Monday, March 18, 2013

DICTATOR in the MAKING - Obama's sequester choices to be examined in House hearing - The Hill's Floor Action

Obama's sequester choices to be examined in House hearing - The Hill's Floor Action


WIKILEAKS EXPOSES OBAMA’S AGENDA OF ASSAULTING OUR BORDERS, AMERICANS IN JOBS HE WANTS TO FILL WITH ILLEGALS


JUDICIAL WATCH:

It proves the Obama administration is willing to go to any extent - including gaming the courts - to continue stonewalling the full story of its lawless release of illegal aliens. Now, with the prison floodgates being thrown open to illegal aliens under the phony pretense of abiding by sequester cuts, it is more important that details of this threat to the public safety be revealed.

OBAMA'S WARS Ten years on I want answers for my daughter Rachel Corrie - The Hill's Congress Blog

Ten years on I want answers for my daughter Rachel Corrie - The Hill's Congress Blog


Report details massive wealth loss for youth in US

By Nick Barrickman
18 March 2013

A recent report from Washington DC-based Urban Institute (UI) shows that overall percentage of wealth in society for those in “Generation X and Y” (those in their 20s and 30s) has been consistently dropping and is currently at a level which may be unprecedented.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/03/staggering-loss-of-wealth-for-americas.html

ANOTHER LA RAZA SUPREMACIST at LABOR - Obama to nominate Thomas Perez to head Labor Department - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

Obama to nominate Thomas Perez to head Labor Department - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

AMERICANS SAY NO TO AMNESTY!


http://www.alipac.us/content.php?r=1567-Poll-64-of-Americans-Oppose-Citizenship-for-Illegals-in-Gang-of-8-Immigration-Plan

Obama's 'Hispanicazation' of America

 


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THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES!
"We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers," said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. "President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws."
 
Obama and Justice Sotomayor Vow to Illegals to SABOTAGE E-verify!
VIVA LA RAZA SUPREMACY?
“What employers really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs, experts say.”
 UNDER OBAMA, TWO-THIRDS OF JOBS GO TO HIS PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS! 
“At the hearing, Dr. Rakesh Kochar, Associate Director for Research at the Pew Hispanic Center, testified that in the year following the official end of the recession (June 2009), foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost an additional 1.2 million jobs.”
"We have a situation where the job market — the bottom fell out, yet we kept legal immigration relatively high without even a national debate," he said. "As a consequence, a lot of the job growth has been going to immigrants."
Mr. Obama did take action this year to grant many illegal immigrants up to 30 years of age a tentative legal status that prevents them from being deported and authorizes them to work in the United States.
Some Republicans in Congress have criticized Mr. Obama's policy, saying it violates his powers and will mean more competition for scarce jobs.
 
 

STAGGERING LOSS of WEALTH for AMERICA'S YOUTH - OBAMA'S ASSAULT on AMERICANS CONTINUES


ON BEHALF OF HIS WALL STREET CRONIES, OBAMA’S ASSAULT ON AMERICAN EXTENDS TO AMERICA’S YOUTH… THEN ILLEGALS GET THE JOBS!

 

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT AS OBAMA AND HIS CORRUPT HAREM OF LIFER-DEMS BUILD THE LA RAZA MEXICAN WELFARE STATE IN OUR BORDERS AND HAND ILLEGALS NOT ONLY OUR JOBS, BUT ALSO DREAM ACTS DISCOUNTS ON EDUCATION, AMNESTY AND NON-ENFORCEMENT AS WELL AS OPEN BORDERS.

Report details massive wealth loss for youth in US

By Nick Barrickman
18 March 2013

A recent report from Washington DC-based Urban Institute (UI) shows that overall percentage of wealth in society for those in “Generation X and Y” (those in their 20s and 30s) has been consistently dropping and is currently at a level which may be unprecedented.

The report finds that although wealth accumulation had been relatively stagnant for this sector for some time prior, the 2008 financial collapse impacted young people more deeply than the rest of the population.

