It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
What if the authorities had enforced bank regulations as vigorously as they enforced park rules and curfews?
We wouldn't be in this mess in the first place!
The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators.
Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest. When supplemented with late fees (themselves subject to interest), the resulting effective interest rate can be as high as 600% a year, which is perfectly legal in many states.
It's not just the private sector that's preying on the poor. Local governments are discovering that they can partially make up for declining tax revenues through fines, fees, and other costs imposed on indigent defendants, often for crimes no more dastardly than driving with a suspended license. And if that seems like an inefficient way to make money, given the high cost of locking people up, a growing number of jurisdictions have taken to charging defendants for their court costs and even the price of occupying a jail cell. More..
Last week the City of Boston agreed to pay Simon Glik $170,000 in damages and legal fees to settle a civil rights lawsuit stemming from his 2007 felony arrest for videotaping police roughing up a suspect. Prior to the settlement, the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Glik had a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public." The Boston Police Department now explicitly instructs its officers not to arrest citizens openly recording them in public.
Slowly but surely the courts are recognizing that recording on-duty police is a protected First Amendment activity. But in the meantime, police around the country continue to intimidate and arrest citizens for doing just that. So if you're an aspiring cop watcher you must be uniquely prepared to deal with hostile cops. More...
We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense. The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education. Laws are written to legalize corporate plunder and abuse, as well as criminalize dissent. And the ensuing fear and instability—keenly felt this past weekend by the more than 200,000 Americans who lost their unemployment benefits—ensure political passivity by diverting all personal energy toward survival. It is an old, old game.
A change of power does not require the election of a Mitt Romney or a Barack Obama or a Democratic majority in Congress, or an attempt to reform the system or electing progressive candidates, but rather a destruction of corporate domination of the political process—Gamer's "patron-client" networks. It requires the establishment of new mechanisms of governance to distribute wealth and protect resources, to curtail corporate power, to cope with the destruction of the ecosystem and to foster the common good. But we must first recognize ourselves as colonial subjects. We must accept that we have no effective voice in the way we are governed. More...
"This year's index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world," Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. "Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news.
"Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.
The interesting fact is that the United States has fallen from 20th in 2010 to 47th in 2011/12. This rating is lower than Botswana, Slovenia, Niger, Mali and Jamaica . The United States owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests. More...
Dozens of NATO heads of state and other top officials plan attending. Large delegations are coming with them. So are similar partner nation contingents. The Chicago Tribune and Sun Times reported on elaborate security preparations. Hundreds of state police and National Guard forces are involved. So aren't thousands of Chicago cops.
Secret Service staff also will be out in force. The ACLU said they'll set up a security perimeter around McCormick Place. Part of Lake Shore Drive will be closed. It's one of the city's main arteries. Enormous amounts of anti-scale steel fencing will be erected. Thousands of linear feet of concrete barriers will be strategically placed. Secret Service spokesman George Ogilve declined to give specifics. The ACLU threatened court action unless details are released well in advance.
At issue are fundamental freedoms. They include speech and assembly rights. They're also about police refraining from crackdowns on nonviolent protesters. Will Chicago respect what NATO and Washington never do on so-called "liberating" missions? Activists want to know. The city has an odious reputation. More on that below. Permits were granted for six protest events. Other groups got them earlier. Chicago cops cracked down anyway. A Secret Service/Chicago police business panel session revealed one planned tactic.
"Extraction teams" will snatch and grab protesters from crowds. Who for what reasons wasn't explained. More...
Victoria, a 12 year old girl gave a presentation in front of 600 people at a Rotary Club and her presentation quickly went viral on YouTube. This young girl understands and gets what only 1 in 10,000 adults understands. It is time to educate yourself on our debt based monetary system and the huge interest burdens it places on you, your children, and your grand children. The bankers do not want you to understand this system, because it enriches them at everyone else's expense. If she can figure this out, you can too!
Bruce Quick, attorney for the first American arrested using an unmanned drone says his client was subject to "guerrilla-like police tactics." "The whole thing is full of constitutional violations," Quick told U.S. News. "The drone use is a secondary concern."
Brossart was in a dispute with authorities over the ownership of six cows that had meandered onto his land. The Grand Forks SWAT team borrowed a Predator drone from the Department of Homeland security to make sure it was safe to arrest Brossart, authorities told the paper.
The fact is that drones vest vast new powers that police helicopters and existing weapons do not vest: and that's true not just for weaponization but for surveillance. Drones enable a Surveillance State unlike anything we've seen. Because small drones are so much cheaper than police helicopters, many more of them can be deployed at once, ensuring far greater surveillance over a much larger area. Their small size and stealth capability means they can hover without any detection, and they can remain in the air for far longer than police helicopters. More...
The U.S is ratcheting up a societal-level war on public education. At issue is whether we are going to make it better — build it into something estimable, a social asset that undergirds a noble and prosperous society — or whether we're going to tear it down so that private investors can get their hands on the almost $1 trillion we spend on it every year. The tear-it-down option is the civilian equivalent of Ben Tre, but on a vastly larger scale and with incomparably greater stakes: we must destroy public education in order to save it. It's still early in the game, but right now the momentum is with the wreckers because that's where the money is. Whether they succeed or not will be up to you.
Here's a three-step recipe for how to destroy education. It maps perfectly to how to make a prodigious profit by privatizing it. It is the essential game plan of the big money boys. More...
There are companies that have negotiated that they get to keep the state income taxes that their employees pay. The result of this is that all taxpayers in that state are essentially subsidizing that business. This is not free market, this is corporate socialism at its worst.
The Department of Homeland Security just ordered 450 million rounds of special "hollow point" .40 caliber ammunition from defense contractor ATK. The high performance HST bullets are designed for law enforcement and ATK says they offer "optimum penetration for terminal performance." While we can only guess in what situations this type of domestic firepower might be used by Homeland Security, American citizens should also remember this type of ammunition has been outlawed in international warfare by the Hague Convention Declaration III since 1899. In addition, the Department has an open bid to stockpile rifle ammo, up to 175 million rounds of .223 caliber ammo, the same used by NATO forces.
The new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) takes away basic rights of American citizens who are considered "terrorists" or "enemy combatants." such individuals can now be held indefinitely without trial and without legal representation. After signing the bill, President Obama said he would "never" impose this Act on Americans but don't bet on it! More...
What are these phantasmagoric money machines that they call "private-equity firms?" They're much in the news these days. They operate by borrowing big piles of cash at high interest rates from rich speculators to buy out XYZ Corp. Then, to meet the interest payments owed to the speculators (and to siphon off a financial killing for themselves), the fixers do two things: One, they plunder XYZ's assets, selling the profitable chunks of the corporation; and two, they severely downsize the XYZ workforce, firing as many workers as possible and demanding deep wage cuts and benefit givebacks from the employees they keep.
It's a raw redistribution-of-wealth scheme, shifting XYZ's wage payments from its many workers to a handful of wealthy high rollers. The process downsizes America's middle class, while creating no real economic value. Nothing equitable about it. More...
As the United States is looking to reform its public school system, education experts have increasingly looked at other countries for examples on what works and what won't. The current administration has turned its attention strong performing foreign school systems. As a consequence, recent education summits hosted in the United States have given room to international education showcases.
First of all, although Finland can show the United States what equal opportunity looks like, Americans cannot achieve equity without first implementing fundamental changes in their school system. The following three issues require particular attention. More...
The wealthiest Americans believe they've earned their money through hard work and innovation, and that they're the most productive members of society. For the most part they're wrong. As the facts below will show, they're not nearly as productive as middle-class workers. Yet they've taken almost all the new income over the past 30 years.
Workers have TRIPLED their productivity over 30 years while the richest 1% have TRIPLED their share of income. Worker pay remained flat as the top 10% took almost all the productivity gains since 1980. Private tuition is skyrocketing, with student loans reaching the $1 trillion mark. Bonuses continue for executives at Ford and Bank of America and Sirius and other companies who have underperformed and/or laid off workers.
No, the captains of industry have not earned their money because of their top-notch management skills. Five reasons why they have not earned their money: More...
Throughout history change has been a perpetual tug-of-war between the different social classes. These great divisions have been recast again and again in various manifestations (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the have and have-nots, the 1% and the 99%), but they are always expressing the same common problem: progress, however far it takes us, cannot seem to shake off its built-in inequalities and injustices that always follow alongside it. This sentiment is not the subject of perpetual debate, however. It is most often found in the margins, outside the mainstream, only flickering into popular consciousness when the truly irrational nature of the dominant system reveals itself. These irrationalities serve to mobilize the multitude to demand change, yet the result of these mobilizations is a rationalization of underlying problems. Change does come, but it is limited and mutable, subject to its own changes. More...
