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revelarts
02-25-2011, 07:31 PM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-23/suntrust-boosts-chief-executive-wells-pay-34-while-holding-bailout-funds.html
Banks Boosts CEO Pay by 34% as Bailout Loans Go Unpaid
Published on 02-24-2011
Source: Bloomberg
SunTrust Banks Inc., the Georgia lender that has yet to repay $4.85 billion in taxpayer bailout funds, reported a 34 percent increase in Chief Executive Officer James Wells’s 2010 compensation.
Wells’s total $10.3 million included $4.5 million in pay to be collected later, primarily boosted by the changing value of his pension benefits, the bank said today in a regulatory filing. He received $4.6 million in stock, more than three times as much as the previous year, it said. His salary was unchanged at $1.1 million, and he didn’t get a cash bonus or stock options. The bank reported a $3.3 million option award for 2009.
SunTrust, led by Wells since January of 2007, returned to quarterly profits last year for the first time since 2008 as it set aside less money to cover bad loans. The company may sell stock to repay funds received under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, Wells, 64, told analysts last month.
He declined more than 552,900 stock options that were awarded for 2009, according to the filing. Had he accepted the grant, his total compensation for 2010 would have fallen 37 percent from the year earlier, the Atlanta-based company said.
....
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http://dailybail.com/home/bombshell-report-goldman-sachs-got-billions-from-taxpayers-t.html
...Goldman Sachs Got Billions From Taxpayers Thru AIG For Its OWN Account, Crisis Panel Finds; Contradicting SWORN Testimony From Execs
Published on 02-24-2011 Email To Friend Print Version
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Source: Huffington Post
Goldman Sachs collected $2.9 billion from the American International Group as payout on a speculative trade it placed for the benefit of its own account, receiving the bulk of those funds after AIG received an enormous taxpayer rescue, according to the final report of an investigative panel appointed by Congress.
The fact that a significant slice of the proceeds secured by Goldman through the AIG bailout landed in its own account--as opposed to those of its clients or business partners-- has not been previously disclosed. These details about the workings of the controversial AIG bailout, which eventually swelled to $182 billion, are among the more eye-catching revelations in the report to be released Thursday by the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
The details underscore the degree to which Goldman--the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history--benefited directly from the massive emergency bailout of the nation's financial system, a deal crafted on the watch of then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who had previously headed the bank.
"If these allegations are correct, it appears to have been a direct transfer of wealth from the Treasury to Goldman's shareholders," said Joshua Rosner, a bond analyst and managing director at independent research consultancy Graham Fisher & Co., after he was read the relevant section of the report. "The AIG counterparty bailout, which was spun as necessary to protect the public, seems to have protected the institution at the expense of the public."
Goldman and AIG both declined to comment.
When news first broke in 2009 that Goldman had been an indirect beneficiary of the AIG bailout, collecting the full value of some $14 billion in outstanding insurance polices it held with the firm, the officials who brokered the deal justified these terms as a necessary stabilizer for the broader financial system. As the world's largest insurance company, AIG's inability to cover its outstanding obligations could have threatened the solvency of the institutions holding its policies, asserted the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which oversaw the deal.
Goldman fended off claims that the arrangement amounted to a backdoor bailout by asserting that none of the money from the AIG rescue landed in its own coffers. Rather, those funds went to compensate clients or institutions on the other side of its trades, Goldman said....
IMF =Bank
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/23/imf-says-weaker-dollar-would-help-global-growth/
IMF says weaker dollar would help global growth
Source: AFP
The International Monetary Fund called for a weaker dollar to help the United States reduce its deficits with the rest of the world and rebalance the global economy, in a report released Wednesday.
In the report prepared for a Group of 20 finance chiefs meeting last week, the IMF said that its calculations showed the dollar remains "on the strong side" of medium-term fundamentals, while the euro and the Japanese yen were "broadly in line" and several Asian currencies, including China, were undervalued.
To address global imbalances, the G20 should allow the dollar to fall, the Washington-based institution said.
"Some further real effective depreciation of the US dollar would help ensure a sustained decline of the US current account deficit towards a level more consistent with medium-term fundamentals, helping to support more balanced growth," the IMF said.
The widening US current account deficit -- a broad measure of trade in goods, services, income and payment -- rose a fifth straight quarter in the third quarter last year, to $127.2 billion, according to the latest US official data.
The issue of a weak dollar is particularly sensitive in Brazil, where the government has said an international "currency war" is under way with the United States pumping cheap dollars into its post-crisis economy, while China's yuan sinks in tandem.
fj1200
02-26-2011, 08:15 AM
How do these show corruption?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-23/suntrust-boosts-chief-executive-wells-pay-34-while-holding-bailout-funds.html
The BOD apparently feel he's worth it.
http://dailybail.com/home/bombshell-report-goldman-sachs-got-billions-from-taxpayers-t.html
I think this is more an example of stupid regulators.
IMF =Bank
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/23/imf-says-weaker-dollar-would-help-global-growth/
Dollar devaluation would lead to inflation reducing the value of a banks assets.
Palin Rider
02-26-2011, 02:57 PM
How do these show corruption?
The BOD apparently feel he's worth it.
I think this is more an example of stupid regulators.
Dollar devaluation would lead to inflation reducing the value of a banks assets.
It's high time you just admit you're a corporatist and don't care about conservatism at all.
Go ahead. There's no shame in being a corporatist. :poke:
revelarts
02-27-2011, 09:16 PM
How do these show corruption?
The BOD apparently feel he's worth it.
I think this is more an example of stupid regulators.
Dollar devaluation would lead to inflation reducing the value of a banks assets.
If you don't see it, I don't no if i can splian it.
Here's a link that sums up the IMF's position ( it's a bit left leaning assessment but many valid points)
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/TopTenIMF.html
Psychoblues
02-27-2011, 09:49 PM
It's high time you just admit you're a corporatist and don't care about conservatism at all.
Go ahead. There's no shame in being a corporatist. :poke:
Therein lies the problem, PR. These idiots don't understand that their corporatism and claimed conservatism cannot exist in any kind of harmonious civil mindset. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the last true conservative that we had. Richard Millhouse Nixon was a very close second but we have not had anything close to a genuine conservative even close to the Whitehouse since Nixon. If true conservatism is the issue for today's self styled right bent politicos I suggest they research the policies, practises and beliefs of the aforementioned conservatives.
IOW, what we have now is a bunch of bought and paid for corporate mules that have no idea as to the extent to which their ignorance and fearfulness has been exploited for the profits of the corporations that yank their chains now at will. This is a well known phenomenon but the rightwingers will never admit having been so thoroughly hoodwinked and led to believe that 98% of the population of the Progressive United States of America are worthless, not to be taken seriously and cheated out of everything these hardworking Americans have spent their lives earning and paying for. They spew every day and night on FauxNews and other places things like revolution, targets and crosshairs, violence and false accusations. Well, we may have a revolution and I would not want to be a rightwinger when that happens. The common people know when they're getting screwed and the rightwingers have just about brought them to their knees. It will only take actual truth and freedom and liberty to mobilize that pent up anger and disappointment into taking matters into more deserving hands.
Psychoblues
Kathianne
02-27-2011, 09:54 PM
How all leftwingers get from Relevarts, a Paulist, to all rightwingers is a question for the ages. :thumb:
Psychoblues
02-27-2011, 10:15 PM
How all leftwingers get from Relevarts, a Paulist, to all rightwingers is a question for the ages. :thumb:
All "Paulists" claim to be conservative libertarians. But listening to what they say they are more akin to Ayn Rand and her ridiculous opinions of how society and wealth should be exploited one against the other. The Virtue of Selfishness my ass. Ron and Rand hold elected offices as Republicans.
Psychoblues
Palin Rider
02-27-2011, 10:36 PM
Therein lies the problem, PR. These idiots don't understand that their corporatism and claimed conservatism cannot exist in any kind of harmonious civil mindset. ...what we have now is a bunch of bought and paid for corporate mules that have no idea as to the extent to which their ignorance and fearfulness has been exploited for the profits of the corporations that yank their chains now at will.
That's a result of my update on Lincoln's philosophy.
You can fool some of the people all of the time; you can fool all of the people some of the time; but if you have a few hundred billion dollars and no deadline, you can sell most of the people on damn near anything.
Psychoblues
02-27-2011, 11:04 PM
That's a result of my update on Lincoln's philosophy.
You can fool some of the people all of the time; you can fool all of the people some of the time; but if you have a few hundred billion dollars and no deadline, you can sell most of the people on damn near anything.
'Zackly, PR, zackly.
Psychoblues
revelarts
02-28-2011, 02:40 AM
A "Paulist"?
Paul's the best I see these days.
The right is about as conservative as the left is progressive.
the early progressives in the 1930's were trying to turn the middle class back toward morality with gov't programs and fought monopolies instead of getting funding from them.
democrats are just as bought off by corps as republicans, they just camouflage it better and throw a few corporate bodies to the crowd now an then. Never the big fish or a significant change to the system.
Look at the health care bill, it's a boon to the Ins companies and big pharma all their stock went UP. 1000's of New customers impressed by law, what a deal.
who's fooled there?
Just throw a bone to the poor (kill them in the back room when they're to old though) but get the big payday from the middle class and rich. HMO's were another trick but from the right side.
Both systems end up as heads they win tails we lose.
As far as Paul being an Ayn Rand fan, sure he is.
I think there's merit in some Rand's thought, but it's base is atheistic and a bit narcissistic, for lack of a better term. Which I think are basic flaws. Though many of her observations are spot on. Paul's economics grows out of Mieses work. Similar to Rand but a bit less cold from what I've seen so far but ultimately the same outcomes in many cases.
However I'm not a convinced FULL ON free market person. I think the corps are too corrupt and some kind of Gov't has to be a check for their power. I have no good solution on how to do that effectively but I'm convinced that a COMPLETELY "FREE" market would lead to a kind of corporate mercantilism, or feudalism.
the Mieses and the Rand people seem to think that a free market always self corrects with innovation and/or competition but I only hear faith in a force rather than any real mechanism that makes that happen when they say that. When the rich have bought and only lease all of the land or water , air, fuel and education how can you get viable competition? Vonage was almost bought out by the big telecoms/coms then almost sued out of biz by them, the courts blocked it . And they still aren't serious player in the phone biz.
But the Bible has a novel solution to the general ownership problem.
In ancient Israel every family was given a land hold. They could use it as they pleased, buy n sell crops, raise livestock on it for barter or sale etc OR sell the land outright.
However every 50 years the land ownership would revert back to the original families. Breaking any land and water rights monopolies that may have occurred. No one group would every own all or most of the land or hold any mortgages over it for more than a generation.
Ah... also there was no interest to be charged on money loaned to fellow citizens... ever.
2 very good tools to to use as a template IMO.
revelarts
02-28-2011, 03:07 AM
PS
Concerning the poor and sick,
people were suppose to allow the poor to come through the fields an take only what they could carry with their hands.
And give alms for support for the sick and poor that came across their paths, even foreigners
But primarily the Families were obligated to take care of their poor relations. Not the state and definitely not by state coercion.
Psychoblues
02-28-2011, 03:50 AM
PS
Concerning the poor and sick,
people were suppose to allow the poor to come through the fields an take only what they could carry with their hands.
And give alms for support for the sick and poor that came across their paths, even foreigners
But primarily the Families were obligated to take care of their poor relations. Not the state and definitely not by state coercion.
In north Mississippi if you have car trouble on Sunday and there is a church on one side of the road and a beer joint on the other which would you expect to get some help from?
Our government provides as best as it can despite the cries and clinging of the righwingers. American churches have never in our history been known to adequately look after the poor and infirm. I don't understand how a rightwinger can also claim to be a Christian but there are all kinds of hypocrisies and ironies in that rather nutty community.
Psychoblues
fj1200
02-28-2011, 08:35 AM
It's high time you just admit you're a corporatist and don't care about conservatism at all.
Go ahead. There's no shame in being a corporatist. :poke:
Clearly the time away that you and Psycho had has added nothing to either of your abilities to exhibit thought and make rationale connections.
The opposite of government is not corporate, it's people, individuals; I wouldn't expect either of you to recognize that.
Therein lies the problem, PR. These idiots don't understand that their corporatism and claimed conservatism cannot exist in any kind of harmonious civil mindset. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the last true conservative that we had. Richard Millhouse Nixon was a very close second but we have not had anything close to a genuine conservative even close to the Whitehouse since Nixon. If true conservatism is the issue for today's self styled right bent politicos I suggest they research the policies, practises and beliefs of the aforementioned conservatives.
First you're going to have to explain how Nixon was a conservative. Hard money guy? No, closed the gold window; although the real fault is at the Fed and LBJ. Tax cutter? No, marginal rates remained high after LBJ rolled back the JFK cuts. Limited the power of the central government? No, instituted Affirmative Action.
IOW, what we have now is a bunch of bought and paid for corporate mules that have no idea as to the extent to which their ignorance and fearfulness has been exploited for the profits of the corporations that yank their chains now at will. This is a well known phenomenon but the rightwingers will never admit having been so thoroughly hoodwinked and led to believe that 98% of the population of the Progressive United States of America are worthless, not to be taken seriously and cheated out of everything these hardworking Americans have spent their lives earning and paying for. They spew every day and night on FauxNews and other places things like revolution, targets and crosshairs, violence and false accusations. Well, we may have a revolution and I would not want to be a rightwinger when that happens. The common people know when they're getting screwed and the rightwingers have just about brought them to their knees. It will only take actual truth and freedom and liberty to mobilize that pent up anger and disappointment into taking matters into more deserving hands.
Do we have true conservatism? No, there's clearly to much corporate power over the regulatory environment and you know Democrats are right up there at the corporate trough so your blither is just that. The Dem version of sucking at the "corporatist" teat of unions is just as bad.
revelarts
02-28-2011, 08:38 AM
In north Mississippi if you have car trouble on Sunday and there is a church on one side of the road and a beer joint on the other which would you expect to get some help from?
Our government provides as best as it can despite the cries and clinging of the righwingers. American churches have never in our history been known to adequately look after the poor and infirm. I don't understand how a rightwinger can also claim to be a Christian but there are all kinds of hypocrisies and ironies in that rather nutty community.
Psychoblues
And there are no "hypocrisies and ironies in that rather nutty community" of the left pyscho? Do you need pictures?
The Gov't has never in our history been known to adequately look after the poor and infirm either.
And I don't understand how you pin all of your hopes of "true" Christian charity on wrangling a secular/atheist state to press the rich & middle class into "giving" to the poor under threat of jail and fine.
Psych you say you are a christian, I don't understand why you don't see that there is no group that's doesn't have it's fair share of nuts and bald faced sinners. Seems the best we can all do is follow God and his word to the best of our understanding while giving some respect to all of other fellow travelers and help each other along the way.
As far as car trouble is concerned, I guess it depends, I don't know about the people in the churches in Mississippi but there are a few mechanics in Churches here in VA and they'll be sober at 10 in the morning. I've had one work on my car after church when i came out and it wouldn't start. But what if you need a doctor too?
fj1200
02-28-2011, 08:40 AM
If you don't see it, I don't no if i can splian it.
True as we've talked about this before.
Here's a link that sums up the IMF's position ( it's a bit left leaning assessment but many valid points)
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/TopTenIMF.html
Thanks but I'm no fan of the IMF.
revelarts
02-28-2011, 09:06 AM
True as we've talked about this before.
Thanks but I'm no fan of the IMF.
FJ,
So we agree on the IMF somewhat. cool.
But Maybe you can tell me why you think the AIG Goldman story is the fault of the regulators. When many of the regulators were former Goldman employees. ANd EVEN IF none were Goldman employees. Why is it ONLY the Gov'ts fault if it's so stupid that it allows itself to be robbed but the robbers are not at fault at all? I just don't get that.
I don't understand the line of reasoning that exonerates the con-man/thief and blames the idiot victim.
fj1200
02-28-2011, 09:52 AM
But Maybe you can tell me why you think the AIG Goldman story is the fault of the regulators. When many of the regulators were former Goldman employees. ANd EVEN IF none were Goldman employees. Why is it ONLY the Gov'ts fault if it's so stupid that it allows itself to be robbed but the robbers are not at fault at all? I just don't get that.
I don't understand the line of reasoning that exonerates the con-man/thief and blames the idiot victim.
It's a poorly thought out regulatory system that allows this sort of thing. I don't exonerate Goldman but let the regulators go in and get the money back if they did something wrong. You don't think that unwinding AIG and paying back the other investors at par was the fault of the regulators?
revelarts
02-28-2011, 10:22 AM
It's a poorly thought out regulatory system that allows this sort of thing.
O r well thought out depending on what you want to do?
But If your trying to really regulate, your right it's swiss cheese.
I don't exonerate Goldman but let the regulators go in and get the money back if they did something wrong.
That would be great but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.
You don't think that unwinding AIG and paying back the other investors at par was the fault of the regulators?
No, I agree, that was the regulators fault and pretty stupid.
Or planned to give Financial institutions on the other end of AIG some real money at the expense of the tax payers. I don't know which. Maybe both.
fj1200
02-28-2011, 11:40 AM
O r well thought out depending on what you want to do?
But If your trying to really regulate, your right it's swiss cheese.
A cynic's view I suppose, I think it's generally busy body politicians who keep trying to make it better but can't help but get out of their own way. One side wanting to regulate more and the other side wanting to do less with compromise leading to ill thought out methods.
That would be great but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.
And that's the fault of the police/regulators for not doing their job.
No, I agree, that was the regulators fault and pretty stupid.
Or planned to give Financial institutions on the other end of AIG some real money at the expense of the tax payers. I don't know which. Maybe both.
I'm guessing they just didn't realize the extent of what was coming down the pipe. AIG was the first big bailout iirc and they probably thought stopping the problem there would keep the rest of the industry stable.
revelarts
02-28-2011, 02:24 PM
Goes to your point about regulation, and oversight...
or the lack thereof.
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revelarts
02-28-2011, 02:37 PM
Source - Huff Post
"By Shahien Nasiripour
Goldman Got Billions From AIG For It's Own Account
Goldman Sachs collected $2.9 billion from the American International Group as payout on a speculative trade it placed for the benefit of its own account, receiving the bulk of those funds after AIG received an enormous taxpayer rescue, according to the final report of an investigative panel appointed by Congress.
The fact that a significant slice of the proceeds secured by Goldman through the AIG bailout landed in its own account--as opposed to those of its clients or business partners-- has not been previously disclosed. These details about the workings of the controversial AIG bailout, which eventually swelled to $182 billion, are among the more eye-catching revelations in the report to be released Thursday by the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
The details underscore the degree to which Goldman--the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history--benefited directly from the massive emergency bailout of the nation's financial system, a deal crafted on the watch of then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who had previously headed the bank.
* "If these allegations are correct, it appears to have been a direct transfer of wealth from the Treasury to Goldman's shareholders," said Joshua Rosner, a bond analyst and managing director at independent research consultancy Graham Fisher & Co., after he was read the relevant section of the report. "The AIG counterparty bailout, which was spun as necessary to protect the public, seems to have protected the institution at the expense of the public."
When news first broke in 2009 that Goldman had been an indirect beneficiary of the AIG bailout, collecting the full value of some $14 billion in outstanding insurance polices it held with the firm, the officials who brokered the deal justified these terms as a necessary stabilizer for the broader financial system. As the world's largest insurance company, AIG's inability to cover its outstanding obligations could have threatened the solvency of the institutions holding its policies, asserted the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which oversaw the deal.
* Goldman fended off claims that the arrangement amounted to a backdoor bailout by asserting that none of the money from the AIG rescue landed in its own coffers. Rather, those funds went to compensate clients or institutions on the other side of its trades, Goldman said.
But the report from the financial crisis commission, obtained by The Huffington Post in advance of its release, appears to challenge that assertion: The report reveals another pot of money conveyed to Goldman--the $2.9 billion to cover trades the Wall Street investment house made for itself. That money went straight to the bank's bottom line, according to the report.
Over the last two years, Goldman has reported nearly $22 billion in profits, according to its official earnings statements. During those years, it has paid out $31.6 billion in compensation to its employees.
* According to the report, the financial crisis commission first learned that the $2.9 billion in AIG funds landed in Goldman's account through an e-mail the bank sent to the panel on July 15, 2010 in response to questions.
Previously, Goldman executives had testified that the AIG bailout funds the bank collected went to compensate its clients and institutions that held the other side of its trades.
* At a hearing on July 1, 2010--two weeks before Goldman sent the e-mail acknowledging how $2.9 billion in AIG funds wound up in its own account--the crisis panel questioned Goldman's chief financial officer, David A. Viniar and managing director David Lehman. Both said they knew nothing about AIG funds landing in the bank's private coffers, according to a transcript of the hearing.
The report concludes that Goldman collected the $2.9 billion as payment for so-called proprietary trades made for its own account--essentially successful bets on large pools of financial instruments.
* "The total was for proprietary trades," the report asserts. "Unlike the $14 billion received from AIG on trades in which Goldman owed the money to its own counterparties, this $2.9 billion was retained by Goldman."
"At the time, the idea was the sucker could go down because there wasn't enough liquidity in the system, money wasn't moving, and you could see a domino effect," said Ann Rutledge, a principal at R&R Consulting in New York, which specializes in structured finance.
* In reality, she contends, those fears were overblown: There was ample money in the financial system. Rather, individual institutions did not have enough cash on hand to survive their losses, she asserts. But the fear of a broader liquidity crisis was used as justification for what now appears to have been a backdoor means of bailing out Goldman, said Rutledge.
The details in the commission's report leave Goldman "naked," she added. "It doesn't have the fig leaf of a systemic risk argument. Normally what happens when you have a sophisticated institution that's doing stupid credit stuff is you let them eat it, but that didn't happen in the bailout."....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/26/goldman-sachs-aig-backdoor-bailout_n_814589.html
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fj1200
02-28-2011, 02:48 PM
Goes to your point about regulation, and oversight...
or the lack thereof.
You got that right, lack thereof. Grayson is an idiot and Stearns doesn't seem much smarter re: Fed actions.
revelarts
02-28-2011, 05:51 PM
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Palin Rider
02-28-2011, 09:17 PM
Clearly the time away that you and Psycho had has added nothing to either of your abilities to exhibit thought and make rationale connections.
The opposite of government is not corporate, it's people, individuals; I wouldn't expect either of you to recognize that.
I wasn't asking you to play opposites, kid. This post alone proves you have no ideology to stand on, except "I'm smarter than everyone else in the room."
Which, of course, you're not.
Psychoblues
02-28-2011, 09:29 PM
I wasn't asking you to play opposites, kid. This post alone proves you have no ideology to stand on, except "I'm smarter than everyone else in the room."
Which, of course, you're not.
That's just the only tactic the poor thing can do, PR. I don't know why but I haven't seen that post until you quoted it here?!?!?!?!??!?!
Thanks!!!!!!!
Psychoblues
revelarts
03-01-2011, 01:41 AM
If I can find the Overstock CEO's interviews, I'll post those they are ear benders on all of this.
here's
more Info on Paulson and Goldman
http://www.deepcapture.com/goldman-sachs-john-paulson-and-the-hedge-funds-that-pumped-and-dumped-our-economy/
Goldman Sachs, John Paulson, and the Hedge Funds that Pumped and Dumped Our Economy
It is perhaps beyond the ability of an innocent public to believe this, but there is a growing body of evidence that a few mad scientists might have engineered the near-destruction of the American financial system. Except they weren’t scientists, per se – they were unscrupulous, market manipulating hedge fund managers, and we can almost hear them cackling with glee as they haul their ill-gotten billions to the bank.
In a civil suit filed Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman Sachs with fraud for helping hedge fund manager John Paulson create collateralized debt obligations that he had secretly designed to self destruct. That is, Goldman Sachs, at the direction of Paulson, hand-picked mortgages that were certain to go bad, and stuffed the mortgages (or rather, “synthetic” derivatives of the mortgages) into collateralized debt obligations that temporarily masked the true value of the loans.
Goldman did this for only one reason: to create instruments against which Paulson and other hedge fund clients could bet with virtually no risk. Meanwhile, Goldman cheerfully sold the CDOs to unwitting customers, knowing full well that those customers would be wiped out when the reference loans inevitably defaulted. Goldman and its hedge fund clients also surely knew that the losses on these synthetic CDOs would crash the overall market for CDOs, hobble competing investment banks that had CDOs on their books, and do serious damage to the financial system.
Goldman isn’t the only bank that created these CDOs. Deutsche Bank, UBS, and smaller outfits, such as Tricadia Inc., perpetrated similar scams. All told, well over $250 billion worth of these “synthetic” CDOs were sold into the market in the two years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008. Indeed, there is a distinct possibility that a majority of all the CDOs sold during those two years were deliberately designed to implode by hedge fund managers who were betting against both the CDOs and the financial system as a whole.
For more than three years, the media has swallowed the hedge fund party line that our economic troubles were solely caused by mortgage companies lending too much money to undeserving home buyers. No doubt, there was over exuberance and fraud in the world of subprime lending, but that is not the full story. It is now clear that the so-called “real estate bubble” was fueled by an expanding market for CDOs. And the market for CDOs was driven, in turn, by fraudulent deals similar to the ones that Goldman did for Paulson. In short, we witnessed a classic pump-and-dump scheme, only this time it was writ large, on the scale of the U.S. financial system.
I predict that as the details of this doomsday machine come to light, we will see that the hedge funds that profited from it all know each other well. I predict further that it will become apparent that what ties these hedge funds to each other is a common acquaintance with associates of Michael Milken, the famous financial criminal who pioneered the market for CDOs, and whose criminal debt machine nearly brought the economy to ruins in the 1980s.
