Wednesday, October 8, 2014

The Rise of Bankster-owned Barack Obama and the Rapid Final Death of the American Middle-Class

“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: SERVANT OF THE 1%


Richest one percent controls nearly half of global wealth


The richest one percent of the world’s population now controls 48.2 percent of global wealth, up from 46 percent last year.

 
 

The report found that the growth of global inequality has accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, as the values of financial assets have soared while wages have stagnated and declined.

 
 
This “Hope and Change” clown who was nothing more than Bush’s third and fourth terms on steroids will continue to blame the republican party he hoped to destroy with amnesty for 40 million looting Mexicans.

IMF report: No end to economic breakdown

8 April 2014
Almost six years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund has effectively ruled out any return to the economic growth rates that preceded September 2008.
 

OBAMANOMICS AT WORK - HOW

BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK

OBAMA ORCHESTRATED THE BIGGEST

TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM THE

AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS TO HIS

CRONIES AND THEN PROMISED ILLEGALS

OPEN BORDERS, BIT BY BIT BY BIT

AMNESTY, NO E-VERIFY AND NO LEGAL

NEED APPLY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED

AND PROFITS SOARING FOR HIS

CRONIES... and Hillary is just behind him

promising Obama's banksters the best is yet to

come!


NO ONE HAS WORKED HARDER FOR CRONY CRIMINAL BANKSTER THAN BARACK OBAMA… JAMIE DIMON IS ONE OF OBAMA’S BIGGEST CONTRIBUTORS!

Why aren’t the Wall Street criminals prosecuted?


By Barry Grey
7 January 2014

In May 2012, only days after JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon revealed that his bank had lost billions of dollars in speculative bets, President Barack Obama publicly defended the multi-millionaire CEO, calling him “one of the smartest bankers we’ve got.” What Obama did not mention is that Dimon is a criminal.

JPMorgan is not the exception; it is the rule. Virtually every major bank that operates on Wall Street has settled charges of fraud and criminality on a staggering scale. In 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 630-page report on the financial crash of 2008 documenting what the committee chairman called “a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest and wrongdoing.”
These multiple crimes by serial lawbreakers have had very real and very destructive consequences. The entire world has been plunged into an economic slump that has already lasted more than five years and shows no signs of abating. Tens of millions of families have lost their homes as a result of predatory mortgages pushed by JPMorgan and other Wall Street banks.

Obama’s “recovery” and the social crisis in America … the recovery that NEVER was!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/08/america-under-obamas-crony-capitalism.html


even now Obama and the Democrat party are conspiring to hand millions more jobs to illegals and billions more in welfare to LA RAZA and their bankster paymasters!


THE RISE OF BARACK OBAMA and the FALL of

AMERICA

HOW A SOCIOPATH CONNED A NATION CALLING IT “HOPE & CHANGE” AND THEN BECAME GEORGE BUSH’S THIRD & FORTH TERMS ON STEROIDS.


 
BANKS and GEITHNER ….He was the banksters' HOPE & NO CHANGE man in the white house!


CRONY CAPITALISM: HOW OBAMA AND HIS CRONY BANKSTERS LOOTED AMERICA – It’s a work still in progress!


As he puts it, “We did save the economy, but we lost the country doing it.” Geithner adds, “Conventional wisdom still holds that we abandoned Main Street to protect Wall Street.”

THE OBAM MELTDOWN is here:        

OBAMANnomics: HOW HIS CRONY BANKSTERS LOOTED AMERICAN AND WERE PAID MASSIVE BONUSES FOR DOING SO!


 
……. there was a reason why the banksters invested so many bribes in BARACK OBAMA even before his first term!

No bank or executive has been criminally charged in relation to these crimes.


It is impossible to fully calculate the human suffering that has resulted from these crimes. Since 2003, a typical US household has lost 36 percent of its wealth, while the poorest quarter of households have lost 68 percent of their wealth during the same period.

HOW BARACK OBAMA HELPED WALL
STREET LOOT AMERICA AND HANDED
MILLIONS OF JOBS OVER TO VOTING
ILLEGALS:


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-barack-obama-destroyed-america-for.html


CRONY OBAMANOMICS – HOW OBAMA SQUANDERED AMERICA FOR HIS LOOTING WALL STREET BANKSTERS!



http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-reality-of-obamas-crony-capitalism.html


$3.39T Quantitative Explosion: Fed Owns More Treasuries and MBSs Than Publicly Held Debt Amassed From Washington Through Clinton.

  

The bank bailout and the Forbes 400

8 October 2014

Six years ago this past Friday, the US Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which established the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, the first of the bank bailouts. It was followed by a series of Federal Reserve and Treasury programs that allocated some $7 trillion in free loans to the financial system.

The day after the passage of TARP, October 4, 2008, the World Socialist Web Site offered the following analysis: “The [Bush] administration has invoked the

worst economic crisis since the Great Depression in

an attempt to terrorize the American people into accepting

the greatest transfer of public resources to the financial elite

in history…[The bailout] will facilitate an ever-greater

concentration of wealth that can only produce a drastic

deterioration of living conditions and the undermining of

basic democratic rights.”

Six years later, not a word of this assessment needs to be revised, except for changing the future tense to the past.

The outcome of the past six years of government policy can

be seen in the figures released last week by the business

magazine Forbes, ranking the 400 wealthiest Americans. The

report revealed that since 2009, the 400 richest people in the

US have nearly doubled their net worth, to a shocking $2.9

trillion. This is nearly a fifth of the total value of all the goods

and services produced in the United States in an entire year.

The accumulation of this vast wealth takes place under

conditions not of general prosperity, but rather of an

economic stagnation and falling living standards for the

majority of the population. Since 2010, the median

household income in the US has fallen by five percent.

This outcome is the intended result of the entire policy of the ruling class since the economic crash. From the beginning, the ruling class’s response, initiated under Bush and vastly expanded under Obama, was characterized by two interrelated aspects: the provision of unlimited funds to prop up the financial system—and with it the wealth of the financial oligarchy—to be paid for through sweeping attacks on social programs and the living standards of the working class.

Earlier this year, Timothy Geithner, the former Treasury

Secretary who now heads a private equity firm, published his

memoir, which makes clear that every single substantial

policy question related to the financial crisis was decided

solely from the standpoint of maximizing the most predatory

profit interests of Wall Street.

According to Geithner, by September 2008 it became clear to the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve that every major US financial institution was insolvent, and would go bankrupt without government intervention. Under these circumstances, the Federal Reserve and Treasury allowed Lehman Brothers to collapse, a move that had the effect, to use a phrase recalled by Geithner, of “shock[ing] the political world into taking the crisis seriously.”

Following the collapse of Lehman, the Federal Reserve and Bush administration crafted TARP, which, amid broad popular opposition, was initially voted down in the House of Representatives before passing amid a lobbying campaign by the presidential candidates of both parties (Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain).

After coming to office, the Obama administration has carried

out a set of clear policies: the banks would get rescued, but

their executives would remain in place, there would be no

criminal prosecutions despite clear evidence of illegal

activities, no “haircuts” for bank creditors and no meaningful

restraints on executive pay.

The Obama administration's actions in the aftermath of the 2008 crash were dictated by the same considerations as the bank bailout. In his own memoir, Neil Barofsky, the former inspector-general for TARP, noted that the Obama administration’s mortgage modification program, touted by the White House as a means to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, was in fact nothing more than “an aid to the banks, keeping the full flush of foreclosures from hitting the financial system all at the same time.”

Which brings us back to the Forbes 400. Beyond the total mass of wealth that the rich now control, the most salient fact revealed in the report is the manner in which this wealth has been, to use the word loosely, “earned.” As the magazine began its report, “Thanks

to a buoyant stock market, the richest people

in the US just keep getting richer.” A “buoyant stock market”—that is, through speculation on an historically unprecedented scale, aided and abetted by the government and the Federal Reserve.

