Thursday, May 21, 2015

OBAMA'S CRONY BANKSTERS.... STILL LOOTING A NATION! Token fines for banks caught rigging foreign exchange markets

Token fines for banks caught rigging foreign exchange markets


The payouts, much of them tax deductible, are a fraction of the combined profits of the banks.

The payouts, much of them tax deductible, are a fraction of the combined profits of the banks.

The payouts, much of them tax deductible, are a fraction of the combined profits of the banks.


OBAMA’S PROMISE TO CRONY BANKSTERS: Not one day
 in prison!


“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.”

 

Token fines for banks caught rigging foreign exchange markets

By Andre Damon and Barry Grey 

      21 May 2015
In yet another wrist-slap settlement for bankers involved in criminality on a massive scale, the US government on Wednesday announced that five major banks had pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy and antitrust charges and agreed to pay a combined total of approximately $5 billion in fines.
The payouts, much of them tax deductible, are a fraction of the combined profits of the banks. The amounts have already been set aside by bank CEOs as the cost of doing business in an environment in which banks routinely break the law, secure in the knowledge that there will be no serious consequences.

The banks—JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Barclays and RBS—admitted to conspiring to rig global currency exchange rates. They made billions of dollars by illegally manipulating rates affecting countless businesses and individuals around the world. All of the banks were previously implicated in rigging Libor (the London Interbank Offered Rate), the global benchmark used to set short-term interest rates for hundreds of trillions of dollars in loans.

Two of the banks, UBS and Barclays, carried out the foreign exchange fraud in violation of the terms of their non-prosecution agreements with the US government stemming from their involvement in the Libor scandal.

The documents released by the Justice Department in relation to the settlement point to the culture of fraud and criminality on Wall Street. As one Barclays vice president put it, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.”

Since the Wall Street crash of 2008, these and

other major banks have been cited for crimes

ranging from fraudulently selling worthless

mortgage securities, to laundering money for

Mexican drug lords, facilitating Bernard Madoff’s

Ponzi scheme, and concealing billions in

speculative losses. For these crimes they have

suffered no serious consequences.

Instead, regulators in the US and internationally have crafted settlements in backroom negotiations with the criminals involving token fines that turn out to be significantly smaller than the nominal figures announced by government officials.

“The criminality occurred on a massive scale,” said FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe, announcing the foreign exchange fraud settlement on Wednesday. He explained that traders at multiple banks rigged estimates of global currency exchange rates every day for up to five years.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch spoke of the conspiracy’s “breathtaking flagrancy, its systemic reach, and its significant impact.” Aitan Goelman, the head of enforcement at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, called the five banks a “cabal.”

These statements, meant to give the appearance of government toughness toward the banks, only underscored the gaping discrepancy between the scale of the crimes and the toothless character of the punishment. Wednesday’s announcement was further confirmation that the US and international financial aristocracy is above the law.

Not a single major bank has been closed down or broken up since the 2008 crash, triggered by reckless and illegal speculative activities. Not a single bank CEO or top official has been prosecuted or jailed for crimes that have led to the impoverishment of countless millions of people.

But a petty crime carried out by a US worker or working-class youth brings down the wrath of a so-called “justice system” that is merciless when it comes to the lower social orders. Tens of thousands of workers and poor people are cast into America’s prison gulag every year for offenses that pale in comparison to the crimes carried out by Wall Street CEOs.

Or they are killed outright by the militarized police who occupy America’s working-class neighborhoods. Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed youth, was gunned down last August by a Ferguson, Missouri cop who was tracking him for allegedly stealing a package of cigarillos from a convenience store.

In the deal announced Wednesday, the banks pleaded guilty to felony charges. This is a departure from previous settlements in which the government allowed the banks to avoid any admission of guilt.
But the guilty pleas were part of a scheme worked out between the government and the banks to render the pleas virtually meaningless. The Securities and Exchange Commission issued waivers exempting the banks from the legal repercussions of committing a felony, giving them continued preferential treatment in issuing debt as well as the continued ability to operate mutual funds.

