Monday, February 11, 2013

Class tensions in Europe at the breaking point - AMERICANS CONTINUE TO BE LOOTED BY BANKSTERS

Class tensions in Europe at the breaking point

IS IT ANY DIFFERENT THAN AMERICA WHICH CONTINUES TO BE LOOTED BY OBAMA'S CRIMINAL BANKSTERS???



OBAMA and his FILTHY BANKSTERS… STILL AT IT! THE LOOTING of a NATION
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054). 

IF YOU’RE NOT A FILTHY BANKSTERS, OR A CARD CARRYING MEMBER OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY OF LA RAZA “THE RACE” YOU DON’T GET A JOB IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS DONE MORE FOR CRIMINAL BANKSTERS THAN BARACK OBAMA.

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN MORE BANKSTER MONEY THAN BARACK OBAMA.

DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TWO YEARS ALONE, BANKS MADE MORE MONEY THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH!

Obama nominates Jacob Lew, budget-cutter and ex-banker, to head Treasury

By Andre Damon
11 January 2013

US President Barack Obama announced the nomination of current White House chief of staff Jacob Lew as treasury secretary Thursday, underscoring the administration’s commitment to slashing entitlements and its domination by Wall Street.

Lew, a longtime Washington operative and former Wall Street executive, helped negotiate cuts to Social Security with the Reagan administration in 1983, worked to slash social spending in the Clinton administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and served as the Obama administration’s point-man in budget-cutting negotiations with congressional Republicans.

Prior to joining the Obama administration in 2009, he earned millions of dollars as the chief operating officer of Citigroup’s Alternative Investments unit, which made bets against the housing market as it collapsed.

Nominating one of the Democrats most associated with deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare underscores the administration’s commitment to attacking these programs. “For all the talk out there about deficit reduction, making sure our books are balanced—this is the guy who did it,” Obama said at Lew’s nomination on Thursday afternoon.

Lew’s nomination also makes clear that Obama has no reservations about naming a former Wall Street executive to head the department most responsible for the 2008 bank bailout and regulation of the financial industry. Lew’s predecessor, Timothy Geithner, despite a lifetime spent facilitating the banks’ crimes as a regulator, was never officially on their payroll.

As Obama’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, Lew pushed for the administration’s “grand bargain” proposal in 2011, which would have cut the deficit by $4 trillion through the slashing of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. As it turned out, the White House was only able to negotiate a smaller $2.4 billion deficit package with congressional Republicans. Obama intends to make good on the balance this year.

The “fiscal cliff” deal struck on New Year’s Eve with Republicans, featuring the fig leaf of a small increase in taxes for the wealthy, sets the stage for a budget deal with Republicans that will slash trillions from key entitlement programs.

As a senior advisor to then-Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, Lew worked to develop a bipartisan deal in 1983 with the Reagan administration undermining Social Security. The deal, reached after Reagan’s campaign predicting the imminent financial collapse of the federal pension program, raised regressive payroll taxes and increased the retirement age by two years, to 67.

From August 1995 to July 1998, Lew served as Clinton’s Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where he helped work out the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which included $112 billion in Medicare cuts, including reductions in payments to doctors and hospitals that take part in the program.

Clinton then nominated Lew to become the director of the OMB in 1998, a capacity in which he served till January 2001. With the election of the Bush Administration, Lew moved on to work as an “executive vice president and chief operating officer of New York University, where he was responsible for budget, finance, and operations,” according to the White House. During this time, the university successfully carried out a campaign to end collective bargaining for graduate students.

In 2006, Lew moved on to a more lucrative employer, Citigroup, where he served first as managing director and chief operating officer of Citi Global Wealth Management and later as the chief operating officer of Citi Alternative Investments (CAI), the hedge fund and real estate investing arm of the bank.

The unit that Lew oversaw made large investments in the hedge fund managed by billionaire John Paulson, which helped banks issue toxic mortgages during the subprime boom, then bet, using insider knowledge, that those mortgages would collapse in value. These activities were amply documented by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and prompted a then-record $550 million settlement between the Securities Exchange Commission and Paulson’s partner in crime, Goldman Sachs.

