HERE’S HOW IT WENT
DOWN:
BEFORE HE STARTED HIS FIRST DAY IN
OFFICE, OBAMA HAD ALREADY TAKEN MORE BRIBES FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTERS THAN ANY
POLITICIAN IN HISTORY! WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW THAT WE DIDN’T?
OBAMA IMMEDIATELY WENT TO WORK PULLING
THE MOST CORRUPT OF BUSH’S WALL ST BANKSTERS TOGETHER, LIKE BUSH’S ARCHITECT
FOR BANKSTER BAILOUTS, TIM GEITHNER, TO WRITE THE BANKSTERS’ NO-STRING BAILOUTS
AS DICTATED BY HIS DONORS!
THEN OBAMA BROUGHT IN TWO OF THE
MOST CORRUPT AND BANKSTER-OWNED POLITICIANS, CHRIS DODD AND BARNEY FRANK TO
HAMMER OUT A BANKSTER APPROVED “REGULATION”, WHICH WAS UTTERLY AS WORTHLESS TO
CONSUMERS AS THESE BANKSTERS COULD BUY. THE BANKSTERS ARE ALREADY BUYING
POLITICIANS TO UNWIND THE LIMP REFORMS!
EVEN AS A NATION GRAPPLES WITH
ECONOMIC MELTDOWN, AND MILLIONS OF AMERICANS HAVE LOST THEIR LIFE SAVINGS DUE
TO THE CRIMES OF THESE BANKSTERS, THEIR PROFITS HAVE SOARED!!!!!!!!
BANKSTERS’ PROFITS UNDER THEIR BOY
OBAMA ARE GREATER IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF HIS CORRUPT ADMIN ARE GREATER THAN
ALL EIGHT YEARS OF BANKSTERS’ PILLAGE UNDER BUSH!
The terms of the agreement
are entirely favorable to the banks, while doing little or nothing to aid the
millions of people who have been devastated by the collapse of the US housing
market.
By Joseph Kishore
10 February 2012
10 February 2012
The
Obama administration announced on Thursday a settlement between five major
banks and federal and state governments over massive fraud relating to home
foreclosures. The terms of the agreement
are entirely favorable to the banks, while doing little or nothing to aid the
millions of people who have been devastated by the collapse of the US housing
market.
Government officials reported
that the final deal is valued at about $25 billion spread out over a multi-year
period. This is a paltry sum in relationship to the extent of the housing
crisis, the profits of the banks and the scale of corporate criminality.
However, only a small portion of this would come from direct financial
sanctions on the banks.
Forty-nine
of the 50 US states signed on to the settlement with the five banks—JPMorgan
Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America (which bought mortgage firm
Countrywide), and Ally Financial Inc. (formerly GMAC, the financial arm of
General Motors). These five banks involved
had net profits of $46 billion last year alone.
In exchange for the
settlement, the banks will be released from liability for fraudulent and likely
criminal activities. This
includes “robo-signing,” in which the banks had employees sign hundreds of thousands
of legal foreclosure documents without any knowledge of the underlying
mortgages. Banks were also involved in forging documents. The true extent of
the illegal operations is not known, and keeping this information secret is one
of the aims of the settlement.
Evidence
of these actions first emerged in 2010. States launched investigations in
response, and the Obama administration stepped in to package these
investigations and lead them to a settlement favorable to the banks. Over
the past several weeks, the administration has placed heavy pressure on several
state holdouts to sign on to the deal.
Of
particular importance for Bank of America is the fact that the settlement will
end a lawsuit filed by Nevada and Arizona over allegations that the bank has
been deceiving homeowners seeking to participate in a refinancing program.
Only
about $5 billion of the settlement will take the form of direct payments,
including, according to government officials, a payment of about $2,000 to some
individuals who had their homes foreclosed between September 2008 and December
2011.
Despite the evidence of fraud, no one will get their home back. Since
2007, there have been some 4 million home foreclosures.
About
$17 billion will come from the modification of existing loans, spaced over a
three-year time period. Details are still emerging, but it is evident that
decisions on what loans to modify will be left to the banks themselves. Many of
the loans have already been packaged off and sold to investors (“securitized”),
thus minimizing the impact on bank assets.
The
$17 billion in loan modifications is a tiny fraction of the total negative
equity (the value of loans in relation to the value of the underling houses) of
$700 billion to $750 billion. The deal will affect less than 10 percent of US
homeowners who are “under water.”
