reaped over
$150 million in fees from Lehman, must be held accountable for its role in this fraud.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources detailing the fraud that led to the financial crisis and
bailout of Wall Street by taxpayers, click here.
$2tn debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US cities

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/20/debt-crisis-threatens-us-cities
More than 100 American cities could go bust next year as the debt crisis that has taken down
banks and countries threatens next to spark a municipal meltdown, a leading analyst has warned.
Meredith Whitney, the US research analyst who correctly predicted the global credit crunch,
described local and state debt as the biggest problem facing the US economy, and one that could
derail its recovery. "Next to housing this is the single most important issue in the US and certainly
the biggest threat to the US economy," Whitney [said]. "There's not a doubt on my mind that
you will see a spate of municipal bond defaults. You can see fifty to a hundred sizeable
defaults more. This will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of defaults."
American cities and states have debts in total of as much as $2tn. US states have spent nearly
half a trillion dollars more than they have collected in taxes, and face a $1tn hole in their pension
funds, said the CBS programme, apocalyptically titled The Day of Reckoning.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from major media sources on the dire impacts of the financial
crisis and government bailout of financial capitalists at taxpayers' expense, click here.
Spencer Bachus, incoming House financial chairman, gets heat for

saying regulators should 'serve' banks
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2010/12/spencer-bachus-banks-regulat...
The incoming Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee is facing
fire for recently saying that Washington and banking regulators should "serve" the banks.
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who recently beat back a challenge from Ed Royce of Fullerton to
win the chairmanship of the powerful committee, made the comments in an interview with the
Birmingham News. "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my
view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks," Bachus said. The
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quickly dubbed him "Big Bank Bachus" and
highlighted the more than $1 million in campaign contributions he has received from Wall Street
over the years. Outgoing Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) jumped
into the fray. He slammed Bachus' intentions to scale back the recently enacted financial reform
law, including trying to limit the powers of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying
the comments showed "a seriously flawed view of the relationship that should exist between
financial institutions and those who set the rules governing safety and soundness. His view of the
role of regulation, expressed before he clarified his genuine belief, explains why he is so opposed
to an independent consumer financial protection bureau, and why he wants to weaken restraints
on speculation by banks with depositors money, Frank said.
widespread corruption in government and banking and finance. For additional information, see the
excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information Center.
Bank of America to pay $137 million in state fraud cases

Bank of America will pay $137.3 million to settle allegations that it defrauded schools, hospitals
and dozens of other state and local government organizations, federal officials said [on December
7]. The settlement stems from a long-running investigation into misconduct in the municipal bond
business that raises money for localities to pay for public services. Bank of America is accused of
depriving local organizations of millions of dollars by engaging in illegal behavior when investing
the proceeds of municipal bond sales. The bank is paying $107.8 million to these organizations in
restitution, $25 million to the Internal Revenue Service for abuses related to the tax-free status of
municipal bonds and $4.5 million to state attorneys general for costs related to their investigations.
A number of bankers and other professionals from a variety of financial firms have pleaded guilty in
the probe, which centered on companies conspiring to win municipal securities business in
violation of statutes requiring fair competition. The banking giant is accused of taking part in a
conspiracy in which it and other banks paid kickbacks to win the business of municipalities
seeking to invest the proceeds of bond sales before the money is ready to be spent.
Note: For key reports on financial fraud from reliable sources, click here.
Lending Club, Prosper.com make peer-to-peer loans

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/02/BU361GKD8L.DTL
Before Alex Taguchi proposed to high school flame Jenny Lee, the 26-year-old decided to liquidate
about $11,000 in credit card debt, provided he could find a payment plan affordable on his salary
as a software support specialist. His bank offered him a debt consolidation loan at 16.5 percent,
but the Mountain View man decided to get a quote from a new online financial service that
matches borrowers with lenders to give each better deals than are otherwise generally available.
Today Taguchi is paying $380 a month on a three-year, 13.88 percent note issued through Lending
Club.com, one of two Bay Area firms pioneering a new industry called peer-to-peer lending. The
other is Prosper.com. Lending Club of Redwood City and Prosper of San Francisco have
figured out how to perform [the] two-fisted function, of taking money in the one hand and
lending it with the other, in a way that allows aspiring borrowers to specify how much they want,
and for what purpose, and also gives them an overall risk profile - comparable, say, to a search
engine ranking. These two online lending rivals then give potential investors the option to fund
some of these loans at fixed rates and fixed terms - and interest levels designed to compete with
bonds, stocks and other financial instruments.
Note: This exciting development may eventually change the face of banking, allowing us to lend to
and borrow from each other directly without the need of intermediary bankers.
A Real Jaw Dropper at the Federal Reserve

2010-12-02, Yahoo News/Huffington Post
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20101202/cm_huffpost/791091
As a result of an amendment that I was able to include in the Wall Street reform bill, we have
begun to lift the veil of secrecy at the Fed. It is unfortunate that it took this long, and it is a shame
that the biggest banks in America and Mr. Bernanke fought to keep this secret from the American
public every step of the way. But, the details on this bailout are now on the Federal Reserve's
website. This is a major victory for the American taxpayer and for transparency in government.
After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and
jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America.
What have we learned so far from the disclosure of more than 21,000 transactions? We have
learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout signed into law by President George W.
Bush turned out to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars in
near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal Reserve doled out to
every major financial institution in this country.
Note: The author is Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). For key reports from reliable sources on the
massive federal bailout of the biggest banks and financial firms, click here.
Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter

2010-11-24, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/economy/24econ.html
The nations workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.
American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter,
according to a Commerce Department report. That is the highest figure recorded since the
government began keeping track over 60 years ago. The next-highest annual corporate profits
level on record was in the third quarter of 2006, when they were $1.655 trillion. Corporate profits
have been doing extremely well for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008,
profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history. As a
share of gross domestic product, corporate profits also have been increasing, and they now
represent 11.2 percent of total output. That is the highest share since the fourth quarter of 2006,
when they accounted for 11.7 percent of output.
Note: Long-term unemployment is at a record high, yet corporations are raking in record profits.
With record profits, why aren't corporations hiring more new employees? For many reports from
reliable souces on corporate profiteering, click here.
Is hard currency on its way out? Introducing the new virtual world
currency.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Daily-Reckoning/2010/1028/Is-hard-curre...
When discussing reserve currency alternatives to the US dollar, conversation almost inevitably
returns to the International Monetary Funds synthetic reserve asset, the Special Drawing Right
(SDR). However, the SDR basket of currencies is noticeably antiquated in its design, including only
the currencies of industrialized nations. This week, foreign exchange manager Overlay Asset
Management [OAM] has announced a currency basket its launching in order to offer a more up-todate virtual world reserve currency. According to the Financial Times: [OAMs] Wealth
Preservation Currency Index consists of the currencies of the worlds 15 largest economies,
weighted by their gross domestic product, adjusted for purchasing power parity. Overlays rationale
is that investment portfolios are often heavily exposed to the dollar, but many investors have
doubts as to whether the greenback can retain its value and remain the worlds primary reserve
currency. The global currency war as many are calling it continues to heat up, with
no obvious resolution in sight. While it wouldnt be a simple, quick, or painless process to

replace the US dollar as reserve currency, it seems inevitable that calls for just such action
are bound to increase, especially if currently loose US monetary policy ... continues
unabated.
Note: You can read more details in Financial Times coverage of how a new world currency index
has launched.
Documentary 'Inside Job' only tells part of story

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/24/BUAV1G0LEA.DTL
"Inside Job," as the movie title implies, sees the 2008 financial meltdown, its causes and ongoing
catastrophic consequences, as the work of crooks. Crooks as in members of the financial services
industry. Aided and abetted by ... administrations of both political stripes, ratings agencies and
regulators, all of whom were committed to an ideology that enabled larceny on a grand scale. The
documentary, written, produced and directed by Bay Area high-tech entrepreneur turned filmmaker
Charles Ferguson, opened in Bay Area cinemas [on October 22]. Even if you've read through the
growing pile of books, congressional hearings and material generated by the Financial Crisis
Inquiry Commission, it has plenty to remind you why you are furious, all over again. If further proof
is needed, the film effectively demolishes the "who knew?" argument proffered by Goldman Sachs
Group CEO Lloyd Blankfein and his peers. And it makes a convincing case that much of the
obscenely compensated financial services industry has been rotten to the core for
decades, but is yet to be held truly accountable for activities, both immoral and illegal.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the criminal practices of the largest financial
corporations and regulatory agencies which led to the current economic crisis, click here.
U.S. companies buy back stock in droves as they hold record levels of
cash
For months, companies have been sitting on the sidelines with record piles of cash. Now they're
starting to deploy some of that money - not to hire workers or build factories, but to prop up their
share prices. Sitting on these unprecedented levels of cash, U.S. companies are buying back their
own stock in droves. So far this year, firms have announced they will purchase $273 billion of their
own shares, more than five times as much compared with this time last year, according to Birinyi
Associates, a stock market research firm. But the rise in buybacks signals that many
companies [do not plan to] spend their cash on the job-generating activities that could
produce economic growth. "They don't know what they want to do with all the cash they're
sitting on," said Zachary Karabell, president of RiverTwice Research. Historically low interest
rates are also prompting some companies to borrow to repurchase shares. Microsoft, for instance,
borrowed $4.75 billion last month by issuing new bonds at rock-bottom interest rates and
announced it would use some of that money to buy back shares. The company already has nearly
$37 billion in cash. A share buyback is a quick way to make a stock more attractive to Wall Street.
It improves a closely watched metric known as earnings per share, which divides a company's
profit by the total number of shares on the market. Such a move can produce a sudden burst of
interest in a stock, improving its price.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the massive profiteering by corporate recipients of
government financial largesse, click here.
American Companies Wrest Big Earnings From Lower Revenue

U.S. companies are rebounding quickly from the recession and posting near-historic profits, the
result of aggressively re-tooling their operations to cope with lower revenue and an uncertain
outlook. An analysis by The Wall Street Journal found that companies in the Standard & Poor's
500-stock index posted second-quarter profits of $189 billion, up 38% from a year earlier and their
sixth-highest quarterly total ever, without adjustment for inflation. For all U.S. companies, the
Commerce Department estimates second-quarter after-tax profits rose to an annual rate of $1.208
trillion, up 3.9% from the first quarter and up 26.5% from a year earlier. That annual rate is the
highest on record, though it doesn't account for inflation. As a percentage of national income, aftertax profits were the third-highest since 1947, surpassed only by two quarters in 2006, near the
peak of the last economic expansion. The data indicate that big companies are recovering from the
downturn faster and more strongly than the overall economy, helping send stock prices higher this
year. To achieve that performance, companies laid off hundreds of thousands of workers,
closed less-profitable units, shifted work to cheaper regions and streamlined processes.
Despite the hefty profits, executives aren't expected to boost spending on new employees,
products and equipment anytime soon. "We've focused on permanent changes that won't have
to be undone as sales improve," said John Riccitiello, chief executive of Electronic Arts.
Note: For highly revealing reports on income inequality, click here.
Vatican bank raided in money-laundering inquiry

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/801713...
Italian authorities froze nearly 20 million belonging to the Vaticans bank on [September 21] in an
unprecedented investigation into alleged money-laundering by the Holy See. It was the first time
that such action has been taken against the bank, which is formally known as the IOR or Institute
for Religious Works. Prosecutors placed the banks director-general and its chairman under
investigation in connection with two allegedly suspicious transactions which may have breached
Italys anti-money laundering laws. Investigators have spent more than a year scrutinising millions
of euros of Vatican bank transactions to see if they violated regulations. The Vatican banks
chairman, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi ... was placed under investigation. He is not being investigated for
laundering money but for omitting to disclose key information. The Vatican expressed the
utmost confidence in the banks senior executives, including Mr Gotti Tedeschi. A member
of the conservative religious movement Opus Dei, he has spoken out on the need for more
morality in financing. Mr Gotti Tedeschi is a close adviser to Italys finance minister, Giulio
Tremonti. The IOR manages the Vaticans finances as well as the accounts of Catholic
organisations and religious orders.
Note: This unprecedented case shows that big things are happening behind the scenes. There is
much more here than catches the eye.
Probe Circles Globe to Find Dirty Money

An intelligence analyst named Eitan Arusy [at the district attorney's office in Manhattan] began
studying a slim lead. Suspicious money was flowing to and from an Iranian nonprofit. Mr. Arusy's
probe, later merged with a Justice Department inquiry, ultimately widened to some of Europe's
vaunted banks, helping spark a global inquiry that found they actively evaded U.S. law in aiding
sanctioned countries, banks or other enterprises move some $2 billion undetected. Nine banks
have been caught up in the probe. These weren't rogue operations. The investigators discovered
that the banks ran dedicated units to systematically aid the undetected transfer of money
through the U.S. banking system. They did that by removing identifying coding on fund
transfers so they could evade automated U.S. bank computer systems designed to spot money
flowing from a sanctioned state. The far-reaching inquiry started small. Mr. Arusy arrived at the
district attorney's office in 2005 to help ferret out illegal financing tied to the Middle East. Though
the office prosecutes everyday crime, it carved out a role infiltrating crimes tied to the city's
financial markets and institutions. Its expertise dates to the 1990s, when it led the investigation of
Bank of Credit & Commerce International, or BCCI, which collapsed in a fraud and moneylaundering scandal.
Note: For a treasure trove of articles from reliable sources revealing the criminality of many major
Goldman reveals where bailout cash went

2010-07-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2010-07-24-goldman-bailout-c...
Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas
banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public [on July 23]. Goldman
Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena
from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia. Goldman Sachs received $5.55 billion from the government in fall
of 2008 as payment for then-worthless securities it held in AIG. Goldman had already hedged its
risk that the securities would go bad. It had entered into agreements to spread the risk with the 32
entities named in Friday's report. Overall, Goldman Sachs received a $12.9 billion payout from the
government's bailout of AIG, which was at one time the world's largest insurance company.
Goldman Sachs also revealed to the Senate Finance Committee that it would have received $2.3
billion if AIG had gone under. Other large financial institutions, such as Citibank, JPMorgan
Chase and Morgan Stanley, sold Goldman Sachs protection in the case of AIG's collapse.
Those institutions did not have to pay Goldman Sachs after the government stepped in with
tax money. Shouldn't Goldman Sachs be expected to collect from those institutions "before they
collect the taxpayers' dollars?" Grassley asked. "It's a little bit like a farmer, if you got crop
insurance, you shouldn't be getting disaster aid."
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the Wall Street bailout by taxpayers, click here.
20 people arrested at the G20 tell of inhumane treatment at the hands

of police
2010-06-28, Toronto Star (One of Toronto's leading newspapers)
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontog20summit/article/829921--i-will-not-f...
*Lulu Maxwell, 17, Grade 12, Rosedale Heights: Maxwell and a friend were hanging around near
Queen and Dufferin Sts. at a convergence centre for protesters on Sunday afternoon when police
started making arrests. My friend was blowing bubbles and I was scribbling peace signs on the
sidewalk. Within minutes, her friend was grabbed and Lulu was put up against a wall. Her
backpack was searched and Lulu says an officer said she could be charged with possession
of dangerous weapons because I had eyewash solution in my backpack. She was taken to
the detention centre and almost 12 hours after her arrest was allowed to call her parents. She was
released, without charges being laid, at 5 a. m. *Erin Boynton, 24, London, Ont. She was arrested
at The Esplanade early Sunday morning after police boxed dozens of protesters in. I was with a
protest marching peacefully down Yonge from Dundas Square, she said. When the cops came at
us, many people scattered and those who were left in front of the (Novotel) got arrested. She said
police came from all sides and squished us in. They didnt give us a warning to leave. just
announced that we are arresting all of you. She said a lot of people at the detention centre were
innocent bystanders. The police violated all our rights . . . there was police brutality. Quite
frankly, it was quite disgusting. Boynton wasnt charged.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on mounting threats to civil liberties, click here.
Bracing for G-20 protests, Toronto closes doors
2010-06-24, San Francisco Chronicle/Bloomberg News

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/23/MNKC1E3VFB.DTL
The host city for this weekend's Group of 20 summit is preparing for an invasion of world leaders,
police and protesters by shutting its doors. The Toronto Blue Jays baseball team is leaving town,
the Royal Alexandra Theatre is closing for the first time in more than a century, and thousands of
bankers and money managers such as David Cockfield are working from home. "People coming
to cover the G-20 are going to find Toronto just empty, with wind blowing through the
downtown canyons, asking 'Where are all the people?' " said Cockfield, a portfolio manager at
MacNicol & Associates Asset Management. A 12-block section of Toronto's financial district
already is surrounded by 10-foot-high chain-link fences and concrete barriers, part of the largest
security operation ever in Canada with 20,000 police and security guards.
Note: What does it say about world government when a whole city has to close doors simply
because the world's leaders are meeting there?
Origin of Wall Streets Plunge Continues to Elude Officials

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/business/08trading.html
A day after a harrowing plunge in the stock market, federal regulators were still unable on Friday
[May 7] to answer the one question on every investors mind: What caused that near panic on Wall
Street? The cause or causes of the markets wild swing remained elusive, leaving what amounts to
a $1 trillion question mark hanging over the worlds largest, and most celebrated, stock market.
The initial focus of the investigations appeared to center on the way a growing number of highspeed trading networks interact with one another and with venerable exchanges like the New York
Stock Exchange. Most investors are unaware that these competing systems have fractured
the traditional marketplace and have displaced exchanges like the Big Board as the
dominant force in stock trading. In a joint statement issued after the close of trading, the S.E.C.
and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said they were ... looking particularly closely at
how different trading rules on different exchanges, which temporarily halted trading on some
markets while activity in the same stocks continued on other markets, might have contributed to
the problem. The pressure in the less-liquid markets was amplified by the computer-driven
trades, which led still other traders to pull back.
Note: For more information on the impact of the new high-speed computer-driven trading
methods, click here.
More Americans Considering Community Banks

2010-02-17, NPR News
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122945143
Bailouts and bonuses have many Americans frustrated with big banks. Some consumers think
these giant institutions have lost touch with customers and basic good business practices. They're
so fed up that they're holding these behemoths accountable by moving their money to
community banks. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post is spearheading a campaign
called Move Your Money, which encourages people to move from the banking giants to
smaller community banks. "There's a lot of anger about the way banks have acted," says
Huffington. "It's a total lack of empathy and concern." The group's Facebook page has more than
27,000 fans. "I think it's already an enormous success," says Huffington. "The fact that people are
considering it; the fact that people are doing it; the fact that people are feeling empowered."
Note: Please consider going local and supporting credit unions and community banks. For
information on moving your checking and savings accounts from profit oriented banks to
membership run credit unions, click here and here.
Why Is the UBS Whistle-Blower Headed to Prison?

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1928897,00.html
No one, including himself, would argue that Bradley Birkenfeld, 44, is a saint. But at the same time,
almost no one in the U.S. government would deny that Birkenfeld was absolutely essential to its
landmark tax-evasion case against Swiss banking giant UBS. The former UBS employee turned
whistle-blower exposed the previously hidden world of offshore tax shelters, which cheats the
Treasury out of about $100 billion a year. Thanks to his insider information, UBS was fined $780
million, and it promised to "exit entirely" from the U.S. tax-shelter business and to provide the
names of thousands of American tax dodgers, from which hundreds of millions of dollars still might
be collected. It also led to new tax treaties with the Swiss that should provide unprecedented tax
information in civil cases and better access to such data in criminal cases. Considering
Birkenfeld's help, many observers wonder why the Justice Department decided to arrest
and prosecute him. Many critics believe the decision to prosecute Birkenfeld, whom some
consider the most important whistle-blower in years, sends the worst possible message to
other financial-industry insiders who might be considering coming forward. The
Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington watchdog organization that has extensive
whistle-blower experience, says a chilling effect is already apparent: a senior executive at a
European bank that offers similar U.S. tax shelters is having second thoughts about going public
because of the Birkenfeld case.
Note: For lots more, including Obama's tight ties with UBS, see the New York Daily News article
here.
The demise of the dollar

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798...
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning
along with China, Russia, Japan and France to end dollar dealings for oil, moving
instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro,
gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council,
including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by
finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the
scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The
Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain
the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets.
The Americans ... are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies
Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan,
China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions
between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and
clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against
hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security." This sounds like a dangerous
prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil yet again
turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy.
Note: The publication of this article caused the value of the dollar to fall and the price of gold to
rise worldwide. For important ideas on how to reform the role of money in the world, click here.
Michael Moore blames capitalism for meltdown

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/18/MN0V19OTKP.DTL
Two weeks before his movie "Capitalism: A Love Story" opens nationwide, filmmaker Michael
Moore swept through San Francisco ... with a rally, a Commonwealth Club appearance and an
unlikely new antagonist: Democrats. When Moore criticized Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., this week
on NBC's "The Jay Leno Show" for getting "sweetheart loans" from a mortgage company he was
charged with overseeing, Moore said he got a call from a top Democratic Party official telling him
to "back off." But Moore, a longtime supporter of a single-payer health plan, didn't back off. In an
interview with The Chronicle, he chided House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not being aggressive
enough in pushing health care reform and ripped President Obama's financial team as "the foxes
guarding the henhouse." There is plenty of conservative-bashing in the film, which focuses on
capitalism as the "evil" at the root of the financial crisis, but the film also refers to Democratic
leaders as the "deliverymen" of the government bailouts for financially troubled Wall Street firms. In
his new film, Moore focuses on the investment house Goldman Sachs as a main beneficiary
of capitalism's largesse. He notes that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and senior White
House economic adviser Lawrence Summers are proteges of Robert Rubin, longtime Goldman
executive and President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary. "The fact that Geithner and Summers
are part of this administration makes everything that happens open to question and needs
our vigilance," Moore said, "because, literally now, the foxes are guarding the henhouse."
Note: For a review of Michael Moore's new film, "Capitalism: a Love Story," click here.
Why Are Corporate Insiders Selling Their Shares?

2009-09-08, Time magazine
Any time corporate executives and directors are heavily selling their company's stock there's
reason for concern. And lately they've been doing just that. The last time insider selling was as
high as it is now was in the period from late 2006 to late 2007. It was right after that insiderselling surge that the stock market began its long painful decline, says Charles Biderman,
CEO of TrimTabs, an independent institutional research firm. Biderman believes that insider trades
shoot higher when there's a disconnect between broad market opinions and what business
executives feel in their gut. "When [insiders think] things are going better than most people think,
they buy stock," he says. "When things are going worse than people think, they sell." That's to say,
insiders have no crystal ball but they often have access to up-to-the-minute sales data as well as
firsthand impressions from their sales managers and that gives them an inside track on what's
happening in the economy. When this special access leads them to be big sellers of their stock,
well, it's a vote of no confidence in their employer's near-term future. Biderman has measured the
ratio of insider selling to buying since 2004, and says historically the ratio is 7 to 1. (Insiders almost
always sell more than they buy because they receive stock as part of their compensation.) Right
now the ratio is 30, one of the highest he's recorded. November 2007 is the last time the ratio even
came close, at 24.
Note: According to the New York Times, insider trading levels are at the "highest levels since the
firm started keeping numbers in 2004." Why does this Time article state they were higher in 2006
to 2007? For a treasure trove of revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall
Street bailout, click here.
Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing

2009-04-10, USA Today
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-04-05-scrip_N.htm
A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.
Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and
support struggling local businesses. Businesses and individuals form a network to print
currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount say, 95 cents for $1 value and spend the full
value at stores that accept the currency. Workers with dwindling wages are paying for
groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North
Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts. Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist
who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting
because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash. Jackie
Smith of South Bend, Ind., who is working to launch a local currency, [said] "It reinforces the
message that having more control of the economy in local hands can help you cushion yourself
from the blows of the marketplace." During the Depression, local governments, businesses and
individuals issued currency, known as scrip, to keep commerce flowing when bank closings led to
a cash shortage. Pittsboro, N.C., is reviving the Plenty, a defunct local currency created in 2002. It
is being printed in denominations of $1, $5, $20 and $50. A local bank will exchange $9 for $10
worth of Plenty. "We're a wiped-out small town in America," says Lyle Estill, president of Piedmont
Biofuels, which accepts the Plenty. "This will strengthen the local economy. ... The nice thing about
the Plenty is that it can't leave here."
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click
here.
Revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall

Street
2009-04-03, PBS Bill Moyers Journal
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/transcript1.html
BILL MOYERS: For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of
Wall Street have reminded us that "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." In fact, the man
you're about to meet wrote a book with just that title. Bill Black, ... what's your definition of fraud?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I create trust in you, and
then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value." And as a result, there's
no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's
what we have. Well, The way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better.
Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you're a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing
you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination
creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you
rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it
inevitable that there's going to be a disaster down the road. BILL MOYERS: So you're ... saying
that CEOs of some of these banks and mortgage firms in order to increase their own personal
income, deliberately set out to make bad loans? WILLIAM K. BLACK: Yes. BILL MOYERS: If I
wanted to go looking for the parties to this, with a good bird dog, where would you send me?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, that's exactly what hasn't happened. We haven't looked, all right? You'd
look at the specialty lenders. The lenders that did almost all of their work in the sub-prime and
what's called Alt-A, liars' loans.
Note: William K. Black is the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the
savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. He is now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at
the University of Missouri. The video of this fascinating interview is available here. For a powerfully
revealing archive of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities of the financial bailout,
click here.
Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another $1 Trillion Bailout

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA
Public pension funds across the U.S. are hiding the size of a crisis thats been looming for years.
Retirement plans play accounting games with numbers, giving the illusion that the funds are
healthy. The paper alchemy gives governors and legislators the easy choice to contribute too little
or nothing to the funds, year after year. The misleading numbers posted by retirement fund
administrators help mask this reality: Public pensions in the U.S. had total liabilities of $2.9 trillion
as of Dec. 16, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Their total
assets are about 30 percent less than that, at $2 trillion. With stock market losses this year,
public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trillion. That lack of funds
explains why dozens of retirement plans in the U.S. have issued more than $50 billion in
pension obligation bonds during the past 25 years -- more than half of them since 1997 -public records show. The quick fix for pension funds becomes a future albatross for taxpayers.
The public gets nothing from pension bonds -- other than a chance to at least temporarily avoid
paying for higher pension fund contributions. Pension bonds portend the possibility of steep tax
increases. By law, states must guarantee public pension fund debts. What appears to be a
riskless strategy is actually very risky, says David Zion, director of accounting research for New
York-based Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. If the returns on the pension bond-financed assets
dont exceed the cost of servicing the debt, the taxpayers bear the brunt.
Note: The risks to pension funds may require yet another huge public bailout. Where will the
money come from? For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Stimulus Plan Places New Limits on Wall St. Bonuses

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/business/economy/14pay.html?partner=rss&emc...
Buried deep inside the ... economic stimulus bill ... is some bitter medicine for companies that have
received financial bailout funds. Over staunch objections from the Obama administration, Senate
Democrats inserted a provision that would impose restrictions on executive bonuses at financial
institutions that are much tougher than those proposed 10 days ago by the Treasury Department.
The provisions would prohibit cash bonuses and almost all other incentive compensation for the
five most-senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies that receive
money under TARP. The restriction with the most bite would bar top executives from receiving
bonuses that exceed one-third of their annual pay. The provision, written by Sen. Chris Dodd, DConn., highlighted the growing wrath ... over the lavish compensation that top Wall Street firms
and big banks awarded to senior executives at the same time that many of the companies,
teetering on the brink of insolvency, received taxpayer-paid bailouts. "The decisions of certain
Wall Street executives to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers have seriously
undermined public confidence," Dodd said Friday. "These tough new rules will help ensure
that taxpayer dollars no longer effectively subsidize lavish Wall Street bonuses." Top
economic advisers to President Obama adamantly opposed the pay restrictions, according to
congressional officials.
Note: For powerfully revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Analyst who raised alarm about Madoff nine years ago lambasts
authorities
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/feb/04/analyst-fingered-madoff-9-yea...
The financial analyst who nine years ago discovered Bernard Madoff's multi-billion dollar ... fraud
scheme today lambasted US securities officials who ignored his warnings, calling for a shakeup of
the US securities and exchange commission's structure. Harry Markopolos, a Massachusetts
financial analyst who since 2000 several times sought to alert the SEC to Madoff's fraud, told a
House of Representatives committee that the agency should replace its lawyer-heavy enforcement
staff with senior securities professionals who have years of industry experience and can
understand cutting-edge financial instruments used by hedge fund traders. He said regulators
should give fraud investigators a pay incentive to unearth large fraud, and eliminate the turf wars
that he said kept New York-based regulators from heeding tips he fed to the Boston office.
Markopolos discovered Madoff's alleged malfeasance in May 2000, after he became
suspicious of his years-long record of success in all market conditions. Markopolos said it
took him about five minutes perusing Madoff's marketing materials to suspect fraud, and
another roughly four hours to develop mathematical models to prove it. He eventually
delivered a detailed case to securities regulators in Boston and followed up several times over the
next eight years as he continued to gather evidence. He said that important SEC officials in New
York and Boston brushed his reports aside. In testimony before members of the House financial
services committee, Markopolos described "an abject failure by the regulatory agencies we entrust
as our watchdog".
Bad bank + toxic debts = moral hazard x10

2009-02-02, MarketWatch.com
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Bad-bank-toxic-debt-one/story.aspx?guid...
BusinessWeek says Paulson/Bush & Co. wasted $350 billion in TARP money ... the Congressional
Budget Office and GOP say Obama & Co. will waste another $800 billion on "non-stimulus"
programs ... Nobel economist [Joseph Stiglitz] calls [the Bad Bank] plan "cash for trash" ...
Warning, you are entering a bizarre space-time continuum ... where Wall Street makes
random quantum leaps between metaphoric realities. In the "Lost" television series we're
transported into a parallel reality, a perfect metaphor for today's global economic
meltdown, which is misunderstood and grossly mismanaged. Wall Street crashed ... on the
"Lost Island ... of Manhattan," the former center of world banking. The collateral damage has been
enormous: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, global trade, Iceland. [Wall
Street's] clueless leaders ... are "Lost" with no bottom, no recovery, no strategy in sight. A new
president, a secretive Fed and an old Congress are throwing around taxpayer trillions like free
candy ... on top of Bush's "$10 Trillion Hangover" ...after a clueless Wall Street wrote off trillions in
toxic debt, then wasted $350 billion in TARP bailout money, buying $50 million private jets,
attending golf outings at exclusive resorts, spending millions on CEO's office renovations and
paying $18 billion in year-end bonuses. Hope masks denial: Even President Obama's consultant
[Warren] Buffett acknowledges that the proposed stimulus plan "might not work." The stimulus
might not work? What if this last bullet is a blank? Should you prepare for the worst-case scenario?
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...
By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street except, that is, when the
bonuses arrived. Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of
the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the
now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for
the year. That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday
by the New York State comptroller. Some bankers took home millions last year even as their
employers lost billions. The comptrollers estimate, a closely watched guidepost of the annual
December-January bonus season, is based largely on personal income tax collections. It excludes
stock option awards that could push the figures even higher. The state comptroller, Thomas P.
DiNapoli, said it was unclear if banks had used taxpayer money for the bonuses, a possibility that
strikes corporate governance experts, and indeed many ordinary Americans, as outrageous. He
urged the Obama administration to examine the issue closely. The issue of transparency is a
significant one, and there needs to be an accounting about whether there was any taxpayer money
used to pay bonuses or to pay for corporate jets or dividends or anything else, Mr. DiNapoli said in
an interview.
Note: For many reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
U.S. moving toward czarism, away from democracy

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/18/INGP158S4G.DTL
Every patriot should be concerned about the intensifying efforts to supplant democracy with
something far more authoritarian. Call it American czarism. Czars - i.e., policymakers granted
extralegal, cross-agency powers - have become increasingly prevalent in our government over the
past century. Until now, this slow lurch toward czarism has primarily reflected the ancient, almost
innate human desire for power and paternalistic leadership. In recent years, this culture of
"presidentialism," as Vanderbilt Professor Dana Nelson calls it, has justified the Patriot Act,
warrantless wiretaps and a radical theory of the "unitary executive" that aims to provide a
jurisprudential rationale for total White House supremacy over all government. But only in the past
three months has American czarism metastasized from a troubling slow-growth tumor to a
potentially deadly cancer. In October, Congress relinquished its most basic oversight powers and
gave Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sole authority to dole out billions of bailout dollars to Wall
Street. At the same time, it did nothing when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke used
fiats to commit $5 trillion worth of new money, loan guarantees and loosened lending
requirements ... all while he refused to tell the public who is receiving the largesse. Indeed,
the Economist magazine's prediction that the "economic crisis may increase the attractiveness of
the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism" is coming true right here at home, as we seem ever
more intent on replicating - rather than resisting - that model.
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Madoff's fund may not have made a single trade

http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2009/01/15/afx5928915.html
Bernie Madoff's investment fund may never have executed a single trade, industry officials
say, suggesting detailed statements mailed to investors each month may have been an
elaborate mirage in a $50 billion fraud. An industry-run regulator for brokerage firms said ...
there was no record of Madoff's investment fund placing trades through his brokerage operation.
That means Madoff either placed trades through other brokerage firms, a move industry officials
consider unlikely, or he was not executing trades at all. 'Our exams showed no evidence of trading
on behalf of the investment advisor, no evidence of any customer statements being generated by
the broker-dealer,' said Herb Perone, spokesman for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Each month, Madoff sent out elaborate statements of trades conducted by his broker-dealer. There
also appear to be discrepancies between monthly statements sent to investors and the actual
prices at which the stocks traded on Wall Street. To some, the numbers did not add up. About 10
years ago, Harry Markopolos, then chief investment officer at Rampart Investment Management
Co in Boston, asked risk management consultant Daniel diBartolomeo to run Madoff's numbers
after Markopolos tried to emulate Madoff's strategy. DiBartolomeo ran regression analyses and
various calculations, but failed to reconcile them. For a decade, Markopolos raised the issue with
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has come under fire in Congress in recent
weeks for failing to act on Markopolos's warnings.
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.
Investors dump $89B in U.S. securities in historic fire sale

2009-01-04, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/2009-01-04-foreign-investors-us-securit...
The deep river of private money that helped knit together the global economy has abruptly dried
up, new government figures show. As the global financial crisis grew more severe this summer,
foreigners sold almost $90 billion of U.S. securities the greatest quarterly fire sale by overseas
investors since the government began keeping track in 1960. U.S. investors also are retrenching;
they unloaded about $85 billion worth of foreign holdings in the quarter, says the Commerce
Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. "We've had a global panic. Everyone is pulling
their money home," says economist Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute in Washington, D.C.
That's bad for economic growth in the U.S. because it threatens to starve capital-hungry
companies and entrepreneurs. But it's especially serious for emerging-market countries that rely
heavily on outside financing. Capital flows into countries such as South Korea, Turkey and Brazil
were evaporating even before the mid-September Lehman Bros. bankruptcy made things worse.
The reversal of private capital flows signals an abrupt end to a nearly two-decades-long era
of financial globalization, says economist Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Private flows into and out of the U.S. for purchases of stocks, corporate bonds and federal agency
bonds have dropped from around 18% of economic output to near zero "in a remarkably short
period of time," Setser says.
Credit-card industry may cut $2 trillion lines: analyst

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4B01HI20081201
The U.S. credit-card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months
due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending,
prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said. The credit card is the second key source of
consumer liquidity, the first being jobs, the Oppenheimer & Co analyst noted. "In other words, we
expect available consumer liquidity in the form of credit-card lines to decline by 45 percent."
Closing millions of accounts, cutting credit lines and raising interest rates are just some of the
moves credit card issuers are using to try to inoculate themselves from a tsunami of expected
consumer defaults. A consolidated U.S. lending market that is pulling back on credit is also posing
a risk to the overall consumer liquidity, Whitney said. Mortgages and credit cards are now
dominated by five players who are all pulling back liquidity, making reductions in consumer
liquidity seem unavoidable, she said. "We are now beginning to see evidence of broad-based
declines in overall consumer liquidity. Already, we have witnessed the entire mortgage market hit a
wall, and we believe it will, for the first time ever, show actual shrinkage over the next few months,"
she wrote. "In a country that offers hundreds of cereal and soda pop choices, the banking
industry has become one that offers very few choices", Whitney wrote in a note dated
November 30. "Pulling credit when job losses are increasing by over 50 percent year-over-year in
most key states is a dangerous and unprecedented combination, in our view," the analyst said.
Note: This article, in pointing out that the banking industry offers few choices for consumers, fails
to mention that the industry is rapidly becoming extremely concentrated, with major bank failures
and takeovers accelerating due to the financial crisis on Wall Street. And the bailout from the Fed
and Treasury has encouraged this concentration through huge tax breaks and risk protections. For
many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from reliable sources, click here.
Economic rescue could cost $8.5 trillion