John Paulson, who launched his career with the assistance of a host of Milken cronies, including Jerome Kohlberg and Leon Levy, is one of the hedge fund managers in this network. He has been described as a genius by the media, and perhaps that is what he is, but we now know that he abides by the Milken code, which has it that there is virtue in a clever con well-orchestrated. And never in history has there been a more profitable con than Paulson’s. His bets against the CDO market – the market that he helped set up to collapse — earned him more than $3 billion over the course of just a few months in 2007....
fj1200
03-01-2011, 08:11 AM
I wasn't asking you to play opposites, kid. This post alone proves you have no ideology to stand on, except "I'm smarter than everyone else in the room."
Which, of course, you're not.
Talk is cheap PR, especially your sad little one liners.
revelarts
03-01-2011, 12:21 PM
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xT-I-6OfDao" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8lHvTKzfu8Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FwXpG6fjUdU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Palin Rider
03-01-2011, 12:54 PM
Talk is cheap PR, especially your sad little one liners.
Coming from you of all people, that's "flippin' funny!"
fj1200
03-01-2011, 02:41 PM
Coming from you of all people, that's "flippin' funny!"
Still upset I was slowly dismantling your Psychology of money and taxation (http://www.debatepolicy.com/showthread.php?29112-Psychology-of-money-and-taxation) thread eh?
fj1200
03-01-2011, 02:55 PM
http://www.youtube.com/embed/xT-I-6OfDao
http://www.youtube.com/embed/8lHvTKzfu8Q
http://www.youtube.com/embed/FwXpG6fjUdU
I'm guessing a movie about general regulatory incompetence and Fed based inflation wouldn't sell.
revelarts
03-01-2011, 03:15 PM
I'm guessing a movie about general regulatory incompetence and Fed based inflation wouldn't sell.
Would sell with me but only if you showed the wall st crooks too.
To many people in left right tribes if the facts attacks part of the other tribe it will sell.
But the thing is FJ, Wall st has bought, used, stacked and managed to dodged the few good keystone cops available. And the Fed is a bank in on the take.
Wall st is control, even pushed the newspapers there way.
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/a-1zYibGUDY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
Matt Taibbi
February 16, 2011 9:00 AM ET
Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.
Invasion of the Home Snatchers
Instead, federal regulators and prosecutors have let the banks and finance companies that tried to burn the world economy to the ground get off with carefully orchestrated settlements — whitewash jobs that involve the firms paying pathetically small fines without even being required to admit wrongdoing. To add insult to injury, the people who actually committed the crimes almost never pay the fines themselves; banks caught defrauding their shareholders often use shareholder money to foot the tab of justice. "If the allegations in these settlements are true," says Jed Rakoff, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, "it's management buying its way off cheap, from the pockets of their victims."
Taibblog: Commentary on politics and the economy by Matt Taibbi
To understand the significance of this, one has to think carefully about the efficacy of fines as a punishment for a defendant pool that includes the richest people on earth — people who simply get their companies to pay their fines for them. Conversely, one has to consider the powerful deterrent to further wrongdoing that the state is missing by not introducing this particular class of people to the experience of incarceration. "You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."
But that hasn't happened. Because the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.
Just ask the people who tried to do the right thing....
fj1200
03-01-2011, 03:58 PM
Would sell with me but only if you showed the wall st crooks too.
To many people in left right tribes if the facts attacks part of the other tribe it will sell.
But the thing is FJ, Wall st has bought, used, stacked and managed to dodged the few good keystone cops available. And the Fed is a bank in on the take.
Wall st is control, even pushed the newspapers there way.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
There you go; assume corruption, find "evidence" to support your assumption, hence assumption was correct. :rolleyes:
There are crooks everywhere, finding some doesn't prove systemic corruption. I'm obviously more on the systemic incompetence side of things.
Palin Rider
03-01-2011, 04:09 PM
Still upset I was slowly dismantling your Psychology of money and taxation (http://www.debatepolicy.com/showthread.php?29112-Psychology-of-money-and-taxation) thread eh?
You couldn't dismantle a Lego robot if you had a full-color set of illustrated directions, kid.
fj1200
03-01-2011, 04:14 PM
You couldn't dismantle a Lego robot if you had a full-color set of illustrated directions, kid.
That's why you completely abandoned defense of it? Keep trollin' brother.
Palin Rider
03-01-2011, 05:16 PM
That's why you completely abandoned defense of it?
It would follow: there was no need.
fj1200
03-01-2011, 05:31 PM
It would follow: there was no need.
Anyway... When was the last time one of your posts exceeded three sentences?
Palin Rider
03-01-2011, 05:34 PM
Anyway... When was the last time one of your posts exceeded three sentences?
Why should I use 4 sentences if 1 gets my point across just as well?
fj1200
03-01-2011, 05:36 PM
Why should I use 4 sentences if 1 gets my point across just as well?
Agreed if your point is :Imatroll: Maybe Jim has a smilie for that, it would save you valuable internets.
Palin Rider
03-01-2011, 08:25 PM
Agreed if your point is :Imatroll: Maybe Jim has a smilie for that, it would save you valuable internets.
You're sinking below even your own low standards, kid. Keep it up and one of the oldtimers may adopt you as a pet.
fj1200
03-02-2011, 10:49 AM
You're sinking below even your own low standards, kid. Keep it up and one of the oldtimers may adopt you as a pet.
You're right, you are a low standard. When are you going to put me back on ignore?
Palin Rider
03-02-2011, 02:14 PM
You're right, you are a low standard. When are you going to put me back on ignore?
Why bother? You can just keep whining to the mods to pull me off the threads you troll on.
fj1200
03-02-2011, 02:25 PM
Why bother? You can just keep whining to the mods to pull me off the threads you troll on.
That would imply I've done that before. Clearly a falsehood to which you're no stranger.
Palin Rider
03-02-2011, 02:33 PM
That would imply I've done that before. Clearly a falsehood to which you're no stranger.
Clearly? With only your word to go on? Yeah, right.
fj1200
03-02-2011, 02:40 PM
Clearly? With only your word to go on? Yeah, right.
Ask any and all mods if your baseless charge has any merit. Unless you have some evidence to produce that would back your baseless charge. I await your submitting of evidence.
Palin Rider
03-09-2011, 04:29 PM
Ask any and all mods if your baseless charge has any merit. Unless you have some evidence to produce that would back your baseless charge. I await your submitting of evidence.
Since the mods obviously won't tell me anything, I'll use the fj approach to evidence:
I've already proved it conclusively.
Kathianne
03-09-2011, 04:50 PM
Why bother? You can just keep whining to the mods to pull me off the threads you troll on.
Trolling/flaming. Stop or you WILL be removed from thread.
Kathianne
03-09-2011, 04:53 PM
That would imply I've done that before. Clearly a falsehood to which you're no stranger.
End of discussions related to moderating. For the record, Fj1200 has NOT 'reported posts,' no more discussion.
revelarts
04-14-2011, 03:06 PM
Congressional Docs SHOW Goldman Sachs CROOKS!!!
In the new report released late Wednesday, Levin and Coburn unveiled new documents that they believe prove that Goldman took "short" positions; in other words, they bet against the mortgage market in an effort to profit when the market went south. The lawmakers contend that Goldman was designing, marketing, and selling mortgage-backed securities such as Timberwolf that created conflicts of interest with the investment giant's clients because the firm would profit when the risky loans went sour, while the clients -– unaware that Goldman was betting against the same loans -– would suffer substantial losses.
"Our investigation found a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing," Levin said in releasing the report.
"The free market has helped make America great, but it only functions when people deal with each other honestly and transparently," Coburn said. "At the heart of the financial crisis were unresolved, and often undisclosed, conflicts of interest. Blame for this mess lies everywhere from federal regulators who cast a blind eye, Wall Street bankers who let greed run wild, and members of Congress who failed to provide oversight."....
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senate-report-goldman-sachs-bets-housing-helped-spur/story?id=13373662
fj1200
04-15-2011, 04:37 PM
Congressional Docs SHOW Goldman Sachs CROOKS!!!
Where was the crime?
Kathianne
04-15-2011, 04:38 PM
Where was the crime?
Too much money! Hate the rich!
fj1200
04-15-2011, 04:40 PM
Too much money! Hate the rich!
:laugh: Sometimes it doesn't seem much deeper than that.
revelarts
04-15-2011, 05:53 PM
Where was the crime?
So it's not criminal to design, market, and sell mortgage-backed securities that you KNOW are Bad. Sell them at inflated prices, market them as AAA AND bet that the value will go down. Against their valued customers they just sold them to and the rest of the market.
I thought that might be called fraud.
I've heard some say it's just savvy business. :puke3:
Not exactly creating value there.
not exactly serving the customer would you say?
Hating on the rich?
I hate on the rich when they are crooks
i hate on the poor when they are crooks.
Equally opportunity hater Kath.
You know me.
But the Numbers do make a difference. I do think stealing a billions from the whole country is worse than stealing $150 from the 7-11.
That's why I post the pentagon Trillions and billions and millions of dollars trickling into the winds stories that everyone ignores.
Big Dollars, BIG losses are Important. But No one seems to care enough to even complain.
No one is willing to Says there's Fraud, Corruption andor MONUMENTAL STUPIDITY that allows this to go on an on for years.
No one is investigated
No one is fried
No one goes to jail
No one really trys to make and account or get funds returned.
no one seems to care.
...Billions under the bridge...OH well...
now we see that GSachs is Sacking wall St and the gov't with insider trading naked short selling. Cronys, former employees, in the gov't at the highest levels Bailing out there people for GS's benefit while there competitors go down the toilet unaware of GSachs dealing.
Not my idea of Free market there folks.
A Crook is a crook.
Bernie Made-off was rich and is a Crook,
Gold-mans Sacks is Made-off on Hyperdrive.
http://www.deepcapture.com/goldman-sachs-john-paulson-and-the-hedge-funds-that-pumped-and-dumped-our-economy/
http://www.deepcapture.com/category/4-the-crime-naked-shorts-other-insincere-ious/
logroller
04-15-2011, 08:25 PM
So it's not criminal to design, market, and sell mortgage-backed securities that you KNOW are Bad. Sell them at inflated prices, market them as AAA AND bet that the value will go down. Against their valued customers they just sold them to and the rest of the market.
I thought that might be called fraud.
I've heard some say it's just savvy business. :puke3:
Not exactly creating value there.
not exactly serving the customer would you say?
Hating on the rich?
I hate on the rich when they are crooks
i hate on the poor when they are crooks.
Equally opportunity hater Kath.
You know me.
But the Numbers do make a difference. I do think stealing a billions from the whole country is worse than stealing $150 from the 7-11.
That's why I post the pentagon Trillions and billions and millions of dollars trickling into the winds stories that everyone ignores.
Big Dollars, BIG losses are Important. But No one seems to care enough to even complain.
No one is willing to Says there's Fraud, Corruption andor MONUMENTAL STUPIDITY that allows this to go on an on for years.
No one is investigated
No one is fried
No one goes to jail
No one really trys to make and account or get funds returned.
no one seems to care.
...Billions under the bridge...OH well...
now we see that GSachs is Sacking wall St and the gov't with insider trading naked short selling. Cronys, former employees, in the gov't at the highest levels Bailing out there people for GS's benefit while there competitors go down the toilet unaware of GSachs dealing.
Not my idea of Free market there folks.
A Crook is a crook.
Bernie Made-off was rich and is a Crook,
Gold-mans Sacks is Made-off on Hyperdrive.
http://www.deepcapture.com/goldman-sachs-john-paulson-and-the-hedge-funds-that-pumped-and-dumped-our-economy/
http://www.deepcapture.com/category/4-the-crime-naked-shorts-other-insincere-ious/
What's savvy is getting the American taxpayer to bail them out.
"Equal opportunity hater":laugh: classic
fj1200
04-16-2011, 08:05 AM
So it's not criminal to design, market, and sell mortgage-backed securities that you KNOW are Bad. Sell them at inflated prices, market them as AAA AND bet that the value will go down. Against their valued customers they just sold them to and the rest of the market.
I thought that might be called fraud.
I've heard some say it's just savvy business. :puke3:
Not exactly creating value there.
not exactly serving the customer would you say?
You're making some presumptions there that are only evident in hindsight. IKB is an institutional investor that had the same access to information as GS/Paulson. They were serving the investor, IKB wanted the deal.
Another opinion:
http://www.businessinsider.com/abacus-goldman-sachs-paulson-2010-5
No one is willing to Says there's Fraud, Corruption andor MONUMENTAL STUPIDITY that allows this to go on an on for years.
No one is investigated
No one is fried
No one goes to jail
No one really trys to make and account or get funds returned.
no one seems to care.
...Billions under the bridge...OH well...
"Monumental stupidity" is not a crime and to say there is no investigation or trial is disingenuous as the SEC is making the case against GS and Paulson. Whether someone goes to jail is incumbent on finding guilt and determining fraud. IKB wanted to make a bet and of course GS was more than happy to arrange the deal. Paulson wanted to make the opposite bet; there is no crime in that and the questions are if Paulson's involvement was necessary to be disclosed. And no jumping ahead with your hindsight position that IKB lost the bet and Paulson's stature that is higher now than it was when the deal was put together.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/16/us-goldmansachs-abacus-factbox-idUSTRE63F5CZ20100416
A Crook is a crook.
Bernie Made-off was rich and is a Crook,
Gold-mans Sacks is Made-off on Hyperdrive.
You have to make your case before making that claim, besides GS is NOT Madoff.
http://www.deepcapture.com/goldman-sachs-john-paulson-and-the-hedge-funds-that-pumped-and-dumped-our-economy/
http://www.deepcapture.com/category/4-the-crime-naked-shorts-other-insincere-ious/
He's polluting your mind.
fj1200
04-16-2011, 08:05 AM
What's savvy is getting the American taxpayer to bail them out.
That's the crime but unfortunately not criminal.
fj1200
04-16-2011, 08:11 AM
http://www.deepcapture.com/goldman-sachs-john-paulson-and-the-hedge-funds-that-pumped-and-dumped-our-economy/
I feel stupider for even skimming that. I was going to post each overreaching assumption he made and hindsight conclusion he reached but I would have violated copyright by posting the whole thing.
revelarts
04-16-2011, 11:15 AM
You're making some presumptions there that are only evident in hindsight. IKB is an institutional investor that had the same access to information as GS/Paulson. They were serving the investor, IKB wanted the deal.
Another opinion:
http://www.businessinsider.com/abacus-goldman-sachs-paulson-2010-5
I thinks the rebuttal comments to the link you posted cover most of the points in it.
FJ, if you want to give GS and friends MORE than the benefit of the doubt, and a pass Using the it's (barely or shouldn't be) legal even though it's immoral therefore so it OK defense. that's fine with me.
Hopeful more detail will come out in a real investigation proving beyond doubt that they we're guilty, as the evidence available to date clearly suggest. Or it will have some exculpatory evidence giving them some mild cover. but I don't see the later happening.
there's another link at the site I sent you to
Called "the SHORT heard around the world."
What the pale excuse for that one FJ.
fj1200
04-16-2011, 11:41 AM
I thinks the rebuttal comments to the link you posted cover most of the points in it.
I read them, they were just more of the hindsight same IMO.
FJ, if you want to give GS and friends MORE than the benefit of the doubt, and a pass Using the it's (barely or shouldn't be) legal even though it's immoral therefore so it OK defense. that's fine with me.
Is it immoral for a casino to take both sides of a Superbowl bet? I think you're projecting your own view of morality on the situation and thinking that GS "just knew the loans were bad..." opinion. Two educated investors made a bet...
Hopeful more detail will come out in a real investigation proving beyond doubt that they we're guilty, as the evidence available to date clearly suggest. Or it will have some exculpatory evidence giving them some mild cover. but I don't see the later happening.
I just can't argue with that position now can I? :rolleyes:
there's another link at the site I sent you to
Called "the SHORT heard around the world."
What the pale excuse for that one FJ.
This one?
http://www.deepcapture.com/category/4-the-crime-naked-shorts-other-insincere-ious/
I give it the fj seal... :rolleyes:
revelarts
04-28-2011, 03:40 PM
Financial Speculation In the food prices ADDING to the Hike in food prices especially of the poorer in the world ie Egypt.
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fj1200
04-28-2011, 07:28 PM
Financial Speculation In the food prices ADDING to the Hike in food prices especially of the poorer in the world ie Egypt.
:facepalm:
revelarts
04-28-2011, 09:57 PM
:facepalm:
not sure what you guys mean, but im guessing...
So FJ
Hedges funds, Futures speculation and Derivatives are only good for the economy? Making Food (and Housing) Prices cheaper?
Sorry to dismay folks by pointing out the darkside. just trying to ID some reality. food prices going up, multiple causes an all, just making sure everyone owns up to their contribution. Is that wrong?
Are there no such things as high finance rouges, are only the poor and middle class cold blooded crooks sometimes?
Are rich people always honest and care about what happens to people when they Hoard staple commodities or artificially jack up prices just to make a dollar. Adding ZERO to the real value of the commodity?
FJ will the free market work it all out?
double face palm
fj1200
04-28-2011, 10:13 PM
not sure what you guys mean, but im guessing...
...
FJ will the free market work it all out?
double face palm
Tell me, is it simply an increase in price that has you railing against speculators, the rich, global banking conspiracies? Do you praise them once a commodity starts to fall? I mean if you cry foul on the way up then they're doing us all a favor on the way down by your logic.
In the other thread, where I posted a link that showed virtually every commodity rising at some point during the past 10 years was it all the work of speculators, etc.? When every commodity price declined after the inflation of the '70s, see Simon Ehrlich wager (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager), were speculators just having a bad couple of decades?
If you're insistent on laying some blame at least lay it where it makes sense; I mean you already hate the Fed anyway right?
Oh, and to answer your last question... Yes.
revelarts
04-28-2011, 11:02 PM
FJ your a true free market believer sir.
If you look at my post You'll notice that I qualified my statements.
I never said I hate free markets I'm just saying that there are Crooks among the rich just as much as other places in Market strata.
that's something that you seem to keep trying to block out of your very rosie picture of the Market. And Big Business Righteousness. It's like you think I'm attacking the the Pope or the WHOLE Church if i say some , --A bunch -- of the priest are stinking pedophiles.
You accuse me of not wanting the give the market credit when things are going well, but you never seem want to lay any blame on it practices when things go badly.
"It's not Speculation"
"It's Not the Banks "
"Its Not Big Oil"
"Bernie Madoff wasn't wrong it was the stupid investors and piss poor regulators that are REALLY the problem."
Ok I made that last one up, but it's not far from what I hear you saying.
Everytime I've mentioned a problem it's prety much included specific companies and actions. I don't have a blanket indictment for WALL st. or All banks. I do for Goldman Sack, Bank of America, CitiBank, AIG, etc...
i post links to specific wrong doing.
that you keep making excuses for or try to convince me aren't "technically" crimes though they may be slightly immoral.
I like the free market, I wish we had more of one in general.
But I don't like crooks, conmen, bullies and market kingpins.
Especially as they seem to get away with it Billions while other Businesses like cherry Growers can't even state the fact that cherry's are good against arthritis without threat of jail and fines. And we are Patted down at airports like criminals etc etc..
Offends my sometimes overblown sense of justice FJ.
I stand by my post, some high preist of Rome/WALL ST of the FREE MARKET CHURCH universal are pedophiles and they need to go to jail. Not be reverved as keepers of the of the Most Holy Free Market.
fj1200
04-29-2011, 07:50 AM
FJ your a true free market believer sir.
If you look at my post You'll notice that I qualified my statements.
You qualified them? Barely.
I never said I hate free markets I'm just saying that there are Crooks among the rich just as much as other places in Market strata.
that's something that you seem to keep trying to block out of your very rosie picture of the Market. And Big Business Righteousness. It's like you think I'm attacking the the Pope or the WHOLE Church if i say some , --A bunch -- of the priest are stinking pedophiles.
When did I dispute that? If people break the law they should be prosecuted, I have no issue with that. You seem to throw out there that because prices go up, or because GS worked in their own interest, or because someone got rich then it's clear the system is broken; THAT I dispute.
You accuse me of not wanting the give the market credit when things are going well, but you never seem want to lay any blame on it practices when things go badly.
"It's not Speculation"
"It's Not the Banks "
"Its Not Big Oil"
"Bernie Madoff wasn't wrong it was the stupid investors and piss poor regulators that are REALLY the problem."
Ok I made that last one up, but it's not far from what I hear you saying.
I wasn't saying that you did or did not give credit only that you lose your evidence when prices get cheaper.
I don't lay blame on its "practices." You see what you did right there? You lumped speculators, banks, and oil in with Madoff. You attempt to confer guilt on them just by adding Madoff in at the end.
Everytime I've mentioned a problem it's prety much included specific companies and actions. I don't have a blanket indictment for WALL st. or All banks. I do for Goldman Sack, Bank of America, CitiBank, AIG, etc...
i post links to specific wrong doing.
that you keep making excuses for or try to convince me aren't "technically" crimes though they may be slightly immoral.
Can you find bad things done by banks? Of course you can but you attempt to paint the industry with the same guilty brush, that is where I think you haven't proven your point. So many people want someone, ANYONE, to go to jail over what happened in 2008 that they buy into the populist viewpoint that some individual somewhere did something wrong and they latch onto anything that will bolster their "evidence." What happened was a macro level event based on macro level conditions; "Because people got rich on the way up they must have been guilty" doesn't jibe with me.
I like the free market, I wish we had more of one in general.
But I don't like crooks, conmen, bullies and market kingpins.
Especially as they seem to get away with it Billions while other Businesses like cherry Growers can't even state the fact that cherry's are good against arthritis without threat of jail and fines. And we are Patted down at airports like criminals etc etc..
Offends my sometimes overblown sense of justice FJ.
You allege that "they" got away with something and list them with strawman examples. I don't buy into your premise.
I stand by my post, some high preist of Rome/WALL ST of the FREE MARKET CHURCH universal are pedophiles and they need to go to jail. Not be reverved as keepers of the of the Most Holy Free Market.
Pedophiles eh? Overstate much? The free market will do fine and the only "keepers" it requires are those who will keep the government from FURTHER corrupting it.
revelarts
05-17-2011, 05:08 PM
video Matt Taibbi vs fj100's sister.
http://dailybail.com/home/video-matt-taibbi-vs-wall-street-apologist-megan-mcardle-on.html
Goldman Sachs crooks
fj1200
05-17-2011, 10:23 PM
video Matt Taibbi vs fj100's sister.
http://dailybail.com/home/video-matt-taibbi-vs-wall-street-apologist-megan-mcardle-on.html
Goldman Sachs crooks
Megs (that's what I called her when we were growing up) did fine. Taibbi engages in petty hackery. I don't get detailed financial analysis from Rolling Stone.
I also worked to dump an asset for a client and was damn happy that someone took off of their hands... not on the order of billions though.
fj1200
05-18-2011, 01:24 PM
video...
Is this the same Abacus deal we already went over?
fj1200
06-08-2011, 07:53 AM
The Fine Print of Goldman's Subprime Bet (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/The-Fine-Print-of-Goldmans-nytimes-3973223226.html;_ylt=Angeyasvaf2Arb.30CHlScO7YWsA; _ylu=X3oDMTFmOGdobjdjBHBvcwMzBHNlYwNleHBlcnRPcGlua W9uRHluYW1pYwRzbGsDdGhlZmluZXByaW50?x=0)
But upon further reporting - talking with executives at Goldman, who pointed me to other documents, and with officials in Washington, and then poring through the report, following the footnotes to the original sources and then cross-referencing them against other public records - I have come to a different and perhaps unsatisfying conclusion for those readers looking for a big scalp: Mr. Blankfein wasn't lying.
revelarts
06-08-2011, 08:16 AM
FJ I'll look at this more closely later but what I gather so far is that it's less of lie. I could be wrong.
But this doesn't clear them from many other large issues.
fj1200
06-08-2011, 08:37 AM
FJ I'll look at this more closely later but what I gather so far is that it's less of lie. I could be wrong.
As even Mr. Roach acknowledged, "It's about how you define 'massive' and 'large' - and I'm not trying to be cute."
What's massive to you and me is not massive to Goldman... especially when offset against long positions on the other side.
So when Mr. Blankfein contended that the firm was "not consistently or significantly net 'short the market' in residential mortgage-related products in 2007 and 2008" the numbers - if you believe them - are on his side.
But this doesn't clear them from many other large issues.
As suggested in the link.
That's not to suggest Goldman always behaved well. There are other assertions in the subcommittee's report that detail some pretty egregious activity by certain executives.
revelarts
07-01-2011, 08:07 AM
Iceland Declares Independence from International Banks
this is great news. I hope they aren't named a terrorist nation who's leaders must be overthrown.
By Bill Wilson – Iceland is free. And it will remain so, so long as her people wish to remain autonomous of the foreign domination of her would-be masters — in this case, international bankers.
On April 9, the fiercely independent people of island-nation defeated a referendum that would have bailed out the UK and the Netherlands who had covered the deposits of British and Dutch investors who had lost funds in Icesave bank in 2008.
At the time of the bank’s failure, Iceland refused to cover the losses. But the UK and Netherlands nonetheless have demanded that Iceland repay them for the “loan” as a condition for admission into the European Union.
In response, the Icelandic people have told Europe to go pound sand. The final vote was 103,207 to 69,462, or 58.9 percent to 39.7 percent. “Taxpayers should not be responsible for paying the debts of a private institution,” said Sigriur Andersen, a spokeswoman for the Advice group that opposed the bailout.
A similar referendum in 2009 on the issue, although with harsher terms, found 93.2 percent of the Icelandic electorate rejecting a proposal to guarantee the deposits of foreign investors who had funds in the Icelandic bank. The referendum was invoked when President Olafur Ragnur Grimmson vetoed legislation the Althingi, Iceland’s parliament, had passed to pay back the British and Dutch.
Under the terms of the agreement, Iceland would have had to pay £2.35 billion to the UK, and €1.32 billion to the Netherlands by 2046 at a 3 percent interest rate. Its rejection for the second time by Iceland is a testament to its people, who feel they should bear no responsibility for the losses of foreigners endured in the financial crisis.