At Citigroup, Lew received a salary of $1.1 million. Two weeks before he joined the Obama State Department, and after Citigroup had received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout money, Lew received an additional $900,000 bonus on top of his salary, which the Obama administration sought to cover up during his nomination.

Lew was tapped by Obama to become deputy secretary of State for management and resources in January 2009 under Hilary Clinton, a position in which he served through November 2010. He then moved on to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from November 2010 through January 2012, after which he became Obama’s third chief of staff. Lew’s predecessors, Rahm Emanuel (2009-2010) and William Daley (2011-2012), were like him multi-millionaires who made their fortunes as top executives of major banks.

Lew’s predecessor, Timothy Geithner, played a leading role in the bank bailout, first as president of the New York Fed, then as Obama’s treasury secretary. During his time as the head of the New York Federal Reserve from 2003 to 2009, he did his best to cover up the practices that led to the 2008 crash, then, as treasury secretary, supervised the bank bailout while working to disguise the banks’ ongoing criminality.
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OBAMA and his CRIMINAL BANKSTERS – THERE IS A REASON WHY THE BANKSTERS INVESTED SO HEAVILY IN BARACK OBAMA, ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY TOOK SO MUCH DIRTY MONEY FROM BANKSTERS THAN BARACK OBAMA. DURING HIS FIRST TWO YEARS THE BANKS LOOTED MORE PROFITS THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH!

“I’m not here to punish banks!” Barack Obama – Floor of the Senate – STATE of the UNION MESSAGE.

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN MORE LOOT FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTERS THAN BARACK OBAMA! WHILE HIS DOJ IS OUT HARASSING LEGALS ON BEHALF OF OBAMA’S LA RAZA PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS, THE BANKSTER GO UNPUNISHED!

DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TWO YEARS ALONE, HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS’ PROFITS SOARED GREATER THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH!

BANKSTERS’ PROFITS AND CRIMES ARE SOARING… so are foreclosures!


 

OBAMA and HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS – THE LOOTING OF A NATION CONTINUES!


Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).  

Consider the Obama administration's choices for the four most important positions in financial sector law enforcement. The attorney general (Eric Holder) and the head of the Justice Department's criminal division (Lanny Breuer) both come to us from Covington & Burling, a law firm that represents and lobbies for most of the major banks and their industry associations; indeed Breuer was co-head of its white collar criminal defense practice, and represented the Moody's rating agency in the Enron case. Mary Schapiro, the head of the SEC, spent the housing bubble in charge of FINRA, the investment banking industry's "self-regulator," which gave her a $9 million severance for a job well done. And her head of enforcement, perhaps most stunningly of all, is Robert Khuzami, who was general counsel for Deutsche Bank's North American business during the entire bubble. So zero prosecutions isn't much of a surprise, really.

Banking Is a Criminal Industry Because Its Crimes Go Unpunished

Posted: 07/16/2012 8:23 am

Consider just this month's news in financial services.

First, Barclay's has been manipulating the Libor, the main interest rate upon which most other interest rates and financial transactions are based, since 2005. Moreover, Barclay's traders were colluding with traders in many other banks to assist them in manipulating the Libor too, so that they could all profit from their bets on it.

Second, JP Morgan Chase is having a really great month. Recent reports describe how it is resisting Federal subpoenas related to price-fixing in U.S. electricity markets. It is also accused (by former employees among others) of deliberately inflating the performance of its investment funds to obtain business. And finally, JP Morgan's failed "London whale" trade, which has now cost over $5 billion, is being investigated to determine whether the loss was initially concealed from regulators and the public.

Third, HSBC is paying a fine because it allowed hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars of money laundering by rogue states and sanctioned firms, including some related to terrorist activities and Iran's nuclear efforts. But HSBC is only one of at least 12 banks now known to have tolerated, and in some cases aggressively courted, money laundering by rogue states, terrorist organizations, corrupt dictators, and major drug cartels over the last decade. Others include Barclay's, Lloyds, Credit Suisse, and Wachovia (now part of Wells Fargo). Several of the banks created special handbooks on how to evade surveillance, created special business units to handle money laundering, and actively suppressed whistleblowers who warned of drug cartel activities.