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pricetag30-2008nov30,0,7549258.story
With its decision last week to pump an additional $1 trillion into the financial crisis, the government
eliminated any doubt that [it has] no hesitation in pledging to spend previously almost
unimaginable sums of money and running up federal budget deficits on a scale not seen since
World War II. Indeed, analysts warn that the nation's next financial crisis could come from the
staggering cost of battling the current one. Just last week, new initiatives added $600 billion to
lower mortgage rates, $200 billion to stimulate consumer loans and nearly $300 billion to
steady Citigroup, the banking conglomerate. That pushed the potential long-term cost of the
government's varied economic rescue initiatives, including direct loans and loan guarantees, to an
estimated total of $8.5 trillion -- half of the entire economic output of the U.S. this year. The
spending already has had a dramatic effect on the federal budget deficit, which soared to a record
$455 billion last year and began the 2009 fiscal year with an amazing $237-billion deficit for
October alone. Analysts say next year's budget deficit could easily bust the $1-trillion barrier. "I
didn't think we'd see that for a long time," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for
a Responsible Federal Budget. "There's a huge risk of another economic crisis, a debt crisis, once
we get on the other side of this one." Once the financial crisis eases, higher interest rates and
soaring inflation will be risks.
Citigroup gets a monetary lifeline from feds

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/24/BUST14B71M.DTL
The bailouts keep coming, and they seem to be getting worse for taxpayers. The deal worked out
over the weekend to prevent the collapse of Citigroup "is a terrible deal for taxpayers," says
Campbell Harvey, a Duke University global finance professor. "Some intervention was
necessary. But the terms of the intervention basically shafted the U.S. taxpayer." Under the
deal, the U.S. government will invest $20 billion in Citigroup preferred stock (on top of its previous
$25 billion capital injection from the Troubled Asset Relief Program) and guarantee up to $306
billion in mortgage and other assets. Citigroup would absorb the first $29 billion in losses on that
asset pool. Losses exceeding $29 billion would be shared 90 percent by the government and 10
percent by Citigroup. What do taxpayers get for taking on this risk? Citigroup will pay an 8 percent
dividend on the preferred stock or $560 million a year. By comparison, when Warren Buffett's
Berkshire Hathaway recently invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and $3 billion in General
Electric, it got preferred stock that pays a 10 percent dividend. The government also gets warrants
to purchase about $2.7 billion worth of Citigroup common stock at $10.61 per share. Citigroup's
shares closed at $5.95 per share Monday, up $2.18 from Friday. For the warrants to become
profitable, the common shares would have to nearly double.
Note: The answer to the question of what taxpayers get should be essentially nothing. Only
Citigroup shareholders will see the benefits mentioned, and very few taxpayers are shareholders.
Money is being thrown around like never before. For many revealing reports on the realities of the
Wall Street bailout, click here.
Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions

2008-11-18, CNBC
Given the speed at which the federal government is throwing money at the financial crisis, the
average taxpayer, never mind member of Congress, might not be faulted for losing track. CNBC,
however, has been paying very close attention and keeping a running tally of actual
spending as well as the commitments involved. Try $4.28 trillion dollars. That's
$4,284,500,000,000 and more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation, based
on our computations from a variety of estimates and sources. Not only is it an astronomical
amount of money, it's a complicated cocktail of budgeted dollars, actual spending, guarantees,
loans, swaps and other market mechanisms by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and other
offices of government taken over roughly the last year, based on government data and news
releases. Strictly speaking, not every cent is a direct result of what's called the financial crisis, but
it is arguably related to it. Some 68-percent of the sum falls under the Federal Reserve's umbrella,
while another 16 percent is the under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, as defined under
the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, signed into law in early October. The TARP alone is
bigger than virtually any other US government endeavor dating back to the Louisiana Purchase.
Note: That's over $10,000 per man, woman, and child in the U.S. Click on the link above to view a
highly informative slideshow, the "Biggest Budget Items in US History," comparing the Wall Street
bailout to famous historic government expenditures, and a chart, the "Financial Crisis Balance
Sheet," detailing the many components of the bailout. For many key articles revealing the hidden
realities of the bailout, click here.
No curbs on Wall Street pay despite meltdown
2008-10-24, San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/10/24/national/a143651D...
Despite the Wall Street meltdown, the nation's biggest banks are preparing to pay their workers as
much as last year or more, including bonuses tied to personal and company performance. So far
this year, nine of the largest U.S. banks, including some that have cut thousands of jobs, have
seen total costs for salaries, benefits and bonuses grow by an average of 3 percent from a year
ago, according to an Associated Press review. "Taxpayers have lost their life savings, and now
they are being asked to bail out corporations," New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
said of the AP findings. "It's adding insult to injury to continue to pay outsized bonuses and
exorbitant compensation." That there is a rise in pay, or at least not a pronounced dropoff, from
2007 is surprising because many of the same companies were doing some of their best business
ever, at least in the first half of last year. In 2008, each quarter has been weaker than the last.
"There are, of course, expectations that the payouts should be going down," David Schmidt, a
senior compensation consultant at James F. Reda & Associates. "But we haven't seen that show
up yet." Some banks are setting aside large amounts. At Citigroup, which has cut 23,000 jobs this
year amid the crisis, pay expenses for the first nine months of this year came to $25.9 billion, 4
percent more than the same period last year. Typically, about 60 percent of Wall Street pay goes to
salary and benefits, while about 40 percent goes to end-of-the-year cash and stock bonuses that
hinge on performance, both for the individual and the company.
Note: For lots more on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
U.S. Is Said to Be Urging New Mergers in Banking

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/business/21plan.html?partner=rssuserland&em...
In a step that could accelerate a shakeout of the nations banks, the Treasury Department hopes to
spur a new round of mergers by steering some of the money in its $250 billion rescue package to
banks that are willing to buy weaker rivals, according to government officials. As the Treasury
embarks on its unprecedented recapitalization, it is becoming clear that the government
wants not only to stabilize the industry, but also to reshape it. Two senior officials said the
selection criteria would include banks that need more capital to finance acquisitions.
Treasury doesnt want to prop up weak banks, said an official who spoke on condition of
anonymity, because of the sensitivity of the matter. One purpose of this plan is to drive
consolidation. With bankers traumatized by the credit crisis and the loss of investor confidence,
officials said, there are plenty of banks open to selling themselves. The hurdle is a lack of wellcapitalized buyers. Stable national players like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells
Fargo are already digesting acquisitions. A second group of so-called super-regional banks are
well positioned to take over their competitors, officials said, but have been reluctant to undertake
or unable to complete deals. By offering capital at a favorable rate, the government may
encourage them to expand.
Note: So the U.S. government is using billions of taxpayer dollars to support megamergers which
create less competition and more monopolistic conditions. Hmmmm. Is that what the taxpayers
really want? For lots more highly revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Banks Are Likely to Hold Tight to Bailout Money

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/business/17bank.html?partner=rssuserland&em...
All of the combined profits that major banks earned in recent years have vanished. Since mid2007, when the credit crisis erupted, the countrys nine largest banks have written down the value
of their troubled assets by a combined $323 billion. The problems that began with home
mortgages, analysts say, are migrating to auto, credit card and commercial real estate loans. The
deepening red ink underscores a crucial question about the governments plan: Will lenders deploy
their new-found capital quickly, as the Treasury hopes, and unlock the flow of credit through the
economy? Or will they hoard the money to protect themselves? John A. Thain, the chief executive
of Merrill Lynch, said on Thursday that banks were unlikely to act swiftly. We will have the
opportunity to redeploy that, Mr. Thain said of the new capital. But at least for the next quarter, its
just going to be a cushion." For every dollar the banks earned during the industrys most
prosperous years, they have now wiped out $1.06. [Treasury Secretary Henry M.] Paulson
unveiled plans to provide $125 billion to nine banks on terms that were more favorable than they
would have received in the marketplace. The government, however, has offered no written
requirements about how or when the banks must use the money. There is no express
statutory requirement that says you must make this amount of loans, said John C. Dugan,
the comptroller of the currency. The banks could use the money from the government for
any number of things. Some analysts say the banks may use it to acquire weaker competitors.
Others say they might use it to avoid painful cost-cutting. And still others say the banks may sit on
the capital.
Note: With no requirements placed on how the bailout money is to be used, what is to stop the
banks from using taxpayers's money to inflate the bonuses to top executives, or to increase
political campaign contributions to Congress members in return for future favorable legislation?
Outrage Leads AIG To Cancel Second Luxury Retreat

2008-10-09, ABC News
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5994567
Battered by outrage over the $440,000 it spent on a luxury retreat less than a week after the
federal government loaned it $85 billion dollars, the giant AIG Insurance Company says it has
called off plans to hold a second retreat next week at the exclusive Ritz-Carlton Resort in Half
Moon Bay, California. The Ritz-Carlton outing, like the earlier one, was to reward top independent
insurance agents, which the company called a "standard industry practice." "I am somewhat
relieved to hear that AIG has canceled their Ritz-Carlton conference, which was nothing less than
a slap in the face of the American people," said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). "I cannot fathom
how in the same day -- the very same day -- that AIG asked the government for another
$37.8 billion loan, the company would even consider moving forward with plans to host
another large conference at another luxury resort." Critics ... have denounced AIG for holding
an expensive retreat at a time of economic crisis. The criticism has been "demoralizing" within AIG
said Nicholas Ashooh, a spokesperson for AIG, "but we have to recognize that we're in a different
environment and we have to adjust to that." AIG says it has instructed its worldwide managers to
re-scrutinize how money is being spent. "We're certainly reviewing all our expenditures in light of
financial circumstances and the fact that taxpayer dollars are helping to support AIG as we get
through this difficult credit crisis," said Ashooh.
Note: For many reports of corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
After Bailout, AIG Execs Head to California Resort

2008-10-07, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5973452&page=1
Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of
the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St.
Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today. "Rooms at
this resort can cost over $1,000 a night," Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said. AIG
documents obtained by Waxman's investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for
the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa
charges. "They're getting their pedicures and their manicures and the American people are
paying for that," said Cong. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). Appearing before the committee, Martin
Sullivan, the AIG CEO until June, said the company was overwhelmed by a "financial global
tsunami," and that "no simple or single cause" was to blame. "I am heartbroken at what has
happened," Sullivan said. Robert Willumstad, the CEO from June to September, 2008, maintained
AIG was a victim of a "crisis in confidence" and an "unprecedented global catastrophe." But
Congressional investigators raised questions of "mismanagement" and whether AIG executives
sought to "cook the books" and hide negative information from outside auditors. Waxman also said
there is evidence the two men changed the bonus schedule once the company began to post
losses, so that executives under the "Senior Partners Plan" would continue to make multi-million
dollar salaries. Sullivan was given a $15 million "golden parachute" payment after being replaced
as CEO in June.
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
'Deficit hawks' revive attacks on nation's fiscal woes

2008-06-24, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-06-24-budget-hawks_N.htm
Eleven years after the last major effort to balance the federal government's books, advocates of
fiscal integrity are seeking to make a comeback. Most notable is Pete Peterson, a son of Greek
immigrants and Wall Street chieftain who has vowed to invest $1 billion of his personal fortune to
alert Americans that their government is going broke. He has lured former U.S. comptroller general
David Walker to his fledgling Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which will finance advertising,
lobbying and grass-roots efforts designed to pressure the next president and Congress. The
situation has gotten much worse since past presidents and Congress negotiated deficit-reduction
deals in 1990, 1993 and 1997. The federal deficit is estimated at $357 billion. The national
debt, as calculated by the Treasury Department, is more than $9.3 trillion. Future liabilities,
from government pensions to elderly entitlements, bring the total to $53 trillion $175,000
per person, according to Peterson and Walker. Both men say a comprehensive fix will need to
include overhauls of the nation's health care and tax systems. At the core of the effort is Peterson,
82, a founder of the Concord Coalition fiscal watchdog group, who has preached the danger of
federal budget deficits for decades. He and Walker spoke Tuesday at a House Budget Committee
hearing and met privately with congressional backers of balanced budgets. Peterson is retiring this
year as senior chairman of the Blackstone Group, which he co-founded. [He is a] former secretary
of Commerce in the Nixon administration and chairman of Lehman Brothers.
Economists Debate Link Between War, Credit Crisis

For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the connection between the Iraq conflict and the U.S. economic
downturn is simple: "The president has taken us into a failed war," [she] said recently. "He's taken
us deeply into debt, and that debt is taking us into recession." Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prizewinning economist who wrote the new book The Three Trillion Dollar War, contends that the
connection is real. Even with a growing energy demand from China, the United States and
elsewhere, oil traders anticipated before the war that the price of oil would remain about $25 a
barrel. Instead, it has soared to more than $100 a barrel. Iraqi oil production has not risen with
demand, in part because investment in the Middle East has been stunted by war-related unrest.
Those price increases are self-perpetuating, Stiglitz argues. Oil-rich Persian Gulf states are so
awash in money that they are not sure what to do with it all. That cash, through state-owned
sovereign wealth funds, has flowed into stocks, bonds and other investments, creating incentives
for lenders to offer low-interest loans, many of which have now gone sour. But that is only one
factor, by Stiglitz's accounting. The federal government has sunk deeply into debt, first with
tax cuts, then with accelerating war expenditures that have easily topped half a trillion
dollars. So the Federal Reserve Board used low interest rates and the free flow of money to
keep the economy growing. Cheap credit sparked rash loans, a housing bubble and the
current crisis. "The war played a very important role," Stiglitz said. The analysis is politically
powerful because people believe it. A CNN poll last month found that 71 percent of Americans say
government spending in Iraq is a factor in the economic downturn.
Note: For a powerful personal account of the economic underpinnings of modern war by a US
Marine Corps general, click here.
JPMorgan memo shows dirty tricks of mortgage trade

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed1/idUSN2838474720080328
An internal JPMorgan Chase memo entitled "Zippy Cheats & Tricks" offers a peek into just the sort
of dubious lending tactics that underpinned the U.S. housing market's deepening downward spiral.
The memo outlines step-by-step instructions on how to beef up mortgage applicants' stated
incomes in order to help them qualify for home loans. They read as follows: "1. Make sure you
input all income in base income. DO NOT break it down by overtime, commissions or bonus. 2. If
your borrower is getting a gift, add it to a bank account along with the rest of the assets. Be sure to
remove any mention of gift funds. 3. If you do not get (the desired results), try resubmitting with
slightly higher income. Inch it up $500 to see if you can get the findings you want. Do the same for
assets." In the context of a broader housing debacle, the memo [provides] some clues into just
what lengths bankers went to [to] push loans through the system. Over the past six months, rising
defaults on home loans have not only battered the mortgage sector, threatening recession, but
also sent the banking industry into a tailspin. Many large banks repackaged mortgages and held
them on their balance sheets as complex derivatives securities, essentially bonds backed by other
types of loans. The conclusion of the JPMorgan memo, written in bright purple letters,
certainly hints at a credit system gone awry: "It's super easy! Give it a try!" it reads. "If you
get stuck, call me ... I am happy to help!"
Note: Though this highly revealing news was reported by the venerable Reuters news agency,
why did no major media pick it up? For numerous reports of financial corruption from verifiable
sources, click here.
Foreign investors veto Fed rescue

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/03/17/ccview117.xml
As feared, foreign bond holders have begun to exercise a collective vote of no confidence in the
devaluation policies of the US government. The Federal Reserve faces a potential veto of its
rescue measures. Asian, Mid East and European investors stood aside at last week's auction of
10-year US Treasury notes. "It was a disaster," said Ray Attrill from 4castweb. "We may be close
to the point where the uglier consequences of benign neglect towards the currency are revealed."
The share of foreign buyers ("indirect bidders") plummeted to 5.8pc, from an average 25pc over
the last eight weeks. On the Richter Scale of unfolding dramas, this matches the death of Bear
Stearns. Rightly or wrongly, a view has taken hold that Washington is cynically debasing the
coinage, hoping to export its day of reckoning through beggar-thy-neighbour policies. But even if
you think the Fed has no choice other than to take dramatic action, the critics are also right in
warning that this comes at a serious cost and it may backfire. The imminent risk is that global
flight from US Treasury and agency debt drives up long-term rates, the key funding
instrument for mortgages and corporations. The effect could outweigh Fed easing. Overall
credit conditions could tighten into a slump (like 1930). It's the stuff of bad dreams. As the
Wall Street Journal wrote this weekend, the entire country is facing a "margin call". The US has
come to depend on $800bn inflows of cheap foreign capital each year to cover shopping bills. As
of June 2007, foreigners owned $6,007bn of long-term US debt. [Most] likely, the twin crash in the
dollar and US agency debt reflects a broad exodus by global wealth managers, afraid that America
is spinning out of control.
Note: Why is the U.S. media not reporting important information like this? And why was the fact
that gold broke $1,000 for the first time ever in mid-March not reported widely in the media?
Wall Street paying record bonuses

2008-01-08, New York Daily News/Bloomberg News
http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/01/18/2008-01-18_wall_street_paying_rec...
Wall Street's five biggest firms are paying a record $39 billion in bonuses for 2007. It was a year
when three of the firms suffered their worst quarterly losses in history and shareholders lost over
$80 billion. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns
together awarded $65.6 billion in compensation and benefits last year to their 186,000 employees.
That means year-end bonuses, at 60% of the total, exceeded the $36 billion distributed in 2006
when the industry reported all-time high profits. The firms have said they are eliminating at least
6,200 jobs amid mounting losses from the subprime mortgage mess. The payouts come as the
economy slows, with unemployment rising, retail sales declining and new home foreclosures
surging to a record. The industry's bonuses are larger than the gross domestic products of
Sri Lanka, Lebanon or Bulgaria, and the average bonus of $219,198 is more than four times
higher than the median U.S. household income in 2006, according to Census Bureau data.
Shareholders in the securities industry endured their worst year since 2002, as Merrill and Bear
Stearns slumped more than 40% and the CEOs at both firms gave up their jobs. Morgan Stanley
fell 21% and Lehman dropped 16%. Only Goldman rose, gaining 7.9%.
Note: For lots more on escalating income inequality, click here.
Bleakonomics
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html?ex=1348804800&...
The Shock Doctrine is [Naomi] Kleins ambitious look at the economic history of the last 50 years
and the rise of free-market fundamentalism around the world. Disaster capitalism, as she calls it,
is a violent system that ... requires terror to do its job. Extreme capitalism loves a blank slate, often
finding its opening after crises or shocks. Klein compares radical capitalist economic policy to
shock therapy administered by psychiatrists. She interviews Gail Kastner, a victim of covert C.I.A.
experiments in interrogation techniques that were carried out by the scientist Ewen Cameron in the
1950s. His idea was to use electroshock therapy to break down patients. Once complete
depatterning had been achieved, the patients could be reprogrammed. For Klein the larger
lessons are clear: Countries are shocked by wars, terror attacks, coups dtat and
natural disasters. Then they are shocked again by corporations and politicians who
exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock
therapy. People who dare to resist are shocked for a third time, by police, soldiers and
prison interrogators. Klein offers an account of Milton Friedman she calls him the other
doctor shock. In the 1950s, as Cameron was conducting his experiments, the Chicago School
was developing the ideas that [dominate capitalist planning today]. She quotes the Chilean
economist Orlando Letelier on the inner harmony between the terror of the Pinochet regime and
its free-market policies. Letelier said that Milton Friedman shared responsibility for the regimes
crimes, rejecting his argument that he was only offering technical advice. Letelier was killed in
1976 by a car bomb planted in Washington [DC]. For Klein, he was another victim of the Chicago
Boys who wanted to impose free-market capitalism on the region. In the Southern Cone, where
contemporary capitalism was born, the war on terror was a war against all obstacles to the new
order, she writes.
Note: For highly revealing, verifiable information on government mind control programs, click here.
Auditors: Billions of U.S. tax dollars wasted in Iraq

2007-02-16, CNN News/Associated Press
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/16/iraq.reconstruction.ap
The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in
Iraq contracts found that ... about $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq
reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses. Of the $10
billion in overpriced contracts or undocumented costs, more than $2.7 billion were charged by
Halliburton Co., the oil-field services company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk. More
than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported,
nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall.
"There is no accountability," said David M. Walker, who heads the auditing arm of Congress.
"Organizations charged with overseeing contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not
held accountable. The individuals responsible are not held accountable." The investigators urged
the Pentagon to reconsider its growing reliance on outside contractors. Layers of subcontractors,
poor documentation and lack of strong contract management are rampant. Walker complained that
GAO investigators have difficulty getting basic detail about reconstruction contracts such as
expenses and subcontractors involved because many Pentagon divisions fail to consistently track
or fully report them. Noting that auditors still have $300 billion of Iraq spending to review, Waxman
said the total amount of waste, fraud and abuse "could be astronomical."
Note: To understand how so much money can go missing, read what a top U.S. general has to say
here. And for major media articles claiming hundreds of billions of dollars are missing, click here.
Senate panel probes ways super-rich can avoid taxes

2006-08-01, San Francisco Chronicle/New York Times
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/01/MNGO6K8OI41.DTL
So many super-rich Americans evade taxes using offshore accounts that law enforcement
cannot control the growing misconduct, according to a Senate report that provides the
most detailed look ever at high-level tax schemes. Cheating now equals about 7 cents out of
each dollar paid by honest taxpayers, as much as $70 billion a year, the report estimated. "The
universe of offshore tax cheating has become so large that no one, not even the United States
government, could go after all of it," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., whose staff ran the
investigation. The report details how the Quellos Group, a tax shelter boutique based in Seattle,
"concocted a tax shelter" using $9.6 billion "worth of fake securities transactions that were used to
generate billions of dollars of fake capital losses." When investigators asked for trading records,
Levin said, they were first told the trades were private, over-the-counter transactions. He said
investigators asked for trading tickets or other evidence of who owned the $9.6 billion worth of
stock and were told the stocks were never owned by the parties involved. "They just wrote down
numbers on paper and claimed losses," he said. "It was just like fantasy baseball, except the taxes
not paid were for real."
Note: Up to $70 billion is lost to the U.S. Treasury each year, yet law enforcement "cannot control"
the problem. Hmmmm. If just $10 million were directed to stop the losses, I suspect things might
change and the investment would be paid back many fold. Could pressure from high places be
preventing such an investigation?
Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules

2006-05-23, BusinessWeek
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2006/nf20060523_2210.htm
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad
authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual
accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry
in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye. Unbeknownst to
almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy
Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects
from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that
they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside
the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver
under this provision. The timing of Bush's move is intriguing. On the same day the President
signed the memo, Porter Goss resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Only
six days later ... USA Today reported that the National Security Agency had obtained
millions of calling records of ordinary citizens provided by three major U.S. phone
companies. Negroponte oversees both the CIA and NSA in his role as the administration's top
intelligence official. In addition to refusing to explain why Bush decided to delegate this authority to
Negroponte, the White House declined to say whether Bush or any other President has ever
exercised the authority and allowed a company to avoid standard securities disclosure and
accounting requirements.
Note: For many revealing reports on government secrecy from major media sources, click here.
U.S. corporations paying less in taxes

2004-09-23, MSNBC/Forbes
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6080561/
The effective tax rate for America's largest and most profitable corporations has sharply
declined in recent years, and one third of such companies paid zero taxes -- or less -- in at
least one of the last three years. In 2003 alone, 46 of the 275 companies...paid no taxes at all in
2003, despite reporting a total of $42.6 billion in pre-tax profits. Indeed, these companies received
$5.4 billion in tax rebates that year. Half of the "tax-break dollars" over the three-year period went
to just 25 companies. All told, 82 companies paid zero or negative taxes in at least one of the
last three years and 28, including Boeing, paid negative taxes for the entire period. The
largest beneficiaries were some of the most profitable companies: General Electric, SBC
Communications, Citigroup, IBM and Microsoft. Of the 10 most profitable U.S.-based companies
on the Forbes 2000, only Wal-Mart and Freddie Mac do not appear on the study's list of top 25 tax
break beneficiaries. At the same time, IRS data indicates that the overall share of federal taxes
paid by corporations in now less than 10 percent, down from nearly 13 percent in 1997. This trend
occurred against a backdrop of rising corporate earnings. The study attributes the trend to the
widening availability of offshore tax shelters and other lawful avoidance techniques.
Technology gets under clubbers' skin

2004-06-09, CNN News
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06/09/spain.club
Queuing to get into one nightclub in Spain could soon be a thing of the past for regular
customers thanks to a tiny computer chip implanted under their skin. The technology,
known as a VeriChip, also means nightclubbers can leave their cash and cards at home and
buy drinks using a scanner. The bill can then be paid later. Clubbers who want to join the
scheme at Baja Beach Club in Barcelona pay 125 euros (about US $150) for the VeriChip -- about
the size of a grain of rice -- to be implanted in their body. Then when they pass through a scanner
the chip is activated and it emits a signal containing the individual's number, which is then
transmitted to a secure data storage site. The club's director, Conrad Chase, said he began using
the VeriChip, made by Applied Digital Solutions, in March 2004 because he needed something
similar to a VIP card and wanted to provide his customers with better service. He said 10 of the
club's regular customers, including himself, have been implanted with the chip, and predicted more
would follow. "I know many people who want to be implanted," said Chase. "Almost everybody now
has a piercing, tattoos or silicone. Why not get the chip and be original?" Chase said VeriChip
could also boost security by speeding up checks at airports, for example. He denied the scheme
had any drawbacks. The VeriChip is an in-house debit card and contains no personal information.
Note: Why is the media so upbeat about this? The article raises very few questions, yet seems to
promote microchip implants in humans as the wave of the future for commerce.
Bush's Grandfather Directed Bank Tied to Man Who Funded Hitler

2003-10-17, Fox News/Associated Press
President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because
of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government
documents show. Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp., a New
York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to
recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press. Fritz
Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler. Reports of Bush's involvement with the
seized bank have been circulating on the Internet for years and have been reported by some
mainstream media. The newly declassified documents provide additional details about the Union
Banking-Thyssen connection. Union Banking was owned by a Dutch bank, Bank voor Handel en
Scheepvaardt N.V., which was "closely affiliated" with the German conglomerate United Steel
Works, according to an Oct. 5, 1942, report from the federal Office of Alien Property Custodian.
The Dutch bank and the steel firm were part of the business and financial empire of Thyssen and
his brother, Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, the report said. The 4,000 Union Banking shares
owned by the Dutch bank were registered in the names of the seven U.S. directors, [including
Prescott Bush and E. Roland Harriman, the bank chairman and brother of former New York Gov.
W. Averell Harriman]. Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of
Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as
other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel.
Buffett warns on investment 'time bomb'

2003-03-04, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2817995.stm
The rapidly growing trade in derivatives poses a "mega-catastrophic risk" for the economy and
most shares are still "too expensive", ... investor Warren Buffett has warned. The derivatives
market has exploded in recent years, with investment banks selling billions of dollars worth of
these investments to clients as a way to off-load or manage market risk. But Mr Buffett argues
that such highly complex financial instruments are time bombs and "financial weapons of
mass destruction" that could harm not only their buyers and sellers, but the whole
economic system. Derivatives are financial instruments that allow investors to speculate on the
future price of, for example, commodities or shares - without buying the underlying investment.
Outstanding derivatives contracts - excluding those traded on exchanges such as the International
Petroleum Exchange - are worth close to $85 trillion, according to the International Swaps and
Derivatives Association. Some derivatives contracts, Mr Buffett says, appear to have been devised
by "madmen". He warns that derivatives can push companies onto a "spiral that can lead to a
corporate meltdown", like the demise of the notorious hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management
in 1998.
Note: Though written in 2003, this excellent article reveals the incredible risk of creating
derivatives that have more value than the entire GDP of the world. The risk has increased
tremendously since then.
New York City Mayor Hylan Foresees A Revolt

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F07EED6153AEF33A25753C1A96...
One of the most astounding facts about our American life is that the wealth and property of the
country and the control of the machinery of government are in the hands of less than 2 per cent of
the inhabitants. A small group of excessively wealthy individuals, members of the
Republican and Democratic Parties alike, have, through the exercise of powerful, sinister
and, too often, unlawful influence, usurped the government and seized public property on
such a wholesale scale that they have become ... virtual dictators. A small group of
international bankers and money lenders, public utility exploiters and tariff beneficiaries have
actually dictated nominations for offices up to the Presidency. They have placed the slickest,
cleverest, and most cunning manipulators in official positions, even in the minor posts, where they
could be of service when called upon by the invisible power which, utterly devoid of all humanity,
seeks but to wallow in riches. So absolute is the power of America's secret dynastic rulers that
they have, without hindrance, written the very platforms and pledges of political parties, and
because of substantial contributions to campaign chests they have arrogated to themselves the
right to dictate the governmental policies of the administration elected to office regardless of party.
Woe to the public officials who dare to resent their dictatorship! If there be such public officials who
will not submit to their imperious dictation, then the flood-gates of lying press propaganda are
released, sweeping the unhappy public servant to an earthly as well as political grave, or
compelling him to compromise with his conscience and become their subservient tool to the end of
his term.
Note: John F. Hylan was Mayor of New York City from 1918 to 1925. New York has long been the
US banking and financial headquarters, with the mayor's office about a half-mile from the New
York Stock Exchange. The rest of this important article can be accessed at this link as well as the
one above. It is interesting to note that this article was published not long after the Federal
Reserve was created, turning over huge amounts of control of the U.S. economy to the most
powerful bankers in the country. For more on this, click here.
HSBC and Goldman sued for allegedly fixing metal price

2014-11-26, BBC News
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30209544
Goldman Sachs and HSBC are among four platinum and palladium dealers to be sued in
New York for allegedly fixing the price of the metals. The four companies are said to have
rigged prices for eight years. BASF and Standard bank were also sued in the first lawsuit of
its kind in the US. The four defendants declined to comment. Modern Settings, a Florida-based
maker of jewellery and police badges, said purchasers lost millions of dollars. The Florida
company filed the complaint in Manhattan federal court. The companies were accused of having
conspired since 2007 to rig the twice-daily platinum and palladium fixings. It is alleged that the
companies illegally shared customer data and then used that information to engage in front
running ... a form of market manipulation in which traders profit by using information about their
clients' trading intentions. Traders will often know how a particular client order will affect the market
and can place their own trades ahead of that order to benefit. The four companies in this case
are also accused of manufacturing "spoof" orders. Goldman, HSBC and Standard Bank
declined to comment. International regulators have tightened scrutiny of pricing benchmarks in
recent years. The tighter regulation comes after a currency trading scandal and the Libor scandal,
which fixed a benchmark interest rate.
widespread corruption in banking and finance. For additional information, see the excellent,
reliable resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information Center.
Credit Suisse Pleads Guilty to Aiding Tax Evasion

2014-05-20, NBC News/Reuters
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/55216700#.U4CjcHbRl9Q
Credit Suisse has agreed to pay a $2.5 billion fine to authorities in the United States for helping
Americans evade taxes, after becoming the largest bank in 20 years to plead guilty to a U.S.
criminal charge. Switzerland's second largest bank escaped what could have been the worst
outcome for its business - its top management stayed in place and it will not have to hand over
client data, protected by Swiss secrecy laws. And the New York state bank regulator decided not
to revoke the bank's license in the state. U.S. prosecutors said the bank helped clients deceive
U.S. tax authorities by concealing assets in illegal, undeclared bank accounts, in a
conspiracy that spanned decades, and in one case began more than a century ago. The
Justice Department has not often pursued such convictions of financial companies,
especially large ones that could become destabilized following an indictment. Credit Suisse
will pay the penalties to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal
Reserve and New York's banking regulator, the New York State Department of Financial Services.
It had already paid just under $200 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Some
analysts said clients and counterparties could pull their business due to the guilty plea. The United
States has been trying to wrest client data from Swiss banks in a long-standing fight with
Switzerland and its bank secrecy laws. The standoff has already forced Wegelin & Co, the oldest
Swiss private bank, to close shop after a guilty plea to charges of helping U.S. clients evade taxes.
10 Things Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Protection Agency Has Done

for You
2014-03-14, Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/elizabeth-warren-consumer-financi...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the watchdog agency conceived of and
established by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the wake of the financial crisis, ... has
issued dozens of protections shielding consumers from shady practices by mortgage
lenders, student loan servicers, and credit card companies. Here are ten things the CFPB,
which was created in 2011, has done to protect the little guy: 1. Mortgage lenders can no longer
push you into a high-priced loan. 2. New homeowners are less likely to be hit by foreclosure. 3. If
you are are delinquent on your mortgage payments, loan servicers have to try harder to help you
avoid foreclosure. 4. Millions of Americans get a low-cost home loan counselor. 5. Borrowers with
high-cost mortgages get an outside eye. 6. Fly-by-night financial players will be held accountable.
7. Folks scammed by credit card companies get refunds. 8. Student lenders face scrutiny. 9.
Service members get extra protection. 10. Consumers get a help center: If your bank or lender
does anything you think is unfair, the bureau has a division dedicated to fielding consumer
complaints. The agency promises to work with companies to try to fix consumers' problems.
Justice Department Inquiry Takes Aim at Banks Business With Payday

Lenders
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/justice-dept-inquiry-takes-aim-at-bank...
Federal prosecutors are trying to thwart the easy access that predatory lenders and dubious online
merchants have to Americans bank accounts by going after banks that fail to meet their
obligations as gatekeepers to the United States financial system. The Justice Department is
weighing civil and criminal actions against dozens of banks, sending out subpoenas to more than
50 payment processors and the banks that do business with them, according to government
officials. In the new initiative, called Operation Choke Point, the agency is scrutinizing banks both
big and small over whether they, in exchange for handsome fees, enable businesses to illegally
siphon billions of dollars from consumers checking accounts. The critical role played by banks
largely plays out in the shadows because they typically do not deal directly with the Internet
merchants. What they do is provide banking services to third-party payment processors, financial
middlemen that, in turn, handle payments for their merchant customers. The new, more rigorous
oversight could have a chilling effect on Internet payday lenders, which have migrated from
storefronts to websites where they offer short-term loans at interest rates that often exceed 500
percent annually. As a growing number of states enact interest rate caps that effectively ban the
loans, the lenders increasingly depend on the banks for their survival. With the banks help,
the lenders that typically work with a third-party payment processor that has an account at
the banks are able, authorities say, to automatically deduct payments from customers
checking accounts even in states where the loans are illegal.
G-20 Nations Fully Endorse OECD Action Plan on Tax Evasion

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-20/g-20-nations-fully-endorse-oecd-acti...
Group of 20 nations, [which account] for almost 90 percent of the global economy, fully endorse
the ambitious and comprehensive plan presented by the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development to prevent the largest companies from using complicated ownership structures
and transfer pricing to avoid paying taxes where they do most of their business. Strategies used at
U.S. companies including Google, Apple and Yahoo! have been targeted in legislative hearings as
governments look to improved tax collection to fill state coffers. Low tax rates paid by large
multinational companies means smaller businesses and individuals are left with a
disproportionately larger burden, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria told reporters yesterday.
The OECD published its 40-page report as deficit-laden governments attempt to increase revenue
collected from profitable enterprises. It follows hearings in the U.S. and U.K. that revealed how
companies have avoided billions in taxes by attributing profits to mailbox subsidiaries in
places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Under current law, such offshore subsidiaries
can take credit for profits arising from patents developed in countries like the U.S. and U.K. -generally with cash the parent companies provided. Mountain View, California-based Google has
avoided as much as $2 billion in worldwide income taxes annually by attributing profits to a
subsidiary in Bermuda that holds the rights to its intellectual property for sales outside the U.S..
Note: For more on corporate corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
U.K. Bankers Face Decade Bonus Delay and Criminal Sanctions

2013-06-19, Bloomberg/Washington Post
http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-MOLK2O07SXL101-0E799136C7JHEP4...
Senior employees at U.K. banks may face a 10-year wait for bonuses under proposals put forward
by a committee investigating the failures of the industry, which also recommended making
reckless management of lenders a crime. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards'
... proposal to introduce a criminal offence for mismanagement, which could see executives of
failed firms facing jail time, was endorsed by Prime Minister David Cameron. The potential
rewards for fleeting short-term success have sometimes been huge, but the penalties for failure,
often manifest only later, have been much smaller or negligible, the authors of the report said.
"Performance should be assessed using a range of measures rather than just return on
equity, which creates perverse incentives, the committee said. "Taxpayers have bailed out
the banks. The public have the sense that advantage has been taken of them, that bankers have
received huge rewards, that some of those rewards have not been properly earned, and in some
cases have been obtained through dishonesty, and that these huge rewards are excessive,
bearing little or no relationship to the value of the work done. The committee recommended
introducing an offence for reckless misconduct and potential prison time for bankers
found responsible for the worst mismanagement, the first such sanctions."
Note: For a related article in the London Review of Books, which starts "the blame in Spain falls
mainly on the banks as it does in Ireland, in Greece, in the US, and pretty much everywhere else
too," click here. For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable
major media sources available here.
Political intelligence firms set up investor meetings at White House

