PROFITS FOR OBAMA’S
CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS HAVE SOARED MORE DURING HIS FIRST 2 YEARS THAN ALL
EIGHT YEARS OF BANKSTERS’ PILLAGE AND LOOTING UNDER BUSH! WHAT DOES THAT TELL
YOU?
OBAMA’S BANKSTER
DONORS DOIN’ GOOD! PROFITS UP! FORECLOSURES UP! BANK NO REGULATION GUARANTEED!
BAILOUTS FOR BUYOUTS…. And not a single bankster donor in prison!
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).
*
“Obama's rhetoric covered the whole financial
industry, but the key changes will affect only a few high-profile players,
including JPMorgan Chase & Co., while sparing investment banks like Goldman
Sachs Group Inc.”
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Thursday, July 9,
2009
And Harvard economics
professor JEFFREY MIRON will weigh in on the state of the U.S. economy—and why
the only plausible argument for bailing out banks crumbles on close
examination.
*
"There is a populist and conservative revolt against
Wall Street and financial elites, Congress and government," Democratic
pollster Stanley Greenberg warned in an analysis this week. "Democrats and
President Obama are seen as more interested in bailing out Wall Street than
helping Main Street."
*
*
August 21, 2010
Janet Tavakoli.President, Tavakoli Structured
Finance
August 15, 2010
How to Thwart the Assassins of the American Dream
Arianna Huffington's
new book, Third World America: How Our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle
Class and Betraying the American Dream, paints a grim picture of the State of
the Union:
"Every day,
Americans, faced with layoffs and tough economic times, are forced to use their
credit cards to pay for essentials such as food, housing, and medical care --
the costs of which continue to escalate. But, as their debt rises, they find it
harder to keep up with their payments. When they don't, banks, trying to offset
losses in other areas, turn around, hike interest rates, and impose all manner
of fees and penalties..."
Third World America,
(P. 77)
Our mediocre grammar
school and high school educational system continues its downward slide. The
Great Recession is squeezing school budgets. We are failing our children, our
most important resource of all.
In 2009, the American
Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation's infrastructure a near failing D
rating:
"Flip on a light
switch, and you are tapping into a seriously overtaxed electrical grid. Go to
the sink, and your tap water may be coming to you through pipes built during
the Civil War. Take a drive, and pass over pothole-filled roads and
cross-if-you-dare bridges. The evidence of decay is all around us." (P.
95)
The over-hyped
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 earmarked only $72 billion of
the $787 billion appropriation of taxpayer dollars to projects to improve the
country's infrastructure.
Meanwhile,
multi-national corporations avoid taxes, sheltering $700 billion in foreign
earnings to end up with a measly $16 billion (2.3%) tax bill. GM is among those
companies, yet it took almost a half billion dollars in bailout loans. Boeing
and KBR Halliburton are among the defense contractors that avoid taxes, while
enjoying government contracts worth tens of billions.
Banks (not Fannie and
Freddie) Crippled the Housing Market
Fannie and Freddie do
not make loans. They purchase mortgage loans and earn fees for guaranteeing
payments on the loans. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, in 2006,
Fannie and Freddie accounted for 33% of total mortgage backed securities
issuance. In the first half of 2010, they accounted for around 64% of new
issuance. They were forced to pick up the slack and buy more when Wall Street's
private label securitization Ponzi scheme blew up.
Fannie and Freddie
are Wall Street's dumping ground. They would have had problems on their own,
but their problems would not have been close to their current scale, and they
did not create the housing bubble.
Congress twisted arms
to make Fannie and Freddie buy more than $300 billion of phony "AAA"
rated mortgage-backed securities from banks, not counting loans that didn't
meet their stated requirements. Today Fannie and Freddie want banks to
repurchase tens of billions of these loans, since they fail to meet representations
and warranties, and the banks are fighting this obligation.
*
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).
*
WELLS FARGO and their
BANKSTER PARTNERS IN CRIME:
Top subprime lenders
included Wells Fargo; Countrywide, purchased by Bank of America; Washington
Mutual, now part of JPMorgan Chase; CitiMortgage, part of Citigroup; First
Franklin (now closed), purchased by Merrill Lynch, which was purchased by Bank
of America; ChaseHome Finance, JPMorgan Chase; Ownit, partly owned by Merrill
Lynch, which was later purchased by Bank of America; and EMC, part of Bear
Stearns, which was purchased by JPMorgan Chase. Most of the rest depended on
massive loans from Wall Street. Many of these lenders were sued by states for
fraud and paid billions in settlements.