That opposition to bailouts led to Iceland’s decision to allow the bank to fail in 2008. Not that the taxpayers there could have afforded to. As noted by Bloomberg News, at the time the crisis hit in 2008, “the banks had debts equal to 10 times Iceland’s $12 billion GDP.”
“These were private banks and we didn’t pump money into them in order to keep them going; the state did not shoulder the responsibility of the failed private banks,” Iceland President Olafur Grimsson told Bloomberg Television.
The voters’ rejection came despite threats to isolate Iceland from funding in international financial institutions. Iceland’s national debt has already been downgraded by credit rating agencies, and now those same agencies have promised to do so once again as punishment for defying the will of international bankers.
This is just the latest in the long drama since 2008 of global institutions refusing to take losses in the financial crisis. Threats of a global economic depression and claims of being “too big to fail” have equated to a loaded gun to the heads of representative governments in the U.S. and Europe. Iceland is of particular interest because it did not bail out its banks like Ireland did, or foreign ones like the U.S. did.
If that fervor catches on amongst taxpayers worldwide, as it has in Iceland and with the tea party movement in America, the banks would have something to fear; that is, the inability to draw from limitless amounts of funding from gullible government officials and central banks. It appears that the root cause is government guarantees, whether explicit or implicit, on risk-taking by the banks.
Ultimately, such guarantees are not necessary to maintain full employment or even prop up an economy with growth, they are simply designed to allow these international institutions to overleverage and increase their profit margins in good times — and to avoid catastrophic losses in bad times.
The lesson here is instructive across the pond, but it is a chilling one. If the U.S. — or any sovereign for that matter — attempts to restructure their debts, or to force private investors to take a haircut on their own foolish gambles, these international institutions have promised the equivalent of economic war in response. However, the alternative is for representative governments to sacrifice their independence to a cadre of faceless bankers who share no allegiance to any nation.
It is the conflict that has already defined the beginning of the 21st Century. The question is whether free peoples will choose to remain free, as Iceland has, or to submit.
Bill Wilson is the President of Americans for Limited Government. You can follow Bill on Twitter at @BillWilsonALG.
Read more at NetRightDaily.com: http://netrightdaily.com/2011/04/iceland-declares-independence-from-international-banks/#ixzz1QrGLMupc
fj1200
07-01-2011, 09:37 AM
Iceland Declares Independence from International Banks
this is great news. I hope they aren't named a terrorist nation who's leaders must be overthrown.
The voters’ rejection came despite threats to isolate Iceland from funding in international financial institutions. Iceland’s national debt has already been downgraded by credit rating agencies, and now those same agencies have promised to do so once again as punishment for defying the will of international bankers.
...
If that fervor catches on amongst taxpayers worldwide, as it has in Iceland and with the tea party movement in America, the banks would have something to fear; that is, the inability to draw from limitless amounts of funding from gullible government officials and central banks. It appears that the root cause is government guarantees, whether explicit or implicit, on risk-taking by the banks.
Good... I think.
It'll be interesting how Iceland can come out of this and how their economy will stabilize.
He definitely got that last part right though.
revelarts
11-02-2011, 01:23 PM
maybe your right about me FJ,
Populasit bank hater,
have you seen this film?
If anyone has the time they should watch this.
history of central banks , commentary on the gold standard, and the causes of depressions.
amazing
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fj1200
11-02-2011, 01:26 PM
Geez rev. do you watch ANYTHING less than an hour long?
fj1200
11-02-2011, 01:36 PM
maybe your right about me FJ,
Populasit bank hater,
have you seen this film?
If anyone has the time they should watch this.
history of central banks , commentary on the gold standard, and the causes of depressions.
amazing
So far... mostly crap. Facts are thrown in which are completely unrelated to the point that they're trying to make. "People are hungry" because of our monetary system? BS.
revelarts
11-02-2011, 02:01 PM
Geez rev. do you watch ANYTHING less than an hour long?
Nothing worth repeating
So far... mostly crap. Facts are thrown in which are completely unrelated to the point that they're trying to make. "People are hungry" because of our monetary system? BS.
watch on my friend, or maybe you just like the private bankers controlling the national money supply. And banks lending on 10% of what they actually hold and pray they don't get called on it.
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fj1200
11-02-2011, 05:58 PM
watch on my friend, or maybe you just like the private bankers controlling the national money supply. And banks lending on 10% of what they actually hold and pray they don't get called on it.
If the rest was the same as the first 12 minutes it was utter balderdash. Repeat after me:
FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING IS NOT THE CAUSE OF OUR COUNTRIES PROBLEMS!!!
Or you could check into someone who has some actual intelligence on the subject.
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/poor-public-school-education-not-wall-st-blame-183736325.html
He also did an excellent bit on PBS a few years ago. Here's episode I:
kXMygmS_Ank
revelarts
11-03-2011, 04:48 AM
Did we watch the same film?
Fractional reverve banking is not the only thing delt with HOwEVER it is a unstable -to say the least- and nigh on corrupt way to do biz. C'mon Loaning and making interest on money you don't have, it's an outstanding CON. the only way to think otherwise is to have been immesred in the system for so long as to think it's a normal healthy business arragment, it's always been this way. Similar to a dysfunctional families kids who thinks getting beatings everyday is NORMAL and good for them. But the bigger issue in the film is WHO Creates the Money Supply the gov't or a group of Private bankers masquerading as a FEDERAL agency who it appears have manipulated the money supply to there own advantage.
Not sure why You call it balerdash, when Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, James Garfield and other presidents saw the dangers of the "federal" reserve banks that you like to defend.
What's wrong with the gov't issuing the money directly without BORROWING from the private Banks? to me it's a no braininer and your defense of the system is balderdash FJ. I'm not sure where it comes from, defending the status quo, or what?
fj1200
11-03-2011, 10:12 AM
Did we watch the same film?
Unfortunately yes. You, however, thought it contained something resembling intelligence.
Fractional reverve banking is not the only thing delt with HOwEVER it is a unstable -to say the least- and nigh on corrupt way to do biz. C'mon Loaning and making interest on money you don't have, it's an outstanding CON. the only way to think otherwise is to have been immesred in the system for so long as to think it's a normal healthy business arragment, it's always been this way. Similar to a dysfunctional families kids who thinks getting beatings everyday is NORMAL and good for them. But the bigger issue in the film is WHO Creates the Money Supply the gov't or a group of Private bankers masquerading as a FEDERAL agency who it appears have manipulated the money supply to there own advantage.
Not sure why You call it balerdash, when Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, James Garfield and other presidents saw the dangers of the "federal" reserve banks that you like to defend.
What's wrong with the gov't issuing the money directly without BORROWING from the private Banks? to me it's a no braininer and your defense of the system is balderdash FJ. I'm not sure where it comes from, defending the status quo, or what?
Why are you quoting founding fathers after posting a video that decries a "defect in the constitution"? Nevertheless, the reason for an independent central bank is that it takes the manipulation of a currency out of the hands of elected officials who would manipulate it for their own purpose.
I just figured out why you like that video; it takes little bits of information which may or may not have a grain of truth to it and then extrapolates it into rationale which easily fits into your worldview of global corruption. In some threads you decry the power of the central government and how easily it will slip into a corrupt morass but in this thread you wish that the government would be the one to have the powers to manipulate the currency. You have little consistency in the views you espouse.
fj1200
11-03-2011, 10:47 AM
What's wrong with the gov't issuing the money directly without BORROWING from the private Banks? to me it's a no braininer and your defense of the system is balderdash FJ. I'm not sure where it comes from, defending the status quo, or what?
Alright then rev, defend this statement:
Coxey was a greenbacker, and his idea was simple: The federal government should build public works and pay for them by printing money
"At the time the idea seemed to be the wildest kind of extremism. But given unemployment of 18.4%... few modern economists would be prepared to dismiss such a proposal out of hand."
EVERY modern economist would dismiss such a proposal out of hand. It's exactly the type of inflationary, politically based policy that would be the temptation of an elected official. It would be the rehash of the Weimar Republic of the 20's, the Argentinian meltdown of the 80's, the Zimbabwean inflation of the '00s... Nothing good can come of that kind of power resting in the hands of Congress.
So impress me with your defense of the "no brainer" monetary system.
red states rule
11-04-2011, 04:15 AM
Dems are playing the populism card in hopes of regaining their power
It will not work
Democrats have been rediscovering their inner populist lately. President Obama is calling on the wealthiest Americans to pay their “fair share” in taxes. Elizabeth Warren, campaigning for the Senate in Massachusetts, has become a rising star by bluntly criticizing the business class. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a petition last month aimed at leveraging the Occupy Wall Street movement against the Republican Party.
But the clearest test for whether Democrats can sell a message centered on income inequality won’t be in the presidential race, where Obama’s chances of victory depend heavily on the mood of upscale, white-collar professionals. Rather, the battle for the hearts and minds of the working-class will take place in the House race battlefields, where Democrats can’t afford to write off blue-collar voters if they hope to win the 25 seats they need to recapture the majority.
It wasn’t long ago that Democrats were highly competitive with that demographic. In 2006 and 2008, their greatest gains came in heavily white districts with relatively small concentrations of college graduates. Former DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel aggressively recruited culturally conservative candidates, recognizing that the party couldn’t handicap itself by ceding Middle America to Republicans. The ability to compete across the country is what allowed the party to forge a congressional governing majority for four years.
Democrats suffered their biggest losses last year in blue-collar territory, as Obama’s approval ratings with blue-collar white voters plummeted. White voters without a college education voted for Republican House candidates nearly 2 to 1, according to last year’s Edison Research exit poll. The party’s bulwark of Blue Dog Democrats, many of whom had held onto seats in deeply conservative districts no matter the political climate, collapsed.
While Democrats aren’t going to win back many of those seats given the districts’ conservative orientation, they’re betting that a message decrying income inequality can put some of them in play.
http://nationaljournal.com/columns/against-the-grain/democrats-bet-on-populism-20111101
revelarts
11-04-2011, 02:47 PM
Alright then rev, defend this statement:
EVERY modern economist would dismiss such a proposal out of hand. It's exactly the type of inflationary, politically based policy that would be the temptation of an elected official. It would be the rehash of the Weimar Republic of the 20's, the Argentinian meltdown of the 80's, the Zimbabwean inflation of the '00s... Nothing good can come of that kind of power resting in the hands of Congress.
So impress me with your defense of the "no brainer" monetary system.
the question is the role of gov't as a necessary good/evil.
One of the founders described gov't as a fire . great in it's place but beyond that, trouble.
Sure congress could get it wrong but at least they would be directly accountable to the people in some respects.
As apposed to now where the banks of the Fed are accountable to NO ONE and only ultimatly have their own private undisclosed motives at heart. Which group has a greater temptation to do wrong? The congress who are accountable and should be transparent or private bankers LOANING money to the gov't and others at Interest that they've create out of nothing?
There's more that can be said , but I'll read your notes to flesh out my own opinion but i think the foundation seems clear. If these are the only real choices for money creation, I'll take the more or less Neutral player, Congress. over a Commercial player with a profit motive and the possibility they manipulate everyone to their own private advantage.
fj1200
11-04-2011, 03:22 PM
the question is the role of gov't as a necessary good/evil.
One of the founders described gov't as a fire . great in it's place but beyond that, trouble.
Sure congress could get it wrong but at least they would be directly accountable to the people in some respects.
Congress would do what they always do and delegate their responsibility to the Executive branch, or establish an independent entity anyway, and you'd be in the same boat as we are now where some mythic bankers are pulling the strings behind the curtain. If you want to really get the government out of the action you need to seriously think about passing the Aldrich-Vreeland Act (1914?) again which gave authority to the banks to issue currency as necessary subject to standards. Canada survived the Great Depression much better than we did with no central bank and a structure similar to AV sought to implement with no bank closures iirc.
But I implore you, read an actual book on the subject that isn't predicated on the myth that it is a beast meant to consume us. The History of the Federal Reserve (Meltzer) or Lords of Finance (http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/159420182X) (Ahamed). There's another history of the Fed book but I don't recall the author or exact name but it's less technical than the Meltzer book.
As apposed to now where the banks of the Fed are accountable to NO ONE and only ultimatly have their own private undisclosed motives at heart. Which group has a greater temptation to do wrong? The congress who are accountable and should be transparent or private bankers LOANING money to the gov't and others at Interest that they've create out of nothing?
Their motives are two; Monetary stability and full employment (or some such thing) and their accountability is to Congress. I also challenge your basis, and the videos, that our monetary system requires debt. Treasury creates the debt, the Fed creates the money; those are two different things.
There's more that can be said , but I'll read your notes to flesh out my own opinion but i think the foundation seems clear. If these are the only real choices for money creation, I'll take the more or less Neutral player, Congress. over a Commercial player with a profit motive and the possibility they manipulate everyone to their own private advantage.
Are you daft? Congress is not neutral, they are politically motivated which is exactly the opposite of what you want when determining monetary policy. The original 13 Fed banks were established so different parts of the country, read farmers, would have input into monetary policy. The results were disastrous, a bad law to begin with, but you had various factions trying to jigger policy so it would suit their constituents. It took quite some time for the Fed to gets its head straight in determining a national monetary policy and asserting its independence and speaking with one voice and not 13. It's also not a "commercial player" that is controlling our monetary policy, they may be a tool by which the Fed does it's business but they are not the beast.
revelarts
11-07-2011, 06:16 AM
Congress would do what they always do and delegate their responsibility to the Executive branch, or establish an independent entity anyway, and you'd be in the same boat as we are now where some mythic bankers are pulling the strings behind the curtain. If you want to really get the government out of the action you need to seriously think about passing the Aldrich-Vreeland Act (1914?) again which gave authority to the banks to issue currency as necessary subject to standards. Canada survived the Great Depression much better than we did with no central bank and a structure similar to AV sought to implement with no bank closures iirc.
But I implore you, read an actual book on the subject that isn't predicated on the myth that it is a beast meant to consume us. The History of the Federal Reserve (Meltzer) or Lords of Finance (http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/159420182X) (Ahamed). There's another history of the Fed book but I don't recall the author or exact name but it's less technical than the Meltzer book.
Their motives are two; Monetary stability and full employment (or some such thing) and their accountability is to Congress. I also challenge your basis, and the videos, that our monetary system requires debt. Treasury creates the debt, the Fed creates the money; those are two different things.
Are you daft? Congress is not neutral, they are politically motivated which is exactly the opposite of what you want when determining monetary policy. The original 13 Fed banks were established so different parts of the country, read farmers, would have input into monetary policy. The results were disastrous, a bad law to begin with, but you had various factions trying to jigger policy so it would suit their constituents. It took quite some time for the Fed to gets its head straight in determining a national monetary policy and asserting its independence and speaking with one voice and not 13. It's also not a "commercial player" that is controlling our monetary policy, they may be a tool by which the Fed does it's business but they are not the beast.
FJ i'll say it again if I have to choose between congress and private banks to create money I'll choose congress.
Take a second and replace a different items with money.
would you like Congress to control the water supply or a private cartel for a completely profit motive. who's going to be more responsive to your needs a congressman who needs your vote or a ceo with a monopoly? Sure BOTH could go corrupt but
I don't see the advantage of a cartel having cotrol of the spigot.
fj1200
11-07-2011, 06:29 AM
FJ i'll say it again if I have to choose between congress and private banks to create money I'll choose congress.
Take a second and replace a different items with money.
would you like Congress to control the water supply or a private cartel for a completely profit motive. who's going to be more responsive to your needs a congressman who needs your vote or a ceo with a monopoly? Sure BOTH could go corrupt but
I don't see the advantage of a cartel having cotrol of the spigot.
You still have a mistaken assumption: Private banks do not create money. Do a bit of research into elected officials controlling money; I gave a short list earlier.
revelarts
11-07-2011, 12:10 PM
I'm reading but I also read items like those below and from where i sit at this point they seem to be the most frank about the situation
“I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create money. And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hand the destiny of the people.”
Reginald McKenna, as Chairman of the Midland Bank, addressing stockholders in 1924.
“The banks do create money. They have been doing it for a long time, but they didn’t realise it, and they did not admit it. Very few did. You will find it in all sorts of documents, financial textbooks, etc. But in the intervening years, and we must be perfectly frank about these things, there has been a development of thought, until today I doubt very much whether you would get many prominent bankers to attempt to deny that banks create it.”
H W White, Chairman of the Associated Banks of New Zealand, to the New Zealand Monetary Commission, 1955.
“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908- ), former professor of economics at Harvard, writing in ‘Money: Whence it came, where it went’ (1975).
Federal Reserve Bank of New York quotes (http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/federal_reserve_bank_of_new_york_quote_2bc9):
Because of 'fractional' reserve system, banks, as a whole, can expand our money supply several times, by making loans and investments.
Commercial banks create checkbook money whenever they grant a loan, simply by adding new deposit dollars in accounts on their books in exchange for a borrower's IOU.
Jerry Voorhis quotes (http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/jerry_voorhis_quote_db7e):
The banks -- commercial banks and the Federal Reserve -- create all the money of this nation and its people pay interest on every dollar of that newly created money. Which means that private banks exercise unconstitutionally, immorally, and ridiculously the power to tax the people. For every newly created dollar dilutes to some extent the value of every other dollar already in circulation.
Richard McKenna (http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/richard+mckenna)
Secretary to the Treasury (1903), President of the Board of Education (1907–08) First Lord of the Admiralty (1908–1911), Home Secretary (1911–1915) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (1915–1916), and Chairman of the Midland Bank (1918)
"I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money.
And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."
Ralph M. Hawtrey, former Secretary of Treasury, England.
Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing.
<tbody>
</tbody>
fj1200
11-07-2011, 01:58 PM
I'm reading but I also read items like those below and from where i sit at this point they seem to be the most frank about the situation
Some quippy quotes that happen to coincide with your worldview are not the same as gathering a complete understanding of the whole situation. Besides, private bankers operate at the pleasure of the Fed and under the rules created by it and the rest of the government regulation.
red states rule
11-08-2011, 03:17 AM
Rev reminds me of a custmer who called after we refused to grant him a loan mod due to the workout plan being outside investor guidelines
He was yelling how he hoped Obama put all the banks out of business
I asked him how that would improve his situation - he was silent on that question - but continued his rant against the "evil" banks
red states rule
11-11-2011, 05:28 AM
http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/cb110411dAPR20111104074522.jpg
revelarts
11-12-2011, 01:11 PM
Judge Napolitona said it so it must be true.
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/embed.js?id=1269071637001&w=466&h=263"></script><iframe src="http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/video-embed.html?video_id=1269071637001&w=466&h=263&loc=debatepolicy.com" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" height="263" scrolling="no" width="466"></iframe><noscript>Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com (http://video.foxbusiness.com)</noscript>
red states rule
11-12-2011, 01:16 PM
Rev I would ove to see you live in the world you want the rest of us to live in
Less credit, more regs on free market, more expensive cost of doing business, fewer jobs, and a weakened economy than what what we have now.
Even the hippies took their money and deposited it in a Wells Fargo Bank - so much for hating capitalism
revelarts
11-15-2011, 05:32 AM
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zpbW64vRrMc?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
fj1200
11-15-2011, 06:03 AM
I wouldn't hang my hat on anything that holds out Grayson and Kucinich as standard bearers.
revelarts
11-15-2011, 06:11 AM
Smearing a couple of the messengers again buddy? Ok fine, but it doesn't change the factual info FJ.
fj1200
11-15-2011, 06:16 AM
Smearing a couple of the messengers again buddy? Ok fine, but it doesn't change the factual info FJ.
Just the truth that they are in general... idiots. But your video is really nothing new, just opinions of "factual."
Just had a thought though. Why do you post videos much more than you post articles when it comes to Fed stuff? Or is that just my mistaken impression?
fj1200
11-15-2011, 06:29 AM
Rev, why are you not picking this low-hanging fruit?
Corzine's fortune could invite more lawsuits (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/corzines-fortune-could-invite-more-192901052.html)
The millions that Jon Corzine amassed as head of Goldman Sachs have become an alluring target for investors who were crushed by the collapse of MF Global, the brokerage firm he led until earlier this month.And Corzine isn't the only one who may be financially vulnerable after the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Others include MF Global's other top executives; its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers; and some big Wall Street banks.
...
Legal experts say Corzine could be held personally liable for misrepresenting to investors the risks that the firm had taken.MF Global didn't list the European debt on its balance sheet for all to see. Instead, those holdings were shifted to the company's "off-balance sheet," deep in its financial statements. Some separate filings with regulators excluded the European debt entirely.
Under a 2002 anti-corporate fraud law — which Corzine co-wrote as a U.S. senator — CEOs of public companies must personally certify the accuracy of their company's financial statements.
If client money was used by the firm for its own purposes, Corzine could be held responsible, said Thomas Ajamie, an attorney who specializes in financial fraud cases.
"That would be the house gambling with customers' money," Ajamie said.
Other top MF Global executives also could face legal jeopardy, experts say. And members of the board of directors could be accused of failing to properly oversee Corzine's trading strategy and the firm's risk management.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, MF Global's auditors, could be targeted, too. So could the Wall Street banks that put up money for floating the firm's own bonds.
red states rule
11-18-2011, 05:28 AM
a friend of yours Rev?
Man charged by federal authorities after tossing fire bomb at Utah Wells Fargo bank
A Utah man has been charged after throwing Molotov cocktails at a Wells Fargo branch.
Joshua Raymond Townsend faces one federal count of attempting to destroy a building used in interstate commerce.
</ARTICLE>
Police arrested the 20-year-old Thursday morning outside the West Jordan bank, about 15 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Authorities say Townsend began planning to bomb a bank about two months ago after ordering explosive chemicals. He decided earlier this week to instead use Molotov cocktails.
Authorities say Townsend called police immediately before throwing the first Molotov cocktail, which failed to ignite. A second one bounced off a window and ignited a bush, which Townsend extinguished by dousing it with gasoline.
Townsend remains jailed pending a hearing Monday. It wasn’t immediately clear if he had an attorney.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/man-arrested-after-tossing-fire-bomb-at-utah-wells-fargo-bank-fbi-and-atf-join-investigation/2011/11/17/gIQAzKOwUN_story.html
revelarts
11-18-2011, 05:43 AM
a friend of yours Rev?
Was Someone you talked to on the phone upset and went to the wrong bank?
:poke:
revelarts
11-18-2011, 06:16 AM
Rev, why are you not picking this low-hanging fruit?
Corzine's fortune could invite more lawsuits (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/corzines-fortune-could-invite-more-192901052.html)
That's a good news story that But I guess I'm a bit deflated becuase even people like the loud mouth Stock/Biz guy on FoX thought there would be Massive SHOW TRIALS as the info became public and there haven't been the bankers are for the most part sailing through this Unscathed.
remember post #32
....
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
"Matt Taibbi
February 16, 2011 9:00 AM ET
Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.
Invasion of the Home Snatchers
Instead, federal regulators and prosecutors have let the banks and finance companies that tried to burn the world economy to the ground get off with carefully orchestrated settlements — whitewash jobs that involve the firms paying pathetically small fines without even being required to admit wrongdoing. To add insult to injury, the people who actually committed the crimes almost never pay the fines themselves; banks caught defrauding their shareholders often use shareholder money to foot the tab of justice. "If the allegations in these settlements are true," says Jed Rakoff, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, "it's management buying its way off cheap, from the pockets of their victims."
Taibblog: Commentary on politics and the economy by Matt Taibbi
To understand the significance of this, one has to think carefully about the efficacy of fines as a punishment for a defendant pool that includes the richest people on earth — people who simply get their companies to pay their fines for them. Conversely, one has to consider the powerful deterrent to further wrongdoing that the state is missing by not introducing this particular class of people to the experience of incarceration. "You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once."
But that hasn't happened. Because the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.
Just ask the people who tried to do the right thing.... "
fj1200
11-18-2011, 11:39 AM
That's a good news story that But I guess I'm a bit deflated becuase even people like the loud mouth Stock/Biz guy on FoX thought there would be Massive SHOW TRIALS as the info became public and there haven't been the bankers are for the most part sailing through this Unscathed.
remember post #32
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Palin Rider was fun wasn't he? Oh, and my response to #32 still stands as well.
Also, I'm not sure who you're referring too, haven't seen Fox News in ages; Kudlow is one of the smarter guys if you ask me.
revelarts
11-18-2011, 12:39 PM
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Palin Rider was fun wasn't he? Oh, and my response to #32 still stands as well.
Also, I'm not sure who you're referring too, haven't seen Fox News in ages; Kudlow is one of the smarter guys if you ask me.
No it's Jim Cramer, not Kudlow,
Jim Cramer was predicting Heads rolling as they should have, from AIG, Lehmann bros, predatory hedge funds and the rouges gallery mentioned in above article. That was the saddest of his forecast that did not come true (bear sterns). The courts should apologize to the S&L scandal people.
however here's more folks that fines and have gone to jail or took fines for fraud and sweetheart deals fairly recently but wall street has somehow cauterized the bleeding pretty much ...
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revelarts
11-18-2011, 01:35 PM
part 2
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fj1200
11-18-2011, 01:39 PM
No it's Jim Cramer, not Kudlow,
Jim Cramer was predicting Heads rolling as they should have, from AIG, Lehmann bros, predatory hedge funds and the rouges gallery mentioned in above article. That was the saddest of his forecast that did not come true (bear sterns). The courts should apologize to the S&L scandal people.
however here's more folks that fines and have gone to jail or took fines for fraud and sweetheart deals fairly recently but wall street has somehow cauterized the bleeding pretty much ...
I know it wasn't Kudlow, Cramer is wackadoodle. People should go to jail for violating actual laws.
red states rule
11-19-2011, 03:28 AM
Was Someone you talked to on the phone upset and went to the wrong bank?