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/political-intelligence-firms-set-up-in...
Wall Street investors hungry for advance information on upcoming federal health-care decisions
repeatedly held private discussions with Obama administration officials, including a top White
House adviser helping to implement the Affordable Care Act. The private conversations show that
the increasingly urgent race to acquire political intelligence goes beyond the communications
with congressional staffers that have become the focus of heightened scrutiny in recent weeks.
White House records show that Elizabeth Fowler, then a top health-policy adviser to President
Obama, met with executives from half a dozen investment firms in 2011 and 2012. Among
them was Kris Jenner, a stock picker with T. Rowe Price Investment Services who managed
its $6 billion Health Sciences Fund. Separately, [Andrew Shin,] an official in the agency that
oversees Medicare and Medicaid spoke in December with managers of hedge funds, pension
plans and mutual funds in a conference call. That call and the White House meetings Fowler
attended were arranged by political-intelligence firms, an expanding class of consultants in
Washington that specialize in providing government information to Wall Street. Hedge fund
executives and other investors are increasingly interested in the timing and nature of health-policy
decisions in Washington because they directly affect the profits and stock prices of
pharmaceutical, insurance, hospital and managed-care companies. Similar interest surrounds
other industry sectors, such as defense, agriculture and energy, whose fortunes are especially
dependent on government decisions.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate and
government corruption, click here and here.
The 1% aren't like the rest of us

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-page-wealth-and-politics...
Over the last two years, President Obama and Congress have put the country on track to reduce
projected federal budget deficits by nearly $4 trillion. Yet when that process began, in early 2011,
only about 12% of Americans in Gallup polls cited federal debt as the nation's most important
problem. Two to three times as many cited unemployment and jobs as the biggest challenge facing
the country. So why did policymakers focus so intently on the deficit issue? One reason may be
that the small minority that saw the deficit as the nation's priority had more clout than the majority
that didn't. We recently conducted a survey of top wealth-holders (with an average net worth of
$14 million) in the Chicago area, one of the first studies to systematically examine the political
attitudes of wealthy Americans. Our research found that the biggest concern of this top 1% of
wealth-holders was curbing budget deficits and government spending. When surveyed,
they ranked those things as priorities three times as often as they did unemployment
and far more often than any other issue. Our Survey of Economically Successful Americans
[found that] two-thirds of the respondents had contributed money (averaging $4,633) in the most
recent presidential election, and fully one-fifth of them "bundled" contributions from others. About
half recently initiated contact with a U.S. senator or representative, and nearly half (44%) of those
contacts concerned matters of relatively narrow economic self-interest rather than broader national
concerns. This kind of access to elected officials suggests an outsized influence in Washington.
Conscious Capitalism ready for spotlight

http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Conscious-Capitalism-ready-...
Conscious Capitalism Inc. [is] an organization that came to public attention ... with the publication
of a book with the same title and the controversial comments made by its author, Whole Foods
Market CEO John Mackey. Not the capitalism that's been "hijacked by the 'story-of-me,' "
explained the organization's CEO, Doug Rauch. "It should be the story of us. "Us" as in
employees, customers, investors, surrounding communities, the environment - also known as
"stakeholders" - to whom business leaders owe an obligation over and above the bottom line and
mere shareholder value. These are not new ideas - they've been expressed by a number of
business leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus, founder of the
microlending Grameen Bank ... and pushed by organizations like San Francisco's Business for
Social Responsibility. Still, Conscious Capitalism - registered trademark - has rounded up a
number of corporate chieftains in addition to Mackey, including those running Patagonia, The
Container Store, Southwest Airlines, Motley Fool, Zappos, Herman Miller, Gibson Guitars and
Nordstrom. POSCO, the giant South Korean steel company, is a major financial contributor. Up to
now, the 6-year-old nonprofit has been operating mostly under the radar, but with a $1
million annual budget - funded by individual and corporate contributions and revenue from
conferences - Conscious Capitalism appears ready to spread its wings.
Money-Laundering Inquiry Said to Aim at US Banks

2012-09-15, CNBC/New York Times
Federal and state authorities are investigating [several] major American banks for failing to monitor
cash transactions in and out of their branches, a lapse that may have enabled drug dealers and
terrorists to launder tainted money. Regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency, are close to taking action against JPMorgan Chase for insufficient safeguards.
The agency is also scrutinizing several other Wall Street giants, including Bank of America.
In addition to the comptroller, prosecutors from the Justice Department and the Manhattan district
attorneys office are investigating several financial institutions in the United States. The surge in
investigations, compliance experts say, is coming now because authorities were previously
inundated with problems stemming from the 2008 financial turmoil. Until now, investigators have
primarily focused on financial transactions at European banks. The authorities accused several
foreign banks of flouting American law by transferring billions of dollars on behalf of sanctioned
nations. As the investigation shifts to American shores, the Justice Department and the Manhattan
district attorneys office are moving beyond those violations to focus on money-laundering, in
which criminals around the globe try to hide illicit funds in United States bank accounts.
here.
The rotten heart of finance

2012-07-07, The Economist Magazine
http://www.economist.com/node/21558281
The rapidly spreading scandal of LIBOR (the London inter-bank offered rate) ... is beginning to
assume global significance. The number that the traders were toying with determines the prices
that people and corporations around the world pay for loans or receive for their savings. It is used
as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, ranging from
complex interest-rate derivatives to simple mortgages. The number determines the global flow of
billions of dollars each year. Yet it turns out to have been flawed. Over the past week damning
evidence has emerged, in documents detailing a settlement between Barclays and regulators in
America and Britain, that employees at the bank and at several other unnamed banks tried to rig
the number time and again over a period of at least five years. And worse is likely to emerge.
Investigations by regulators in several countries, including Canada, America, Japan, the
EU, Switzerland and Britain, are looking into allegations that LIBOR and similar rates were
rigged by large numbers of banks. As many as 20 big banks have been named in various
investigations or lawsuits alleging that LIBOR was rigged. The scandal also corrodes further what
little remains of public trust in banks and those who run them.
Dimon's Unshakable Hubris

2012-05-16, MSNBC
http://powerwall.msnbc.msn.com/politics/dimons-unshakable-hubris-1718428.story
Jamie Dimon was reelected chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase yesterday afternoon. He got
to keep his $23 million pay package, too. This means that at ... three of the top five bank holding
companies dominating U.S. derivatives exposure, loans, assets, and deposits, the same man
holds the chairman and CEO positions - at Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and JPM Chase. At
the shareholders meeting there was no mention of the details behind the mistake that
cost the bank $2 billion, just that it should never have happened. The fact that after a
formal announcement, a friendly Meet the Press chat, and a face-to-face with the firm's
shareholders, Dimon can still call it a mistaken hedge is ludicrous. It was a directional bet on
the health of North American corporate bonds that the firm got wrong, enacted via the synthetic
derivatives market, to worsen the blow. To the extent that it's betting wrong, it's a mistake, but it's
not a hedge. Included in the proxy materials in the shareholder package that went out before the
vote was ... a wealth of negativity about regulations. The letter stressed that ... two regulations
would actively hurt the bank's competitive ability, the Volker Rule and the derivatives rules. JPM
Chase holds nearly $70 trillion of derivatives exposure on $1.8 trillion of assets. Bank chairmen,
like Jamie Dimon ... claim that regulation is too complex, too anti-competitive, and too un-American
(putting U.S. banks at a disadvantage against other global banks). [Yet] pretending that it's okay to
allow dormant volcanoes of risk to remain embedded in big bank balance sheets, supported by
customer money and taxpayer guarantees is not sensible.
Note: For a treasure trove of revealing reports from reliable sources on the criminality and
corruption of major financial corporations and their "regulators" in government, click here. For
disturbing news articles on the derivatives market time bomb, click here.
Goldman, Merrill E-Mails Show Naked Shorting, Filing Says
2012-05-16, Businessweek/Bloomberg News

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-15/goldman-merrill-e-mails-show-nake...
Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch employees discussed helping naked short-sales by
market-maker clients in e-mails the banks sought to keep secret, including one in which a
Merrill official told another to ignore compliance rules, Overstock.com ... said in a court filing.
The online retailer accused Merrill, now part of Bank of America and Goldman Sachs of
manipulating its stock from 2005 to 2007, causing its shares to fall. Lawyers for Overstock ...
asked a judge to make public e-mails sent in 2005 and 2006 that it said reflect business decisions
to put profits and corporate ambition over compliance at Goldman Sachs and Merrill. The banks
decisions to intentionally fail to deliver Overstock shares caused large-scale naked short selling of
the companys stock, according to the filing. Four media organizations, including Bloomberg, the
New York Times, Wenner Media and The Economist, intervened in the Overstock case and joined
the companys request to unseal court files. Bloomberg News obtained a copy of the filing
describing the e-mails.
Note: For more on this from reporter Matt Taibbi, click here.
Greek debt nightmare laid bare

2012-02-21, CNN/Financial Times
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/20/business/greece-debt-report/index.html
A "strictly confidential" report on Greece's debt projections prepared for eurozone finance ministers
reveals Athens' rescue programme is way off track. The ... debt sustainability analysis ... found that
even under the most optimistic scenario, the austerity measures being imposed on Athens risk
a recession so deep that Greece will not be able to climb out of the debt hole over the
course of a new three-year, 170bn bail-out. It warned that two of the new bail-out's main
principles might be self-defeating. Forcing austerity on Greece could cause debt levels to rise by
severely weakening the economy. The report made clear why the fight over the new Greek bail-out
has been so intense. A German-led group of creditor countries -- including the Netherlands
and Finland -- has expressed extreme reluctance to go through with the deal since they
received the report. A "tailored downside scenario" in the report suggests Greek debt could fall
far more slowly than hoped, to only 160 per cent of economic output by 2020 -- well below the
target of 120 per cent set by the International Monetary Fund. Under such a scenario, Greece
would need about 245bn in bail-out aid, far more than the 170bn under the "baseline"
projections eurozone ministers were using in all-night negotiations in Brussels on Monday.
Note: For key reports from major media sources exposing the interests served by the imposition of
austerity on Greece and other countries, click here.
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-cong...
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the
largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing. The
Fed didnt tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion
on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didnt mention that they took tens of
billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their
firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13
billion of income by taking advantage of the Feds below-market rates. Saved by the bailout,
bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never
disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and
debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse. Details suggest taxpayers paid a price
beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest
banks to grow even bigger. When you see the dollars the banks got, its hard to make the case
these were successful institutions, says Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio who in
2010 introduced an unsuccessful bill to limit bank size. This is an issue that can unite the Tea
Party and Occupy Wall Street.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on corruption and collusion between
government officials and the largest financial firms, click here.
Retired Police Captain Arrested At OWS

2011-11-17, Fox News (Philadelphia Fox affiliate)
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/Retired_Police_Captain_Ray_Lew...
A retired Philadelphia police captain has been arrested in New York at an Occupy Wall
Street demonstration. Ray Lewis retired from the Philadelphia Police Department in 2004. It
was Philadelphia police who confirmed Lewis' arrest in New York on Thursday morning. Any
additional details, they said, would have to come from NYPD. First news of the arrest was
broadcast over Twitter around 9:15 a.m. by the protest group ... stating, "Philly Police Captain
(Retired) has just been ARRESTED!" The group then tweeted, "The arrested retired police
captain's name is Captain Ray Lewis. Immense cheers and music as he is taken away." Video
posted to YouTube by RT America and linked to by Occupy Wall Street appears to show Lewis'
arrest. There were messages online stating that Lewis had joined the protesters, including a
photo of him holding a sign that read "NYPD Don't Be Wall Street Mercenaries," and talking
with a helmeted New York police officer at Zuccotti Park.
Note: For a four-minute video interview with Officer Lewis, click here. For a treasure trove of
reports from reliable sources on the reasons why protestors worldwide are occupying their city
centers to protest against the "1 percent", click here.
JPMorgan Joins Goldman Keeping Italy Derivatives Risk in Dark
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LURLN51A1I4K01-4BQL...
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., among the world's biggest traders of
credit derivatives, disclosed to shareholders that they have sold protection on more than $5 trillion
of debt globally. Just don't ask them how much of that was issued by Greece, Italy, Ireland,
Portugal and Spain, known as the GIIPS. As concerns mount that those countries may not be
creditworthy, investors are being kept in the dark about how much risk U.S. banks face
from a default. Firms including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan don't provide a full picture of
potential losses and gains in such a scenario, giving only net numbers or excluding some
derivatives altogether. Goldman Sachs discloses only what it calls funded exposure to GIIPS
debt -- $4.16 billion before hedges and $2.46 billion after, as of Sept. 30. Those amounts exclude
commitments or contingent payments, such as credit-default swaps. JPMorgan said ... its net
exposure was no more than $1.5 billion, with a portion coming from debt and equity securities. The
company didn't disclose gross numbers or how much of the $1.5 billion came from swaps, leaving
investors wondering whether the notional value of CDS sold could be as high as $150 billion.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the reasons why protestors
worldwide are occupying their city centers to protest against the "1 percent", click here.
Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/25/occupy-wall-st...
Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation despite the latest police
crackdown sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send
pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago,
OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA? We are watching the beginnings of the defiant
self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing
their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Is it
really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?
Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the
very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be
marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring
the whole system down. But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. If the occupiers finally
manage to break the 30-year stranglehold that has been placed on the human imagination ...
everything will once again be on the table and the occupiers of Wall Street and other cities
around the US will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can.
Note: A post on the JP Morgan Chase website confirms an unprecedented $4.6 million gift to the
New York City Police Foundation. The money was donated ostensibly as a "gift ... to strengthen
security in the Big Apple." Now why would this huge bank be donating millions for security in New
York City? For key insights from major media sources into the reasons why so many are protesting
worldwide, click here.
Foreign Banks Tapped Feds Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak

2011-04-01, Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-01/foreign-banks-tapped-fed-s-lifeline-...
Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New
York branch from the Feds discount window lending program, according to Fed documents
released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa
Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German
government, drew $24.5 billion. The biggest borrowers from the ... discount window as the
program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent
of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program
surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S.
taxpayers by the central banks role in global financial markets. Separate data disclosed in
December on temporary emergency-lending programs set up by the Fed also showed big foreign
banks as borrowers. Six European banks were among the top 11 companies that sold the most
debt overall -- a combined $274.1 billion -- to the Commercial Paper Funding Facility. Those
programs also loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to the biggest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan
Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the bailout of banks worldwide by
the US taxpayer, click here.
New Ways to Get a Loan Without Going to the Bank

2011-01-06, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/online-peer-peer-loans-benefit-borrowers-lende...
In between Chase Manhattan Bank and Vinny, who will break your legs if you don't repay
your loan, lie new and novel online lenders that act more like dating services than banks.
They match people wanting money with others who have money to lend. The two biggest
such 'peer-to-peer' lenders, LendingClub.com and Prosper.com, offer borrowers lower rates than
banks, and offer investors a better return than they could get from putting their money in a CD.
Both companies are headquartered in the San Francisco Bay area, and both are licensed in most
states. Rates and rules for the two are similar. While investors' money does not enjoy the FDIC
protection it would have at a bank, it enjoys a better than 10% return. Plus, lenders can diversify
their risk by dividing their investment, if they want, across hundreds of different loan accounts in
increments as small as $25. At LendingClub, a borrower with a good credit rating can expect to
pay an interest rate five percentage points lower than at a bank. Since its start in 2007,
LendingClub has funded nearly $204 million worth of loans and has paid over $15.6 million to its
investors.
Note: For those who want to borrow or loan money free of the banks with excellent rates, check
out www.lendingclub.com/ and www.prosper.com.
Fidel Castro fascinated by book on Bilderberg Club

2010-08-18, Boston Globe/Associated Press
http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2010/08/18/fidel_castr...
Fidel Castro is showcasing a theory long popular both among the far left and far right: that the
shadowy Bilderberg Group has become a kind of global government, controlling not only
international politics and economics, but even culture. The 84-year-old former Cuban president
published an article [on August 18 to quote] from a 2006 book by Lithuanian-born writer Daniel
Estulin. Estulin's work, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, argues that the international group
largely runs the world. It has held a secretive annual forum of prominent politicians, thinkers and
businessmen since it was founded in 1954 at the Bilderberg Hotel in Holland. Estulin's book, as
quoted by Castro, described "sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public
"to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own
self." The prominence of the group is what alarms critics. It often includes members of the
Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, senior U.S. and European officials and major international
business and media executives. Castro -- who had an inside seat to the Cold War -- has long
expressed suspicions of back-room plots. He has raised questions about whether the Sept. 11
attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government to stoke military budgets and, more
recently suggested that Washington was behind the March sinking of a South Korean ship
blamed on North Korea.
Note: For lots more on secret societies like the Bildergroup, click here.
IMF blueprint for a global currency yes really

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/08/04/306346/imf-blueprint-for-a-global-...
[An] IMF paper [that] first came out in April, 2010, [a]uthored by Reza Moghadam, director of the
IMFs strategy, policy and review department, ... discusses how the IMF sees the International
Monetary System evolving after the financial crisis. In the eyes of the IMF ... the best way to
ensure the stability of the international monetary system (post crisis) is actually by
launching a global currency. And that, the IMF says, is largely because [sovereign nations]
cannot be trusted to redistribute surplus reserves, or battle their deficits, themselves. The
ongoing buildup of such imbalances, meanwhile, only makes the system increasingly vulnerable to
shocks. Its also a process thats ultimately unsustainable for all, says the IMF. All in all, the IMF
believes there has simply been too much reserve hoarding going on. A global currency makes the
most sense, the paper concludes especially since the SDR [Special Drawing Rights] is currently
just an accounting tool that draws on the freely usable currencies of member states, not an actual
currency itself.
Note: For key news articles on the global financial crisis to which this IMF report is responding,
click here.
Goldman Sachs defends dark pools, short selling

Goldman Sachs defended a range of trading practices currently under regulatory scrutiny,
including dark pools and short selling, in a report to the Securities and Exchange Commission and
a series of postings on its Web site. In defending dark pools, private venues where large blocks of
securities are traded anonymously, Goldman said they are simply the result of technology
improving on the kind of non-displayed liquidity that has always existed in the market. Dark pools
have been criticized by lawmakers and targeted by regulators seeking a better idea of how
much trading takes place away from exchanges. While it reiterated its support for regulation of
abusive, or "naked" short selling, Goldman said further regulation isn't necessary and could
actually hurt the market. As for high-frequency trading, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro at a
Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference ... reiterated that she has asked
SEC staff to propose ways the agency can collect more information about high frequency traders,
noting that lightning speed trading now represents more than 50% of trading volume.
Note: To read this article without a subscription to the WSJ, click here. Is it a surprise that
Goldman Sachs wants to keep its secret deals hidden? Full transparency for the banks would
almost certainly reveal major manipulations.
Judge upholds three-word foreclosure strategy

2009-05-29, KGO-TV (San Francisco ABC-TV affiliate)
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/7_on_your_side&id=6839404
A Bay Area couple has successfully blocked their lender from taking their home. A federal judge in
San Jose brought the foreclosure process to a stop after the couple invoked a three-word strategy
first outlined last month by 7 On Your Side's Michael Finney. A home could be saved with three
words: "produce the note." Facing foreclosure, owners Isabel and Richard Caporale are using a
novel legal strategy to hang on to their home. The couple went to federal court and basically said
just three words. "They claim they have it, but I have no proof that they have this note, and you
would think by now it's been almost three months," says attorney Marc Voisenat. The "they"
Voisenat is referring to is the loan servicing company and "the note" is the legal document proving
money is owed. Without it, the strategy goes, money can't be collected and there can be no
foreclosure. On Thursday, a federal judge agreed, stopping the foreclosure in its tracks and for
now, the Caporales can stay in their home. "It's wonderful because I'm almost positive the next
time we come back to court the house will be ours," says Isabel Caporale. Thousands could use
this strategy and it all comes down to sloppy paperwork. Mortgages are chopped up, bundled and
resold around the world as complicated financial vehicles. Often the paperwork doesn't follow the
loan and if there's no paperwork and no proof, the foreclosure is a no-go. "We've never seen a
company produce the original note yet," says Attorney Chris Hoyer. Hoyer set up a website
offering consumers advice and paperwork to pursue a "produce the note" strategy. In
Florida "produce the note" is gaining momentum as a safety net for homeowners.
Note: For more information on how to use this strategy, see the Consumer Warning Network's
excellent information available here. More information is also available in this article.
Chrysler rejects new loan over exec pay limits

2009-04-21, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/04/21/chrysler.loan/
Chrysler turned down additional government funding this month because executives at the
troubled auto manufacturer could not agree to new government-mandated limits on
executive pay, according to a source familiar with the matter. An official with Chrysler Financial
told CNN that the loan was turned down because the company "has determined that it has
adequate private capital funding to cover the short-term needs of our dealers and customers and
as such, no additional TARP funding is necessary at this time." The official also said that company
executives "have not been presented with any new demands with regard to executive
compensation." Chrysler already borrowed $1.5 billion from the Treasury under the Troubled Asset
Relief Program, or TARP, but those loans were made under less strict regulations pertaining to
executive compensation. The Washington Post, which first reported the story online Monday, said
the amount of the loan Chrysler rejected was $750 million. A Treasury department spokesman
declined to confirm the loan rejection, but told CNN that the administration's Auto Task Force
continues to monitor the financing situations for Chrysler and General Motors. "This is an issue
that Chrysler and its stakeholders will need to address as part of this process," the spokesman
said.
Note: The reason many banks are giving back government loans is very likely also because of
executive pay limits. The limits were reported in a NY Times article on Feb. 14, 2009. Not long
after came the first news that banks were considering returning the bailout money. Do you think
these top execs are more interested in their own paychecks or the health of the company? For a
highly revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click
here.
The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5096524/The...
The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary
policy for all humanity. A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqu issued by the G20 leaders
amounts to revolution in the global financial order. "We have agreed to support a general SDR
allocation which will inject $250bn (170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity," it
said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International
Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.In effect, the G20 leaders have activated
the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they
are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign
body. Conspiracy theorists will love it. There is now a world currency in waiting. In time,
SDRs are likely evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the
People's Bank of China. Beijing's moves this week to offer $95bn in yuan currency swaps to
developing economies show how fast China aims to break dollar dependence.
click here.
Banks Get New Leeway in Valuing Their Assets

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/business/03fasb.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pa...
A once-obscure accounting rule that infuriated banks ... was changed Thursday to give banks
more discretion in reporting the value of mortgage securities. The change seems likely to allow
banks to report higher profits by assuming that the securities are worth more than anyone
is now willing to pay for them. But critics objected that the change could further damage
the credibility of financial institutions by enabling them to avoid recognizing losses from
bad loans they have made. Critics also said that since the rules were changed under heavy
political pressure, the move compromised the independence of the organization that did it, the
Financial Accounting Standards Board. During the financial crisis, the market prices of many
securities, particularly those backed by subprime home mortgages, have plunged to fractions of
their original prices. That has forced banks to report hundreds of billions of dollars in losses over
the last year, because some of those securities must be reported at market value each three
months, with the bank showing a profit or loss based on the change. At first FASB ... resisted
making changes, but that changed within a few days of a Congressional hearing at which
legislators from both parties demanded the board act. There is a perception that we are yielding to
political pressure, one board member, Lawrence W. Smith, said as he voted for the changes. A
group headed by two former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission, one who
served under President Bill Clinton and one who was appointed by President George W. Bush,
said that it feared that politicization of accounting standards would destroy the credibility of the
board.
AIG - the biggest shark of all

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/18/ED0316IQ82.DTL
There must be a criminal investigation of the AIG debacle, and it looks as if New York's top
lawman is on the case. The collusion to save this toxic company in order to salvage the rogue
financiers who conspired to enrich themselves by impoverishing millions is being revealed as the
greatest financial scandal in U.S. history. Instead of taking bonuses, the culprits should be taking
perp walks. The real culprits are the AIG leaders who, as New York Attorney General Andrew
Cuomo revealed Tuesday, signed those bonus contracts a year ago to reward the very
people "principally responsible for the firm's meltdown." As Cuomo noted in a letter to Rep.
Barney Frank: "The contracts shockingly contain a provision that required most individuals'
bonuses to be 100 percent of their 2007 bonuses. Eleven of the individuals who received
'retention' bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received
$4.6 million." But the $165 million in taxpayer funds used to reward them is but a sideshow in a far
larger drama of moral decay swirling around the banking bailout. It should not distract from the
many billions, not paltry millions, of our dollars being diverted to reward the very folks who brought
us such misery. Consider the $12.8 billion of the $170 billion that taxpayers gave AIG in bailout
funds that AIG then secretly diverted to Goldman Sachs, a company that evidently has a lock on
both the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve no matter which political party is in power.
Note: For an excellent analysis of "the real AIG conspiracy", click here. For lots more on the
hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Spitzer Takes Aim at Real Disgrace at A.I.G.

2009-03-17, New York Times blog
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/spitzer-takes-aim-at-real-disgra...
Eliot Spitzer must miss his glory days when he was the scourge of Wall Street as New Yorks
attorney general. With the bonus battle exploding at the American International Group, Mr. Spitzer
has jumped into the fray and dismissed the bonus scandal, arguing that it is obscuring the real
disgrace at A.I.G. Why are A.I.G.s counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of
billions of taxpayer dollars? he asks in an article on Slate. Mr. Spitzer notes that A.I.G.s trading
parties were all the big banks including Goldman Sachs, many of which received billions of dollars
from the governments Troubled Asset Relief Program. So now we know for sure what we already
surmised: The A.I.G. bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the
same group that had received TARP money already, he writes. It all appears, once again, to be
the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad
adventure, Mr. Spitzer writes. Recounting how the economic crisis is affecting workers, with tax
increases, pay cuts and layoffs, Mr. Spitzer asks: Why cant Wall Street royalty shoulder some
of the burden? Why did Goldman have to get back 100 cents on the dollar? Didnt we
already give Goldman a $25 billion capital infusion, and arent they sitting on more than
$100 billion in cash? What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and A.I.G.?
Note: For the article written in 2008 by former NY Governor Spitzer which likely caused him to be
targeted for a takedown just weeks later, click here. For lots more on the hidden realities of the
Wall Street bailout, click here.
Curtailing executives' pay? Good luck with that

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/05/BUHF15NF2U.DTL
Will President Obama's new plan to rein in executive compensation at companies receiving
taxpayer money be more successful than previous attempts? Not if history is any guide. Since at
least 1984, Congress and accounting authorities have enacted measures designed in whole or
part to stem runaway pay. Yet compensation for top executives has continued to climb in both
dollar terms and as a multiple of average worker pay. In 1992, the average chief executive
earned $5 million, or 126 times the average hourly worker. By 2007, the average CEO was
earning $12.3 million, or 275 times the average worker. No matter what Congress cooks up, it
seems like executives, companies and their consultants find a way over, under or through the
rules. "It's like putting up a dam for a river. The water tries very hard to find a way around it," says
John Olson, a partner with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher who advises corporate boards on
compensation and other matters. Obama's plan will apply only to companies taking bailout money
in the future and has escape hatches of its own. "You can try all these different reforms," [says
Corey Rosen, executive director of the National Center for Employee Ownership,] but none will be
truly effective "unless the board of directors, the media and public stop thinking of executives as
superstars and that if we just get the right CEO, everything will be OK."
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the Wall Street
bailout, click here.
U.N. crime chief says drug money flowed into banks

2009-01-25, International Herald Tribune/Reuters News
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2009/01/25/europe/OUKWD-UK-FINANCIAL-UN-D...
The United Nations' crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade
has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on
Sunday. Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview
released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when
the crisis spiralled out of control last year. "In many instances, drug money is currently the only
liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008,
liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important
factor." The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had found evidence that "interbank loans
were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities," Costa
was quoted as saying. There were "signs that some banks were rescued in that way." Profil
said Costa declined to identify countries or banks which may have received drug money and gave
no indication how much cash might be involved.
Note:. For powerful evidence that corporations and even rogue elements of government are
involved in the huge amounts of cash generated in the drug trade, click here. For lots more on
corporate corruption, click here.
U.S. Debt Expected To Soar This Year

With President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats considering a massive
spending package aimed at pulling the nation out of recession, the national debt is projected to
jump by as much as $2 trillion this year, an unprecedented increase that could test the world's
appetite for financing U.S. government spending. For now, investors are frantically stuffing money
into the relative safety of the U.S. Treasury, which has come to serve as the world's mattress in
troubled times. Interest rates on Treasury bills have plummeted to historic lows, with some shortterm investors literally giving the government money for free. But about 40 percent of the debt held
by private investors will mature in a year or less, according to Treasury officials. When those loans
come due, the Treasury will have to borrow more money to repay them, even as it launches
perhaps the most aggressive expansion of U.S. debt in modern history. With the government
planning to roll over its short-term loans into more stable, long-term securities, experts say
investors are likely to demand a greater return on their money, saddling taxpayers with huge new
interest payments for years to come. Some analysts also worry that foreign investors, the
largest U.S. creditors, may prove unable to absorb the skyrocketing debt, undermining
confidence in the United States as the bedrock of the global financial system.
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout and its impacts on the
national debt, click here.
UAW busting, Southern style

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-raynor18-2008dec18,0,406...
The foreign nonunion auto companies located in the South have a plan to reduce wages and
benefits at their factories in the United States. And to do it, they need to destroy the United Auto
Workers. Last week, Senate Republicans from some Southern states went to work trying to do just
that, on the foreign car companies' behalf. [Republican] representatives from states that subsidize
companies such as Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota and Nissan first tried to force the UAW to take
reductions in wages and benefits as a condition for supporting the auto industry bailout bill. When
the UAW refused, those senators torpedoed the bill. They claimed that they couldn't support the
bill without specifics about how wages would be "restructured." They didn't, however, require such
specificity when it came to bailing out the financial sector. Their grandstanding, and the
government's generally lackluster response to the auto crisis, highlight many of the
problems that have caused our current economic mess: the lack of concern about
manufacturing, the privileged way our government treats the financial sector, and political
support given to companies that attempt to slash worker's wages. When one compares how
the auto industry and the financial sector are being treated by Congress, the double standard is
staggering. At Goldman Sachs ... employee compensation made up 71% of total operating
expenses in 2007. In the auto industry, by contrast, autoworker compensation makes up less than
10% of the cost of manufacturing a car. Hundreds of billions were given to the financial-services
industry with barely a question about compensation; the auto bailout, however, was sunk on this
issue alone.
Note: For highly revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout,
click here.
Jim Rogers calls most big U.S. banks "bankrupt"

http://www.reuters.com/article/InvestmentOutlook09/idUSTRE4BA5CO20081211
Jim Rogers, one of the world's most prominent international investors, ... called most of the largest
U.S. banks "totally bankrupt," and said government efforts to fix the sector are wrongheaded. Cofounder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund, [Rogers] said the government's $700 billion
rescue package for the sector doesn't address how banks manage their balance sheets, and
instead rewards weaker lenders with new capital. "Without giving specific names, most of the
significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt," said Rogers. "What is
outrageous economically and is outrageous morally is that normally in times like this, people who
are competent and who saw it coming and who kept their powder dry go and take over the assets
from the incompetent," he said. "What's happening this time is that the government is taking
the assets from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people and
saying, now you can compete with the competent people. It is horrible economics." While
not saying how long the U.S. economic recession will last, he said conditions could ultimately
mirror those of Japan in the 1990s. "The way things are going, we're going to have a lost decade
too, just like the 1970s," he said. "Governments are making mistakes," he said. "They're saying to
all the banks, you don't have to tell us your situation. You can continue to use your balance sheet
that is phony.... All these guys are bankrupt, they're still worrying about their bonuses, they're still
trying to pay their dividends, and the whole system is weakened."
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable reports exposing the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click
here.
Ditch the smooth transition. The people voted for change

2008-11-14, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/14/obama-white-house-wall-st...
The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street
bail-out is not merely incompetent: it is borderline criminal. In a moment of high panic in
September, the US treasury pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are
taxed - a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the
government of as much as $140bn in tax revenue, legislators found out only after the fact.
According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "[the] treasury
had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice". Of equally dubious legality are the equity
deals the treasury has negotiated with many of the banks. According to Congressman Barney
Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals: "Any use of these funds for
any purpose other than lending - for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of
other institutions ... is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used. Then
there is the nearly $2 trillion that America's central bank, the Federal Reserve, has handed out in
emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans
or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg news service believes this secrecy violates the
law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure. Yet the Democrats are either openly
defending the administration or refusing to intervene. Obama owes it to the people who elected
him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.
Note: For many key articles revealing the hidden realities of the bailout, click here.
F.B.I. Struggles to Handle Financial Fraud Cases

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/washington/19fbi.html?partner=rssuserland&e...
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is struggling to find enough agents and resources to
investigate criminal wrongdoing tied to the countrys economic crisis, according to current and
former bureau officials. The bureau slashed its criminal investigative work force to expand its
national security role after the Sept. 11 attacks, shifting more than 1,800 agents, or nearly onethird of all agents in criminal programs, to terrorism and intelligence duties. The cutbacks have left
the bureau seriously exposed in investigating areas like white-collar crime, which has taken on
urgent importance in recent weeks because of the nations economic woes. So depleted are the
ranks of the F.B.I.s white-collar investigators that executives in the private sector say they have
had difficulty attracting the bureaus attention in cases involving possible frauds of millions of
dollars. Since 2004, F.B.I. officials have warned that mortgage fraud posed a looming threat,
and the bureau has repeatedly asked the Bush administration for more money to replenish
the ranks of agents handling nonterrorism investigations. But each year, the requests have
been denied, with no new agents approved for financial crimes, as policy makers focused on
counterterrorism. According to previously undisclosed internal F.B.I. data, the cutbacks have been
particularly severe in staffing for investigations into white-collar crimes like mortgage fraud, with a
loss of 625 agents, or 36 percent of its 2001 levels.
Note: How fortunate for the financial fraudsters that the FBI doesn't have the resources to
investigate them! Was it just a coincidence that first the "war on terror" and then the Wall Street
bailout both have resulted in trillions of dollars going to a few well-positioned corporations? For
more on government corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Illinois sheriff scolds banks for evictions of 'innocent' renters

2008-10-09, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/08/chicago.evictions/index.html
An outraged sheriff in Illinois who refuses to evict ... renters from foreclosed homes criticized
mortgage companies ... and said the law should protect victims of the mortgage meltdown. Sheriff
Thomas J. Dart said earlier he is suspending foreclosure evictions in Cook County, which includes
the city of Chicago. The county had been on track to reach a record number of evictions, many
because of mortgage foreclosures. "Many good tenants are suffering because building owners
have fallen behind on their mortgage payments," he said Thursday on CNN's "American Morning."
"These poor people are seeing everything they own put out on the street. ... They've paid their
bills, paid them on time. Here we are with a battering ram at the front door going to throw them out.
It's gotten insane," he said. Mortgage companies are supposed to identify a building's occupants
before asking for an eviction, but sheriff's deputies routinely find that the mortgage companies
have not done so, Dart said. "This is an example where the banking industry has not done any of
the work they should do. It's a piece of paper to them," Dart said. "These mortgage companies ...
don't care who's in the building," Dart said. "They simply want their money and don't care who gets
hurt along the way. "On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them.
We're not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We're just not going to evict innocent
tenants. It stops today. When you're blindly sending me out to houses where I'm coming
across innocent tenant after innocent tenant, I can't keep doing this and have a good
conscience about it."
Note: For many reports of corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Bailout tests how much the American public will tolerate theft
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/23/ED0J132MOV.DTL
Treasury Secretary Paulson's edict to create a $700 billion fund to buy worthless mortgage
securities from agitated wealthy bond investors is nothing short of a final step on the path to the
end of the republic. The secretary claims he can only be effective if his decisions are beyond
judicial review. Our government and its owners appear to be testing how much the American public
will tolerate. A few years ago, no one could have imagined that the silent majority would quietly
accept thefts of this magnitude from a government that stopped tiny payments to single mothers
with poor children in the name of welfare reform because the program's $10 billion cost was
breaking the federal budget. If the public allows this theft, then it will signal to powerful
forces that they can essentially do anything, because the American public has become so
mushy-headed that it will stand up for nothing. When power discovers that those from whom it
would exact payment are powerless, its viciousness increases infinitely. Our enemy has revealed
itself, and it is our own government. Because the American public has not been introduced to
methods for controlling its government for generations, I will suggest one called a general strike.
This fundamental democratic power is where everyone decides to send a message to the
government by not going to work, to school, shopping, nowhere. This is the critical time when
charlatans among us will promise they can save us from the inevitable if we only allow them the
power they need to save us. They are lying.
Note: This article's author Sean Olender is an attorney in San Mateo, California. Mr. Oleander
predicted the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac months before it happened based on clearly
disempowering moves by the government. To see his prescient article on this from Feb. 2008, click
here.
Almost Armageddon: Markets were 500 Trades from a Meltdown

2008-09-21, New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09212008/business/almost_armageddon_130110.htm
The market was 500 trades away from Armageddon on Thursday [September 18], traders inside
two large custodial banks tell The Post. Had the Treasury and Fed not quickly stepped into the fray
that morning with a quick $105 billion injection of liquidity, the Dow could have collapsed.
According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were
inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening. The Fed's dramatic $105 billion
liquidity injection on Thursday (pre-market) was just enough to keep key institutional accounts from
following through on the sell orders and starting a stampede of cash that could have brought large
tracts of the US economy to a halt. Cracks started to show in money market accounts late
Tuesday when shares in one fund, the Reserve Primary Fund - which touted itself as super safe fell below the golden $1 a share level. By Wednesday, banks sensed a run on their accounts.
They started stockpiling cash in anticipation of withdrawals. Banks, which usually keep an
average of $2 billion in excess reserves earmarked for withdrawals, pumped that up to an
astounding $90 billion, Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrighton ICAP, told The [Wall Street]
Journal. And for good reason. By the close of business on Wednesday, $144.5 billion - a record had been withdrawn. How much money was taken out of money market funds the prior week?
Roughly $7.1 billion, according to AMG Data Services. By Thursday, that level ... had grown to
$100 billion.
Note: For insight into the banking and financial powers that runs today's governments, click here.
Rescue Me: A Fed Bailout Crosses a Line

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/business/16gret.html?ex=1363320000&en=04d1c...
What are the consequences of a world in which regulators rescue even the financial institutions
whose recklessness and greed helped create the titanic credit mess we are in? Will the
consequences be an even weaker currency, rampant inflation, a continuation of the slow bleed that
we have witnessed at banks and brokerage firms for the past year? Or all of the above? Stick
around, because well soon find out. And its not going to be pretty. Agreeing to guarantee a 28day credit line to Bear Stearns, by way of JPMorgan Chase, the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York conceded last Friday that no sizable firm with a book of mortgage securities or loans out
to mortgage issuers could be allowed to fail right now. It was the most explicit sign yet of
the Feds Rescues R Us doctrine that already helped to force the marriage of Bank of
America and Countrywide. But why save Bear Stearns? Why not set an example of Bear
Stearns, the guys who have this record of dog-eat-dog, were brass knuckles, were tough? asked
William A. Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital in Issaquah, Wash., and co-author with
Fred Sheehan of Greenspans Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve. After years
of never allowing any of our financial institutions to fail, they have become so enormous that
nobody will be allowed to sink beneath the waves. Otherwise, a tsunami would swamp the hedge
funds, banks and other brokerage firms that remain afloat. If Bear Stearns failed, for example, it
would result in a wholesale dumping of mortgage securities and other assets onto a market that is
frozen and where buyers are in hiding. This fire sale would force surviving institutions carrying the
same types of securities on their books to mark down their positions, generating more margin calls
and creating more failures.
Note: This excellent article should be read in its entirety by anyone who wants to understand the
impending financial meltdown and the government's response to it.
Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime (by then N.Y. Governor Eliot

Spitzer)
Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to
notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some
were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to
repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing
loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. In addition, the
widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets. Even
though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the
other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead
to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers. Predatory lending was widely
understood to present a looming national crisis. Individually, and together, state attorneys general
of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were
engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted
laws aimed at curbing such practices. When history tells the story of the subprime lending
crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners,
the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when
the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any
lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal
government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys
general and anyone else on the side of consumers.
Note: Isn't it interesting that just weeks after former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer wrote this
highly revealing article his sexual affairs were exposed, leading to his resignation!
Anybody Seen Our Gold?