Fourth, a new private lawsuit cites documents indicating that Morgan Stanley successfully pressured rating agencies into inflating the ratings of mortgage-backed securities it issued during the housing bubble.

Fifth, Visa and Mastercard have just agreed to pay $7 billion to settle a private antitrust case filed by thousands of merchants, who alleged that Visa and Mastercard colluded to fix fees and terms of service.

Just another month in financial services. Is it unusual? No, it's not. If we go back just a little further, we have UBS, HSBC, Julius Baer, and other banks actively marketing tax evasion services to wealthy U.S. and European citizens. We have senior executives of several banks (including JP Morgan Chase and UBS) strongly suspecting that Bernard Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, but deciding to make money from him rather than turn him in. And then, of course, we have the financial crisis and everything that led to it. As I show in great detail in my book Predator Nation, we now possess overwhelming evidence of massive securities fraud, accounting fraud, perjury, and criminal Sarbanes-Oxley violations by mortgage lenders, investment banks, and credit insurers (including senior executives of Countrywide, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, AIG, and Lehman Brothers) during the housing bubble that caused the financial crisis. If we go back to the late 1990s, we have the massively fraudulent hyping of Internet stocks, and several banks (including Merrill Lynch and Citigroup) actively aiding Enron in committing its frauds.

So, July 2012 really isn't abnormal at all. The reason for this is very simple. Over the past two decades, the financial services industry has become a pervasively unethical and highly criminal industry, with massive fraud tolerated or even encouraged by senior management. But how did that happen?

Well, deregulation helped, of course. But something else was far more important. It is the one critical factor that unites all of the episodes cited above, including those of this month. This critical unifying factor is the total number of criminal prosecutions of major firms and senior executives as a result of all of these crimes combined.

And what is that number?

Zero.

Literally zero. A number that neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney shows the slightest interest in changing.

Consider the Obama administration's choices for the four most important positions in financial sector law enforcement. The attorney general (Eric Holder) and the head of the Justice Department's criminal division (Lanny Breuer) both come to us from Covington & Burling, a law firm that represents and lobbies for most of the major banks and their industry associations; indeed Breuer was co-head of its white collar criminal defense practice, and represented the Moody's rating agency in the Enron case. Mary Schapiro, the head of the SEC, spent the housing bubble in charge of FINRA, the investment banking industry's "self-regulator," which gave her a $9 million severance for a job well done. And her head of enforcement, perhaps most stunningly of all, is Robert Khuzami, who was general counsel for Deutsche Bank's North American business during the entire bubble. So zero prosecutions isn't much of a surprise, really.

In contrast, what do you think would happen to you if, as a lone individual, you were caught supporting Iran's nuclear program? Do you think that you would get off with a "deferred prosecution agreement" and a fine equal to a few percent of your annual salary? No?

But that's because you don't live right. You probably haven't been to the White House a dozen times since President Obama took office, or attended White House state dinners, like Lloyd Blankfein has. Nor have you probably overseen millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign donations, or hired senior administration officials, or sent your executives into the government in senior regulatory positions, or paid $135,000 for a speech by someone who later became chairman of the National Economic Council. And, well, you get the law enforcement that you pay for.


“Gretchen Morgenson, in a New York Times op-ed entitled “Surprise, Surprise: The Banks Win,” wrote: “If you were hoping that things might be different in 2013—you know, that bankers would be held responsible for bad behavior or that the government might actually assist troubled homeowners—you can forget it.”

“In concluding the pittance of a settlement, a fraction of the billions taken in by the banks from the sub-prime mortgage racket, the Obama administration is once again letting the banks get away with massive crimes that have had devastating social consequences, while giving them a green light to continue similar practices.”

Another sweetheart bank settlement on mortgage fraud
By Andre Damon
9 January 2013


Ten major financial firms agreed on Monday to pay $3.3 billion in cash to settle allegations of mortgage fraud by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in the latest in a string of sweetheart settlements between the major Wall Street banks and their nominal regulators. As usual, there were no criminal charges and no bank officials were held accountable.

The settlement, which nominally totals $8.5 billion, includes $3.3 billion in direct payments to borrowers and $5.2 billion in loan modifications and other forms of “borrower assistance” left largely at the discretion of the banks.