:poke:
I worked my way off the phones Rev and now I deal with the written sob stories the customer sends in
But I find it telling you did not say anything about the hippie trying to blow up a bank and kill people in the process
red states rule
11-19-2011, 03:31 AM
No it's Jim Cramer, not Kudlow,
Jim Cramer was predicting Heads rolling as they should have, from AIG, Lehmann bros, predatory hedge funds and the rouges gallery mentioned in above article. That was the saddest of his forecast that did not come true (bear sterns). The courts should apologize to the S&L scandal people.
however here's more folks that fines and have gone to jail or took fines for fraud and sweetheart deals fairly recently but wall street has somehow cauterized the bleeding pretty much ...
<EMBED height=360 type=application/x-shockwave-flash width=640 src=http://www.youtube.com/v/wiupWdM6Irk?version=3&feature=player_detailpage allowScriptAccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">
Rev you have got to be kidding me. You are using Rachel Maddow of DNCTV as a source of information?
No wonder you are so scewed up
revelarts
11-19-2011, 07:58 AM
Rev you have got to be kidding me. You are using Rachel Maddow of DNCTV as a source of information?
No wonder you are so scewed up
refute the docs, letters and court cases she brings up here then well have something to talk about red.
red states rule
11-19-2011, 08:08 AM
refute the docs, letters and court cases she brings up here then well have something to talk about red.
Easy enough when it comes to her Rev. But I am sure in your world she is a very credoble source
In that world the blame lies soley on the "greedy" banks, and Wall St.
She (and you) NEVER talk about who laid the foundation for what we are now experiencing
The Dems
On Friday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow accurately blamed a bill enacted in 1999 for today's financial crisis, but in so doing exclusively pointed accusatory fingers at its Republican sponsors while totally ignoring the overwhelming Democrat support it received in both Chambers of Congress.
Maybe even more egregious, she chose not to address it being signed into law by President Bill Clinton until a guest inconveniently brought it up.
Of course, NewsBusters has been apprising readers about the significance of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (aka Gramm-Leach-Bliley) for many months, including articles on the subject here (http://www.debatepolicy.com/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/03/23/abcs-claire-shipman-blames-republicans-current-financial-crisis) and here (http://www.debatepolicy.com/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/10/27/60-minutes-financial-crisis-piece-ignores-election-ramifications).
With this in mind, despite Maddow's supposed intellectual prowess, she's not only extremely late to this party, but she also apparently thinks only the sponsors of a bill are responsible for its content and not those that vote for or eventually sign it into law (video part I embedded right, part II below the fold with partial transcript):
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 was introduced by three Republicans, Gramm, Leach, and Bliley. It repealed the wall that had been put up in the Great Depression, a wall that kept investment banks separate from commercial banks, separate from insurance firms and so on. When that wall got torn down, we ended up with big, hybrid, complicated, uber financial everything companies that we couldn`t have had before. That`s how Citibank ended up eating Travelers Group Insurance to change from Citibank into Citigroup, which just happened to be completely impossible to regulate.
All of a sudden, with these new, uber, giant, complicated, hybrid firms, the Wall Street cops, the regulators, they were essentially still on horseback while the robbers, the guys trying to get away with anything to make a buck, they were in spaceships. So, we had robbers in spaceship and cops on horseback.
Yes, this was introduced by three Republicans. However, what Maddow conveniently ignored is that it passed the Senate (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00354) by a vote of 90-8 with 38 Democrats saying "Yea"; it passed in the House (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h1999-570) 362-57 with 153 Democrats saying "Yea".
To be more specific, in the Senate this bill was supported by high-profile Democrats such as Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Robert Byrd, Tom Daschle, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Diane Feinstein, Ernest Hollings, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Mary Landrieu, Pat Leahy, Carl Levin, Joe Lieberman, Daniel Moynihan, Harry Reid, Paul Sarbanes, and Chuck Schumer.
In the House, the bill was supported by high-profile Democrats such as David Bonior, Sherrod Brown, James Clyburn, Elijah Cummings, Harold Ford, Dick Gephardt, Steny Hoyer, Sheila Jackson-Lee, William Jefferson, John Murtha, Jerry Nadler, Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel, Debbie Stabenow, Ellen Tauscher, and Bob Wexler.
With this in mind, why did Maddow only point fingers at the three Republican sponsors? Maybe more importantly, why didn't she mention that it was signed into law by Bill Clinton who could have vetoed it and survived an override attempt if Democrats backed him?
Of course, she actually didn't mention Clinton's involvement. That was only revealed when her guest David Cay Johnston brought it up likely much to Maddow's disappointment.
In the end, I congratulate Maddow for at least informing her viewers about this important piece of legislation, and how critical its passage was in causing the current financial crisis.
However, her exclusively blaming this on three Republicans is a shameful attempt to shelter high-ranking Democrats -- including the current Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee -- from responsibility.
Additionally, it is preposterous to exclusively accuse this bill for Glass Steagall's demise. After all, the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 was actually the first law enacted to remove some of Glass Steagall's regulations. This was sponsored by Democrat Rep. Fernand St. Germain (D-RI.), passed in the House 367-39, passed in the Senate 76-9, and was signed into law by Jimmy Carter.
Two years later, the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act deregulated savings and loans. It passed in the House by a margin of 272-91, and cleared the Senate with amendments by a simple voice vote.
Add it all up, and for twenty years, Republicans and Democrats in the legislative and executive branches of our government have been steadily unwinding Glass Steagall regulations.
To blame it on only three Republicans is a disgusting farce.
Nice job, Rachel.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/03/22/maddow-blames-financial-crisis-republican-deregulation-ignores-overwh#ixzz1e9k7GL29
fj1200
12-02-2011, 01:51 PM
More low hanging fruit rev:
Stock Wipeout
Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said.The fund manager says he was shocked that Paulson would furnish such specific information -- to his mind, leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.There's no evidence that they did so after the meeting; tracking firm-specific short stock sales isn't possible using public documents.And law professors say that Paulson himself broke no law by disclosing what amounted to inside information.
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LVDZC507SXKX01-53FDT6STR4PRVU9B7CRTDL62J0
revelarts
12-03-2011, 01:05 PM
More low hanging fruit rev:
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LVDZC507SXKX01-53FDT6STR4PRVU9B7CRTDL62J0
This is the kind of thing I've mentioned before.
the revolving door, federal Jobs and Fed Positions going to Goldaman Sachs heads and from there acting on the markets and feeding inside info back to friends at the old firm and other insiders.
Not mistakes,
I'd call it criminal.
fj1200
12-03-2011, 01:40 PM
^All made possible by excessive government involvement, regulations, and a lack of transparency.
revelarts
12-03-2011, 02:10 PM
^All made possible by excessive government involvement, regulations, and a lack of transparency.
:rolleyes: maybe some but not all. The "guberment made me crooked" riiiiiight.
IMO it's symbiotic thing, big money and gov't. One of the things the founders warned of, the moneyed powers taking the reins and using it for their benefit.
fj1200
12-03-2011, 04:22 PM
^You misunderstand.
red states rule
12-05-2011, 05:23 AM
http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/gv120111dAPR20111202064527.jpg
revelarts
02-05-2012, 12:06 PM
ANd the NY state district attoney's office doesn't wanna know, congress about to get a roun to an investigation.
World net daily has docs that prove it apparently.
Bank of america and Well fargo have done the same i've read from other stories.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/banking-giant-accused-of-laundering-billions/
NEW YORK – A former employee of HSBC in New York has 1,000 pages of customer account records he claims are evidence of an international money-laundering scheme involving hundreds of billions of dollars by the global banking giant, which reportedly is under investigation by a U.S. Senate committee.
John Cruz has delivered to WND customer account records he says he pulled from the HSBC computer system before he was fired. Cruz was terminated Feb. 17, 2010, after two years at HSBC for “poor performance,” but he contends he was let go because senior management didn’t want to him to pursue his personal investigation.
Asked for comment, HSBC spokesman Rob Sherman issued a statement to WND.
“We support efforts to protect the integrity of the financial system, and our commitment to AML (anti-money laundering) includes rigorous internal processes and a close working partnership with regulators and law enforcement,” the statement said.
One of the largest banks in the world, London-based HSBC has about 7,500 offices in more than 80 countries and territories in Europe, North and South America, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and Africa.
In his position as an account relationship manager, Cruz worked in the HSBC southern New York region, which accounts for about 50 percent of HSBC’s North American revenue. He was assigned to work with several branch managers to identify accounts in which HSBC might introduce additional banking services.
Cruz told WND he has “firsthand knowledge and proof of how HSBC transferred billions of dollars through accounts linked to companies that did not exist.”
“I had poor job performance because the portfolio of HSBC accounts I was given to work ended up being 90 percent fictitious and fraudulent accounts,” he said. “How could I expand HSBC bank relations with fraudulent accounts that were created to be used for illegal money laundering?”
Meanwhile, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has begun probing money-laundering activity at HSBC, according to a Reuters report last week (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/uk-hsbc-probe-idUKTRE80O1FQ20120125), with the intention of scheduling hearings in the spring.....
...
“From what I saw, I came to suspect HSBC had become the Mexican drug cartels’ bank of choice,” he said....
...“I was shocked to find accounts through which millions of dollars were being deposited and withdrawn without any apparent business activity being conducted,” he said. “Then when I went to visit the business, I found nothing – shell companies, vacant offices with no furniture, or no such business whatsoever at the address listed on the account records.”
Cruz said he never imagined that keeping his job at HSBC would mean turning a blind eye to criminal behavior.
“I always thought that if you ran a bank, you would keep away from customers with fake names,” he said. “Instead, what I found at HSBC were thousands of accounts established for phantom businesses that had apparently only thousands of dollars of claimed business each year, but millions of dollars flowing into and out of the accounts every month.”....
How do stop the drug trade when you have the larges banks in the world doing the money laundering under molested by the gov't and the U.S. military protecting the poppy fields of 90% of the opium trade.
what's wrong with this picture?
Dilloduck
02-05-2012, 03:04 PM
nothing if you are on the right side of the fence.
revelarts
02-20-2012, 10:07 PM
Wachovia Bank Laundered Money for Latin American Drug Cartels
"Between 2004 and 2007 Wachovia Bank handled funds totaling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses acting on behalf of drug cartels. Wachovia conceded it didn’t do enough oversight in processing the $378.4 billion (http://www.justice.gov/usao/fls/PressReleases/Attachments/100317-02.Statement.pdf) for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. The transactions amount to the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history. Between 2006 and 2010, over 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) Mexico-U.S. border. Illegal narcotics cost the U.S. economy $215 billion (http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs38/38661/index.htm) annually.
Martin Woods, who directed Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009, left the bank after Wachovia executives disregarded documentation he produced showing drug dealers were channeling money through Wachovia’s branch network.
The case of Wachovia is not exceptional; it is just one of the U.S. and European banks that have been used by the drug cartels to launder money. Since the early 1990s, Latin American drug traffickers have gone to U.S. banks to launder their dirty cash, says Paul Campo, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s financial crimes unit.
Sources:
Article Title: American Banks ‘High’ On Drug Money: How a Whistleblower Blew the Lid Off Wachovia-Drug Cartel Money Laundering Scheme, AlterNet, November 1, 2011.
Author: Clarence Walker
URL:http://www.alternet.org/story/151135/american_banks_’high’_on_drug_money:_how_a_whistle blower_blew_the_lid_off_wachovia-drug_cartel_money_laundering_scheme (http://www.alternet.org/story/151135/american_banks_%27high%27_on_drug_money:_how_a_whi stleblower_blew_the_lid_off_wachovia-drug_cartel_money_laundering_scheme)>.
Article Title: The Banksters Laundered Mexican Cartel Drug Money, Economic Populist, June 29, 2010.
Author: Robert Oak
URL: http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/banksters-laundered-mexican-cartel-drug-money.
Article Title: Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal, Bloomberg, June 29, 2010.
Author: Michael Smith
URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html>.
Student Researcher: Alysha Klein, Florida Atlantic University
Faculty Advisor: James F. Tracy, Florida Atlantic University"
http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2012/01/26/wachovia-bank-laundered-money-for-latin-american-drug-cartels/
So why are we busting down the door of local crack dealers and sending them up the river but the fat cats pay fines with drug money and count it as the cost of doing biz?
Hows the war on drugs working here?
Dilloduck
02-21-2012, 10:14 AM
It's working great. Bankers are getting rich and home boys have a way to make some extra Benjamins if they play the system right. We're capitalists. We have to make a profit on everything or we lose.
revelarts
05-01-2012, 10:03 AM
Dutch central banker's memoirs confirm gold price suppression April 29, 2012 Source: Gata (http://www.gata.org/node/11304)
With his new study, "Dr. Zijlstra's Final Settlement: Gold as the Monetary Cosmos' Sun," appended here, our good friend the Netherlands economist Jaco Schipper of MarketUpdate.nl today adds substantially to the growing documentation of the Western central bank gold price suppression scheme.
Zijlstra is the late Dutch treasurer, prime minister, and central banker Jelle Zijlstra, in whose memoirs Schipper has found confirmations of that scheme, including a confirmation involving former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, whose involvement in gold price suppression often has been noted by GATA:
http://www.gata.org/node/10923
http://www.gata.org/node/8209
Zijlstra knew what he was writing about, as he served not only as president of its central bank but also, simultaneously until his retirement in 1981, as president of the Bank for International Settlements, where gold price suppression long has been a primary function:
http://www.gata.org/node/8773
http://www.gata.org/node/11012
http://www.gata.org/node/11257
As noted by Schipper, in his memoirs Zijlstra recounts repeated efforts by the U.S. government to discourage the use of gold as a measure of currency values and writes, "Gold is artificially kept at a far too low price."
Schipper also calls attention to Zijlstra's notation that central banks had begun to count as an asset not only gold but "an asset on an equal footing," apparently some claim to gold not quite in a central bank's own possession, perhaps the original form of the somewhat mysterious "gold receivables" that now reside on the books of many central banks, mechanisms of imaginary inflation of official gold reserves....
hmmm, the free market at work, nothing to see here.
fj1200
05-01-2012, 11:16 AM
^Huh?
Dilloduck
05-01-2012, 02:08 PM
maybe your right about me FJ,
Populasit bank hater,
have you seen this film?
If anyone has the time they should watch this.
history of central banks , commentary on the gold standard, and the causes of depressions.
amazing
<OBJECT style="WIDTH: 640px; HEIGHT: 390px"><EMBED height=360 type=application/x-shockwave-flash width=640 src=http://www.youtube.com/v/7qIhDdST27g?version=3&feature=player_detailpage allowScriptAccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></OBJECT>
I rarely sit and watch anything that takes this long but this was one of the most enlightening piece I've seen for a long time. It pieces the history of our economy together in a way that really opens the eyes. Thanks again and our government DOES need to start issuing money instead of borrowing it. It's like you say "a no brainer".
fj1200
05-01-2012, 02:41 PM
I rarely sit and watch anything that takes this long but this was one of the most enlightening piece I've seen for a long time. It pieces the history of our economy together in a way that really opens the eyes. Thanks again and our government DOES need to start issuing money instead of borrowing it. It's like you say "a no brainer".
No it doesn't.
Dilloduck
05-01-2012, 07:45 PM
No it doesn't.
Does too:slap:
fj1200
05-01-2012, 10:38 PM
Does too:slap:
No. You can read my comments after rev's original posting.
Dilloduck
05-02-2012, 11:55 AM
No. You can read my comments after rev's original posting.
I did read em but you didn't convince me. The banksters have been fucking with the world for years. The bank borrows your money (savings account) and you don't get shit for interest on it. Try borrowing theirs and see what they want to charge you. Just one example. These fuckers don't work--they manipulate other people's money and entire economies for that matter.
"The money power preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. "
Abraham Lincoln
fj1200
05-03-2012, 07:56 AM
I did read em but you didn't convince me.
Of course, populists are hard to convince because they base their beliefs on misperceptions, the Wizard of Oz, convenient quotes, and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
Dilloduck
05-03-2012, 10:32 AM
Of course, populists are hard to convince because they base their beliefs on misperceptions, the Wizard of Oz, convenient quotes, and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
Odd that the presidents who wanted to do away with the fed were either assasinated or had people try to assasinate them.
fj1200
05-03-2012, 12:52 PM
Odd that the presidents who wanted to do away with the fed were either assasinated or had people try to assasinate them.
Yeah, odd. :rolleyes: Especially considering the Fed was only established in 1913. Unless you mean the various central banks that were established prior to that.
4horsemenrule
05-05-2012, 06:55 AM
While I am not saying banks are without blame in this mess we are in, the government and deadbeat homeowners deserve a majority of the blame. Here is a perfect example of what banks and investors are up against and why the housing meltdown has been going on for so long
Fort Washington couple evicted from million-dollar house
Prince George’s County sheriff’s deputies have evicted a Fort Washington couple who spent years fighting the foreclosure of their million-dollar house.
Keith and Janet Ritter did not make a single mortgage payment on the showcase home along the Potomac River after buying it at the end of 2006.
Sheriff’s deputies showed up at the house Wednesday morning with an eviction order issued last week by the county Circuit Court. The order had been sought by Kondaur Capital Corp., a California firm that buys foreclosed properties and now owns the house.
The Ritters could not be reached for comment.
During the real estate boom, the Ritters earned six-figure incomes by flipping houses — buying and reselling rapidly. Most of their activity was in the Fort Washington area. The Ritters ran into financial trouble once the housing bubble burst. They had said previously that they did not make payments because they were scrambling to save other investment properties from foreclosure.
The mortgage on the million-dollar house passed through several lenders, at least two of which tried to foreclose. The Ritters held them off with repeated bankruptcy filings in different states, temporarily halting the foreclosure process. They also benefited from a national moratorium on foreclosures following the robo-signing scandal and from Maryland’s unusually long foreclosure process, one of the most protracted in the nation.
Attorneys for Kondaur successfully foreclosed on the house late last year and obtained an eviction order in December. In March, after an article about the couple appeared in The Washington Post, sheriff’s deputies pulled up to the house but had to leave because of another last-minute bankruptcy filing by Janet Ritter. Kondaur’s lawyers last week secured the court order that allowed the eviction to go forward.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fort-washington-couple-evicted-from-million-dollar-house/2012/05/04/gIQAkTCc2T_story.html
Dilloduck
05-05-2012, 07:26 AM
Yeah, odd. :rolleyes: Especially considering the Fed was only established in 1913. Unless you mean the various central banks that were established prior to that.
Had to really split hairs for that one, didn't ya. Don't wanna count Jackson, Mckinley or Lincoln huh ?
fj1200
05-05-2012, 09:14 PM
Had to really split hairs for that one, didn't ya. Don't wanna count Jackson, Mckinley or Lincoln huh ?
No, not really. Kennedy, Ford, and Reagan opposed the Fed? I do give credit for injecting more hearsay into the debate though.
4horsemenrule
05-07-2012, 03:25 PM
and here is an artcile from last year showing the deadbeat homeowners take their "revenge" on the banks for taking the property back (when they stop making their payments) and they trash the property
Guess who pays for this?
Foreclosed Home Owners Take Out Revenge on Properties
Daily Real Estate News | Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Some foreclosed home owners are taking out their anger on the homes they are forced to leave behind, smashing holes in the walls, scribbling graffiti everywhere, leaving piles of trash, and ripping out appliances.
More banks -- facing a growing problem from trashed foreclosures -- are opting to offer homes at big discounts rather than fix the repairs, which can send surrounding home values in the neighborhood spiraling down, experts say.
Real estate pro Nick Davis with RE/MAX Premier Group told the Tampa Tribune that he has seen some home values greatly diminish from foreclosed home owners who have trashed it. For example, he recalls one home that would have fetched $250,000 back in 2006 during the housing boom that would now sell for about $75,000 because it was trashed by the former owners.
"It looks like someone took revenge," Davis says about the home, which had holes in the wall, appliances ripped out, and piles of trash. "Unfortunately, we're seeing more of this. We've seen cement in the plumbing systems, the air conditioners ripped out from the outside, wiring being removed."
http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2011/08/31/foreclosed-home-owners-take-out-revenge-properties
4horsemenrule
05-28-2012, 06:16 AM
Why are the Police NOT doing their job - and I wonder who will pay for all the damage to the property?
On Friday morning, police from the Hennepin Country Sheriff's Office abandoned an attempt to evict protestors from a foreclosed home in south Minneapolis after a tense standoff.
By the protestors' account, the standoff began at 4 a.m., when about 20 to 30 police arrived at the home with a battering ram, bashed in the front door, surrounded the home and blocked traffic so that no one could approach it. A spokesman for the sheriff's department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For the past month, activists with the Occupy movement in Minneapolis have been using the home as a sort of fortress and command center, and the raid was the second on the home this week. On Wednesday, the police called off their first attempt to evict the protestors after about 100 people rallied at the house.
The house belongs to the Cruz family -- a young woman named Alejandra, her brother David and their parents -- and the family and its supporters insist that the home went into foreclosure not because of the family's fault but as a result of a difficulties arising from an online banking system. Activists say they have been working with the original lender, the PNC Financial Services Group, to find a solution that both sides can agree on. But in the meantime, Freddie Mac, which bought the home in August at a sheriff's sale, is pushing for an eviction.
Freddie Mac Brad German said documents provided to the company by PNC showed "no record of the borrower seeking assistance and no record of a missed electronic transfer payment." The family has not made any payments for nearly two years, he said.
After the police arrived on Friday morning, five protestors who had been staying in the home locked themselves to railings and other objects, and the sheriff’s deputies used saws, jackhammers and other tools to remove them, the protestors said. All five of these protestors were arrested.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/25/foreclosure-occupy-homes-minneapolis-_n_1546419.html
tailfins
05-28-2012, 10:05 AM
Why are the Police NOT doing their job - and I wonder who will pay for all the damage to the property?
The only difference here is the publicity. Abandoned bank owned houses are routinely vandalized or get used as meth houses.
I have a better question: Why do standoffs from people the left like get treated different than standoffs from people the left hate? In other words: Why didn't the occupiers get the "Ruby Ridge" treatment?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge
4horsemenrule
05-28-2012, 10:07 AM
The only difference here is the publicity. Abandoned bank owned houses are routinely vandalized or get used as meth houses.
and no matter which way you slice it, we the taxpayers will be paying for the damage and/or eating the losses
Something that the OWS hippies know full well and ignore
Along with the liberal media
revelarts
07-09-2012, 07:27 AM
Mainstream Economist: We Might Need to Hang Some Bankers to Stop Criminal Looting
Source: Washington’s Blog (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/)
Nobel prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz – and many other experts – have said nothing will change unless dishonest bankers are jailed (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/11/another-nobel-economist-says-we-have-to-prosecute-fraud-or-else-the-economy-wont-recover.html).
Former trader Max Keiser (http://maxkeiser.com/) has been calling for years for crooked bankers to be hanged, to send a message that crime won’t be tolerated.
But Nouriel Roubini is a lot more mainstream than Keiser – or even Stiglitz – being very close to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. See this (http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-05-11/wall_street/30064401_1_financial-crisis-geithner-and-summers-objective-view) and this (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123491676536704371.html).
Roubini told Bloomberg that nothing has changed since the start of the financial crisis, and we might need to throw bankers in jail – or hang them in the streets – before they’ll change:
Nobody has gone to jail since the financial crisis. The banks, they do things that are illegal and at best they slap on them a fine. If some people end up in jail, maybe that will teach a lesson to somebody. Or somebody hanging in the streets.
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revelarts
07-09-2012, 07:54 AM
Quotes from the video i posted above
"nothing has happened after the global banking crisis
the intensive are still to Cheat and be illegal or immoral
You have to Break up these financial supermarket
you have
commercial banking,
investment banking,
asset management,
baan brokerage,
insurance underwriting every security and directive
there are no Chinese walls and there are massive conflicts interest because you are on every side of every deal...
...Bankers haven't changed in the last 100 or 1000 of years they are greedy...
...no one has gone to jail over any of the financial issues until they are Jailed or maybe hanged in the streets you won't have change...
...there are MORE conflicts of interest now than 4 yrs ago
the to big to fail the banks are even bigger to fail
JP Morgan taken over Wash Mutual and Bear Sterns
Bank of America merged with Country Wide & Meryl Lynch
things are worse not better….
… And the gov't have less policy tricks to pull out of the hat than in 2008
fj1200
07-09-2012, 11:34 AM
Jail? For what crime?
revelarts
07-09-2012, 12:09 PM
AS mentioned Above, Conflict of interest and Fraud for a start.
revelarts
07-09-2012, 12:27 PM
Banks get a fine, a slap on the wrist, and the bankers retire to luxury.
Barclays Bank boss Bob Diamond resigning from his job over the LIBOR rate fixing scandal. Still no resignations or police charges at the Bank of England for their frauds and money laundering.
The LIBOR affair
Banksters
"How Britain’s rate-fixing scandal might spread—and what to do about it
Jul 7th 2012 | from the print edition
“SINCE we have not more power of knowing the future than any other men, we have made many mistakes (who has not during the past five years?), but our mistakes have been errors of judgment and not of principle.” So reflected J.P. Morgan junior in 1933, in the middle of a financial crisis. Today’s bankers can draw no such comfort from their behaviour. The attempts to rig LIBOR (the London inter-bank offered rate), a benchmark interest rate, not only betray a culture of casual dishonesty; they set the stage for lawsuits and more regulation right the way round the globe. This could well be global finance’s “tobacco moment”.
The dangers of this are obvious. Popular fury and class- action suits are seldom a good starting point for new rules. Yet despite the risks of banker-bashing, a clean-up is in order, for the banking industry’s credibility is shot, and without trust neither the business nor the clients it serves can prosper.