2008-01-30, Full Page Ad in Wall Street Journal
http://www.gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal
The gold reserves of the United States have not been fully and independently audited for half a
century. Now there is proof that those gold reserves and those of other Western nations are being
used for the surreptitious manipulation of the international currency, commodity, equity, and bond
markets. The Federal Reserves general counsel, J. Virgil Mattingly, acknowledged as much when
he told the Federal Open Market Committee on January 31, 1995, that the Treasury Departments
Exchange Stabilization Fund had undertaken gold swaps. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
Greenspan acknowledged as much in testimony to Congress on July 24, 1998, when he said that
central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise. Since last
May the U.S. Treasury Departments weekly report of the governments international reserve
position has cited loans and swaps from the U.S. gold reserves. Since 2004 four major
international investment houses Sprott Asset Management, Cheuvreux, Citigroup, and Redburn
Partners have issued reports stating that Western central banks have been manipulating the
gold market. The objective of this manipulation is to conceal the mismanagement of the
U.S. dollar so that it might retain its function as the worlds reserve currency. But to
suppress the price of gold is to disable the barometer of the international financial system so that
all markets may be more easily manipulated. This manipulation has been a primary cause of the
catastrophic excesses in the markets that now threaten the whole world.
Note: Did you notice that for the first time in history gold passed the $1,000 per ounce mark on
March 13, 2008? Why did the major media practically ignore this huge milestone? Gold rose 32%
in 2007 and continues to rise, yet the media is giving very little attention to this. Some newspapers
which regularly listed the price of gold in their business section are no longer doing so. Why? For
more, click here.
The shock doctrine

2007-09-08, Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://business.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2165023,00.html
At the big Red Cross shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana ... the news ... was that the Republican
Congressman Richard Baker had told a group of lobbyists, "We finally cleaned up public housing
in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans' wealthiest
developers, had just expressed a similar sentiment: "I think we have a clean sheet to start again.
And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities." All that week Baton Rouge had
been crawling with corporate lobbyists helping to lock in those big opportunities: lower taxes, fewer
regulations, cheaper workers and a "smaller, safer city" - which in practice meant plans to level the
public housing projects. One of those who saw opportunity in the floodwaters of New Orleans was
the late Milton Friedman, grand guru of unfettered capitalism and credited with writing the rulebook
for the contemporary, hyper-mobile global economy. "Most New Orleans schools are in ruins,"
Friedman observed, "as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are
now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity." Friedman's radical
idea was that instead of spending a portion of the billions of dollars in reconstruction money on
rebuilding and improving New Orleans' existing public school system, the government should
provide families with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions. In sharp contrast to
the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online,
the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and
precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New
Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run
charter schools.
Bankers for poor win peace Nobel

2006-10-13, CNN News/Associated Press
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/10/13/nobel.peace.ap
Bangladeshi microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank were awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their work in advancing economic and social opportunities for the
poor, particularly women. The economist and the bank he founded will share the prize. They were
cited for their efforts to help "create economic and social development from below" ... by using
innovative economic programs such as microcredit lending. Grameen Bank has been instrumental
in helping millions of poor ... improve their standard of living by letting them borrow small sums to
start businesses. Loans go toward buying items such as cows to start a dairy, chickens for an egg
business, or mobile phones to start businesses where villagers who have no access to phones pay
a small fee to make calls. "Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the
right to live a decent life. Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have
shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,"
the Nobel Committee said in its citation. Microcredit is the extension of small loans, typically
US$50 to US$100, to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. The bank claims
to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women, and provides services in more than
70,000 villages in Bangladesh.
Note: If the above CNN link does not work, click here. To make a real difference in the world and
to help reduce poverty in a dramatic way, see our empowering summary of this inspiring worldwide
movement.
Congress Passes Wide-Ranging Bill Easing Bank Laws

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/congress-passes-wide-ranging-bill-...
Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in
which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter
one another's businesses. The measure, considered by many the most important banking
legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight
by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said.
''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great
Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H.
Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the
new economy.'' The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire
warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday
wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that
separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were
thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression. Consumer
groups and civil rights advocates criticized the legislation for being a sop to the nation's biggest
financial institutions. The opponents of the measure ... predicted that by unshackling banks and
enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead
to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.
Note: Clearly these critics of the elimination of Glass-Steagall have been proven right by the
financial crisis which has unfolded less than 10 years later. Note the key role played by President
Obama's top economic advisor, Larry Summers. If the players haven't changed, how likely is it that
the game has?
With limited oversight, the wealthy get a charitable tax break

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/With-limited-oversight-the-wealthy-get...
Nicholas and Jill Woodman ... will receive a huge tax deduction for their [charitable] donation of 5.8
million shares of company stock to a donor-advised fund. But theres no guarantee that one dollar
of their October donation will ever be spent [on charity]. Donors gets an immediate, one-time tax
break by depositing their money or assets in a donor-advised fund. They can advise the
institution holding their money where and when to spend it on their timetable. Boston
College Law School Professor Ray Madoff points out, It is like money-laundering." There
was $54 billion under management in donor-advised funds in 2013. Top financial houses like
Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard have fully embraced donor-advised funds. Fidelity Charitable, with
$13.2 billion worth of assets under management, is now the nations second-largest charity. Even
though organizations like Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable and Vanguard Charitable were
founded by their financial house namesakes, they are separate 501(c)3 charities. But while Fidelity
Charitable is independent from the financial institution, roughly two-thirds of the money in the
charitable arm is invested in Fidelity mutual funds. Madoff said that because investment advisers
can charge a fee for managing the money in these accounts, they have a natural incentive to keep
the money in these accounts growing and not leaving.
New Scrutiny of Goldmans Ties to the New York Fed After a Leak
http://dealbook.nytimes.com//2014/11/19/rising-scrutiny-as-banks-hire-from-th...
From his desk in Lower Manhattan, a banker at Goldman Sachs thumbed through confidential
documents courtesy of a source inside the United States government. The banker came to
Goldman through the so-called revolving door ... that connects financial regulators to Wall Street.
He joined in July after spending seven years as a regulator at the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York, the governments front line in overseeing the financial industry. He received the confidential
information, lawyers briefed on the matter suspect, from a former colleague who was still working
at the New York Fed. The previously unreported leak, recounted in interviews with the
lawyers briefed on the matter who spoke anonymously ... illustrates the blurred lines
between Wall Street and the government. When Goldman hired the former New York Fed
regulator, who is 29, it assigned him to advise the same type of banks that he once policed.
And the banker obtained confidential information [that] provided Goldman a window into the New
York Feds private insights. The emergence of the leak comes as questions mount about a
perceived coziness between the New York Fed and Wall Street banks Goldman in particular.
Revelations from a former New York Fed employee, Carmen Segarra, recently stoked that debate.
Ms. Segarra released taped conversations suggesting that her supervisors went soft on Goldman.
The new accounts of a regulator and a banker actually sharing confidential documents violating
a cardinal rule of the regulatory world suggest that ... Goldman, perhaps more than any other
Wall Street bank, appears to be entwined with the New York Fed.
widespread corruption in government and banking and finance. For additional information, see the
excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information Center.
Our Dysfunctional Financial System

http://time.com/3455631/our-dysfunctional-financial-system/
Did anyone ever doubt that the New York Fed was in hock to Wall Street? Or that Fed bank
examiners ... might fear alienating the powerful financiers on whom they depend for information or
future jobs? Its one thing to know and another to hear in painful, crackling detail how the
Feds financial cops slip on their velvet gloves to deal with Goldman Sachs. Or how
Segarra, one of a group of examiners brought in after the financial crisis to keep a closer
watch on the till, was fired, perhaps for doing her job. Consider one of the shady deals
highlighted on the secret tapes of New York Fed meetings, which Segarra made with a spy
recorder before she was let go and which were made public on Sept. 26. The Fed employees,
who work inside the banks they examine (yes, its literally an inside job), knew the deal was
dodgy. Numerous experts believe that the size of the financial sector is slowing growth in the real
economy by sucking the monetary oxygen out of the room. Banks dont want to lend; they want to
trade, often via esoteric deals that do almost nothing for anyone outside Wall Street. This
disconnect between the real economy and finance is now being closely studied by policymakers
and academics. Adair Turner, a former British banking regulator, thinks that only about 15% of U.K.
financial flows go to the real economy; the rest stay within the financial system, propping up
existing corporate assets, supporting trading and enabling $40 million briefcase-watching fees. If
the New York Fed really wants to redeem itself, it might consider commissioning a similar study to
look at Wall Streets contribution to the U.S. economy.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing financial news
articles from reliable major media sources. For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable
resources provided in our Banking Corruption Information Center.
Goldman to Pay $3.15 Billion to Settle Mortgage Claims

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/22/goldman-to-pay-3-15-billion-to-settle-...
Goldman Sachs is paying its largest bill yet to resolve a government lawsuit related to the financial
crisis. The bank said ... that it had agreed to buy back $3.15 billion in mortgage bonds from
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to end a lawsuit filed in 2011 by the Federal Housing Finance
Agency, the federal regulator that oversees the two mortgage companies. The agency had
accused Goldman of unloading low-quality mortgage bonds onto Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in
the run-up to the financial crisis. It estimates that Goldman is paying $1.2 billion more than the
bonds are now worth. Most of the other 18 banks that faced similar suits from the housing agency
have already reached settlements. The previous settlements have included penalties, which
Goldman avoided. But Goldman had been hoping to avoid settling the suit altogether, contending
as recently as last month that many of the governments claims should be dismissed. The $1.2
billion figure carries a sting because it is double the $550 million payment that Goldman made in
2010 to settle the most prominent crisis-era case it has faced the so-called Abacus case. Since
then, Goldman has largely avoided the billion-dollar penalties paid by other banks for wrongdoing
before the 2008 crisis. This week, Bank of America reached a $16.65 billion settlement with the
Justice Department related to the banks handling of shoddy mortgages. In a separate deal this
year, Bank of America agreed to pay $9.5 billion to settle its part of the housing finance agencys
lawsuit. Some of that money was a penalty and the rest was used to buy back mortgage bonds.
The Unemployment Puzzle: Where Have All the Workers Gone?

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441304579477341062142388
A big puzzle looms over the U.S. economy: Only 63.2% of Americans 16 or older are participating
in the labor force, which ... is down substantially since 2000. As recently as the late 1990s, the
U.S. was a nation in which employment, job creation and labor force participation went hand in
hand. That is no longer the case. The unemployment rate, the figure that dominates reporting on
the economy, is the fraction of the labor force (those working or seeking work) that is unemployed.
This rate has declined slowly since the end of the Great Recession. What hasn't recovered over
that same period is the labor force participation rate, which today stands roughly where it did in
1977. Labor force participation rates increased from the mid-1960s through the 1990s, driven by
more women entering the workforce, baby boomers entering prime working years in the 1970s and
1980s, and increasing pay for skilled laborers. But over the past decade, these trends have leveled
off. At the same time, the participation rate has fallen, particularly in the aftermath of the
recession. The drop is a function of various factors, including simple discouragement, poor
work incentives created by public policies, inadequate schooling and training, and a greater
propensity to seek disability insurance. Globalization and technological change have also
reduced employment and wage growth for low-skilled workerswhich raises questions about
whether current policy is focused enough on helping workers to achieve the skills necessary to
work productively and earn decent incomes.
Note: For more on the devastating impact of financial power and government policy on US
workers, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
For the Love of Money

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html
In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million and I was angry because it wasnt big
enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in
mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was
addicted. It was actually my absurdly wealthy bosses who helped me see the limitations of
unlimited wealth. I was in a meeting with one of them, and a few other traders, and they were
talking about the new hedge-fund regulations. Most everyone on Wall Street thought they were a
bad idea. But isnt it better for the system as a whole? I asked. The room went quiet, and my
boss shot me a withering look. I remember his saying, I dont have the brain capacity to think
about the system as a whole. All Im concerned with is how this affects our company. I felt as if Id
been punched in the gut. He was afraid of losing money, despite all that he had. From that moment
on, I started to see Wall Street with new eyes. I noticed the vitriol that traders directed at the
government for limiting bonuses after the crash. I heard the fury in their voices at the
mention of higher taxes. These traders despised anything or anyone that threatened their
bonuses. Wealth addiction was described by the late sociologist and playwright Philip Slater in a
1980 book, but addiction researchers have paid the concept little attention. Like alcoholics driving
drunk, wealth addiction imperils everyone. Wealth addicts are, more than anybody, specifically
responsible for the ever widening rift that is tearing apart our once great country.
Feds Dudley: Deep Seated Cultural, Ethical Lapses at Many Financial

Firms
2013-11-07, Wall Street Journal blog
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/11/07/feds-dudley-sees-deep-seated-cultur...
Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley said [that] any effort to reduce
the threat to financial stability posed by massive financial firms also must include
compelling banking executives to have more respect for the law and the broader impact on
society of their actions. There is evidence of deep-seated cultural and ethical failures at many
large financial institutions, Mr. Dudley said. Whether this is due to size and complexity, bad
incentives or some other issues is difficult to judge, but it is another critical problem that needs to
be addressed as regulators seek to deal with the problem of banks that are considered too big to
fail, the official said. Mr. Dudley [added] that ending too big to fail and shifting the emphasis to
longer-term sustainability will encourage the needed cultural shift necessary to restore public trust
in the industry. His comments on banking issues come in the wake of last weeks decision by the
Fed to stay the course on its $85-billion-a-month bond-buying program. Mr. Dudley has been a
steadfast supporter of the aggressively easy-money policies pursued by the central bank.
Note: For more on the banking bailout, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
School bonds are a Wall Street scam

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/School-bonds-are-a-Wall-Street-scam-479...
An exotic bond scheme promoted by Wall Street as a way to build schools ... is really a
financial scam. These "capital appreciation bonds" ... were part of AB1388, signed by then-Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009. Unlike conventional bonds that have to be paid off on a regular
basis, the bonds approved in AB1388 relaxed regulatory safeguards and allowed them to be paid
back 25 to 40 years in the future. The problem is that from the time the bonds are issued until
payment is due, interest accrues and compounds at exorbitant rates. This kind of bond has been
outlawed by a number of states. Several grand jury investigations warned [California] school
officials against these scams. According to a recent San Mateo County grand jury report, the
bonds have been issued in California to raise more than $500 billion - but the estimated
future repayment of that debt will total more than $2 trillion. School and community college
districts issued 98 percent of all capital appreciation bonds. More than 200 California school and
community college districts issuing these bonds will end up paying 10 to 20 times more than they
borrowed, [and] payment will not be due until after the useful life of the school facilities built with
the bond funds. State records show that Piper Jaffray has brokered 165 of such bonds since 2008,
earning $31.4 million, and that Goldman Sachs earned $1.6 million on a single deal with the San
Diego Unified School District.
corruption in government and in the financial industry.
Lloyd Blankfein's $21m haul makes him the world's best paid banker
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/apr/12/goldman-sachs-lloyd-blankfein-pay
Goldman Sachs paid its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, $21m last year and granted him a
further $5m in bonus shares in January. The Wall Street bank handed Blankfein $13.3m (8.7m) in
restricted shares and a $5.7m cash bonus on top of his $2m annual salary last year. His total 2012
pay was $9m more than in 2011, and the highest since the $68m he received in 2007, before the
financial crisis struck. The payout, disclosed in a filing with the US regulator the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC), makes Blankfein, 58, the world's best paid banker. Blankfein's top
four lieutenants collected a total of $72m in annual pay, bonuses and share options last year.
Goldman paid its bankers an average of $400,000 last year, $30,000 more than in 2011. The
total pay, bonuses and perks bill to its 32,400 staff came in at $13bn. The payroll figures come
after the bank ... reported a near-doubling of full year net profits to $7.5bn. The payouts come
despite a senior employee attacking it as "morally bankrupt" and revealing that senior
Goldman bankers describe clients as "muppets".
Note: For an excellent four-minute video clip of Sen. Elizabeth Warren questioning government
bank regulators and showing without doubt they are protecting the banks rather than consumers,
click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption,
click here.
Dont Blink, or Youll Miss Another Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/business/dont-blink-or-youll-miss-another-b...
Many people became rightfully upset about bailouts given to big banks during the mortgage crisis.
But it turns out that they are still going on, if more quietly, through the back door. The existence of
one such secret deal, struck in July between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Bank of
America, came to light just last week in court filings. Not only do the filings show the New York
Fed helping to thwart another institutions fraud case against the bank, they also reveal that
the New York Fed agreed to give away what may be billions of dollars in potential legal
claims. The New York Fed said in a court filing that in July it had released Bank of America from
all legal claims arising from losses in some mortgage-backed securities the Fed received when the
government bailed out the American International Group in 2008. One surprise in the filing, which
was part of a case brought by A.I.G., was that the New York Fed let Bank of America off the hook
even as A.I.G. was seeking to recover $7 billion in losses on those very mortgage securities. What
did the New York Fed get from Bank of America in this settlement? Some $43 million, it seems,
from a small dispute the New York Fed had with the bank on two of the mortgage securities. At the
same time, and for no compensation, it released Bank of America from all other legal claims. For
zero compensation, the New York Fed released Bank of America from what may be sizable legal
claims, knowing that A.I.G. was trying to recover on those claims.
regulators and financial corporations, click here.
'Who knew' mortgage defense falling apart

http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Who-knew-mortgage-defense-f...
The "who knew?" defense [was] thrown down by financial institutions and their senior executives to
ward off accusations that they were somehow responsible for the disaster that befell the country.
That defense is now crumbling by the day, thanks in part to their own employees' admissions.
Citing internal e-mails, California joined the federal government and 15 other states this week in
filing multibillion-dollar civil fraud lawsuits against the nation's leading credit ratings agency,
Standard & Poor's, for allegedly deliberately "downplaying and disregarding the true extent of the
credit risks" of the financial instruments it had rated as rock-solid. S&P says the charges are
"without factual or legal merit," while adding that it, "like everyone else, did not predict the speed
and severity of the coming crisis and how credit quality would ultimately be affected." Stack that
up against an S&P executive who warned in an internal memo in December 2006, "This
market is a wildly spinning top which is going to end badly." Or the 2007 e-mail from an
analyst that read, "Job's going great, aside from the fact that the MBS (residential
mortgage-backed securities) is crashing." Foreknowledge seemed to be apparent at JPMorgan
Chase and Morgan Stanley as well. Internal documents in a lawsuit filed by Dexia SA, a French-
Belgian bank, alleging "egregious fraud" by JPMorgan in the sale of $1.7 billion of mortgagebacked bonds, suggested executives at JPMorgan, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual ...
intentionally covered up the unworthiness of the securities they were selling.
Oil supply grows, but so does price

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Oil-supply-grows-but-so-does-price-422...
Since 2008, oil production in the United States has surged ... 28 percent as the controversial
practice of fracking unlocks new supplies in North Dakota and Texas. At the same time, use of oil
and petroleum products has fallen 4 percent, as Americans switch to more efficient cars. In theory
at least, both of those factors should have pushed the price of crude down. Instead, it's gone up.
Since bottoming out during the financial crisis, oil futures traded on the New York Mercantile
Exchange have nearly tripled in value, climbing from $33.87 per barrel in December 2008 to
roughly $95 this month. Oil still costs substantially more now than it did in 2007, before the
recession began. The high price illustrates a brutal truth of today's interconnected world - oil is a
global commodity, bought and sold in a global marketplace. Even while demand falls in the United
States, it's growing in countries such as China and India. Critics say the price paradox undercuts
the oil industry's efforts to drill in more of America's public lands and coastal waters. "It really
debunks the myth of 'Drill, baby, drill,' that if we just produce more oil, prices will stay low or go
lower," said Michael Marx, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Oil campaign. Will all that extra
petroleum finally mean lower prices? "It's a difficult question to answer, because there's not a
one-for-one (relationship) between an increase in production and a decrease in prices,"
said Doug MacIntyre, director of the Energy Information Administration's office of
petroleum statistics. "There are so many other factors."
Note: Though the author refers to "so many other factors," he doesn't even mention greed and
corruption which almost everyone knows are rampant. When will the media focus their attention on
these fundamental challenges of our world?
'Shadow Banking' Still Thrives, System Hits $67 Trillion

The system of so-called "shadow banking" ... grew to a new high of $67 trillion globally last year, a
top regulatory group said, calling for tighter control of the sector. A report by the Financial Stability
Board (FSB) [states] that shadow banking is set to thrive, beyond the reach of a regulatory net
tightening around traditional banks and banking activities. The FSB, a task force from the world's
top 20 economies, also called for greater regulatory control of shadow banking. The study by the
FSB said shadow banking around the world more than doubled to $62 trillion in the five years to
2007 before the crisis struck. But the size of the total system had grown to $67 trillion in 2011
more than the total economic output of all the countries in the study. The multitrillion-dollar
activities of hedge funds and private equity companies are often cited as examples of shadow
banking. But the term also covers investment funds, money market funds and even cash-rich firms
that lend government bonds to banks, which in turn use them as security when taking credit from
the European Central Bank. The United States had the largest shadow banking system, said
the FSB, with assets of $23 trillion in 2011, followed by the euro area with $22 trillion
and the United Kingdom at $9 trillion.
Note: That's $10,000 for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Do you think the bankers are
somehow manipulating the system? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
sources on financial corruption, click here.
A Startling Gap Between Us And Them In 'Plutocrats'

2012-10-15, NPR
http://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162799512/a-startling-gap-between-us-and-them-i...
Journalist Chrystia Freeland has spent years reporting on the people who've reached the pinnacle
of the business world. For her new book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and
the Fall of Everyone Else, she traveled the world, interviewing the multimillionaires and
billionaires who make up the world's elite super-rich. Those at the very top, Freeland says,
have told her that American workers are the most overpaid in the world, and that they need
to be more productive if they want to have better lives. "It is a sense of, you know, 'I
deserve this,' " she says. "I do think that there is both a very powerful sense of entitlement and a
kind of bubble of wealth which makes it hard for the people at the very top to understand the
travails of the middle class." How are the super-rich ... different from the super-rich of the past
say, 1955? Well, there are many more of them, and they're a lot richer than they used to be. "One
of the things which is really astonishing is how much bigger the gap is than it was before," she
says. "In the 1950s, America was relatively egalitarian, much more so than compared to now."
CEOs earn exponentially more now, compared with their workers, than they did 60 years ago.
Freeland says she's worried about what she calls an inevitable human temptation that people
who've benefited from a mobile society, like America, will get to the top and then rig the rules to
benefit themselves." You don't do this in a kind of chortling, smoking your cigar, conspiratorial
thinking way," she says. "You do it by persuading yourself that what is in your own personal selfinterest is in the interests of everybody else.
Note: For a fascinating excerpt from this book, click here. For revealing major media articles
showing the stark gap between the uber-rich and the rest of us, click here.
The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/the-self-destruction-of-the-...
In the early 14th century, Venice was one of the richest cities in Europe. By 1500, Venices
population was smaller than it had been in 1330. In the 17th and 18th centuries, as the rest of
Europe grew, the city continued to shrink. The story of Venices rise and fall is told by the scholars
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power,
Prosperity, and Poverty, as an illustration of their thesis that what separates successful states from
failed ones is whether their governing institutions are inclusive or extractive. Extractive states are
controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of
society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater
inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness.
The history of the United States can be read as one such virtuous circle. But as the story of Venice
shows, virtuous circles can be broken. Elites that have prospered from inclusive systems can
be tempted to pull up the ladder they climbed to the top. Eventually, their societies become
extractive and their economies languish. That ... is the danger America faces today, as the 1
percent pulls away from everyone else and pursues an economic, political and social agenda
that will increase that gap even further ultimately destroying the open system that made
America rich and allowed its 1 percent to thrive in the first place.
Note: The author of this article, Chrystia Freeland, wrote the book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New
Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, from which this essay is adapted. For deeply
revealing reports from reliable major media sources on income inequality, click here.
SEC whistle-blower program starts paying off for agency, tipsters

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/22/business/la-fi-sec-whistleblower-2012...
For the last year, whistle-blowers deep inside corporate America have been dishing dirt on their
employers under a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission program that could give them a cut
of multimillion-dollar penalties won by financial regulators. A new bounty program has been an
intelligence boon to the securities industry regulator, which has struggled to redeem itself after
failing to stop Bernard Madoff's epic Ponzi scheme and rein in Wall Street before the 2008
financial crisis. Motivated by cash and the chance to rat out wrongdoers, tipsters are dropping
more than names. Whistle-blowers and their attorneys are turning over boxes of documents,
copies of emails and even audio recordings of alleged fraud or illegal overseas bribery. "We
are getting very, very high-quality information from whistle-blowers," said Sean McKessy,
director of the SEC's whistle-blower office. In the program's first year, 2,870 tips or about eight a
day rolled in as of Aug. 12. And on Tuesday, one of them finally led to the agency's first payout:
$50,000 to an informant who alerted regulators to an investment fraud. They declined to specify
the case, careful to avoid identifying the whistle-blower. Some say shielding identities could pose a
challenge for publicizing the program, but the anonymity probably will yield more information. The
flood of new information doesn't necessarily mean the SEC will be more effective. In the case of
Madoff, one whistle-blower repeatedly sounded the alarm years before the scheme blew up to
no avail.
government and the big banks, click here.
CNBC Reports Financial System Changeover: Theyre Going to Put the

Old System In a Coma
2012-08-10, CNBC
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000108212
Kevin Ferry: There are Libor subpoenas raining down on the New York branches of these foreign
banks today. So I think you really have to watch it. The [British Bankers' Association] is now
saying they are going to go into overhaul mode. So as if we dont have enough things going
on, youre going to start opening up a Pandoras Box here in the Libor sector of the market. I think
what theyre going to do ... is basically put the old system in a coma, and work to devise
something thats a little bit better, and its going to be tricky. Doug Dachille: So what are they
going to do with the euro/dollar futures and all the outstanding notion of principal of contracts
linked to Libor? I mean is everybody going to convert their Libor interest rate swaps to cost of fund
funds or Fed fund basis swaps or some other index? KF: Are you asking me? Ive asked that
question as high as I could ask it and I get blank stares. DD: Its not clear that every bank has
exactly the same Libor exposure, so its not clear that that cartel, in setting Libor and manipulating
it, actually is as powerful as the cartel that manages oil prices. Yet I dont hear any outrage of
people routinely trading commodity derivatives and commodity futures, as much as I hear the
outrage over euro/dollar futures and Libor-based interest rate swaps. Everybody assumes thats
what goes on when you trade commodity futures, but nobody ever really thought that was going on
when you were trading euro/dollar futures.
Note: The text above is an excerpt from a CNBC news video. Click on the link above for the full
report. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption in the
financial sector, click here.
The Austerity Agenda

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/opinion/krugman-the-austerity-agenda.html
Slashing spending while the economy is deeply depressed is a self-defeating strategy, because it
just deepens the depression. So why is Britain doing exactly what it shouldnt? Unlike the
governments of, say, Spain or California, the British government can borrow freely, at historically
low interest rates. So why is that government sharply reducing investment and eliminating
hundreds of thousands of public-sector jobs, rather than waiting until the economy is stronger?
The great American economist Irving Fisher explained it all the way back in 1933, summarizing
what he called debt deflation with the pithy slogan the more the debtors pay, the more they
owe. Recent events, above all the austerity death spiral in Europe, have dramatically illustrated
the truth of Fishers insight. So why have so many politicians insisted on pursuing austerity in [the]
slump? And why wont they change course even as experience confirms the lessons of theory and
history? When you push austerians ... they almost always retreat to assertions along the lines of:
But its essential that we shrink the size of the state. These assertions often go along with claims
that the economic crisis itself demonstrates the need to shrink government. So the austerity drive
in Britain isnt really about debt and deficits at all; its about using deficit panic as an
excuse to dismantle social programs. And this is, of course, exactly the same thing that has
been happening in America.
Note: For lots more on the devastating impacts created by the corruption of governments and
States seek currencies made of silver and gold

2012-02-03, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/03/pf/states_currencies/
A growing number of states are seeking shiny new currencies made of silver and gold. Worried
that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. dollar are on the brink of collapse, lawmakers from 13
states, including Minnesota, Tennessee, Iowa, South Carolina and Georgia, are seeking approval
from their state governments to either issue their own alternative currency or explore it as an
option. Just three years ago, only three states had similar proposals in place. Unlike individual
communities, which are allowed to create their own currency -- as long as it is easily
distinguishable from U.S. dollars -- the Constitution bans states from printing their own
paper money or issuing their own currency. But it allows the states to make "gold and silver
Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts." And since gold has grown exponentially more valuable,
while the U.S. dollar continues to lose ground, the notion has become increasingly appealing to
state lawmakers, he said. The states' proposals have been gaining steam among Tea Partyers and
Republicans, many of whom also endorse a nationwide return to the gold standard, which would
require the U.S. dollar to be backed by gold reserves.
Wall Street - a raw deal for the 100 percent

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/28/EDQN1MHHJI.DTL
The stunning reality is that five years into the financial meltdown, it's business as usual on Wall
Street - outlandish rewards for insiders with downside for almost everyone else. Occupy Wall
Street protesters are right - something is wrong - but they're not sure what. Let's revisit the latest
debacle - the implosion of yet another Wall Street darling, MF Global. The fallout of its bad bets on
European bonds is hitting home hard, even in rural America, where many of its agricultural
customers work. As the eighth-largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, MF Global represents just
about everything that is wrong on Wall Street. 1. The cult of a Wall Street superstar. 2. Gambling
disguised as investing. 3. The bail-me-out syndrome. 4. Enormous conflicts of interest. 5.
Leverage on a grand scale. 6. Failure of regulators and the reform law. 7. Misappropriation of client
funds. 8. Worthless rating agencies. 9. Golden parachutes soaring high. 10. Breakdown of
morality. Wall Street will keep sucking huge sums out of our economy and putting 100
percent of us at risk unless the rules change. Most important, we must stop gambling and
start investing again to build valuable companies. The next crisis will make 2008 look like a
warm-up. Imagine how big the Occupy camps will be if that happens.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources which provide detailed information on
all the problematic dimensions of Wall Street's operations described in the article above, click here.
Person of the Year Introduction

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102139_21...
No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square in
a town barely on a map, he would spark protests that would bring down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt
and Libya and rattle regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Or that that spirit of dissent would spur
Mexicans to rise up against the terror of drug cartels, Greeks to march against unaccountable
leaders, Americans to occupy public spaces to protest income inequality, and Russians to marshal
themselves against a corrupt autocracy. Protests have now occurred in countries whose
populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspapers and
online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history. Everywhere, it seems,
people said they'd had enough. They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when
the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. The root of the word
democracy is demos, "the people," and the meaning of democracy is "the people rule." And
they did, if not at the ballot box, then in the streets. Protest is in some ways the source
code for democracy and evidence of the lack of it. For steering the planet on a more
democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century, the Protester is
TIME's 2011 Person of the Year.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from major media sources that explain why protestors
worldwide have been occupying their cities, click here.
Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don't get it

2011-10-05, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/05/opinion/rushkoff-occupy-wall-street/index.html
Yes, there are a wide array of complaints, demands, and goals from the Wall Street protesters: the
collapsing environment, labor standards, housing policy, government corruption, ... and so on.
Different people have been affected by different aspects of the same system -- and they believe
they are symptoms of the same core problem. I witnessed [many cogent conversations] as I
strolled by Occupy Wall Street's many teach-ins this morning. There were young people teaching
one another about, among other things, how the economy works, ... the history of centralized
interest-bearing currency, the creation and growth of the derivatives industry, and about the
Obama administration deciding to settle with, rather than investigate and prosecute the investment
banking industry for housing fraud. Anyone who says he has no idea what these folks are
protesting is not being truthful. We all know that there are investment bankers working on
Wall Street getting richer while things for most of the rest of us are getting tougher. Occupy
Wall Street is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion, creates as many
questions as it answers, aims to force a reconsideration of the way the nation does business and
offers hope to those of us who previously felt alone in our belief that the current economic system
is broken.
Note: For insights into the reasons why people have decided they must occupy their cities in
protest of the predations of financial corporations, check out our extensive "Banking Bailout" news
articles.
While Wall St. flourishes, Main St. flounders

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/28/EDKO1KRVJM.DTL
What if we stood up for Main Street? Corporations and elected officials are making decisions that
are impacting our lives, and we are at their mercy. Americans, many [of] whose lives have been
destroyed by the 2008 subprime mortgage market disaster, resent the lack of accountability on the
part of Wall Street for its role in this scandal. Few have been indicted for the market collapse
and resulting meltdown of the global economy. After the federal government bailed out the
financial institutions, it is back to business as usual. Corporate profits are accumulating
and bonuses are raining down on the very players who created the bubble and crash in the
first place. On the other hand, the taxpayers who bailed out Wall Street aren't doing so well.
Instead of bonuses, we are suffering from unemployment and underemployment of epic
proportions. Homeowners continue to lose their homes to foreclosure, and homelessness is on the
rise. Public services, public safety and public welfare funding is being cut back or cut out. Public
education has been decimated. American corporations have lost all sense of responsibility for U.S.
citizens. While the U.S. economy fights to survive, corporations have turned their backs on those
whose tax dollars kept our ship of state from sinking. Sending jobs overseas might improve
corporate profit margins, but at what expense to the workforce and U.S. economy? These
decisions have devastated American workers' lives. So, what needs to be done? What if we begin
to stand up for Main Street?
Note: For a treasure trove of reports detailing the criminal collusion between the federal
government and Wall Street financial corporations, click here.
With moving truck, Fla. couple threatens bank with foreclosure