This is a long but very well written and well documented article on how movements such as the Tea Party, Occupy, and others eventually become co-opted by the elites and the dominant system. One part of the co-opting is to get the movement to support political candidates. However, once these candidates are in office, they often become co-opted themselves by their political party, campaign donors and others. This is a must read for anyone who truly wants to understand this process and its implications.
Boy, do I feel like an idiot. I've been out there on radio and TV in the last few months saying that I thought there was a chance Barack Obama was listening to the popular anger against Wall Street that drove the Occupy movement, that decisions like putting a for-real law enforcement guy like New York AG Eric Schneiderman in charge of a mortgage fraud task force meant he was at least willing to pay lip service to public outrage against the banks.
Then the JOBS Act happened. The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market. More...
In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA's massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford's recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.
Binney served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as technical director of the NSA's World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA's data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state." Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national television about NSA surveillance. More...
Anyone else find it troubling that the corporate controlled main stream media has not jumped on this story?
Sweatshop labor is back with a vengeance. It can be found across broad stretches of the American economy and around the world. Penitentiaries have become a niche market for such work. The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation of a small army of workers too coerced and right-less to complain.
Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate. The Corrections Corporation of America and G4S (formerly Wackenhut), two prison privatizers, sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM.
These companies can, in most states, lease factories in prisons or prisoners to work on the outside. All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day. Rarely can you find workers so pliable, easy to control, stripped of political rights, and subject to martial discipline at the first sign of recalcitrance. More...
Benjamin Franklin, who used his many talents to become a wealthy man, famously said that the only things certain in life are death and taxes. But if you're a corporate CEO in America today, even they can be put on the back burner – death held at bay by the best medical care money can buy and the latest in surgical and life extension techniques, taxes conveniently shunted aside courtesy of loopholes, overseas investment and governments that conveniently look the other way.
To add insult to injury, average taxpayers even help subsidize the private jet travel of the rich. On the Times' DealBook blog, mergers and acquisitions expert Steven Davidoff writes, "If an outside security consultant determines that executives need a private jet and other services for their safety, the Internal Revenue Service cuts corporate chieftains a break. In such cases, the chief executive will pay a reduced tax bill or sometimes no tax at all." More...
We're headed towards economic and financial bankruptcy. But that's mostly because society has been largely intellectually and morally bankrupt for some time. I don't believe a society can rise to real prosperity without a sound intellectual and moral foundation – that's why the US was so uniquely prosperous for so long, because it had such a foundation. And it's also why societies like Saudi Arabia will collapse as soon as the exogenous things that support them are pulled away. It's why the USSR collapsed. It's the reason why countries everywhere across time reach a peak (if they ever do), then stagnate and decline.
This isn't a matter of academic contemplation, for the same reason that it doesn't matter much if you're in a first-class cabin when the ship it's in is taking on water. More...
The States of America are, truly, children of the Constitution. The legal framework that is the foundation of State sovereignty and internal administration was unprecedented when the United States won its independence. States were designed to decentralize and keep in check the power of the Federal government. They were meant to be the guardians at the gate, the barrier to the formation of oligarchy or outright dictatorship. This, of course, has changed drastically.The battle over centralized versus decentralized authority and economy has been going on for quite some time. It is undeniably critical in our current climate of crisis, under a government that is bankrupt in every sense and a currency that is on the verge of calamity.
The following is a step-by-step method that States could use to accomplish the task of insulation from financial crisis and Federal control. Much of it hinges on a willingness by State governments to actually pursue independence, which might seem like a naïve dream to most of us. More...
Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the U.S. and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline. The new centers of growth - China, India, Brazil and Russia - have run their course and are de-accelerating rapidly and will continue to do so throughout the year.
The austerity programs imposed in Europe, from England to Latvia to southern Europe will really take hold in 2012. Massive public sector firings and reduced private sector salaries and job opportunities will lead to a year of permanent class warfare and regime challenges. The 'austerity policies' in the South, will be accompanied by debt defaults resulting in bank failures in France and Germany. England's financial ruling class, isolated from Europe, but dominant in England, will insist that the Conservatives 'repress' labor and popular unrest. A new tough neo-Thatcherite style of autocratic rule will emerge; the Labor-trade union opposition will issue empty protests and tighten the leash on the rebellious populace. In a word, the regressive socio-economic policiesput in place in 2011 have set the stage for new police-state regimes and more acute and possibly bloody confrontations with workers and unemployed youth with no future. More...
In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the "trespass bill", which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement.
In surreal reasoning, justice Anthony Kennedy explained that this ruling is necessary because the 9/11 bomber could have been stopped for speeding. How would strip searching him have prevented the attack? Did justice Kennedy imagine that plans to blow up the twin towers had been concealed in a body cavity? In still more bizarre non-logic, his and the other justices' decision rests on concerns about weapons and contraband in prison systems. But people under arrest – that is, who are not yet convicted – haven't been introduced into a prison population. More...
What an incredibly complex confusing and treacherous month. It can be safely said that 80% of the activity is almost totally kept from the public. The financial system is breaking in an accelerated fashion. The most significant two factors at work are the Iran sanctions and their powerful backfire, and the futile efforts in Europe to stem the banking center collapse. The anti-USDollar federation that spans widely across the globe is gathering strong momentum. Financial aggression is being met by financial alternative development.
As Greece moved off the daily news fabrication factory, the reality of a collapse in Spain and Italy has moved to the front center of observations. Meanwhile, the American nitwits continue to argue over Quantitative Easing when it never stopped, and in fact, went global under their noses. The US news machine, dominated by the syndicate, churns out absurdities after more nonsensical bites on an economic recovery. The subprime loan machinery has ramped up. The retail factor does not tell of strength, but of weakness. Spending on consumption does not indicate strength, but a path to ruin still not well recognized. The gap between reality and reports is diverging. More...
The US government pretends to live under the rule of law, to respect human rights, and to provide freedom and democracy to citizens. Washington's pretense and the stark reality are diametrically opposed. US government officials routinely criticize other governments for being undemocratic and for violating human rights. Yet, no other country except Israel sends bombs, missiles, and drones into sovereign countries to murder civilian populations. The torture prisons of Abu Gahraib, Guantanamo, and CIA secret rendition sites are the contributions of the Bush/Obama regimes to human rights.
Washington violates the human rights of its own citizens. Washington has suspended the civil liberties guaranteed in the US Constitution and declared its intention to detain US citizens indefinitely without due process of law. President Obama has announced that he, at his discretion, can murder US citizens whom he regards as a threat to the US. Congress did not respond to these extraordinary announcements with impeachment proceedings. There was no uproar from the federal courts, law schools, or bar associations. Glenn Greenwald reports that the Department of Homeland Security harasses journalists who refuse to be "presstitutes", and we have seen videos of the brutal police oppression of peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors. More...
In recent weeks several big finance insiders have publicly exposed fault lines in the U.S. financial system. Their inside views are telling us that the corruption we see is real and, more importantly, those in the system know it.
Financiers that break from the corruption of gluttonous greed can become the conscience of a sector that seems to have no conscience. Let's hope their courage is contagious and others follow their lead. We need a revolt from inside big finance that will help radically transform finance from greed to generosity, from gluttony to moderation and from selfishness to community benevolence.
A thorough examination of the corruption of big finance came in a recent shareholder letter from Robert Wilmers, the Chairman and CEO of M&T Bank. He laments that " it is difficult, for one who has spent more than a generation in the field, to recall a time when banking as a profession has been publicly held in such persistently low esteem" noting that polls show "only a quarter of the American public expressed confidence in the integrity of bankers ." More...
Wells Fargo is one of the top five largest banks in America, a fact that on its own is damning enough, basic human decency not exactly being conducive to success in the financial industry. Despite, or rather because of, its role as one of the leading sub-prime mortgage lenders prior to the 2008 crash in the housing market, the bank was handed $37 billion from the U.S. government, a transfer of wealth from the foreclosed upon have-nots to the haves doing the foreclosing – people like chairman and CEO John Stumpf, whose compensation actually rose after his company's de facto bankruptcy to a cool $18 million last year.
As Wells Fargo has grown over the years, using its bailout funds to gobble up rival Wachovia and expand to the East Coast, so has the U.S. prison population. By 2008, one in 100 American adults were either in jail or in prison – and one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34, many simply for non-violent offenses, justice not so much blind as bigoted. Overall, more than 2.3 million people are currently behind bars, up 50 percent in the last 15 years, the land of the free now accounting for a full quarter of the world's prisoners. These developments are not unrelated. More...
Again, the incentives of a for profit private prison system are all wrong. Their inventive is to maximize the number of inmates for maximium profit. A state based system has the incentive to minimize the number of inmates to reduce costs. With the huge growth in private prison systems, is it any wonder that the US inmate population is exploding?
Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the US. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track people.
The technology for tracking and identifying people is exploding as is the government appetite for it.