An
additional $3 billion is to come in the form of mortgage refinancing, again
left to the discretion of the banks.
The
banks will be tasked with self-reporting their actions. The industry and the
state attorneys general selected North Carolina banking commissioner Joseph Smith to “oversee” the agreement and
determine whether the banks are in compliance based on the bank reports. Smith
is a former bank lawyer with close ties to the industry.
Markets
reacted enthusiastically to the terms, and bank stocks rose Thursday. The banks
involved already have set aside funds that cover the amount of the agreement.
Indeed, since many banks have written down the value of their existing loans,
the agreement could have a positive net impact on their balance sheets.
“I
wouldn’t say it’s a panacea for the housing industry,” commented Barclays
analyst Jason Goldberg, “but it is good for the banks to get this behind them.”
Perversely,
the deal will likely lead to a surge in home foreclosures, with banks now
confident that they can proceed with business as usual. Bloomberg News
commented, “Lenders slowed the pace of foreclosures as they negotiated with
attorneys general in all 50 states for more than a year… With today’s agreement,
banks are likely to resume property seizures.” Increased foreclosures will also
lead to a further fall in home prices.
In
hailing the deal, Obama said that it would “speed relief to the hardest-hit
homeowners, end some of the most abusive practices of the mortgage industry,
and begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that has left so much
damage in its wake.”
In fact, as with every
component of the administration’s policy, the agreement will leave things
entirely as they are, while giving a free pass to corporate criminals
responsible for the economic crisis.
ISN’T
OBAMA SIMPLY BUSH’S THIRD TERM, BUT EVEN MORE CORRUPT???
*
“There is, however, nothing
paradoxical about this. The crash of 2008 was set off by the collapse of an
enormous speculative bubble. Since that time, world governments, led by
Washington, have scrambled to ensure the wealth of the very financial
aristocracy that created the crisis, at the direct expense of the vast majority
of the population.”
2 November 2011
The
International Labour Organization’s report on global unemployment, released
Monday, paints a stark picture of world capitalism.
Three
years after the onset of the economic crisis in 2008, the global jobs situation
is disastrous. According to the ILO, 80 million jobs would have to be added in
the next two years just to reach pre-crisis employment levels. Basing itself on
extraordinarily optimistic assumptions, the ILO anticipates that only half that
number will be created.
In
the advanced industrial countries, including the United States and Europe,
there are 13 million fewer jobs now then four years ago. Employment in these
countries is not expected to recover until well past 2016. Youth unemployment
is above 20 percent, and long-term unemployment has soared to record heights.
(See, “ILO report warns of sharp employment downturn, social unrest“)
Beyond
the immediate indicators of social distress—to which many more could be
added—the ILO report points to an unprecedented state of global class
relations. Conditions are building up for a social explosion on a world scale.
One
of the ILO’s comments is especially revealing. Its report refers to the
“paradox” of the past three years; that “the impact of the global economic
crisis of 2007-08 on the financial sector was short-lived initially—despite it
being at the very origin of the downturn.”
There is, however, nothing
paradoxical about this. The crash of 2008 was set off by the collapse of an
enormous speculative bubble. Since that time, world governments, led by
Washington, have scrambled to ensure the wealth of the very financial
aristocracy that created the crisis, at the direct expense of the vast majority
of the population.
Unlimited
funds have been turned over to the banks, with no strings attached, in the form
of direct bailouts and cheap cash. In the United States alone, some $14
trillion has been made available. The argument advanced to justify this
transfer of wealth—that it was necessary to revive economic growth and “create
jobs”—has proven a fraud. The funds have simply been funneled back into the
financial system and the pocket books of the ruling elite.
The
ILO complains that even non-financial institutions—which, in the US in
particular, have record cash hoards—have shunned productive investment in favor
of stock buybacks and other financial transactions. Actual production is not
considered sufficiently profitable.
The
response of the ruling class to the financial crisis has led not only to an
unprecedented decline or even collapse in the living standards of workers all
over the world; it has also failed to resolve any of the contradictions that
led to the crisis in the first place. Bad assets have been transferred to
governments, which now face bankruptcy, most immediately in Europe. The
financial system itself, heavily invested in government debt, stands on the
brink of another collapse.