Months after Bank of America wrongly foreclosed on a house Warren and Maureen Nyerges had
already paid for, they were still fighting to get reimbursed for the court battle. So on Friday, their
attorney showed up at a branch office in Naples with a moving truck and sheriff's deputies who had
a judge's permission to seize the furniture if necessary. An hour later, the bank had written a check
for $5,772.88. "The branch manager was visibly shaken," attorney Todd Allen said Monday,
recalling the visit to the bank last week. "At that point I was willing to take the desk and the chair
he was sitting in." After the moving company and sheriff's deputies get their share, the Nyerges
should receive the rest of the money this week, ending a bizarre saga that started when they paid
Bank of America $165,000 cash for a 2,700-square-foot (250 meter) foreclosed home in Naples in
2009. About four months later, a process server knocked on their door and handed Warren
Nyerges a notice of foreclosure. That started 18 months of frustrating phone calls, paperwork and
court hearings. Whenever Nyerges called the bank, representatives told him to "come up to
date" with his payments. When he called 25 different law firms, no attorney would take the
case. When he went to court, the lawyers for the bank filed incorrect motions and were
woefully unprepared for the hearings.
Note: For a great two-minute video on this most unusual happening, click here.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn to face fresh sex assault complaint

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/16/dominique-strauss-khan-tristane-b...
A French writer who claims Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her nine years ago is to
file an official complaint, her lawyer has announced. Tristane Banon previously described the
attack, which happened when she was in her early 20s, in a television programme in 2007. The
62-year-old head of the International Monetary Fund who was widely tipped to be France's next
president was refused bail by the judge, Melissa Jackson, who ruled he might attempt to flee the
US. Across France, after the shock of Strauss-Kahn's arrest, came speculation ... and conspiracy
theories. For some ... the story was so extraordinary it smacked of a set-up. Only three weeks ago,
Strauss-Kahn evoked such a possibility in an interview with French newspaper Libration when he
said he thought he was under surveillance and named the three principal difficulties he foresaw if
he was to stand for the presidential elections. "Money, women and the fact I am Jewish." He
said he could see himself becoming the victim of a honey trap: "a woman raped in a car
park and who's been promised 500,000 or a million euros to invent such a story ...".
Note: For further reasons to suspect that the charges against Strauss-Kahn are politicallymotivated, whether true or not, click here.
Inside Job: how bankers caused the financial crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/feb/17/inside-job-financial-crisis-banker...
Charles Ferguson's film Inside Job ... explains why so little has been done to reform the financial
world or bring criminal prosecutions against the main protagonists [of the financial crash that
began in 2008]. His villainous lineup includes bankers, politicians (many of whom were previously
bankers), regulators, the credit ratings agencies and academics. In Inside Job, the name that
keeps cropping up is Larry Summers, a friend of President Bill Clinton and more recently Barack
Obama. Summers exemplifies the links between cheerleaders in academia, Wall Street,
supine regulators and an ignorant Capitol Hill that Ferguson stresses were at the root of the
problem. Still, no matter how much it is explained, the general public is not going to understand.
How does one go into battle yelling slogans about credit default swaps? The bankers know
ignorance is their trump card. Maybe Inside Job will make us more savvy in time for the next crash.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable souces on the criminality of the major financial
firms, regulatory agencies and politicians which led to the global financial crisis and Greater
Depression, click here.
The little red book that swept France

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-little-red-book-that-swept...
Take a book of just 13 pages, written by a relatively obscure 93-year-old man, which contains no
sex, no jokes, no fine writing and no startlingly original message. A publishing disaster? No, a
publishing phenomenon. Indignez vous! (Cry out!), a slim pamphlet by a wartime French
resistance hero, Stphane Hessel, is smashing all publishing records in France. The book urges
the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by
rejecting the "insolent, selfish" power of money and markets and by defending the social
"values of modern democracy". The book, which costs 3, has sold 600,000 copies in three
months and another 200,000 have just been printed. Its original print run was 8,000. In the run-up
to Christmas, Mr Hessel's call for a "peaceful insurrection" not only topped the French bestsellers
list, it sold eight times more copies than the second most popular book. Mr Hessel, who survived
Nazi concentration camps to become a French diplomat, said he was "profoundly touched" by the
success of his book. Just as he "cried out" against Nazism in the 1940s, he said, young people
today should "cry out against the complicity between politicians and economic and financial
powers" and "defend our democratic rights acquired over two centuries".
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the "complicity between politicians and
economic and financial powers", click here.
BofA halts foreclosures in 50 states

2010-10-08, Salt Lake Tribune/Associated Press
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/50440207-79/bank-foreclosures-documents-fo...
A mushrooming crisis over potential flaws in foreclosure documents is threatening to throw the real
estate industry into chaos as Bank of America [today] became the first bank to stop taking back
tens of thousands of foreclosed homes in all 50 states. The move ... adds to growing concerns that
mortgage lenders have been evicting homeowners using flawed court papers, without verifying the
information in them. Bank of America Corp., the nations largest bank, said [its decision] applies to
homes that the bank takes back itself and those that it transfers to investors such as mortgage
giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The bank did so in reaction to mounting pressure from public
officials inquiring about the accuracy of foreclosure documents. A document obtained last week
by The Associated Press showed a Bank of America official acknowledging in a legal
proceeding that she signed thousands of foreclosure documents a month and typically
didnt read them. The official, Renee Hertzler, said in a February deposition that she signed
up to 8,000 such documents a month.
Note: For any who might be facing home foreclosure, don't miss the CNN News clip with important
advice from a courageous congresswoman available here. For many key reports from reliable
sources on the corrupt practices of major banks, click here.
Goldman Sachs exec to advise central bank

2010-06-29, Businessweek/Associated Press
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9GLB2AO3.htm
The chief executive of Goldman Sachs Canada has been named a special adviser to the head of
Canada's central bank. The Bank of Canada said [on June 29] that Timothy Hodgson will
advise central bank head Mark Carney, a former Goldman Sachs executive, on financial
reform. Carney says Hodgson is one of Canada's top investment bankers. Hodgson is leaving
Goldman Sachs. The company has come under sharp criticism over civil fraud charges brought by
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and because of the high pay its executives and
traders received during the financial crisis. Hodgson joined Goldman Sachs in 1990 and became
CEO of its Canadian operations in 2005.
Note: So Canada's central bank head, a former Goldman Sachs exec, will now be advised by the
chief executive of Goldman Sachs Canada. Hmmmmm.
Sticking the public with the bill for the bankers crisis
2010-06-27, Globe and Mail (One of Toronto's leading newspapers)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/opinion/sticking-the-public-...
My city feels like a crime scene and the criminals are all melting into the night, fleeing the scene.
No, Im not talking about the kids in black who smashed windows and burned cop cars on
Saturday. Im talking about the heads of state who, on Sunday night, smashed social safety nets
and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession. Faced with the effects of a crisis created by
the worlds wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and
most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill. How else can we interpret the G20s
final communiqu, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet
instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and
we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further
deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard-earned benefits; public-sector
workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already
begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse. But there is
nothing to say that citizens of G20 countries need to take orders from this hand-picked club.
Already, workers, pensioners and students have taken to the streets against austerity measures in
Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Greece, often marching under the slogan: We wont pay for
your crisis. And they have plenty of suggestions for how to raise revenues to meet their respective
budget shortfalls. Many are calling for a financial transaction tax that would slow down hot money
and raise new money for social programs.
Note: This report from Toronto is by Naomi Klein, the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of
Disaster Capitalism. For powerful evidence that the violence at the recent G20 meeting was largely
instigated by undercover police, click here.
The Rise and Fall of the G.D.P.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/magazine/16GDP-t.html
G.D.P. is an index of a countrys entire economic output a tally of, among many other things,
manufacturers shipments, farmers harvests, retail sales and construction spending. Its a figure
that compresses the immensity of a national economy into a single data point of surpassing
density. The conventional feeling about G.D.P. is that the more it grows, the better a country and
its citizens are doing. [But] it has been a difficult few years for G.D.P. For decades, academics and
gadflies have been critical of the measure, suggesting that it is an inaccurate and misleading
gauge of prosperity. What has changed more recently is that G.D.P. has been actively challenged
by a variety of world leaders, especially in Europe, as well as by a number of international groups,
like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The G.D.P. ... has not only
failed to capture the well-being of a 21st-century society but has also skewed global political
objectives toward the single-minded pursuit of economic growth. Which indicators are the most
suitable replacements for, or most suitable enhancements to, G.D.P. Should they measure
educational attainment or employment? Should they account for carbon emissions or
happiness?
Note: Which is more important, the economic prosperity of a people, or the well being and level of
happiness?
Bankers jailed, sued as Iceland seeks culprits for crisis

2010-05-13, Daily Telegraph (Australia)/AFP
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/breaking-news/bankers-jailed-sued-a...
More than a year and a half after Iceland's major banks failed, all but sinking the country's
economy, police have begun rounding up a number of top bankers while other former executives
and owners face a $US2 billion ($2.24 billion) lawsuit. Since Iceland's three largest banks Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir - collapsed in late 2008, their former executives and owners
have largely been living untroubled lives abroad. But the publication last month of a
parliamentary inquiry into the island nation's profound financial and economic crisis
signalled a turning of the tide, laying much of the blame for the downfall on the former bank
heads who had taken "inappropriate loans from the banks" they worked for. Overnight, the
administrators of Glitnir's liquidation announced they had filed a $US2 billion lawsuit in a New York
court against former large shareholders and executives for alleged fraud. "I think this lawsuit is
without precedence in Iceland," Steinunn Gudbjartsdottir, who chairs Glitnir's so-called winding-up
board, told reporters in Reykjavik. The bank also said it was "taking action against its former
auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for facilitating and helping to conceal the fraudulent
transactions engineered by [its principal shareholder] and his associates, which ultimately led to
the bank's collapse in October 2008."
Note: Yet American and British bankers who played a major role in the economic collapse are
getting record pay. For an incisive article in Rolling Stone titled "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?" click
here. For key reports on financial fraud from major media sources, click here.
Reported Suicide Is Latest Shock at Freddie Mac

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/23freddie.html?partner=rss&emc=rss...
The pressures were already immense when David B. Kellermann was promoted to the top
financial position at the mortgage giant Freddie Mac last September. Mr. Kellermann's boss and
other top executives were ousted when the Treasury secretary seized Freddie Mac and its sibling
company, Fannie Mae; others left on their own and were not replaced. Early on Wednesday, Mr.
Kellermann went to the basement of his brick home and hanged himself, according to people
familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak. His body was removed five hours
later, through a throng of neighbors, television crews and others. "David was such an honest and
humble person," said Tim Bitsberger, Freddie Mac"s treasurer until he left in December. "It just
doesn't make sense," Mr. Bitsberger said. The roots and causes of suicide are often unclear. It
is not known if Mr. Kellermann succumbed to the pressures of his job. But in the aftermath
of his death, it is plain that at Freddie Mac, as at many of the companies in the center of this
economic storm, there are forces so strong they can overwhelm almost anyone. Mr.
Kellermann ... was at the intersection of some of the most difficult issues facing the company. Mr.
Kellermann was also working in a poisonous political atmosphere. He was recently involved in
tense conversations with the company's federal regulator over its routine financial disclosures.
Freddie Mac executives wanted to emphasize to investors that they believed the company was
being run to benefit the government, rather than shareholders.
Note: For a revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street bailout,
click here.
Restrain the credit card industry

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/22/EDK817761J.DTL
While American consumers have been struggling, credit card companies have been enjoying a
field day. Not only are most of them receiving federal bailout money, but they've been jacking up
interest rates (there were rate hikes on nearly 25 percent of accounts between 2007 and 2008)
and switching the terms of agreements with consumers. Why the rush to gouge consumers in the
depths of a recession? In July 2010, the Federal Reserve will impose new, consumer-friendly
disclosure and administrative restrictions on the credit card industry. Scrambling to get ahead of
the deadline, the card companies have been raising interest rates, slicing credit lines and, in too
many cases, simply dumping customers with little rhyme or reason. Defaults and delinquencies
have skyrocketed - and consumers are livid. "It's off the charts in terms of their ire about
paying higher interest rates, particularly when their money, as they see it, is being given to
the banks to prop them up," said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough. Speier's staff says her
office has been "flooded" with calls from furious constituents. Speier is ... a co-sponsor of HR627,
better known as "The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights." The bill - which has the support of the
Obama administration - would prevent card issuers from raising interest rates without advance
notice and end the practice of "double-cycle billing" so that consumers do not have to pay interest
on debts they've already paid.
Note: For a highly revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street
The U.S. Financial System Is Effectively Insolvent

2009-03-05, Forbes Magazine
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/04/global-recession-insolvent-opinions-columnis...
With economic activity contracting in 2009's first quarter at the same rate as in 2008's fourth
quarter, a nasty U-shaped recession could turn into a more severe L-shaped near-depression (or
stag-deflation). The scale and speed of synchronized global economic contraction is really
unprecedented (at least since the Great Depression), with a free fall of GDP, income, consumption,
industrial production, employment, exports, imports, residential investment and, more ominously,
capital expenditures around the world. And now many emerging-market economies are on the
verge of a fully fledged financial crisis, starting with emerging Europe. In the meantime, the
massacre in financial markets and among financial firms is continuing. The debate on "bank
nationalization" is borderline surreal, with the U.S. government having already committed-between guarantees, investment, recapitalization and liquidity provision--about $9 trillion of
government financial resources to the financial system (and having already spent $2 trillion of
this staggering $9 trillion figure). Thus, the U.S. financial system is de facto nationalized, as the
Federal Reserve has become the lender of first and only resort rather than the lender of last resort,
and the U.S. Treasury is the spender and guarantor of first and only resort. And even with the $2
trillion of government support, most of these financial institutions are insolvent, as delinquency and
charge-off rates are now rising at a rate ... that means expected credit losses for U.S. financial
firms will peak at $3.6 trillion. So, in simple words, the U.S. financial system is effectively insolvent.
Note: The author of this insightful analysis, Nouriel Roubini, has a very informative blog, available
here.
The Death of 'Rational Man'

What allowed some people to see the financial crash coming while so many others missed its
gathering force? I put that question recently to Nouriel Roubini, who has come to be known as "Dr.
Doom" because of his insistent warnings starting in 2006 that we were heading into a global
firestorm. Roubini gave two kinds of answers. The first involves standard number-crunching of the
sort that economists routinely do -- and that Roubini just did better and sooner. It's his second
answer that's more interesting, because it goes to the heart of what we should take away from this
crisis: Roubini decided to discard the assumption of market rationality that underlies most
economics and to embrace the psychological insights of what's known as "behavioral economics."
Everyone else had those same numbers. Why did Roubini act? The answer is that he
decided to trust his gut, which told him there was trouble ahead, rather than Wall Street's
"wisdom of the crowd," which -- as reflected in stock prices -- said everything was rosy. He
concluded that the markets were not pricing in the degree of risk that was actually present in
housing. "The rational man theory of economics has not worked," Roubini said last month at a
session of the World Economic Forum at Davos. That's why he and other prominent economists
are paying more attention to behavioral economics, which starts from the premise that economic
decisions, like other aspects of human behavior, are influenced by irrational psychological factors.
Note: To visit Nouriel Roubini's highly informative blog, click here. For lots more on the financial
crisis and bailout, click here.
US Treasury overpaid $78 bln under TARP-watchdog

2009-02-06, CNN News/Reuters
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/reuters/MTFH29185_2009-02-06_01-...
The U.S. Treasury looks to have overpaid financial institutions to the tune of $78 billion in carrying
out capital injections last year, the head of a congressional oversight panel for the government's
$700 billion bailout program told lawmakers. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor, said her
group estimated the Treasury paid $254 billion in 2008 in return for stocks and warrants worth
about $176 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Warren said the Treasury,
under then-Secretary Henry Paulson, misled the public about how it would price them.
"Treasury simply did not do what it said it was doing ... They described the program one
way, and they priced it another," Warren said at a hearing before the Senate Banking
Committee. She added that Paulson "was not entirely candid" in describing TARP's bank capital
injection program. Neil Barofsky, another watchdog for the TARP program, told the Senate
committee his office is turning to criminal investigations. "That's going to be a large focus of my
office," he said. Warren told the banking committee that after three months on the job, her panel is
still not getting enough answers from Treasury. She described the bailout as "an opaque process
at best." Barofsky raised concerns about potential fraud in one of several programs funded by
bailout money -- the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility (TALF).
Note: Was the overpayment by Treasury to Wall Street banks for nearly-worthless assets they
created a mistake? Or was it the real, hidden purpose of TARP to pay the banks more for the
assets than they are worth? For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities
behind the Wall Street bailout, click here.
U.S. Pledges Top $7.7 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=arEE1iClqDrk
The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American
taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The unprecedented
pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest
response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled
by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury
Departments $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was
1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis. When Congress approved the
TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more
money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in
return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in. Whether its
lending or spending, its tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding
collateral we dont know anything about, said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey
Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. The time has come that we
consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to
elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.
Note: How is it possible that trillions of taxpayer dollars are being thrown around, yet Congress is
not being told where the money is going? For revealing information on how the Fed manipulates
World Bank Under Cyber Siege in 'Unprecedented Crisis'

2008-10-10, FOX News
The World Bank Group's computer network one of the largest repositories of sensitive data
about the economies of every nation has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a
year, FOX News has learned. It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources
inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution's highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply
penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank's
network for nearly a month in June and July. In total, at least six major intrusions two of them
using the same group of IP addresses originating from China have been detected at the World
Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month. In a frantic
midnight e-mail to colleagues, the bank's senior technology manager referred to the
situation as an "unprecedented crisis." In fact, it may be the worst security breach ever at a
global financial institution. The crisis comes at an awkward moment for World Bank president
Robert Zoellick. This weekend, the bank holds its annual series of meetings in Washington and
just in advance of those sessions, Zoellick called for a radical revamping of multilateral
organizations in light of the global economic meltdown. Zoellick is positioning himself and the bank
as an institution that can help chart a new path toward global financial stability. But that reputation
... depends on the bank's stable information infrastructure. The fact that the information vaults of
the World Bank have been repeatedly pried open won't help Zoellick's case.
Note: For analysis of the role of banks and financial corporations in today's world, click here.
A Bailout. For Everyone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/03/11/ST2008031103060...
Last week, it was a $200 billion cash-for-bond swap for the banks. This week, it was a $200 billion
bond-for-bond swap for the big investment houses. If they keep this up, pretty soon you'll be able
to walk into any Federal Reserve bank and hock that diamond brooch you inherited from Aunt
Mildred. Forget all that nonsense about the Bernanke Fed being too timid or behind the curve. In
the face of what is turning into the most serious financial market crisis since the Great Depression,
the Fed has been more aggressive and more creative in using its limitless balance sheet -- in
effect, its ability to print money -- than at any time in history. We can argue till the cows come home
about whether this is a bailout for Wall Street. It is -- but only to the extent that it is also a bailout
for all of us, meant to prevent a financial and economic meltdown that drags everyone down with it.
In broad strokes, we're going through a massive "de-leveraging" of the economy, wringing
out trillions of dollars of debt that had artificially driven up the price of real estate and
financial assets, and, more generally, allowed Americans to live beyond their means. Fed
officials warn that this de-leveraging is nowhere near finished. It's anyone's guess how long
this credit crunch will last, but the chances are that we'll have several more market meltdowns and
Fed rescues before it's over, probably in the fall. Until then, the dollar will continue to get
hammered and stocks will continue their fitful decline. And if the last two financially induced
recessions are any guide, it will be well into 2009 before the economy hits bottom, followed by a
couple of years of slow growth and "jobless" recovery.
Note: The title of this article is quite revealing. A bailout for the big banks is considered to be a
bailout for everyone. If you believe this, we most highly encourage you to read our powerful twopage summary of the banking cover-up available here.
Energy Traders Avoid Scrutiny

One year ago, a 32-year-old trader at a giant hedge fund named Amaranth held huge sway over
the price the country paid for natural gas. Trading on unregulated commodity exchanges, he made
risky bets that led to the fund's collapse -- and, according to a congressional investigation, higher
gas bills for homeowners. But as another winter approaches, lawmakers and federal regulators
have yet to set up a system to prevent another big fund from cornering a vital commodity market.
Called by some insiders the Wild West of Wall Street, commodity trading is a world where
many goods that are key to national security or public consumption, such as oil, pork
bellies or uranium, are traded with almost no oversight. Part of the problem is that the
regulator, the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has had a hard time keeping up
with the sector it oversees. Commodity trading has exploded in complexity and popularity, growing
six-fold in trading volume since 2000 -- the year that a handful of giant energy companies,
including Enron, successfully lobbied to get Congress to exempt energy markets from government
regulation. Meanwhile CFTC's staffing has dropped to its lowest level in the agency's 33-year
history. Its computer systems that monitor trades are outdated. Its leadership has seen frequent
turnover. "We are facing flat budgets and exponential growth in the industry," said CFTC Acting
Chairman Walter Lukken. "Over the long term this type of budgetary situation is not sustainable."
Commodities markets also have become complex with many trading futures contracts as well as
financial tools called derivatives and swaps, whose value is based on the risk of futures contracts.
Gathering data on these products has been a challenge for the CFTC. The evolution of the
markets has led to some tension between the CFTC and the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission.
Note: For more revealing major media reports of unregulated financial corruption and its impact,
click here.
Radical banking: You shop locally -- why not bank locally too?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2007/09/04/moneytales.DTL
Jessica ... lives what some might consider the perfect alternative lifestyle. She makes enough
money to pay for rent and food (from the farmer's market) by teaching classes at the Solar Living
Institute and selling her self-published zine about alternative fuel. She grows much of her own food
and raises chickens and bees in her backyard. As a child, her family life centered around growing
food and cooking meals together. Her parents never emphasized money. She hasn't strayed far
from her upbringing. When asked about her views on money, she said: "It's better to be happy than
to worry about your credit card bill or working a lot." One of the key points of being happy, for
Jessica, is to bank at Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union. Jessica's made it a point to
convert her friends to using credit unions, which are nonprofit banks. "I say to people: So you
shop at a farmer's market. You use alternative fuel or bike or take public transportation. But
you still bank at Bank of America?" She laughed at the paradox of the small-is-beautiful crowd
supporting a global corporation. "With banks, it's a business and all your money goes to make
someone you don't know rich -- but with credit unions, all the money goes back into the
community," Jessica explained. "It's people banding together to share the abundance."
Credit unions -- also called cooperative banks or people's banks -- have origins in Europe. They
were first started by German farmers in the 1860s who felt private banks were charging unfair
fees. These rural people pooled money together in order to make loans within their tight-knit
community. In North America, the idea of credit unions was first embraced by Canadians. These
days in the United States, there are over 8,000 credit unions; 536 of them are in California.
Note: To locate a credit union near you (in the United States), click here.
4 Banks, Including JPMorgan, Fined in Europe Over Cartel Behavior

http://dealbook.nytimes.com//2014/10/21/4-banks-including-jpmorgan-fined-in-e...
The European Commission on Tuesday fined four major financial institutions 93.9 million euros, or
about $120 million, over two types of activity that it deemed as cartel behavior. In one case, the
European Commission fined JPMorgan Chase 61.7 million euros for manipulating the Swiss franc
Libor benchmark interest rate in an illegal bilateral cartel with the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Interest-rate derivatives such as forward rate agreements, swaps, futures and options are
financial products intended to help manage interest-rate fluctuations. In December 2013, the
European Union fined several global financial institutions a combined 1.7 billion to settle charges
that they colluded to fix benchmark interest rates. Regulators accused R.B.S. and JPMorgan of
trying to distort the process used to price interest rate derivatives. In a separate settlement also
announced on Tuesday, the European Commission said R.B.S., UBS, JPMorgan and Credit
Suisse, operated a cartel on bid-ask spreads of Swiss franc interest-rate derivatives, imposing
fines worth a total of 32.4 million. from May to September 2007, R.B.S., UBS, JPMorgan and
Credit Suisse agreed to quote to clients wider, fixed bid-ask spreads on certain categories of franc
interest-rate derivatives. The banks maintained narrower spreads for trades among themselves.
The aim was to lower the banks transaction costs and continue the flow of trades between
themselves while preventing others from participating on the same terms in the franc
derivatives market. Global financial institutions have paid more than $6 billion in fines over
manipulating benchmark rates.
Note: For more along these lines, see the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Banking
Corruption Information Center.
Vietnams punishment for corrupt bankers: Death

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/04/vietnams-punishm...
On June 29, 2009, upon conviction of running a Ponzi scheme that bamboozled investors of
at least $18 billion, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison. The
sentence ... came at a time of public anger against bankers, [and] was almost unanimously hailed:
Finally, at least one corrupt financier had gotten his comeuppance. The judge called Madoffs
crimes extraordinarily evil. By Vietnamese standards, Madoff got off easy. In the past five
months, at least three Vietnamese bankers have been sentenced to death though their crimes
amount to just 1 percent of Madoffs haul. a 57-year-old director of a Vietnam Development Bank
was sentenced to death after he and 12 others approved counterfeit loans in the amount of $89
million. For inking those contracts, he got a BMW, a diamond ring, and $5.5 million. His death
sentence follows similar punishments meted out to two other bankers: One was sent to death row
in November for his part in a $25 million scam, and the other, banker Duong Chi Dung, got his in
December. The sentences offer a sharp contrast between how the West handles financial crimes
prison terms, sometimes just a fine and how some East Asian countries do it. What warrants
death in Vietnam would only be years in prison or no prison at all in the United States.
Note: An interactive map of global corruption is available online from Transparency International.
For more along these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing articles about
China to allow direct yuan, New Zealand dollar trades

China has allowed direct domestic trading of the yuan against the New Zealand dollar to
encourage such trading as it internationalizes the Chinese currency. The move ... comes after
China doubled the yuan's trading band over the weekend in a milestone step that gives investors
more freedom to set the value of the tightly controlled currency. The move was seen as promoting
trade between the two countries, which rose 25.2 percent to NZ$18.2 billion ($15.71 billion) in
2013. As part of China's sweeping plans to overhaul its maturing economy and let market forces
drive a host of industries, the government wants to gradually relax its hold over the yuan and
turn it into a global reserve currency that one day rivals the dollar. The government's wish to
promote international use of the yuan is partly driven by its concern that China is too vulnerable to
the fluctuating value of the dollar. China is home to the world's largest foreign exchange reserves,
worth $3.82 trillion at the end of last year. About a third is invested in U.S. government bonds. To
promote international use of the yuan, China has signed a series of currency swaps with foreign
governments in order to increase the overseas circulation of the Chinese currency. The New
Zealand dollar is the 10th foreign currency that can be directly traded against the yuan in
China.
Note: The US dollar's role as a global currency is gradually fading.
Warren Says U.S. Political System Rigged by Special Interests

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-07/warren-says-u-s-political-system-rig...
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said the political system is still rigged by lobbyists and special
interests who work to keep the public in the dark. Ive been in the Senate for nearly a year and
believe as strongly as ever that the system is rigged for powerful interests and against working
families, Warren said. Warren, a critic of Wall Street, rose to prominence by highlighting tricks
and traps of credit-card disclosures and creating [the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB)] as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. Warren said despite progress by the consumer
bureau and confirmation of its director after a two-year delay, lobbyists for the financial industry
continue to fight it and consumer groups shouldnt let down their guard. We all know that the fight
isnt over and that the lobbyists are still working to undercut the agencys work, Warren said. She
compared the CFPB to government agencies that test the safety of physical products like
cribs and paint, and said the bureaus work on the safety of financial products will become
just as valued by the public. You tell me: When was the last time you heard someone call for
regulators to go easier on companies that want to use lead paint on our childrens toys or leave the
safety switches off toasters? Warren asked. The CFPB was designed from the very beginning
to cut out tricks and traps in consumer finance and add transparency to the marketplace.
Note: For an excellent video showing the courage and forthrightness of Elizabeth Warren, click
here. For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
Angola missing $750 million, report says

2013-06-05, San Francisco Chronicle/Associated Press
http://www.sfchronicle.com/world/article/Angola-missing-750-million-report-sa...
An estimated $750 million is missing from Angola's treasury [after] a deal with Russia facilitated by
a Swiss bank and a shell company registered in Britain's Isle of Man, a report by a corruption
watchdog group said. Russian and French arms dealers got away with $263 million, Angola's
president reportedly stashed away more than $36 million, and three Angolan officials and a former
Russian legislator got away with smaller amounts. Another $400 million is unaccounted for,
according to Corruption Watch UK. The Angolan expos is the latest of a slew of reports on
corruption, its cost to development, and how it is aided by bankers and shell companies
that keep secret the identities of owners. Angola has long been accused of siphoning off
payments from its massive oil production, worth about $40 billion in 2011 according to
Revenue Watch. They enrich a small coterie surrounding President Jose Eduardo dos Santos,
while nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. Dos Santos has ruled Angola for 33
years. The $750 million that disappeared from Angola was supposed to repay a $1.5 billion debt to
Russia for help in its 27-year civil war. Angola paid with promissory notes on future oil shipments,
but those notes went through shell companies that milked much of the money, the report said.
Russian and French arms dealers took most of the money owed to Russia, the report said. The
illegal transfer of capital from Africa has surpassed $50 billion a year.
Note: Global arms dealers work feverishly behind the scenes to enflame wars so that their huge
profits keep rolling. Yet governments around the world seem reluctant to try to stop or even
monitor this lucrative trade. Do you think there might be any collusion here?
Sean FitzPatrick is third ex-Anglo Irish Bank executive to be arrested in

24 hours
2012-07-24, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18965510
The former head of Anglo Irish Bank, Sean FitzPatrick, has been arrested by Irish police in
connection with alleged financial irregularities at the bank. He is the third former senior
executive from Anglo Irish Bank to appear in court within the past 24 hours. All three men
face 16 charges in relation to an alleged failed attempt to prop up Anglo's share price after a stock
market collapse. Anglo was nationalised at a cost of about 30bn euros (23.4bn) to Irish
taxpayers. Anglo was badly exposed by the bursting of the Irish property bubble and suffered the
largest corporate loss in the history of the Republic of Ireland. It is the third time Mr FitzPatrick has
been arrested as part of the three-and-a-half year long investigation into the collapse of Anglo Irish
Bank. Willie McAteer - the second in command at the bank before his resignation in January 2009
- appeared in court alongside Pat Whelan, a former head of lending and operations at the bank.
The former bank is being wound down and is currently being run by the Irish Bank Resolution
Corporation Limited (IBRC).
National debt: Will the U.S. be like Japan?

2012-05-24, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/24/news/economy/national-debt-us-japan/index.htm
Political gridlock. High national debt. Rock-bottom bond rates. An aging population. Warnings
about more downgrades. Sound like the United States? Indeed. But those characteristics also
describe Japan -- the country that fiscal experts often point to as a cautionary tale about the risk of
carrying too much national debt for too long. Ever since a stock market crash and banking
crisis more than 20 years ago, Japan has suffered from anemic growth for much of that
time and its debt has soared. The country's debt is projected to be 239% of the size of its
economy by the end of this year. U.S. gross debt, by contrast, is a little over 100% of GDP. On
almost every economic and demographic measure, U.S. fiscal problems are still less urgent than
the ones facing Japan today, said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight. In
his view, the biggest debt-related problem facing Americans today is gridlock in Washington. "We
have a political crisis in the United States," he said. There are plenty of ideas for how Washington
could curb the growth in debt without undermining the economy. For example, lawmakers could
phase in tax increases and spending cuts over time. They could agree on a credible plan that puts
off serious fiscal restraint until the economy is stronger. What's missing though is political
cooperation. But, Behravesh said, "If we're careful, we can resolve this sensibly."
Note: For an alternative analysis by Paul Craig Roberts, click here. He notes that "Unlike Japan,
whose national debt is the largest of all, Americans do not own their own public debt. Much of US
debt is owned abroad, especially by China, Japan, and OPEC, the oil exporting countries. This
places the US economy in foreign hands." Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US
Treasury, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week, and professor
of economics.
Feds must probe banks further over mortgage crisis

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/20/EDFL1IEOFE.DTL
Anonymous, an online hacker group, released a string of e-mails last week that purportedly show
mortgage document fraud at Bank of America. Many people yawned. After all, there have been
well-documented cases of mortgage fraud and illegal foreclosures, and little has been done to
punish Bank of America or any of the banks for their behavior. But just because the federal
government has been slow to act on the mortgage crisis doesn't mean that these e-mails are any
less valuable. The e-mails are a chain showing requests for Balboa Insurance employees to
remove document tracking numbers from the system of record. Balboa Insurance became a
division of Bank of America after the bank bought the bankrupt home loan company Countrywide
Financial. The idea suggested in the e-mails was to misplace individual documents away
from matching loans. This would make it harder for federal auditors to investigate
individual loans. It would also make it far more difficult for individual homeowners to
dispute or question bank action on their loans - and therefore obtain mortgage
modifications or a stay on bank foreclosure. The Anonymous e-mails are serious indeed.
They're a snapshot into why the mortgage mess spiraled out of control. While they don't tell the
whole story, they point to the need for further investigation and possible action on behalf of the
federal government. When people are losing their homes, the banks shouldn't be allowed to get
away with deception.
government and banks against the public interest, click here.
Super-Rich Investors Buy Gold by Ton

2010-10-04, ABC News/Reuters
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=11793612
The world's wealthiest people have responded to economic worries by buying gold by the bar -and sometimes by the ton -- and by moving assets out of the financial system, bankers catering to
the very rich said [today]. Fears of a double-dip downturn have boosted the appetite for
physical bullion as well as for mining company shares and exchange-traded funds, UBS
executive Josef Stadler told the Reuters Global Private Banking Summit. "They don't only
buy ETFs or futures; they buy physical gold," said Stadler, who runs the Swiss bank's services
for clients with assets of at least $50 million to invest. UBS is recommending top-tier clients hold 710 percent of their assets in precious metals like gold, which is on course for its tenth consecutive
yearly gain and traded at around $1,314.50 an ounce [today], near the record level reached last
week. Julius Baer's chief investment officer for Asia is also recommending that wealthy investors
park some of their assets in gold as a defensive stance following a string of lackluster U.S. data
and amid concerns about currency weakness.
Note: Gold has increased from under $300/oz at the time of 9/11 to over $1,300 in Oct. 2010. Is it
a bubble, or a sign that our economy could be collapsing?
Police powers expanded for G20

2010-06-25, CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/25/g20-new-powers.html
Police forces in charge of security at the G20 summit in Toronto have been granted special powers
for the duration of the summit. The new powers took effect [on June 21] and apply along the
border of the G20 security fence that encircles a portion of the downtown core. This area the
so-called red zone includes the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where delegates will meet.
Under the new regulations, anyone who comes within five metres of the security area is
obliged to give police their name and state the purpose of their visit on request. Anyone
who fails to provide identification or explain why they are near the security zone can be
searched and arrested. The new powers are designed specifically for the G20, CBC's Colin
Butler reported Friday. Ontario's cabinet quietly passed the new rules on June 2 without legislature
debate. Civil liberties groups are concerned about the new regulations. Anyone who refuses to
identify themselves or refuses to provide a reason for their visit can be fined up to $500 and face
up to two months in jail. The regulation also says that if someone has a dispute with an officer and
it goes to court "the police officer's statement under oath is considered conclusive evidence under
the act."
U.S. Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since 1945

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/us/17deficit.html
The Obama administration [has said] that the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just
ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before and the largest
shortfall relative to the size of the economy since 1945. The shortfall for the fiscal year
2009, which ended Sept. 30, translates to 10 percent of the economy, according to a joint
statement from the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and the director of the Office of
Management and Budget, Peter R. Orszag. For the 2008 fiscal year, the deficit of $459 billion was
3.2 percent of the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product. At 10 percent of the
gross domestic product, the 2009 deficit is the highest since the end of World War II, when it was
21.5 percent. The overall national debt, which is the accumulation of annual deficits, is nearly $12
trillion, and projected deficits for the next decade will add an estimated $9 trillion more.
Administration officials say two-thirds of that is due to Bush administration policies.
Note: The current debt of $12 trillion equals $40,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.
Most of the increased deficit is due to the government bailout of the biggest Wall Street banks and
investment houses. For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
Piggish capitalism endangers us all

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/07/ED1117GOT8.DTL
Even if you don't dig on swine, it has become impossible to avoid them. If you're not pummeled by
television reports about Wall Street oinkers, you're bombarded by talk-radio rants about
congressional pork and newspaper dispatches about swine flu. They are each part of what might
be called piggish capitalism - an economic theory that mixes subsidization, consolidation and
deregulation - and it endangers us all. In 1999 ... President Bill Clinton signed a landmark
deregulation measure that "ushered in an era of aggressive bank mergers," as Reuters
reports. The result was what critics like Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., predicted at the time:
Wall Street created "a group of institutions which are too big to fail" and that "taxpayers are
going to be called upon to cure." Mass producing mortgage-backed securities that were quickly
infected with subprime mutations, these financial factory farms became so enormous and
unregulated that they spread toxic assets throughout the entire economy. And when losses
mounted, the government made banks whole with trillion-dollar bailouts. Incredibly, our
government hasn't learned from these crises. Regulation-wise ...new financial rules have yet to
move in Congress. Additionally, the much-vaunted bank "stress tests" have been shrouded in
secrecy, which experts say created the potential for rampant insider trading. Meanwhile, the White
House seems loath to break up financial firms, preferring instead another bank bailout - even as
analysts warn that such bailouts fuel merger mania. Pigs may, in fact, be the smartest domestic
animal. But when charged with managing capitalism, they clearly have trouble comprehending the
simplest lessons.
Note: For a clear example of the lack of concern about trillions of dollars unaccounted for by the
Federal Reserve, listen to a five-minute video testimony of the inspector general of the Fed being
question by a Congressman at this link. Then learn more about the major manipulations of the Fed
on our highly banking and financial revealing summary available here.
Inquiry Asks Why A.I.G. Paid Banks