Soon, police everywhere will be equipped with handheld devices to collect fingerprint, face, iris and even DNA information on the spot and have it instantly sent to national databases for comparison and storage.
Bloomberg News reports the newest surveillance products "can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices," change the contents of written emails mid-transmission, and use voice recognition to scan phone networks. More...
While the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act is sure to grab headlines as the 2012 presidential campaign begins its home stretch, the Court is gearing up to hear another contentious issue early next year.
The Supreme Court is expected to grant review in the case of American Traditions Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, a case legal experts have dubbed Citizens United 2.0. Citizens United v. FEC was a 2009 case which held that provisions of federal election law prohibiting independent organizations from running political advertisements within 60 days of a general election (or 30 days of a primary) violated the the First Amendment.
American Traditions comes to the Supreme Court by way of the Montana Supreme Court, where a law prohibiting independent corporate political expenditures was upheld as constitutional, in seeming defiance of the Supreme Court's holding in Citizens United. More...
In mid-February, the Arizona chapter of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) released a report on the impact of private prisons in the state. Private Prisons: the Public's Problem concluded that Arizona overpaid for private prison services between 2008 and 2010 to the tune of $10 million, and that the services it received were shoddy at best: malfunctioning alarm systems, fences with holes in them, staff who didn't follow basic procedures and many other failings. All told, the state's auditor general documented 157 serious security failings across five facilities that hold in-state prisoners. (There are three additional private prisons.) At least twenty-eight riots were also reported.
"The main purpose of a prison is to reduce crime," said the AFSC's report. "The only measurement available of how well a prison performs this function is its recidivism rates." Yet, "none of the corporations operating in Arizona measure recidivism." The report noted that at the private facilities there were higher staff turnover and lower staff qualifications, as well as more cases of violence than in state prisons. More...
The incentives of a for profit private prison system are all wrong. Their inventive is to maximize the number of inmates for maximium profit. A state based system has the incentive to minimize the number of inmates to reduce costs. With the huge growth in private prison systems, is it any wonder that the US inmate population is exploding?
What exactly are the dominant players doing to manipulate the price? The current exact mechanism they use to suddenly rig the price lower is High Frequency Trading (HFT). This is the placing of sell orders in great quantities by computer programs that suddenly appear as legitimate orders, but are really mostly "spoofs," or orders entered and canceled immediately (in the fractions of a second). When the sell orders first appear, they spook others into selling as they give the appearance of great selling about to hit the market. Instead, it is all a bluff, intended only to scare others into selling, as the vast majority of these original sell orders are never executed, nor were they ever intended to be executed. They were designed for one purpose only - to scare others into selling.
Through HFT, the commercials are able to push prices suddenly lower on very little actual volume. But once prices are put lower, the outside selling (from those who are frightened by the drop in prices) hits the market. It is that outside selling from technical traders that the commercials then buy. In a nutshell that's the HFT scam in silver. It is important to grasp the fact that the actual selling (and commercial buying) takes place AFTER the price drops. Most people think great selling is what causes the price to decline, but that's not true. The great selling only comes in after the price has been put lower, which is the purpose behind HFT in silver. More...
Most people think of a cashless society as something that is way off in the distant future. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. The truth is that a cashless society is much closer than most people would ever dare to imagine. To a large degree, the transition to a cashless society is being done voluntarily. Today, only 7 percent of all transactions in the United States are done with cash, and most of those transactions involve very small amounts of money. Just think about it for a moment. Where do you still use cash these days? If you buy a burger or if you purchase something at a flea market you will still use cash, but for any mid-size or large transaction the vast majority of people out there will use another form of payment. Our financial system is dramatically changing, and cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. We live in a digital world, and national governments and big banks are both encouraging the move away from paper currency and coins. But what would a cashless society mean for our future? Are there any dangers to such a system?
Those are very important questions, but most of the time both sides of the issue are not presented in a balanced way in the mainstream media. Instead, most mainstream news articles tend to trash cash and talk about how wonderful digital currency is. More...
The first of the more than 70 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested Saturday afternoon and evening were arraigned yesterday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Exhausted by a night and day in jail and shaken by the violence of the police response to Occupy Wall Street's six-month anniversary celebration, many burst into tears of relief when they were finally released to the friendly welcome of the movement's Jail Support team.
But protesters and their legal advisers were surprised yesterday to learn that the size of their bail was being affected by whether defendants were willing to have the distinctive patterns of their irises photographed and logged into a database. More...
And the police state slowly and insidiously keeps growing while the nation numbs its mind with gladiator games (football etc), celebrity worship, gossip and reality TV.
At the start of the first hearing on a lawsuit challenging the Homeland Battlefield Act, a federal judge appeared to be "extremely skeptical" that those pursuing the challenge had grounds to sue the US government. However, by the end of the hearing, the judge acknowledged plaintiffs had made some strong arguments on why there was reason to be concerned about the Act, which passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on New Year's Eve last year.
Back in December, Congress passed the law but there wasn't unanimous support. There was a level of consternation over what the Obama Administration was asking members of Congress to do. Much of that dismay came from a broad political spectrum of Americans that found the law to be an assault on civil liberties. Amendments were proposed but failed to pass. More...
Pouring money into the private banking system has only fixed the economy for bankers and the wealthy; it has not done much to address either the fundamental problem of unemployment or the debt trap so many Americans find themselves in.
In this dark firmament, however, one bright star shines. The sole state to actually gain jobs is an unlikely candidate for the distinction: North Dakota. Yet, since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56 percent, personal income has grown 43 percent and wages have grown 34 percent. The state not only has no funding problems, but this year it has a budget surplus of $1.3 billion, the largest it has ever had.
Why is North Dakota doing so well, when other states are suffering the ravages of a deepening credit crisis? Its secret may be that it has its own credit machine. North Dakota is the only state in the Union to own its own bank. More...
Finally, some well-deserved help for beleaguered monster banks is on its way. Make that, well on its way.
Those poor big banks accidently and inadvertently got caught up making so many easy loans to deserving, hard-up borrowers, who wanted to buy overpriced dream homes, and a few million other folks who deserved two homes and McMansions to keep up with the Joneses (you know the Joneses… most of them were "friends of Angelo").
But now, at last, the banks are making profits again. After suffering the indignity of insolvency and near collapse for all their hard work, the New Samaritans are still being haunted by their generosity, as regulators hound them into settlement submission, merely for doing God's work. More...
Don't understand economics? And the thought of even trying makes your eyes cross?
That's what they want. Government, which is an artificial, unnecessary construct has made a concerted effort to make economics sound as difficult as possible for decades. The reason? They can use your programmed ignorance as the publicly "educated" to confuse you about how they manipulate the economy for their benefit.
Economics is simple. Nearly the full extent of it can be taught in a near pamphlet, as has been done in Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson". That is the full extent that any individual needs and should know about economics. More...
My colleague, Margaret Flowers, asked two women carrying an Americans for Prosperity sign (a group opposed to Obama's law) whether they were on Medicare. They said "yes." "Do you like it?" Again, "yes." "Do you know Medicare is a government program?" A confused look. "Do you know the Republicans want to end Medicare, make it into private insurance?" "You don't know what you're talking about. You probably support Obama" and they started to walk away. "No, we oppose ObamaCare," the women stopped and listened again, "we think everyone should have Medicare. Don't you think it would be a good idea if every American could have the Medicare you have and like?" "Hmm, yes" then, more confusion in their faces.
Then, talking to the Democrats showed equal partisan confusion. I explained: "We oppose the Obama mandate because we want to end insurance control of health care. We support single payer, Medicare for all?" Response: "So do I." I asked: "Single payer ends insurance, and Obama's law entrenches insurance more deeply in control of health care, aren't those opposites?" Response, obviously not understanding what "opposite' means: "It's a step in the right direction." I ask: "How can it be a step in the right direction when it is going in the opposite direction?" More...
I'm through with you. I was proud to be affiliated with you. I hoped to live up to the moniker you bestowed upon me.
But more than a month has past since your executive director, Michael Brune, admitted in Time magazine that the Sierra Club had, between 2007 and 2010, clandestinely accepted $25 million from the fracking industry, with most of the donations coming from Chesapeake Energy. Corporate Crime Reporter was hot on the trail of the story when it broke in Time.
The hard truth: National Sierra Club served as the political cover for the gas industry and for the politicians who take their money and do their bidding. It had a hand in setting in motion the wheels of environmental destruction and human suffering. It was complicit in bringing extreme fossil fuel extraction onshore, into our communities, farmlands, and forests, and in blowing up the bedrock of our nation. And I can't get over it. More...