In this section
At present, the scandal rages in one country and around one bank. Barclays has been fined $450m by American and British regulators for its attempts to manipulate LIBOR. The bank’s first attempt to ride out the storm failed miserably; Bob Diamond, Barclays’ chief executive, resigned this week. The British government has ordered a parliamentary review into its banks. The reputation of the City of London, where LIBOR is set by collating estimates of their own borrowing costs from a panel of banks, has been further dented."
http://www.economist.com/node/21558260
revelarts
07-09-2012, 12:39 PM
No Banker held accountable
Bank of America
is facing over a dozen major lawsuits for selling fraudulent securities
to institutional investors. They have settled for $8.5 billion
in damages with investors, still face a further $10 billion in similar
claims from AIG, and $700 million more from Allstate, as well as a
fraud suit for just over $1 billion by U.S. Bancorp.
settled for $624 million in a case that claimed they knowingly sold
in fraudulent securities to New York PUBLIC PENSION funds. Also settled
for $315 million in a case involving the Mississippi state PENSION fund. Similar
cases from other states are in the pipeline.
After purchasing ailing Merrill Lynch with taxpayer funds,
bonuses paid to Merrill executives—to ease the merger approval
process—became the subject of a lawsuit. While they settled with
the S.E.C. for $33 million, a judge later QUADRUPLED THE FINE to $125 million
to resolve the claim of fraud.
On October 14, 2004 the New York State Office of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer) announced that it had commenced a civil action against Marsh & McLennan Companies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_%26_McLennan_Companies) for steering clients to preferred insurers with whom the company maintained lucrative payoff agreements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery), and for soliciting rigged bids for insurance contracts from the insurers. The Attorney General announced in a release that two AIG executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges in connection with this illegal course of conduct. In early May 2005, AIG restated its financial position and issued a reduction in book value of USD $2.7 billion, a 3.3 percent reduction in net worth.
On February 9, 2006, AIG and the New York State Attorney General's office agreed to a settlement in which AIG would pay a fine of $1.6 billion.[124] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_International_Group#cite_note-123)
etc etcetcet
fj1200
07-09-2012, 12:40 PM
AS mentioned Above, Conflict of interest and Fraud for a start.
Any details of crimes or just nebulous stuff you don't like?
EDIT:
Ah, details I see. Someone is pursuing allegations and prosecuting.
revelarts
07-09-2012, 12:48 PM
Any details of crimes or just nebulous stuff you don't like?
EDIT:
Ah, details I see. Someone is pursuing allegations and prosecuting.
Eliot Spizter WAS pursuing the criminal activity but Just at the right time he was exposed and moved out of a position where he could do any harm to Wall st.
Kaphish my friend? nutralized ya see, that's all. forgietaboutit
revelarts
07-09-2012, 12:54 PM
And I'll mention again the drug money laudering stuff
where the company pays a fine and the Bankers ... well nothing that i know of. and even the Bank pays a fines and promises to do better.
Pssfft. cost of doing biz seems to me.
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fj1200
07-09-2012, 12:56 PM
Eliot Spizter WAS pursuing the criminal activity but Just at the right time he was exposed and moved out of a position where he could do any harm to Wall st.
Kaphish my friend? nutralized ya see, that's all. forgietaboutit
Yes, I'm sure Wall Street planted the hooker. BTW, I'm all for prosecutors pursuing actual crime.
revelarts
07-09-2012, 01:00 PM
Yes, I'm sure Wall Street planted the hooker. BTW, I'm all for prosecutors pursuing actual crime.
Ahh most times you don't have to plant the hooker.
You just have to have pictures times and dates ready when you need um. yasee, yaknowwhatimean?
fj1200
07-09-2012, 01:09 PM
Ahh most times you don't have to plant the hooker.
You just have to have pictures times and dates ready when you need um. yasee, yaknowwhatimean?
Yes, of course... and a DA who likes hookers. :rolleyes:
revelarts
07-09-2012, 01:23 PM
Yes, of course... and a DA who likes hookers. :rolleyes:
yeah yeah dats right you got it.
A DA that Likes Hookers yeah yeah...
or has a mistress, girlfriend boyfriend on the side. Or maybe Who drinks a little to much or likes the ponys, likes to indulge a lil recreational drugs from time to time, or has financial troubles or maybe a very close family with similar issues kapish?
If they don't have no weakness like that we can make it look like it, and still gum up the so called wheel of justice der you know, it's business. You don't like to go there but somtimes you gotta do what ya gotta do.
revelarts
07-09-2012, 01:37 PM
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revelarts
07-10-2012, 07:13 AM
By Matt Taibbi (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog)
March 14, 2012 10:55 AM ET
At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some shit again: ...
It's been four years since the government, in the name of preventing a depression, saved this megabank from ruin by pumping $45 billion of taxpayer money into its arm. Since then, the Obama administration has looked the other way as the bank committed an astonishing variety of crimes – some elaborate and brilliant in their conception, some so crude that they'd be beneath your average street thug. Bank of America has systematically ripped off almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, depositors, homeowners, shareholders, pensioners and taxpayers. It brought tens of thousands of Americans to foreclosure court using bogus, "robo-signed" evidence – a type of mass perjury that it helped pioneer. It hawked worthless mortgages to dozens of unions and state pension funds, draining them of hundreds of millions in value. And when it wasn't ripping off workers and pensioners, it was helping to push insurance giants like AMBAC into bankruptcy by fraudulently inducing them to spend hundreds of millions insuring those same worthless mortgages.
But despite being the very definition of an unaccountable corporate villain, Bank of America is now bigger and more dangerous than ever. It controls more than 12 percent of America's bank deposits (skirting a federal law designed to prohibit any firm from controlling more than 10 percent), as well as 17 percent of all American home mortgages. By looking the other way and rewarding the bank's bad behavior with a massive government bailout, we actually allowed a huge financial company to not just grow so big that its collapse would imperil the whole economy, but to get away with any and all crimes it might commit. Too Big to Fail is one thing; it's also far too corrupt to survive.
All the government bailouts succeeded in doing was to make the bank even more prone to catastrophic failure – and now that catastrophe might finally be at hand. Bank of America's share price has plunged into the single digits, and the bank faces battles in courtrooms all over America to avoid paying back the hundreds of billions it stole from everyone in sight. Its credit rating, already downgraded to a few rungs above junk status, could plummet with the next bad analyst report, causing a frenzied rush to the exits by creditors, investors and stockholders – an institutional run on the bank.
They're in deep trouble, but they won't die, because our current president, like the last one, apparently believes it's better to project a false image of financial soundness than to allow one of our oligarchic banks to collapse under the weight of its own corruption. Last year, the Federal Reserve allowed Bank of America to move a huge portfolio of dangerous bets into a side of the company that happens to be FDIC-insured, putting all of us on the hook for as much as $55 trillion in irresponsible gambles. Then, in February, the Justice Department's so-called foreclosure settlement, which will supposedly provide $26 billion in relief for ripped-off homeowners, actually rewarded the bank with a legal waiver that will allow it to escape untold billions in lawsuits. And this month the Fed will release the results of its annual stress test, in which the bank will once again be permitted to perpetuate its fiction of solvency by grossly overrating the mountains of toxic loans on its books. At this point, the rescue effort is so sweeping and elaborate that it goes far beyond simply gouging the tax dollars of millions of struggling families, many of whom have already been ripped off by the bank – it's making the government, and by extension all of us, full-blown accomplices to the fraud.
....
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bank-of-america-too-crooked-to-fail-20120314#ixzz20DeNQZts
red states rule
07-11-2012, 03:16 AM
Rev, I doubt if you will respond to this but I have some info for you regarding my employer.
In my comapny's case 93 percent of our customers have kept up with their home payments in the Obama economy. For those we have not been able to help – it certainly has not been for a lack of trying. For every one foreclosed loan, we have helped two families avoid it Rev
Bottom line is some people can’t afford to remain in their homes. On average, they remain there for 17 months before the foreclosure is completed. Per the notes on the loan I am working, we attempt to contact these customers 250 times (on average) and did everything within our power to find an option to avoid foreclosure. After all, as a company, we know that nobody wins when a foreclosure occurs – not us, not the h/o - only the f/c attorney makes out
I have seen loan after loan where payments have not been made for YEARS Rev
What is the bank and investors to do in these caeses? Eat the mortgage? Let the people live there forever for free?
In NJ they slowed down the f/c process to a point where it is common to see loans 3 YEARS past due and the f/c sale date has yet to be set
While you constantly blame the banks for all this, do you hold the person who bought a home they coound not afford accountable at all?
revelarts
07-11-2012, 05:49 AM
Rev, I doubt if you will respond to this but I have some info for you regarding my employer.
In my comapny's case 93 percent of our customers have kept up with their home payments in the Obama economy. For those we have not been able to help – it certainly has not been for a lack of trying. For every one foreclosed loan, we have helped two families avoid it Rev
Bottom line is some people can’t afford to remain in their homes. On average, they remain there for 17 months before the foreclosure is completed. Per the notes on the loan I am working, we attempt to contact these customers 250 times (on average) and did everything within our power to find an option to avoid foreclosure. After all, as a company, we know that nobody wins when a foreclosure occurs – not us, not the h/o - only the f/c attorney makes out
I have seen loan after loan where payments have not been made for YEARS Rev
What is the bank and investors to do in these caeses? Eat the mortgage? Let the people live there forever for free?
In NJ they slowed down the f/c process to a point where it is common to see loans 3 YEARS past due and the f/c sale date has yet to be set
While you constantly blame the banks for all this, do you hold the person who bought a home they coound not afford accountable at all?
RSR, yes we've talk about this before, your right the banks are not wrong to foreclose on loans years in arrears. I'm not saying most banks, even the ones mentioned in the stories i've posted, haven't dealt with many homeowners more than fairly in plenty of cases.
But that doesn't erase their other wrong doing.
Like a cleaning service that does n outstanding job and doesn't always bug people to pay while still serving, but part of the company also goes to a few customers homes/businesses in the night to rob them blind.
revelarts
07-11-2012, 06:33 AM
Gold may have been manipulated like the London interbank rate or Libor over a long time frame, Ned Naylor-Leyland, investment director at Cheviot, told CNBC.
The scandal (http://www.cnbc.com/id/48114974)surrounding the fixing of the Libor has opened markets up to "more scrutiny and more investigation," Naylor-Leyland said.
He expects to see revelations over the next few months that the price of gold (Exchange:XAU=) was also manipulated because "gold and silver reflect the true value of money the same way interest rates do."
[More from CNBC: Dollar Rally Could Accelerate, Charts Say (http://www.cnbc.com/id/48128906)]
"It is effectively an intervention in two ways; one would be the fact that for central banks, gold and silver going up doesn't make their currency look any good, and secondly a number of the big commercial banks have very large short positions which they like to manage and make easy money from," he said.
A formal investigation into the manipulation of silver has been going on for two years in the U.S. "Although there is a lot of evidence that it is taking place, nothing has come out of the investigation yet," Naylor-Leyland said.
Chris Powell, Secretary and Treasurer of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee told CNBC in June that "as central banks are interested in supporting government bonds and the dollar and keeping interest rates low, they continue to manipulate the gold market".
it was manipulated, I posted this before:
Dutch central banker's memoirs confirm gold price suppression
April 29, 2012 Source: Gata (http://www.gata.org/node/11304)
With his new study, "Dr. Zijlstra's Final Settlement: Gold as the Monetary Cosmos' Sun," appended here, our good friend the Netherlands economist Jaco Schipper of MarketUpdate.nl today adds substantially to the growing documentation of the Western central bank gold price suppression scheme.
Zijlstra is the late Dutch treasurer, prime minister, and central banker Jelle Zijlstra, in whose memoirs Schipper has found confirmations of that scheme, including a confirmation involving former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, whose involvement in gold price suppression often has been noted by GATA:
http://www.gata.org/node/10923
http://www.gata.org/node/8209
Zijlstra knew what he was writing about, as he served not only as president of its central bank but also, simultaneously until his retirement in 1981, as president of the Bank for International Settlements, where gold price suppression long has been a primary function:
http://www.gata.org/node/8773
http://www.gata.org/node/11012
http://www.gata.org/node/11257
As noted by Schipper, in his memoirs Zijlstra recounts repeated efforts by the U.S. government to discourage the use of gold as a measure of currency values and writes, "Gold is artificially kept at a far too low price."
Schipper also calls attention to Zijlstra's notation that central banks had begun to count as an asset not only gold but "an asset on an equal footing," apparently some claim to gold not quite in a central bank's own possession, perhaps the original form of the somewhat mysterious "gold receivables" that now reside on the books of many central banks, mechanisms of imaginary inflation of official gold reserves....
max kiser has been screaming the markets been manipulated by gov't and banking crooks for years
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revelarts
07-18-2012, 03:46 PM
MORE J.P. Morgan
JPMorgan scandal: The tip of the iceberg July 17, 2012
Source: Andre Damon and Barry Grey, Global Research (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31951)
JPMorgan Chase, the biggest US bank by assets, announced Friday that the trading loss from derivatives bets made by its Chief Investment Office (CIO) had reached $5.8 billion, nearly three times the amount the company had revealed in May. It added that the bad bets could result in an additional $1.7 billion in losses over the rest of the year.
In its second quarter filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the bank admitted that it had failed to report $459 million in losses from the trades in its first quarter report, released April 13. CEO Jamie Dimon and other top executives attempted to lay the blame on “certain individuals” who “may have been seeking to avoid showing the full amount of the losses being incurred in the portfolio during the first quarter”—an allusion to several traders in the London office of the bank’s CIO who have since been forced out of the firm.
Bloomberg News reported that this explanation seemed implausible to former JPMorgan executives it interviewed, who said the company had mechanisms in place to make sure traders could not simply hide their losses. In fact, JPMorgan’s report to the SEC on Friday indicates that the bank recorded a $718 million loss from the London trades on its internal accounts, but did not report the loss in its first quarter earnings statement.
In other words, JPMorgan deliberately falsified its first quarter report to the SEC in order to conceal its massive gambling losses. This is a crime—a violation of banking laws for which Dimon, as the CEO, is responsible. That Dimon was involved in a cover-up is underscored by the proof contained in Friday’s report to the SEC that he was already aware his bank had lost hundreds of millions if not billions when he told a conference call in April that reports of major losses by the bank’s CIO were “a tempest in a teapot.”
The trading loss debacle is only one of many scandals engulfing JPMorgan Chase.
* The bank is currently under investigation for helping to manipulate the London interbank lending rate (Libor), together with other major banks, in order to conceal financial weaknesses and boost profits from speculative bets on derivatives linked to Libor, the most important global benchmark for trillions of dollars in mortgages, credit cards, student loans and other financial products.
• The SEC and other regulators are investigating allegations by current and former JPMorgan financial advisers that the company encouraged them to sell their clients JPMorgan mutual funds when it was against the clients’ interests.
• The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has sued JPMorgan to force it to hand over emails related to alleged price-gouging in electrical power markets in California and the Midwest by one of the bank’s subsidiaries.
• JPMorgan, together other major banks and Visa and MasterCard, last week announced a proposal to settle allegations that they colluded to fix fees on credit card transactions, ripping off billions of dollars from retailers and customers and violating antitrust laws.
Dimon has been handsomely rewarded for his role in facilitating these various schemes. He received $23.1 million in compensation last year, up 11 percent from 2010. In this he joined the heads of other major banks, who received an average 12 percent pay increase in 2011.
Dimon has been referred to as “Obama’s favorite banker,” having visited the White House over a dozen times. Within hours of Dimon’s surprise announcement of JPMorgan’s multi-billion-dollar loss in May, Obama personally vouched for him, calling him “one of the smartest bankers we’ve got.”
The criminality oozing out of every pore of JPMorgan is just the tip of the iceberg. Scandals are emerging almost daily in a global financial system that is corrupt to the bone. They are exposing as well the complicity of regulators and governments, which serve as the handmaidens of the financial mafia.
The unfolding Libor scandal reportedly involves more than 20 giant banks in the US, Europe and Asia. Last month’s settlement with British-based Barclays Bank lifted the lid on the role of the Federal Reserve in the US and the Bank of England in covering up and condoning the underreporting of interbank interest rates in the run-up to the Wall Street meltdown of September 2008 and its aftermath....
When will people go to jail over this stuff.
If you steal a 2001 BMW your probably going to jail for a while, these guys rip off BILLIONS and they have to testify before congress and go home to their villas and the bussinesses are allowed to continue without a hic up, after a small settlement of course.
what's wrong witht the picture here?
revelarts
12-11-2012, 07:18 AM
Banking giant HSBC to pay £1.2bn to settle U.S. probe into money-laundering for Mexican drug cartels "December 11, 2012 Source: UK Daily Mai (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2246215/HSBC-pay-1-2bn-settle-money-money-laundering-Mexican-drug-cartels-case.html)
British banking giant HSBC will pay £1.2billion ($1.9billion) to settle a money-laundering probe by federal and state authorities in the United States, a law enforcement official said on Monday.
The probe of the bank – Europe’s largest by market value – has focused on the transfer of billions of dollars on behalf of nations like Iran and North Korea, which are under international sanctions, and the transfer of money through the U.S. financial system from Mexican drug cartels.
According to the official, HSBC will pay £777million ($1.25billion) in forfeiture and pay £407million ($655million) in civil penalties.
The £777million figure is the largest forfeiture ever in a case involving a bank.
Under what is known as a deferred prosecution agreement, the financial institution will be accused of violating the Bank Secrecy Act and the Trading With The Enemy Act.
The London-based bank said it is cooperating with investigations but that those discussions are confidential.
Last month it announced it had set aside £933million ($1.5billion) to cover the costs of any settlement or fines...
Senator Carl Levin, the committee chairman, cited instances in which HSBC promised to fix deficiencies after being sanctioned by regulators but failed to follow up.
Mr Levin also said the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency - the U.S. agency that oversees the biggest banks - tolerated HSBC's weak controls against money laundering for years and that agency examiners who raised concerns were overruled by their superiors...."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2246215/HSBC-pay-1-2bn-settle-money-money-laundering-Mexican-drug-cartels-case.html#ixzz2EkFhMaH8
revelarts
01-30-2013, 01:41 AM
Libor Crime of the Century #3
what's the prosecution up to?
more settlements
The British Banking Association is the non-governmental trade association responsible for setting Libor each day. And its members began rushing to the aid of investigators before the public was made aware of the investigation, seeking to cooperate, in exchange for immunity and prosecutorial leniency. The Swiss banking giant UBS has already reached a conditional immunity agreement with the DOJ on one branch of the investigation. The fine Barclays paid out to regulators was part of its partial immunity deal reached with criminal investigators in the US and UK. And documents made public by Canadian regulators suggest that Citibank has also sought to provide information on the rate-fixing to lighten its own share of the criminal burden....
realnews
some history
July 14, 2012, 9:00 pm U.S. Is Building Criminal Cases in Rate-Fixing
<address class="byline author vcard">By BEN PROTESS (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/author/ben-protess/) and MARK SCOTT (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/author/mark-scott/)</address> As regulators ramp up their global investigation into the manipulation of interest rates, the Justice Department has identified potential criminal wrongdoing by big banks and individuals at the center of the scandal.
The department's criminal division is building cases against several financial institutions and their employees, including traders at Barclays (http://dealbook.on.nytimes.com/public/overview?symbol=BCS&inline=nyt-org), the British bank, according to government officials close to the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. The authorities expect to file charges against at least one bank later this year, one of the officials said.
The prospect of criminal cases is expected to rattle the banking world and provide a new impetus for financial institutions to settle with the authorities. The Justice Department investigation comes on top of private investor lawsuits and a sweeping regulatory inquiry led by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/commodity_futures_trading_commission/index.html?inline=nyt-org). Collectively, the civil and criminal actions could cost the banking industry tens of billions of dollars.
Authorities around the globe are examining whether financial firms manipulated interest rates before and after the financial crisis to improve their profits and deflect scrutiny about their health. Investigators in Washington and London sent a warning shot to the industry last month, striking a $450 million settlement with Barclays in a rate-rigging case. The deal does not shield Barclays employees from criminal prosecution.
The multiyear investigation has ensnared more than 10 big banks in the United States and abroad. With the prospects of criminal action, several firms, including at least two European institutions, are scrambling to arrange deals, according to lawyers close to the case. In part, they are trying to avoid the public outcry that stemmed from the Barclays case, which prompted the resignation of top executives.
The criminal and civil investigations have focused on how banks set the London interbank offered rate (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/l/london_interbank_offered_rate_libor/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier), known as Libor. The benchmark, a measure of how much banks charge one another for loans, is used to determine the borrowing costs for trillions of dollars of financial products, including mortgages, credit cards and student loans (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/student_loans/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier). Cities, states and municipal agencies also are examining whether they suffered losses from the rate manipulation, and some have filed suits.
With civil actions, regulators can impose fines and force banks to overhaul their internal controls. But the Justice Department would wield an even more potent threat by bringing criminal fraud cases against traders and other employees. If found guilty, they could face jail time.
The criminal investigations come at a time when the public is still simmering over the dearth of prosecutions of prominent executives involved in the mortgage crisis. The continued trouble in the financial sector, including the multibillion-dollar trading losses at JPMorgan Chase (http://dealbook.on.nytimes.com/public/overview?symbol=JPM&inline=nyt-org), have only further fueled the anger of consumers and investors.
But the Libor case presents a potential opportunity for prosecutors. Given the scope of the problems and the number of institutions involved, the rate-rigging investigation could provide a signature moment to hold big banks accountable for their activities during the financial crisis.
"It's hard to imagine a bigger case than Libor," said one of the government officials involved in the case.
The Justice Department has jurisdiction over the London bank rate because the benchmark affects markets in the United States. It could not be learned which institutions the criminal division is chasing next.
According to people briefed on the matter, the Swiss bank UBS (http://dealbook.on.nytimes.com/public/overview?symbol=UBS&inline=nyt-org) is among the next targets for regulatory action. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is pursuing a potential civil case against the bank. Regulators at the agency have not yet decided to file an action against the bank, nor have settlement talks begun. UBS has already reached an immunity deal with one division of the Justice Department, which could protect the bank from criminal prosecution if certain conditions are met. The bank declined to comment.
The investigation into the global banks is unusually complex and it could continue for years, and ultimately end in settlements rather than indictments, said the officials close to the case. For now, regulators are building investigations piecemeal because the facts of the cases vary widely. That could make it difficult to compile a global settlement, although some banks would prefer an industrywide deal to avoid the harsh glare of the spotlight, said a lawyer involved in the case.
American authorities face another complication as they build cases. Investigators still lack access to certain documents from big banks.
Before gathering some e-mail and bank records from overseas firms, the Justice Department and American regulators need approval from British authorities, according to the people close to the case. But officials in London have been slow to act, the people said. At times, British authorities have hesitated to investigate.
By contrast, the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have spent two years building cases together. Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice department's criminal division, has close ties with David Meister, the former federal prosecutor who runs the commission's enforcement team.
In the Barclays case, the British bank was accused of reporting false rates to squeeze out extra trading profits and fend off concerns about its health. During the crisis, banks feared that reporting high rates would suggest a weak financial position.
Lawmakers in London and Washington are examining whether regulators looked the other way as banks artificially depressed the rates. On Friday, it was disclosed that a Barclays employee notified the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_reserve_bank_of_new_york/index.html?inline=nyt-org) in April 2008 that the firm was underestimating its borrowing costs. Despite the warning signs, the illegal actions continued for another year.
But in April 2008, a senior enforcement official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Vincent McGonagle, opened an investigation. He directed the case along with another longtime official, Gretchen Lowe.
At first the case stalled as the agency waited months to receive millions of pages of documents when Barclays pushed back against the American regulators, according to the officials close to the case. By the fall of 2009, the trading commission received a trove of information, providing a broad view into the wrongdoing.
A series of incriminating e-mail and instant messages, regulators say, laid bare the multiyear scheme. In one document, a Barclays employee said the bank was "being dishonest by definition."
The case gained further traction in early 2010, when the agency's enforcement team engaged the Justice Department. The department's criminal division, led by Mr. Breuer, agreed that regulators had a strong case. The investigation continued until January 2012, when the trading commission notified Barclays lawyers that they were entering the final stages before deciding about an enforcement action.
As part of the deal, regulators pushed the bank to adopt new controls to prevent a repeat of the problems. Among other measures, the bank must now "implement firewalls" to prevent traders from improperly talking with employees who report rates.
The bank says that it provided extensive cooperation during the three inquiries, and has spent around $155 million on its own three-year investigation. Because it agreed to settle with British authorities, Barclays received a 30 percent fine reduction.
In the United States, Barclays offered to pay a fine of $200 million to the C.F.T.C., slightly below the initially proposed range, according to government officials close to the case. Mr. Meister's team soon accepted the offer, securing the biggest fine in the commission's history.
On June 27, British and American authorities announced the deal with Barclays, which agreed to pay more than $450 million total. "For this illegal conduct, Barclays is paying a significant price," Mr. Breuer said then.
Susanne Craig contributed reporting.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/u-s-is-building-criminal-cases-in-rate-fixing/?pagewanted=print
uly 20, 2012, 7:51 pm Libor Case Documents Show Timid Regulators
<address class="byline author vcard">By BEN PROTESS (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/author/ben-protess/) and MARK SCOTT (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/author/mark-scott/)</address> As an interest rate manipulation scandal grips the banking industry, regulators have defended their actions and trumpeted their efforts to overhaul the flawed system during the financial crisis.
But documents released on Friday show that regulators balked at playing a more public role in reform efforts during 2008, and some British officials resisted certain fixes.
Although the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_reserve_bank_of_new_york/index.html?inline=nyt-org) and the Bank of England (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/bank_of_england/index.html?inline=nyt-org) advocated changes to the rate-setting process, they demanded anonymity. In shunning the spotlight, the regulators deferred to the British Bankers' Association, a private industry group that oversees the rate-setting process.
"They will obviously have to remove the references to us and Fed," a Bank of England official said in a June 2008 e-mail, referring to a draft of the trade group's proposal.