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/27cuomo.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&p...
Members of Congress and the New York State attorney general demanded detailed information
Thursday on how tens of billions of taxpayer dollars flowed through the American International
Group during its crisis last fall and ended up in the coffers of several dozen big banks, shielding
them from losses. The new inquiries shine a spotlight on a question that is exponentially
bigger, in dollars, than the $165 million in bonuses that A.I.G. paid out this month, but
which has been overshadowed until now by the uproar over the bonuses. We would like to
know if the A.I.G. counterparty payments, as made, were in the best interests of the taxpayers who
provided the funding, said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, in a letter
to Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The
banks and investment firms that ended up with A.I.G.s bailout money last fall were, in many
cases, counterparties to derivatives contracts it had sold, known as credit-default swaps, which
guaranteed the value of assets in their investment portfolios. They included Wall Street firms, like
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, that have successfully resisted efforts to
regulate credit derivatives in the past. In several hearings this month, members of Congress said
they believed the derivatives had often been used to speculate, not to manage risk. They have
expressed outrage that A.I.G.s trading partners got 100 cents on the dollar for their money-losing
trades when ordinary Americans paying for the bailout have suffered big losses in their 401(k)
accounts and other investments.
IRS defends drop in audits of millionaires

The Internal Revenue Service is not living up to its pledge to crack down on wealthy tax cheats, an
IRS watchdog group says, citing a drop in audits of millionaires last year. Those with incomes of $1
million and above had a 5.6 percent chance of getting audited in fiscal year 2008, which ended last
September, down from 6.8 percent the previous year, according to IRS figures. The actual number
of millionaires audited fell from 23,200 to 21,874; the number of millionaires filing tax returns grew
from 339,138 to 392,776. "In the face of growing federal deficits and public calls to lower the
tax gap the amount of taxes due but not reported and paid the drop in millionaire
audits is surprising," said the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse in a report Monday. It said the significant drop in audits of richer Americans
contrasted with IRS statements last year that it was making strong progress in enforcement,
especially of those with incomes of more than $1 million. The TRAC report said focus on high
earner returns is critical because of the huge rewards. Among those millionaire audit cases where
additional taxes were recommended, the average was $198,000 after face-to-face audits and
$137,000 for audits done through correspondence. In total, the IRS collected $56.4 billion in
enforcement revenues last year, down from $59.2 billion in 2007 and the first decline in collections
in a decade.
Note: The highly important statistic only mentioned in passing here is "the number of millionaires
filing tax returns grew from 339,138 to 392,776." That's an over-15% increase in the number of
millionaires in one year, while most everyone else seems to be losing money. Hmmmm. Makes
you wonder.
Alternative Currencies Grow in Popularity

2008-12-14, Time magazine
Most of us take for granted that those rectangular green slips of paper we keep in our wallets are
inviolable: the physical embodiment of value. But alternative forms of money have a long history
and appear to be growing in popularity. It's not merely barter or primitive means of exchange like
seashells or beads. Beneath the financial radar, in hip U.S. towns or South African townships, in
shops, markets and even banks, people throughout the world are exchanging goods and services
via thousands of currency types that look nothing like official tender. Alternative means of trade
often surface during tough economic times. "When money gets dried up and there are still
needs to be met in society, people come up with creative ways to meet those needs," says
Peter North, a senior lecturer in geography at the University of Liverpool and the author of [a book]
on the subject. He refers to the "scrips" issued in the U.S. and Europe during the Great Depression
that kept money flowing and the massive barter exchanges involving millions of people that
emerged amid runaway inflation in Argentina in 2000. "People were kept from starving [this
way]," he says. Closer to home, "Ithaca Hours," with a livable hourly wage as the standard, were
launched during the 1991 recession to sustain the economy in Ithaca, N.Y., and stem the loss of
jobs. Hours, which are legal and taxable, circulate within the community, moving from local shop to
local artisan and back, rather than leaking out into the larger monetary system. The logo on the
Hour reads "In Ithaca We Trust." Alternative (or "complementary") currencies range from quaint to
robust, simple to high tech.
Note: Read the entire article at the link above to learn about the great range of uses and benefits
provided by alternative currencies.
Bailout Oversight Lacking, GAO Says

The Bush administration has failed to adequately oversee its $700 billion bailout program and must
move rapidly to guarantee that banks are complying with the plan's limits on conflicts of interest
and lavish executive compensation, congressional investigators said yesterday. The new report
by the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress,
said the Treasury Department has yet to impose necessary safeguards or decide how to
determine whether the program is achieving its goals. The auditors said it was too soon for
them to tell whether the bailout was working. "The rapid pace of implementation and evolving
nature of the program have hampered efforts to put a comprehensive system of internal control in
place," the report said. "Until such a system is fully developed and implemented, there is
heightened risk that the interests of the government and taxpayers may not be adequately
protected and that the program objectives may not be achieved in an efficient and effective
manner." So far, the rescue package has provided at least $150 billion in capital infusions to 52
financial institutions, the auditors said. They added that no applications for funding were denied by
the Treasury. The congressional auditors urged Treasury officials to determine how each bank
receiving bailout money is using the money and whether they are using it in a way consistent with
the intent of the law. Several congressional leaders have criticized financial firms for
hoarding the money instead of using it to lend to borrowers.
Sovereign Funds Become Big Speculators

Sovereign wealth funds, the massive investment pools run by foreign governments, are now
among the biggest speculators in the trading of oil and other vital goods like corn and cotton in the
United States, according to interviews with brokers who handle their investments at leading Wall
Street banks, veteran traders and congressional investigators. Some lawmakers say the
unregulated activity of sovereign wealth funds and other speculators such as hedge funds has
contributed to the dramatic swing in oil prices in recent months. The agency regulating the market
said it had not picked up on this activity by sovereign wealth funds. In a June letter, the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission told lawmakers that its monitoring showed that these funds were not
a significant factor in commodity trading. But the CFTC is not detecting the growing influence
of foreign funds because they invest through Wall Street brokers known as "swap dealers"
who often operate on unregulated markets. For this reason, the extent of their activities
may be known only to the swap dealers at investment banks such as Goldman Sachs,
Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, which handle such transactions. The foreign funds involved
in commodity trading are ... mainly from countries ... in Asia that do not already make money from
producing oil. While it is difficult to quantify how large foreign funds have become, they now
represent 12 percent or more of the overall commodity business for some of the largest investment
banks, said an industry veteran who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Note: For many revealing reports on corporate corruption from reliable, verifiable sources, click
here.
Iceland looks at ending boom and bust with radical money plan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11507810/Iceland-looks-at-ending...
Iceland's government is considering a revolutionary monetary proposal - removing the
power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank. The
proposal, which would be a turnaround in the history of modern finance, was part of a report
written by a lawmaker from the ruling centrist Progress Party, Frosti Sigurjonsson, entitled "A better
monetary system for Iceland". In Iceland, as in other modern market economies, the central bank
controls the creation of banknotes and coins but not the creation of all money, which occurs as
soon as a commercial bank offers a line of credit. The central bank can only try to influence the
money supply with its monetary policy tools. Under the so-called Sovereign Money proposal, the
country's central bank would become the only creator of money. "Crucially, the power to create
money is kept separate from the power to decide how that new money is used," Mr
Sigurjonsson wrote in the proposal. "As with the state budget, the parliament will debate the
government's proposal for allocation of new money," he wrote. Banks would continue to manage
accounts and payments, and would serve as intermediaries between savers and lenders. Mr
Sigurjonsson, a businessman and economist, was one of the masterminds behind Iceland's
household debt relief programme launched in May 2014 and aimed at helping the many Icelanders
whose finances were strangled by inflation-indexed mortgages signed before the 2008 financial
crisis.
Note: Iceland so far has been the only country to really challenge the banksters. For more on this,
see this article. Will Iceland's proposed new monetary policy help check the power of the corrupt
financial industry?
Four Kaupthing bankers sentenced to prison for market abuses in 2008

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/12/kaupthing-bankers-prison-mark...
An Icelandic court has sentenced four former Kaupthing bankers to jail for market abuses related
to a large stake taken in the bank by a Qatari sheikh just before it went under in late 2008. Weeks
before the country's top three banks collapsed under huge debts as the global credit crunch struck,
Kaupthing announced that Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani had bought 5 of its
shares in a confidence-boosting move. A parliamentary commission later said the shares had been
bought with a loan from Kaupthing itself. A Reykjavik district court sentenced Hreidar Mar
Sigurdsson, Kaupthing's former chief executive, to five and a half years in prison while
former chairman Sigurdur Einarsson received a five-year sentence. Magnus Gudmundsson,
former chief executive of Kaupthing Luxembourg, was given a three-year sentence and Olafur
Olafsson the bank's second largest shareholder at the time received three and a half years.
None of the bankers, now based in London and Luxembourg, were present [at the
sentencing].
Note: Yet not a single executive of US or multinational banks has been jailed for funneling billions
of dollars into their own pockets and crashing the entire global economy. For more on this, click
here. For more on financial corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media
Rate-Rigging Investigation Rolls On

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/rate-rigging-investigation-rolls-on/
The global investigation into interest-rate manipulation has emboldened prosecutors to crack down
on banks, and the settlement with the Royal Bank of Scotland on [Feb. 6] underscored that
strategy. As part of the $612 million deal that American and British authorities reached with R.B.S.,
the banks Japanese unit was required to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing, echoing an earlier
action taken against a subsidiary of UBS. The cases announced so far give other banks some idea
of what to expect. Three questions come into play: how much it will cost, whether a guilty plea will
be required and whether embarrassing e-mails will be released. The winners in all this may be the
lawyers and other advisers. The trove of internal e-mails and employee interviews, filed as part of
a lawsuit by one of the investors in the securities, offers a fresh glimpse into Wall Streets
mortgage machine, which churned out billions of dollars of securities that later imploded. The
documents reveal that JPMorgan, as well as two firms the bank acquired during the credit
crisis, Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns, flouted quality controls and ignored problems,
sometimes hiding them entirely, in a quest for profit.
Doubt Is Cast on Firms Hired to Help Banks

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/doubt-is-cast-on-firms-hired-to-help-b...
Federal authorities are scrutinizing private consultants hired to clean up financial misdeeds like
money laundering and foreclosure abuses, taking aim at an industry that is paid billions of dollars
by the same banks it is expected to police. The consultants operate with scant supervision and
produce mixed results, according to government documents and interviews with prosecutors and
regulators. In one case, the consulting firms enabled the wrongdoing. The deficiencies, officials
say, can leave consumers vulnerable and allow tainted money to flow through the financial system.
The pitfalls were exposed last month when federal regulators halted a broad effort to help millions
of homeowners in foreclosure. The regulators reached an $8.5 billion settlement with banks,
scuttling a flawed foreclosure review run by eight consulting firms. In the end, borrowers hurt by
shoddy practices are likely to receive less money than they deserve, regulators said. Critics
concede that regulators have little choice but to hire outsiders for certain responsibilities
after they find problems at the banks. The government does not have the resources to
ensure that banks follow the rules. Some banks that work with consultants continue to run afoul
of the law. At other times, consultants underestimate the extent of the misdeeds or facilitate them,
preventing regulators from holding institutions accountable.
Financiers and Sex Trafficking

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/kristof-financers-and-sex-tr...
The biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls in the United States appears to be a Web
site called Backpage.com. This emporium for girls and women some under age or forced into
prostitution is in turn owned by an opaque private company called Village Voice Media. Until
now it has been unclear who the ultimate owners are. The owners turn out to include private
equity financiers, including Goldman Sachs with a 16 percent stake. Goldman Sachs was
mortified when I began inquiring last week about its stake. It began working frantically to unload its
shares. Backpage has 70 percent of the market for prostitution ads. Village Voice Media makes
some effort to screen out ads placed by traffickers and to alert authorities to abuses, but neither
law enforcement officials nor antitrafficking organizations are much impressed. A Goldman
managing director, Scott L. Lebovitz, sat on the Village Voice Media board for many years.
Goldman says he stepped down in early 2010. The two biggest owners are Jim Larkin and Michael
Lacey, the managers of the company, and they seem to own about half of the shares. The best
known of the other owners is Goldman Sachs, which invested in the company in 2000 (before
Backpage became a part of Village Voice Media in a 2006 merger). That said, for more than six
years Goldman has held a significant stake in a company notorious for ties to sex
trafficking, and it sat on the companys board for four of those years. Theres no indication
that Goldman or anyone else ever used its ownership to urge Village Voice Media to drop escort
ads or verify ages.
Note: For an abundance or major media articles revealing massive sex scandals implication top
authorities, click here.
How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word of Fannie Rescue

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LVDZC507SXKX01-21E0...
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge
fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were
mounting. Amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a
new source of contagion: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in
mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding. Around the conference room table were a
dozen or so hedge-fund managers and other Wall Street executives -- at least five of them alumni
of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from
1999 to 2006. After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil ... the discussion turned to
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The secretary [desribed] a possible scenario for placing Fannie and
Freddie into conservatorship -- a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue
operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets. Paulson explained that under this
scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would
be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said ...
leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers
attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on corruption and collusion between
government officials and the largest financial firms, click here.
Confronting the Malefactors

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors...
When the Occupy Wall Street protests began three weeks ago, most news organizations were
derisive if they deigned to mention the events at all. For example, nine days into the protests,
National Public Radio had provided no coverage whatsoever. It is, therefore, a testament to the
passion of those involved that the protests not only continued but grew, eventually becoming too
big to ignore. Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even
eventually be seen as a turning point. The protesters indictment of Wall Street as a
destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right. Bankers took advantage of
deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through
reckless lending. The bubbles burst but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably
few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the
bankers sins. Bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them,
throwing their support and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts behind
politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the
aftermath of the crisis. Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking
a stand?
articles.
China rating agency condemns rivals

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5632a0b8-94b7-11df-b90e-00144feab49a.html
The head of Chinas largest credit rating agency has slammed his western counterparts for
causing the global financial crisis and said that as the worlds largest creditor nation China should
have a bigger say in how governments and their debt are rated. The western rating agencies
are politicised and highly ideological and they do not adhere to objective standards, Guan
Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, told the Financial Times. China is the
biggest creditor nation in the world and with the rise and national rejuvenation of China we
should have our say in how the credit risks of states are judged. On the corporate side, Mr
Guan argues Moodys Investors Service, Standard & Poors and Fitch Ratings the three
companies that dominate the global credit rating industry have become too close to the clients
they are supposed to be objectively assessing. He specifically criticised the practice of rating
shopping by companies who offer their business to the agency that provides the most favourable
rating. In the aftermath of the financial crisis rating shopping has been one of the key complaints
from western regulators , who have heavily criticised the big three agencies for handing top ratings
to mortgage-linked securities that turned toxic when the US housing market collapsed in 2007.
Note: For key news articles on the global financial crisis, click here.
Let's Break up the Fed

The Obama administration's plan to increase the powers of the Federal Reserve, says one
critic, is like giving a teenager "a bigger, faster car right after he crashed the family station
wagon." Broadening the Fed's responsibilities won't help. Instead, we should think of how
best to dismantle an overextended Fed. The Fed has been incapacitated by its transformation
into an omnibus enterprise with responsibilities ranging from boots-on-the-ground regulation to
high-level monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which created the Federal Reserve
System, did so to forestall financial panics rather than pursue macroeconomic policies. The gold
standard defined monetary policy. The Fed was merely meant to "provide an elastic currency" by
serving as lender of last resort in times of crisis. The Act also assigned the Fed routine
responsibilities for maintaining and improving the financial system examining banks, issuing
currency notes, and helping clear checks. The adoption of Keynesian and monetarist ideas by
central bankers and elected officials subsequently cast the Fed in a proactive macroeconomic role.
In 1977, an amendment to the 1913 Act explicitly charged the Fed with promoting "maximum"
employment and "stable" prices. The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 gave the Fed
responsibility over holding companies designed to circumvent restrictions placed on individual
banks. Congress further tasked the Fed with enforcing consumer-protection and fair-lending rules.
While the record of the Fed's monetary policy has been mixed, its supervision of financial
institutions has been a predictable and comprehensive failure. The Fed's excessively broad
mandate also has thwarted accountability.
Note: The bill to audit the Fed (HR 1207) in the US Congress now has 276 co-signers -- more than
50% of all members. Yet the media is hardly reporting on this. Contact your Congressional
representatives now at this link.
U.S. May Enlist Small Investors in Bank Bailout

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/business/09fund.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pa...
During World War I, Americans were exhorted to buy Liberty Bonds to help their soldiers on the
front. Now, it seems, they will be asked to come to the aid of their banks with the added
inducement of possibly making some money for themselves. As part of its sweeping plan to purge
banks of troublesome assets, the Obama administration is encouraging several large investment
companies to create the financial-crisis equivalent of war bonds: bailout funds. The idea is that
these investments, akin to mutual funds that buy stocks and bonds, would give ordinary Americans
a chance to profit from the bailouts that are being financed by their tax dollars. But there is
another, deeply political motivation as well: to quiet accusations that all of these giant
bailouts will benefit only Wall Street plutocrats. If, as some analysts suspect, the banks assets
are worth even less than believed, the funds investors could suffer significant losses. Nonetheless,
the administration and executives in the financial industry are pushing to establish the investment
funds, in part to counter swelling hostility against the financial industry. The embrace of smaller
investors underscores the concern in Washington and on Wall Street that Americans anger
could imperil further efforts to stimulate the economy with vast amounts of government
spending. Many Americans say they believe the bailout programs ... will benefit only a golden few,
including some of the institutions that helped push the economy to the brink. Critics like Joseph E.
Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, argue that the bailouts merely privatize profits and
socialize losses.
Financial Industry Paid Millions to Obama Aide

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/politics/04disclose.html?partner=rss&emc...
Lawrence H. Summers, the top economic adviser to President Obama, earned more than $5
million last year from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from
Wall Street companies that received government bailout money, the White House disclosed. Mr.
Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr.
Obamas policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently
received payments. Last year, he reported making 40 paid appearances, including a $135,000
speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, in addition to his earnings from the hedge
fund, a sector the administration is trying to regulate. Mr. Summerss role at the White
House includes advising Mr. Obama on whether and how to tighten regulation of
hedge funds, which engage in highly sophisticated financial trading that many analysts have said
contributed to the economic collapse. Mr. Summers ... appeared before large Wall Street
companies like Citigroup ($45,000), J. P. Morgan ($67,500) and the now defunct Lehman Brothers
($67,500), according to his disclosure report. While Mr. Obama campaigned on a pledge to restrict
lobbyists from working in the White House, a step intended to reduce any influence between the
administration and corporations, the ban did not apply to former executives like Mr. Summers, who
was not a registered lobbyist. In 2006, he became a managing director of D. E. Shaw, a firm that
manages about $30 billion in assets, making it one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.
Executive Pay Limits May Prove Toothless

Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping
pay of Wall Street executives, so lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive
compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules. But at the last minute, the Bush
administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision. The change stipulated that the
penalty would apply only to firms that received bailout funds by selling troubled assets to the
government in an auction, which was the way the Treasury Department had said it planned to use
the money. Now, however, the small change looks more like a giant loophole, according to
lawmakers and legal experts. In a reversal, the Bush administration has not used auctions for any
of the $335 billion committed so far from the rescue package, nor does it plan to use them in the
future. Lawmakers and legal experts say the change has effectively repealed the only
enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives. "The flimsy
executive-compensation restrictions in the original bill are now all but gone," said Sen.
Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), ranking Republican on of the Senate Finance Committee. Senators on
the Finance Committee have expressed concern to Paulson and are now considering whether they
should amend the law to apply the enforcement mechanism to all firms participating in the bailout.
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable reports exposing the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click
here.
Idled workers occupy factory in Chicago

2008-12-06, Chicago Tribune/Associated Press
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-workersoccupyfact,0,1928458.story
Outraged and determined Chicago factory workers who were abruptly laid off this week have
occupied their former workplace and say they won't leave until they get the severance and
vacation pay they say they're owed. The employees say they received three days notice their plant
was closing. In the second day of a sit-in on the factory floor Saturday, about 250 union workers
occupied the building in shifts while union leaders outside criticized a Wall Street bailout they say
is leaving laborers behind. Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the
Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give its 300 employees the 60 days' notice
required by law before shutting. She said the company can't pay employees because its creditor,
Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won't let them. Bank of America received $25 billion from
the government's financial bailout package. The company said in a statement to news outlets
Saturday that it isn't responsible for Republic's financial obligations to its employees. "Across
cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame," said Richard
Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to
the workers of this country." Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs
that said, "You got bailed out, we got sold out."
Note: For many revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout from major media sources, click here.
Congress Wants Details On Bailout Firms' Bonus Plans

2008-10-30, CNBC
The hot-button issues of CEO pay and the Wall Street bailout may soon collide with the real world
of Wall Street bonuses, taxpayer and shareholder anger over the financial crisis, and a Treasury
secretary with deep roots on Wall Street. And that collision could be loud and ugly. Though what's
commonly known as the Wall Street bailout package includes modest restrictions on CEO pay, it
hardly prevents participating financial firms from paying bonuses to top executives and others. And
in an environment of beaten-down stock prices, rising layoffs, recession and huge government
bailouts, experts and legislators say big end-of-year bonuses will cause a firestorm of public
outrage and likely provoke a Congressional backlash. "The corporate community doesn't seem
to get it," says a seething Nell Minow, founder of the Corporate Library, which focuses on
corporate governance issues. "If the corporate leaders don't come to the American people
with some accountability, they are going to find themselves in a world of pain. Congress
will set CEO pay." "People are going to be demanding that someone go to jail," say Rep.
Peter DeFazio (D.-Ore), who says his constituents have applauded him for voting against the
legislation. "It will require Democrats to revisit restrictions [on CEO pay]. " DeFazio says he would
also recommend Congress "empower a division in the FBI and Justice Department to investigate
the fraud and misdeeds that went on."
U.S. corporations are sitting on huge stockpiles of cash

2006-05-28, Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Associated Press
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/271828_market27.html
Imagine the dilemma of having so much cash in your bank account that you didn't know what to do
with it. This pipe dream for the average American is now reality for the country's biggest
corporations. The industrial companies that make up the Standard & Poor's 500 index...have a
staggering $643 billion in cash and equivalents. "We're in a time that is out of whack with all
historical numbers," said Howard Silverblatt, equity market analyst at Standard & Poor's. "People
are demanding why corporations need so much cash, what are they going to do with it?"
Companies began propping up their reserves through 16 straight quarters of double-digit
profit growth. Leading the pack with the most cash is Exxon Mobil Corp., which has about
$36.55 billion on its balance sheet. That amount is nearly equal to its 2005 profit of $36.13
billion, the highest ever for a U.S. company. Some results of the cash riches: An unprecedented
$500 billion of stock buybacks. Last year, ExxonMobil spent $18.2 billion buying its shares. One of
the biggest avenues in which companies have spent this excess money has been through mergers
and acquisitions. Some 75.4 percent of all deals under $1 billion so far this year were done purely
with cash.
Note: A Google search reveals that though this Associated Press article was widely picked up by
medium-sized newspapers in the U.S., none of the top 10 papers picked it up. The Seattle
newspaper above also removed the word "huge" from the title after it was published. $36 billion
means that more than $100 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. went into ExxonMobil
profits last year, and another $100 for each person went into their cash reserves. If ExxonMobil
and other oil companies have so much extra cash, why are gas prices so high? It's also quite
interesting that the advertisements of these mega-corporations continually invite us to go into debt
buying their products, while their profits and cash reserves grow ever higher.
Warren leads liberal Democrats rebellion over provisions in $1 trillion

spending bill

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/warren-leads-liberal-democrats...
Congressional liberals rebelled Wednesday against a must-pass spending bill that would ... roll
back critical limits on Wall Street and sharply increase the influence of wealthy campaign donors.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a popular figure on the left, led the insurrection with a speech on
the Senate floor, calling the $1.01 trillion spending bill the worst of government for the rich and
powerful. Meanwhile, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, I dont think the vast
majority of Democrats or even Republicans are going to look too kindly on a Congress thats ready
to go back and start doing the bidding of Wall Street interests again. On the Senate floor,
Warren said the changes in the spending bill would let derivatives traders on Wall Street
gamble with taxpayer money and get bailed out by the government when their risky bets
threaten to blow up our financial system. She added: These are the same banks that
nearly broke the economy in 2008 and destroyed millions of jobs. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (DMd.), who opposed the 2013 bill, said he would vote against the new spending measure in its
current form. The change to Dodd-Frank coupled with the campaign finance provision makes for a
toxic blend, he said. Van Hollen was one of the few Democrats willing to risk a government
shutdown by blocking the bill. Pressed by reporters, even Warren would not make that
commitment.
Now Thats Rich

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/opinion/krugman-now-thats-rich.html
The 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers ... made a combined $21 billion in 2013. In particular,
lets think about how their good fortune refutes several popular myths about income inequality in
America. Apologists for soaring inequality almost always try to disguise the gigantic incomes of the
truly rich by hiding them in a crowd of the merely affluent. Instead of talking about the 1 percent or
the 0.1 percent, they talk about the rising incomes of college graduates. The goal of this
misdirection is to soften the picture, to make it seem as if were talking about ordinary white-collar
professionals who get ahead through education and hard work. But many Americans are welleducated and work hard. The vast gulf that now exists between the upper-middle-class and the
truly rich didnt emerge until the Reagan years. Second, ignore the rhetoric about job creators
and all that. Conservatives want you to believe that the big rewards in modern America go to
innovators and entrepreneurs, people who build businesses and push technology forward. But
thats not what those hedge fund managers do for a living; theyre in the business of financial
speculation. Once upon a time, you might have been able to argue with a straight face that all this
wheeling and dealing was productive, that the financial elite was actually providing services to
society commensurate with its rewards. But, at this point, the evidence suggests that hedge funds
are a bad deal for everyone except their managers; they dont deliver high enough returns
to justify those huge fees, and theyre a major source of economic instability. Were still
living in the shadow of a crisis brought on by a runaway financial industry.
U.S. Criticized for Lack of Action on Mortgage Fraud

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/u-s-overstates-efforts-to-prosecute-mo...
Four years after President Obama promised to crack down on mortgage fraud, his
administration has quietly made the crime its lowest priority and has closed hundreds of
cases after little or no investigation, the Justice Departments internal watchdog said on [March
13]. The report by the departments inspector general undercuts the presidents contentions that
the government is holding people responsible for the collapse of the financial and housing
markets. The administration has been criticized, in particular, for not pursuing large banks
and their executives. The inspector generals report ... shows that the F.B.I. considered mortgage
fraud to be its lowest-ranked national criminal priority. In several large cities, including New York
and Los Angeles, F.B.I. agents either ranked mortgage fraud as a low priority or did not rank it at
all. The F.B.I. received $196 million from the 2009 to 2011 fiscal years to investigate mortgage
fraud, the report said, but the number of pending cases and agents investigating them dropped in
2011. Mortgage fraud was one of the causes of the 2008 financial collapse. Mortgage brokers and
lenders falsified documents, sometimes to make mortgages look safer, other times to make the
property look more valuable.
Note: For more on government collusion with the banking industry, see the deeply revealing
Wall Street Takes the Profit Prize Again

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-23/wall-street-takes-the-profits...
Were coming up on the fifth anniversary of Wall Streets meltdown. Banks have rarely had it this
good. Earnings for financials, the second-biggest group in the S&P 500 after technology, soared
26 percent last quarter, more than any other industry, analyst estimates show. Housing is back.
The stock market is at an all-time high. Investors are finally wiring in cash. The 25 financial firms in
the S&P 500 that have so far reported second-quarter results posted earnings totaling $31.6
billion, exceeding estimates of $29.1 billion, Bloomberg data show. Finance is on track to surpass
tech again as the most profitable industry in the country. First-half revenue at the six biggest U.S.
banks climbed for the first time in four years. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup,
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo reported $43.3 billion in total first-half profit,
the most since 2007. The S&P 500 Financials Index is up 26 percent this year, compared with the
S&P 500's 18 percent gain. Flush banks cannot sell their bonds fast enough: Almost 60 percent of
high-grade debt sales in the U.S. this month are from banks, the biggest ratio in two years,
according to Bloomberg. Banks are somehow making gigatons of money despite onerous
new regulations and capital requirements, writes HuffPos Mark Gongloff. Why, its almost
like theyre not telling the truth when they warn, repeatedly, that these new rules will
destroy their profits and the economy.
Sucker Alert? Insider Selling Surges After Dow 14,000

2013-02-05, CNBC
Insiders have been pulling out of stocks just as small investors are getting in. Selling by corporate
executives has surged recently as the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 14,000 and retail investors
flooded into stocks. The amount of insider selling has usually preceded market selloffs. "In almost
perfect coordination with an equity market that was rushing toward new all-time highs, insider
sentiment has weakened sharply falling to its lowest level since late March 2012," wrote David
Coleman of the Vickers Weekly Insider report, one of the longest researchers of executive buying
and selling on Wall Street. "Insiders are waving the cautionary flag in an increasingly aggressive
manner." There have been more than nine insider sales for every one buy over the past
week among NYSE stocks, according to Vickers. The last time executives sold their company's
stock this aggressively was in early 2012, just before the S&P 500 went on to correct by 10
percent to its low for the year. "Insiders know more than the vast majority of market participants,"
said Enis Taner, global macro editor for RiskReversal.com. "And they're usually right over a long
period of time." "Insiders (are) showing a remarkable ability of late to identify both market
peaks and troughs," states the Vickers report. For selling to be big enough that firms like Vickers
raise a bearish flag, the bulls may want to take heed.
Note: For more on this, click here.
Justice Department sues S&P over mortgage bond ratings

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sandp-justice-20130205,0,1104883.story
The federal government is ... going after Wall Street's biggest credit rating firm for its role in
pumping up the housing bubble. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit [on Feb. 4] against
Standard & Poor's Corp. The suit accuses the company's analysts of issuing glowing reviews
on troubled mortgage securities whose subsequent failure helped cause the worst financial
crisis since the Great Depression. The action marks the first federal crackdown against a
major credit rater, and it signals an untested legal tack after limited success in holding the
nation's banks accountable for the part they played in the crisis. The government selected Los
Angeles as the venue to file the lawsuit in part because it was one of the regions hardest hit when
the bottom fell out of the housing market. Hundreds of thousands of California residents lost their
homes to foreclosure, and others saw their wealth evaporate as properties plummeted in value. In
addition to the Justice Department, several state attorneys general are investigating the ratings
agency. States such as California and New York are expected to pursue their own investigations
and legal action, people familiar with the matter said. The federal action does not involve any
criminal allegations. Critics have complained that the government has yet to send any senior
bankers or Wall Street executives to jail for potential illegal behavior that led to the crisis. But civil
actions typically require a much lower burden of proof.
Top Bank of England director admits Occupy movement had a point

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/top-bank-of-england-director-ad...
The Occupy movement received vindication from an unlikely source tonight, as a senior executive
at the Bank of England credited it with stirring a reformation of finance. Andrew Haldane,
executive director of financial stability, said Occupy protesters had been both loud and
persuasive, and had attracted public support because they are right. Some have suggested
that Occupys voice has been loud but vague, long on problems, short on solutions. Others have
argued that the fault-lines in the global financial system, which chasmed during the crisis, are
essentially unaltered, that reform has failed, Mr Haldane said. I wish to argue that both are wrong
that Occupys voice has been both loud and persuasive and that policymakers have listened and
are acting in ways which will close those fault-lines. In fact, I want to argue that we are in the early
stages of a reformation of finance, a reformation which Occupy has helped stir. Speaking at an
Occupy Economics event in central London, Mr Haldane said that Occupy had been
successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one
very simple reason: they are right. He added that protesters ... touched a moral nerve in
pointing to growing inequities in the allocation of wealth. Mr Haldane ended with a direct
appeal to activists to continue putting pressure on governments and regulators. He said: You have
put the arguments. You have helped win the debate. And policymakers, like me, will need your
continuing support in delivering that radical change.
here.
U.S. sues Wells Fargo in mortgage fraud case

2012-10-09, MSNBC/Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49351559/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/us-sues...
The U.S. government filed a civil mortgage fraud lawsuit on [October 9] against Wells Fargo & Co,
the latest legal volley against big banks for their lending during the housing boom. The complaint,
brought by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, seeks damages and civil penalties from Wells Fargo
for more than 10 years of alleged misconduct related to government-insured Federal Housing
Administration loans. The lawsuit alleges the FHA paid hundreds of millions of dollars on
insurance claims on thousands of defaulted mortgages as a result of false certifications by
Wells Fargo, the fourth-biggest U.S. bank as measured by assets. "As the complaint alleges, yet
another major bank has engaged in a longstanding and reckless trifecta of deficient training,
deficient underwriting and deficient disclosure, all while relying on the convenient backstop of
government insurance," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Bharara's office has brought
similar cases in the past few years, including one against Citigroup Inc unit CitiMortgage Inc, which
settled the case for $158.3 million in February, and against Deutsche Bank, which paid $202.3
million in May to resolve its case. The U.S. Attorney's office in Brooklyn brought the biggest such
case, against Bank of America Corp's Countrywide unit, which agreed in February to pay $1 billion
to resolve the allegations.
here.
Protesters air grievances at Wells Fargo meeting

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/24/MN881O8BCL.DTL
Protesters enraged about the country's economic miasma disrupted Wells Fargo's annual summit
[on April 24], as shareholders celebrated the bank's record profit and awarded its chief executive a
pay package of nearly $20 million. Hundreds of activists - including union members, Occupy
activists and people whose homes have been foreclosed - surrounded the Merchants Exchange
Building in downtown San Francisco, where about 250 shareholders gathered on the 15th floor to
hear details of the bank's 28 percent profit increase last year. Fifteen protesters, allowed into the
meeting because they own stock in Wells Fargo, shouted over CEO John Stumpf as he presented
a PowerPoint slide show about the bank's $15.9 billion profit last year. Police escorted out the
protesters, who were cited for disrupting the meeting and released. It was the bank's
involvement in foreclosures ... that brought hundreds of protesters to the meeting. Some
came from as far away as Minnesota. They filled the air with lively chants, led by people
using loudspeakers set up on a flatbed truck alongside an 8-foot-high, inflated rat smoking
a cigar. A protester-built, 10-foot-high mockup of Wells Fargo's signature stagecoach stood in the
street, covered with slogans denouncing the bank.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on Occupy and other protests against the criminal
profiteering of banks and other financial corporations, click here.
Passive Occupy protesters take pepper spray blast

2011-11-20, Boston Globe/Associated Press
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/11/20/passive_occup...
As video spread of an officer in riot gear blasting pepper spray into the faces of seated protesters
at a northern California university, outrage came quickly -- followed almost as quickly by defense
from police and calls for the chancellor's resignation. In the video, an officer dispassionately
pepper-sprays a line of several sitting protesters who flinch and cover their faces but
remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the
officer to stop. As the images were circulated widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on
Saturday, the university's faculty association called on [UC Davis Chancellor Linda] Katehi
to resign, saying in a letter there had been a "gross failure of leadership." The protest was held in
support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement and in solidarity with protesters at the
University of California, Berkeley. Images of police actions have served to galvanize support during
the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the clash between protesters and police in Oakland last
month that left an Iraq War veteran with serious injuries to more recent skirmishes in New York
City, San Diego, Denver and Portland, Ore. Some of the most notorious instances went viral
online, including the use of pepper spray on an 84-year-old activist in Seattle and a group of
women in New York.
Note: For a one-minute video of this disturbing action, click here. For an eight-minute video
showing how students eventually drive the police out after this, click here.
Teddy Roosevelt Was Snubbed By His Rich Harvard Classmates For

Being Anti-Wall Street
2011-10-29, Forbes Magazine
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/10/29/teddy-roosevelt-was-snub...
Former President Teddy Roosevelt returned to Harvard for his 30th reunion and graduation in
1910, and as he entered the proceedings all his classmates ... turned their backs on him in unison.
TRs latest biographer Edmund Morris believes this shocking snub in public of a former
President was due to TRs strong belief in regulating Wall Street, breaking up monopolies
and not allowing a few wealthy men run the nation. Think of that extraordinary event; some 22
years before TRs 5th cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt was called a traitor to his class, Teddy
was getting the same treatment. The Gilded Age was followed by the Progressive Era of tough
laws and court actions against Robber Barons who controlled state legislatures and Congress with
their anti-trust legislation. Then came the Roaring Twenties and the Crash, followed by the Great
Depression and then the New Deal which created the blessed Glass-Steagall Act which
separated investment banking from commercial banking, plus the WPA and other ... work
programs that gave the unemployed a reason for living and put food in their mouths. Both
Roosevelts ... stabilized the financial industry to help finance American industry. Once again, the
wealthy ... want to cut social programs to the retired and the middle class, while holding onto all
their gains, even in death if the estate tax is deep sixed.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the collusion between financial interests and
AIG sues Bank of America for $10 billion