It is in conference rooms like this one, where attorneys speak in the arcane and formal language of legal statutes, that we lose or save our civil liberties. The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act, the employment of the Espionage Act by the Obama White House against six suspected whistle-blowers and leakers, and the Homeland Battlefield Bill have crippled the work of investigative reporters in every major newsroom in the country. Government sources that once provided information to counter official narratives and lies have largely severed contact with the press. They are acutely aware that there is no longer any legal protection for those who dissent or who expose the crimes of state. The NDAA threw in a new and dangerous component that permits the government not only to silence journalists but imprison them and deny them due process because they "substantially supported" terrorist groups or "associated forces."
The law can be used to detain individuals who are not members of terrorist organizations but have provided, in the words of the bill, substantial support even to "associated forces." But what constitutes substantial? What constitutes support? What are these "associated forces"? What is defined under this law as an act of terror? What are the specific activities of those purportedly "engaged in hostilities against the United States"? None of this is answered. And this is why, especially as acts of civil disobedience proliferate, the NDAA law is so terrifying. It can be used by the military to seize and detain citizens and deny legal recourse to anyone who defies the corporate state. More...
The Federal Reserve Board of Dallas released a report from its chief researcher, Harvey Rosenblum, which has caused quite a stir. The report cites Fed statistics showing that the five largest US banks hold a remarkable 52% of all bank assets.
The most dramatic part of the report and the covering letter by Dallas Fed President Richard W. Fisher is that they call for a "downsizing" of these megabanks. Their primary argument is that financial institutions remain "too-big-to-fail," risking another painful and damaging bailout if a large financial crisis is threatened. In their view, the continuing cloud of too-big-to-fail hanging over the economy is simply intolerable and costly. More...
Many have been detailing the vast sums being raised by the presidential candidates and the super PACs supporting them. But where are all those millions being spent? Among other things, the answers can provide hints on potential improper coordination between campaigns and super PACs. Here are the 200 biggest recipients of spending by the major campaigns and most of the major super PACs.
Buried in the sweeping mortgage settlement with banks, for which final documents were filed this week, are five whistleblower cases that shed light on the litany of foreclosure abuses by the banks.
According to one suit, Bank of America allegedly passed bad loans on to the Federal Housing Administration. According to another, the bank allegedly denied qualified homeowners access to HAMP, the government's loan modification program. More...
We've all done it at one point or another, posting our pictures of ourselves, family and friends on websites and social network portals such as Facebook. Whether it be submitting your picture to output a cartoon or aged version of yourself, or uploading your personal snapshots to Facebook, marketing campaigns are aggressively being pushed by digital media corporations to obtain your facial biometrics. However, most people are completely unaware of the deceptive nature of these campaigns and their intentions.
Opponents to facial recognition technology are well aware that its acceptance and integration within society are growing in combination with wider use of video surveillance, which is likely to grow increasingly invasive over time. Once installed, this kind of a surveillance system rarely remains confined to its original purpose. New ways of applying the technology are leading to abuse as authorities or operators find them to be an irresistible expansion of their power. Ultimately, the privacy of citizens will suffer another blow. The threat is that widespread surveillance will change the character, feel, and quality of our lives. More...
Traders making speculative money from speculative money, traded in trillions of dollars, now hold hostage the real economy wherein people make money from providing needed or wanted goods and services. The fate of American workers, their pensions and the real businesses that employ them, rests on the globalized dominoes that a teetering Greece could set in motion. This is the craven logic of a global casino economy, driven by split-second computerized algorithms and camouflaged by the phony theory of "free trade" which is really corporate-managed trade.
The U.S. does not need to be shackled by the global corporatists to what may happen in Greece or Spain or Portugal. We should be less dependent on financial economies abroad and more self-reliant and independent of the global economy's dangerously contagious risks. More...
Living as an international man used to be just an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the US used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was nothing pressing about becoming an international man.
Things change, however, and being rooted like a plant, at least if you have a choice, is a suboptimal strategy for surviving and prospering. Throughout history, almost every place has at some point become dangerous for those who were stuck there. It may be America's turn.
For those who can take up the life of an international man, it's no longer just an interesting lifestyle decision. It has become, at a minimum, an asset saver, and it could be a life saver. That said, I understand the hesitation you may feel about taking action; pulling up one's roots (or at least grafting some of them to a new location) can be almost as traumatic to a man as to a vegetable. More...
There are 3 reasons for this. These reasons are universal.
First, every institution assumes voluntary compliance in at least 95% of all cases. This may be a low-ball estimate. Most people comply, either out of fear or lack of concern or strong belief in the system and its goals. More...
Perhaps no such case is more controversial and worrying than the failed prosecution of former National Security Agency (NSA) senior official turned whistleblower, Thomas Drake. Drake helped shed light on the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping through two Congressional investigations of 9/11; a Defense Department Inspector General audit of the NSA regarding waste, fraud and constitutional abuse; and, finally, through the disclosure of non-classified information to Baltimore Sun reporter Siobhan Gorman in 2006 and 2007,which triggered the government's criminal investigation (Drake said that internal whistleblowing had already made officials eager to retaliate up until that point).
That is, he agreed to a substantially diluted plea deal four years after his house was first raided in the dead of night; after he was branded as a traitor, lost his job and his pension and ended up working at an Apple Store (which is no walk in the park, according to a report by Josh Eidelson of In These Times). And, to add insult to injury, the indictment was not filed by the DOJ of the Imperial President, George W. Bush, but by a president who campaigned on the idea that his would be the "Most Transparent Administration in History." More...
This Executive Order was posted on the WhiteHouse.gov web site on Friday, March 16, 2012, under the name National Defense Resources Preparedness. In a nutshell, it's the blueprint for Peacetime Martial Law and it gives the president the power to take just about anything deemed necessary for "National Defense", whatever they decide that is. It's peacetime, because as the title of the order says, it's for "Preparedness". A copy of the entire order follows the end of this story.
Under this new Executive Order, cabinet heads are authorized to loan money, offer loan guarantees and even subsidize payments at above market rates (no bid contracts?) for whatever they need. This could make Solyndra or Halliburton look like Junior Achievement. Nothing like a war will generate these kinds of huge profits for the corporate "partners" and you can bet the bankers and contractors are already lining up for this one -- because under this order no war is even required! More...
This week, I've been exploring all the different types of ways police and the District Attorney's office in New York have been monitoring, bullying, and harassing Occupiers. Of course, this civil liberties accosting is by no means isolated to the New York City area as we saw on Tuesday when dozens of police equipped with shotguns and assault rifles stormed a Miami, Florida apartment and drew their weapons on peaceful protesters and children with the local Occupy Wall Street campaign.
If a SWAT team drew down on unarmed occupiers, that would still be a horrifying, newsworthy story, but what makes the Miami event additionally alarming is that these were not squatters, but rather legal residents. More...
The relationships that most matter for stocks are those between the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and the White House. The policy that matters most is the Fed's ability to convince the market that it can and will keep the markets up without letting inflation get out of control.
Regarding the relationships that matter, I've stated for months now that we are going to see them crumble. This process has already begun in the sense that we've seen:
1) Key Wall Street players hiring famed defense attorneys (Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs) in preparation for future litigation.
2) The Fed distancing itself from its responsibility for the Crisis by:
a.Suing Goldman Sachs
b.Opening itself to Q&A sessions and townhall meetings
c.Having "pro Fed" editorials written in the Wall Street Journal
d.Putting the blame for the Crisis and the US's financial weakness on Congress's shoulders
3) Various members of Congress (especially Ron Paul) and GOP Presidential candidates taking aim at the Federal Reserve. More...
The resignation letter heard round the world proves what we already know: Washington would like to think it can change the culture of Wall Street -- and it can't. Goldman and all the other investment banks are plagued by conflicts of interest. The problem is that over time all of them, but especially Goldman, have shifted from the business of advising clients or raising capital for clients to trading on their own account. I have the impression (from books about the Pecora hearings) that in the 1930s Glass Steagall was motivated as much by outrage at conflicts of interest (e.g. Citibank famously stuffing the accounts of its deposit holders with foreign bonds that then went bankrupt) as the desire to make the banking system more stable."
But we didn't get a new Glass-Steagall. Instead, courtesy of Tim Geithner and Co., we got the milquetoasty Volcker Rule (which the Treasury only backed, after a year of ignoring Paul Volcker, when Barack Obama insisted on it, as I have previously written), dubious rules about unwinding Wall Street's still-giant firms in a crisis, and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that is under constant assault on Capitol Hill. So it beggars common sense to think that we're really getting a new Wall Street. More...
Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of 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.
It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs's success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients' trust for 143 years. It wasn't just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief. More...
The government is preparing to package and sell foreclosed homes. We do not know what discount to the current market there will be but you can guess it will be 20% or more. These homes will only be available to big buyers such as hedge funds and others with enormous amounts of capital. It is expected that the homes will be sold in lots of 5,000 to 10,000 and the minimum bid would be $1 billion. This is corporatist fascists busy at work.