The documents, released by the Bank of England, shed new light on the inconsistent regulatory response to problems with the London interbank offered rate (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/l/london_interbank_offered_rate_libor/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier), or Libor. The crucial benchmark affects the cost of trillions of dollars in mortgages and other loans.
Authorities around the globe are investigating whether more than 10 banks reported false rates to produce profits and deflect concerns about their well-being. In June, Barclays (http://dealbook.on.nytimes.com/public/overview?symbol=BCS&inline=nyt-org) reached a $450 million settlement with regulators over rate-rigging, the first case to stem from the broad investigation. The wrongdoing at Barclays intensified during the financial crisis, when the bank lowballed its rate out of fear that high borrowing costs indicated weak health.
After the Barclays case, lawmakers in London and Washington are questioning why regulators were not more aggressive in thwarting the illegal activities. The House Financial Services Committee is collecting transcripts of calls between regulators and the banks under scrutiny.
The trove of e-mails and documents released on Friday builds on what regulators have disclosed in pieces over the last few weeks.
The New York Fed previously divulged that it learned in April 2008 that Barclays was reporting false rates, a revelation that came months after hearing market chatter about issues with Libor. In testimony before Parliament this week, British authorities said the New York Fed never told them that Barclays was breaking the law.
Instead, Timothy F. Geithner (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/timothy_f_geithner/index.html?inline=nyt-per), who served as the head of the New York Fed at the time, proposed changes to the rate-setting process. The Bank of England echoed the recommendations.
But the new documents suggest that the British central bank heard complaints about potential Libor manipulation in 2007, sooner than previously known. Despite the knowledge, the documents show that Bank of England officials failed to stop the illegal actions and dismissed some of Mr. Geithner's plans to fix the process.
In part, officials at the British central bank were unsure about the extent of the Libor problems. Some issues "might go away with time," one Bank of England official said in a June 2008 e-mail. The regulator also acknowledged that some market participants saw fundamental flaws with the system. "Since August 2007, this problem has become more severe," a Bank of England official wrote in an internal memo in May 2008. "There is a longstanding perception that Libor by virtue of the manner in which it is set is open to distortion."
By the middle of 2008, there was a consensus among British and American authorities that the rate-setting process - whether or not it was deliberately manipulated - needed to be fixed.
In an e-mail to Mervyn A. King, the governor of the Bank of England, Mr. Geithner recommended that British officials "strengthen governance and establish a credible reporting procedure" and "eliminate incentive to misreport," according to documents released last week. Mr. King replied that the ideas "seem sensible," and he agreed to pass them on to the British Bankers' Association.
Both the New York Fed and the Bank of England pushed the trade group to beef up its proposal and ensure that the rate-setting process was accurate. The changes focused on improving Libor's governance procedures, including audits into how banks submitted rates. Officials also wanted to ensure that the Libor-setting process was more transparent and featured rates from a broader panel of financial institutions.
But within the Bank of England, new documents show, some central bank officials undermined parts of Mr. Geithner's plan.
The New York Fed recommended, for example, that the British Bankers' Association could randomly select rates from banks. A Bank of England official said it "does not seem such a good idea," according to the documents released on Friday. Another idea to poll banks twice daily about their rates, rather than just once in the morning, will "create more difficult issues than it solves," a different official said.
Instead, some Bank of England officials seemed to support a plan to have "a panel of senior bankers overseeing" the Libor process. In essence, the central bank wanted to let a wider set of firms police themselves.
At the same time, neither the New York Fed nor the Bank of England was willing to help oversee Libor. Authorities say they could not provide the government's official stamp of approval to a for-profit plan. The regulators also hoped to keep open the possibility that alternatives would emerge to compete with Libor.
A Bank of England official said in a June 2008 e-mail that "we have a clear line" that the central bank's name "should not be used." The official proposed a broader phrase instead: "all interested parties."
That approach upset the trade group, which said the new wording "is just too weak." The British Bankers' Association argued that government had an interest in protecting the integrity of Libor.
The lobbying became so fierce that a Bank of England official noted that the trade group "is close to desperate for even a small hook to imply that there will be a dialogue with central banks."
After months of discussions, the regulators got their way. The final wording of the Libor review, which was published in late 2008, did not refer to specific central bank authorities.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/british-libor-documents-show-timid-regulators/?pagewanted=print
anybody going to jail i don't thnk so...
For UBS, a Record of Averting Prosecution
By JAMES B. STEWART (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/james_b_stewart/index.html)
Published: July 20, 2012
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As the Justice Department weighs the possibility of criminal charges in the unfolding Libor (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/l/london_interbank_offered_rate_libor/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) rate-setting scandal, it may want to consider the record of the Swiss banking giant UBS (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/ubs_ag/index.html?inline=nyt-org).
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Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg News
UBS is one of more than a dozen banks being investigated for manipulating interest rates for their own benefit.
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UBS A.G (http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/business/ubss-track-record-of-averting-prosecution-common-sense.html)
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At UBS, a series of immunity, nonprosecution and deferred prosecution agreements in recent years — evidently the government’s preferred approach to corporate crime — seems to have had scant, if any, deterrent effect. “It’s depressing,” Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, a member of the House oversight committee, told me this week after we discussed UBS’s recent transgressions. “The Justice Department has to decide: Is the day of consent decrees and settlements, where you pay a fine, one passed on to shareholders, are those days over? Are the days of jail time here?”
UBS, one of more than a dozen banks being investigated for manipulating interest rates for their own benefit, is hardly the only major global bank with a record of recidivism. Just this week, HSBC apologized after a Senate committee exposed a pattern of money laundering for “drug kingpins and rogue nations.” HSBC, which had been cited twice in the last decade for repeatedly violating money laundering laws, remains under civil and criminal investigation.
It was a rival, Barclays, that set off an international furor when it admitted to a wide-ranging conspiracy to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, commonly known as Libor, which is the benchmark for countless interest rate determinations and an estimated $450 trillion in derivative contracts. It obtained a nonprosecution agreement, in large part because of what the Justice Department called its “extraordinary” cooperation, and agreed to pay American and British authorities a $450 million penalty. Barclays has had its own problems with accusations of money laundering and paid $298 million to settle charges that it circumvented United States prohibitions on funneling money to Iran.
But in many ways, UBS is in a league of its own given its track record for scandals. Should UBS be implicated in the Libor rate-fixing conspiracy, it’s hard to imagine a better corporate candidate for a criminal indictment — even though it has already been granted conditional immunity from some aspects of the Libor scandal.
As the Justice Department points out in its guidelines for charging a corporation with a crime (http://www.justice.gov/dag/cftf/corporate_guidelines.htm): “A corporation, like a natural person, is expected to learn from its mistakes,” and “a history of similar misconduct may be probative of a corporate culture that encouraged, or at least condoned, such misdeeds, regardless of any compliance programs. Criminal prosecution of a corporation may be particularly appropriate where the corporation previously had been subject to noncriminal guidance, warnings or sanctions.”
UBS, with dual headquarters in Zurich and Basel, traces its roots to 1854. Last year, it had more than $26 billion in revenue and nearly 65,000 employees worldwide. It was deemed too big to fail during the financial crisis, and had to be bailed out by the Swiss government after a $50 billion write-down on mortgage-backed securities.
The bank’s recidivism seems rivaled only by its ability to escape prosecution:
¶ UBS obtained a deferred prosecution agreement in 2009 for conspiring to defraud the United States of tax revenue by creating more than 17,000 secret Swiss accounts for United States taxpayers who failed to declare income and committed tax fraud. UBS bankers trolled for wealthy clients susceptible to tax evasion schemes at professional tennis matches, polo tournaments and celebrity events. One UBS banker smuggled diamonds in a toothpaste tube to accommodate a client. In return for the deferred prosecution agreement, UBS agreed to pay $780 million in fines and penalties and disclose the identities of many of its United States clients. At the same time it settled Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it acted as an unregistered broker-dealer and investment adviser to American clients and paid a $200 million fine. In October 2010 the government dropped the charges, saying UBS had fully complied with its obligations under the agreement.
¶ In May 2011, UBS admitted that its employees had repeatedly conspired to rig bids in the municipal bond (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/municipal_bonds/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) derivatives market over a five-year period, defrauding more than 100 municipalities and nonprofit organizations, and agreed to pay $160 million in fines and restitution. An S.E.C. official called UBS’s conduct “a ‘how to’ primer for bid-rigging and securities fraud.” UBS landed a nonprosecution agreement for that behavior, and the Justice Department lauded the bank’s “remedial efforts” to curb anticompetitive practices.
¶ In what the S.E.C. called at the time the largest settlement in its history, in 2008 UBS agreed to reimburse clients $22.7 billion to resolve charges that it defrauded customers who purchased auction-rate securities, which were sold by UBS as ultrasafe cash equivalents even though top UBS executives knew the market for the securities was collapsing. Seven of UBS’s top executives were said to have dumped their own holdings, totaling $21 million, even as they told the bank’s brokers to “mobilize the troops” and unload the securities on unsuspecting clients. As Andrew M. Cuomo, who was New York’s attorney general then, put it: “While thousands of UBS customers received no warning about the auction-rate securities market’s serious distress, David Shulman — one of the company’s top executives — used insider information to take the money and run.” Besides reimbursing clients and settling with the S.E.C., UBS paid a $150 million fine to settle consumer and securities fraud charges filed by New York and other states. It again escaped prosecution.
There’s more — including UBS’s prominent role and big losses in the mortgage-backed securities debacle that helped bring on the financial crisis. The federal agency overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sued UBS for securities law violations, accusing it of “materially false statements and omissions.” The agency is seeking $1 billion in damages. (UBS has denied the charges and the case is pending.) UBS hasn’t been charged with any civil or criminal misconduct related to mortgage-backed securities.
In the continuing global interest rates investigations, UBS last summer revealed that it had received conditional immunity (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1114446/000095012311068021/y92053e6vk.htm#Y92053tocpage) from the Justice Department and other authorities. It was shown this leniency even though the Justice Department has pointedly said that Barclays, not UBS, was the first bank to cooperate.
Among the dozen or so banks caught up in the investigation, UBS hasn’t disclosed what role, if any, it played. But its conditional immunity indicates that UBS confessed and gave evidence against others.
A corporation can avoid criminal conviction and fines for antitrust crimes “by being the first to confess participation in a criminal antitrust violation, fully cooperating with the division, and meeting other specified conditions,” according to the Justice Department.
The department’s antitrust division stresses that it makes only one grant of immunity per conspiracy, so it isn’t clear how both Barclays and UBS managed to get it. Libor is set each day based on submissions from major global banks for a variety of currencies. UBS is a member of the banking panels that determine United States dollar, British pound (http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/currency/pound_british/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier), euro, yen and Swiss franc Libor rates.
UBS said its antitrust immunity was tied only to yen-related rates. That means it could still be prosecuted for antitrust crimes related to other currencies. Barclays obtained antitrust immunity only for a conspiracy involving the euro (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/currency/euro/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) interbank offered rate, suggesting that the Justice Department is treating the cases as separate conspiracies.
Unlike Barclays, UBS does not have immunity or a nonprosecution agreement from the criminal division, which means it could be charged with the full range of securities and commodities fraud.
When I asked UBS for comment about its record, a spokeswoman said that the bank “acknowledges and takes responsibility for the mistakes and oversights that occurred in our past, and we have learned a great deal. New senior management is fully committed to protecting the firm’s reputation, our employees and shareholders from any misconduct by individuals. We continuously work to ensure compliance with the rules, and improve controls to keep mistakes from happening or to detect them as soon as possible, if they do occur.”
In the Libor scandal, UBS’s conditional immunity applies only to the company, not to individuals.
While UBS seems to fit the profile for charging corporations with crime, it remains the case that individuals commit crimes, even if companies are liable for their acts. But so far, the only person from UBS to receive a jail term in connection with any of the bank’s multiple scandals and offenses is Bradley Birkenfeld, the original whistle-blower in the huge tax evasion case. Mr. Birkenfeld pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and was sentenced to 40 months in prison.
Another UBS banker, Renzo Gadola, pleaded guilty in the tax fraud case, cooperated, and was granted probation. A third was charged but hasn’t been tried and remains a fugitive.
In another notorious case, British authorities charged a trader, Kweku Adoboli, with fraud and false accounting after UBS announced it had lost $2.3 billion in unauthorized trades. He pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. And in the municipal securities bid-rigging scandal, three former UBS bankers are facing trial and a fourth pleaded guilty but hasn’t been sentenced.
Otherwise, no one at UBS has faced criminal charges, even though two high-ranking UBS officials settled New York and other states’ charges of insider trading for dumping their auction-rate securities. One, Mr. Shulman, UBS’s global head of municipal securities, who was publicly criticized by Mr. Cuomo, paid $2.75 million to settle the charges and was suspended as a securities broker for two and a half years. Another, David D. Aufhauser, UBS’s general counsel, paid $6.5 million and was barred from practicing law in New York for two years. Mr. Shulman was suspended by UBS and Mr. Aufhauser left the bank. UBS declined to comment on the reason for his departure and named him an adviser to the bank.
Neither man admitted or denied guilt, but in both cases, the allegations made by the authorities were incriminating. According to the complaints, Mr. Shulman sold his personal holdings within days of learning the market was in distress. Mr. Aufhauser was on an Acela train to Washington when UBS’s chief risk officer e-mailed him to warn that the auction-rate securities market was collapsing. Minutes later, he e-mailed his UBS broker to sell the securities in his account. (A lawyer said Friday that Mr. Aufhauser subsequently reversed the trade and didn’t profit from the order.)
Today Mr. Shulman is listed as a “managing member” of BasePoint Capital L.L.C., a private investment firm in Greenwich, Conn. Mr. Aufhauser is a partner at the prominent Washington law firm Williams & Connolly. His biography on the firm’s Web site references his experience as “managing director and global general counsel of the UBS AG investment bank.”
Both Mr. Shulman and Mr. Aufhauser declined to comment.
Is it any wonder that despite repeated apologies and promises to change, UBS and other banks keep getting in trouble?
Last week the New York Times reporters Ben Protess and Mark Scott wrote that the Justice Department was building criminal cases (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/u-s-is-building-criminal-cases-in-rate-fixing/?hp)against several individuals and institutions implicated in the Libor scandal, even as rumors swirled that more generous settlements with major banks were in the works.
If prosecutions are forthcoming, it will be a welcome sign that banks and their employees will be held accountable for their misdeeds. As the recent wave of scandals suggests, years of leniency have failed to bring the hoped-for results or respect for the law.
“My view is we’re well past the day where we can postpone putting guilty people behind bars,” said Mr. Welch, the representative from Vermont, who sent a letter this week to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. urging the department to “aggressively prosecute” bank officials who manipulated Libor.
“The whole point of prison terms is to deter conduct in that community, and we know jail sentences are an effective deterrent,” Mr. Welch added. “Restoring public confidence means that people who commit crimes spend some time in jail.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 20, 2012
An earlier version of this column misstated the charges against UBS from the federal agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as fraud, rather than securities violations.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?Itemid=74&id=31&jumival=8668&option=com_content&task=view#.UQjB2eiA3AY
revelarts
04-08-2013, 05:49 AM
Goldman Sachs Trader Faces Prison For Secret $8B Position
Former Goldman trader Matthew Taylor exits federal court in New York on April 3, 2013.
How is this materially different from Goldman Sachs hiding from clients the fact that the CDO they just bought was custom-built by hedge fund manager John Paulson, designed to fail -- stuffed with the worst of subprime mortgage dreck on purpose -- and that both Goldman and Paulson would be taking a secret short position on the CDO.
Here's your answer: there is no difference.
But Goldman won big with Paulson, only the client got hurt, so no one went to jail.
In this case, Goldman lost $118 million.
So you can bet your ass that trader is going to prison.
By far the best part of the story is Taylor's admission that he created the secret position in order to boost his bonus. For the first time in a while, bonus-driven fraud hurts a Wall Street bank more than it hurts taxpayers. And for a final laugh, Morgan Stanley hired Taylor in March 2008, three months after Goldman Sachs fired him.
---
Ex-Goldman Trader Faces Prison For Hiding $8 Billion Position
Bloomberg
Matthew Taylor, a former Goldman Sachs trader, pleaded guilty to concealing an unauthorized $8.3 billion trading position in 2007, causing the bank to lose $118 million.
Under an agreement with the government, Taylor, 34, pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud yesterday before U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley in Manhattan federal court. He told the judge he took the position to boost his standing, and his bonus, at Goldman Sachs.
Reading from a prepared statement, Taylor told Pauley that on Dec. 13, 2007, he accumulated a position 10 times the amount he was allowed to take in futures contracts tied to the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. He said he made false entries in a manual trading system to hide the position on the CME Globex electronic-trading platform used by Goldman Sachs. He said he lied when questioned about the position by other Goldman Sachs employees.
“I accumulated this trading position and concealed it for the purpose of augmenting my reputation at Goldman and increasing my performance-based compensation,” Taylor said. “I am truly sorry.”
In a one-count charging document, prosecutors said Taylor made the unauthorized trades to compensate for losses in his trading account the previous month. Taylor’s salary in 2007 was $150,000 and he expected a $1.6 million bonus, prosecutors said.
After Taylor ran up the $8.3 billion position, which exceeded the combined limit for his 10-trader desk, he was contacted by a member of the Market Risk Management and Analysis team. He falsely claimed the trading account had a position of $65 million, rather than about $8 billion, according to the government.
The maximum sentence for wire fraud is 20 years in prison. Both sides agreed that federal sentencing guidelines, which aren’t binding, call for Taylor to get 33 to 41 months in prison and pay a fine of $7,500 to $75,000.
Pauley asked why prosecutors didn’t seek a higher guideline range for Taylor for jeopardizing the safety and soundness of a financial institution. “I want to just make it very clear to the defendant and his counsel that the court is puzzled by the lack of any enhancements in this case, with a loss of $118 million,” the judge said.
Morgan Stanley hired Taylor in March 2008, three months after Goldman Sachs fired him.
http://dailybail.com/home/goldman-sachs-trader-faces-prison-for-secret-8b-position.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-03/ex-goldman-sachs-trader-to-plead-guilty-his-lawyer-says.html
fj1200
04-08-2013, 08:58 AM
Goldman Sachs Trader Faces Prison For Secret $8B Position
How is this materially different from Goldman Sachs hiding from clients the fact that the CDO they just bought was custom-built by hedge fund manager John Paulson, designed to fail -- stuffed with the worst of subprime mortgage dreck on purpose -- and that both Goldman and Paulson would be taking a secret short position on the CDO.
Quite different actually.
revelarts
04-08-2013, 11:08 AM
Quite different actually.
Yes, the derivatives and CDO's were worse.
fj1200
04-08-2013, 01:02 PM
Yes, the derivatives and CDO's were worse.
No, the models used by (practically) everybody that didn't recognize the true downsides based on particular scenarios were worse. The real problems were an overly generous Fed and mark-to-market which caused a slow bleed.
red states rule
04-08-2013, 03:15 PM
It is amazing how the liberal media is ignoring this story - perhaps because Lord Obama wants it?
Obama administration to banks: Why aren’t you making higher-risk loans?posted at 10:01 am on April 3, 2013 by Ed Morrissey
On one level, it’s almost unbelievable that anyone would ask this (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-administration-pushes-banks-to-make-home-loans-to-people-with-weaker-credit/2013/04/02/a8b4370c-9aef-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_story.html?hpid=z1) less than five years after the housing-bubble crash and the near-wipeout of Western financial institutions. On another, it’s almost inevitable, given the efforts by the governing class and the media to ignore the central failure in that bubble, which was incentivizing increasingly risky loans with government cash and coercion, which created a false-equity trajectory that nearly ruined us. If that core cancer gets overlooked, it simply keeps coming back:
The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.
President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind (http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/duke20130308a.htm), including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.
In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/04/03/obama-administration-to-banks-why-arent-you-making-higher-risk-loans/
How much has Fannie and Freddie cost taxpayers? This is what got us in the mess we are in now and Obama wants to force banks to make those same loans all over again?
Robert A Whit
04-08-2013, 03:26 PM
Banks Boosts CEO Pay by 34% as Bailout Loans Go Unpaid
Published on 02-24-2011
Source: Bloomberg
SunTrust Banks Inc., the Georgia lender that has yet to repay $4.85 billion in taxpayer bailout funds, reported a 34 percent increase in Chief Executive Officer James Wells’s 2010 compensation.
Wells’s total $10.3 million included $4.5 million in pay to be collected later, primarily boosted by the changing value of his pension benefits, the bank said today in a regulatory filing. He received $4.6 million in stock, more than three times as much as the previous year, it said. His salary was unchanged at $1.1 million, and he didn’t get a cash bonus or stock options. The bank reported a $3.3 million option award for 2009.
SunTrust, led by Wells since January of 2007, returned to quarterly profits last year for the first time since 2008 as it set aside less money to cover bad loans. The company may sell stock to repay funds received under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, Wells, 64, told analysts last month.
He declined more than 552,900 stock options that were awarded for 2009, according to the filing. Had he accepted the grant, his total compensation for 2010 would have fallen 37 percent from the year earlier, the Atlanta-based company said.
....
This country sure comes up with strange things to complain about.
First, where is the proof that company got any loans?
Why does the Fed claim it got paid back?
Next, in this era of men paid to spot, swing at, and at times connect with a white ball aka baseball, this pay for the CEO does not bother me.
Why?
First to hit a baseball does not mean much. And one person being hired collects the money and this baseball player does not have employees on his payroll to help him play, nor is his task more than simple entertainment.
CEO pay is decided by a group of people who have pay books to study. The only reason I know of them is it was used by myself and my fellow board of directors to guide us in setting CEO pay.
Some baseball players collect far more than this does.
BTW, the ball player can fail two thirds of the time and still be called a top rated player. CEOs can't fail two thirds of the time.
red states rule
04-08-2013, 03:28 PM
Hey, some people are set to blame the banks and only the banks for tall the economic woes.
They ignore the government interference and have an issue with the free market running its course and determining the pay of individuals
Meanwhile, our economy continues to be crushed over regulations and MORE government interference. As the problem gets worse only the hate toward banks increases
red states rule
04-12-2013, 03:49 AM
http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/ca041213dBP20130409104521.jpg
revelarts
04-26-2013, 01:44 PM
Rolling stone magazine
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...l-yet-20130425 (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425)
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix
Matt Taibbi (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog) April 25, 2013 1:00 PM ET
Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.
You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."
That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.
Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.
It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620), to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.
The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620)
Why? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.
"It's a double conspiracy," says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. "It's the height of criminality."
The bad news didn't stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. "Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry," CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.
But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants' incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.
"A farce," was one antitrust lawyer's response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.
"Incredible," says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.
All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.
If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want....
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz2Rb0OVRK6 (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz2Rb0OVRK6)
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter (http://ec.tynt.com/b/rw?id=bbJxak64Kr4kEzacwqm_6l&u=rollingstone) | RollingStone on Facebook (http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bbJxak64Kr4kEzacwqm_6l&u=RollingStone)
aboutime
04-26-2013, 03:25 PM
How odd is that?
Anyone unfamiliar with WHY banks are in business?
Yes. Banking is a business.
Banks operate, grow, and stay in business by....READY?......Making Money!
Go figure.
Being a business based on Making Money.
The banking industry pays people. Imagine that?
In order for people to work for a bank.
Normally. Unless banks freely give SAMPLES away each week.
They PAY their employee's in order to stay in business.
What is wrong with that?
Other than....if you do not work in a bank, and only keep your money there...
HOW'S THAT DIRECT DEPOSIT WORK ...... to your PIGGY BANK?
revelarts
04-26-2013, 03:36 PM
How odd is that?
Anyone unfamiliar with WHY banks are in business?
Yes. Banking is a business.
Banks operate, grow, and stay in business by....READY?......Making Money!
Go figure.
Being a business based on Making Money.
The banking industry pays people. Imagine that?
In order for people to work for a bank.
Normally. Unless banks freely give SAMPLES away each week.
They PAY their employee's in order to stay in business.
What is wrong with that?
Other than....if you do not work in a bank, and only keep your money there...
HOW'S THAT DIRECT DEPOSIT WORK ...... to your PIGGY BANK?
what the heck are you talking about man?
aboutime
04-26-2013, 04:35 PM
what the heck are you talking about man?
WORDS TOO CONFUSING FOR YA?
fj would like you to patronize him, and make him feel wanted.
fj1200
04-27-2013, 07:33 AM
fj would like you to patronize him, and make him feel wanted.
I don't need to. He understands how to put a sentence together. I may not always agree with his thoughts but at least they are understandable.
aboutime
04-27-2013, 07:35 AM
I don't need to. He understands how to put a sentence together. I may not always agree with his thoughts but at least they are understandable.
fj. Who died and left you here as a grammar cop? Never mind. That's just a typical liberal trick to change the subject, rather than honestly answer a question.
fj1200
04-27-2013, 07:39 AM
fj. Who died and left you here as a grammar cop? Never mind. That's just a typical liberal trick to change the subject, rather than honestly answer a question.
As far as I know Jim is alive and well and wants me nowhere near the levers of power. And beyond that, I did answer your question along the lines of the subject that you initiated.
EDIT:
And I can see why you hate liberal "tricks" so much; they are most confusing for you.
aboutime
04-27-2013, 07:41 AM
As far as I know Jim is alive and well and wants me nowhere near the levers of power. And beyond that, I did answer your question along the lines of the subject that you initiated.
EDIT:
And I can see why you hate liberal "tricks" so much; they are most confusing for you.
3
revelarts
06-24-2013, 11:28 AM
http://www.wnd.com/2012/05/banking-giant-hsbc-a-criminal-enterprise/
World net daily
Banking giant HSBC 'a criminal enterprise' The global banking giant HSBC is a “criminal” operation, charges a former officer for the company’s southern New York region in a video interview with WND.