According to Inside Mortgage
Finance, the top mortgage backed securities underwriters during 2005-2006, only
two of the subprime abuse years, included now defunct Lehman Brothers ($106
billion); RBS Greenwich Capital ($99 billion); Countrywide Securities, which is
now part of Bank of America ($74 billion); Morgan Stanley ($74 billion);Credit
Suisse First Boston ($73 billion); Merrill Lynch ($67 billion); Bear Stearns,
which is now part of JPMorgan Chase ($61 billion); and Goldman Sachs ($53
billion).
The above doesn't
even include the credit derivatives, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs),
and structured investment vehicles (SIVs) that amplified losses. Yet, Arianna
notes how America imploded while bankers soared:
"Someone like
[Robert] Rubin is able to wreak destruction, collect an ungodly profit, then go
along his merry way, pontificating about how 'markets have an inherent and
inevitable tendency -- probably rooted in human nature -- to go to excess, both
on the upside and the downside.' This from the man who, as Bill Clinton's
Treasury secretary, was vociferous in opposing the regulation of derivatives --
a key factor in the current economic crisis -- and who lobbied the Treasury
during the Bush years to prevent the downgrading of the credit rating of Enron
-- a debtor of Citigroup." (P. 150)
Robert Rubin operated
an economic wrecking-ball from prestigious positions of influence including
former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, director of the National Economic Council,
former Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, board member and senior
"risk wizard" counselor at Citigroup, member of the President's
Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations, member of the SEC's Oversight and
Financial Services Advisory Committee, unofficial econmic adviser to President
Obama, and co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Rubin is just one
example of the many bankers, who helped destroy the economy while creating a
connected financial oligarchy.
Hide Billions of
Losses, Take Bailouts, Collect Billions, Skip Jail
Instead of
apologizing for screwing up, the banks demanded the Great Bailout. At the start
of the meltdown, the IMF and the U.S. administration estimated losses of $2 to
$2.5 trillion. Unemployment and the losses are now shockingly worse. What was
merely a recession escalated into the Great Recession.
How big are the
actual losses? No one knows.
After destroying the
value of major banks, culprits used their enormous political influence --
funded with taxpayer dollars -- to get Congress to force the accounting board
to change accounting rules (as of April 2009) so banks don't have to recognize
losses until they sell the assets.
According to William
K. Black, after the much tinier S&L crisis, there were over 1,000
successful felony prosecutions, several thousand successful enforcement actions,
and roughly 1,000 successful civil actions.
This time Congress
gave us the Great Cover-up. Bank officers dodged jail time and collected
billions in bonuses. As one of my South American friends observes, he's
witnessed this third-world corruption before, and this time it's in English.
Banks Stall the
Recovery and Prolong the Great Recession
Unemployment marched
upward, delinquencies soared, and banks stalled foreclosures. The longer banks
delay foreclosures and sales, the longer they can avoid acknowledging losses.
Phony accounting and zero cost funding from taxpayers created an illusion of
recovery.
Stalling helps banks
while they pressure Congress to bail out failed mortgages with taxpayer
dollars. Instead of working out mortgages with homeowners, they can wait for a
government program to buyout or subsidize their failing loans. The markets
aren't recovering, because banks own colossal chunks of mystery-meat assets.
It's a black hole of
debt. If banks were forced to price these assets at market values and sell
them, the market would clear, and the market would make a faster recovery. When
Japan did this, it stalled its economy for twenty years, and it still hasn't
recovered.
Voters Must Demand
the Solution
Voters must demand
that Congress uncovers and publicizes facts and prosecutes the financial
system's massive multi-year frauds. This will mean thousands of felony
prosecutions, enforcement actions, and civil actions.
Congress completely
failed in genuine regulation and enforcement. It must start over on financial
reform, regulate derivatives, commodities trading, update Glass-Steagall, and
more. It will have to break-up the Too Big to Fail financial institutions.
CEOs of our
Systemically Dangerous Institutions (SDI's) fail to manage them, because no one
is capable of doing it. Like a morbidly obese junk food addict, banks won't
even get on a scale. Our banks refuse to properly measure (account for) the
problem.