Finance is increasingly dominant among America’s wealthy. While the finance and real estate sectors made up about 4.4 percent of the first Forbes 400 in 1982, they now make up 21 percent. Beyond those who derive their wealth immediately from the financial sector, the fortunes of billionaires in other sectors of the economy is increasingly based on share values. For example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, currently 11th

on the list with a net worth of $34.1 billion, had his wealth

increase seventeen-fold from 2009 as a result of Facebook’s

speculative initial public offering.

What is revealed in these figures is that the very processes that erupted in 2008 are continuing. The crash was itself rooted in the protracted crisis of American capitalism, characterized by the growth of financial parasitism proportionately with the decline of manufacturing and productive activity. Yet six years later, the big banks are bigger than ever, and even more dependent on speculation on Wall Street.

To resolve a problem, it is necessary to understand its cause.

Yet the cause of all the great problems facing the working

class, in the United States and internationally—soaring social

inequality, the destruction of democratic rights, unending

war that threatens to engulf the entire planet—is rooted

fundamentally in the stranglehold of finance capital over all

aspects of society.

The task of freeing society from the grip of the financial parasites is an existential question for mankind. This task can only be accomplished one way: through the building of a mass political movement of the international working class to expropriate the banks and major corporations, hold the financial criminals to account for their crimes, and reorganize society in the interest of social need, not private profit.

Andre Damon

THE GRUESOME REALITY OF THE JOBS CRISIS: No
legal need apply!!!!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/10/will-amnesty-for-millions-keep-wages.html

“While the economy added an estimated 248,000 jobs and the official unemployment rate fell from 6.1 to 5.9 percent, these headline figures hide a more fundamental reality. Six years after the financial collapse of 2008, the labor market remains stagnant and an increasing portion of the population has simply given up hope of ever finding work.”

 
BARACK OBAMA: Servant of the 1%, Mexico and the MEXICAN
FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA, which operates out of the Obama
white house.

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/09/amnesty-hoax-to-keep-wages-depressed.html

That President Obama would lawlessly bring in more cheap labor at the request of corporate interests at a time when tens of millions of Americans are unemployed speaks volumes….

 
BILLIONAIRE BILL GATES: Number One enemy of the American worker.

He didn’t get rich paying legals a living wage to a LEGAL!!!
 
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


 
ONE IN FIVE (LEGALS) STILL HAVE NO WORK AFTER THE
RECESSION – Good time to hand 40 million looting Mexicans
even more of our jobs???

OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY ARE WORKING ON JUST
THAT!


 
1%TOP SUPER TOP - SOARING RICHES FOR THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS

THE 1% DEMAND THE FINAL SOLUTION TO THE
AMERICAN MIDDLE –CLASS and IMPOSITION OF
THE DEATH PENALTY.


IT’S ONLY OBAMANOMICS AT WORK

INVESTORS.com
LA RAZA ABOVE THE LAW – CONSULATES LOOTING

Democrat politicians partner with Mexico and the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA “The Race” to loot America and then send the tax bills to the American middle-class whose jobs LA RAZA owns.


  
Hillary Clinton’s promise to illegals (AND THE 1%): more Mexifornias.

The staggering cost of Mexico’s looting of America


 

RASMUSSEN POLL: Hillary Clinton is a bad clone of Barack Obama owned by the same bankster paymasters as Obama

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/09/rasmussen-obama-and-hillary-friends-or.html

 

THE LOOTING OF DETROIT: A case study on the methods the 1% use to loot America.

Your city, job and your pension next on the line for the slaughter!


With colossal impertinence, the Mexican government attacked Texas Gov. Rick Perry for sending National Guard troops to guard our Southern border, saying that Mexico "deeply rejects and condemns the deployment." The Mexicans accused Perry of taking this action to advance his political ambitions.

As Obama's Wall Street cronies continue to loot and Obama hands the American middle class the tax bills for their economic crimes:


 “A sea change is unfolding in the US and world economy that portends a catastrophe of dimensions not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.” It warned that for the working class, the financial meltdown meant “rapid growth of unemployment, poverty, homelessness and social misery,” while “many of those who precipitated this economic disaster… will profit handsomely from the debris they have left behind.”

 
LA RAZA SUPREMACIST MARK ZUCKERBERG WANTS OPEN
BORDERS…. except for his!


Today, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) blasted pro-amnesty billionaires whose fondness for open borders ends at the doors of their "gated compounds and fenced-off communities," noting how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought other four houses surrounding his own just because he wanted "a little privacy."


 
ZUCKERBERG: AMERICA’S GREEDY LITTLE LA RAZA SUPREMACIST HISPANDERING RUNTJOB!

his one man war against the AMERICAN worker!


Today, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) blasted pro-amnesty billionaires whose fondness for open borders ends at the doors of their "gated compounds and fenced-off communities," noting how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought other four houses surrounding his own just because he wanted "a little privacy."


 
BILL GATES FIRES EMPLOYEES AND THEN DEMANDS AMNESTY TO KEEP THE MEX HORDES JUMPING OUR BORDERS!


 
ZUCKERBERG

tech says no to hiring AMERICANS

OPEN BORDERS AND ENDLESS HORDES OF IMMIGRANTS POURING IN IS ONLY ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED


To cite just one example, if there is a shortage of U.S. engineers, are 1.5 million Americans with engineering degrees either unemployed or working in other fields? In all too many cases, U.S. tech companies prefer foreign workers on temporary visas because they are cheaper and more exploitable than Americans.

The Employment Situation of Immigrants and Natives in the Second Quarter of 2013


 


By Steven A. Camarota August 2013  

That President Obama would lawlessly bring in more cheap labor at the request of corporate interests at a time when tens of millions of Americans are unemployed speaks volumes.
 
INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET CRONIES

collapse of household income in the US… STILL BILLIONS IN WELFARE HANDED TO ILLEGALS… they already get our jobs and are voting for more!


 

INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA… most jobs go to illegals.

AS HIS CRONY BANKSTERS CONTINUE TO LOOT, INCOMES PLUMMET FOR AMERICANS (LEGALS).

GOOD TIME FOR AMNESTY FOR MILLIONS OF LOOTING MEXICANS?

MORE HERE:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/09/and-still-democrat-party-wants-millions.html

“The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.”

 

THE OBAMA devastation of America (wall street's poster boy for corruption)


THE SPEEDING TRAIN WRECK TO DESTRUCTION: BARACK OBAMA'S CRONY CAPITALISM, WALL STREET'S UNFETTERED LOOTING AND THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA. . .. one man's utter destruction of America!



ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER RAGES ON UNDER THE GREAT HISPANDERER OBAMA!

Labor Day 2014


Temp labor at record levels in US


By Andre Damon                                      
2 September 2014

The Obama administration marked Labor Day 2014 with demagogic speeches by President Obama in Milwaukee and Vice President Joseph Biden in Detroit—speeches that were notable mainly for the brazenness of their dishonesty and cynicism.

 

Obama and Biden postured as partisans of what they referred to as the “middle class,” even as a number of reports emerged documenting the devastating decline in conditions for the working class under the current administration.



WAGES PLUMMET… and millions more illegals are arriving soon!


Low-wage males’ wages declined by an astonishing 31.2 percent, with mid-wage male workers seeing a 16 percent drop, the study found. Workers without a high school diploma suffered a 46.3 percent fall in wages, while workers with only a high school diploma lost 32.1 percent, and those holding a bachelor’s degree lost 4 percent. VIVA LA RAZA SUPREMACY? DEMS SABOTAGE E-VERIFY NATIONWIDE!

BANK of AMERICA fines THE OBAMA SWEETHEART DEAL FOR ONE OF AMERICA'S BIGGEST CRIMINAL BANKS

BANKSTER-OWNED OBAMA KEEPS PROMISE TO CRIMINAL BANKSTERS… tax payers pay their fines, no bankster goes to prison and their looting only soars unfettered!


BIG PHARMATOP

BIG PHARMA loves Obama’s CRONY CAPITALISM and is investing in democrat politicians big time… BUT NOT AS BIG AS BIG BANKSTERS DID!


“Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., delivered crucial support to the 2009 package of healthcare subsidies, mandates, and regulations known as Obamacare. Back then, the drug industry pledged to help any Democratic senators endangered by their support of the bill. They seem to be still delivering today.”

 
The Obama Assault on Americans (Legals)

BIG PHARMA DELIGHTS IN SOARING RATES… illegals still get “free” gringo-paid medical. All they have to do is wave their Mexican flags in our faces!


OBAMA’S AMERICA: Soaring poverty for Legals, looting by crony banksters and a massive welfare state for illegals!


 

THE OBAMA, PELOSI, REID, FEINSTEIN, BOXER bit by bit amnesty conspiracy… IT’S WORKING!

By Mark Krikorian

“A number of Alice in Wonderland euphemisms for such executive amnesties have been concocted over the years, including Deferred Action, Extended Voluntary Departure, Deferred Enforced Departure, and Parole in Place. What they have in common is that they were made up out of whole cloth by the executive as ways of LETTING ILLEGAL ALIENS STAY.”


“Childhood Arrivals (DACA). So far more than half a million illegal immigrants claiming to have arrived here before age 16 have been legalized by the president’s unilateral riff on the Dream Act”.

Obama has been “quite aggressive and he’s been creative in looking for every possible avenue to take matters into his own hands,” Woolley added.


Sage Foundation: Wealth "Inequality" Will
Continue to Worsen

Sage Foundation: Wealth "Inequality" Will Continue to Worsen


Written by  Bob Adelmann


In another so-called research study about wealth inequality, the liberal think-tank Sage Foundation said in June that while the super-rich have fully recovered from the Great Recession, the vast majority of Americans have not. Specifically their report shows that median household net  worth “was $32,000 lower in 2013 than it was 10 years earlier,” a decline of 36 percent. It concluded:


These wealth losses, however, were not distributed equally.… Wealth inequality increased significantly from 2003 through 2013; by some metrics inequality roughly doubled.


 (SEE LINK TO BLOG BELOW)


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/08/america-under-obamas-crony-capitalism.html


CRONY CAPITALISM at work

Obama’s “recovery” and the social crisis in America … the recovery that
NEVER was!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/08/america-under-obamas-crony-capitalism.html


Sage Foundation: Wealth "Inequality" Will Continue to Worsen.

Wealth inequality increased significantly from 2003 through 2013; by some metrics inequality roughly doubled.

 
WAGES PLUMMET UNDER OBAMA as the rich get richer.

wages and amnesty…. It’s all about keeping wages depressed and passing along the real cost of all that “cheap” Mexican labor to the American middle class!


 
THE OBAMA DEPRESSION

WALL STREET-OWNED BARACK OBAMA’S ASSAULT on the AMERICAN WORKER as he builds the LA RAZA Mexican welfare state .


 

AMERICA…. NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!!!

JOBS – THE REALITY THEY DON’T WANT US TO KNOW… only illegals get them!

amnesty would add 100 million more illegals… they’re climbing our borders now for it!

WORST JOB MARKET IN 40 YEARS… and

getting worse!



NAFTA BORDERS and BILLIONAIRES

AMNESTY: America’s death warrant 

THE CONSPIRACY to DESTROY AMERICA’S BORDERS… Obama and his Wall Street banksters
 

This nation no longer is a democratic republic...rather it has become a tool of the super-rich members of the above mentioned elite who preselect our presidents based on their cooperation and complicity with the elite’s ultimate goals. Obama has, in their opinion done superbly carrying out the plans well laid out for him by his backers.

 


 
BILLIONAIRES partner with MEXICO, OBAMA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to assault the AMERICAN WORKER…. Amnesty, it’s all about keeping wages depressed and passing along the real cost of all that “cheap” mex labor to the American middle class.


OPEN BORDERS AND ENDLESS HORDES OF IMMIGRANTS POURING IN IS ONLY ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED


To cite just one example, if there is a shortage of U.S. engineers, are 1.5 million Americans with engineering degrees either unemployed or working in other fields? In all too many cases, U.S. tech companies prefer foreign workers on temporary visas because they are cheaper and more exploitable than Americans.


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.

 

WE KNOW WHAT OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS HAVE DONE TO THE AMERICAN ECONOMY… but will Obama’s amnesty hoax to legalize mexico’s looting and destroy the GOP, also destroy the DEMOCRAT PARTY?

 

HE’S WORKING ON IT…

 


 

CRONY CAPITALISM and WEALTH INEQUALITY in AMERICA

How Barack Obama destroyed the American middle class and built Mexico’s LA RAZA welfare state in America.


 
OBAMANOMICS

FROM THE HOPE & CHANGE & LOOTING” BY CRONIES CLOWN

THE ENTIRE REASON BORDERS ARE SABOTAGED IS TO INVITE ENDLESS HORDES OF ILLEGALS INTO OUR COUNTRY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED. THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS GETS THE TAX BILLS FOR THEIR LOOTING, WELFARE, ANCHOR BABIES AND CRIME TIDAL WAVE!



The US ruling elite has reached a historical dead end. It staggers from crisis to crisis, trying to put out fires with gasoline. This pragmatic, shortsighted and parasitic approach to the crisis of the US economy is expressive of the basic physiognomy of the financial elite. This is a social layer that has amassed its wealth not through productive activity, but through the looting of society: raiding pension funds, slashing wages, shutting down industrial facilities and laying off workers.

SEN. TED CRUZ LAMBAST OBAMA’S SABOTAGE of AMERICAN BORDERS and the Obama bit by bit by bit by millions more illegals AMNESTY!


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/07/sen-ted-cruz-condems-obamas-bit-by-bit.html


Although the crisis has prompted a new flurry of legislative activity, Obama's unilateral actions may prove far more significant. According to National Journal, Obama recently gave “quiet credence” to a plan from a left-wing activist group to grant unilateral amnesty to as many as 6 million illegal aliens currently residing in the U.S.

............. and they're still at it! Looting like banksters!!!

Big Banks Face Another Round of U.S. Charges


http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/big-banks-face-another-round-of-u-s-charges/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

 



The Justice Department is preparing a fresh round of attacks on the world’s biggest banks, again questioning Wall Street’s role in a broad array of financial markets.
 
With evidence mounting that a number of foreign and American banks colluded to alter the price of foreign currencies, the largest and least regulated financial market, prosecutors are aiming to file charges against at least one bank by the end of the year, according to interviews with lawyers briefed on the matter. Ultimately, several banks are expected to plead guilty.
 
Interviews with more than a dozen lawyers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations open a window onto previously undisclosed aspects of an investigation that is unnerving Wall Street and the defense bar. While cases stemming from the financial crisis were aimed at institutions, prosecutors are planning to eventually indict individual bank employees over currency manipulation, using their instant messages as incriminating evidence.
 
The charges will most likely focus on traders and their bosses rather than chief executives. As a result, critics of the Justice Department might view the cases as little more than an exercise in public relations, a final push to shape the legacy of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who was blamed for a lack of criminal cases against Wall Street executives.
 
Yet the breadth of the suspected wrongdoing in the currency inquiry — Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and UBS are among the dozen or so banks under investigation — might distinguish it from the piecemeal nature of the crisis-era investigations.
 
And prosecutors are testing a new negotiating tactic, two lawyers said, using the currency investigation as a cudgel to potentially reopen other cases. Arguing that the misconduct would violate earlier settlements involving interest rate manipulation, prosecutors have threatened to impose new penalties in the interest rate cases.
 
Those interest rate cases, which have already led to settlements with five banks and laid the groundwork for the currency investigation, are experiencing something of a resurgence. For one thing, prosecutors are preparing additional charges against at least one trader suspected of manipulating the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, a benchmark that underpins the cost of

Some banks also remain under investigation. In the last major rate-rigging case against a bank, prosecutors are discussing the possibility of forcing Deutsche Bank or one of its subsidiaries to plead guilty to manipulating Libor, the lawyers said. The lawyers added that the German bank’s New York branch faces a separate action from Benjamin M. Lawsky, New York State’s banking regulator, who until now has sat out the Libor settlements.
 
A spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank said the bank was “cooperating in the various regulatory investigations and conducting its own ongoing review into the interbank offered rates matters,” adding that “no current or former member of the management board had any inappropriate involvement.”
 
The Justice Department’s focus on financial misdeeds comes at a time of transition; top prosecutors are leaving its criminal division, which is handling the benchmark investigations along with the antitrust division. And for Mr. Holder, entering his final weeks at the Justice Department, the cases offer a last opportunity to address public and political complaints that prosecutors have gone soft on Wall Street.
 
He has sought to swing the tide through a series of recent cases: record fines against JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America and guilty pleas from Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas.
 
The public lust for charges is at odds with the view on Wall Street, where bankers and lawyers report fatigue with what seems like unrelenting investigations. With each inquiry, the fines have multiplied, stretching to nearly $17 billion for Bank of America.
 
And the scrutiny could drag on for years. The Justice Department, lawyers said, has widened its focus to include a criminal investigation into banks that set an important benchmark for interest rate derivatives, a previously unreported development that coincides with international regulators’ proposing overhauls to the rate-setting process.
 
The flurry of activity strikes at the heart of Wall Street’s role in setting benchmarks across the globe. The investigations suggest that banks, seeking to benefit their own trades, have compromised the sanctity of rates like Libor and the “4 p.m. London fix” for currencies, which investors use to value their positions.
 
As the currency investigation gains momentum, it is unclear which bank will settle first or which will plead guilty. As was the case in the Libor investigation, lawyers said, UBS was accepted into the antitrust division’s leniency program in exchange for its cooperation, though it still faces an action from the criminal division. Several banks, including at least one American bank, are expected to plead guilty.
 
Prosecutors have explained publicly that banks would earn credit for exposing their misbehaving employees or face charges for protecting them. Already, banks have fired or suspended about 30 employees linked to the currency investigation, although no one has been accused of wrongdoing.
While prosecutors are aiming to bring at least one currency case this year, the heavy workload could delay action until early next year. The pace also could stall as prosecutors seek to coordinate with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Mr. Lawsky and federal banking regulators.
 
In Britain, however, regulators are nearing a settlement with several banks in the currency case. The Financial Conduct Authority of Britain met last month with six banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan, Barclays, UBS, the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC — to discuss the contours of a collective settlement that it plans to announce this fall.
 
Those banks are not necessarily the most culpable, but rather the ones most willing to reach a settlement. While American prosecutors have not ruled out joining a global settlement, lawyers said, such a move appears unlikely.
 
Altogether, the British regulator could collect fines that total up to $3.3 billion, people briefed on that settlement said. Of the six banks, one person said, the size of Citigroup’s payout is expected to fall in the middle.
 
Banks are eager to put the case behind them as they prepare to submit their capital plans to the Federal Reserve. Under the Fed’s rules, the banks must set aside enough cash to cover a potential settlement, which can become an expensive guessing game without clarity from prosecutors.
At Deutsche Bank, facing both Libor and currency investigations, there is growing momentum to resolve at least one of them. In the Libor case, prosecutors have begun to coordinate with the bank’s American regulators, including Mr. Lawsky, about the fallout from a potential guilty plea for the bank or one of its subsidiaries, lawyers said. That planning reflects a desire to criminally punish the bank without imperiling its ability to operate in the United States. 
 
At their core, the investigations into Libor and currency trading center on suspicions that banks manipulated the benchmarks for their own gain. In Libor, a measure of how much banks charge one another for loans, several banks submitted false rates to benefit their trading positions.
 
The foreign exchange inquiry has pointed to a more complex scheme to fix currency prices and game the market. Authorities suspect that banks, using information gleaned from their clients, collaborated to flood the market with orders just seconds before the so-called 4 p.m. fix, which serves as the benchmark for foreign exchange rates. The aim in part, authorities suspect, was to drive up the price of, say, euros before selling them to clients at an inflated price.
 
Traders at competing banks met in private chat rooms. Some traders became so cozy that they earned the nickname “the cartel” and “the bandits club.”
 
    


 
 
A.I.G. Bailout, Revisionists’ Version

 

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/a-i-g-bailout-revisionists-version/
 
 

Was the bailout of the American International Group by the government punitive? Was it confiscatory?
 
Of course it was, on both counts. It was supposed to be.
 
Somehow, Maurice R. Greenberg, A.I.G.’s former chief executive and a large shareholder through his firm Starr International, has spun a ludicrous tale in open court in Washington that the bailout of the insurer was unfair to its investors.
 
What is more worrying, this lawsuit increasingly appears to be gaining support from a phalanx of Wall Street financiers and commentators, who have managed to use the case to rewrite history so that A.I.G. can be viewed as a sympathetic casualty of the crisis and one that was mistreated by the big bad government, which sought more onerous terms from A.I.G. than it did from many of the banks that also received bailouts.
 
Even the writer Noam Scheiber, whom I have long read with admiration, contended in a recent Op-Ed article in The New York Times that “as asinine as the Starr suit may be in legal terms, it may end up serving a constructive purpose.” His rationale? “Ever since the details of the A.I.G. rescue entered the popular consciousness, everyone from members of Congress to financial commentators to Occupy Wall Street protesters and Tea Party activists have fulminated against the ‘backdoor bailout’ of Goldman et al. By fully litigating the issue, the Starr trial may finally help heal this festering wound.”
 
While the A.I.G. rescue has long been described as a “backdoor bailout of Wall Street,” there was actually nothing backdoor about it. As I’ve written before, the bailout of A.I.G. should be called a “front-door bailout.”
 
The government sought to save A.I.G. for only one reason: because it was “systemically important,” which is not-so-hard-to-decipher code for a company whose failure would have had a ripple effect on large swaths of the industry — in this case, dozens of banks. To pretend that the rescue of A.I.G. was anything but an effort to make sure the rest of the industry didn’t go under is to misunderstand history. The entire point of the A.I.G. bailout was to bail out Wall Street and reinstall confidence in the system so that it didn’t collapse under even more uncertainty.
 
The government never sought to couch A.I.G.’s lifeline as a way to push money into the hands of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale and the dozens of other banks around the world that were the beneficiaries. That idea was never going to win a popularity contest. But that was the effect of the assistance to A.I.G. And that was the point.
 
Which brings us back to Mr. Greenberg’s case, being heard in Washington in the United States Court of Federal Claims. Mr. Greenberg, who sued on behalf of fellow shareholders and seeks more than $40 billion from the government, does not dispute that A.I.G. needed $192 billion to survive the financial crisis. It instead challenges the onerous nature of the rescue.
 
On Monday, his lawyer, David Boies, hammered Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury secretary, about why A.I.G.’s shareholders were nearly wiped out when the government took what eventually became a 92 percent stake in the firm and put the interest rate on the loans at a high 14 percent. The onerous terms were unlike the deals made for so many other institutions receiving bailouts in 2008, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America.
    

Paulson Testifies That ‘Punitive’ A.I.G. Terms Were Also Necessary

Including hard terms for A.I.G. was politically necessary to getting the TARP program going, but Henry M. Paulson Jr. said he did support the bailout package and its terms.
 
In his complaint, Mr. Greenberg asserts that the terms amounted to a violation of the Fifth Amendment. “This is the only time in history when the government has taken without just compensation and/or illegally exacted the assets and equity of a company and its shareholders in connection with a loan, let alone a fully secured loan bearing an extortionate interest rate,” the suit says.
 
On questioning, Mr. Paulson didn’t beat around the bush. “It was important that the terms be harsh because I take moral hazard seriously,” he said, confirming that the deal was structured so as to be punitive to A.I.G. shareholders. “When companies fail, shareholders bear the losses,” he said, “It’s just the way our system is supposed to work.”
 
Mr. Paulson was also quick to acknowledge, that A.I.G. “certainly was a scapegoat for Wall Street and all the bad practices that people were angry about.”
 
Lest anyone forget, A.I.G. stupidly insured big banks on large swaths of bad mortgage deals via credit-default swaps.
 
So why was the government so tough on A.I.G. and so easy on the banks that bought the soured mortgage bundles in the first place?
 