John Cruz, a former vice president and relationship manager, has turned over to WND more than 1,000 pages of documents, including customer account ledgers for dozens of companies through which, he charges, the financial institution was laundering money each month.
Cruz told WND that as a relationship manager, it was his responsibility to look up various accounts in the HSBC computer system and visit the account holders in person to offer additional banking products and services.
“I pulled these documents because I thought they were evidence of suspicious activity taking place,” Cruz affirmed when presented by WND with various HSBC computer ledgers of customer accounts. “These same documents I brought to bank security and my managers in the bank.”
To his surprise, HSBC management and security did not welcome his reports of suspicious activity.
“My managers told me I was crazy and I didn’t know what I was talking about,” he said. “They told me it was none of my business what goes on in transactions. But that’s my job.”
WND showed Cruz the HSBC account ledger for a business named United Express, as seen redacted in Exhibit 1 below:
....
“Money comes in daily, thousands of dollars, always in even amounts,” he noted. “You look at a statement and it says ‘transfer,’ but where did it go? There’s no account number or tracking number that documents where the transaction went.”
Cruz contended that HSBC was running what amounted to a “shell game.”
“So many of these businesses are conducted out of a person’s home,” he commented. “I would walk into these homes. There’s a couch, there’s a chair, a desk – but the house is empty, a couple of Mercedes sitting out front, but where is the business? It’s only online transactions of money in and money out.”
Identity theft
Cruz charges that the 1,000 pages of customer account records suggest HSBC relied on identity theft to capture legitimate Social Security numbers that were then used to create the bogus retail and commercial bank accounts through which employees systematically deposited and withdrew hundreds of millions of dollars on a daily basis, apparently without the knowledge of the identity theft victims.
“When an individual finds out they got a loan they never knew about, 5 percent of that loan went to the accounting firm that made up the phony tax returns, and the other 95 percent of that loan went to the manager,” he said.
“One manager was involved in the transaction, another manager was involved in notarizing the transaction, and senior management was involved where they signed off permission to give the loans even when the loans get rejected by underwriting.”
A criminal enterprise
Cruz told WND he recorded meetings he conducted with HSBC management and bank security personnel in which he charges various bank managers were engaging in criminal acts.
“I have hours upon hours of voice recordings, ranging from bank tellers, to business representatives, to managers, to executives,” he said. “The whole system is designed to be a culture of fraud to make it look like it’s a legalized system. But it’s not.”
Cruz explained that even when he let bank managers know he was taping the conversation, the managers were not interested in what he was saying.
“HSBC is a criminal organization,” he stressed. “It is a culture of crime.”
In January, Reuters reported (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/uk-hsbc-probe-idUKTRE80O1FQ20120125) that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had begun investigating money-laundering activity at HSBC with the intention of scheduling hearings later this year.
Last week, Reuters reported (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/03/us-hsbcusa-probes-idUSBRE8420FX20120503) the U.S. unit of the London-based HSBC Holdings Plc has been under investigation by federal law enforcement officials since 2003 for the bank’s lax attitudes toward enforcing anti-money laundering statutes.
Reuters reported that confidential documents examined from the offices of two U.S. Attorneys’ offices allege that from 2005, “the bank violated the Bank Secrecy Act and other anti-money laundering laws on a massive scale” by not adequately reviewing “hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions for any that might have links to drug trafficking, terrorist financing and other criminal activity.”
In an attempt to make his charges public, Cruz in 2011 published a book about his experiences titled “World Banking World Fraud: Using Your Identity.” (http://www.amazon.com/World-Banking-Fraud-Using-Identity/dp/146378659X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328115934&sr=8-1)
Previous stories:
Whistleblower explains ABCs of money laundering (http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/whistleblower-explains-abcs-of-money-laundering/)
Look who ‘has stolen IDs, fake tax returns’ (http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/just-makin-stuff-up-stolen-ids-fake-tax-returns/)
Investment firm fires WND reporter for exposing scandal (http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/next-shoe-drops-in-bank-scandal-on-wnd/)
Big bank retaliates against WND for exposé (http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/big-bank-retaliates-against-wnd-for-expose/)
PayPal, American Express implicated in bank fraud (http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/paypal-american-express-implicated-in-bank-fraud/)
See big bank money-laundering evidence (http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/see-big-bank-money-laundering-evidence/)
Banking giant accused of laundering billions (http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/banking-giant-accused-of-laundering-billions/)
gabosaurus
06-24-2013, 12:09 PM
Which administration's lack of oversight led to the banking industry growing increasing more corrupt?
One hint -- it wasn't the black guy.
fj1200
06-24-2013, 01:40 PM
Which administration's lack of oversight led to the banking industry growing increasing more corrupt?
One hint -- it wasn't the black guy.
Fallacy #1; who said it was the "black guy"?
Fallacy #2; what lack of oversight? Are you aware of the massive increases in oversight, AML and KYC rules promulated after the PATRIOT Act?
fj1200
06-24-2013, 01:54 PM
http://www.wnd.com/2012/05/banking-giant-hsbc-a-criminal-enterprise/
World net daily
Banking giant HSBC 'a criminal enterprise'
In an attempt to make his charges public, Cruz in 2011 published a book about his experiences titled “World Banking World Fraud: Using Your Identity.” (http://www.amazon.com/World-Banking-Fraud-Using-Identity/dp/146378659X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328115934&sr=8-1)
I hope they prosecute criminals. Did he by chance go to the DoJ?
Also, I was expecting you to post the Taibbi piece on the ratings companies I saw the other day.
The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-crisis-154447818.html)
It's long been suspected that ratings agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's helped trigger the meltdown. A new trove of embarrassing documents shows how they did it
He's still quoting from the wrong playbook though IMO.
aboutime
06-24-2013, 02:37 PM
Which administration's lack of oversight led to the banking industry growing increasing more corrupt?
One hint -- it wasn't the black guy.
Gabby. What Black guy would that be? You sound more like a racist than Obama now. How liberally, intolerant, and bigoted you are Has never been questioned here. You just prove it...over, and over, and over again.
And people like you always blame others, calling us Racists? Hypocrisy is your standard Liberal, Democrat Tactic.
red states rule
06-24-2013, 04:06 PM
Which administration's lack of oversight led to the banking industry growing increasing more corrupt?
One hint -- it wasn't the black guy.
You are correct - it was not the black guy
It was the Southern guy. The sexual predator, the guy who sexually assaulted many women, and committed perjury while President
It all began right here Gabby
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Published: September 30, 1999
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.
Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae-eases-credit-to-aid-mortgage-lending.html
aboutime
06-24-2013, 04:28 PM
You are correct - it was not the black guy
It was the Southern guy. The sexual predator, the guy who sexually assaulted many women, and committed perjury while President
It all began right here Gabby
red states rule. Once again. Gabby is just repeating the standard, instructed, brainwashed kinds of lies the Liberal, Democrats have been trained to use whenever they are threatened by Honesty, or Truth that would expose their Ignorance of which they speak.
Gabby isn't smart enough, or sincere enough to veer from blaming Bush when she is intentionally trying not to mention Bubba's name. Where the BLAME RIGHTLY belongs. That goes against the grain of everything people like Gabby thrive upon, and depend on as a defense against their own Stupidity.
gabosaurus
06-24-2013, 07:13 PM
Once again, aboutime and RSR prove they are braindead jackasses who only consider one point of view:
From the start, Bush embraced a governing philosophy of deregulation. That trickled down to federal oversight agencies, which in turn eased off on banks and mortgage brokers.
Bush did push early on for tighter controls over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but he failed to move Congress.
After the Enron scandal, Bush backed and signed the aggressively regulatory Sarbanes-Oxley Act. But SEC head William Donaldson tried to boost regulation of mutual and hedge funds, he was blocked by Bush's advisers at the White House as well as other powerful Republicans and quit.
Plus, let's face it, the meltdown happened on Bush's watch.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877320,00.html
Robert A Whit
06-24-2013, 07:43 PM
Once again, aboutime and RSR prove they are braindead jackasses who only consider one point of view:
From the start, Bush embraced a governing philosophy of deregulation. That trickled down to federal oversight agencies, which in turn eased off on banks and mortgage brokers.
Bush did push early on for tighter controls over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but he failed to move Congress.
After the Enron scandal, Bush backed and signed the aggressively regulatory Sarbanes-Oxley Act. But SEC head William Donaldson tried to boost regulation of mutual and hedge funds, he was blocked by Bush's advisers at the White House as well as other powerful Republicans and quit.
Plus, let's face it, the meltdown happened on Bush's watch.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877320,00.html
I don't recognize the Time hit piece authors, but as to the mortgage industry, I can assure all posters that blaming Bush is utter nonsense. Worse, it is all lies.
We were not deregulated. Hedge funds are not mortgage companies. It is possible that a company can do both, but Most in the mortgage industry work hard and are dedicated to honesty. A few bad apples does not mean we are bad.
You left wingers sit on your thumb as Obama enriches the very rich. With all he has done for the very rich, it probably is smart for those on the right to not defend the Rich.
But for one fact of course. They have been overtaxed and but for Obama making them all richer, they can pay more taxes.
Look at the stock market. I hear that the rich home builders are slowly coming back to life. Dodd Frank is an economy killer.
aboutime
06-24-2013, 07:51 PM
Once again, aboutime and RSR prove they are braindead jackasses who only consider one point of view:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877320,00.html
Tell us more gabby. I really do enjoy the laughs.
Robert A Whit
06-24-2013, 08:07 PM
You are correct - it was not the black guy
It was the Southern guy. The sexual predator, the guy who sexually assaulted many women, and committed perjury while President
It all began right here Gabby
I am backing you up 100 percent on what FNMA did. When it happened, I still got daily FAX flyers with many many lenders packages shown in detail. They were marked as not for public use.
It happened on Clinton's watch but in defense of him, it started in TX where a bank was sued by negroes who claimed their bad credit should qualify them for a loan. A court ruled for them thus the court takes the blame vs Clinton. Cleiton had no desire to defy the court. But the nonsense if is my fault or even the wholesale companies fault when we all know the rules came from FNMA should end but left wingers live to tell lies.
fj1200
06-24-2013, 09:06 PM
Once again, aboutime and RSR prove they are braindead jackasses who only consider one point of view:
Plus, let's face it, the meltdown happened on Bush's watch.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877320,00.html
(http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877320,00.html)
When it gets right down to it, that's really all they've got. Timing. Yet it happened within two years of the Dems taking over Congress; Coincidence?
gabosaurus
06-24-2013, 11:10 PM
Tell us more gabby. I really do enjoy the laughs.
The feeling is mutual. I get a lot of laughs out of your bullshit posts as well. There is a lot of sickness evident in all the right-wing blogs out there. Along with bitterness and dismay.
red states rule
06-25-2013, 03:07 AM
Once again, aboutime and RSR prove they are braindead jackasses who only consider one point of view:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877320,00.html
Gabby, here is the timeline where Bush tried to warn Dems on reforming Fannie and Freddie - but Dems said no
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM
and here are Dems in their own words - mostly playing the race card over R's not wanting low income people to own a home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebWJ892h5dA
NO you may now run away from this thread Gabby as the facts are way to much for you to handle
aboutime
06-25-2013, 05:00 PM
The feeling is mutual. I get a lot of laughs out of your bullshit posts as well. There is a lot of sickness evident in all the right-wing blogs out there. Along with bitterness and dismay.
We love it when you talk that way. It saves us the trouble of providing proof about what most of us have seen, and heard from you.
Please continue Gabby. If we create bullshit posts. It proves your training is worth EMULATING.
red states rule
06-26-2013, 03:15 AM
Libs like Obama NEVER learn from their past errors - and Gabby will blame Republicans when we get the same results
Please note the date
Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit
By Zachary A. Goldfarb,April 02, 2013
The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.
President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind (http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/duke20130308a.htm), including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.
In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.
Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.
Officials are also encouraging lenders to use more subjective judgment in determining whether to offer a loan and are seeking to make it easier for people who owe more than their properties are worth to refinance at today’s low interest rates (http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1836.aspx), among other steps.
Obama pledged in his State of the Union address (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/state-of-the-union-2013-president-obamas-address-to-congress-transcript/2013/02/12/d429b574-7574-11e2-95e4-6148e45d7adb_story.html) to do more to make sure more Americans can enjoy the benefits of the housing recovery, but critics say encouraging banks to lend as broadly as the administration hopes will sow the seeds of another housing disaster and endanger taxpayer dollars.
“If that were to come to pass, that would open the floodgates to highly excessive risk and would send us right back on the same path we were just trying to recover from,” said Ed Pinto (http://www.aei.org/scholar/edward-j-pinto/), a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former top executive at mortgage giant Fannie Mae.
Administration officials say they are looking only to allay unnecessary hesi*ta*tion among banks and encourage safe lending to borrowers who have the financial wherewithal to pay.
“There’s always a tension that you have to take seriously between providing clarity and rules of the road and not giving any opportunity to restart the kind of irresponsible lending that we saw in the mid-2000s,” said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-02/business/38220144_1_housing-recovery-housing-market-housing-officials
revelarts
11-29-2013, 07:45 PM
US bank JP Morgan has agreed to a record $13bn (£8bn) settlement with US regulators for misleading investors during the housing crisis.
It is the largest settlement ever between the US government and a corporation.
The bank acknowledged it made “serious misrepresentations to the public”, but said it did not violate US laws.
“We are pleased to have concluded this extensive agreement,” said JP Morgan boss Jaime Dimon in a statement (http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ONE/2799085367x0x708089/7d588c42-ea93-41c2-bc74-d99ac21edeb6/JPM%20Press%20Release%2011.19.13.pdf).
About $4bn of the settlement is to go to homeowners hurt by JP Morgan’s practices.
But Jaime Dimon and none of the other multi billion dollar fraudsters are in jail yet though are they?
have the stock holders and the corp pay the fine and the directors and people who did the deeds go home without a scratch.
If i stole a tank of gas from the 7-11 I'm likely to get in more trouble than these lying trillon dollar economy wrecking thieves.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25009683
red states rule
11-30-2013, 01:46 AM
But Jaime Dimon and none of the other multi billion dollar fraudsters are in jail yet though are they?
have the stock holders and the corp pay the fine and the directors and people who did the deeds go home without a scratch.
If i stole a tank of gas from the 7-11 I'm likely to get in more trouble than these lying trillon dollar economy wrecking thieves.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25009683
Rev please tell me what fraud took place here. The banks did what the Feds ordered them to do - make as many loans to people as possible. Since when is it fraud to give people money?
The Feds mandated banks make these loans - now the Feds blame them for the mess the government created
What is the solution Rev? Do you really think Dodd-Frank will really fix anything? With the new regs kicking in on 1/1/14 the situation will only get worse. More costs to the bank means more fees for YOU. Hell, I have seen where most banks will charge their customers a fee to merely deposit their money into their account
It is going to get very interesting Rev watching how banks respond to more intrusiveness by the Feds
logroller
11-30-2013, 04:27 AM
Rev please tell me what fraud took place here. The banks did what the Feds ordered them to do - make as many loans to people as possible. Since when is it fraud to give people money?
The Feds mandated banks make these loans - now the Feds blame them for the mess the government created
What is the solution Rev? Do you really think Dodd-Frank will really fix anything? With the new regs kicking in on 1/1/14 the situation will only get worse. More costs to the bank means more fees for YOU. Hell, I have seen where most banks will charge their customers a fee to merely deposit their money into their account
It is going to get very interesting Rev watching how banks respond to more intrusiveness by the Feds
I think the fraud occurred in not disclosing the toxicity of traded securities.
fj1200
11-30-2013, 05:18 AM
But Jaime Dimon and none of the other multi billion dollar fraudsters are in jail yet though are they?
have the stock holders and the corp pay the fine and the directors and people who did the deeds go home without a scratch.
If i stole a tank of gas from the 7-11 I'm likely to get in more trouble than these lying trillon dollar economy wrecking thieves.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25009683
Perhaps this answers why no one is in jail:
Although the settlement effectively concludes the US government's civil investigation into the bank, a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice is continuing.
Although I'm not sure there isn't some 20/20 hindsight here.
The bank has been under investigation for selling low-quality mortgage-backed securities to investors who were unaware that the securities often contained faulty mortgage products.
It is great though that they finally exonerate Bush. :poke:
"The conduct uncovered in this investigation helped sow the seeds of the mortgage meltdown," said Attorney General Eric Holder in a statement (http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/November/13-ag-1237.html).
Not forgetting that I generally disagree with your premise above. ;)
red states rule
11-30-2013, 05:36 AM
I think the fraud occurred in not disclosing the toxicity of traded securities.
LR everyone involved in that process saw what was coming and what the securities were really worth. These were the top investors the nation had and they were not rookies or day traders
What the real issue was that the Feds were not reporting accurate numbers as far as the n umber of sub prime loans that were being handed out. As most of those were bought by Freddie and Fannie when the bottom fell out of the subprime market that dragged everyone down with them
The banks were doing what the Feds ordered them to do. Go back a few posts and listen to Dems denying there was ANY problem and see how Bush tried to change things before the crap hit the fan
As usual, Dems dismissed what R's wanted to do because they were racist and did not want blacks folks to own a home
BTW any idea where that money from JP Morgan will go. NOT to the investors or homeowners like we are being told. More money for the DOJ if anything
logroller
11-30-2013, 06:00 AM
I agree, Credit markets are a sham. But what you're telling me is these traders over-valued these securities knowing very well they weren't worth it, going so far as to conceal the fact, accounting-wise, that the mortgages that backed the securities were NOT solvent. Yeah that's fraud. I don't care who says, do it anyways. If they knew it was unscrupulous, they shouldn't have done it. I'd rather be thought a racist than known as a lieing cheater.
red states rule
11-30-2013, 06:09 AM
I agree, Credit markets are a sham. But what you're telling me is these traders over-valued these securities knowing very well they weren't worth it, going so far as to conceal the fact, accounting-wise, that the mortgages that backed the securities were NOT solvent. Yeah that's fraud. I don't care who says, do it anyways. If they knew it was unscrupulous, they shouldn't have done it. I'd rather be thought a racist than known as a lieing cheater.
I have not seen where the bankers committed the fraud. LR these loans were rated by the pros like Moody's and S&P. It is their job to review these security instruments and the assists attached
I deal with this on a daily basis. The housing market was overheated and over rated thanks to all the sub prime loans being pushed out the door with the blessing of these ratings agencies, the Feds, Fannie, and Freddie
I read the letters from the borrowers whining how they are the f'ing victim in all this when they signed the closing docs
What the hell happened to the standard requirement of 20% down when you bought a house?
Remember how the lawyers (and Obama was one of them) sued banks for NOT giving enough loans to the poor folks.
logroller
11-30-2013, 06:35 AM
I have not seen where the bankers committed the fraud. LR these loans were rated by the pros like Moody's and S&P. It is their job to review these security instruments and the assists attached
I deal with this on a daily basis. The housing market was overheated and over rated thanks to all the sub prime loans being pushed out the door with the blessing of these ratings agencies, the Feds, Fannie, and Freddie
I read the letters from the borrowers whining how they are the f'ing victim in all this when they signed the closing docs
What the hell happened to the standard requirement of 20% down when you bought a house?
Remember how the lawyers (and Obama was one of them) sued banks for NOT giving enough loans to the poor folks.
You just stated that they knew what was going on and what was coming, so what difference does it make who else did what? You don't get a free pass because everybody's doing it-- and that includes the borrowers. The difference is the borrower loses their investment, as well they should , and often their home; while the investment bank loses their cash cow but keeps the cash. Go figure, the Feds go after the cash. As I said, credit markets are a sham. That's why I'm debt free, but I nonetheless must compete for things that others overvalue thanks to credit.
red states rule
11-30-2013, 06:44 AM
You just stated that they knew what was going on and what was coming, so what difference does it make who else did what? You don't get a free pass because everybody's doing it-- and that includes the borrowers. The difference is the borrower loses their investment, as well they should , and often their home; while the investment bank loses their cash cow but keeps the cash. Go figure, the Feds go after the cash. As I said, credit markets are a sham. That's why I'm debt free, but I nonetheless must compete for things that others overvalue thanks to credit.
"They" are the rating agencies and the government - not the banks. The difference is, the real culprits in this - Congress, The Fed, politicians like Clinton, Dodd, Frank - and others get zero attention to their complicity in this entire matter
From what I have read, JP settled as it was cheaper and quicker
Also nothing has changed as Obama is telling banks to make their loans again to the "poor". And thanks to this Obama economic recovery and insane Dodd-Frank regs that kick in 1/1/14 I am back to OT again
As far as the cash - the government benefits but nobody else will
Much like the Tobacco Settlement where little cash went to the smokers nut state and local governments made out
logroller
11-30-2013, 07:48 AM
"They" are the rating agencies and the government - not the banks. I was referring to this:
LR everyone involved in that process saw what was coming and what the securities were really worth. These were the top investors the nation had and they were not rookies or day traders
revelarts
11-30-2013, 08:21 AM
Red I think you may be letting your view of some transactions cloud your view of many larger transactions.
And letting your gov't vs wall st (RvsD) world view to over shadow the fact that Wall st. often dominates the gov't, side steps the gov't , appeases the gov't, and sometimes IS the gov't.
NO ONE in the Clinton, Bush, or Obama Admins told the banks to create the trillion dollar derivatives market NO ONE. they did that to make make money on what they KNEW was TONS of toxic loans.
sure .. OK .. in the beginning the the gov't was trying to Help by "forcing" the banks to make loans. and the poor banks just we're helpless. riiiight.
the bad laons were in the millions and Billions. the banks, that you admit, knew what they had done was bad biz then took those bad loans REPACKEAGED them for investors and turn the pile of crap into TRILIIONS , by cooking the books and claiming it was GOLD, the agencies, in cahoots, reported them as A1 and such, keeping the fraud going.
DId the gov't force the big banks to launder drug money too? (maybe they did?)
Did they force the big banks to give the people who made the most deceptive monetary plays bonuses to keep the game going by hook or crook?
Go back through the thread you can't just blame the gov't on this one RSR. or say " I know you are but what am I"
I'm not saying you don't have a point but what I see is There's both front counter honest banking biz AND under the counter wholesale fraud and corruption going on at the big banks RSR.
.................................................. ...................
And they have they stopped with the shaky dealing it seems one of the new things is"collateral transformations".
The "collateral transformations" of derivative and the like are supposed to be pristine, but they are based on series of 'someday maybe i'll have real collateral because i loaned -that guy- my not so pristine junk bonds or something' but -that guy- had to trade something else to get at our pension funds to attach any real pristine collateral.
and then it seems some of it doesn't even get to the pristine collateral, seem they just say it is, that's Honest and sound financial tradin' right?
I'm sure FJ will correct me if i'm off here.
Did the gov't force them to do all that does that sound like sound financial business, or more smoke?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-07/moden-market-alchemy-explained-converting-junk-debt-supersafe-treasurys-out-thin-air
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/APyOLQGXLKU?feature=player_detailpage" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640"></iframe>
red states rule
11-30-2013, 08:33 AM
Rev, the government is the one to blame for what happened. Here is one link
http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/21/study-says-community-reinvestment-act-in
Also I see how these "victims" of predatory lending behave. They file multiple bankruptcy cases to stall the foreclosure process. They demand to be presented with proof they own any money at all. They send in "debt elimination" letters off the internet to drag out the process
Also after YEARS of not paying the mortgage (and taxes and homeowners ins) they still claim to be broke. Meanwhile, it is the big bad evil banks that are attacked - while the deadbeats are offered pity and sympathy
and here is a link to some lawyer named Obama who sued CitiMortgage for not making enough loans to poor people; and also said sub prime loans was a good idea
http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/obama-sued-citibank-under-cra-to-force-it-to-make-bad-loans/
revelarts
11-30-2013, 09:16 AM
Rev, the government is the one to blame for what happened. Here is one link
http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/21/study-says-community-reinvestment-act-in
Also I see how these "victims" of predatory lending behave. They file multiple bankruptcy cases to stall the foreclosure process. They demand to be presented with proof they own any money at all. They send in "debt elimination" letters off the internet to drag out the process
Also after YEARS of not paying the mortgage (and taxes and homeowners ins) they still claim to be broke. Meanwhile, it is the big bad evil banks that are attacked - while the deadbeats are offered pity and sympathy
and here is a link to some lawyer named Obama who sued CitiMortgage for not making enough loans to poor people; and also said sub prime loans was a good idea
http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/obama-sued-citibank-under-cra-to-force-it-to-make-bad-loans/
So the banks are pure and holy and have never done any wrong every, they've never wrote any of the regs they were forced to abide by, they never had people inside the SEC to regulate them, and they've never lied or mislead anyone ever ever. They never lied to ANY customers, it JUST the customers and gov't that are evil low lifes.
AND the gov't forced the ever righteous clear headed honest capitalist big banks to launder billions in drug money too.
We should ignore and deny any evidence that tells MORE or any other story, it's just leftist propaganda, not to even be considered because we know before we examine it that it can't be true right?
well um OK,
sorry to disturb you Red.
red states rule
11-30-2013, 09:22 AM
So the banks are pure and holy and have never done any wrong every, they've never wrote any of the regs they were forced to abide by, they never had people inside the SEC to regulate them, and they've lied or mislead anyone ever ever. They never lied to ANY customers, it JUST the customers and gov't that are evil low lifes.
AND the gov't forced the ever righteous clear headed capitalist big banks to launder billions in drug money too.
We should ignore and deny any evidence that tells MORE or any other story, it's just leftist propaganda.
well um OK,
sorry to disturb you Red.