Third World America
elegantly summarizes the way forward. Arianna Huffington names the culprits and
gives a roadmap for solutions. The rest is up to us. We deserve better than a
third world economy divided by ultra-rich on one side and debt-ridden middle
class and dirt poor citizens on the other. Citizens must demand a clean-up of corruption
and a foundation for healthy growth.
*
HUFF POST
IS THERE A GLOBAL WAR BETWEEN FINANCIAL THEOCRACY AND
DEMOCRACY?
BY LES LEOPOLD
Senate and House conferees are about to
reconcile a financial reform bill that is virtually designed to
institutionalize "too big to fail." And when they do we'll lose
another battle in the ongoing war between global financial markets and democratic
nation-states.
This war has been going on for decades
-- but democracy hasn't always been in full retreat.
The New Deal Conquest: During the Great
Depression democratic forces gained the upper hand in the war. We realized that
financial markets, which are driven by the largest banks and financiers, had to
be tightly controlled. We knew that global speculation on currencies only
deepened the Depression and had to be strictly limited. We knew that an iron
curtain was needed between commercial and investment banking to protect Main
Street depositors from market madness (that was the Glass-Steagall Act). And
most importantly we knew that the key to preventing economic upheaval was to
limit the wealth of the super-rich and to increase the wealth of working people
through progressive taxes, Social Security, wage and hour laws, and the
promotion of unionization. The Bretton Woods agreements forged by the Allies
during WWII set up strict rules for global finance, rules that kept financiers
in check for more than a quarter century.
And it worked pretty damn well. As
economist Joseph Stiglitz points out, this era saw only one financial crisis
(Brazil, 1964), and working people in western democracies made huge gains.
Since the era of deregulation took hold in the late 1970s, the world has
suffered over a hundred financial crises and middle-class incomes have
stagnated.
The Deregulatory
Counter-Offensive: By the late 1970s, bankers regained the advantage through
the spread of a new faith in self-regulated markets. The economic apostles of
unfettered markets lobbied against progressive taxes, unions, and social
welfare programs. The new orthodoxy was: Let the elites collect the
money--they'll invest wisely (instead of consuming), and all boats will rise.
This near-religious revolution rapidly spread through the economic and policy
establishment. Regulations were dismantled right and left, and the revolving
door between government and Wall Street started spinning. The American
financial catechism ruled the world. And on Wall Street, the money tap was
open. It did not trickle down.
Then, suddenly, in 2008, the market
gods destroyed themselves as the unregulated financial casinos crashed and
burned, just like they did in 1929. For a few months, it seemed like the
deregulatory theology become a global heresy. It was obvious that Wall Street's
reckless speculation and its bold new wave of financial engineering had caused
the Great Recession. (See The Looting of America for an accessible account.). It was also clear that if
government didn't come to the rescue, Wall Street would lay in ruins, along
with the rest of the economy. This was the perfect moment for democracy
reassert democratic control on financial markets, just as we did during the New
Deal. We blew it.
The Victory at Too
Big to Fail: At the moment when Wall Street was on its knees, we decided
to bypass serious reform. Instead, we rebuilt Wall Street, using taxpayer money
and guarantees - more than $10 trillion worth. We let bankers use our bailout
money to pay themselves $150 billion in bonuses -- at a moment when over 29
million Americans were jobless or forced into part-time jobs. We allowed the
top hedge fund managers to walk off with over $900,000 an hour (not a typo) in 2009. Windfall profits taxes? No. In fact
we let hedge fund honchos pay an extra-low tax rate by calling their income
"capital gains." We didn't restore Glass-Steagall, we didn't break up
"too big to fail" financial institutions. In fact the biggest banks
became even bigger, courtesy of the U.S. government.
The Invasion against
Democracy: The war is escalating. Right now, financial elites aren't
just fighting a defensive battle against new regulations. They're playing
offense: They're whipping up deficit hysteria around the globe and calling for
drastic cuts in middle class programs. Why? They want to ensure that their
loans to governments aren't threatened by rising public debt. Ironically, the
public debt they're so worried about was created in large part by them -- the
result of huge bailouts and other expenses stemming from the crash they caused.
Although the bankers want us to dismantle what remains of our worker-oriented
policies, welfare for the financial elites is still fine and dandy.
This is the most dangerous counter
attack in the history of finance. We had better know a great deal more about
the attackers. Who makes up this shadowy force called "global
markets"? Who fights their battles? Do they have a high command?