2011-08-08, The Globe and Mail/Reuters News
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/aig-sues-bank-of-america-for-10...
The insurer AIG is suing Bank of America to recover more than $10 billion of losses from a
"massive fraud" on mortgage debt, deepening the morass of litigation faced by the largest U.S.
bank. American International Group Inc, still largely owned by taxpayers after $182.3-billion of
government bailouts, is the latest of a growing number of investors filing lawsuits to hold banks
responsible for losses on soured mortgages that contributed to the financial crisis. The AIG
complaint accuses Bank of America and its Countrywide and Merrill Lynch units of
misrepresenting the quality of mortgages placed in securities and sold to investors.
"Defendants were engaged in a massive scheme to manipulate and deceive investors, like
AIG, who had no alternative but to rely on the lies and omissions made," said the complaint,
being filed in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Bank of America bought
Countrywide for $2.5 billion in July 2008 and acquired Merrill six months later. The Countrywide
acquisition is almost universally considered a disaster because of the costs of litigation and writing
down bad loans.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the government bailout of major banks and Wall
Street corporations, click here.
Banking Run Amok Is Less Likely a Year After Dodd-Frank

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-17/banking-run-amok-is-less-likely-a-ye...
With the first anniversary of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law on July 21, ... what has it
accomplished? Consumer advocates, many congressional Democrats and some economists
say banks are still too big, the derivatives market remains untamed and opaque, and
regulators have been slow to write hundreds of rules. Rules forcing most derivatives trades to
be processed through clearinghouses, and backed by collateral, should ... be accepted globally to
avoid regulatory arbitrage, in which trading firms move to countries with the least intrusive, and
lowest cost, oversight. Less than three years ago, the financial system almost buckled under the
weight of worthless mortgages, and the country narrowly avoided another Great Depression.
Regulators had been blind to the credit boom and bust; banks took huge risks that exploited
regulatory gaps. Today, the economy remains weak ... because of the lingering fallout of the
financial crisis. Dodd-Frank isnt perfect, but already its influence on the financial system has been
positive, in ways big and small. Accounting is more transparent; off-balance-sheet assets are
largely a thing of the past. [Yet] with the top 10 U.S. banks holding 77 percent of the
industrys domestic assets, compared with 55 percent in 2002, too-big-to-fail is an even

bigger worry today. Thomas M. Hoenig, the Kansas City Federal Reserve president, has said
that the incentives for risk-taking that existed before the crisis all remain in place.
Note: For many of the most informative reports from major media sources on the financial
meltdown and government bailout of the biggest banks, click here.
Bernanke's worst nightmare: Ron Paul

2010-11-12, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/12/news/economy/Bernanke_Paul/index.htm
Ben Bernanke has had his hands full since his first day on the job as Federal Reserve chairman
nearly five years ago. It's about to get even tougher. His harshest critic on Capitol Hill, Rep. Ron
Paul of Texas, is about to become one of his overseers. Paul, who would like to abolish the Fed
and the nation's current monetary system, will become the chairman of the House Subcommittee
on Domestic Monetary Policy. Paul doesn't think he'll be able to move his proposal to eliminate the
Fed. But he said he does intend to use his new position as "a mini-bully pulpit" to criticize Fed
policy and call more attention to what he sees as its negative consequences. And Paul vows to try
again to authorize Congressional audits of the Fed's decisions on the economy, a proposal that
passed the House last year but was essentially gutted from the final version of the financial
regulatory overhaul legislation. Paul argues the Fed is making a serious mistake by pumping
more money into the economy to try to spur more spending and growth. He predicts it will
only lead to further declines in value of the dollar, inflation and higher interest rates rather
than the lower rates the Fed is shooting for. Paul thinks that will bring about another
economic crisis.
Note: To understand why Congressman Ron Paul wants to eliminate the Federal Reserve, click
here.
'Run on UK' sees foreign investors pull $1 trillion out of the City
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/run-on-uk-sees=foreign-invest...
A silent $1 trillion "Run on Britain" by foreign investors was revealed yesterday in the latest
statistical releases from the Bank of England. The external liabilities of banks operating in the UK
that is monies held in the UK on behalf of foreign investors fell by $1 trillion (700bn) between
the spring and the end of 2008, representing a huge loss of funds and of confidence in the City of
London. Some $597.5bn was lost to the banks in the last quarter of last year alone, after a ...
massive $682.5bn haemorrhaged in the second quarter of 2008 a record. About 15 per cent of
the monies held by foreigners in the UK were withdrawn over the period. This is by far the
largest withdrawal of foreign funds from the UK in recent decades about 10 times what
might flow out during a "normal" quarter. The revelation will fuel fears that the UK's reputation
as a safe place to hold funds is being fatally compromised by the acute crisis in the banking
system and a general trend to financial protectionism internationally. The slide in sterling it has
shed a quarter of its value since mid-2007 has been both cause and effect of the run on London,
seemingly becoming a self-fulfilling phenomenon. The danger is that the heavy depreciation of the
pound could become a rout if confidence completely evaporates. Paranoia that the UK could follow
Iceland into effective national insolvency and jibes about "Reykjavik on Thames" will find an
unwelcome substantiation in these statistics.
Note: For many deep revelations of the realities of the world financial crisis from reliable sources,
click here.
Bair Says Insurance Fund Could Be Insolvent This Year

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=alsJZqIFuN3k
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the fund it uses to protect customer
deposits at U.S. banks could dry up amid a surge in bank failures, as she responded to an industry
outcry against new fees approved by the agency. Without these assessments, the deposit
insurance fund could become insolvent this year, Bair wrote in a March 2 letter to the industry. A
large number of bank failures may occur through 2010 because of rapidly deteriorating economic
conditions. The fund, which lost $33.5 billion in 2008, was drained by 25 bank failures last year.
Sixteen banks have failed so far this year, further straining the fund. Smaller banks are outraged
over the one-time fee ... Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of
America, said yesterday. The agency, which has released the change for 30 days of public
comment, could modify the assessment to shift the burden to the large banks that caused this
train wreck, Fine said. Community bankers are feeling like they are paying for the incompetence
and greed of Wall Street, he said. Consumers should watch this issue closely, said Edmund
Mierzwinski, consumer program director at U.S. PIRG, a Boston- based consumer-watchdog
group. I wouldnt take their money out of the bank yet, Mierzwinski said. If the FDIC is
saying that there is this serious problem, then we should all be concerned. I think there is a
chance the FDIC is going to have to ask taxpayers for money in the future.
Note: For lots more on the financial crisis from reliable sources, click here.
Goldman, JPMorgan Wont Feel Effects of Executive-Salary Caps

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=azVLk.22AkLI
Executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and hundreds of financial
institutions receiving federal aid arent likely to be affected by pay restrictions announced
yesterday by President Barack Obama. The rules, created in response to growing public
anger about the record bonuses the financial industry doled out last year, will apply only to
top executives at companies that need exceptional assistance in the future. The limits
arent retroactive, meaning firms that have already taken government money wont be subject to
the restrictions unless they have to come back for more. Pay caps may provide the political cover
the administration needs to deliver additional infusions of capital into the financial sector. Obama ...
is not proposing to go back and get that $18.4 billion in bonuses back, Laura Thatcher, head of
law firm Alston & Birds executive compensation practice in Atlanta, said of the cash bonuses New
York banks paid last year, the sixth-biggest haul in history. Right now, we have not clamped down
on pay at banks. In addition, some executives may be compensated for the potential reduced
salaries with restricted stock grants, which may result in huge paydays after the bank repays the
government assistance with interest. Theyre just allowing companies to defer compensation,
said Graef Crystal, a former compensation consultant. The restrictions are a joke, he said,
because if the government is paid pack, you can be sure that the stock will have risen hugely.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the Wall Street
Mukasey Declines to Create a U.S. Task Force to Investigate Mortgage

Fraud
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/business/06justice.html?partner=rssuserland...
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey rejected ... the idea of creating a national task force to
combat the countrys mortgage fraud crisis, calling the problem a localized one akin to white-collar
street crimes. He gave his most definitive answer ... in a briefing for reporters, saying that he did
not think that the kind of national task force created at the Justice Department in 2002 to
investigate the collapse of Enron was the proper response to the current crisis. Some critics have
called for the same sort of broad federal law enforcement response seen in the Enron case and a
wave of other corporate scandals earlier this decade, or in the collapse of the savings and loan
industry in the 1980s and 1990s. This is disappointing, Representative Barney Frank, the
Massachusetts Democrat who leads the House financial services committee, said. Calling the
mortgage crisis worse than Enron, Mr. Frank said Enron didnt cause a worldwide
recession. This has more innocent victims. Mr. Frank noted that a $2.4 billion bill to prevent
mortgage foreclosure, which has already passed the House, includes a provision backed by
Republicans to provide an additional $300 million for law enforcement officials to fight mortgage
fraud. He questioned how that money could be spent without a more centralized effort. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating 19 major corporate fraud cases related to
the mortgage crisis. The targets of most of those investigations have not been disclosed. In
addition, the F.B.I. has 1,380 small mortgage fraud investigations now open in field offices around
the country.
Note: For many powerful reports on government corruption, click here.
Secretly, tiny nations hold much wealth

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0425/p17s01-cogn.html
They're tax havens: 70 mostly tiny nations that offer no-tax or low-tax status to the wealthy so they
can stash their money. Usually, the process is so secret that it draws little attention. But the sums and lost tax revenues - are growing so large that the havens are getting new and unaccustomed
scrutiny. There are about 3 million shell companies (set up largely to duck taxes) in offshore tax
havens, Komisar reckons. These tiny tax havens hold 31 percent of total world assets and 26
percent of the stock of US multinationals.
End Is Seen to Free Checking

Bank of America Corp. and other banks are preparing new fees on basic banking services as they
try to replace revenue lost to regulatory rules, in a push that is expected to spell an end to free
checking accounts for many Americans. Free checking accounts, which have been widely
available for more than a decade, have been a boon to middle-class consumers and attracted lowincome customers to the banking system for the first time. Customers will likely be required to
pay new monthly maintenance fees on the most basic accounts that don't generate a lot of
activity. To avoid a fee, customers will have to maintain certain account balances or
frequently use other banking services, such as credit and debit cards, automated teller
machines and online accounts. Some consumer advocates warn the new fees will whack
consumers who now manage their bank accounts to avoid such charges. The transformation of
checking accounts comes at a time when banks are bouncing back from the steepest financial
losses in a generation and are facing new regulations. To accelerate that recovery and recoup
losses from new banking rules, financial institutions are increasingly leaning on customers who
don't now generate enough revenue for the bank.
Note: Why hasn't the federal government protected consumers from this sort of response by the
banking industry to new regulations imposed after the massive taxpayer bailout of these failing
corporations?
AT&T, Verizon to Target Visa, MasterCard With Smartphones

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-02/at-t-verizon-said-to-target-visa-mas...
AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile carriers, are planning a venture to
displace credit and debit cards with smartphones, posing a new threat to Visa Inc. and MasterCard
Inc., three people with direct knowledge of the plan said. The trial would be the carriers biggest
effort to spur mobile payments in the U.S. and supplant more than 1 billion plastic cards in
American wallets. Smartphones have encroached on tasks ranging from Web browsing to
street navigation and now may help the phone companies compete with San Franciscobased Visa and MasterCard, the worlds biggest payments networks. The service, similar to
those already available in Japan, Turkey and the U.K., would use contactless technology to
complete purchases in stores. Theyd be processed through Discovers payments network,
currently the fourth-biggest behind Visa, MasterCard and American Express Co. Barclays would
be the bank helping to manage the accounts, said the people, who requested anonymity because
of confidentiality agreements. Retailers may be eager to help another network after years of
fighting over transaction fees set by Visa and MasterCard.
Facing foreclosure? Don't leave. Squat

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/04/EDK215MNA0.DTL
Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is the longest-serving Democratic congresswoman in U.S. history. Her
district, stretching along the shore of Lake Erie from west of Cleveland to Toledo, faces an
epidemic of home foreclosures and 11.5 percent unemployment. Now, she is recommending a
radical foreclosure solution from the floor of the U.S. Congress: "So I say to the American people,
you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave." She criticizes the bailout's failure to protect
homeowners facing foreclosure. These mortgages were made, then bundled into securities and
sold and resold repeatedly, by the very Wall Street banks that are now benefiting from [a
government bailout]. The banks foreclosing on families very often can't locate the actual loan
note that binds the homeowner to the bad loan. "Produce the note," Kaptur recommends
[to] those facing foreclosure demands of the banks. "[P]ossession is nine-tenths of the law,"
Rep. Kaptur [said]. "Therefore, stay in your property. Get proper legal representation ... [if] Wall
Street cannot produce the deed nor the mortgage audit trail ... you should stay in your
home. It is your castle. It's more than a piece of property. ... If you look at the bad paper, if you
look at where there's trouble, 95 to 98 percent of the paper really has moved to five institutions:
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wachovia, Citigroup and HSBC. They have this country held
by the neck."
Note: Why is it that with the trillions of dollars given by the U.S. government to prop up banks who
used shady loan practices, so few homeowners facing foreclosure have received any assistance?
For many revealing reports on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
US and EU agree 'single market'

2007-04-30, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6607757.stm
The United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic
partnership at a summit in Washington. The pact is designed to boost trade and investment by
harmonising regulatory standards, laying the basis for a US-EU single market. The two sides
agreed to set up an "economic council" to push ahead with regulatory convergence in

nearly 40 areas, including intellectual property, financial services, business takeovers and
the motor industry. The aim is to increase trade and lower costs. Some reports suggest that
incompatible regulations in the world's two richest regions add 10% to the cost of developing and
producing new cars.
Note: Why is this important news getting such minimal press coverage?
Congressional Testimony of DOD Inspector General - Report No. D2001-120

2001-05-08, Department of Defense Inspector General's Website
http://www.dodig.osd.mil/Audit/reports/fy01/01-120.pdf
Statement of Robert J Lieberman, Deputy Inspector General, Department of Defense, Before the
Subcommittee on Governmental Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental
Relations, House Committee on Government Reform of Defense Financial Management. The
extensive DoD efforts to compile and audit the FY 2000 financial statements, for the Department
as a whole and for the 10 subsidiary reporting entities like the Army, Navy and Air Force General
Funds, could not overcome the impediments caused by poor systems and unreliable
documentation of transactions and assets. Some examples of the problems in these year-end
statements follow. Department-level accounting adjustment entries used to compile the
financial statements were $4.4 trillion, with $1.1 trillion of those unsupported by reliable
explanatory information and audit trails. This is an improvement from FY 1999, when $7.6
trillion of adjustments were made with $2.3 trillion unsupported, but remains a good
indication of the need for wholesale changes to the financial data reporting systems.
Accurate reporting of inventory and property remains a continuing challenge for each of the Military
Departments and Defense Logistics Agency because of problems in logistics and other feeder
systems. Although the DoD has put a full decade of effort into improving its financial reporting, it
seems that everyone involved-the Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, the audit
community, and DoD managers-have been unable to determine or clearly articulate exactly how
much progress has been made.
Cities and states paying millions in secret fees to Wall Street

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Cities-and-states-paying-millions-in-se...
Currently, about 9 percent or $270 billion of Americas $3 trillion public pension fund assets
are invested in private equity firms. With the financial industrys standard 2 percent management
fee, that quarter-trillion dollars generates roughly $5.4 billion in annual management fees for the
private equity industry and thats not including additional performance fees paid on investment
returns. Public officials are overseeing this enormous payout to Wall Street at the very moment
many of those same officials are demanding big cuts to retirees promised pension benefits. With
billions of public worker and taxpayer dollars put at risk in the highest-cost, most opaque
investment schemes ever devised by Wall Street for a decade now, investigations that hold
Wall Street profiteers accountable are long, long overdue, said former Securities and
Exchange Commission attorney Ted Siedle. In a 2014 speech, the SECs top examiner, Andrew
Bowden, sounded the alarm about undisclosed fees in the private equity industry, saying the
agency had discovered violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50 percent of the
time at firms it had evaluated. To date, however, the SEC has taken few actions to crack down on
the practices, but some states are starting to step up their oversight.
corruption in government and in the financial industry.
Elizabeth Warren: The market is broken

2014-09-05, CNN
http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/05/news/economy/elizabeth-warren-market-broken/i...
Senator Elizabeth Warren ... believes the most important [problem] to solve is how to get the
American economy working for someone other than billionaires. It's a message she's been taking
all over the country, and she isn't afraid to call banks, credit card companies and some
employers cheats and tricksters. "The biggest financial institutions figured out they could
make a lot of money by cheating people on mortgages, credit cards and payday loans," she
told a packed auditorium at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she
spoke alongside New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. The biggest applause of the night was
on three issues that come up frequently in Warren's speeches. 1) Financial regulation: Warren was
the driving force behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the 2008
financial crisis. The agency has returned billions of dollars to Americans who were wronged. 2)
Reducing student loans: Last summer Warren made headlines for arguing that student loans
should have the same interest rates that banks get when they borrow money from the Federal
Reserve. As she likes to remind people, "Student loans issued from 2007 to 2012 are on target to
produce $66 billion in profit for the United States government." 3) Raising the minimum wage: "No
one should work full time and still live in poverty," Warren said. Her other big push is for basic
worker rights.
Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income inequality news
No more liberal apologies as Elizabeth Warren takes the offensive

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-no-more-liberal-apologies-as...
Elizabeth Warren is cast as many things: a populist, a left-winger, the paladin against the bankers
and the rich, the Democrats alternative to Hillary Clinton, the policy wonk with a heart. The senior
senator from Massachusetts is certainly a populist and her heart is with those foreclosed upon and
exploited by shady financial practices. But she is not nearly as left-wing as many say she can
offer a strong defense of capitalism thats usually overlooked. She is, above all, a lawyer who
knows how to make arguments. From the time she first came to public attention, Warren
has been challenging conservative presumptions embedded so deeply in our discourse
that we barely notice them. Where others equivocate, she fights back with common sense.
Since the Reagan era, Democrats have been so determined to show how pro-market and probusiness they are that theyve shied away from pointing out that markets could not exist without
government, that the well-off depend on the state to keep their wealth secure and that participants
in the economy rely on government to keep the marketplace on the level and to temper the
business cycles gyrations. Warren doesnt back away from any of these facts. In her new book, A
Fighting Chance, she recalls the answer she gave to a voter during a living-room gathering in
Andover, Mass., that quickly went viral. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,
she said. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved
your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to
educate."
Elizabeth Warren: The contender

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/11/21/elizabeth-warren-the-contender/...
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the champion of Main Street versus Wall Street, just got another boost
to the presidential campaign she said she isnt running. It lies in the $13 billion deal that JP Morgan
Chase reached with the US Justice Department. The settlement, which ends the governments
probe into the banks risky mortgage business, reportedly represents the largest amount a single
company has ever committed to pay Uncle Sam. Thats significant but so is the banks unusual
admission that it failed to disclose the risks of buying its mortgage securities. Warren was a force
in both aspects of JP Morgans day of reckoning. After the economic collapse of 2008
and before her election as senator Warren led the charge for Wall Street accountability
while overseeing the government response to the banking crisis. As senator from
Massachusetts, she ... isnt shy about acknowledging her role in achieving them. In September,
Warren [said] that her lobbying of Mary Jo White, the newly installed chairwoman of the Securities
and Exchange Commission, played a key role in getting government regulators to require more
companies to admit wrongdoing, not just pay fines which is what happened in JP Morgans
case. The JP Morgan headlines play out as the stock market surges and unemployment ticks up.
The gap between Americas rich and poor is growing bigger. The divide creates an opening for a
Democrat who speaks to the shrinking middle class, as well as to those already squeezed out of it.
Warren could be that candidate, if she chooses.
Banks hate Richmond homeowners' bailout plan

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/johnson/article/Banks-hate-Richmond-homeow...
Richmond [CA] city officials took a giant leap forward for everyday people last week when they
announced a program to purchase ailing residential mortgages and refinance them through a
financial partnership and a bold new initiative that's already begun. To accomplish the task, the city
said it will use its eminent domain powers in reverse: To save a home instead of condemn it. Much
to the displeasure of the banking industry, the city sent offer letters to more than 600
homeowners whose mortgages are held by nongovernment lending institutions. The
program offers to pay lenders the current market value of the property, not the higher value
of the mortgage. Under the Richmond program, a bank that approved a $500,000 mortgage
would be paid roughly 80 percent of its investment. Already, some lenders contend that such a law
violates constitutionally protected property rights and sets a precedent that could open the
floodgates for other cities in the same predicament. The mere exploration of similar programs in a
half-dozen California cities and counties provoked a strong reaction from the banking industry.
Financial experts have warned that the Richmond policy is certain to spawn legal challenges and a
backlash from lenders who recalculate higher mortgages in Richmond to offset the risk of the city
using a local law to claim a foreclosed property. That's interesting, because no measure was too
extreme, no taxpayer sacrifice too great to come up with and fund a new financial model to bail out
the bankers and brokerage firms in 2008. But that's what the federal government - and American
taxpayers did.
Banks score major win in private Libor suits

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-29/business/sns-rt-us-libor-lawsui...
The world's biggest banks won a major victory on [March 29] when a U.S. judge dismissed a
"substantial portion" of the claims in private lawsuits accusing them of rigging global benchmark
interest rates. The 16 banks had faced claims totaling billions of dollars in the case. The banks
include: Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings, JPMorgan
Chase, [and others]. They had been accused by a diverse body of private plaintiffs, ranging from
bondholders to the city of Baltimore, of conspiring to manipulate the London Interbank Offered
Rate (Libor), a key benchmark at the heart of more than $550 trillion in financial products. In a
significant setback for the plaintiffs, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan
granted the banks' motion to dismiss federal antitrust claims and partially dismissed the
plaintiffs' claims of commodities manipulation. She also dismissed racketeering and statelaw claims. Buchwald did allow a portion of the lawsuit to continue that claims the banks' alleged
manipulation of Libor harmed traders who bet on interest rates. Small movements in those rates
can mean sizable gains or losses for those gambling on which way the rates move. Buchwald's
decision may make it more likely that banks will talk settlement with a significant win in their
pocket. The decision also could cast doubt on some of the highest analyst projections about
potential Libor damages, and quell some concerns that the banks have not reserved enough for
litigation expenses.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on criminal operations of the
financial industry, click here.
Racketeering and Money Laundering Lawsuit Seeking Return of $43

Trillion to the United States Treasury
2012-10-25, MarketWatch/Wall Street Journal
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/major-banks-governmental-officials-and-their...
Spire Law Group's national home owners' lawsuit [is] the largest money laundering and
racketeering lawsuit in United States history, identifying $43 trillion of laundered money. [In] the
federal lawsuit now [pending] in the United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York ... plaintiffs
now establish the location of the $43 trillion of laundered money in a racketeering
enterprise. [The] mass tort action [seeks] to halt all foreclosures nationwide pending the
return of the $43 trillion, an audit of the Fed and audits of all the "bailout programs." The
epicenter of this laundering and racketeering enterprise has been and continues to be Wall Street
and continues to involve the very "Banksters" located there who have repeatedly asked in the past
to be "bailed out" and to be "bailed out" in the future. The Havens for the money laundering
schemes ... are located in such venues as Switzerland, the Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Malaysia,
Cypress and [other entities] identified in both the United Nations and the U.S. Senate's recent
reports on international money laundering. The case further alleges that through these obscure
foreign companies, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo Bank, Citibank, Citigroup, One
West Bank, and numerous other federally chartered banks stole trillions of dollars of home owners'
and taxpayers' money during the last decade and then laundered it through offshore companies.
Note: CNBC also reported this astonishing news. Yet within hours the original page for the article
was taken down, and CNBC senior vice president Kevin Krim received news that his children were
killed under very suspicious circumstances. Could this have been a strong warning? For more in
this, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial
corruption, click here.
Transatlantic alliance between Rothschilds and Rockefellers for wealth

management

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/transatlantic-alliance-betwee...
As if they weren't already well-connected enough, the world's two greatest dynasties joined forces
yesterday as Europe's Rothschild banking clan bought a stake in the Rockefeller group's wealth
and asset management business to gain a foothold in the US. The patriarchs of the two families
96-year-old David Rockefeller and Jacob Rothschild, 76 cemented a five-decade
acquaintance as the younger man's London-based 2bn RIT Capital investment trust
bought a 37 per cent stake in the American's business. In addition to bringing together the two
doyens, the deal will considerably expand the vast networks of both families. To give a taste: Lord
Rothschild's son, Nat Rothschild, is a well-known entrepreneur with stakes in a range of
companies such as Genel, the Kurdistan-focused oil producer ... and Bumi, the Indonesian mining
group. He was also linked with George Osborne and Peter Mandelson at a notorious party on an
oligarch's yacht off Corfu in 2008. Lord Rothschild's niece Kate is married to Ben Goldsmith,
brother of Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith and Jemima Khan and son of the late billionaire
business tycoon Sir James Goldsmith. On the Rockefeller side, for starters, David's granddaughter
Ariana is a successful fashion designer who married the construction heir Matthew Bucklin in
2010. The Rothschilds bought the stake in Rockefeller from French banking group Socit
Gnrale for an undisclosed sum.
Overall, about 5.6 million people moved their bank accounts in the last
quarter of 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-bank-transfer-idUSTRE80Q1TU20120127
More than 600,000 U.S. consumers have moved their money from big banks to community banks
or credit unions, thanks to the much-publicized Bank Transfer Day last fall, according to an
analysis released by Javelin Strategy & Research. The grassroots campaign to get people to shift
out of big banks capitalized on the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement, and picked up
further momentum from a Bank of America plan in September to charge customers a $5 per month
debit card fee. "It was a meaningful movement of people from big banks into small
community banks and credit unions ..." said Jim Van Dyke, founder of Javelin. Historically,
people don't switch banks easily, even if they are unhappy, Van Dyke says. Consumers have
strong ties to their banks because of direct deposit, automated bill payments and habit -- making
change more complex than simply going someplace else. "Individuals are really resistant to
moving their money out of banks," Van Dyke says. Overall, about 5.6 million people moved their
bank accounts in the last quarter of 2011, Javelin says. Account changes attributed to Bank
Transfer Day represented about 11 percent of total moves.
Note: As the article mentions, people rarely change banks, so the fact that 6 million changed
banks in three months is quite impressive!
Wall Street protest movement spreads to cities across US, Canada and
Europe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/04/wall-street-protest-movement-spreads
It began as the brainchild of activists across the border in Canada when an anti-consumerism
magazine put out a call in July for supporters to occupy Wall Street. Now, three weeks after a few
hundred people heeded that initial call and rolled out their sleeping bags in a park in New York's
financial district, they are being joined by supporters in cities across the US and beyond.
Protesters against corporate greed, unemployment and the political corruption that they say Wall
Street represents have taken to the streets in Boston, Los Angeles, St Louis and Kansas City. The
core group, Occupy Wall Street, claims people will take part in demonstrations in as many as 147
US cities this month, while the website occupytogether.org lists 47 US states as being involved.
Around the world, protests in Canada, the UK, Germany and Sweden are also planned, they
say. The speed of the leaderless movement's growth has taken many by surprise. The
movement, which organisers say has its roots in the Arab spring and in Madrid's Puerta del
Sol protests, has been galvanised by recent media attention. Last week, the Guardian
reported that a NYPD police officer had been filmed spraying four women protesters with pepper
spray. On Saturday, a peaceful march on Brooklyn bridge intended as a call to the other four
boroughs of New York to join in resulted in 700 arrests. Some protesters claim the police trapped
them.
articles.
Trader tells BBC 'millions of people's savings will vanish'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8790719/Trader-tells-BBC-m...
An independent trader, appearing on BBC News, reveal[ed] that he thinks banks and hedge funds
believe the stock market 'is toast'. Alessio Rastani said that Goldman Sachs rules the world,
not governments, and that Goldman Sachs don't care about this rescue package because
they know the stock market is finished and they don't really care about the Euro. US
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said over the weekend: "Sovereign and banking stresses in
Europe are the most serious risk now confronting the world economy. Decisions cannot wait until
the crisis gets more severe." He has proposed the so-called Geithner plan which will leverage the
EU's 440bn bail-out fund (EFSF) from 440bn to 2 trillion to cope with Italy and Spain. But
according to Mr Rastani it may already be too late as: In less than twelve months, my prediction
is, the savings of millions of people are going to vanish.
Note: To watch the full BBC video of this most unusual interview, click here. For lots more on the
fraudulent practices of major financial firms, click here.
Sharpton Appears to Win Anchor Spot on MSNBC

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/business/media/sharpton-close-to-being-msnb...
After giving a nearly six-month tryout for the Internet talk show host Cenk Uygur, the cable news
channel MSNBC is preparing to instead hand its 6 p.m. time slot to the Rev. Al Sharpton. Cenk
Uygur said MSNBC's management decided that they did not care for his aggressive style. Mr.
Uygur, who had been made a paid contributor to MSNBC months earlier, was handed 6 p.m., a big
coup given that he had earlier campaigned to have his progressive Web show The Young Turks
picked up by MSNBC. Mr. Uygur, who by most accounts was well liked within MSNBC, said in an
interview that he turned down the new contract because he felt [MSNBC President Phil] Griffin had
been the recipient of political pressure. In April, he said, Mr. Griffin called me into his office
and said that hed been talking to people in Washington, and that they did not like my tone.
He said he guessed Mr. Griffin was referring to White House officials, though he had no
evidence for the assertion. He also said that Mr. Griffin said the channel was part of the
establishment, and that you need to act like it.
Note: To understand why Uygur was forced out by powerful forces behind the scenes, watch the
amazing 10-minute video of him exposing the blatant corruption of the bankers at this link. For an
interview of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Uygur's resignation, click here.
Allied Irish Banks to pay 40m bonuses despite bailout

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/08/allied-irish-banks-pay-bonuses...
Stricken Allied Irish Banks is preparing to hand out 40m (34m) of bonuses next week despite
being on the brink of receiving another emergency bailout from the Irish government. As many as
2,400 bankers in its Dublin capital markets division are to receive the payments on 17 December
under agreements struck with the bank in 2008. The bank, 19% owned by Ireland's taxpayers but
expected to reach 95% state-ownership, had originally been blocked from making the payments
under one of the government's bailout programmes. But legal action by a trader, John Foy, over a
deferred 161,000 bonus awarded in 2008 has led the bank to conclude it will need to pay
bonuses to many of the staff to whom they were awarded for that year. The bonuses are being
handed out at a time when the government is instigating four years of tax rises and brutal
cuts to benefits. Bankers are receiving much of the blame for forcing Ireland to take
international assistance and implement the austerity budgetary measures.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the worldwide bailout by taxpayers of failed banks,
click here.
Mondragn Worker-Operatives Decide How to Ride Out a Downturn

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=3511
The Mondragn Cooperative Corporation (MCC), the largest consortium of worker-owned
companies, has developed a different way of doing businessa way that puts workers, not
shareholders, first. Heres how it played out when one of the Mondragn cooperatives fell on hard
times. The worker/owners and the managers met to review their options. After three days of
meetings, the worker/owners agreed that 20 percent of the workforce would leave their jobs for a
year, during which they would continue to receive 80 percent of their pay and, if they wished, free
training for other work. This group would be chosen by lottery, and if the company was still in
trouble a year later, the first group would return to work and a second would take a year off. The
result? The solution worked and the company thrives to this day. The central importance of
workers permeates every aspect of the Mondragn Cooperatives. Even though the MCC
businesses are affected by the global financial crisis, there is no unemployment within the
MCC businesses. People are moved around to other jobs, or hours are cut without cutting pay.
The wages for unworked hours are to be repaid through extra hours worked later in the year.
Contrary to what some advocates of top-down management say, this worker-centered focus hasnt
been an obstacle to growth. Founded in 1956 by Father Don Jose Arizmendi, a Basque Catholic
priest, the Mondragn cooperatives today comprise more than 100 cooperatives, as well as more
than 100 subsidiaries that MCC has purchased and hopes to convert. Altogether, MCC companies
employ more than 100,000 worker/owners and in 2007 generated revenues of more than $24
billion.
Mystery of Fake U.S. Bonds Fuels Web Theories

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/business/global/26fake.html
Ever since two middle-aged men with Japanese passports were caught in Italy this month
trying to smuggle a purported $134.5 billion in United States government bearer bonds into
Switzerland, the Internet has been abuzz with theories. In all, the Italian financial police and
customs guards confiscated 249 paper bonds, each supposedly worth $500 million, and 10 bonds
with a face value of $1 billion each. After reports of the seizure began to trickle out of Italy, the
blogosphere sprang into action, the ponderings fueled by suspicions that the mainstream media
was willfully ignoring the tale. The story took on greater life after Italian authorities who have
refused to talk about the scandal declined to declare the bonds fakes until they were examined
by Washington. Col. Rodolfo Mecarelli, the provincial commander of the financial police in Como,
said the investigations were focused on understanding who these men were and where they were
from. Also unknown are the whereabouts of the two men, who were released after being stopped
in early June. The men were questioned, but not arrested, said Naoki Oyakawa, an official at the
Japanese consulate in Milan. He said the two men had valid Japanese passports, but he would not
elaborate further on their identities. We dont know where they are now, he said. We have had
no contact with the two men. They have not asked us for our help. What the bonds were for
remains unclear. Its not the sort of thing that you can just go into a bank and convert, said
Colonel Mecarelli. But they may have been useful to guarantee business deals among people
who dont use cash. Agencies that deal with financial crimes, including Europol, declined to
comment while the Italian investigation was still under way.
Note: Although this dismissive article asserts that the bonds seized are fakes, many odd
circumstances remain unexplained, including the "unknown" identity of the smugglers and why
they would smuggle fake securities. The US, Italian and Japanese authorities and mainstream
media again have failed to report something of potential significance.
Fed to Buy Up to $300 Billion Long-Term Bonds

2009-03-18, CNBC/Reuters News
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29755961/
The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will spend up to $300 billion over the next six
months to buy long-term government bonds, a new step aimed at lifting the country out of
recession by lowering rates on mortgages and other consumer debt. Fed purchases should boost
Treasury prices and drive down their rates. That would ripple through and lower rates on other
kinds of debt. The last time the Fed set out to influence long-term interest rates was during the
1960s. The Fed also said it will buy more mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac to help that battered market. The central bank will buy an additional $750
billion, bringing its total purchases of these securities to $1.25 trillion. It also will boost its
purchase of Fannie and Freddie debt to $200 billion. Pimco's Bill Gross tells CNBC that the
move has expanded the Feds balance sheet by perhaps 50 percent, up to $3 trillion. In
addition, the Fed said a $1 trillion program to jump-start consumer and small business lending
could be expanded to include other financial assets. Across the Atlantic, the Bank of England last
week began buying government bonds from financial institutions as it turned to other ways to help
revive Britain's moribund economy. The Bank of England, like the Fed, already had lowered its key
interest rate to a record low of 0.5 percent. Finance leaders from top economies have discussed
coordinating actions from their governments and central banks to provide a more potent punch
against the global financial crisis.
Note: The Fed is now buying long-term Treasury bonds because it cannot directly lower interest
rates any further. Isn't this just a hidden form of increasing the money supply, with the risk of
further devaluing the dollar and eventually causing high inflation? For lots more on the hidden
realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here
Treasurys Are 'Disaster Waiting to Happen'

2009-03-17, CNBC
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29720589/
The Federal Reserve has no option but to start buying Treasurys as the government's needs for
financing are huge, but the government bond market is a disaster in the making, Marc Faber,
editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, told CNBC. "Other central banks have
done it already around the world but basically what it amounts to is money printing and in fact I
don't think that it will help the bond market at all in the long run," Faber told CNBC. "Yields have
already backed up pretty substantially and I tell you, I think the US government bond market is a
disaster waiting to happen for the simple reason that the requirements of the government to cover
its fiscal deficit will be very, very high," Faber said. "The Federal Reserve will have to buy
Treasurys, otherwise yields will go up substantially," he said, adding that as their reserves
were dwindling, foreign investors were likely to scale down their purchases. But there will
be a time when the Federal Reserve will have to increase interest rates to fight inflation, and
it will be reluctant to do so because the cost of servicing government debt will rise
substantially. "So we'll go into high inflation rates one day," Faber said. The stock market ...
outlook is bleak, he added. "I think we may still have a rally ... until about the end of April and
probably then a total collapse in the second half of the year sometimes, when it becomes clear that
the economy is a total disaster," Faber said.
Note: For lots more on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here
Regulatory reports show 5 big banks face huge loss risk