Rev you remind me a lot of the folks I have to deal with everyday. I had this one jerk (NO I am NOT calling you a jerk) who kept calling me everyday demanding we do a loan mod on his loan because the value of his property went down
Now the jerk was working, earned enough to make his payments, and was current
After 5 day of telling him we could not do it I finally took a chance and told him something that I hoped would shut him up
I asked him if we lowered his interest rate because the value of his home decreased if he would agree to allow us to increase the rate if the property value increased
He hung up and never called back
What we are seeing here is the entitlement mentality run amok and Dems leading the way. Yes Rev I know you hate the banks and think we are all heartless monsters taking advantage of the poor and uninformed
Meanwhile get ready for more fees from your bank Rev as they have to recover the lost revenue thanks to do gooder liberals
revelarts
11-30-2013, 09:45 AM
Should i start out by saying "REd i know you LOVE the big Banks but...":rolleyes:
look Red if you want to talk about more than what the customers and the gov't have done wrong we can have an honest conversation.
if you ,on principal , are not willing to admit any wrong doing by the banks we can't.
I'm not sure what name i can call a person who ignores completely the points brought up by others in a conversation.
Ok lets start with an Easy one. if we can be honest here maybe we can talk more about the rest.
RED, Did the banks launder drug money?
Did the gov't force them to do it?
Did the customers you talk to on the phone make them do it?
Did the banks commit crimes in doing so?
red states rule
11-30-2013, 09:49 AM
Should i start out by saying "REd i know you LOVE the big Banks but...":rolleyes:
look Red if you want to talk about more than what the customers and the gov't have done wrong we can have an honest conversation.
if you ,on principal , are not willing to admit any wrong doing by the banks we can't.
I'm not sure what name i can call a person who ignores completely the points brought up by others in a conversation.
Ok lets start with an Easy one. if we can be honest here maybe we can talk more about the rest.
RED, Did the banks launder drug money?
Did the gov't force them to do it?
Did the customers you talk to on the phone make them do it?
Did the banks commit crimes in doing so?
Rev, working in default I see all the origination docs and I see where the borrower signed.
I see where the Feds ordered banks to make these loans
I see where the investor in most cases is Fannie or Freddie
I recall Barney Frank telling a reporter that there is no big deal if the borrower defaults. The government is backing the loan
Now if you can show me where a mortgage banker deliberately entered false info AND the borrower signed the docs - then BOTH need to charged
I se you are getting desperate by now talking about money laundering - not the same as giving loans to poor folks then acting shocked when they default
revelarts
11-30-2013, 09:57 AM
Rev, working in default I see all the origination docs and I see where the borrower signed.
I see where the Feds ordered banks to make these loans
I see where the investor in most cases is Fannie or Freddie
I recall Barney Frank telling a reporter that there is no big deal if the borrower defaults. The government is backing the loan
Now if you can show me where a mortgage banker deliberately entered false info AND the borrower signed the docs - then BOTH need to charged
I see you are getting desperate by now talking about money laundering - not the same as giving loans to poor folks then acting shocked when they default
so that's you answer?
I said i'd talk more about the other AFTER you answer my simple questions.
This is test of your willingness to be honest about fault in general.
No need for me to beat my head against a wall of denials if you can't step up and be honest with the simple questions i posed.
red states rule
11-30-2013, 10:35 AM
so that's you answer?
I said i'd talk more about the other AFTER you answer my simple questions.
This is test of your willingness to be honest about fault in general.
No need for me to beat my head against a wall of denials if you can't step up and be honest with the simple questions i posed.
Rev the bottom line is, if Dems did not set out to make owning a home a "right" this never would have happened. Libs are out to do for the health care ins industry what they did for the housing industry
As some on the left want to put ins companies out of business - some also want to put the banks out of business
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it
revelarts
12-01-2013, 10:39 AM
Federal Judge Slams DOJ For Not Prosecuting Wall Street Execs
https://services.nycbar.org/EventDetail?EventKey=SLE111213&WebsiteKey=f71e12f3-524e-4f8c-a5f7-0d16ce7b3314
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/cb1e43f2-4be6-11e3-8203-00144feabdc0.pdf
A federal judge with a history of slamming the regulatory system issued scathing remarks against the Department of Justice on Tuesday for allowing Wall Street executives to escape criminal prosecutions.
Speaking at an event (https://services.nycbar.org/EventDetail?EventKey=SLE111213&WebsiteKey=f71e12f3-524e-4f8c-a5f7-0d16ce7b3314) hosted by the New York City Bar Association on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of Manhattan said the DoJ’s “unconvincing” excuses for not prosecuting individuals were “technically and morally suspect.”
“[Not] a single high level executive has been successfully prosecuted in connection with the recent financial crisis, and given the fact that most of the relevant criminal provisions are governed by a five-year statute of limitations, it appears very likely that none will be,” Rakoff said (http://www.thestreet.com/story/12106189/1/federal-judge-sees-no-prosecution-for-top-wall-street-execs.html).
While the DoJ has not said that all the top executives are innocent in the lead-up to the financial crisis, it “has offered one or another excuse for not criminally prosecuting them—excuses that, on inspection, appear unconvincing,” the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/db1923d0-4bd2-11e3-8203-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2kdTD95V4) reports Judge Rakoff as saying.
“Just going after the company,” which could lead to deferred prosecutions and nominal fines, is “both technically and morally suspect. It is technically suspect because, under the law, you should not indict or threaten to indict a company unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that some managerial agent of the company committed the alleged crime; and if you can prove that, why not indict the manager?”
“And from a moral standpoint, punishing a company and its many innocent employees and shareholders for the crimes committed by some unprosecuted individuals seems contrary to elementary notions of moral responsibility,” Rakoff said (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/judge-rakoff-blasts-breuer-prosecution-of-companies-rather-than-individuals-in-bar-speech.html).
Ultimately, “the failure of the government to bring to justice those responsible for such a massive fraud speaks greatly to weaknesses in our prosecutorial system that need to be addressed,” he said (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/13/financial-judge-idUSL2N0IX1B620131113).
And “to federal judges who take an oath to apply the law equally to the rich and the poor, this excuse, sometimes labeled the ‘too big to jail excuse,’ is mindboggling in what it says about the department’s disregard of fundamental legal principles,” he continued.
Rakoff’s statements echo the calls (http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/28-4) of many banking reform advocates who have charged that real accountability will only come when executives are prosecuted and sent to jail for illegal activity.
Rakoff’s comments, however, were not surprising given his history.
In 2011 Rakoff made (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/nov/28/citigroup-sec-settlement-rejected-judge) what was described as a “historic” decision when he rejected a $285 million settlement the SEC sought with Citigroup because it was too lenient and would have blocked an “overriding public interest in knowing the truth.” His full ruling, Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi wrote (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/federal-judge-pimp-slaps-the-sec-over-citigroup-settlement-20111129#ixzz2kdZ8Vx2E) at the time, “read like a political document, serving not just as a rejection of this one deal but as a broad and unequivocal indictment of the regulatory system as a whole.”
In 2009, Rakoff rejected an SEC settlement with Bank of America.
As Mary Bottari then reported at PRWatch (http://www.prwatch.org/node/8553):
As reported previously (http://www.prwatch.org/node/8510), the court was weighing the appropriateness of a $33 million fine the SEC levied against BofA for failing to notify shareholders about a massive bonus package paid to Merrill Lynch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Merrill_Lynch) executives when BofA acquired Merrill in September of 2008.
Because it failed to fully disclose the bonuses as required by law, BofA was fined by the SEC (http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2009/2009-177.htm). But Rakoff delved into more fundamental questions. Merrill had just lost $27 billion and was on the rocks. BofA was given $40 billion in taxpayer funds to acquire Merrill and help cover the firm’s losses. So where did the bonus bucks come from? As Rakoff put it: “To say now that the $33 million does not come directly from U.S. funds is simply to ignore the overall economics of the Bank’s situation.”
The SEC’s $33 million fine was less than 1% of the 3.6 billion provided by taxpayers. Rakoff ruled that the fine “does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality.” In addition, he slammed the SEC for not getting to the bottom of the matter by investigating who precisely was responsible for the bonus bonanza.
Rakoff characterized the settlement as “unfair,” “inadequate” and “unreasonable.” One year after the collapse of investment banking behemoths threw the economy into crisis, the case raises profound questions about why so few Wall Street titans have been indicted and the continuing lethargy shown by the top cops charged with policing the market.
Noting that the banks had “effectively lied to their shareholders,” Jim Hightower wrote (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/02-0) in 2009:
[Rakoff] wanted to know the names of the liars, suggesting that those “who made the wrongful decisions” should be held personally accountable. Also, Rakoff pointedly asked the kind of questions that folks all across the country would ask if they had the chance, such as, “Do Wall Street people expect to be paid large bonuses in years when their company lost $27 billion?” The judge also went after the SEC, calling its meek fine “strangely askew” and bluntly telling the agency’s lawyer that his feeble explanation for the low fine “seems so at war with common sense.”
red states rule
12-01-2013, 10:44 AM
OK Rev, a Clinton appointed Judge who tilts left hates capitalism. What is the surprise here?
On October 11, 1995, Rakoff was nominated by President Bill Clinton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton)[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff#cite_note-4) to fill a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by David N. Edelstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_N._Edelstein). He was confirmed by the Senate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate) on December 29, 1995, appointed on January 4, 1996, and entered on duty on March 1, 1996. On December 31, 2010, he assumed senior status (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senior_status).
Rakoff is Adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia Law School (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Law_School). He has taught at the law school since 1988, teaching seminars on White Collar Crime, the Interplay of Civil and Criminal Law, and Science and the Courts.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff#cite_note-5) Judge Rakoff also served on the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarthmore_College) and serves on the Governing Board of the MacArthur Foundation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Foundation)'s Law & Neuroscience Project.[6]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff#cite_note-MacArthur-6)
In July 2011 and August 2012, Rakoff sat by designation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_designation) on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Circuit_Court_of_Appeals)[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff#cite_note-7) in San Francisco[8] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff#cite_note-8) and Seattle,[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff#cite_note-9) respectively.
On April 13, 2013, Rakoff was on a list released by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ministry_of_Foreign_Affairs) (MID) of Americans banned from entering the Russian Federation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Federation) over their alleged human rights violations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violation).[10] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff#cite_note-10) The list was a direct response to the so-called Magnitsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act) list revealed by the United States the day before.[11] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff#cite_note-11)
Judge Rakoff's younger brother, Todd, is a professor at Harvard Law School.[12] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_S._Rakoff#cite_note-FacultyDirectory-12)
revelarts
12-01-2013, 12:17 PM
Red, look i can't talk to you on this subject, you love the banks. no one does wrong there ever to hear you tell it.
So a left or a right leaning judge talking about prosecution of crimes wouldn't matter to you it seems to me.
You seem to say the banks don't commit crimes, at least not any worth admitting.
so i'd say, burnt pot calling the kettle black, as far as any assummed biases based on party afliliation or ..maybe getting a regular paycheck from the bank Red.
red states rule
12-01-2013, 12:23 PM
Red, look i can't talk to you on this subject, you love the banks. no one does wrong there ever to hear you tell it.
So a left or a right leaning judge talking about prosecution of crimes wouldn't matter to you it seems to me.
You seem to say the banks don't commit crimes, at least not any worth admitting.
so i'd say, burnt pot calling the kettle black, as far as any assummed biases based on party afliliation or ..maybe getting a regular paycheck from the bank Red.
Yes Rev I love banks along with the hundreds of thousands of people they employ Rev
Try living without them Rev
Try buying a house or car without a bank. Try engaging in any kind of financial transaction without a bank
Or try opening or maintaining a business without a bank
Like many folks Rev you see the banks and financial sector as an enemy. Nut I would love to watch you try to live without them and the benefits they provide you and the rest of us
revelarts
12-01-2013, 01:04 PM
Red you just gave me this idea.
Banker: You want answers?
Revelarts : I think I'm entitled to them.
Banker: You want answers?
Revelarts: I want the truth!
Banker: You can't handle the truth!
Son, we live in a world that has banks. And those banks have to be guarded by men with prosecutorial immunity. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for drug addicts and former home owners and people that used to have retirement funds and you curse the banks. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that those billions in losses and destroyed financial futures, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me in that bank. You need me in that bank.
We use words like derivatives, fractional reserve, capital, asset-backed securities, bonds, hedge funds, puts, Sipp, the term structure of interest rates, arbitrage-free pricing ...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent making money. You use 'em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very financial system I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a WSJ and stand at the stock exchange. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!
Revelarts: Did you commit federal and state crimes of fraud? did you launder drug money?
Banker: (quietly) I did the job I had to do.
Revelarts: Did you commit federal and state crimes of fraud and manipulate markets? Did you launder drug money?
Banker: ....the bottom line is you hate the banks, I'd like to see you get along without them... Now i'm going back to my office or my home in Caribbean maybe ...
red states rule
12-02-2013, 02:56 AM
OK rev you have made your position clear
While some on the left have an irrational hate for success (ie rich people) you have an irrational hate for banks
Someday you must share the secrets of your success as you must have paid cash for your house and cars. How you can live your life without a credit cards, checking, savings accounts, or a retirement account
revelarts
12-02-2013, 05:57 AM
OK rev you have made your position clear
While some on the left have an irrational hate for success (ie rich people) you have an irrational hate for banks
Someday you must share the secrets of your success as you must have paid cash for your house and cars. How you can live your life without a credit cards, checking, savings accounts, or a retirement account
http://lovefreedomtruth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Big-Gov-Big-Banks-Cartoon.jpg
revelarts
11-24-2014, 03:03 PM
An Survey of Bank Corruption, the list only included stuff recent in 2012 not the settlements and convictions (mostly settlements so no one goes to jail) in the pass 2 years
Source: Max Keiser (http://maxkeiser.com/2012/07/18/ritholtz-a-concise-list-recent-bank-fraud/)
Here are some recent improprieties by the big banks:
Laundering money for drug cartels. See this (http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-hsbc-senate-20120717,0,3041182.story), this (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs), this (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/03/us-hsbcusa-probes-idUSBRE8420FX20120503) and this (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/27/world/la-fg-mexico-money-laundering-banks-20111128) (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat (http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims) during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis)
Laundering money for terrorists (http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-hsbc-senate-20120717,0,3041182.story)
Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620), this (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/notes-on-wall-streets-bid-rigging-scandal-20120622) and this (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-14/governments-using-swaps-emulate-subprime-victims-of-wall-street.html)
Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/28/bny-mellon-case_n_1172575.html), here (http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/02/21/2009-02-21_bank_of_new_york_mellon_scored_3b_bailou.html), here (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/business/new-york-state-says-bank-of-new-york-mellon-cheated-pension-funds.html), here (http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/10/6_Madoff_Whistleblower_Tells_KWN_Banks_Stealing_Fr om_Pensions.html), here (http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-07/wall_street/30253397_1_trial-dates-bny-mellon-bank), here (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104576122220220538048.html), here (http://blogs.reuters.com/financial-regulatory-forum/2011/02/04/analysis-madoff-whistleblower-tries-new-shield-tactic-in-bank-fraud-suits/), here (http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/wsj_on_harry_markopolos_whistl.php), here (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703960804576120544029594566.html?m od=ITP_pageone_0#articleTabs%3Darticle), here (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/sec-probes-state-street-foreign-exchange-pricing.html), here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/21street.html) and here
Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion … without even buying or storing any gold (http://uk.reuters.com/article/2007/06/12/morganstanley-suit-idUKN1228014520070612). And raiding allocated gold accounts (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/beware-allocated-gold-may-not-really-be-there.html)
Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/at-the-root-of-the-crisis-we-find-the-largest-financial-swindle-in-world-history-where-counterfeit-mortgages-were-laundered-by-the-banks.html) (and see this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/the-fbi-estimates-that-80-percent-of-all-mortgage-fraud-involves-collaboration-or-collusion-by-industry-insiders.html))
Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/professors-black-and-wray-confirm-that.html), this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/mortgages-were-fraudulently-pledged-to-multiple-buyers-at-the-same-time.html), this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/was-abacus-the-business-model-for-the-entire-mortgage-industry.html), this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/the-fraud-perpetrated-upon-investors-and-insurers-due-to-multiple-pledges-of-collateral-could-be-massive.html) and this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/how-did-the-banks-get-away-with-pledging-mortgages-to-multiple-buyers.html). This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car
Cheating homeowners (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/08/bank-of-america-whistleblower-idUSL2E8E804820120308) by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure
Committing massive fraud (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/the-biggest-banking-scam-in-world-history.html) in an $800 trillion dollar market which effects everything from mortgages, student loans, small business loans and city financing
Engaging in insider trading of the most important financial information (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/libor-the-largest-insider-trading-scandal-ever.html)
Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/goldman-bet-against-entire-european-nations-who-were-clients-the-same-way-it-bet-against-its-subprime-mortgage-clients.html), this (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/jp-morgan-sold-investors-mbs-covered-sack-shit-loans-goldman-aig-redux), this (http://www.teribuhl.com/2012/05/12/sec-tells-jp-morgan-enforcement-action-coming-over-bears-mortgage-backed-securities-violations/), this (http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-123.htm) and this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/bank-of-america-down-20-today-after-being-sued-by-aig-for-massive-fraud-goldman-jp-morgan-and-deutsche-are-next.html)
Engaging in unlawful “frontrunning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running)” to manipulate markets. See this (http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/17/exclusive-nobel-winner-joseph-stiglitz-predicts-recessions-end/), this (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/whoa-glitch-hft), this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/corporate-media-spotlights-distortion-of-market-by-high-frequency-trading.html), this (http://www.zerohedge.com/taxonomy_vtn/term/8356), this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/what-is-high-frequency-trading-and-how.html) and this (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18809)
Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this (http://news.yahoo.com/jpmorgan-fined-wash-trades-oil-gasoline-151048338--sector.html), this (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-02/rbc-sued-by-u-s-regulators-over-wash-trades-seeking-tax-benefit.html) and this (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-22/wash-trading-by-high-frequency-firms-said-to-face-u-s-scrutiny.html)
Otherwise (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/jpmorgan-role-in-power-market-comes-under-scrutiny/) manipulating markets. And see this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/05/will-silver-and-gold-prices-rise-now-that-the-feds-are-launching-criminal-and-civil-investigations-into-manipulation-of-the-silver-market.html)
Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See this (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/in-prison-madoff-says-banks-had-to-know-of-fraud/), this (http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120417-716851.html) and this (http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/28/2665114/55-victims-of-ponzi-schemer-rothstein.html)
Charging veterans unlawful mortgage fees (http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Banks-allegedly-charged-vets-illegal-mortgage-fees-2328659.php)
Cooking their books (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830104575172280848939898.html?m od=WSJ_Markets_MIDDLETopNews) (and see this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/lehman-fraudulently-cooked-its-books-accounting-giant-ernst-young-helped-geithner-and-bernanke-winked-and-slapped-them-on-the-back.html))
Bribing (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/09/credit-rating-agencies-took-bribes-for-higher-ratings.html) and bullying (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/unsealed-documents-expose-morgan-stanley-forcing-rating-agencies-inflate-ratings) ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments
The executives of the big banks invariably pretend that the hanky-panky was only committed by a couple of low-level rogue employees. But studies show that most of the fraud is committed by management (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/09/fraud-bosses-206m).
Indeed, one of the world’s top fraud experts – professor of law and economics, and former senior S&L regulator Bill Black – says that most financial fraud is “control fraud”, where the people who own the banks are the ones who implement systemic fraud. See this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/why-did-banks-give-home-loans-to-people-who-they-knew-couldnt-pay.html), this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/the-fbi-estimates-that-80-percent-of-all-mortgage-fraud-involves-collaboration-or-collusion-by-industry-insiders.html) and this (http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Way-Rob-Bank/dp/0292706383).
But at least the big banks do good things for society, like loaning money to Main Street, right?
Actually:
The big banks no longer do very much traditional banking. Most of their business is from financial speculation. For example, less than 10% of Bank of America’s assets come from traditional banking deposits (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/01/less-than-a-tenth-of-bank-of-americas-assets-comes-from-traditional-banking-deposits.html). Instead, they are mainly engaged in financial speculation and derivatives. (and see this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/10/do-we-need-banks-or-can-we-cut-out-the-middleman.html))
The big banks have slashed lending since they were bailed out by taxpayers … while smaller banks have increased lending. See this (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-26/biggest-u-s-banks-curb-loans-as-regional-firms-fill-gap.html), this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/04/mega-banks-which-received-bailouts-slashed-lending-more-gave-higher-bonuses-and-reduced-costs-less-than-banks-which-didnt-get-bailed-out.html) and this (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/01/%E2%80%9Cthe-vast-majority-of-this-contraction-of-credit-availability-to-american-industry-has-been-by-the-larger-banks%E2%80%9D.html)
A huge portion (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/03/big-banks-continue-to-suck-at-the-government-teat-with-never-ending-stealth-bailouts.html) of the banks’ profits comes from taxpayer bailouts. For example, 77% of JP Morgan’s net income comes from taxpayer subsidies (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/77-of-jp-morgans-net-income-comes-from-government-subsidies.html)
The big banks are literally killing the economy (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/10/the-only-way-to-save-the-economy-break-up-the-giant-insolvent-banks.html) … and waging war on the people of the world (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/big-banks-are-waging-warfare-against.html)
And our democracy (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/04/krugman-break-up-the-giant-banks-to-stop-their-domination-of-the-political-process.html) and republican form of government (http://player.vimeo.com/video/44511301) as well
aboutime
11-24-2014, 06:19 PM
rev. Where do you keep your money? If you try to convince the rest of us you NEVER use a bank for any reasons, other than to blast them. Then. You should be working feverishly to ARREST your Piggy Bank, where your savings, and all financial dealings today are nothing more than PORK products.:laugh:
revelarts
11-24-2014, 06:25 PM
rev. Where do you keep your money? If you try to convince the rest of us you NEVER use a bank for any reasons, other than to blast them. Then. You should be working feverishly to ARREST your Piggy Bank, where your savings, and all financial dealings today are nothing more than PORK products.:laugh:
local credit union
aboutime
11-24-2014, 08:24 PM
local credit union
Really? And, I guess you think Credit Unions have no support from the Banking Industry?
Hold on to your piggy bank. And keep fighting with reality. Where do you suppose Credit Unions get their supplies of Currency?
revelarts
11-24-2014, 10:02 PM
Really? And, I guess you think Credit Unions have no support from the Banking Industry?
Hold on to your piggy bank. And keep fighting with reality. Where do you suppose Credit Unions get their supplies of Currency?
We all get as far away from things we don't like/trust as possible. and trust God for the rest AT.
But do you approve of bankers Fraudulent handling of TRILLIONS of dollars and NEVER going to jail or being held accountable AT?
Or are you HAPPY with banks that do that. as long as your well earned gov't check clear every month?
If someone stole your neighbors car would you want the cops to look into it and catch the thief. even if the thief helped you buy your last car.
I don't understand your defense of the banks and questioning of me.
seems to be theme around here.
I point out a crimes, trillions stolen, people working with terrorist, lying politicians , rapist military men, corrupt police etc.
and people want to question my motives and such? And assume I HATE whole systems rather than just want to clear out the crooks and get back to the constitution.
You should be joining me the bringing light to crimes.
So who's got the problem here AT?
aboutime
11-24-2014, 10:19 PM
We all get as far away from things we don't like/trust as possible. and trust God for the rest AT.
But do you approve of bankers Fraudulent handling of TRILLIONS of dollars and NEVER going to jail or being held accountable AT?
Or are you HAPPY with banks that do that. as long as your well earned gov't check clear every month?
If someone stole your neighbors car would you want the cops to look into it and catch the thief. even if the thief helped you buy your last car.
I don't understand your defense of the banks and questioning of me.
seems to be theme around here.
I point out a crimes, trillions stolen, people working with terrorist, lying politicians , rapist military men, corrupt police etc.
and people want to question my motives and such? And assume I HATE whole systems rather than just want to clear out the crooks and get back to the constitution.
You should be joining me the bringing light to crimes.
So who's got the problem here AT?
rev. You are actually guilty of following the rule about ASSUME here.
Show me anywhere, at any time where I said any of the things you claimed above.
You ASSUME because I am not agreeing with you that you can say I approve of any of the things you stated?
That's a pretty liberal, tired, foolish assumption you feel so comfortable spreading around here.
Show me where I said any of what you claim.
And stop playing the "I'm smarter than everyone else" assumption games. It makes you look even more foolish.
revelarts
11-24-2014, 10:44 PM
rev. You are actually guilty of following the rule about ASSUME here.
Show me anywhere, at any time where I said any of the things you claimed above.
You ASSUME because I am not agreeing with you that you can say I approve of any of the things you stated?
That's a pretty liberal, tired, foolish assumption you feel so comfortable spreading around here.
Show me where I said any of what you claim.
And stop playing the "I'm smarter than everyone else" assumption games. It makes you look even more foolish.
Ok so show me where you condemn the banks criminal actions.
Or where you say that my condemnation is justified in any way AT.
At that point i might have a reason to think otherwise, until then all i've got to go on is your jabs at me, CONTINUED IN THIS LAST POST rather than any criticism of any bank's crimes here AT.
i'd loved to hear you're criticism against any bank's crimes AT. go for it.
But i suspect some other post about how terrible i person am is probably due before we see anything about the Banks bringing the earth to near financial collapse or stealing trillions being a problem.
aboutime
11-24-2014, 10:56 PM
Ok so show me where you condemn the banks criminal actions.
Or where you say that my condemnation is justified in any way AT.
At that point i might have a reason to think otherwise, until then all i've got to go on is your jabs at me, CONTINUED IN THIS LAST POST rather than any criticism of any bank's crimes here AT.
i'd loved to hear you're criticism against any bank's crimes AT. go for it.
But i suspect some other post about how terrible i person am is probably due before we see anything about the Banks bringing the earth to near financial collapse or stealing trillions being a problem.
Gotta refer you to my first post. Otherwise. Arguing with you is foolish, and will never make any sense.
Say whatever you want. I really don't care. Nothing I say will ever please, or satisfy your ASSUMPTIONS.
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