Every
dollar handed to the financial aristocracy must in turn be extracted from the
flesh of the working class. Austerity measures have only undermined growth,
depleting government treasuries, and thus requiring new doses of austerity. “In
short,” the ILO writes, “there is a vicious cycle of a weaker economy affecting
jobs and society, in turn depressing real investment and consumption, thus the
economy and so on.”
Events
Tuesday brought out sharply the relationship of the financial aristocracy to
the overwhelming majority of the population. For his own purposes, Greek Prime
Minister George Papandreou proposed to put the most recent bailout/austerity
scheme to a referendum. Financial markets reacted with horror at the prospect
of the Greek or any other population having some democratic say on the course
of events. The major powers and their propaganda machines mobilized themselves,
insisting that the package had to be pushed through at any cost, and by the end
of the day the future of the Greek government was in question.
At
the same time, the divisions among these powers—over who will be forced to foot
the bill and who will get the biggest share of the spoils—has precluded any
coordinated international response. The crisis of the eurozone points to the
reemergence of national conflicts, which in the 20th century sparked two
catastrophic world wars.
The
ILO’s prediction that the global conditions are producing conditions for
increased “social unrest” now has the character of a truism. Indeed, 2011 has
already witnessed a significant upturn in the global class struggle, beginning
in Tunisia and Egypt in January and February, and extending to Europe, the
United States and Latin America. The Occupy Wall Street movement is itself an
initial expression of the reemergence of explosive class struggles at the
center of world capitalism, unlike anything that has been seen in generations.
The
financial aristocracy stands as an absolute barrier to even the most trifling
reforms. “Everything for the rich!” is the watchword of each ruling elite. In
the face of these class realities, the ILO’s counsel—that governments institute
significant jobs programs and reverse the staggering growth of social
inequality—is hopelessly utopian. In the United States, experience with the
Obama administration, the government of “change,” has assuredly demonstrated
the absolute stranglehold of the financial elite over the entire political
system.
A
crisis has a way of clarifying class relations. For three years, the ruling
class and its political representatives have been free to advance their
solution, a solution that has only paved the way for an even greater disaster.
The response of the international working class now emerges as a new and
decisive factor in the global situation.
There
is no way out of the crisis in the interests of the working class that does not
target the power of the corporate and financial elite and the social system
that it defends. In fighting for their basic rights—including, above all, the
right to a job—workers everywhere are driven into struggle against capitalism.
The
success of that struggle requires above all the building of a new, socialist
leadership in the international working class.
Joseph
Kishore
*
NO REPUBLICAN IN HISTORY HAS
WORKED HARDER FOR WALL ST BANKSTERS THAN OBAMA! THEY HAVE FILLED HIS POCKETS
WITH THANKS.
OTHER THAN BANKSTERS, ONLY
ILLEGALS GET OBAMA’S ATTENTION MORE! HE IS THE FIRST LA RAZA SUPREMACIST
PRESIDENT!
“In other words, despite the
trillions of dollars handed out to the banks and financial institutions over
the past three years by governments around the world, nothing has been
resolved. The global economy could be plunged into a disaster at any time. This
underscores the fact that the crisis of 2008 was not a conjunctural downturn,
from which there would be a recovery, but the start of an ongoing breakdown in
the world capitalist economy, threatening the jobs and livelihoods of billions
of people.”
World economy set for another major
downturn
By Nick Beams
19 January 2012
19 January 2012
The
World Bank has issued a grim forecast on the outlook for the world economy,
with the potential for a crisis worse than that which followed the collapse of
Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The warning was contained in the Bank’s
Global Economic Prospects report, issued yesterday.
These
predictions were backed by a United Nations report. It said the world economy
was “teetering on the brink of another major downturn,” with output growth
slowing “considerably” in 2011 and only “anaemic growth” expected in 2012 and
2013.
The
World Bank pointed to a significant worsening of economic prospects, beginning
in August 2011 as the euro zone financial crisis started to deepen. This was
having a major impact on so-called emerging markets where rates on credit
default swaps (CDS)—an indication of fears of a debt default—had been rising.
However,
this was by no means the only sign. “For developing countries, the contagion
has been broadly based,” the report stated. “Developing-country markets have
lost 8.5 percent of their value since July-end. This, combined with the 4.2
percent drop in high-income stock-market valuations, has translated into $6.5
trillion, or 9.5 percent of global GDP, in wealth losses.”