2009-03-09, Miami Herald/McClatchy News
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/940829.html
Five of America's largest banks, most of which have received $145 billion in taxpayer bailout
dollars, still face potentially catastrophic losses from exotic investments if economic conditions
substantially worsen, their latest financial reports show. Citibank, Bank of America, HSBC Bank
USA, Wells Fargo Bank and J.P. Morgan Chase reported that their "current" net loss risks
from derivatives insurance-like bets tied to a loan or other underlying asset surged to
$587 billion as of Dec. 31 ... a jump of 49 percent in just 90 days. The banks' potentially huge
losses ... shed new light on the hurdles that President Barack Obama's economic team must
overcome to save institutions it deems too big to fail. While the potential loss totals include risks
reported by Wachovia Bank, which Wells Fargo agreed to acquire in October, they don't reflect
another Pandora's Box: the impact of Bank of America's Jan. 1 acquisition of tottering investment
bank Merrill Lynch, a major derivatives dealer. The risks of these off-balance sheet investments,
once thought minimal, have risen sharply. Fears are rising that a spate of corporate bankruptcies
could deliver a new, crippling blow to major banks. Because of the trading in derivatives, corporate
bankruptcies could cause a chain reaction that deprives the banks of hundreds of billions of dollars
in insurance they bought on risky debt or forces them to shell out huge sums to cover debt they
guaranteed. The biggest concerns are the banks' holdings of contracts known as credit-default
swaps.
Note: For many powerful revelations from major media sources of the Wall Street bailout, click
here.
Gold Climbs to Seven-Month High as Economy May Worsen

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=acerPa4tlqXg
Gold rose to its highest [price] in almost seven months in London as investors bought the precious
metal to preserve their wealth on speculation the global economy will deteriorate. Bullion has
climbed 33 percent since October as governments lowered interest rates and spent trillions of
dollars to combat the recession. The very big uncertainties in the stock market and economy are
driving investors into gold and precious metals, said Peter Fertig, owner of Quantitative
Commodity Research Ltd. in Hainburg, Germany. Gold for immediate delivery rose as much as
$25.40, or 2.7 percent, to $967.15 an ounce, the highest since July 22. April futures gained
$22.10, or 2.4 percent, to $964.40. Some investors are buying precious metals on speculation
government stimulus packages [and bank bailouts] will spur inflation, Fertig said. Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner last week pledged as much as $2 trillion in financing for programs
aimed at spurring new lending. The Treasury will likely borrow a record $2.5 trillion this fiscal year
ending Sept. 30, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Investors have been aggressively
adding physical gold to their portfolios as concerns about counterparty risk increase, ETF
Securities wrote in a report. Investors are hedging against the risk of currency depreciation
and longer term inflation risks as government debt projections balloon. Gold has
become, for all intents, the worlds second reserve currency, Dennis Gartman, an economist
and the editor of the ... Gartman Letter, said.
Note: For many revealing reports on the realities of government bailouts of banks worldwide, click
here.
Global economic crisis called biggest U.S. security threat

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-security-threat13-2009fe...
The nation's new intelligence chief [has warned] that the global economic crisis is the most serious
security peril facing the United States, threatening to topple governments [and] trigger waves of
refugees. The economic collapse "already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in
centuries," said Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence, in [testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee]. Blair's focus on the economic meltdown represents a sharp contrast
from the testimony of his predecessors in recent years, who devoted most of their attention
in the annual threat assessment hearing to the issues of terrorism and the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. "Time is probably our greatest threat," Blair said. "The longer it takes for
the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests." He
said that one-quarter of the world's nations had already experienced low-level instability attributed
to the economic downturn, including shifts in power. He cited anti-government demonstrations in
Europe and Russia, and he warned that much of Latin America and the former Soviet satellite
states lacked sufficient cash to cope with the spreading crisis. "Countries will not be able to export
their way out of this one because of the global nature" of the crisis, Blair said. U.S. intelligence
analysts fear there could be a backlash against American efforts to promote free markets because
the crisis was triggered by the United States. "We're generally held to be responsible," Blair said.
Note: For the complete text of Blair's testimony, click here. For an excellent analysis, click here.
For more on the realities behind the economic crisis, click here.
Credit crunch may take out large US bank warns former IMF chief
2008-08-19, Times of London
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_f...
The deepening toll from the global financial crisis could trigger the failure of a large US bank within
months, a respected former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund claimed today,
fuelling another battering for banking shares. Professor Kenneth Rogoff, a leading academic
economist, said there was yet worse news to come from the worldwide credit crunch and financial
turmoil, particularly in the United States, and that a high-profile casualty among American banks
was highly likely. The US is not out of the woods. I think the financial crisis is at the halfway point,
perhaps. I would even go further to say the worst is to come, Prof Rogoff said at a conference in
Singapore. In an ominous warning, he added: Were not just going to see mid-sized banks
go under in the next few months, were going to see a whopper, were going to see a big
one one of the big investment banks or big banks". Professor Rogoff, who was chief
economist at the IMF from 2001 to 2004, predicted that the crisis would foster a new wave of
consolidation in the US financial sector before it was over, with mergers between large institutions.
He also suggested that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the struggling US secondary mortgage
lending giants, were likely to cease to exist in their present form within a few years. His prediction
over the fate of Fannie and Freddie came after investors dumped the two groups shares on
Monday after reports suggested that the US Treasury may have no choice but to effectively
nationalise them.
Note: For revealing reports on banking and financial corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Every bank transaction triggers snooping

2008-03-26, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta's leading newspaper)
http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/barrcode/entries/2008/03/26...
The sad saga of [Eliot] Spitzer should concern every American. The web of snooping in which
federal investigators and regulators are now able to ensnare any person who engages in any form
of financial transaction has become so complex and pervasive that almost no person anywhere in
the world can escape its clutches. The seeds of this modern-day Orwellian financial web were
sown in the late 1960s and early 1970s when such expansive federal laws as the Bank Secrecy
Act were enacted. Designed as tools to ferret out organized crime figures, major drug traffickers
and international money launderers, this family of far-reaching regulatory-cum-criminal laws initially
was used largely as intended. Many of the Suspicious Activity Reports (or SARs) required by the
Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, for example, were largely ignored by investigators and prosecutors,
who viewed them as burdensome and difficult to catalog and utilize. Two events have conspired to
change all that. First, the advent of digital technology has elevated dramatically the ability of the
government to gather, analyze, manipulate, retrieve and disseminate the SAR data. The second
factor ... was, of course, the events of 9/11 and the ensuing USA Patriot Act. These two things
institutionalized fear as the driving force in virtually all federal policies, including those relating to
financial reporting. [A section of] the Patriot Act has been interpreted by banking
examiners to require banks to profile their customers and the full range of their
transactions, regardless of amount. These know your customer regulations are among
the most insidious of this entire class of invasive federal laws and regulations.
Note: This informative article is by former US Congressman Bob Barr, who has become a
crusader against the excesses of the PATRIOT Act.
Unintended Consequences
2008-03-24, Newsweek magazine
http://www.newsweek.com/id/123489
When Congress passed the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, law-enforcement
agencies hailed it as a powerful tool to help track down the confederates of Osama bin
Laden. No one expected it would end up helping to snag the likes of Eliot Spitzer. In the fine
print were provisions that gave the Treasury Department authority to demand more information
from banks about their customers' financial transactions. But Treasury went further. It issued
stringent new regulations that required banks themselves to look for unusual transactions (such as
odd patterns of cash withdrawals or wire transfers) and submit SARsSuspicious Activity Reports
to the government. Facing potentially stiff penalties if they didn't comply, banks and other
financial institutions installed sophisticated software to detect anomalies among millions of daily
transactions. They began ranking the risk levels of their customers ... based on complex formulas
that included ... whether an account holder was a "politically exposed person" [PEP]. At first
focused on potentially crooked foreign officials, the PEP lists expanded to include many U.S.
politicians and public officials who were conceivably vulnerable to corruption. Federal prosecutors
around the country routinely scour the SARs for potential leads. One of those leads led to Spitzer.
Last summer New York's North Fork Bank, where Spitzer had an account, filed a SAR about
unusual money transfers he had made. The governor called attention to himself by asking the
bank to transfer money in someone else's name. The SAR was not itself evidence that Spitzer had
committed a crime. But it made the Feds curious enough to follow the money.
Note: This story provides useful information about how the PATRIOT Act has been applied since
its passage. The reasons for the investigation of Eliot Spitzer, leading to his resignation, may not
have been so simple, however, given his many powerful enemies in government and on Wall
Street.
Foreclosure wave sweeps America

2007-11-05, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7070935.stm
A wave of foreclosures and evictions is about to sweep the United States in the wake of the subprime mortgage lending crisis. This could destabilise the US housing market and may also lead to
further turmoil in financial institutions, who collectively own $1 trillion (480.6bn) worth of subprime debt. Cleveland, Ohio, is an industrial city on the banks of Lake Erie in the US "rust belt". It
is the sub-prime capital of the United States. One in ten homes in the city is now vacant, and
whole neighbourhoods have been blighted by foreclosed, vandalized and boarded-up homes.
Cleveland is facing a rising crime wave, and the cost of demolishing the vacant houses alone will
cost the city $100m of its tax base. According to Jim Rokakis, the County Treasurer for Cleveland's
Cuyahoga County, "Wall Street strategies that made the cycle of no-money-down, noquestions-asked lending possible have sucked the life out of my city". As the credit crunch
continues to bite "families all over the country continue to lose homes in record numbers,
stripping families of their wealth and destroying entire neighbourhoods," says Michael
Calhoun of the Center for Responsible Lending, which tracks these issues. There have already
been 1.7 million foreclosure proceedings in the US in the first eight months of 2007, and up to 2
million families are expected to lose their homes over the next two years, according to estimates
by the US Congress's Joint Economic Committee. Many of these mortgages were sold by
unscrupulous and little regulated mortgage brokers, who received handsome commissions for
selling expensive and unsuitable products. Some customers were not told that their interest rates
would go up sharply after two years; others were promised they could refinance their home before
higher rates took effect. Others found that when they had difficulties paying, huge unexplained
fees were added to their bills, putting them further in debt.
Music Manager, Film Producer Dies at 64

Aaron Russo, who managed Bette Midler and went on to produce such films as "Trading Places,"
has died. He was 64. Russo died from cancer before dawn on Friday, surrounded by family at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said Heidi Gregg. Russo had been battling the disease for nearly six
years. "He was my best friend for 27 years," said Gregg. "Aaron was a freedom fighter, a film
maker and a lover of life." Russo ... began promoting rock and roll shows at a local theater while
still in high school. He later ... promoted some of the most successful rock acts of the 1960s
including Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead. In the 1970s, Russo managed Bette Midler,
producing the Tony award winning "Clams on the Half-Shell Revue" starring the singer. Russo
eventually turned to producing feature films including "The Rose" which starred Midler in 1979 as a
self destructive rock star, and later "Trading Places" in 1983 which starred Eddie Murphy and Dan
Aykroyd. Russo was also a long time political activist. In 2006, Russo finished work on a
documentary titled "America: Freedom to Fascism," which was billed as an expose of the
Internal Revenue Service. "He was an absolutely amazing man," said Ilona Urban, his press
secretary. "He was pointed and once he knew there was a direction to go, you couldn't get him to
turn left or right. He was very committed."
Note: Aaron Russo was one of the few respected film makers who dared to reveal some of the
major cover-ups going on behind the scenes in the world of banking and more. To view his highly
popular, five-star-rated 2006 documentary on this topic, America: From Freedom to Fascism, click
here.
Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/80fa0a2c-49ef-11dc-9ffe-0000779fd2ac.html
The US government is on a burning platform of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal
deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments
threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the countrys top government inspector has warned.
David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his
countrys future in a report that lays out what he called chilling long-term simulations. These
include dramatic tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign
governments of holdings of US debt. Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr
Walker warned there were striking similarities between Americas current situation and the
factors that brought down Rome, including declining moral values and political civility at
home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal
irresponsibility by the central government. In my view, its time to learn from history. Mr
Walkers views carry weight because he is a non-partisan figure in charge of the Government
Accountability Office, often described as the investigative arm of the US Congress. In an interview
with the Financial Times, Mr Walker said he had mentioned some of the issues before but now
wanted to turn up the volume. Some of them were too sensitive for others in government to have
their name associated with. Im trying to sound an alarm and issue a wake-up call, he said. As
comptroller general Ive got an ability to look longer-range and take on issues that others may be
hesitant, and in many cases may not be in a position, to take on."
Sen. Warren: We Need Regulators Who 'Work For The American People'
2014-10-01, NPR Blog
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/10/01/352852976/sen-warren-we-need-r...
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, says newly released recordings of
conversations between Federal Reserve officials show that the same kind of cozy relationships
that led to the 2008 financial crisis still dominate Wall Street. "You really do, for a moment, get
to be the fly on the wall that watches all of it, and there it is to be exposed to everyone: the
cozy relationship, the fact that the Fed is more concerned about its relationship with a toobig-to-fail bank than it is with protecting the American public," Warren says. The recordings
don't reveal anything outright illegal. Instead, they reveal Fed officials discussing "legal but shady"
transactions and then wringing their hands over how to delicately bring them up with the bank.
Warren, who before coming into office led an effort to create the U.S. Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, says that trepidation is another thing wrong with regulators today. "The fact that
Goldman could mount a legal defense here is not really the point of these tapes. The point of these
tapes is that the regulators are backing off long before anyone's in court making a legal argument
about whether or not they came right up to the line or they crossed over the line." The bottom line,
Warren says, is that the United States needs regulators "who understand that they work for the
American people, not for the big banks."
Warren Calls for Hearings on New York Fed Allegations

2014-09-27, BloombergBusinessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-09-26/new-york-fed-denies-allegations-o...
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren called for congressional hearings into allegations that the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York has been too deferential to the firms it regulates. A radio program
about the regional Fed bank raised disturbing issues. Its our job to make sure our financial
regulators are doing their jobs, Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and member of the Senate
Banking Committee, said in a statement yesterday. The program This American Life released the
transcript of a broadcast that includes excerpts of conversations it said were secretly recorded by
Carmen Segarra, a former New York Fed bank examiner who was fired in 2012, with some of her
colleagues and her supervisor. In the transcript, Segarra described how she felt that her Fed
colleagues were afraid of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and handled it with kid gloves. Senator
Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat whos also on the banking committee, backed Warrens call for
a probe. Segarra sued the New York Fed last October, alleging she was fired in May 2012 after
refusing to change her findings on the conflict-of-interest policy. In 2009, New York Fed President
William C. Dudley commissioned a probe into his own institutions practices by David Beim, a
finance professor at Columbia Business School. In a report submitted that year and released by
the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2011, Beim wrote that a number of people he
interviewed at the reserve bank believe that supervisors paid excessive deference to
banks and as a result they were less aggressive in finding issues or in following up on
them in a forceful way.
Note: Listen to these revealing recordings and more. For more on this, see concise summaries of
deeply revealing financial corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Heads or Tails, Some CEOs Win the Pay Game

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-04/heads-or-tails-some-ceos-win-...
Most companies in the Standard & Poors 500-stock index pay their CEOs annual bonuses
that are conditional on meeting specific goals. Yet companies often find ways to lower or
reset the performance benchmarks to ensure that their CEOs get at least a portion of their
bonus. The practice, which has become more frequent since the 2007 economic downturn, risks
turning bonus plans into a meaningless exercise, says Carol Bowie, head of Americas research
at ISS Governance. Bonus plans are not simply a mechanism to deliver pay, she says, but they
should be designed to focus executives on the kinds of operational metrics that are going to deliver
value. Companies often justify moving the goal posts as a way to protect executives from events
out of their controlbad luck, such as a hurricane or rising fuel costs. Yet CEOs also benefit
financially when good luck strikes. Departing from a bonus plan only works if a board is willing to
use it on the upside and the downside, says Blair Jones of Semler Brossy Consulting Group. If
its only used for the downside, it calls into question the process. Several studies of U.S. CEO pay
have confirmed the lopsided practice. One study, from researchers at Claremont Graduate
University and Washington University in St. Louis, found that executives lost far less pay for bad
luck than they gained for good luck.
here.
Carter: 'Financial Corruption' Harms US Elections

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/carter-financial-corruption-harms-us-elect...
Former President Jimmy Carter issued a blistering indictment of the U.S. electoral process ...,
saying it is shot through with "financial corruption" that threatens American democracy. Carter said
"we have one of the worst election processes in the world right in the United States of America,
and it's almost entirely because of the excessive influx of money." The 39th president lamented a
recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows unlimited contributions to third-party
groups that don't have to disclose their donors. The dynamic is fed, Carter said, by an
income tax code that exacerbates the gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of
the electorate, allowing the rich even greater influence over public discourse and electioneering.
He added that he hopes the "Supreme Court will reverse that stupid ruling," referring to the case
known as Citizens United. He said the United States should return to publicly financed elections for
president. The system technically is still in place, but it is voluntary and both President Barack
Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have chosen to bypass the taxpayer money
because they can amass far more on their own. "You know how much I raised to run against
Gerald Ford? Zero," Carter said, referring to his 1976 general election opponent. "You know how
much I raised to run against Ronald Reagan? Zero. You know how much will be raised this year by
all presidential, Senate and House campaigns? $6 billion. That's 6,000 millions."
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on our dysfunctional
electoral system, click here.
Billionaires Soros, Paulson Bet Big on Gold

2012-08-16, ABC News blog
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/08/billionaires-soros-paulson-bet-b...
Once again John Paulson is choosing to heavily invest in gold and fellow billionaire George
Soros is making a similar bet. Paulson & Co. and Soros Fund Management bumped up
exposure to SPDR Gold Trust to 21.8 million shares and 884,000 shares, respectively. The
decision by Soros is an interesting one. In 2010, Soros called gold the ultimate bubble during an
appearance on Reuters television. Paulson & Co. now has 44 percent of its $24 billion fund
exposed to bullion. Peter Sorrentino, a senior portfolio manager at Huntington Funds, ... said
consumers should not rush out and buy gold. Historically these moves span roughly a decade and
while the last phase is typically the most explosive, the risk is getting out before it rolls over.
Sorrentino said ... the fundamentals behind gold such as available supply coming to market and
end demand have not changed in any material way. In fact, gold purchase by central banks in the
pacific rim, India and Russia have reached new highs. So from an investor psychology and
supply/demand perspective, this looks like every cycle before it during the last decade. But,
despite big bets by two of the nations billionaires, he continued, There is an old saying among
Wall Street traders; Its said with a whisper and not with a shout, when the widows and orphans
get in, its time to get out.
Note: A Fox News report also shows unusually high purchases of gold from central banks, mostly
those of developing nations. Yet the price of gold has remained relatively stable in the last 10
months (between $1,550 and $1,800/oz) after rising from around $250/oz in 2002 up to $1,900/oz
in August of 2011. Could these purchases be indicators of rocky financial times in the near future?
A gold dealer informed WTK founder Fred Burks that gold prices tend to stabilize in election years,
which you can verify using the charts at this link.
Protesters Granted 4-Month Extension to Stay on Freedom Plaza

2011-10-13, NBC Washington (Washington DC's NBC affiliate)
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Protesters-Continue-to-Occupy-DC-on-C...
Authorities granted protesters a four-month extension to continue occupying Freedom Plaza in
D.C.. A deadline for protesters with the October 2011/Stop the Machine demonstration to pack up
and leave Freedom Plaza came and went Monday afternoon. The protesters were given until 2
p.m. to break down their stage and other equipment after their original four-day permit expired
Sunday. While the protesters cleaned the space and took down the stage where they led rallies,
made speeches and played music, they didn't leave. At about 2 p.m. Monday, Park Police went to
Freedom Plaza and requested a private meeting with protest organizers. They met at National
Park Service headquarters about 4 pm. Before leaving Freedom Plaza, the organizers told the
crowd they'd stay until they're ready to leave. The organizers returned to a round of applause
when they told demonstrators that authorities offered the four-month extension. Park
Police realized it was not in their best interests to shut the demonstrators down or make
arrests, organizers said, and asked if demonstrators needed to be arrested to make their point.
The organizers replied that they dont need to be arrested over a permit issue and want their
issues addressed.
N.Y.'s Cuomo alleges appraiser, lender collusion upped home values

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/02/MNO8T4NNM.DTL
In a major legal action alleging misdeeds in the mortgage business, New York's attorney general
[Andrew Cuomo] has accused appraisers of helping fuel the nation's foreclosure crisis by pumping
up home values at the behest of lenders and other real estate professionals. The lawsuit said that
First American eAppraiseIT, a subsidiary of Fortune 500 company First American Corp., caved in
to pressure from Washington Mutual to rely on "proven appraisers" who were willing to inflate
home prices. Washington Mutual profited from the artificially high appraisals because they allowed
the company to close more home loans at greater values, the lawsuit said. First American, a
provider of business information, title insurance and related services, wanted to win more business
from Washington Mutual, the suit said. The lawsuit comes in the midst of the nation's subprime
lending crisis, which industry experts say could cause up to 2 million homes to be lost to
foreclosure over the next couple of years. Most subprime foreclosures are caused by a confluence
of two factors: mortgage payments that rise when adjustable loans reset, and home prices that are
lower than the amount owed on the mortgage. A moribund real estate market has caused prices to
flatten or fall. But if home prices were artificially high to begin with - which would be the case
if appraisers inflated values, as the lawsuit alleged - the likelihood increases of
homeowners owing more on the mortgage than their properties are worth. Cuomo said
fraudulent appraisal practices were pervasive in the industry. At a news conference
announcing the lawsuit, he said lenders, mortgage brokers, real estate agents and others
frequently pressured appraisers to "come in with the right number, the number that justifies the
transaction" so that everyone in the chain would receive commissions.
At least 19 UK firms under investigation for an alleged conspiracy to

make $20bn of dirty money seem legitimate
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-great-british-money-laund...
Front companies in the UK are at the heart of an investigation into ... a conspiracy to make
$20bn (12.5bn) of dirty money look legitimate. The funds are believed to have come from
major criminals and corrupt officials around the world. An investigation by The Independent
and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an NGO, has identified dozens of ...
front companies in the UK which carried out massive phoney business deals between themselves.
These front companies then sued each other in courts in Moldova, demanding the repayment of
hundreds of millions of pounds of loans. A judge in Moldova ... would rule in favour of the claimant
company, which would then receive the cash from the other front firm with an all-important
signed court document ordering the debt to be paid. But rather than being transferred from one
legitimate British company to another, the funds were being routed from Russia, where gangs from
around the world go to launder money from corruption, drug dealing, prostitution and people
smuggling. Their tainted money would first be put into the UK front companies accounts in
Moldova before being transferred to another bank in Latvia. This final stage adds to the dirty
moneys clean appearance. The UK bank accounts involved include ones at UBS in London,
HSBC, RBS, NatWest and Citibank.
Note: Here is a diagram of this complex international money laundering scam. For more along
these lines, see these concise summaries of deeply revealing articles about widespread corruption
in government and banking and finance.
Could Elizabeth Warren beat Hillary Clinton?

2013-11-11, Washington Post blog
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/11/could-elizabeth-wa...
The question in the background of Noam Scheiber's exploration of whether Elizabeth Warren could
challenge Hillary Clinton in 2016 is whether, come 2015, Democrats will care very much about
cracking down harder on Wall Street. An issue-based challenger needs two things to pose a
serious threat to a front-runner. One is an issue that differentiates them from the front-runner. The
other is for that issue to be foremost in the minds of voters. Scheiber points out that Warren's
background isn't just Wall Street reform. It's protecting the middle class. The Two-Income Trap was
a seminal book in defining the mounting pressures on working Americans. And Warren has long
tried to protect that dimension of her work from being eclipsed by her unexpected turn as a finreg
rockstar. But concern for the middle class doesn't, by and large, differentiate her from Clinton.
Clinton, like Warren, believes in higher taxes on the rich and universal health care and highereducation costs and universal pre-k and so on. The danger for Clinton is if Warren is able to
persuade Democrats that cracking down on Wall Street reform is the key to helping the
middle class or -- perhaps more plausibly -- opposing inequality. On a policy level, that's a
harder case to make. But on an emotional, who's-on-your-side level, it might work.
Note: For an excellent video showing the courage and forthrightness of Elizabeth Warren, click
here. For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major
Economies in peril
2011-11-15, MSNBC
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/dylan-ratigan-show/45311653
Lazy people on social services, a spree of borrowed money. That's how the Greek people are
being portrayed. But like Wall Street, the streets of Athens are like a crime scene. The Greek
people [are] victims of a fraud and cover-up. Greg Palast is a renowned investigative reporter and
author of the new book Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and HighFinance Carnivores. Greg, how is it that a bank can lend money to a country that has an economy
smaller than Dallas, at a level that is this big? Palast: Greece is a crime scene. Goldman Sachs,
beginning in 2001 [or] 2002 ... cut a deal to secretly take euros out of the Greek treasury, convert
them to yen, convert them back to euros. This is through some fancy derivative action. Goldman
takes a multi-billion dollar loss. The Greek government gets a gain. There's no deficit in the
Greek treasury. It's only 3%. The Greek economy looks good. Goldman doesn't take billions
of dollars in losses. It's a fraud. They've cut a secret deal to get that money back and then
some. Goldman charged about $300, $400 million to pull off this scam.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the chicaneries of central banks and financial
corporations, click here. For other powerful reporting by journalist Greg Palast, click here.
CalPERS scandal detailed in report

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/19/BUFR1IELSM.DTL
"The facts in the report speak for themselves, but the principles it describes could apply to funds
throughout the United States and overseas." That's attorney Philip Khinda, talking about the 75page report he delivered last week to the California Public Employees' Retirement System on
dealings involving former senior executives and board members with so-called placement agents,
and how the latter got tens of millions of dollars in questionable fees for their services. The report
is the culmination of a 17-month investigation headed by Khinda, a partner at the Washington law
firm Steptoe & Johnson, which was hired by CalPERS for the job. Citing the $800 million a year
CalPERS was paying out in fees, the report concludes that "the excessive nature created an
environment in which external managers were willing and able to pay fees at a level that bore little
or no relationship to the services apparently provided by the placement agents ... Many of the
abuses relating to placement agent arrangements were, in a sense, a symptom of a larger
problem." That larger problem applies, in part, to funds throughout the United States and
overseas, ranging from other public pension funds to sovereign wealth funds investing in
the United States. With the amount of money at stake, the fat fees involved, and the various
middlemen looking for a piece, events similar to what transpired at CalPERS could just as
easily appear elsewhere.
government and financial corporations against the public interest, click here.
Julian Assange vows to reveal tax details of 2,000 wealthy people

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/17/julian-assange-tax-wikileaks-swiss
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, today pledged to make public the confidential tax details of
2,000 wealthy and prominent individuals, after being passed the data by a Swiss banker who
claims the information potentially reveals instances of money-laundering and large-scale illegal tax
evasion. Rudolf Elmer, formerly a senior executive at the Swiss bank Julius Baer, based in
the Cayman islands, said he was handing the data to WikiLeaks as part of an attempt "to
educate society" about the amount of potential tax revenues lost thanks to offshore
schemes and money-laundering. "As [a] banker, I have the right to stand up if something is
wrong," he said. "I am against the system. I know how the system works and I know the day-to-day
business. I want to let society know how this system works because it's damaging our society," he
said. Elmer will appear in a Swiss court on Wednesday charged with breaking Swiss banking
secrecy laws, forging documents and sending threatening messages to two officials at his former
employer. He denies the charges. Assange ... said he would pass the information to the Serious
Fraud Office(SFO), examine it to ensure sources were protected, and then release it on the
WikiLeaks site, potentially within "a couple of weeks".
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on how the rich cheat the rest with help from lax
regulations, click here.
Clinton, Obama are Wall Street darlings

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wallstdems21mar21,1,1953...
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who are running for president as economic populists,
are benefiting handsomely from Wall Street donations, easily surpassing Republican John McCain
in campaign contributions from the troubled financial services sector. It is part of a broader
fundraising shift toward Democrats, compared to past campaigns when Republicans were the
favorites of Wall Street. The flow of campaign cash is a measure of how open-fisted banks and
other financial institutions have been to politicians of both parties. Concern is rising that "no matter
who the Democratic nominee is and who wins in November, Wall Street will have a friend in the
White House," said Massie Ritsch of the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks
campaign donations. "The door will be open to these big banks." Sen. Clinton of New York is
leading the way, bringing in at least $6.29 million from the securities and investment industry,
compared with $6.03 million for Sen. Obama of Illinois and $2.59 million for McCain. Those figures
include donations from the investment companies' employees and political action committees. The
candidates' receipts reflect a broader trend that demonstrates how money follows power in
Washington. It suggests that the nation's money managers are betting heavily that either Clinton or
Obama will capture the White House and that Democrats will retain control of Congress. "What
that Wall Street money means is that few people in Washington, including the leading
presidential candidates, say a thing when the government moves to bail out Wall Street
before it helps homeowners," said David Sirota, a liberal activist and former congressional aide.
Note: For more insight into the relationship between big finance and big government, click here.
Cost of Iraq war nearly $2b a week

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/09/28/cost_of_iraq_...
A new congressional analysis shows the Iraq war is now costing taxpayers almost $2 billion a
week -- nearly twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent
more than last year -- as the Pentagon spends more on establishing regional bases. The total cost
of military operations at home and abroad since 2001...will top half a trillion dollars. The spike in
operating costs -- including a 20 percent increase over last year in Afghanistan, where the mission
now costs about $370 million a week -- comes even though troop levels in both countries have
remained stable. [A] major factor...is "the building of more extensive infrastructure to support
troops and equipment in and around Iraq and Afghanistan," according to the report. Based on
Defense Department data, the report suggests that the construction of so-called semipermanent support bases has picked up in recent months, making it increasingly clear that
the US military will have a presence in both countries for years to come. The United States
maintains it is not building permanent military bases in Iraq or Afghanistan. "You would
expect [operating costs] to level off if you have the same level of people," said the report's principal
author, Amy Belasco, a national defense specialist at the Congressional Research Service. "It's a
bit mysterious." The Pentagon has not provided Congress with a detailed accounting of all the war
funds, making it impossible to conduct a full, independent estimate.
Note: Many hundreds of billions of dollars have been reported missing by top media sources. Do
you think it's possible there might be some corruption going on here?
Fiscal Year 2005 U.S. Government Financial Statement

2006-03-01, Government Accountability Office
http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-06-406T
For the ninth consecutive year, certain material weaknesses in internal control and in selected
accounting and financial reporting practices resulted in conditions that continued to prevent GAO
from being able to provide the Congress and American people an opinion as to whether the
consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government are fairly stated in conformity with U.S.
generally accepted accounting principles. Until the problems discussed in GAO's audit report on
the U.S. government's consolidated financial statements are adequately addressed, they
will...hinder the federal government from having reliable financial information to operate in an
economical, efficient, and effective manner. The cost to operate the federal government-increased to $760 billion in fiscal year 2005 from $616 billion in fiscal year 2004. This
represents an increase of about $144 billion or 23 percent. The federal government's gross
debt was about $8 trillion as of September 30, 2005. The federal government's fiscal exposures
now total more than $46 trillion, representing close to four times gross domestic product (GDP) in
fiscal year 2005 and up from about $20 trillion...in 2000.
Note: For the full 20-page GAO report on the sad state of U.S. government finances, click here.
For the text-only version, click here. The GAO is one of the few branches of government which
works hard to prevent corruption. Why didn't this devastating report get any press coverage? Why
does the media fail to inform the public that the Pentagon cannot account for literally trillions of
dollars? (see CBS article on this) For possible answers, see our highly informative mass media
summary.
Dubious Fees Hit Borrowers in Foreclosures

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/business/06mortgage.html?ex=1352005200&en=2...
As record numbers of homeowners default on their mortgages, questionable practices among
lenders are coming to light in bankruptcy courts, leading some legal specialists to contend that
companies instigating foreclosures may be taking advantage of imperiled borrowers. Because
there is little oversight of foreclosure practices and the fees that are charged, bankruptcy
specialists fear that some consumers may be losing their homes unnecessarily or that
mortgage servicers, who collect loan payments, are profiting from foreclosures. Bankruptcy
specialists say lenders and loan servicers often do not comply with even the most basic legal
requirements, like correctly computing the amount a borrower owes on a foreclosed loan or
providing proof of holding the mortgage note in question. Regulators need to look beyond their
current, myopic focus on loan origination and consider how servicers calculation and collection
practices leave families vulnerable to foreclosure, said Katherine M. Porter, associate professor of
law at the University of Iowa. In an analysis of foreclosures in Chapter 13 bankruptcy, the program
intended to help troubled borrowers save their homes, Ms. Porter found that questionable fees had
been added to almost half of the loans she examined, and many of the charges were identified
only vaguely. Collectively they could raise millions of dollars for loan servicers at a time when the
other side of the business, mortgage origination, has faltered. In one example, Ms. Porter found
that a lender had filed a claim stating that the borrower owed more than $1 million. But after the
loan history was scrutinized, the balance turned out to be $60,000. And a judge in Louisiana is
considering an award for sanctions against Wells Fargo in a case in which the bank assessed
improper fees and charges that added more than $24,000 to a borrowers loan.
China's Wealth Woes

2006-09-04, Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14535192/site/newsweek/
With its dollar hoard rising at $17 billion a month and about to pass the $1 trillion mark,
Beijing is finding out that it is possible to have too much money. Beijing's growing dollar
hoard represents the most dangerous imbalance in today's global economy. The United States is
both importing heavily from China and borrowing heavily from the country to finance those
purchases, pushing the dollar down and putting the two economic superpowers on a collision
course.
Analysts outraged over U.S. adjustments of employment data

2006-11-07, Globe and Mail (One of Canada's leading newspapers)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061107.RNONFARM07/TPStory/...
U..S. non-farm payrolls dataarguably the most closely watched indicator in the world's
largest economyare revised so often and by so much that they can't be trusted, some
strategists argued yesterday. Their comments come after Friday's report for October showed huge
upward revisions for job creation in August and September. And last month, the Bureau of Labour
Statistics said 810,000 more jobs were created between March, 2005, and March, 2006, than
originally thoughtthe biggest revision ever made to the data. "How can you trust a non-farm
payroll report that shows such massive revisionswe have never seen this before to such an
extent," David Rosenberg, North American economist at Merrill Lynch & Co., railed in a note to
clients. The U.S. reportwhich measures the creation of non-agricultural jobsis usually released
on the first Friday of the month and provides the earliest economic snapshot of the previous
month. It tends to be one of the top market-moving indicators, influencing stocks, bonds and
currency markets in the U.S. and beyond. "We find it utterly comical and at times almost
contemptible that some in our business still wish to trade pending this report," [investment guru]
Dennis Gartman wrote in his newsletter yesterday. "Such is nonsense, for the report itself is
nonsense."
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on
several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing
news articles ever published.

Financial News Articles - COMPLETE ARCHIVE

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Excerpts of Key Financial News Articles in Media

Where'd the Bailout Money Go? Shhhh, It's a Secret

Gold price rigging fears put investors on alert

IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers

Bilderberg mystery: Why do people believe in cabals?

A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives

The $700 trillion elephant

Western Europe: New Elan in an Old Clan

What Ever Happened to Antitrust?

The Coin of the Realm

Here's why Wall Street has a hard time being ethical

The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis

Traders Said to Rig Currency Rates to Profit Off Clients

Cypriot Bailout Sends Shivers Throughout the Euro Zone

spying on Americans' communications without the warrants required by criminal law by

Goldman Sachs' Global Coup D'etat

Libor: They all knew and no one acted

Was the petrol price rigged too?

Bank rate rigging scandal widens; Diamond fights on

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

OCCs Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities:

The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest

Citigroup to Pay $285 Million to Settle Fraud Charges

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Loans

The Fed Audit

Top lobbying banks got biggest bailouts: study

What if growth had been equal?

Speedy New Traders Make Waves Far From Wall Street

Battle Over the Bailout

G30, Ripe for Conspiracy Theorists

Public servants on $20m a year

Senate Blocks Bid to Audit Federal Reserve

'Bailout psychology' destroying the economy

The Madoff Economy

US diluted loan rules before crash

All Fall Down

So When Will Banks Give Loans?

Davos: Wealth, power and a sprinkling of stardust

Global Derivatives Market Expands to $516 Trillion

The Rothschild story: A golden era ends for a secretive dynasty

Military waste under fire: $1 trillion missing

IMF's four steps to damnation

Ford Sees Wealth in Muscle Shoals: Edison Backs Him Up

U.S. probes banks over metals markets

A Whistleblower's Horror Story

Wall Street's threat to the American middle class

The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

Citigroup to pay $7 billion for egregious misconduct leading up to

Elizabeth Warrens A Fighting Chance: An exclusive excerpt on the

Canadian Brad Katsuyama in spotlight over 'rigged' markets allegation

Is the U.S. stock market rigged?

Pope Francis 'is mafia target after campaigning against corruption'

Rigging currency markets

Former Bank of America workers allege lies to homeowners

What Goldman Sachs should admit: it drives up the cost of food

The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street

Too Big to Indict

HSBC Investigation: clients of Britain's biggest bank exposed

Fighting Recession the Icelandic Way

Big Banks: No Crime, No Punishment

Bank scandals: Somebody must go to jail

The unrepentant and unreformed bankers