Not really. There is no executive
committee of financial elites. There's no international conspiracy, no Elders
of Zion. Instead these markets are pulled and pushed by about 50 very large
banks and financial institutions. This is where much of the nation's $2
trillion in hedge fund money roams. This is where the top six US banks frolic.
They don't have to sit around a table strategizing. They instantly sense
threats to their power. They instantly smell profitable openings and they're
poised to grab what they can, whenever they can. They thrive on turmoil, which
gives them new "proprietary" trading opportunities to exploit.
Volatility means big bucks, especially now that the largest players know that
the government will back up even their wildest gambles. History has just proven
that they are way too big to fail.
Of course they still have to lobby
government officials--many of whom either were bankers, or will be once they
leave office. But their most powerful lever on government is through the market
itself: Here, by moving vast quantities of money around, they can instantly
veto policies they don't like. If the EU talks seriously about financial
transaction taxes, the markets go down the Euro grows weaker, and interest
rates rise--making it more expensive for governments to borrow the money they
need to operate. Politicians have learned to "listen" to the markets
and are conditioned to placate them.
Should a nation state get out of line
(Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc), the markets slap them silly. Politicians
rush to the scene and start slicing social spending. If instead they demand new
taxes on financial elites to reduce public debt, the markets respond with even
more fury. Money flees.
All the external machinery of democracy
still clanks along. We still pull the levers in the voting booth. But the
decisions that affect us the most are made in a profoundly undemocratic way.
Faceless financial markets exercise far more control over politicians than the
voters who elected them.
So the problem isn't just the corporate
campaign contributions, or corporate media control or the academic consensus
supporting our financial theocracy. It's the raw power of the markets. They've
been roaming free and virtually unregulated for more than a generation, and now
their power is unparalleled. Just months after they brought our economy
crashing down, they're right back to their old tricks, setting the stage for
the next crash and the next bailout while getting filthy rich along the way.
Bill Clinton nailed it on the head when
he reportedly said:
"You mean to tell me that the success of the economic
program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fxxxing
bond traders?" (See Agenda by Bob Woodward)
No Retreat, No
Surrender? There's no room for
pacifists in this war. Clearly, Wall Street and its global minions are not
seeking a truce. Instead, they're coming after our Social Security, Medicare
and Medicaid programs. They want us to work longer before we retire and get
less when we do. They want us to pay more for health care and get less of it.
They want less public money to go to schools, teachers and public
infrastructures. And they want us to get used to a jobless recovery with double
digit unemployment rates. (And when millions and millions of people are
unemployed, we can't maintain high labor standards, and our wages and benefits
erode.) In short, they want to undermine all the policies and programs that
have built and sustained middle class life.
Already government officials in the UK,
Germany and here are telling us we must endure austerity for "decades to
come." As Fed Chair Ben Bernanke candidly put it:
"We can see what problems can arise in a country if
investors lose confidence in the fiscal position of that country, so it is very
important that we address this problem."
Of course, he's not going to point out
that this austerity is only for the masses, definitely not for the financial
elites. Or that the underlying cause of the debt investors are so worried about
is the giant economic crater caused by the very same financial elites who now
might "lose confidence" in financing a middle class society.
We shouldn't kid ourselves about the
pitched battles ahead. Fighting back won't be easy, and winning will be even
harder. People in country after country will have to mobilize themselves in
defense of real democracy, in defense of each nation's right to provide its
people with a decent quality of life. In my opinion, that includes sustainable
jobs with decent benefits and a solid public infrastructure that promotes
equity, protects the vulnerable and enriches the environment.
Unfortunately, no one can guarantee
that democracy will prevail in the war against financial theocracy -- just
recall the totalitarian chaos in Europe during the Great Depression. But don't
count it out, either. It's true that many of us regular folks have been
diverted by the media, distracted by the Internet or lulled into a stupor by
pharmaceuticals. But when we realize that we've been shoved into a corner with
no way out, we'll act. A popular struggle will begin. And when it does, we'll
at least have a fighting chance to recapture our democratic souls.
Les Leopold is the
author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of
Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do
About It Chelsea Green
Publishing, June 2009.
*
“Altogether, Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley will gain nearly $20 billion in tax breaks from their employee compensation this year.
$$$
“Records show that
four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry
giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207)
and Citigroup ($358,054).
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