Ten years ago we can only remember one other European journalist exposing the scam that Goldman Sachs had pulled for Greece and Italy to falsely qualify them for euro zone membership. Everyone else looked the other way and now we found out that this is why both countries are in serious debt problems. Mind you, this was all done in secret but European insiders knew what was going on and looked the other way. They wanted the exports and for the euro zone to be the foundation for world government. Goldman disguised a $793 million loan as a derivative transaction. Now the bill for the Greek government from Goldman is $6.8 billion. Goldman and the Greek politicians sold out the Greek people. That year Goldman made 12% of their revenues from Greece. More...
On Tuesday, Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford was convicted in a Houston federal court on 13 out of 14 criminal counts of fraud. Media accounts of Stanford's conviction were filled with stories of his excesses — mansions, private yachts and jets, and so much money invested in Antigua — including bribes — the small island awarded him a knighthood. Among his other indulgences, noted the Reuters news service: "He bought a castle in Florida for one of his girlfriends and his oldest daughter lived in a million-dollar condominium in Houston. He wore custom-made suits and bankrolled a $20 million prize for an international cricket tournament."
But what most of this week's stories failed to mention was the large amount of his clients' cash that was spent on campaign contributions, greasing the corrupt nexus of money and politics for personal gain. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to candidates, including Barack Obama, John McCain, John Boehner and Harry Reid; as well as national fundraising committees for the Republican and Democratic parties. The court-appointed receiver charged with returning money to Stanford's investors is trying to get the contributions back. And the committees are resisting. More...
Four years after the disintegration of the financial system, Americans have, rightfully, a gnawing feeling that justice has not been served. Claims of financial fraud against companies like Citigroup and Bank of America have been settled for pennies on the dollar, with no admission of wrongdoing. Executives who ran companies that made, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities remain largely unscathed.
Last week, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. proclaimed in a speech that when it comes to fighting financial fraud, the Obama administration's "record of success has been nothing less than historic." Such self-congratulation is not only premature, but it also reveals a troubling lack of understanding about what is required to win the war against financial wrongdoing. More...
The US is sleepwalking into becoming a police state, where, like a pre-Magna Carta monarch, the president can lock up anyone. Yes, the worst things you may have heard about the National Defense Authorization Act, which has formally ended 254 years of democracy in the United States of America, and driven a stake through the heart of the bill of rights, are all really true. The act passed with large margins in both the House and the Senate on the last day of last year – even as tens of thousands of Americans were frantically begging their representatives to secure Americans' habeas corpus rights in the final version.NDAA critics say that it enables ordinary US citizens to be treated like 'enemy combatants' in Guantánamo.
It does indeed – contrary to the many flatout-false form letters I have seen that both senators and representatives sent to their constituents, misleading them about the fact that the NDAA destroys their due process rights. Under the act, anyone can be described as a 'belligerent". More...
The entire world seems to be one huge advertisement for The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein showed in her revelatory book how the corporate-political-military-media complex exploits crises to further impose their harsh right-wing agenda – even when they themselves created the crisis. In a sane world, the economic meltdown and deep recession of the past four years would have led at minimum to stringent regulation of financiers and speculators plus programs to assist their victims. But in this world, you have to be nuts to believe in a sane world.
In reality, everything that's happened in the past several years has gone to further empower and enrich the 1 per cent (or maybe the 5 per cent) at the expense of the rest of us. Look anywhere you want. What else does the universal demand for austerity programs mean? What else does the sudden concerted attack on public sector workers mean? What else does the intransigent line taken by multinational corporations against their unions mean? What else does the demand for "right-to-work" laws mean? What else does the widespread attack on seniors' pensions mean? More...
Just when you thought the government couldn't ruin the First Amendment any further: The House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday that outlaws protests in instances where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it.
The US House of Representatives voted 388-to-3 in favor of H.R. 347 late Monday, a bill which is being dubbed the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011.
Under the act, the government is also given the power to bring charges against Americans engaged in political protest anywhere in the country. Covered under the bill is any person protected by the Secret Service. Although such protection isn't extended to just everybody, making it a federal offense to even accidently disrupt an event attended by a person with such status essentially crushes whatever currently remains of the right to assemble and peacefully protest. More...
The real world revolves around cash flow. Families across the land understand this basic concept. Cash flows in from wages, investments and these days from the government. Cash flows out for food, gasoline, utilities, cable, cell phones, real estate taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, clothing, mortgage payments, car payments, insurance payments, medical bills, auto repairs, home repairs, appliances, electronic gadgets, education, alcohol (necessary in this economy) and a countless other everyday expenses. If the outflow exceeds the inflow a family may be able to fund the deficit with credit cards for awhile, but ultimately running a cash flow deficit will result in debt default and loss of your home and assets. Ask the millions of Americans that have experienced this exact outcome since 2008 if you believe this is only a theoretical exercise. The Federal government, Federal Reserve, Wall Street banks, regulatory agencies and commercial real estate debtors have colluded since 2008 to pretend cash flow doesn't matter. Their plan has been to "extend and pretend", praying for an economic recovery that would save them from their greedy and foolish risk taking during the 2003 – 2007 Caligula-like debauchery. More...
Our global society is facing conditions of systemic dependency, greed and malice very similar to those which existed in the American South of the late 19th century, which created a system of slavery for blacks just as ruthless as that which existed before the Civil War. The modern industrial and financial elites cannot tolerate any policies of systemic debt forgiveness, since almost all of their wealth is invested in instruments tied to those debts (including the underlying currencies).
At the same time, they cannot continue extracting surplus value when large segments of the developed world's population remain saturated with debt, which acts to suppress aggregate demand for goods, services and capital investment. In order to continue making profits, then, they must have extensive access to very cheap labor and fixed capital inputs. They must transform the consuming classes of the first world into indentured servants and slaves through already established channels of financial and political oppression, and also pick up productive assets for "pennies on the dollar". More...
CDS are a form of derivative taken out by investors as insurance against default. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, nearly 95% of the banking industry's total exposure to derivatives contracts is held by the nation's five largest banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, and Goldman Sachs. The CDS market is unregulated, and there is no requirement that the "insurer" actually have the funds to pay up. CDS are more like bets, and a massive loss at the casino could bring the house down.
Players who have hedged their bets by betting both ways cannot collect on their winning bets; and that means they cannot afford to pay their losing bets, causing other players to also default on their bets. The dominos go down in a cascade of cross-defaults that infects the whole banking industry and jeopardizes the global pyramid scheme. The potential for this sort of nuclear reaction was what prompted billionaire investor Warren Buffett to call derivatives "weapons of financial mass destruction." It is also why the banking system cannot let a major derivatives player—such as Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers—go down. More...
In a match that some would say was made in hell, the nation's two leading producers of agrochemicals have joined forces in a partnership to reintroduce the use of the herbicide 2,4-D, one half of the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, which was used by American forces to clear jungle during the Vietnam War. These two biotech giants have developed a weed management program that, if successful, would go a long way toward a predicted doubling of harmful herbicide use in America's corn belt during the next decade.
Large-scale industrial farming has grown dependent on ever-increasing applications of agrochemicals. Some have compared this to a drug addict who requires larger and larger fixes to stay high. Herbicide use has increased steadily over time as weeds develop resistance and need to be doused with more and deadlier chemicals to kill them. This, in turn. requires more aggressive genetic engineering of crops that can withstand the escalating chemical assault. More...
Under the terms of the 50-state mortgage foreclosure settlement, US taxpayers could end up paying billions in penalties that were supposed to be paid by the banks. That's the gist of a front-page story which appeared in the Financial Times on Thursday, February 17. The widely-cited article by Shahien Nasiripour notes that the 5 banks that will be effected by the settlement — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial – will be able to use Obama's mortgage modification program (HAMP) to reduce loan balances and "receive cash payments of up to 63 cents on the dollar for every dollar of loan principal forgiven."
Keep in mind, that the banks are really only on the hook for $5 billion in cash. The rest of the $25 billion settlement will be shrugged off onto investors in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) many of who are retirees and pensioners. They're going to get clobbered while the perpetrators of this nationwide crime walk away Scott-free. More...
A little-noted amendment to a $63 billion Federal Aviation Authority appropriations bill has ominous implications for democratic rights in the United States. President Barack Obama signed the bill, the "FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012", into law on February 14. It clears the way for a vast expansion of the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, over US territory.
The legislation, passed earlier this month, underscores the link between the explosive growth of US militarism abroad and the steady advance of police state repression at home. By 2020 an estimated 30,000 drones could be operating in US skies—including military, police and corporate-owned UAVs. They are already in use by the Department of Homeland Security in monitoring US borders.
Moreover, there is no reason to believe that drones inside the United States will not be armed, putting to use within the United States the experience the US government has obtained from its killing spree in Pakistan and the assassination of Awlaki. In this regard, it is worth recalling the arguments used to justify the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act signed into law by Obama last December. More...