Even
more significant was the sharp decline in capital flows to developing countries
as investors withdrew money in the second half of last year. “Overall, gross
capital flows to developing countries plunged to $170 billion in the second
half of 2011, only 55 percent of the $309 billion received during the like
period of 2010.”
According
to the report, “the world economy has entered a dangerous period” as the
financial turmoil in Europe spread to developing and other high-income
countries that had previously been unaffected.
The
World Bank’s forecasts of world economic growth had been “significantly
downgraded” from its previous assessment six months ago. It now expected the
global economy to expand by only 2.5 percent and 3.1 percent in 2012 and 2013,
compared to the previous prediction of 3.6 percent for both years. Any rate
below 3 percent is generally considered to be a recession for the world economy
as a whole. Europe was now in a recession and growth in high-income countries
was expected to be only 1.4 percent.
Even
these weak results may not be achieved. “The downturn in Europe and the slow
growth in developing countries could reinforce one another more than is
anticipated,” resulting in even worse results and “further complicating efforts
to restore market confidence.” At the same time, “the medium-term challenge
represented by high debts and slow trend growth in other high-income countries
has not been resolved and could trigger sudden adverse shocks.”
The
consequences would be even greater than those of the breakdown of the global
financial system after September 2008.
“While
contained for the moment, the risk of a much broader freezing up of capital
markets and a global crisis similar in magnitude to the Lehman crisis remains.
In particular, the willingness of markets to finance the deficits and maturing
debt of high-income countries cannot be assured. Should more countries find
themselves denied such financing, a much wider financial crisis that could
engulf private banks and other financial institutions on both sides of the
Atlantic cannot be ruled out.”
In other words, despite the
trillions of dollars handed out to the banks and financial institutions over
the past three years by governments around the world, nothing has been
resolved. The global economy could be plunged into a disaster at any time. This
underscores the fact that the crisis of 2008 was not a conjunctural downturn,
from which there would be a recovery, but the start of an ongoing breakdown in
the world capitalist economy, threatening the jobs and livelihoods of billions
of people.
The
report stated: “In the event of a major crisis, the downturn may well be longer
than in 2008/09 because high-income countries do not have the fiscal or
monetary resources to bailout the banking system or stimulate demand to the
same extent as in 2008/09. Although developing countries have some
maneuverability on the monetary side, they could be forced to … cut
spending—especially if financing for fiscal deficits dries up.”
The
impact of the financial turmoil in Europe is expressed in world trade—always an
indicator of the state of the global economy. The report noted that trade
volumes had declined at an annualised pace of 8 percent during the three months
ending in October 2011 “mainly reflecting a 17 percent annualised decline in
European imports.”
Exports
from so-called developing countries fell at an annualised rate of 1.7 percent
in the third quarter of last year and continued to fall in November. The
countries of South Asia were among the hardest hit, with sharp contractions,
following rapid export growth in the first half of the year. Exports from East
Asia were falling at double-digit annualised rates. While some of this decline
was due to the impact of the floods in Thailand, it also expressed the
contraction of markets in Europe and other high-income regions.
World
Bank chief economist Justin Lifu Liu said China still remained a bright spot.
Its growth rate, although down to a forecast of 8.4 percent for this year,
compared to 9.1 percent last year, remained relatively high. “If China can
maintain its growth, it’s good for the world, providing support for commodities
markets and growth in other countries.” He warned that while China’s exports
would be adversely affected by the worldwide downturn, the Chinese government
was one of the least indebted in the world and had “relatively large room for
manoeuvre to stimulate the economy.”
In
view of recent reports from Beijing on the state of the Chinese economy and the
mounting problems faced by government and monetary authorities, such comments
can be likened to whistling past the graveyard.
This
week, the Chinese government announced that the growth rate for the last
quarter of 2011 was an annualised 8.9 percent, the lowest for 10 quarters.
Overall growth for 2011 was 9.2 percent, the weakest since 2009 when China
experienced the impact of the Lehman collapse.
A
National Bureau of Statistics spokesman said 2012 would be a year of
“complexity and challenges.” The Financial Times reported that his
remarks were “laced with words such as ‘gloomy’, ‘complicated’ and ‘severe’.”
Huang
Yiping, the chief economist at Barclays Bank, which has just completed a study
of China’s real estate bubble, told the FT that the probability of a big
stimulus package was much lower now because the government was still dealing
with the effects of the last one. “China has very heavily indebted local governments
and has seen an extraordinary credit expansion that contributed to large asset
bubbles, particularly in housing, over the last few years. Over-investment is
also a major concern and these are all problems that have contributed to
collapse in other developing economies in the past,” he said.
A
severe economic crisis in China will have major social and political
consequences, with the government calculating that it needs at least 8 percent
growth to maintain social stability and prevent a challenge to its rule. There
will also be significant consequences for commodity exporting countries such as
Canada, Australia and Brazil that have, to some extent, been insulated from the
full impact of financial turbulence by high prices and volumes for their commodity
exports to China.
*
2009 - NOT A BANKSTER GOES TO PRISON!
December 14, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Disaster and Denial
When I first began
writing for The Times, I was naïve about many things. But my biggest
misconception was this: I actually believed that influential people could be
moved by evidence, that they would change their views if events completely
refuted their beliefs.
And to be fair, it does
happen now and then. I’ve been highly critical of Alan Greenspan over the years
(since long before it was fashionable), but give the former Fed chairman
credit: he has admitted that he was wrong about the ability of financial
markets to police themselves.
But he’s a rare case. Just how rare was
demonstrated by what happened last Friday in the House of Representatives, when
— with the meltdown caused by a runaway financial system still fresh in our
minds, and the mass unemployment that meltdown caused still very much in
evidence — every single Republican and 27 Democrats voted against a quite
modest effort to rein in Wall Street excesses.
Let’s recall how we got
into our current mess.
America emerged from the
Great Depression with a tightly regulated banking system. The regulations
worked: the nation was spared major financial crises for almost four decades
after World War II. But as the memory of the Depression faded, bankers began to
chafe at the restrictions they faced. And politicians, increasingly under the
influence of free-market ideology, showed a growing willingness to give bankers
what they wanted.
The first big wave of
deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in
the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying
more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to
clean up the mess.
But the proponents of
deregulation were undaunted, and in the decade leading up to the current crisis
politicians in both parties bought into the notion that New Deal-era
restrictions on bankers were nothing but pointless red tape. In a memorable
2003 incident, top bank regulators staged a photo-op in which they used garden
shears and a chainsaw to cut up stacks of paper representing regulations.
And the bankers —
liberated both by legislation that removed traditional restrictions and by the
hands-off attitude of regulators who didn’t believe in regulation — responded
by dramatically loosening lending standards. The result was a credit boom and a
monstrous real estate bubble, followed by the worst economic slump since the
Great Depression. Ironically, the effort to contain the crisis required
government intervention on a much larger scale than would have been needed to
prevent the crisis in the first place: government rescues of troubled
institutions, large-scale lending by the Federal Reserve to the private sector,
and so on.
Given this history, you
might have expected the emergence of a national consensus in favor of restoring
more-effective financial regulation, so as to avoid a repeat performance. But
you would have been wrong.
Talk to conservatives
about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in
which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a
universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis,
even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans.
It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to
unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was
subject to the regulations in question.
Oh, and conservatives
simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the
only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups,
because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit
the narrative.
In part, the prevalence
of this narrative reflects the principle enunciated by Upton Sinclair: “It is
difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his
not understanding it.” As Democrats have pointed out, three days before the
House vote on banking reform Republican leaders met with more than 100
financial-industry lobbyists to coordinate strategies. But it also reflects the
extent to which the modern Republican Party is committed to a bankrupt ideology,
one that won’t let it face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S.
economy.
So it’s up to the
Democrats — and more specifically, since the House has passed its bill, it’s up
to “centrist” Democrats in the Senate. Are they willing to learn something from
the disaster that has overtaken the U.S. economy, and get behind financial
reform?
Let’s hope so. For one
thing is clear: if politicians refuse to learn from the history of the recent
financial crisis, they will condemn all of us to repeat it.
*
WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE
DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors
are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG
($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
BARACK OBAMA HAS COLLECTED NEARLY TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS
JOHN McCAIN
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
July 1st 2008
Wall Street firms have chipped in more than $9 million to
Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg
Wall Street is investing heavily in Barack Obama.
In addition to calling for corporate and capital gains tax
hikes, Obama has proposed raising income taxes on those earning more than
$250,000.
But Wall Street is often motivated by something more than
money - winning.
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).
McCain's top five include Wall Street's Merrill Lynch
($230,310) and Citigroup ($219,551).
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