The settlement with the OCC, a branch of the Treasury Department, relates to widespread fraud committed by the banks in their rush to foreclose on as many homes as possible in 2009 and 2010. To expedite the foreclosure process, the banks had employees or contractors sign off on thousands of mortgage documents every month, swearing that they had intimate knowledge of their contents when in reality they had not even read them.

In many cases, banks illegally imposed fees on targeted homeowners or failed to inform them of their rights.

In concluding the pittance of a settlement, a fraction of the billions taken in by the banks from the sub-prime mortgage racket, the Obama administration is once again letting the banks get away with massive crimes that have had devastating social consequences, while giving them a green light to continue similar practices.

In all the scandals relating to the banks’ criminality in the run-up to and aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the government has deliberately avoided bringing cases to trial. This is not only to protect the banks’ activities from further public scrutiny, but also to cover up regulators’ complicity in facilitating the banks’ illegal activities.

The number of households that will get a share of the $3.3 billion in payouts, averaging $868 for each of the 3.8 million borrowers whose homes were in foreclosure in 2009 and 2010, has not been disclosed. Under previous guidelines issued by the federal government, homeowners who were put in foreclosure but were not really in default would theoretically receive $15,000 and a reversal of the foreclosure, or $125,000 if a reversal was not possible. The actual amounts that are ultimately paid out could be far lower.

The settlement puts to an end the “Independent Foreclosure Review” imposed as a regulatory action by the OCC on fourteen banks in April 2011. Under the program, banks paid contractors to examine each claim of improper foreclosure. The cost to the banks had reached $1.5 billion when the government agreed to end the investigation.

With the new settlement, the banks themselves are left to determine where abuses took place, with only a handful of cases to be examined by regulators.

Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry sought in a press conference Monday to present the settlement as a means of getting money to consumers as soon as possible. “When we began the Independent Foreclosure Review, the OCC pledged to fix what was broken, identify who was harmed, and compensate them for that injury,” Curry said. “While today’s announcement represents a significant change in direction,” he continued, “it meets those original objectives by ensuring that consumers are the ones who will benefit.”

The settlement prompted an outpouring of denunciations from consumer advocates and even some media commentators. “The regulators have decided to replace the fox in the henhouse with the wolf,” commented John Taylor, head of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a community development nonprofit. “It is just incomprehensible to me that they could not find a third party that has the wherewithal and independence to fairly determine what the damage is to homeowners.”

Gretchen Morgenson, in a New York Times op-ed entitled “Surprise, Surprise: The Banks Win,” wrote: “If you were hoping that things might be different in 2013—you know, that bankers would be held responsible for bad behavior or that the government might actually assist troubled homeowners—you can forget it.”

The settlement includes Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, MetLife Bank, PNC, Sovereign, SunTrust, US Bank and Aurora. Four other banks that were included in the investigation refused to take part in the settlement.

The settlement by the OCC is of a piece with the agreement announced last February between 49 state governments and five top Wall Street banks over similar types of mortgage fraud. In last year’s settlement, the federal government put pressure on state attorneys general to wind down their investigation into criminal abuses by the banks, leaving them to pay only $5 billion in payouts and a largely meaningless $17 billion in mortgage modifications.

Under the de facto protection of the government agencies that are supposed to police them, the banks are allowed to violate securities and other laws knowing that they can treat any fines that may eventually be imposed as part of the cost of doing business.

The same applies to the settlement also announced Monday between Bank of America and the government-sponsored mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae, in which the bank will pay $3.55 billion to Fannie and buy back 30,000 low-performing mortgages for $6.75 billion.

The settlement covers allegations that Countrywide Financial, bought by Bank of America in 2008, knowingly sold Fannie Mae toxic mortgages that produced billions of dollars of losses. The loans were made between 2000 and 2008 and were originally valued at $1.4 trillion. The collapse of these assets triggered a $116 billion government bailout of Fannie and helped precipitate the financial crisis that led to the loss of millions of jobs.

The deal follows a similar 2010 agreement in which Bank of America repurchased $2.87 billion of bad loans from Fannie’s fellow government-backed mortgage company, Freddie Mac.

More than four years after the financial crash of September 2008, not a single top Wall Street executive has been criminally prosecuted.