In the mind of most American citizens, local government officials exist (at least the majority of the time) to serve and answer to the people who elected them. It is within this system of accountability that we rely upon to make sure our best interests are being served. While I had a healthy amount of skepticism, this was my held view until the fall of 2011. I believed that the Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, and his staff were in office to protect their citizens, myself included, and that the problems of this country were for the most part the result of unchecked corporate greed on Wall Street, amid a variety of other issues.
What follows is an account of how my thinking was transformed from this moderate view of a trust in those in power into one in which my faith in our government and specifically, those who govern, was destroyed. More...
The MF Global money was not vaporized, it is not missing, and it was not "highly compromised."
It was stolen, and not once but twice. In today's environment the protections that investors and depositors think that they have is thin stuff indeed. People think that they are safeguarded by regulation and legal statements, and they think they have equal protection under the law, as compared to the corporate leviathans and political insiders like Jon Corzine.
To use customer funds in this manner is a violation of fiduciary trust, known in lesser circles as STEALING. MF Global thought they could take the money and put it back with no one being the wiser, but they were caught up in the discovery of events. This is not much different than taking company money to pay your private debts, and then failing to return them before the loss is discovered.
Who is to say that Wall Street will not steal customer money and embezzle depositors funds even if Glass-Steagall is reinstated? If there are no investigations and prosecutions for such a blatant theft as this, how can anything or anyone ever be safe? More...
The settlement mostly requires mortgage lenders and servicers to comply with what I would have thought was already the law, which prohibits, you know, criminal fraud.
The signatories to the deal are Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC), which handle payments on more than half the nation's outstanding 27 million home loans and therefore have been at the center of the servicing and foreclosure abuses the settlement is supposed to end.
If you don't listen too closely, it sounds as if they're putting up the $25 billion. Not so. The only cold cash the banks are paying is a combined $5 billion, including $1.5 billion to compensate borrowers whose homes were foreclosed on from 2008 through the end of last year, with the rest going to the federal and state governments to pay for regulatory programs. More...
Americans, in order to continue their idyllic lifestyles have traded in their freedom and liberty for promises of security from terrorists. We give up our country to a group of totally insane elitists just as the Germans did so long ago. There is nothing sensible anymore. The middle class has lost its logic. They do not want to see through anything as long as they have theirs and nothing disrupts their lives. By living in this cocoon it allows Americans to live in their own world and overlook what their government is doing in their name. Do not forget living as prisoners makes us safer. You might ask why people would want to take our freedoms away from us? We can certainly understand a terrorists' motivation, but the elitist's goals are far more complicated. They want our hearts and our minds. They want to enslave us, because they consider us useless rabble to do as we are told. They want the complete submission of all societies. More...
Betting on the misfortune of others has an unsettling quality to it. It just feels wrong. Under our current financial regulatory regime, speculators freely gamble on businesses failing and countries defaulting. In addition to its unseemliness, betting on others' failure poses a grave risk to our financial system. Because these transactions are not transparent and are poorly regulated, we have little idea who is betting against whom or to what extent. This creates uncertainty in the market and proliferates risk. Additionally, betting on others' failure fundamentally changes the nature and purpose of financial markets. In theory, markets are supposed to allocate capital efficiently, benefiting individuals, businesses, and society as a whole. Banking on failure skews incentives such that investors profit when others fail.
CDS are the destabilizing instruments that facilitated the financial meltdown of 2008. At first glance, CDS look like insurance products. But because speculators can use them to profit from and even enable failure, CDS can also be gambling products. More...
So they settled the case in a way that reads in headlines like it's a bite out of the banks, but in fact is barely even that. There will be little in the way of real compensation for stuggling homeowners, and there are serious issues in the area of the deal's enforceability. In fact, about the only part of the deal we can be absolutely sure will be honored in full is the liability waiver for the robosigning offenses.
Really this looks like America's public prosecutors just wilted before the prospect of a long, drawn-out conflict with an army of highly-paid, determined white-shoe banker lawyers. The message this sends is that if you commit crimes on a large enough scale, and have enough high-priced legal talent sitting at the negotiating table after you get caught, the government will ultimately back down, conceding the inferiority of its resources. More...
Why is Eric Holder the spokesperson for this deal? He has done NOTHING to prosecute financial crimes. With this abrogation of the Dept of Justice responsibilities, the states finally had to step in. Now that these states were starting to get somewhere, the administration steps in a pressures them for a settlement? TIME TO FIRE ERIC HOLDER!
Most people in the United States have long suspected that a "shadow government" exists and that the real power in the country resides in that dark location, not in our elected government. The citizens instinctly know that our elected officials are really nothing more than the hired servants of the money masters and are beholden to them if they wish to retain their positions of power.
A quick look at the curtain which they hide behind reveals one shadowy organization that represents the interests of these money masters, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association also known as ISDA. The officers and directors of this organization include most of the major banks in the world including the largest banks in the United States. One of the purposes of the ISDA is determine if a "credit event" is actually a default. If a "credit event" is declared to be a default, then Credit Default Swap (CDS) contracts come into play.
So what do derivatives and Credit Default Swaps have to do with all this, how do they affect people on the street, and why are the money masters so concerned about them? More...
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It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
What if the authorities had enforced bank regulations as vigorously as they enforced park rules and curfews?
We wouldn't be in this mess in the first place!
The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators. 
Last week the City of Boston agreed to pay Simon Glik $170,000 in damages and legal fees to settle a civil rights lawsuit stemming from his 2007 felony arrest for videotaping police roughing up a suspect. Prior to the settlement, the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Glik had a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public." The Boston Police Department now explicitly instructs its officers not to arrest citizens openly recording them in public.
We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense. The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education. Laws are written to legalize corporate plunder and abuse, as well as criminalize dissent. And the ensuing fear and instability—keenly felt this past weekend by the more than 200,000 Americans who lost their unemployment benefits—ensure political passivity by diverting all personal energy toward survival. It is an old, old game.
"This year's index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world," Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. "Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news.
Dozens of NATO heads of state and other top officials plan attending. Large delegations are coming with them. So are similar partner nation contingents. The Chicago Tribune and Sun Times reported on elaborate security preparations. Hundreds of state police and National Guard forces are involved. So aren't thousands of Chicago cops. 
Bruce Quick, attorney for the first American arrested using an unmanned drone says his client was subject to "guerrilla-like police tactics." "The whole thing is full of constitutional violations," Quick told U.S. News. "The drone use is a secondary concern."
The Department of Homeland Security just ordered 450 million rounds of special "hollow point" .40 caliber ammunition from defense contractor ATK. The high performance HST bullets are designed for law enforcement and ATK says they offer "optimum penetration for terminal performance." While we can only guess in what situations this type of domestic firepower might be used by Homeland Security, American citizens should also remember this type of ammunition has been outlawed in international warfare by the Hague Convention Declaration III since 1899. In addition, the Department has an open bid to stockpile rifle ammo, up to 175 million rounds of .223 caliber ammo, the same used by NATO forces.
What are these phantasmagoric money machines that they call "private-equity firms?" They're much in the news these days. They operate by borrowing big piles of cash at high interest rates from rich speculators to buy out XYZ Corp. Then, to meet the interest payments owed to the speculators (and to siphon off a financial killing for themselves), the fixers do two things: One, they plunder XYZ's assets, selling the profitable chunks of the corporation; and two, they severely downsize the XYZ workforce, firing as many workers as possible and demanding deep wage cuts and benefit givebacks from the employees they keep. 
As the United States is looking to reform its public school system, education experts have increasingly looked at other countries for examples on what works and what won't. The current administration has turned its attention strong performing foreign school systems. As a consequence, recent education summits hosted in the United States have given room to international education showcases. 
The wealthiest Americans believe they've earned their money through hard work and innovation, and that they're the most productive members of society. For the most part they're wrong. As the facts below will show, they're not nearly as productive as middle-class workers. Yet they've taken almost all the new income over the past 30 years. 
Throughout history change has been a perpetual tug-of-war between the different social classes. These great divisions have been recast again and again in various manifestations (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the have and have-nots, the 1% and the 99%), but they are always expressing the same common problem: progress, however far it takes us, cannot seem to shake off its built-in inequalities and injustices that always follow alongside it. This sentiment is not the subject of perpetual debate, however. It is most often found in the margins, outside the mainstream, only flickering into popular consciousness when the truly irrational nature of the dominant system reveals itself. These irrationalities serve to mobilize the multitude to demand change, yet the result of these mobilizations is a rationalization of underlying problems. Change does come, but it is limited and mutable, subject to its own changes. 
Boy, do I feel like an idiot. I've been out there on radio and TV in the last few months saying that I thought there was a chance Barack Obama was listening to the popular anger against Wall Street that drove the Occupy movement, that decisions like putting a for-real law enforcement guy like New York AG Eric Schneiderman in charge of a mortgage fraud task force meant he was at least willing to pay lip service to public outrage against the banks.