“It’s a little bit of a tipping-point moment. … If we don’t address it today, they might never catch up,” Signe-Mary McKernan, one of the report’s co-authors told the New York Times. The UI study, “Lost Generation? Wealth Building Among Young Americans,” is relatively brief, giving a broad overview of the impact of the recession on youth. It cites the depressed job market, stagnant pay levels, and ballooning student debt, which particularly impact young adults’ efforts to put away savings.

Those born after 1970 have seen a seven percent loss of household wealth from 1983 to 2010. Those in the 29-37 age-range saw a 21 percent drop in their total accrued wealth. In contrast, those aged 74 or older saw an increase of wealth by 150 percent on average. A significant factor was the impact of a more robust social safety net.

Throughout the past century the amount of wealth obtained from one generation to the next generally increased. In the past several decades, however, this trend has been reversed as social gains made by workers nearly a century ago have been rolled back. The report points out that even before 2008, youth had been falling behind in savings.

Gene Steuerle, one of the study’s co-authors explained, “One might expect to see, say, a parent generation accumulate $100,000 by the time its members were in their 30s and $300,000 in their 60s, whereas their children might accumulate $200,000 by their 30s and $600,000 by their 60s. … This normal pattern no longer holds for the younger among us.”

The report found that many of those born before 1952 were more likely to hold annuities or defined-benefit pension plans. Such benefits have been almost entirely eliminated for younger workers.

Another recent study put out by the New York Federal Reserve found that the average student loan debt for a 25-year-old in the US has risen to $25,000, with about 17 percent of all borrowers, nearly one in five, at least three months delinquent. This indebtedness has affected the ability of individuals to receive mortgage loans, the report said.

In 2005 nine percent of all mortgages went to individuals in the 25-30 age group. This has fallen to only four percent. Fewer young people own houses today, declining from 40 to 34 percent since the recession first struck.

This growth of debt is compounded by the absence of decent paying jobs. A report last fall by the National Employment Law Project showed that of the jobs generated since 2009, the majority paid between $7.69 and $13.83, near poverty level. These jobs have become the foundation for the Obama administration’s claims of “economic recovery.”

Though the UI report presents conditions for seniors in somewhat rosy colors, their situation is becoming increasingly dire as well. The report does not state that many have also faced the loss of homes and livelihoods. Likewise, the average time out of a job for members of the workforce above 50 is 17 months.

The same benefits and programs that the report notes have benefited older workers are increasingly under assault. The Obama administration and the Republican Party are united in their efforts to slash hundreds of billions of dollars from federal health care and retirement programs.

The author also recommends:



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DURING BARACK OBAMA’S FIRST TERM, 2/3s OF ALL JOBS WENT TO IMMIGRANTS, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGAL.

IT’S ALL ABOUT MAKING BILLIONAIRES BY KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED.

Silicon Valley Poverty Is Often Ignored By The Tech Hub's Elite


 

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AMERICANS (LEGALS) HAND THEIR JOBS OVER TO ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS, PAY FOR THE ANCHOR BABY BREEDING = 18 YEARS OF WELFARE, AND CRIME TIDAL WAVE… but have NO vote in amnesty?

BUT THE DEMS ARE REALLY NOT CONCERNED ABOUT AMNESTY PASSING AS OBAMA WILL CONTINUE NON-ENFORCEMENT UNTIL THERE ARE SO MANY ILLEGALS VOTING… THEY WILL VOTE THE HISPANDERER FOR A THIRD TERM!


AMERICANS SAY NO TO AMNESTY!


Obama's 'Hispanicazation' of America

 


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Most Illegal Immigrant Families Collect Welfare… ALL GET AMERICAN JOBS???

April 05, 2011

Surprise, surprise; Census Bureau data reveals that most U.S. families headed by illegal immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare programs on behalf of their American-born anchor babies.


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OBAMA’S WALL STREET and the LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM

The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.

Megan McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's new Mandarin class.


 


 

DID OBAMA PUNK AMERICANS AS BADLY AS IT LOOKS NOW?

 


"There is a populist and conservative revolt against Wall Street and financial elites, Congress and government," Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg warned in an analysis this week. "Democrats and President Obama are seen as more interested in bailing out Wall Street than helping Main Street."