In today’s thoroughly corrupt political environment, totally dominated by corporate money, there is no stigma attached to a bank that effectively admits to being a criminal enterprise. The media pays no attention and the markets could care less. Shares of most of the banks involved in the settlement spiked on Wednesday. UBS and Barclays both rose 3.4 percent. RBS finished the day up by 1.9 percent.

Wednesday’s settlement is further evidence of the reassertion of the aristocratic principle in contemporary capitalist society: there is one set of laws for the vast majority, the working people, and an entirely different legal framework for the financial oligarchs—one that can be summed up with the phrase “Anything goes.”




FRAUD for FEES

WELLS FARGO’S LOOTING OF AMERICA CONTINUES!


 

WELLS FARGO a criminal enterprise
 

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN’S PAYMASTERS….. MUCKING OVER

MINORITIES FOR PROFITS FOR YEARS… it’s only one of the reasons this

criminal outfit has had their CA mortgage license REVOKED!

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/11/sen-dianne-feinsteins-paymasters.html

 

THE UNLEASHING OF WALL STREET’S BIGGEST

MONSTERS and the ASSAULT ON  the AMERICAN

MIDDLE-CLASS  STARTED WITH BILL CLINTON.

You think Hillary’s any different? Obama’s crony banksters don’t!!!


OBAMA’S  CRONY  BANKSTER-DRIVEN  ECONOMY

First he  sabotaged America’s borders and then invited endless waves of illegals to grab America’s jobs and keep wages depressed.

Then he went after America’s pensions, medicare and social security towards his design of destroying the American middle-class.

AND IT’S WORKING!


“Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America (ALL MAJOR DONORS TO BARACK OBAMA) and every other major US bank have been implicated in a web of scandals, including the sale of toxic mortgage securities on false pretenses, the rigging of international interest rates and global foreign exchange markets, the laundering of Mexican drug money, accounting fraud and lying to bank regulators, illegally foreclosing on the homes of delinquent borrowers, credit card fraud, illegal debt-collection practices, rigging of energy markets, and complicity in the  Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.

 
 

IMF PREDICTS THAT OBAMANOMICS and the GLOBAL

LOOTING BY OBAMA’S CRIMINAL CRONY BANKSTERS

WILL SOON DESTROY THE AMERICAN ECONOMY.


The International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday that the world economy would remain locked in a pattern of slow growth, high unemployment and high debt for a prolonged period. The forecast, contained in the organization’s updated World Economic Outlook (WEO), marks a shift from previous economic projections in acknowledging that there is little prospect of a return to the growth levels that prevailed prior to the 2008 Wall Street crash.

The document’s grim analysis amounts to a tacit acknowledgement that the crisis ushered in nearly seven years ago by the financial meltdown is of a historical and fundamental character, and that the underlying problems in the global capitalist system have not been resolved.


THE LOOTING OF AMERICA: BARACK OBAMA AND HIS CRONY BANKSTERS set themselves on America’s pensions next!
The new aristocrats, like the lords of old, are not bound by the laws that apply to the lower orders. Voluminous reports have been issued by Congress and government panels documenting systematic fraud and law breaking carried out by the biggest banks both before and after the Wall Street crash of 2008.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and

every other major US bank have been implicated in a web of

scandals, including the sale of toxic mortgage securities on

false pretenses, the rigging of international interest rates

and global foreign exchange markets, the laundering of

Mexican drug money, accounting fraud and lying to bank

regulators, illegally foreclosing on the homes of delinquent

borrowers, credit card fraud, illegal debt-collection

practices, rigging of energy markets, and complicity in the

Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.

 
MUCH, MUCH MORE ON OBAMA’S ECONOMIC CRIMES PERPETRATED ON

BEHALF OF HIS CRONIES ON THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
One government-organized settlement has followed another, utilizing “deferred prosecution” deals and other gimmicks to allow Wall Street CEOs to get off scot-free. All the banks have had to do is pay largely fictitious fines, much of the nominal amount written off as tax credits.
BANKSTER RAHM’S VICTORY FOR HIS 1% CRONIES – FIRST ON THE RAHM AGENDA: CUT PENSIONS, MORE “BAILOUTS” FOR CRONY BANKSTERS.
RAHM EMANUEL…. only one more of Obama’s dirty crony banksters implementing OBAMANOMICS: loot from the middle-class and hand it to the 1%!
“Mayor Emanuel embodies the foulest characteristics of American politics in general and the Democratic Party in particular. An operative in the Clinton administration, Emanuel made millions as an investment banker before returning to the White House as Obama’s chief of staff.”