In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA's massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford's recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.
Sweatshop labor is back with a vengeance. It can be found across broad stretches of the American economy and around the world. Penitentiaries have become a niche market for such work. The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation of a small army of workers too coerced and right-less to complain.
Benjamin Franklin, who used his many talents to become a wealthy man, famously said that the only things certain in life are death and taxes. But if you're a corporate CEO in America today, even they can be put on the back burner – death held at bay by the best medical care money can buy and the latest in surgical and life extension techniques, taxes conveniently shunted aside courtesy of loopholes, overseas investment and governments that conveniently look the other way.
We're headed towards economic and financial bankruptcy. But that's mostly because society has been largely intellectually and morally bankrupt for some time. I don't believe a society can rise to real prosperity without a sound intellectual and moral foundation – that's why the US was so uniquely prosperous for so long, because it had such a foundation. And it's also why societies like Saudi Arabia will collapse as soon as the exogenous things that support them are pulled away. It's why the USSR collapsed. It's the reason why countries everywhere across time reach a peak (if they ever do), then stagnate and decline.
The States of America are, truly, children of the Constitution. The legal framework that is the foundation of State sovereignty and internal administration was unprecedented when the United States won its independence. States were designed to decentralize and keep in check the power of the Federal government. They were meant to be the guardians at the gate, the barrier to the formation of oligarchy or outright dictatorship. This, of course, has changed drastically.The battle over centralized versus decentralized authority and economy has been going on for quite some time. It is undeniably critical in our current climate of crisis, under a government that is bankrupt in every sense and a currency that is on the verge of calamity.
Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the U.S. and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline. The new centers of growth - China, India, Brazil and Russia - have run their course and are de-accelerating rapidly and will continue to do so throughout the year.
In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the "trespass bill", which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement.
What an incredibly complex confusing and treacherous month. It can be safely said that 80% of the activity is almost totally kept from the public. The financial system is breaking in an accelerated fashion. The most significant two factors at work are the Iran sanctions and their powerful backfire, and the futile efforts in Europe to stem the banking center collapse. The anti-USDollar federation that spans widely across the globe is gathering strong momentum. Financial aggression is being met by financial alternative development. 
The US government pretends to live under the rule of law, to respect human rights, and to provide freedom and democracy to citizens. Washington's pretense and the stark reality are diametrically opposed. US government officials routinely criticize other governments for being undemocratic and for violating human rights. Yet, no other country except Israel sends bombs, missiles, and drones into sovereign countries to murder civilian populations. The torture prisons of Abu Gahraib, Guantanamo, and CIA secret rendition sites are the contributions of the Bush/Obama regimes to human rights. 
In recent weeks several big finance insiders have publicly exposed fault lines in the U.S. financial system. Their inside views are telling us that the corruption we see is real and, more importantly, those in the system know it.
Wells Fargo is one of the top five largest banks in America, a fact that on its own is damning enough, basic human decency not exactly being conducive to success in the financial industry. Despite, or rather because of, its role as one of the leading sub-prime mortgage lenders prior to the 2008 crash in the housing market, the bank was handed $37 billion from the U.S. government, a transfer of wealth from the foreclosed upon have-nots to the haves doing the foreclosing – people like chairman and CEO John Stumpf, whose compensation actually rose after his company's de facto bankruptcy to a cool $18 million last year.
Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the US. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track people.
While the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act is sure to grab headlines as the 2012 presidential campaign begins its home stretch, the Court is gearing up to hear another contentious issue early next year.
In mid-February, the Arizona chapter of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) released a report on the impact of private prisons in the state. Private Prisons: the Public's Problem concluded that Arizona overpaid for private prison services between 2008 and 2010 to the tune of $10 million, and that the services it received were shoddy at best: malfunctioning alarm systems, fences with holes in them, staff who didn't follow basic procedures and many other failings. All told, the state's auditor general documented 157 serious security failings across five facilities that hold in-state prisoners. (There are three additional private prisons.) At least twenty-eight riots were also reported. 
What exactly are the dominant players doing to manipulate the price? The current exact mechanism they use to suddenly rig the price lower is High Frequency Trading (HFT). This is the placing of sell orders in great quantities by computer programs that suddenly appear as legitimate orders, but are really mostly "spoofs," or orders entered and canceled immediately (in the fractions of a second). When the sell orders first appear, they spook others into selling as they give the appearance of great selling about to hit the market. Instead, it is all a bluff, intended only to scare others into selling, as the vast majority of these original sell orders are never executed, nor were they ever intended to be executed. They were designed for one purpose only - to scare others into selling.
Most people think of a cashless society as something that is way off in the distant future. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. The truth is that a cashless society is much closer than most people would ever dare to imagine. To a large degree, the transition to a cashless society is being done voluntarily. Today, only 7 percent of all transactions in the United States are done with cash, and most of those transactions involve very small amounts of money. Just think about it for a moment. Where do you still use cash these days? If you buy a burger or if you purchase something at a flea market you will still use cash, but for any mid-size or large transaction the vast majority of people out there will use another form of payment. Our financial system is dramatically changing, and cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. We live in a digital world, and national governments and big banks are both encouraging the move away from paper currency and coins. But what would a cashless society mean for our future? Are there any dangers to such a system?
The first of the more than 70 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested Saturday afternoon and evening were arraigned yesterday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
At the start of the first hearing on a lawsuit challenging the Homeland Battlefield Act, a federal judge appeared to be "extremely skeptical" that those pursuing the challenge had grounds to sue the US government. However, by the end of the hearing, the judge acknowledged plaintiffs had made some strong arguments on why there was reason to be concerned about the Act, which passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on New Year's Eve last year.
Pouring money into the private banking system has only fixed the economy for bankers and the wealthy; it has not done much to address either the fundamental problem of unemployment or the debt trap so many Americans find themselves in. 
Finally, some well-deserved help for beleaguered monster banks is on its way. Make that, well on its way.
Don't understand economics? And the thought of even trying makes your eyes cross?
My colleague, Margaret Flowers, asked two women carrying an Americans for Prosperity sign (a group opposed to Obama's law) whether they were on Medicare. They said "yes." "Do you like it?" Again, "yes." "Do you know Medicare is a government program?" A confused look. "Do you know the Republicans want to end Medicare, make it into private insurance?" "You don't know what you're talking about. You probably support Obama" and they started to walk away. "No, we oppose ObamaCare," the women stopped and listened again, "we think everyone should have Medicare. Don't you think it would be a good idea if every American could have the Medicare you have and like?" "Hmm, yes" then, more confusion in their faces.
Dear Sierra Club,
It is in conference rooms like this one, where attorneys speak in the arcane and formal language of legal statutes, that we lose or save our civil liberties. The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act, the employment of the Espionage Act by the Obama White House against six suspected whistle-blowers and leakers, and the Homeland Battlefield Bill have crippled the work of investigative reporters in every major newsroom in the country. Government sources that once provided information to counter official narratives and lies have largely severed contact with the press. They are acutely aware that there is no longer any legal protection for those who dissent or who expose the crimes of state. The NDAA threw in a new and dangerous component that permits the government not only to silence journalists but imprison them and deny them due process because they "substantially supported" terrorist groups or "associated forces."
The 
Many have been detailing the vast sums being raised by the presidential candidates and the super PACs supporting them. But where are all those millions being spent? Among other things, the answers can provide hints on potential improper coordination between campaigns and super PACs. Here are the 200 biggest recipients of spending by the major campaigns and most of the major super PACs.
Buried in the sweeping mortgage settlement with banks, for which final documents were filed this week, are five whistleblower cases that shed light on the litany of foreclosure abuses by the banks.
We've all done it at one point or another, posting our pictures of ourselves, family and friends on websites and social network portals such as Facebook. Whether it be submitting your picture to output a cartoon or aged version of yourself, or uploading your personal snapshots to Facebook, marketing campaigns are aggressively being pushed by digital media corporations to obtain your facial biometrics. However, most people are completely unaware of the deceptive nature of these campaigns and their intentions.
Traders making speculative money from speculative money, traded in trillions of dollars, now hold hostage the real economy wherein people make money from providing needed or wanted goods and services. The fate of American workers, their pensions and the real businesses that employ them, rests on the globalized dominoes that a teetering Greece could set in motion. This is the craven logic of a global casino economy, driven by split-second computerized algorithms and camouflaged by the phony theory of "free trade" which is really corporate-managed trade.
Living as an international man used to be just an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the US used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was nothing pressing about becoming an international man.
Four words: "Follow the rules exactly." 