OBAMA, THE BANKSTER OWNED LA RAZA DEM

“The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”

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JUDICIAL WATCH:

It proves the Obama administration is willing to go to any extent - including gaming the courts - to continue stonewalling the full story of its lawless release of illegal aliens. Now, with the prison floodgates being thrown open to illegal aliens under the phony pretense of abiding by sequester cuts, it is more important that details of this threat to the public safety be revealed.


Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses…and Muslim Dictators


“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).”

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Importing Poverty: Immigration and Poverty in the United States: A Book of Charts


By Robert Rector
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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THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES!

 


 

"We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers," said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. "President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws."

 

 

Obama and Justice Sotomayor Vow to Illegals to SABOTAGE E-verify!

VIVA LA RAZA SUPREMACY?


“What employers really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs, experts say.”

 

UNDER OBAMA, TWO-THIRDS OF JOBS GO TO HIS PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS!

 


 

“At the hearing, Dr. Rakesh Kochar, Associate Director for Research at the Pew Hispanic Center, testified that in the year following the official end of the recession (June 2009), foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost an additional 1.2 million jobs.”

"We have a situation where the job market — the bottom fell out, yet we kept legal immigration relatively high without even a national debate," he said. "As a consequence, a lot of the job growth has been going to immigrants."

Mr. Obama did take action this year to grant many illegal immigrants up to 30 years of age a tentative legal status that prevents them from being deported and authorizes them to work in the United States.

Some Republicans in Congress have criticized Mr. Obama's policy, saying it violates his powers and will mean more competition for scarce jobs.

 

 

 

Report details massive wealth loss for youth in US AS OBAMA'S BANKSTERS LOOT THE NATION and JOBS GO TO ILLEGALS

Report details massive wealth loss for youth in US



Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses…and Muslim Dictators


“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).”

OBAMA, THE BANKSTER OWNED LA RAZA DEM

“The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”

OBAMAnomics: Soaring Profits for Wall Street, Soaring Crimes of Bankster Donors, Soaring Foreclosures and Soaring Unemployment for Americans (Legals)…. STILL CALLING IT “CHANGE”???

New Detroit emergency manager owes back taxes - OBAMA'S CULTURE OF CORRUPT CRONY CAPITALISM

New Detroit emergency manager owes back taxes


OBAMAnomics: Soaring Profits for Wall Street, Soaring Crimes of Bankster Donors, Soaring Foreclosures and Soaring Unemployment for Americans (Legals)…. STILL CALLING IT “CHANGE”???

Detroit’s emergency manager: Who is Kevyn Orr? Where the hell is BARACK OBAMA GOLFING THESE DAYS?

Detroit’s emergency manager: Who is Kevyn Orr?

OBAMA, ALWAYS A SOFTY ON MUSLIM DICTATORS, JUST HANDED OVER TO THE DICTATORS OF EGYPT $250 MILLION DOLLARS. THE SUM WOULD HAVE BEEN MUCH GREATER BUT CONGRESS WOULD NOT BACK OBAM'S GENEROSITY... THIS WAS DONE ONLY DAYS AFTER OBAMA CUT VERTERAN'S EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS AND FURLOUGHED 6,000 TROOPS ON THE NARCOMEX BORDER.

...AND FOR DETROIT... OBAMA HAS......???


Orr, who says he is a lifelong Democrat, played a role in the presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Barack Obama. He took part in the Obama administration’s forced bankruptcy and restructuring of the auto industry in which tens of thousands of jobs were eliminated, retiree health benefits slashed and new-hire pay cut by half.


OBAMAnomics: Soaring Profits for Wall Street, Soaring Crimes of Bankster Donors, Soaring Foreclosures and Soaring Unemployment for Americans (Legals)…. STILL CALLING IT “CHANGE”???

 

OBAMA’S CYNICAL JOKE of HOMELAND SECURITY


(ALL THE BELOW POSTS IN THE ABOVE)

According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department.