In truth, because the government thought that such a deal wouldn’t destabilize A.I.G. — and a tougher deal for banks might undermine confidence in the financial system in the markets.
 
That’s the same reason the government didn’t push harder for A.I.G.’s counterparties — i.e. the banks — to take “haircuts,” or less than the money they were owed on the insured payouts. The government worried it would only make people more nervous about the strength of the banking system, undermining the confidence it was trying to sow.
 
On A.I.G., the government turned out to be right. The deal worked. And rather than turn into a financial albatross for taxpayers, we got our money back — with more than $22 billion in profit.
You can argue about whether the government could have done better. It certainly could have. You can argue about the government officials’ thinking about how to tackle the crisis, how they approached the bailout. And you could debate their methods.
 
But the problem with the financial crisis, ultimately, isn’t that we are still in search of answers. The problem is that so many people don’t like the answers.

 

A.I.G. Trial Puts Geithner, and His Book, on Hot Seat

There were moments on Tuesday when Timothy F. Geithner, the former Treasury secretary, may have thought he was still on his book tour.
So often did parts of his book, “Stress Test,” come up during Mr. Geithner’s testimony at the trial of a lawsuit against the government over its bailout of the American International Group, that at one point Justice Department lawyers suggested the entire book should be submitted as evidence. And it was.
David Boies, the lawyer for Maurice R. Greenberg, the former A.I.G. chief executive, who has sued the government for $40 billion claiming the Federal Reserve shortchanged shareholders in 2008pulled out copies to give to the Justice Department’s lawyers and Mr. Geithner. Mr. Geithner sat on the stand with a half-amused, half-nervous look.
Mr. Boies and his team had their own prop, too: The television displays in the courtroom shone with a black-and-white image of the cover, complete with a sticker that read “Autographed.”
Photo
 
Timothy Geithner, former Treasury secretary, testified in a lawsuit brought against the government over its bailout of A.I.G.Credit Win McNamee/Getty Images

The hardcover handouts prompted the presiding judge, Judge Thomas C. Wheeler of the United States Court of Claims, to interject dryly: “Do you have a copy for court, or should I visit Barnes & Noble?”
 
But while the scene of Mr. Geithner sitting in the witness box frequently holding a copy of his own book, paging through with the help of some stylish reading glasses, struck some in the courtroom as a bit farcical, the strategy by Mr. Greenberg’s legal team was carefully orchestrated.
 
Mr. Greenberg’s side believes that much of what Mr. Geithner has said in his book — and which he consequently cannot dispute during the trial without hurting his own credibility — helps the shareholders’ case, according to people briefed on the legal strategy. Mr. Greenberg’s lawyers also obtained transcripts of the unpublished interviews the former Treasury secretary gave to people assisting him with putting together “Stress Test.”
 
The transcripts were frequently referenced, as Mr. Geithner was peppered with questions about his role in the A.I.G. bailout in 2008. Mr. Geithner was then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — arguably the most important player in the financial crisis after the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke. (Mr. Bernanke is scheduled to take the stand on Thursday.)
 
Under questioning from Mr. Boies, Mr. Geithner said the aftershocks from the collapse of Lehman Brothers were “very much on my mind” during those critical days in September 2008, and that the subsequent failure of A.I.G. would have been “catastrophic” for the economy, possibly “even more damaging” than Lehman.
 
While Mr. Geithner mostly concurred with his previous statements, he also struggled at times to explain his own words — seemingly boxed in by judgments he uttered as part of his book.
At one point, Mr. Boies zeroed in on the idea of whether some banks that were “insolvent” were given more lenient loan terms than A.I.G. (The plaintiffs argue that A.I.G. at the time was solvent, but suffering from a liquidity crisis; the government disagrees.) Using one of Mr. Geithner’s unpublished book interviews, he raised the subject of Citigroup and Bank of America, two banks that received bailouts in the crisis.
 
“Certainly Citi and B. of A. were insolvent,” Mr. Geithner had said during the book interview.
The two men then engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth over the definition of “insolvent.”
During more than six hours of testimony, Mr. Geithner’s was not the only book introduced. The other volume was the secretive compilation of the Federal Reserve’s legal powers, known internally at the central bank as the “Doomsday Book,” which has never been made public.
 
When Mr. Boies moved to introduce two of the editions of the book into evidence, the New York Fed’s own lawyer, John Kiernan, sprang up from the gallery to chime in: The Fed wanted the “Doomsday Book” kept strictly under seal.
 
Judge Wheeler determined he would let the editions into evidence under a temporary seal, until a hearing to determine whether they should stay that way. Mr. Boies did not appear to mind if most of the contents remained secret, as long as he could ask Mr. Geithner certain questions that related to the Fed’s texts.
 
Mr. Geithner testified on Tuesday that while he had seen the “Doomsday Book” while president of the New York Fed, he felt some of what had been done in the past — dating to the Great Depression in the 1930s — was not necessarily what was needed to solve the 2008 crisis.
 
“We were operating outside of the boundaries of established precedent,” Mr. Geithner said.
As the trial continues, the civil case, which will be decided by the judge, may rest on whether he believes that the Fed acted within its authority under the Federal Reserve Act in imposing certain terms on A.I.G.’s loan, or if it stepped over the legal line.
 
Mr. Geithner, whose testimony will continue on Wednesday, at one point summed up what he believed was the biggest problem with federal regulations leading up to the financial crisis: that it occurred outside the traditional banking system at places like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the investment banks, and of course, A.I.G.
 
“It was a failure of the country to put in place a system to constrain risk-taking,” Mr. Geithner said. “Risk migrated to places where constraints did not exist.”
 
Maurice R. Greenberg, A.I.G.’s former chief and a large shareholder, has spun a ludicrous tale in court that the bailout of the insurer was unfair to its investors.



WILL OBAMA BANKRUPT AMERICA? It’s looking good that he will!



THE LOOMING GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN: OBAMAnomics at work!

BUT HIS CRONY BANKSTERS ARE SWIMMING IN PROFITS!



BARACK OBAMA: The Sociopath that conned us with “hope and change” but became George Bush’s third and fourth terms.



They Destroyed Our Country

“They knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps irreparable.)”

more at this link – post on your Facebook and email broadcast

 

'Incompetent' and 'liar' among most frequently used words to describe the president: Pew Research Center

THE AMNESTY HOAX – LEGALIZATION OF MEXICO’S LOOTING, GUARANTEE OF OPEN BORDERS and NO E-VERIFY and CONTINUED NON-ENFORCEMENT!

 
Hillary bellies up to Obama’s banksters – She reeks of the smell of BRIBES and BAILOUTS
 
AFTER 8 YEARS OF  BANKSTER LOOTING UNDER OBAMA, CAN WE AFFORD ANOTHER BANKSTER-OPERATED WHITE HOUSE?
 
This week she’ll speak at an Ameriprise Financial conference in Boston. She’s also been booked or given paid speeches at events sponsored by Fidelity, KKR and Co., the Carlyle Groups and Goldman Sachs.


HILLARY & BILLARY… getting filthy rich serving the filthy rich… And what have they done for America again??? Ah, er…. I forget!
THE OBAMA YEARS – THE GOLDEN AGE OF BANKSTER LOOTING AND BANKSTER WELFARE…

INCEST! The case of bankster-owned Barack Obama and crony Jamie Dimon of JP MORGAN… their looting continues!


OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS PARTY UP AND STILL GIVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THE MIDDLE FINGER


'Not when those foibles had resulted in real harm to millions of people in the form of foreclosures, wrecked 401(k)s, and a devastating unemployment crisis.'

CRONY CAPITALISM: OBAMA PROTECTS JP MORGAN, THE BIGGEST BANKSTER CRIMINALS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, AND ONE OF OBAMA’S BIGGEST BANKSTER DONORS!
Nearly five years after the greatest financial crash since the Great Depression, triggered by rampant illegality and fraud on the part of the major banks, not a single major institution or leading bank executive has been indicted, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.
 
 
POVERTY IN AMERICA
UNDER OBAMA IT IS SOARING POVERTY FOR AMERICANS BUT STILL SOARING PROFITS FOR HIS BANKSTER DONORS!
THERE ARE MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS AND BILLIONS IN WELFARE HANDED OVER TO ILLEGALS SO THEY KEEP COMING AND KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE POLITICIANS’ PAYMASTERS!
 

BOOK


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




 
OBAMA’S HAREM OF CORRUPT BANKSTERS… DO A GOOGLE FOR HOW MANY ENDED UP WORKING IN HIS ADMINISTRATION.

“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 now looting the American student while he hands billions in DEM DREAM ACTS of WELFARE to illegals… his bankster cronies at JPMorgan cleaning up on students also!

“But as the Federal Reserve attempts to lower borrowing

costs for everyone from households and small businesses to

large corporations and Wall Street banks, student borrowers

have not been able to benefit.”

 

 


CRONY CAPITALISM – THE INCEST BETWEEN BARACK OBAMA AND JP MORGAN’S JAMIE DIMON
FOLLOWING THE MONEY…. right into Obama’s pockets!
“I’m not here to punish banks!” Barack Obama – State of the Looted Union Message.
  
OBAMA and his bankster J P MORGAN LOOT AMERICA
It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
In reality, the settlement falls far short of holding JPMorgan accountable for its fraudulent sale of mortgage-backed assets, which netted the bank tens of billions of dollars in profits while exacerbating the sub-prime mortgage crash that led to over ten million foreclosures in the US and a global economic downturn that thrust many millions more into unemployment and poverty.
 
Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
“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 BANKSTER-BOUGHT REGIME of
CORRUPTION SERVING CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS,
BILLIONAIRES, the 1% and LA RAZA ILLEGALS!   …..the rest
of us get the tax bills for their crimes and looting!
 
more here:
 
Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all
while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory
robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
 
BARACK OBAMA – JP MORGAN’S RENT BOY? OR SIMPLY A SERVANT OF WALL STREET’S BIGGEST CRIMINAL BANKSTERS, ALL OF WHICH END UP WORKING IN THE CORRUPT OBAMA WHITE HOUSE!
 
 
 PROBABLY THE ONLY TRUTH OBAMA EVER TOLD THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WAS THAT HE WAS “NOT HERE TO PUNISH BANKS!”… NOPE, AND HE NEVER HAS. THEIR CRIMES, LOOTING AND PROFITS HAVE SOARED UNDER OBAMA.
YOU WOULD NOT HAVE FOUND OBAMA’S DOJ GOING AFTER OBAMA’S PALS AT JP MORGAN. HOLDER IS TOO BUSY HISPANDERING FOR LA RAZA, SUING AMERICAN STATES AND SABOTAGING OUR LAWS AND BORDERS SO THE OBAMANATION CAN BUILD HIS LA RAZA PARTY BASE of ILLEGALS.
“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’S OLD PALS J.P.MORGAN STILL FUCKING OVER CONSUMERS… IT’S LIKE OLD TIMES FOR THE BANKSTERS!
Headline: California lawsuit alleges illegal collection practices by JPMorgan Chase 
THE LONG HISTORY of BARACK OBAMA and HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS JP MORGAN… STILL LOOTING AMERICA AND THE WORLD!
more at this link
This is the unadulterated voice of finance capital speaking. It should be recalled that JPMorgan is deeply implicated in the speculative operations that have devastated the lives of hundreds of millions of workers around the world. In March of this year, a US Senate committee released a 300-page report documenting the criminal practices and fraud carried out by JPMorgan, the largest bank in the US and the world’s biggest dealer in derivatives. Despite the detailed revelations in the report, no action will be taken against the bank’s CEO, Jamie who enjoys the personal confidence of the US president.
 
NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO ORCHESTRATE AN ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MORE THAN BARACK OBAMA and a  PACK OF HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS!
… now expanded to pillaging of AMERICAN STUDENTS
more at this link
 
ONLY OBAMA WOULD LEVEL YET ANOTHER CON JOB ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, ON BEHALF OF HIS WALL STREET PAYMASTERS, AND THEN TELL US IT IS FOR OUR OWN GOOD!
THE ONLY ONES THAT WILL EVER BENEFIT FROM THIS FREAK OBAMA ARE ILLEGALS AND WALL STREET CRIMINALS!..... WELL, AND MAYBE MUSLIM DICTATORS HE PUMPS BILLIONS INTO!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-obama-assault-on-americans-for-wall.html

YES, UNDER THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT
OBAMA, LIFE IS GOOD FOR HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER
DONORS. THEIR PROFITS and CRIMES ARE SOARING AND
SO ARE FORECLOSURES.

more at this link – post on your Facebook and email broadcast

 
“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).”


A CASE OF INCEST! OBAMA PARTNERS WITH WALL STREET’S BIGGEST CRIMINAL BANKSTERS, MOST OF WHOM NOW WORK IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION!

CRONY CAPITALISM: OBAMA PROTECTS JP MORGAN, THE BIGGEST BANKSTER CRIMINALS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, AND ONE OF OBAMA’S BIGGEST BANKSTER DONORS!

Nearly five years after the greatest financial crash since the Great Depression, triggered by rampant illegality and fraud on the part of the major banks, not a single major institution or leading bank executive has been indicted, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.


The criminal charges are part of an attempt by the Obama administration to create the appearance that it is cracking down on Wall Street criminality, while it continues to shield top executives and allow banking fraud and criminality to continue unabated.

“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).”

CRONY CAPITALISM: JP MORGAN’S RENT BOY, BARACK OBAMA HAS HELPED HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS LOOT AMERICA BIG TIME!

more at this link – post on your Facebook and email broadcast

…it’s probably all he’s ever done well in in his pathetic corrupt political life!


…no filthy politician in American history has taken more loot from looting banksters than the WALKING CON JOB BARACK OBAMA… and not one bankster has gone to prison! HOW’D THAT HAPPEN?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?$?

“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

*


 

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 JPMorgan debacle

15 May 2012

The economic and political fallout from JPMorgan Chase’s sudden announcement last Thursday night that it lost more than $2 billion from speculative bets on credit derivatives continued to grow on Monday. The biggest US bank announced the forced retirement of Ina Drew, who headed up the bank’s London-based Chief Investment Office, which placed huge bets on the creditworthiness of a collection of US corporations. Other top executives and traders are expected to be sacked or demoted.

The bank’s shares fell another 3.2 percent, bringing its two-day market capitalization loss to nearly $19 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorgan was prepared for a total loss of more than $4 billion over the next year from its soured stake in credit default swaps—the same investment vehicle that played a central role in the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the government bailout of insurance giant American International Group (AIG) in September of 2008.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program on Sunday, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon sought to present the loss as an innocent mistake, resulting from “errors, sloppiness and bad judgment.” Only a month ago, Dimon, who has led the public campaign by Wall Street against even the mildest restrictions on speculative banking practices, dismissed warnings over the massive bets being made by his Chief Investment Office as “a complete tempest in a teapot.”

The scale of the loss and the denials that preceded it raise the likelihood that banking rules and laws against investor fraud and deception were breached.

President Obama, however, rushed to the defense of JPMorgan and Dimon, declaring on a daytime television talk show Monday that JPMorgan was “one of the best managed banks there is” and Dimon was “one of the smartest bankers we got.” At the same time he cited the bank’s loss as a vindication of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory bill that he signed into law in July of 2010. “This is why we passed Wall Street reform,” he said.

In fact, the JPMorgan debacle demonstrates that nearly four years after the Wall Street crash nothing has changed for the financial aristocracy. No measures have been taken to rein in the banks, which received trillions of dollars in government handouts, guarantees and cheap loans. The same forms of speculation and outright swindling that led to the financial meltdown and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression continue unabated.

The big banks, such as JPMorgan, have increased their stranglehold over the US economy. They have recorded bumper profits by withholding credit from consumers and small businesses, keeping unemployment high, while speculating on credit default swaps and other exotic financial instruments that drain resources from the real economy. On this basis, bank executives and traders, including those at bailed-out institutions, have continued to rake in eight-figure compensation packages. Last year, Ina Drew made $14 million, and Jamie Dimon took in $26 million.

