Friday, May 22, 2015

The Bankster-owned President and JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon - OBAMA AND DIMON LOOT AMERICA - IT'S A PARTNERSHIP!

Why aren’t the banksters in prison?

OBAMANOMICS:
The report observes that while the wealth of the world’s 80 richest people doubled between 2009 and 2014, the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population (3.5 billion people) was lower in 2014 than it was in 2009.



In 2010, it took 388 billionaires to match the wealth of the bottom half of the earth’s population; by 2013, the figure had fallen to just 92 billionaires. It fell to 80 in 2014.

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


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?


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 OR A LA RAZA

SUPREMACY PARTY MEMBER.

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.”

 
Is JPMorgan's Loss a Canary in a Coal Mine?


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

*


or 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.
 
  

JPMorgan Chase: Break Up the Big Banks Now. Here's How.
 
 

When Jamie Dimon revealed that JPMorgan Chase had lost billions through risky and legally questionable trading, he said the losses would be about $2 billion and maybe more. Apparently it is more -- a lot more. People in a position to know are saying the real figure is probably in the $5-7 billion range.
 

The JPMorgan Chase scandal -- and yes, it is a scandal -- shows us why we need to break up the big banks as quickly as possible.
 

But that won't happen unless we can get our hands around the real scope of the problem, which is probably far greater than we're being told. That means cutting through the enveloping shroud of jargon, euphemisms and double talk -- "crap," if you will -- that keeps us from seeing the situation as it really is.
 

Here's why we need to do it, and here's how.
 

Talk Talk
 
Two images come to mind when considering too-big-to-fail banks like JPMorgan Chase: The first is of the gigantic spaceships hovering over all of the world's cities in Independence Day, leaving the citizenry in shadows and the world in fear and uncertainty.
 
The second image is of an old New Yorker cartoon which shows a husband and wife chatting with guests over drinks and h'ors d'oeuvres while an enormous monster scowls in the corner. The caption reads: "We deal with it by not talking about it."
 
Most politicians are either talking about tighter regulations for too-big-to-fail banks, or about the virtues of self-regulation and the so-called "free markets." But the real problem isn't how to manage too-big-to-fail banks, which are inherently unmanageable. The real problem is that they exist, an everpresent menace that hovers over our economy while we go about our daily lives.
They deal with that problem by not talking about it.
 
Monster Mash
JPMorgan Chase is either our largest or second-largest bank, depending on when and how you ask the question. News stories often point out that it has $2 trillion in assets, which sounds impressive. But they usually fail to mention that it has liabilities of more than $2 trillion, too, leaving it roughly $183 billion in the black.
 
That ain't bad -- but it's not much more net worth than you'll see sitting around the table when Mitt Romney's super PAC friends get together for lunch.
 
And we can't trust those numbers. We now know that these risky London deals weren't accurately conveyed in last year's annual report. What else don't we know about JPM's liabilities?
 
All of our big banks were on the hook for hundreds of trillions of dollars in the run-up to the financial crisis of 2008. And now they're bigger than ever. How big? We don't know for sure -- and that's a big part of the problem.
 
Our four largest banks have 95 percent of the total exposure to derivatives. Two years ago we analyzed the raw data and found that JPM alone held 44 percent of that risk -- and JPM has grown since then.
 
Because they intend to keep right on growing. As Jamie Dimon promised shareholders, "I want to assure you that your company will be bigger and stronger and better a year from today."
If that doesn't frighten you, you haven't been paying attention.
 
Bigger ≠ Better
 
Here's an example of what we mean when we say it's time to "cut the crap" when we talk about big banks:
 
Writers should no longer be allowed to tell us, even in passing, that "I agree we need large institutions" unless they tell us why we need them.
 
Jamie Dimon was leading the chorus of bankers saying that their large size leads to increased efficiency and economies of scale. Okay, Mr. Dimon: Where are they? Is the cost of borrowing cheaper at JPM than it is at community banks? Are ATM fees lower? Are loans easier to get?
"Economies of scale" work well for customers -- when you're manufacturing toasters. But banks like JPM aren't in the toaster business. They're not even in the customer business anymore. Ordinary clients at the big banks are like cannon fodder in a colonial army: They're there to be used and discarded, not to be served or respected.
 
(John Reed's interview with Bill Moyers offers an enlightening glimpse into this shift in banking culture.)
 