HILLARY CLINTON VOWS THAT OBAMA’S CRONY
CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WILL TAKE OUT ELIZABETH
WARREN!
 
…. Hillary has filled her pockets with dirty Obama bankster money!!!!
 
CRONY CAPITALISM… predicated on keeping wages depressed to third world levels for his billionaire donors!  
Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses…and Muslim Dictators
 
Hillary has declared bankster looting will see
even greater rewards from her
administration!
 
“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.”
OBAMANOMICS: Did Obama’s Crony Banksters Destroy the Global Economy after sucking up trillions in tax payer-paid welfare?

You bet! That’s why they invested in Obama!

THE IMPENDING GLOBAL DEPRESSION –
OBAMANOMICS AT WORK… even as his crony banksters  loot trillions.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/02/did-obamas-crony-banksters-destroy.html

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

“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.”


 
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.'
 
Loretta Lynch – DEDICATED SERVANT TO OBAMA’S

CRONY CRIMINAL BANKSTERS! Why else would he nominate her?
 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/02/obama-and-his-crony-criminal-banksters.html

 
OBAMA’S PROMISE TO CRONY BANKSTERS: Not one day in prison!

 
“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.”


Big bucks, but no bankers jailed in $5.7B settlement

 
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/242767-big-bucks-but-no-bankers-jailed-in-57b-settlement

Six of the biggest names in global finance shelled out billions of dollars Wednesday to settle charges of rigging currency markets, but liberal lawmakers complain the government is just doling out slaps on the wrist.


On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced a settlement that also saw five banks plead guilty to illegal gaming of financial markets. But the new settlement, the latest in a long series of hefty payouts by bad-acting banks, did little to tamp down vocal criticism from the left that the Obama administration is doing little to actually change Wall Street’s course and culture.... BUT AREN'T THEY ALL OBAMA DONORS CRONIES???

 
the new settlement hours after the Justice
 
Department hailed its historic nature —
 
specifically that no individual bank employees
 
faced criminal charges, even as the overall
 
institutions pleaded guilty to criminal
 
wrongdoing.
 
 
“The big banks have been caught red-handed

conspiring to manipulate financial markets ...

but not a single trader is being held

individually accountable,” she said in a

statement. “That’s not accountability for Wall

Street. It’s business as usual, and it stinks.”



Since the financial crisis, nearly every major financial

institution has struck some sort of government deal to close

probes on a sundry list of wrongdoing, including mortgage

servicing flaws, offshore tax evasion and aiding rogue nations

like Iran in evading U.S. sanctions.

But while the government has pulled in the largest monetary settlements in history during that time, with several reaching billions of dollars, the continued failure to prosecute high-ranking executives at any of these firms remains a sore point for some groups and lawmakers.

Liberal critics lament that the fines appear to be doing little to change the culture of the financial sector, making them just the cost of doing business.

“Since 2009, huge financial institutions have paid $176 billion in fines and settlement payments for fraudulent and unscrupulous activities,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running for president, said Wednesday. “The reality is that seven years after too-big-to-fail banks crashed the economy, fraud still appears to be the business model on Wall Street.”
The latest settlement announced by the Justice Department saw the government assessing penalties and accepting guilty pleas from a host of banks for conspiring to rig currency markets to maximize profits.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the agreement brings to an end a manipulation scheme of “breathtaking flagrancy,” in which traders conspired across institutions to artificially alter currency exchange markets to obtain illicit profits, forming a group they dubbed “the cartel.” Dating back to 2007, Lynch said traders “acted as partners rather than competitors” in a “brazen display of collusion.”

The settlement marked the first against the financial industry since Lynch took over the Justice Department. Her predecessor, Eric Holder, was dogged by comments he made during a congressional hearing, which he later refuted, that seemed to imply the government was wary of bringing serious charges against large banks because it could damage the economy.

The banks will pay the Justice Department and the Federal Reserve a total of $5.7 billion in criminal penalties, with most of the institutions also agreeing to plead guilty to some criminal charges.

Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan and the Royal Bank of Scotland all agreed to plead guilty to charges of conspiring to fix prices. UBS agreed to plead guilty to charges stemming from a previous investigation after the bank’s role in this new probe led the Justice Department to toss out a prior agreement not to seek criminal charges. Bank of America agreed to pay a fine as well.

The announcement is just the most recent in a string of settlements the government has struck with huge banks over industry-wide bad behavior.

In April, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a record $2.5 billion in fines, and fire several employees, for its role in rigging benchmark interest rates. And in November, five large banks agreed to pay a combined $4.25 billion in penalties to U.S. and British authorities on the same matter.

That’s on the heels of Bank of America

agreeing to pay $16.6 billion for its role in the

financial crisis, $2.6 billion by Credit Suisse

for helping wealthy Americans evade taxes,

and $1.9 billion by HSBC after laundering

money for Mexican drug cartels and

violating sanctions against Iran, Libya and

Sudan, among others.

In many of those cases, bank executives assigned the bad actions to a handful of rogue employees. As part of the most recent settlement, the Justice Department threw out a non-prosecution agreement it struck with UBS following a rate-rigging probe in 2012.

The discovery of new illegal behavior during the currency-rigging investigation prompted the U.S. to toss out that deal, and forced the bank to plead guilty to charges. But UBS said Tuesday that the $545 million it was paying to settle the new claims, after paying $1.5 billion during the previous investigation, was due to “a small number of employees.”

But Wall Street critics argue the settlements are sign that bad behavior is a cultural issue in the finance sector. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen has expressed concern that banks are failing to properly police themselves, sometimes “brazenly” breaking the law.

And recent research seems to back up that

sentiment. One day before the new settlement

was announced, a survey of 1,200 financial

services workers found that 47 percent of

executives believe their competitors have

engaged in illegal or unethical behavior — up

from the 39 percent found in 2012.


The poll, from the law firm Labaton Sucharow and the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, also found 23 percent of Wall Street professionals suspect their colleagues of serious wrongdoing, up from 12 percent in 2012.


Why aren’t the banksters in prison?

BARACK OBAMA HAS RAKED IN BIG (STOLEN) BUCKS FROM HIS CRONY JAMIE DIMON'S JP MORGAN. OBAMA HAS STATE PUBLICALLY THAT MORGAN IS A "WELL RUN BANK".



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).


"As a result of the crimes perpetrated by JPMorgan and other banks over the past decade, millions of people have had their homes foreclosed, and millions more have lost their jobs, while countless university endowments, pension plans, and municipalities have been swindled out of billions of dollars."

Why aren’t the banksters in prison?

22 May 2015
On Wednesday, five major international banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, America’s largest and third-largest financial institutions, pleaded guilty to felony charges for helping to manipulate global foreign exchange markets, paying a wrist-slap fine of about $1 billion apiece.
The financial impact on JPMorgan and the other banks for pleading guilty to a felony will be effectively zero. As part of the deal, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued waivers exempting the banks from the legal repercussions arising from their status as criminal organizations, giving them continued preferential treatment in issuing debt, as well as the continued right to operate mutual funds.

Despite the claims by Justice Department officials of a criminal conspiracy "on a massive scale," carried out with "breathtaking flagrancy," there was no talk of breaking up JPMorgan or any other bank, let alone bringing criminal charges against any of their executives.

The rigging of global foreign exchange rates is only the latest in the string of crimes, frauds and criminal conspiracies for which JPMorgan has been fined by US and international regulators.

* In January 2013, JPMorgan, together with 10 other banks, agreed to pay a combined $8.5 billion to settle charges that they forged documents to foreclose homes more quickly.

* In November 2013, the bank agreed to pay $13 billion to settle charges that it defrauded investors by selling fraudulent mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the housing bubble collapse in 2007 and 2008.

* That same month, JPMorgan paid $4.5 billion to settle charges that it defrauded pension funds and other institutional investors to whom it sold mortgage bonds.