The Dodd-Frank law trumpeted by Obama is a fraud, an attempt to give the appearance of financial reform while enabling the banks to continue their parasitic and criminal activities. A case in point is the so-called Volcker Rule, named after the former chairman of the Federal Reserve and economic adviser to the Obama White House, Paul Volcker.

The rule, incorporated into the Dodd-Frank Act and supposedly one of its most daring provisions, ostensibly bars proprietary trading—speculation by a bank on its own account—by commercial banks whose consumer deposits are guaranteed by the federal government. The idea is to prevent government-insured banks from speculating with depositors’ money.

But the regulation as drafted by federal regulators—under pressure from the Federal Reserve and Obama’s treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, as well as the banks—would actually allow the type of speculative bet made by JPMorgan in the guise of a “hedge” to offset risk in the bank’s overall investment portfolio.

The Volcker Rule, whose precise form is yet to be announced, will do nothing to halt speculation by government-backed banks using small depositors’ money.

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.

When Iowa Senator Charles Grassley submitted a letter to the Justice Department earlier this year asking how many bank executives had been prosecuted in response to the financial crisis, the Justice Department replied it did not know because it was not keeping a list.

According to a study by Syracuse University, however, federal financial fraud prosecutions have fallen to 20-year lows under the Obama administration, and are down 39 percent since 2003. Under Obama, the number of financial fraud cases has fallen to one-third the level of the Clinton administration.

These facts demonstrate the de facto dictatorship exercised by the financial aristocracy over the entire political system and both major parties. The Obama administration, in particular, is an instrument of the most powerful financial institutions. It has focused its efforts on protecting and increasing the wealth of the privileged elite while utilizing the crisis to permanently slash the wages and living standards of the working class.

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.

The incestuous and corrupt relations between Wall Street, the Obama administration and the entire political system underscore the necessity for the working class to build its own mass socialist movement to fight for its interests in opposition to the ruling elite.

The bankers responsible for the financial crisis, including Dimon and his co-conspirators, must be held criminally liable for their lawlessness and held accountable for the social suffering that has resulted from their actions. The ill-gotten trillions accumulated by the banks must be expropriated, with full protection for small depositors and small businesses, and used to provide decent jobs, housing, health care and education for all.

There is no way to rein in the banks and end their socially destructive activities within the framework of the capitalist system. The only way to stop the fraud and parasitism that go on every day on Wall Street is to nationalize the banks and run them as democratically controlled public utilities.

Andre Damon and Barry Grey

FACT: JP MORGAN IS ONE OF BANKSTER-BOUGHT OBAMA’S BIGGEST PAYMASTERS! HE’S PROMISED THEM NO PRISON TIME AND NO REAL REGULATION.

THERE IS A REASON WHY THE BANKSTERS INVESTED HEAVILY IN OBAMA’S CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION!

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: JPMorgan Is 'One of the Best-Managed Banks'

By Mary Bruce | ABC OTUS News – 2 hrs 31 mins ago

Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the …

Lou Rocco / ABC News

Just hours after a top JPMorgan Chase executive retired in the wake of a stunning $2 billion trading loss, President Obama told the hosts of ABC's "The View" that the bank's risky bets exemplified the need for Wall Street reform.

"JPMorgan is one of the best managed banks there is. Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got and they still lost $2 billion and counting," the president said. "We don't know all the details. It's going to be investigated, but this is why we passed Wall Street reform."

The full interview airs on "The View" Tuesday on ABC at 11 a.m. ET

While a powerhouse like JPMorgan might be able to weather an error that the bank's own CEO called "egregious," the president questioned what might happen to smaller institutions in similar situations.

"This is one of the best managed banks. You could have a bank that isn't as strong, isn't as profitable managing those same bets and we might have had to step in," he said. "That's why Wall Street reform is so important."

While touting his efforts to rein in the Wall Street behavior that led to the massive taxpayer bailout of the banks following the financial crisis, he noted his administration is still fighting for tough reform.

Pivoting to November, the president said Wall Street reform is one of the many critical areas where he and his Republican challenger, presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, have a different vision for the future.

The president's full interview airs Tuesday on "The View." Tune into "World News with Diane Sawyer" tonight for more.

*

Nicole Gelinas
It’s Not About Jamie Dimon
We should look to markets, not men, to govern the economy.
14 May 2012

On Meet the Press yesterday, JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon epitomized what’s wrong with America’s approach to the financial crisis. The American media and political elite remain obsessed with personalities, looking for heroes and villains instead of focusing on what we really need: the dispassionate rule of law that would allow free markets to flourish. Meet the Press is for politicians, and Dimon performed like a model one. He spoke in short sentences and apologized directly: “I was dead wrong,” he offered, for having made a “terrible, egregious mistake.” Specifically, last Thursday, JPMorgan announced a $2 billion trading loss on a derivatives bet.

Theoretically, anyway, such a loss should be a matter between the bank and investors, not TV fodder. Yet Dimon’s business—too-big-to-fail banking—is no ordinary business. Washington’s willingness to subsidize failure means that Dimon’s job is as much political risk management as financial risk management. Because JPMorgan depends on Uncle Sam’s backing, one of Dimon’s key constituencies is politicians and government regulators. And one way to charm regulators—and the voters who elect the politicians—is through a killer interview.

In October 2008, the Bush administration, not normally a fan of government expropriation, forced nine big banks, including Dimon’s, to accept $125 billion in TARP money. The banks were deemed so important that they had to take the money to protect them against failure, whether they wanted it or not. Since then, the banks and the government have stayed bound together. President Obama’s Dodd-Frank financial reform law, enacted two summers ago, has tied the two sides closer still. The problems that led to the financial crisis, remember, included investors’ perception—honed over two decades of smaller-scale bailouts—that big banks were too big to fail. Dodd-Frank has given such banks an official title: “systemically important financial institutions.”

Another problem that led to the financial crisis was that, over the years, politicians and regulators determined that banks had become so good at risk management that they no longer needed to abide by consistent rules—fixed limits on borrowing, for example, so that banks could fail without leaving behind so much unpaid debt that they endangered the economy. Instead, banks could largely do what their executives wanted, as long as regulators believed, on a case-by-case basis, that they knew what they were doing.

In the aftermath of the JPMorgan mess, politicians and reporters have been invoking the Dodd-Frank law’s “Volcker Rule.” Named after Paul Volcker, the Federal Reserve chairman from the Carter and Reagan eras, the rule prohibits banks whose customers benefit from taxpayer-backed deposit insurance from engaging in “proprietary trading,” or speculation. But the Volcker Rule isn’t a rule at all: it prohibits behavior that has no set definition. Twenty-two months after Dodd-Frank became law, regulators have delayed enforcing the rule because they still cannot figure out what proprietary trading really is. Consider how JPMorgan lost all that money: creating derivatives that let it sell billions of dollars’ worth of protection against the risk that some corporate securities would default. That sure doesn’t sound like a good idea. Banks, because they’re lenders, are already at risk if people and companies default in droves.

But does selling such synthetic “insurance” constitute proprietary trading? Michigan Senator Carl Levin, who helped draft the Volcker Rule language, says it does. Bank officials have argued that such behavior is hedging, which would be okay under Dodd-Frank.

Real rules could govern Wall Street, but politicians must give regulators the backing to create and enforce them. Rather than worry about the Volcker Rule, politicians and reporters should be focusing on derivatives rules. One reason that Washington had to bail out the financial system four years ago was that financial firms such as AIG had taken on virtually infinite risk through the derivatives markets. Through derivatives, AIG could “sell” protection against other companies’ defaults with almost no cash down. Lo and behold, that’s what JPMorgan Chase was doing, too. Regulators should demand that traders—whether big banks or tiny hedge funds—put a set amount of cash down behind such bets, curtailing the amount of potential unpaid debt in the financial system. Regulators should also require that traders execute such transactions on open clearinghouses and exchanges—so that markets can determine which bets are going well and which aren’t, and clearinghouses can demand more money from traders to cover their losses. Such rules empower market signals, not regulatory micromanagement, to control risk. If such rules were in place, it’s unlikely Dimon would have visited the White House 18 times in three years, as he would have had no way to manipulate a restriction that, after all, applied to everyone.

The best way to stop bailouts is to limit borrowing and demand transparency. When markets know that financial firms have put a cash cushion behind their bets—and where the risk behind such bets lies—they’re unlikely to pull their money out of the financial system en masse, necessitating a government rescue. The Volcker Rule, by contrast, adds no such protection against future taxpayer rescues; all it does is unleash regulators to debate, in private, the definitions of risk.

Dodd-Frank gave regulators the authority to impose real rules on derivatives, and the regulators have done so. But lobbyists demanded and secured exceptions, which could eventually prove the rule. With such loophole-ridden reform, America has hardly set a good example for Europe, which lags even further behind in enacting derivatives rules. In fact, JPMorgan Chase may have executed the derivatives deals from London because the bank perceived London as a looser environment. Moving this activity around the world so that financiers can play inconsistent rules against one another does nothing to help the struggling Western economies.

The media and the politicians, however, would rather discuss people than arcane issues like financial rules. Look at how politely—almost obsequiously—NBC’s David Gregory treated Dimon. Gregory asked Dimon: “Here you are, Jamie Dimon, you’ve got a sterling reputation. . . . How does a guy like you make this mistake? If this happened at JPMorgan Chase . . . what about all the other banks out there? If somebody else made a mistake like this, would we be again talking about too big to fail and taxpayer bailouts?” Then, when asking delicate questions about potential criminal liability, Gregory unconsciously switched from “you” to “the bank.” Lowly regulators will hardly be more willing to take on Dimon and his colleagues.

Focusing on one man represents bailout thinking. Policymakers continue to be distracted from the rules needed to protect the economy from the consequences—including corporate failure—of the bad decisions that individuals can make. Nearly four years after the financial crisis began, Washington seems to have learned almost nothing.


 

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN MORE LOOT FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS THAN OBAMA. HE PROMISED HIS BANKSTERS NO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION, AND NO REAL REGULATION.

 

PROFITS FOR BANKSTERS HAVE SOARED UNDER OBAMA, JUST AS FORECLOSURES HAVE. DURING HIS FIRST 2 YEARS THE BANKSTERS MADE MORE LOOT THAN ALL 8 UNDER BUSH!

 

WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?

*

 

"In general, these are professional prognosticators," said Ritsch. "And they may be putting their money on the person they predict will win, not the candidate they hope will win."

 

 

Shaping up to be the most corrupt
administration in American history:

  • Obama’s team: Not the “best of the Washington insiders,” as the liberal media style them, but rather, a dysfunctional and dangerous conglomerate of business-as-usual cronies and hacks
  • In the first two weeks alone of his infant administration, Obama had made no fewer than 17 exceptions to his “no-lobbyist” rule
  • Why the fact that the massive infusion of union dues into his campaign treasury didn’t trouble him in the least reveals Obama’s credibility as a reformer
  • The lack of unprecedented pace of withdrawals and botched appointments -- and how getting through the confirmation process was no guarantee of ethical cleanliness or competence, even as Obama’s cheerleaders were glorifying the Greatest Transition in World History
  • Inconsistency: How Obama, erstwhile critic of the campaign finance practice known as “bundling,” happily accepted more than $350,000 in bundled contributions from billionaire hedge-fund managers
  • How Obama broke his transparency pledge with the very first bill he signed into law -- helping make hostility to transparency is a running thread through Obama’s cabinet
  • Michelle Obama: Beneath the cultured pearls, sleeveless designer dresses, and eyelashes applied by her full-time makeup artist, is a hardball Chicago politico
  • Joe Biden: It’s not just that he lies, it’s that he lies so well that you think he really believes the stuff he makes up
  • Treasury Secretary Geithner: His ineptness and epic blundering -- including how he nearly caused the collapse of the dollar in international trade with a single remark
  • The appalling story of Technology Czar Vivek Kundra, the convicted shoplifter in charge of the entire federal government’s information security infrastructure
  • Obama’s “Porker of the Month” Transportation Secretary, Roy LaHood: An earmark-addicted influence peddler born and raised on the politics of pay-to-play
  • SEIU: Responsible for installing a cabal of hand-chosen officers who exploited their cash-infused fiefdoms for personal gain and presided over rigged elections -- in the process, becoming all that they had professed to stand against as representatives of the downtrodden worker
  • How Obama lied on his “Fight the Smears” campaign website when he claimed that he “never organized with ACORN”
  • ACORN: How the profound threat the group poses is not merely ideological or economic -- it’s electoral
  • ACORN’s own internal review of shady money transfers among its web of affiliates: How it underscores concerns that conservatives have long raised about the organization
  • Liar, liar, pantsuit on fire: How Hillary Clinton has already trampled upon her promise not to let her husband’s financial dealings sway her decisions as Secretary of State
  • How even a few principled progressives are finally beginning to question the cult of Obama -- even as Obama sycophants in the mainstream media continue to celebrate his “hipness” and “swagga”

 

*

GET THIS BOOK!


 

*

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


 

BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY

 

 

Editorial Reviews

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.

Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.

 


Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.

Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:

* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.

*
Praise for Obamanomics

“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author

“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama

“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul

“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guideto American History

*

·         Hardcover: 256 pages

·         Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1596986123

·         ISBN-13: 978-1596986121

 
ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED POLITICIANS ARE?

GET THIS BOOK!

Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies

by Michelle Malkin

Editorial Reviews

In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.

From the Inside Flap

The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months in office to kill it.

Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of Corruption, Malkin reveals:

* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily

* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide

* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable "czars" than any other administration

* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons

* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power

* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather keep hidden.

 

           Publisher: Regnery Publishing (July 27, 2009)

           Language: English

           ISBN-10: 1596981091

           ISBN-13: 978-1596981096

THE FORBES 400 ARE LOOTING AMERICA FOR EVERY DROP OF BLOOD THEY HAVE NOT ALREADY STOLEN!

The Rise of bankster-owned Barack Obama and the final looting of the American middle-class.


.. and Hillary Clinton has vowed to banksters that the best is yet to come!

JEFF BEZOS: THE DROOLING HOG AMAZON LET LOOSE

LIKE THE CLINTONS, THE BUSH CRIME
 
FAMILY, and the OBAMANATION,
 
FEINSTEIN LOVES THE SMELL OF MONEY
 
OFF ELECTED OFFICE.
  
"Some ethics analysts question whether Mrs. Feinstein ran afoul of the latter provision, creating the appearance that she was rewarding the agency that had just hired her husband's firm."


Richard C. Blum and Dianne Feinstein: The
 
Power Couple of California LOOTING
 
AMERICA FROM TOP TO BOTTOM!


"They remain at the pinnacle of power today, he as a billionaire financier, speculator, real estate executive and deal maker; she as the senior Senator (California's highest federal official), from the largest and most powerful state in the United States. They exemplify power as it is now wielded in the higher circles of the class system of the U.S. today, and illustrate well the dismal results of this system. This system is best characterized as a plutocratic kleptocracy, completely lacking in authentic democracy, operated by and for corporate racketeers, in short, a dictatorship of big capital, the top 1% of wealth holders, which makes up a ruling class."




UNIONS PARTNER WITH OBAMA AND WALL STREET TO
ASSAULT THE AMERICAN WORKER WITH AMNESTY
AND OPEN BORDERS… It’s all about keeping wages depressed

For their part, US trade unions such as the United Auto Workers have functioned as junior partners in the impoverishment and exploitation of the working class, suppressing any opposition to the attack on living standards.


In this corporate America has enjoyed the full backing of the Obama administration and both big business parties, which have slashed food stamps and long-term unemployment benefits. The White House, which orchestrated the slashing of wages in the auto industry restructuring of 2009, has made the lowering of living standards for US workers the centerpiece of its so-called revival of American manufacturing.







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