So let's stop repeating the mantra that big institutions have anything to offer us -- anything, that is, except moral hazard. We did fine without them for centuries, and we'll be better off once they're gone.
 
Gaming the Numbers
 
Here's something else that needs to stop: When a bank deceives its investors, reporters need to stop saying only that it "changed its risk model." That makes it sound arcane. What JPM really did was mislead everyone.
 
The bank told investors that they had begun assessing internal risk in a new and more effective way. But reports say that the unit which made these hazardous trades reported directly to Dimon, bypassing the bank's other executive and risk management channels. And despite what they told the public -- including investors -- the bank did not use its new risk model to assess these trades. They used an old model which dramatically understated the risk involved.
 
Listen, I know this kind of talk confuses some people, but if there's one thing I learned after working in risk management it's this: The more jargon you hear, the less trustworthy the source.
If reports are true, then Chase was deceiving the public and it was deceiving investors. That's not "changing its risk model." It's lying. And it's very possibly fraud.
 
Byline Creep
And while we're in the crap-cutting business, here's something else that needs to stop:
Just because Jamie Dimon described the loss as "stupid" doesn't mean that you have to believe him, or use the same language. Listen, writers: He's the architect of this charade, not an observer.
If this disaster should tell you anything, it's to stop letting Jamie Dimon write your copy for you.
 
Something Stupid
 
Executives at Chase and the other big banks live in confidence that they'll reap the profits for risky betting and leave the losses to you. That may be many things -- venal, selfish, greedy -- but it's not stupid.
 
What's more, as long as nobody is indicted for Wall Street's ongoing criminality, they can keep breaking the law knowing they'll never pay the price for that either.
 
And if laws were broken in JPMorgan Chase's case, as Dimon himself acknowledges is possible, then these deals were only "stupid" the way any crime is stupid: It's only stupid if you get caught.
 
It Can Be Done. Here's How.
 
We've been led to believe that it's politically and economically impossible to break up these banks. That's not true. How can the political climate be changed?
 
The first step is to push for better financial reporting, so that we see less of the mistakes described above. If people are better-informed about big banks, sentiment against them will run even stronger than it is right now.
 
Which gets us to the politics of big banks.
 
Democracy First
 
The commonsense SAFE Act introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Keith Ellison would end the era of too big to fail. It's a smart first step toward ridding the world of these menaces to society.
Legislation should also be introduced to strengthen and expand antitrust laws so that they can rein in out-of-control banks like JPM.
 
True, the SAFE Act and antitrust banking bills are unlikely to pass under our corrupt political system. But every politician in Washington should be forced to vote "yes" or "no" on this bill before the elections and let the public know where they stand on this vital issue. That's the only way Americans can make an informed decision in November.
 
During the drafting of Dodd/Frank financial legislation we saw something important happen a number of times: If politicians were allowed to craft deals in private, those deals always benefited the big banks. But if they were forced to debate these issues publicly, we saw a much greater consensus against Wall Street.
 
Public debate: It's how democracy is supposed to work. It will help us break up the big banks.
 
Contraptions and Elegance
 
The Dodd/Frank bill's reforms, while anemic, are somewhat useful. It's madness to suggest repealing them, as Republicans are trying to do. But Dodd/Frank isn't useful at all unless agencies are staffed with regulators determined to do their jobs. The Administration's record has been lackluster (or worse) in that regard, while the Republicans have made it clear that they'll staff regulatory agencies with people determined not to do their jobs.
 
It doesn't help that when it comes to too-big-to-fail banks the current system of financial regulation is a rickety, complicated, Rube Goldberg-ish contraption designed to work around the massive danger that they pose to the economy.
 
Simple solutions are usually the best, and the simple solution to too big to fail banks is: Break them up.
 
That may not be politically feasible right now, but it's the job of a mobilized citizenry to change the political equation with public pressure whenever possible. That means keeping the issue on the front burner by inundating elected officials from the White House on down with emails and calls in support of the SAFE Act. (More here.)

Lead the Fed

 
The public needs to pres Congress about the Federal Reserve, too. The Fed is feeding the growth of the megabanks with free or very low-interest money, no strings attached. That gives megabanks the resources and the incentive to place that where it can maximize income in a stagnant, nearly consumerless economy. That tempts the banks into increasingly risky transactions and instruments like the ones that caused JPM's loss.
 
The Fed must also stop interfering with shareholder democracy, which cuts to the core of executive accountability. We should demand that Congress hold the Fed accountable for its actions in propping up too-big-to-fail banks.
 