WIKILEAKS EXPOSES OBAMA’S AGENDA OF ASSAULTING OUR BORDERS, AMERICANS IN JOBS HE WANTS TO FILL WITH ILLEGALS


JUDICIAL WATCH:

It proves the Obama administration is willing to go to any extent - including gaming the courts - to continue stonewalling the full story of its lawless release of illegal aliens. Now, with the prison floodgates being thrown open to illegal aliens under the phony pretense of abiding by sequester cuts, it is more important that details of this threat to the public safety be revealed.



Senate report documents fraud and lawbreaking by JPMorgan Chase

Senate report documents fraud and lawbreaking by JPMorgan Chase

“The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”

OBAMA’S WALL STREET and the LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM

The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.

Megan McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's new Mandarin class.


 


 

OBAMA'S BANKSTER CRONIES AT IT STILL - JPMorgan and the criminalization of the US ruling class

JPMorgan and the criminalization of the US ruling class



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.

 “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!



 
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

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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.


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NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN MORE MONEY FROM BANKSTERS THAN BARACK OBAMA!

“The response of the White House was to do absolutely nothing. Not a single senior bank executive has been criminally charged, let alone imprisoned, for crimes that have devastated the lives of countless millions of people in the US and around the world. Instead, the White House has shielded the corporate criminals.”

 An insider’s view of Wall Street criminality

15 March 2012

Greg Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, announced his resignation Wednesday in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, denouncing the bank's “toxic” culture of avarice and fraud.

Smith headed the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In his column, entitled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” he describes a corporate environment that encourages and rewards big short-term returns gained through the bilking of clients and the general public. “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off,” he writes.

Speaking of one’s clients as “muppets” and describing deal-making as “ripping eyeballs out” are commonplace at Goldman, according to Smith. The way to advance at the Wall Street giant, he writes, is to persuade your clients “to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of,” get your clients “to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman,” and trade “any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.”

The column describes an operation in which laws and regulations requiring financial institutions to deal honestly with their clients and protect their interests are routinely violated. The insider’s indictment of Goldman Sachs highlights a broader process—the criminalization of American capitalism as a whole.

It confirms from the inside that three-and-a-half years after Wall Street’s manic pursuit of super-profits triggered a global financial meltdown and the deepest slump since the Great Depression, nothing has changed in the boardrooms of corporate America. The same fraudulent and often illegal practices that enriched the financial aristocracy and plundered the rest of society continue unabated. The criminals at the top, having been bailed out with trillions of taxpayer funds, are making more money than ever, while millions of ordinary people are being driven into poverty and homelessness.

Education, health care, pensions are being gutted, wages are being slashed and more austerity is on the agenda because there is supposedly “no money.” Corporate profits and CEO pay, meanwhile, are setting new records.

This is an indictment not simply of Goldman Sachs, or even Wall Street alone, but rather the entire economic and political system. Every official institution—the White House, Congress, the courts, the media, the Democratic and Republican parties—is complicit.

Smith’s column was widely reported in the media. NBC Nightly News led its report Wednesday night with the story, interviewing a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission who was brought on to deplore the type of practices described by the former Goldman executive. The ruling class is well aware that popular anger against Wall Street is rising and capitalism itself is becoming increasingly discredited in the eyes of millions of Americans—a process that found an initial expression in the Occupy Wall Street protests. It is concerned that Smith’s piece will further fuel this sentiment.

The practices to which Smith points—and worse—are well known to the Obama administration and the financial regulatory agencies. In April of last year, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published a 640-page report outlining in detail the fraudulent and illegal practices of major banks that contributed to the September 2008 crash. Fully 260 pages of that report were devoted to Goldman Sachs. They explained chapter and verse, giving dates and naming names, how the bank defrauded its clients by selling them mortgage securities while betting against the same investments, without telling them it was doing so.

The committee also documented the complicity of the credit rating firms and federal regulators in the colossal mortgage Ponzi scheme that collapsed in 2007-2008, setting off a new world depression. It cited securities laws that had been violated by Goldman and two other banks it examined, Washington Mutual and Deutsche Bank, and referred this information to the Obama administration’s Justice Department.