* In December 2013, JPMorgan and eight other banks were fined $2.3 billion for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), the global benchmark interest rate on which the values of trillions of dollars in securities are based.

* In January 2014, JPMorgan paid $2 billion in fines and penalties to settle charges that it profited from and helped operate Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

As a result of the crimes perpetrated by JPMorgan and other banks over the past decade, millions of people have had their homes foreclosed, and millions more have lost their jobs, while countless university endowments, pension plans, and municipalities have been swindled out of billions of dollars.

Based on this partial list of only the latest and largest crimes carried out by JPMorgan, it is no exaggeration to conclude that America's largest bank is a criminal organization. Why then is it impossible to prosecute, much less jail, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, the mastermind of all of these crimes and conspiracies?

The answer to this question lies in the vast retrogression in social relations that has taken place in America amid the enormous growth of social inequality. Behind the increasingly threadbare outwards trappings of democracy, America has become an aristocratic society, with entrenched legal and social privileges for the ruling elite.

Before the French Revolution of 1789, European society was divided into feudal estates, such as the nobility, the church prelates, and the commoners. The estate into which someone was born was not only an economic category, but affected all aspects of life, from the laws that applied to him, to the types of taxes he paid, even to the kind of clothes he was legally allowed to wear.

The foundations of American democracy, laid in the aftermath of the American Revolution, were set up in opposition to the rigid social hierarchy that dominated contemporary Europe. The American Constitution prohibits the granting and holding of titles of nobility, while the 14th Amendment explicitly guarantees "the equal protection of the laws" to all people.

But could anyone argue that this is the case now? According to the American Bar Association, there are more than three hundred people serving sentences of life without parole for shoplifting in the state of California alone, while countless thousands of men throughout the United States are imprisoned for being too poor to pay child support.

Meanwhile the financial oligarchy and the state officials who defend their interests are effectively immune from prosecution. This tiny elite constitutes not merely a separate economic class, but effectively a separate estate, judged under what are, in effect, a different set of laws. A worker can be thrown in jail for failing to show up for a court date, while bankers who steal billions of dollars get off scot-free.

The American financial aristocracy is an inherently criminal class. Its wealth is based not on production, but on plunder, speculation and the upward redistribution of wealth through the impoverishment of the great majority of the population.

This financial oligarchy controls all the levers of power in contemporary society. The media, courts, politicians and so-called financial regulators are all under the thumb of the Wall Street mafiosos. Far from seeking to restrain Wall Street’s criminality, the government functions to facilitate and cover up for its crimes.

In exchange, politicians are provided with millions of dollars in campaign contributions and "speaking fees," while top financial regulators are invariably assured high-paying positions on Wall Street after their stints with the government.

YOU DON'T WORK IN THE OBAMA

ADMINISTRATION UNLESS YOU'RE

BANKSTER CONNECTED FOR A LA RAZA

SUPREMACY PARTY MEMEBER.

Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman who funneled

trillions of dollars to Wall Street during the 2008 bank bailout,

announced this year that he has been hired by two major Wall

Street firms, the hedge fund Citadel and the bond trading firm

Pimco, each of whom will presumably pay him a seven-figure

salary. Bernanke followed in the footsteps of his colleague Timothy

Geithner, who became the head of hedge fund Warburg Pincus in

November 2013, following his stint as Treasury Secretary.


There is no way to break the power of the criminal cabal that dominates political life in the United States within the framework of the present social order. Holding the Wall Street criminals to account requires a radical reorganization of society. Only then can the criminals who head

the major US financial institutions be arrested, tried and convicted

of the crimes that they have orchestrated against the populations of

the United States and the whole world. Their ill-gotten gains must be seized, and the major Wall Street banks must be put under democratic control by the international working class.
This requires the building of a mass movement of the working class, whose aim must be the overthrow of the capitalist system and the socialist reorganization of economic life in the interest of the great majority of the world's population.

Andre Damon


“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.”
 
 
OBAMA-CLINTONomics: the never end war on
the American middle-class. But we still get the tax
bills for the looting of their Wall Street cronies
and their bailouts and billions for Mexico’s
welfare state in our borders.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

 

 

In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.

 

In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.
 





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