That's not very likely to happen as long as the Federal Reserve, a creation of the United States government, is governed by boards that are dominated by bankers -- bankers like Jamie Dimon. So the public must demand that Dimon step down, and that bankers are removed from Fed boards altogether.
 
Shine a Light
 
The public has the right to know about the banks it's been coddling, spoon-feeding low interest loans to, and protecting for years. It should demand a full and complete audit of these banks by trustworthy outsiders -- if enough of them can still be found. Auditors can provide the banks with all the proprietary protections they rightfully deserve. But twe rescued them, and now we need to shine a light into their dark corners.
 
In addition to these general audits, we also need an immediate, extensive and transparent no-holds-barred review of the JPMorgan Chase debacle. Simon Johnson compares this event with the near-collision of two jet airliners, which would trigger an immediate investigation by the National Traffic Safety Board. It's an apt analogy, and an excellent idea.
 
And bank executives must be investigated, too -- for criminal activity. That, and that alone, would discourage illegal risk-taking. It would also make them take their legal responsibilities under Sarbanes-Oxley much more seriously than they apparently do today, and would discourage them from routinely deceiving the public -- which in many cases appears to cross the line into fraud.

Declare Independence

 
Our national and world economies are in grave danger as long as banks like JPMorgan Chase exist in their present form. They've already left our economy in ruins once. It's only a matter of time before they do it again.
 
Even if we assume that JPM's current problems can be contained, we should realize that every loss of this kind has the potential to turn into a chain reaction. Each could become a cascading failure that threatens JPM or another megabank -- and which therefore threatens the entire financial system.
The megabanks pose an existential threat to our economy. They hover over our economy, our political system, and our personal lives like a fleet of giant spaceships. They serve no useful social purpose, and they only exist because we allow them to exist.
 
it's time to declare our independence from their domination and demand that our elected officials help us in our fight for freedom. It's time to stop living in their menacing shadow and come out into the sunlight.
 
It's time to dedicate ourselves to breaking up JPMorgan Chase and the other too-big-to-fail banks, and to ensuring that they never threaten the world's economy again.
 
THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS NO real REGULATION, NO PRISON TIME, AND UNLIMITED PILLAGING OF THE NATION’S ECONOMY!
DESPITE THE DEVASTATION THESE BANKSTERS HAVE CAUSED AMERICANS, THEIR PROFITS SOARED GREATER DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TWO YEARS, THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH. SO HAVE FORECLOSURES!
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

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.

 
 

"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."

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.



 

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 BOO
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.”

 

Is JPMorgan's Loss a Canary in a Coal Mine?


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

*


 

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.
 
 
 

JPMorgan Chase: Break Up the Big Banks Now. Here's How.
 
 
When Jamie Dimon revealed that JPMorgan Chase had lost billions through risky and legally questionable trading, he said the losses would be about $2 billion and maybe more. Apparently it is more -- a lot more. People in a position to know are saying the real figure is probably in the $5-7 billion range.
 
The JPMorgan Chase scandal -- and yes, it is a scandal -- shows us why we need to break up the big banks as quickly as possible.
 
But that won't happen unless we can get our hands around the real scope of the problem, which is probably far greater than we're being told. That means cutting through the enveloping shroud of jargon, euphemisms and double talk -- "crap," if you will -- that keeps us from seeing the situation as it really is.
 
Here's why we need to do it, and here's how.
 
Talk Talk
 
Two images come to mind when considering too-big-to-fail banks like JPMorgan Chase: The first is of the gigantic spaceships hovering over all of the world's cities in Independence Day, leaving the citizenry in shadows and the world in fear and uncertainty.
 
The second image is of an old New Yorker cartoon which shows a husband and wife chatting with guests over drinks and h'ors d'oeuvres while an enormous monster scowls in the corner. The caption reads: "We deal with it by not talking about it."
 
Most politicians are either talking about tighter regulations for too-big-to-fail banks, or about the virtues of self-regulation and the so-called "free markets." But the real problem isn't how to manage too-big-to-fail banks, which are inherently unmanageable. The real problem is that they exist, an everpresent menace that hovers over our economy while we go about our daily lives.
They deal with that problem by not talking about it.
 
Monster Mash
JPMorgan Chase is either our largest or second-largest bank, depending on when and how you ask the question. News stories often point out that it has $2 trillion in assets, which sounds impressive. But they usually fail to mention that it has liabilities of more than $2 trillion, too, leaving it roughly $183 billion in the black.
 