The response of the White House was to do absolutely nothing. Not a single senior bank executive has been criminally charged, let alone imprisoned, for crimes that have devastated the lives of countless millions of people in the US and around the world. Instead, the White House has shielded the corporate criminals.

One Wall Street firm after another—Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, Countrywide Financial—has been allowed to settle charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission out of court, paying token fines while admitting no wrongdoing. That this continues is seen in the filing Monday in federal court of the sweetheart settlement between five major banks and the state and federal governments of charges arising from the banks’ illegal processing of foreclosures. The banks have merely to pay a combined fine of $5 billion for illegally throwing thousands of families out of their homes, with no admission of wrongdoing. In return, they get the quashing of state investigations that threatened to result in tens of billions in damages and fines.

Not only does the Obama administration protect the Wall Street criminals, it includes their representatives among its top personnel. To cite some examples:

* Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, is the chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

* Dianna Farrell, former financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, is deputy director of the National Economic Council.

* Jacob Lew, Obama’s chief of staff, was a top executive at Citigroup. He follows two other bankers chosen by Obama to head his White House operations—former JPMorgan executive William Daley and former Chicago investment banker Rahm Emanuel.

The criminalization of the American corporate-financial elite cannot be separated from the capitalist system itself. It is the product of a decades-long process of crisis and decay, in which the ruling elite has increasingly separated its wealth-making from the production of real value.

Manufacturing and the productive infrastructure have been decimated, while financial manipulation and speculation have come to dominate economic life. The working class has suffered a catastrophic decline in its social position at the same time that a parasitic financial aristocracy has come to exercise a de facto dictatorship over the political system.

Like all aristocracies, the American financial elite will not accept any infringement of its wealth and power. The working class must break its grip by mobilizing its strength in opposition to both parties of Wall Street and fighting for the establishment of a workers’ government and socialist policies, beginning with the nationalization of the banks and corporations and their transformation into public enterprises under the democratic control of the working people.

Andre Damon and Barry Grey

The authors also recommend:



THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS NO real REGULATION, NO PRISON TIME, AND UNLIMITED PILLAGING OF THE NATION’S ECONOMY!

DESPITE THE DEVASTATION THESE BANKSTERS HAVE CAUSED AMERICANS, THEIR PROFITS SOARED GREATER DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TWO YEARS, THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH. SO HAVE FORECLOSURES!

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).

 “Barack Obama's favorite banker faces losses of $2 billion and possibly more -- all because of the complex, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't trading in exotic financial instruments that he has so ardently lobbied Congress not to regulate.”
Is JPMorgan's Loss a Canary in a Coal Mine?

Posted: 05/16/2012 4:49 pm

That sound of shattered glass you've been hearing is the iconic portrait of Jamie Dimon splintering as it hits the floor of JPMorgan Chase. As the Good Book says, "Pride goeth before a fall," and the sleek, silver-haired, too-smart-for-his-own-good CEO of America's largest bank has been turning every television show within reach into a confessional booth. Barack Obama's favorite banker faces losses of $2 billion and possibly more -- all because of the complex, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't trading in exotic financial instruments that he has so ardently lobbied Congress not to regulate.

Once again, doing God's work -- that is, betting huge sums of money with depositor funds knowing that you are too big to fail and can count on taxpayers riding to your rescue if your avarice threatens to take the country down -- has lost some of its luster. The jewels in Dimon's crown sparkle with a little less grandiosity than a few days ago, when he ridiculed Paul Volcker's ideas for keeping Wall Street honest as "infantile."

To find out more about what this all means, I turned to Simon Johnson, once chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and now a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He and his colleague James Kwak founded the now-indispensable website baselinescenario.com. They co-authored the bestselling book 13 Bankers and a most recent book, White House Burning, an account every citizen should read to understand how the national deficit affects our future.

Bill Moyers: If Chase began to collapse because of risky betting, would the government be forced to step in again?