Perhaps no such case is more controversial and worrying than the failed prosecution of former National Security Agency (NSA) senior official turned whistleblower, Thomas Drake. Drake helped shed light on the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping through two Congressional investigations of 9/11; a Defense Department Inspector General audit of the NSA regarding waste, fraud and constitutional abuse; and, finally, through the disclosure of non-classified information to Baltimore Sun reporter Siobhan Gorman in 2006 and 2007,which triggered the government's criminal investigation (Drake said that internal whistleblowing had already made officials eager to retaliate up until that point). 
This Executive Order was posted on the WhiteHouse.gov web site on Friday, March 16, 2012, under the name National Defense Resources Preparedness. In a nutshell, it's the blueprint for Peacetime Martial Law and it gives the president the power to take just about anything deemed necessary for "National Defense", whatever they decide that is. It's peacetime, because as the title of the order says, it's for "Preparedness". A copy of the entire order follows the end of this story.
This week, I've been exploring all the different types of ways police and the District Attorney's office in New York have been monitoring, bullying, and harassing Occupiers. Of course, this civil liberties accosting is by no means isolated to the New York City area as we saw on Tuesday when dozens of police equipped with shotguns and assault rifles stormed a Miami, Florida apartment and drew their weapons on peaceful protesters and children with the local Occupy Wall Street campaign.
The relationships that most matter for stocks are those between the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and the White House. The policy that matters most is the Fed's ability to convince the market that it can and will keep the markets up without letting inflation get out of control.
The resignation letter heard round the world proves what we already know: Washington would like to think it can change the culture of Wall Street -- and it can't. Goldman and all the other investment banks are plagued by conflicts of interest. The problem is that over time all of them, but especially Goldman, have shifted from the business of advising clients or raising capital for clients to trading on their own account. I have the impression (from books about the Pecora hearings) that in the 1930s Glass Steagall was motivated as much by outrage at conflicts of interest (e.g. Citibank famously stuffing the accounts of its deposit holders with foreign bonds that then went bankrupt) as the desire to make the banking system more stable."
Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of 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. 
On Tuesday, Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford was convicted in a Houston federal court on 13 out of 14 criminal counts of fraud. Media accounts of Stanford's conviction were filled with stories of his excesses — mansions, private yachts and jets, and so much money invested in Antigua — including bribes — the small island awarded him a knighthood. Among his other indulgences, noted the Reuters news service: "He bought a castle in Florida for one of his girlfriends and his oldest daughter lived in a million-dollar condominium in Houston. He wore custom-made suits and bankrolled a $20 million prize for an international cricket tournament."
Four years after the disintegration of the financial system, Americans have, rightfully, a gnawing feeling that justice has not been served. Claims of financial fraud against companies like Citigroup and Bank of America have been settled for pennies on the dollar, with no admission of wrongdoing. Executives who ran companies that made, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities remain largely unscathed. 
The US is sleepwalking into becoming a police state, where, like a pre-Magna Carta monarch, the president can lock up anyone. Yes, the worst things you may have heard about the National Defense Authorization Act, which has formally ended 254 years of democracy in the United States of America, and driven a stake through the heart of the bill of rights, are all really true. The act passed with large margins in both the House and the Senate on the last day of last year – even as tens of thousands of Americans were frantically begging their representatives to secure Americans' habeas corpus rights in the final version.NDAA critics say that it enables ordinary US citizens to be treated like 'enemy combatants' in Guantánamo. 
The entire world seems to be one huge advertisement for The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein showed in her revelatory book how the corporate-political-military-media complex exploits crises to further impose their harsh right-wing agenda – even when they themselves created the crisis. In a sane world, the economic meltdown and deep recession of the past four years would have led at minimum to stringent regulation of financiers and speculators plus programs to assist their victims. But in this world, you have to be nuts to believe in a sane world.
Just when you thought the government couldn't ruin the First Amendment any further: The House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday that outlaws protests in instances where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it.
The real world revolves around cash flow. Families across the land understand this basic concept. Cash flows in from wages, investments and these days from the government. Cash flows out for food, gasoline, utilities, cable, cell phones, real estate taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, clothing, mortgage payments, car payments, insurance payments, medical bills, auto repairs, home repairs, appliances, electronic gadgets, education, alcohol (necessary in this economy) and a countless other everyday expenses. If the outflow exceeds the inflow a family may be able to fund the deficit with credit cards for awhile, but ultimately running a cash flow deficit will result in debt default and loss of your home and assets. Ask the millions of Americans that have experienced this exact outcome since 2008 if you believe this is only a theoretical exercise. The Federal government, Federal Reserve, Wall Street banks, regulatory agencies and commercial real estate debtors have colluded since 2008 to pretend cash flow doesn't matter. Their plan has been to "extend and pretend", praying for an economic recovery that would save them from their greedy and foolish risk taking during the 2003 – 2007 Caligula-like debauchery.
Our global society is facing conditions of systemic dependency, greed and malice very similar to those which existed in the American South of the late 19th century, which created a system of slavery for blacks just as ruthless as that which existed before the Civil War. The modern industrial and financial elites cannot tolerate any policies of systemic debt forgiveness, since almost all of their wealth is invested in instruments tied to those debts (including the underlying currencies).
CDS are a form of derivative taken out by investors as insurance against default. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, nearly 95% of the banking industry's total exposure to derivatives contracts is held by the nation's five largest banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, and Goldman Sachs. The CDS market is unregulated, and there is no requirement that the "insurer" actually have the funds to pay up. CDS are more like bets, and a massive loss at the casino could bring the house down.
In a match that some would say was made in hell, the nation's two leading producers of agrochemicals have joined forces in a partnership to reintroduce the use of the herbicide 2,4-D, one half of the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, which was used by American forces to clear jungle during the Vietnam War. These two biotech giants have developed a weed management program that, if successful, would go a long way toward a predicted doubling of harmful herbicide use in America's corn belt during the next decade.
Under the terms of the 50-state mortgage foreclosure settlement, US taxpayers could end up paying billions in penalties that were supposed to be paid by the banks. That's the gist of a front-page story which appeared in the Financial Times on Thursday, February 17. The widely-cited article by Shahien Nasiripour notes that the 5 banks that will be effected by the settlement — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial – will be able to use Obama's mortgage modification program (HAMP) to reduce loan balances and "receive cash payments of up to 63 cents on the dollar for every dollar of loan principal forgiven."
A little-noted amendment to a $63 billion Federal Aviation Authority appropriations bill has ominous implications for democratic rights in the United States. President Barack Obama signed the bill, the "FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012", into law on February 14. It clears the way for a vast expansion of the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, over US territory.
In the mind of most American citizens, local government officials exist (at least the majority of the time) to serve and answer to the people who elected them. It is within this system of accountability that we rely upon to make sure our best interests are being served. While I had a healthy amount of skepticism, this was my held view until the fall of 2011. I believed that the Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, and his staff were in office to protect their citizens, myself included, and that the problems of this country were for the most part the result of unchecked corporate greed on Wall Street, amid a variety of other issues.
The MF Global money was not vaporized, it is not missing, and it was not "highly compromised."
The settlement mostly requires mortgage lenders and servicers to comply with what I would have thought was already the law, which prohibits, you know, criminal fraud.
Americans, in order to continue their idyllic lifestyles have traded in their freedom and liberty for promises of security from terrorists. We give up our country to a group of totally insane elitists just as the Germans did so long ago. There is nothing sensible anymore. The middle class has lost its logic. They do not want to see through anything as long as they have theirs and nothing disrupts their lives. By living in this cocoon it allows Americans to live in their own world and overlook what their government is doing in their name. Do not forget living as prisoners makes us safer. You might ask why people would want to take our freedoms away from us? We can certainly understand a terrorists' motivation, but the elitist's goals are far more complicated. They want our hearts and our minds. They want to enslave us, because they consider us useless rabble to do as we are told. They want the complete submission of all societies. 
Betting on the misfortune of others has an unsettling quality to it. It just feels wrong. Under our current financial regulatory regime, speculators freely gamble on businesses failing and countries defaulting. In addition to its unseemliness, betting on others' failure poses a grave risk to our financial system. Because these transactions are not transparent and are poorly regulated, we have little idea who is betting against whom or to what extent. This creates uncertainty in the market and proliferates risk. Additionally, betting on others' failure fundamentally changes the nature and purpose of financial markets. In theory, markets are supposed to allocate capital efficiently, benefiting individuals, businesses, and society as a whole. Banking on failure skews incentives such that investors profit when others fail.
So they settled the case in a way that reads in headlines like it's a bite out of the banks, but in fact is barely even that. There will be little in the way of real compensation for stuggling homeowners, and there are serious issues in the area of the deal's enforceability. In fact, about the only part of the deal we can be absolutely sure will be honored in full is the liability waiver for the robosigning offenses.
Most people in the United States have long suspected that a "shadow government" exists and that the real power in the country resides in that dark location, not in our elected government. The citizens instinctly know that our elected officials are really nothing more than the hired servants of the money masters and are beholden to them if they wish to retain their positions of power.