That ain't bad -- but it's not much more net worth than you'll see sitting around the table when Mitt Romney's super PAC friends get together for lunch.
 
And we can't trust those numbers. We now know that these risky London deals weren't accurately conveyed in last year's annual report. What else don't we know about JPM's liabilities?
 
All of our big banks were on the hook for hundreds of trillions of dollars in the run-up to the financial crisis of 2008. And now they're bigger than ever. How big? We don't know for sure -- and that's a big part of the problem.
 
Our four largest banks have 95 percent of the total exposure to derivatives. Two years ago we analyzed the raw data and found that JPM alone held 44 percent of that risk -- and JPM has grown since then.
 
Because they intend to keep right on growing. As Jamie Dimon promised shareholders, "I want to assure you that your company will be bigger and stronger and better a year from today."
If that doesn't frighten you, you haven't been paying attention.
 
Bigger ≠ Better
 
Here's an example of what we mean when we say it's time to "cut the crap" when we talk about big banks:
 
Writers should no longer be allowed to tell us, even in passing, that "I agree we need large institutions" unless they tell us why we need them.
 
Jamie Dimon was leading the chorus of bankers saying that their large size leads to increased efficiency and economies of scale. Okay, Mr. Dimon: Where are they? Is the cost of borrowing cheaper at JPM than it is at community banks? Are ATM fees lower? Are loans easier to get?
"Economies of scale" work well for customers -- when you're manufacturing toasters. But banks like JPM aren't in the toaster business. They're not even in the customer business anymore. Ordinary clients at the big banks are like cannon fodder in a colonial army: They're there to be used and discarded, not to be served or respected.
 
(John Reed's interview with Bill Moyers offers an enlightening glimpse into this shift in banking culture.)
 
So let's stop repeating the mantra that big institutions have anything to offer us -- anything, that is, except moral hazard. We did fine without them for centuries, and we'll be better off once they're gone.
 
Gaming the Numbers
 
Here's something else that needs to stop: When a bank deceives its investors, reporters need to stop saying only that it "changed its risk model." That makes it sound arcane. What JPM really did was mislead everyone.
 
The bank told investors that they had begun assessing internal risk in a new and more effective way. But reports say that the unit which made these hazardous trades reported directly to Dimon, bypassing the bank's other executive and risk management channels. And despite what they told the public -- including investors -- the bank did not use its new risk model to assess these trades. They used an old model which dramatically understated the risk involved.
 
Listen, I know this kind of talk confuses some people, but if there's one thing I learned after working in risk management it's this: The more jargon you hear, the less trustworthy the source.
If reports are true, then Chase was deceiving the public and it was deceiving investors. That's not "changing its risk model." It's lying. And it's very possibly fraud.
 
Byline Creep
And while we're in the crap-cutting business, here's something else that needs to stop:
Just because Jamie Dimon described the loss as "stupid" doesn't mean that you have to believe him, or use the same language. Listen, writers: He's the architect of this charade, not an observer.
If this disaster should tell you anything, it's to stop letting Jamie Dimon write your copy for you.
 
Something Stupid
 
Executives at Chase and the other big banks live in confidence that they'll reap the profits for risky betting and leave the losses to you. That may be many things -- venal, selfish, greedy -- but it's not stupid.
 
What's more, as long as nobody is indicted for Wall Street's ongoing criminality, they can keep breaking the law knowing they'll never pay the price for that either.
 
And if laws were broken in JPMorgan Chase's case, as Dimon himself acknowledges is possible, then these deals were only "stupid" the way any crime is stupid: It's only stupid if you get caught.
 
It Can Be Done. Here's How.
 
We've been led to believe that it's politically and economically impossible to break up these banks. That's not true. How can the political climate be changed?
 
The first step is to push for better financial reporting, so that we see less of the mistakes described above. If people are better-informed about big banks, sentiment against them will run even stronger than it is right now.
 
Which gets us to the politics of big banks.
 
Democracy First
 
The commonsense SAFE Act introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Keith Ellison would end the era of too big to fail. It's a smart first step toward ridding the world of these menaces to society.
Legislation should also be introduced to strengthen and expand antitrust laws so that they can rein in out-of-control banks like JPM.
 
True, the SAFE Act and antitrust banking bills are unlikely to pass under our corrupt political system. But every politician in Washington should be forced to vote "yes" or "no" on this bill before the elections and let the public know where they stand on this vital issue. That's the only way Americans can make an informed decision in November.
 