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NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN MORE LOOT FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTERS THAN BARACK OBAMA! WHILE HIS DOJ IS OUT HARASSING LEGALS ON BEHALF OF OBAMA’S LA RAZA PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS, THE BANKSTER GO UNPUNISHED!

DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TWO YEARS ALONE, HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS’ PROFITS SOARED GREATER THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH!

BANKSTERS’ PROFITS AND CRIMES ARE SOARING… so are foreclosures!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/07/obama-promises-his-criminal-bankster.html



 

Above the law – Obama, His Banks and the Mexican Drug Cartels

WE KNOW ABOUT OBAMA’S AGENDA OF OPEN BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX.


The Obama administration has also cut worksite enforcement efforts by 70%, allowing illegal immigrants to continue working in jobs that rightfully belong to citizens and legal workers.

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WE KNOW HE HAS NOT INTENTION OF PROTECTING OUR BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX, EVEN AS HE SQUANDERS BILLIONS PROTECTING THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS.


CBP said it made 356,873 arrests in 2012, which is up from 327,577 in 2011 — though both are still way down from 2006 when nearly 1.2 million arrests were made. 

WE KNOW THAT HE HAS ARMED THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS.

WE KNOW THAT OBAMA TURNS OVER AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS TO THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA.

WE KNOW THAT LA RAZA OPERATES OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE UNDER CECILIA MUNOZ.

NCLR’s Muñoz Promoted To WH Domestic Policy Director

January 10, 2012

President Obama has elevated the one-time vice president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) from White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs to the more powerful and prestigious post of Domestic Policy Director.

That means Cecilia Muñoz, a renowned open borders lobbyist in Washington D.C., will be the president’s top adviser on domestic issues and she’ll coordinate the policy-making process and supervise the execution of domestic policy in the White House. Clearly the position wields tremendous power and influence.

This can only mean good things for the influential nonprofit she once led and lobbied for, the NCLR, which promotes itself as the nation’s largest Latino civil rights group. Months ago a Judicial Watch investigation uncovered that the NCLR, which for years has raked in millions of taxpayer dollars, has benefitted handsomely from Muñoz’s quick rise in the Obama Administration. In fact, the group’s federal funding has skyrocketed since she got her White House job in 2009.

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WE KNOW HIS ADMIN IS INFESTED WITH FIRST BANKSTERS AND THEN LA RAZA PARTY MEMBERS. EVEN HIS NOMINEE TO THE HIGH COURT, SONIA SOTOMAYOR IS A RACIST MEMBER IF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA “THE RACE”.

VIVA LA RAZA?
Supreme Court Nominee Member Of Mexican La Raza Group

May 28, 2009

President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee is a member of an influential extremist Mexican La Raza group that advocates open borders and driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. 

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is listed as a member of the National Council of La Raza in an American Bar Association profile discovered by a news organization dedicated to exposing public corruption. The appeals court judge has already ignited a firestorm for publicly saying that a jurist’s ethnicity and sex will make a difference in their judging.

The La Raza membership is a fiery compliment to the now infamous Berkeley speech in which Sotomayor said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” 

The National Council of La Raza describes itself as the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, but it actually caters to the radical Chicano movement that says California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas belong to Aztlan.

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Above the law – Obama, His Banks and the Mexican Drug Cartels
14 December 2012

In the latest scandal involving the criminal activities of major banks, the US Justice Department on Tuesday announced a $1.9 billion settlement with British-based HSBC on charges of money laundering on a massive scale for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

The deal was specifically designed to avert criminal prosecution of either the bank, the largest in Europe and third largest in the world, or any of its top executives. Even though the bank admitted to laundering billions of dollars for drug lords, as well as violating US financial sanctions against Iran, Libya, Burma and Cuba, the Obama administration avoided an indictment by means of a “deferred prosecution agreement.”

The agreement was in keeping with the policy of the US government of shielding top bankers from any accountability for illegal activities that led to the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and ushered in the global recession. Not a single leading executive of a major bank has been prosecuted, let alone jailed, for fraudulent activities that triggered the present crisis, leading to the destruction of millions of jobs and the decimation of working-class living standards in the US and around the world.

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