Simon Johnson: Absolutely, Bill. JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail. Hopefully in the future we can move away from this system, but right now it is too big. It's about a $2.5 trillion dollar bank in terms of total assets. That's roughly 20 percent of the U.S. economy, comparing their assets to our GDP. That's huge. If that bank were to collapse -- I'm not saying it will -- but if it were to collapse, it would be a shock to the economy bigger than that of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and as a result, they would be protected by the Federal Reserve. They are exactly what's known as too big to fail.

Moyers: I was just looking at an interview I did with you in February of 2009, soon after the collapse of 2008 and you said, and I'm quoting, "The signs that I see... the body language, the words, the op-eds, the testimony, the way these bankers are treated by certain congressional committees, it makes me feel very worried. I have a feeling in my stomach that is what I had in other countries, much poorer countries, countries that were headed into really difficult economic situations. When there's a small group of people who got you into a disaster and who are still powerful, you know you need to come in and break that power and you can't. You're stuck." How do you feel about that insight now?

Johnson: I'm still nervous, and I think that the losses that JPMorgan reported -- that CEO Jamie Dimon reported -- and the way in which they're presented, the fact that they're surprised by it and the fact that they didn't know they were taking these kinds of risks, the fact that they lost so much money in a relatively benign moment compared to what we've seen in the past and what we're likely to see in the future -- all of this suggests that we are absolutely on the path towards another financial crisis of the same order of magnitude as the last one.

Moyers: Should Jamie Dimon resign? I ask that because as you know and as we've discussed, Chase and other huge banks have been using their enormous wealth for years to, in effect, buy off our politicians and regulators. Chase just had to pay up almost three quarters of a billion dollars in settlements and surrendered fees to settle one case alone, that of bribery and corruption in Jefferson County, Alabama. It's also paid out billions of dollars to settle other cases of perjury, forgery, fraud and sale of unregistered securities. And these charges were for actions that took place while Mr. Dimon was the CEO. Should he resign?

Johnson: I think, Bill, there should be an independent investigation into how JPMorgan operates both with regard to these losses and with regard to all of the problems that you just identified. This investigation should be conducted separate from the board of directors. Remember that the shareholders and the board of directors absolutely have an incentive to keep JPMorgan Chase as a too-big-to-fail bank. But because it is that kind of bank, its downside risk is taken by the Federal Reserve, by the taxpayer, by the broader economy and all citizens. We need to have an independent, detailed, specific investigation to establish who knew what when and what kind of wrongdoing management was engaged in. On the basis of that, we'll see what we'll see and who should have to resign.

Moyers: Dimon is also on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which, as everyone knows is supposed to regulate JPMorgan. What in the world are bankers doing on the Fed board, regulating themselves?

Johnson: This is a terrible situation, Bill. It goes back to the origins, the political compromise at the very beginning of the Federal Reserve system about a hundred years ago. The bankers were very powerful back then, also, and they got a Federal Reserve system in which they had a lot of representation. Some of that has eroded over time because of previous abuses, but you're absolutely right, the prominent bankers, including most notably, Jamie Dimon, are members of the board of the New York Federal Reserve, a key element in the Federal Reserve system. And he should, under these circumstances, absolutely step down from that role. It's completely inappropriate to have such a big bank represented in this fashion. The New York Fed claims there's no impropriety, there's no wrong doing and he doesn't involve himself in supervision and so on and so forth. Perhaps, but why does Mr. Dimon, a very busy man, take time out of his day to be on the board of the New York fed? He is getting something from this. It's a trade, just like everything else on Wall Street.

Moyers: He dismissed criticism of his dual role yesterday by downplaying the role of the Fed board. He said it's more like an "advisory group than anything else." I had to check my hearing aid to see if I'd heard that correctly.

Johnson: Well, I think he is advising them on lots of things. He also, of course, meets with some regularity with top Treasury officials, and some reports say that he meets with President Obama with some regularity. The political access and connections of Mr. Dimon are second to none. One of his senior executives was until recently chief of staff in the White House, if you can believe that. I really think this has gone far enough. Under these kinds of circumstances with this amount of loss of control over risk management, what we need to have is Mr. Dimon step down from the New York Federal Reserve Board.

Moyers: He told shareholders at their annual meeting Tuesday -- they were meeting in Tampa, Florida -- that these were "self-inflicted mistakes" that "should never have happened." Does that seem reasonable to you?

Johnson: Well, it's all very odd, Bill, and I've talked to as many experts as I can find who are at all informed about what JPMorgan was doing and how they were doing it and nobody really understands the true picture. That's why we need an independent investigation to establish -- was this an isolated incident or, more likely, the breakdown of a system of controlling and managing risks. Keep in mind that JPMorgan is widely regarded to be the best in the business at risk management, as it is called on Wall Street. And if they can't do this in a relatively benign moment when things are not so very bad around the world, what is going to happen to them and to other banks when something really dramatic happens, for example, in Europe in the eurozone?

Moyers: Some of his supporters are claiming that only the bank has lost on this and that there's absolutely no chance that the loss could have threatened the stability of the banking system as happened in 2008. What do you say again to that?

Johnson: I say this is the canary in the coal mine. This tells you that something is fundamentally wrong with the way banks measure, manage and control their risks. They don't have enough equity funding in their business. They like to have a little bit of equity and a lot of debt. They get paid based on return on equity, unadjusted for risk. If things go well, they get the upside. If things go badly, the downside is someone else's problem. And that someone else is you and me, Bill. It goes to the Federal Reserve, but not only, it goes to the Treasury, it goes to the debt.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the increase in debt relative to GDP due to the last crisis will end up being 50 percent of GDP, call that $7 trillion dollars, $7.5 trillion dollars in today's money. That's extraordinary. It's an enormous shock to our fiscal accounts and to our ability to pay pensions and keep the healthcare system running in the future. For what? What did we get from that? Absolutely nothing. The bankers got some billions in extra pay, we get trillions in extra debt. It's unfair, it's inefficient, it's unconscionable, and it needs to stop.

Moyers: Wasn't part of the risk that Dimon took with taxpayer guaranteed deposits? I mean, if I had money at JPMorgan Chase, wouldn't some of my money have been used to take this risk?

Johnson: Again, we don't know the exact details, but news reports do suggest that yes, they were gambling with federally insured deposits, which just really puts the icing on the cake here.

Moyers: Do we know yet what is Dimon's culpability? Is it conceivable to you that a risk this big would have been incurred without his approval?

Johnson: It seems very strange and quite a stretch. And he did tell investors, when he reported on first quarter earnings in April, that he was aware of the situation, aware of the trade -- he called it a "tempest in a teacup," and, therefore, not something to worry about.

Moyers: He's been Wall Street's point man in their campaign against tighter regulation of derivatives and proprietary trading. Were derivatives at the heart of this gamble?

Johnson: Yes, according to reliable reports, this was a so-called "hedging" strategy that turned out to be no more than a gamble, but the people involved perhaps didn't understand that or maybe they understood it and covered it up. It was absolutely about a bet on extremely complex derivatives and the interesting question is who failed to understand exactly what they were getting into. And how did Jamie Dimon, who has a reputation that he burnishes more than anybody else for being the number one expert risk manager in the world -- how did he miss this one?

Moyers:I've been reading a lot of stories today about members of the House, Republicans in particular, saying this doesn't change their opinion at all that we've got to still diminish regulation. What do you think about that?

Johnson: I think that it is a recipe for disaster. Look, deregulating or not regulating during the boom is exactly how you get into bailouts in the bust. The goal should be to make all the banks small enough and simple enough to fail. End the government subsidies here. And when I talk to people on the intellectual right, Bill, they get this, as do people on the intellectual left. The problem is, the political right largely doesn't want to go there because of the donations. I'm afraid some people, not all, but some people on the political left don't want to go there either.

Moyers: The Washington Post reported that the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into JPMorgan's trading loss. Have you spotted -- and I know this is sensitive -- but have you spotted anything in the story so far that suggests the possibility of criminality? Dodd-Frank is not in existence yet, so where would any possibility of criminality come from?

Johnson: Well Dodd-Frank is in existence but the rules have not been written and therefore not implemented. So yes, it is hard to violate those rules in their current state. And many of those rules, by the way, violation would be a civil penalty, not a criminal penalty. If you violate a securities law -- if you've mislead investors, if there was material adverse information that was not disclosed in an appropriate and timely manner -- that's a very serious offence traditionally.

I have to say that the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have not been very good at enforcing securities law in recent years, including and specifically since the financial crisis. I am skeptical that this will change. But if they have an investigation that reveals all of the details of what happened and how it happened, that would be extremely informative and show us, I believe, that the risk management approach and attitudes on Wall Street are deeply flawed and leading us towards a big crisis.

Moyers: So what are people to do, Simon? What can people do now in response to this?

Johnson: Well, I think you have to look for politicians who are proposing solutions, and look on the right and on the left. I see Elizabeth Warren, running for the Senate in Massachusetts, who is saying we should bring back Glass-Steagall to separate commercial banking from investment banking. I see Tom Hoenig, who is not a politician, he's a regulator, he's the former president of the Kansas City Fed, and he's now one of the top two people at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC. He is saying that big banks should no longer have trading desks. That's the same sort of idea that Elizabeth Warren is expressing. We need a lot more people to focus on this and to make this an issue for the elections.

And I would say in this context, Bill, it's very important not to be distracted. I understand for example, Speaker Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, is proposing to have another conflict over the debt ceiling in the near future. This is the politics of distraction. This is refusing to recognize that a huge part of our fiscal problems today and in the future are due to these risks within the financial system that are allowed because the people running the biggest banks hand out massive campaign contributions across the political spectrum.

Moyers: Are you saying that this financial crisis, so-called, is at heart a political crisis?

Johnson: Yes, exactly. I think that a few people, particularly in and around the financial system, have become too powerful. They were allowed to take a lot of risk, and they did massive damage to the economy -- more than eight million jobs lost. We're still struggling to get back anywhere close to employment levels where we were before 2008. And they've done massive damage to the budget. This damage to the budget is long lasting; it undermines the budget when we need it to be stronger because the society is aging. We need to support Social Security and support Medicare on a fair basis. We need to restore and rebuild revenue, revenue that was absolutely devastated by the financial crisis. People need to understand the link between what the banks did and the budget. And too many people fail to do that. "Oh, it's too complicated. I don't want to understand the details, I don't want to spend time with it." That's a mistake, a very big mistake. You're playing into the hands of a few powerful people in the society who want private benefit and social loss.

Watch Moyers & Company weekly on public television. See more web-only features like this at BillMoyers.com

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Why hasn’t Obama been impeached? His violations of our borders laws, inducing illegals to vote, sabotage of jobs for Americans, connections to criminal banksters…. WHAT DOES IT TAKE? 

NO WORKS IN THE CORRUPT OBAMA WHITE HOUSE THAT IS NOT CONNECTED TO THE BANKSTERS THAT OWN OBAMA, OR THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA!

THE REASON OBAMA BROUGHT IN DALEY WAS BECAUSE WAS FROM JPMORGAN, AND AN ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS.

For much of Obama’s tenure, Jamie Dimon was known as the White House’s “favorite banker.” According to White House logs, Dimon visited the White House at least 18 times, often to talk to his former subordinate at JPMorgan, William Daley, who had been named White House chief of staff by Obama after the Democratic rout in the 2010 elections.

OBAMA PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS NO PRISON TIME AND NO REAL REGULATION. DID HE DELIVER?

The JPMorgan scandal also throws into relief the government’s failure to prosecute those responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown. Despite overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing and criminality uncovered by two federal investigations last year, those responsible have been shielded from prosecution.

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).
The settlement, reported to be worth $25 billion, was announced February 9 and hailed by President Obama as a serious rebuke to the banks and boon to distressed homeowners. (See: “Obama administration brokers pro-bank mortgage fraud settlement”).

 
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UNDER OBAMA BANK PROFITS AND CRIMES SOAR... SO DO FORECLOSURES!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/bank-foreclosures-24-7-wall-street_n_2934364.html