During the drafting of Dodd/Frank financial legislation we saw something important happen a number of times: If politicians were allowed to craft deals in private, those deals always benefited the big banks. But if they were forced to debate these issues publicly, we saw a much greater consensus against Wall Street.
 
Public debate: It's how democracy is supposed to work. It will help us break up the big banks.
 
Contraptions and Elegance
 
The Dodd/Frank bill's reforms, while anemic, are somewhat useful. It's madness to suggest repealing them, as Republicans are trying to do. But Dodd/Frank isn't useful at all unless agencies are staffed with regulators determined to do their jobs. The Administration's record has been lackluster (or worse) in that regard, while the Republicans have made it clear that they'll staff regulatory agencies with people determined not to do their jobs.
 
It doesn't help that when it comes to too-big-to-fail banks the current system of financial regulation is a rickety, complicated, Rube Goldberg-ish contraption designed to work around the massive danger that they pose to the economy.
 
Simple solutions are usually the best, and the simple solution to too big to fail banks is: Break them up.
 
That may not be politically feasible right now, but it's the job of a mobilized citizenry to change the political equation with public pressure whenever possible. That means keeping the issue on the front burner by inundating elected officials from the White House on down with emails and calls in support of the SAFE Act. (More here.)

Lead the Fed

 
The public needs to pres Congress about the Federal Reserve, too. The Fed is feeding the growth of the megabanks with free or very low-interest money, no strings attached. That gives megabanks the resources and the incentive to place that where it can maximize income in a stagnant, nearly consumerless economy. That tempts the banks into increasingly risky transactions and instruments like the ones that caused JPM's loss.
 
The Fed must also stop interfering with shareholder democracy, which cuts to the core of executive accountability. We should demand that Congress hold the Fed accountable for its actions in propping up too-big-to-fail banks.
 
That's not very likely to happen as long as the Federal Reserve, a creation of the United States government, is governed by boards that are dominated by bankers -- bankers like Jamie Dimon. So the public must demand that Dimon step down, and that bankers are removed from Fed boards altogether.
 
Shine a Light
 
The public has the right to know about the banks it's been coddling, spoon-feeding low interest loans to, and protecting for years. It should demand a full and complete audit of these banks by trustworthy outsiders -- if enough of them can still be found. Auditors can provide the banks with all the proprietary protections they rightfully deserve. But twe rescued them, and now we need to shine a light into their dark corners.
 
In addition to these general audits, we also need an immediate, extensive and transparent no-holds-barred review of the JPMorgan Chase debacle. Simon Johnson compares this event with the near-collision of two jet airliners, which would trigger an immediate investigation by the National Traffic Safety Board. It's an apt analogy, and an excellent idea.
 
And bank executives must be investigated, too -- for criminal activity. That, and that alone, would discourage illegal risk-taking. It would also make them take their legal responsibilities under Sarbanes-Oxley much more seriously than they apparently do today, and would discourage them from routinely deceiving the public -- which in many cases appears to cross the line into fraud.

Declare Independence

 
Our national and world economies are in grave danger as long as banks like JPMorgan Chase exist in their present form. They've already left our economy in ruins once. It's only a matter of time before they do it again.
 
Even if we assume that JPM's current problems can be contained, we should realize that every loss of this kind has the potential to turn into a chain reaction. Each could become a cascading failure that threatens JPM or another megabank -- and which therefore threatens the entire financial system.
The megabanks pose an existential threat to our economy. They hover over our economy, our political system, and our personal lives like a fleet of giant spaceships. They serve no useful social purpose, and they only exist because we allow them to exist.
 
it's time to declare our independence from their domination and demand that our elected officials help us in our fight for freedom. It's time to stop living in their menacing shadow and come out into the sunlight.
 
It's time to dedicate ourselves to breaking up JPMorgan Chase and the other too-big-to-fail banks, and to ensuring that they never threaten the world's economy again.
 
THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS NO real REGULATION, NO PRISON TIME, AND UNLIMITED PILLAGING OF THE NATION’S ECONOMY!
DESPITE THE DEVASTATION THESE BANKSTERS HAVE CAUSED AMERICANS, THEIR PROFITS SOARED GREATER DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TWO YEARS, THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH. SO HAVE FORECLOSURES!
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

 


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."

 


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.


 

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

K!


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

No comments: