Tuesday, April 14, 2020

IMF FORECASTS WORST YEAR FOR WORLD ECONOMY SINCE GREAT DEPRESSION I - OBAMA - BIDEN GEAR UP FOR BANKSTER BAILOUTS, HANDOUTS AND IMPUNITY FROM PROSECUTION


Tom Fitton: Coronavirus and the Killing of the U.S. Economy

Need overwhelms giant loan program for US small businesses
© GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File STREETER LECKA
2:17

As I said in my recent video update segment on the Coronavirus, you can’t cure or end the pandemic by killing our economy – pure and simple.
When it comes to the coronavirus, the best way to get people on their feet is to get them back to work. While the “giant” stimulus package will help many with immediate cash, the economic impact of the country’s being shut down could leave us facing 20-30 million unemployed, a very dangerous consequence of the panicked reactions by governors across the country.
I have been critical of the almost nationwide lockdown from the beginning. There’s got to be a way of moving forward while taking care of people’s health. Shutting down the country cannot be the solution, and as I have alluded to throughout the crisis, it will be a huge detriment to the long-term public health of our communities.
To date, there’s nothing in the White House or CDC guidelines that says shut down everything in your state. On the contrary, we’ve got to care for the sick and make sure our economy is able to function. Ultimately, we need to get America moving again, and not depend on the CDC/FDA timeline, which left to their own devices would only figure out the needed drugs months from now.
What’s more, with the FBI’s shutting down all Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, there will be little transparency during this key part of our country’s history. We’ve also just learned from the State Department that they’ve shut down their FOIA operation indefinitely as well. Instituting the indefinite moratorium on FOIA processing, the FBI and State Department are delaying Judicial Watch’s investigations into the Bidens, Spygate and Hillary Clinton, to mention a few, making these agencies virtually unaccountable by any practical means. The Deep State, unsurprisingly, doesn’t consider following transparency law to be “essential” government business.
You can be sure that Judicial Watch is investigating and monitoring the responses of our government to the coronavirus threat. In the meantime, please be sure to call your state and federal elected officials to let them know what you think about the shutdowns that are destroying our economies and suppressing our liberties.





MF Forecasts Worst Year for World Economy Since Great Depression

circa 1930: A migrant family saying Grace before their noonday meal by the side of the road East of Oklahoma. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)
Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images

It’s going to be a terrible year for the global economy.
Beaten down by the coronavirus outbreak, the world economy in 2020 will suffer its worst year since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the International Monetary Fund says in its latest forecast.
The IMF said Tuesday that it expects the global economy to shrink 3 percent this year — far worse than its 0.1% dip in the Great Recession year of 2009 — before rebounding in 2021 with 5.8 percent growth. It acknowledges, though, that prospects for a rebound next year are clouded by uncertainty.
The economies of the U.S., Europe, and Japan will contract, the IMF projects. Ironically, China, the source of the coronavirus that has devastated economies and costs hundreds of thousands of lives around the globe, is expected to grow–albeit at a much slower rate than in recent decades.
The bleak assessment represents a breathtaking downgrade by the IMF. In its previous forecast in January, before COVID-19 emerged as a grave threat to public health and economic growth worldwide, the international lending organization had forecast moderate global growth of 3.3 percent this year. But far-reaching measures to contain the pandemic — lockdowns, business shutdowns, social distancing and travel restrictions — have suddenly brought economic activity to a near-standstill across much of the world.
The IMF’s twice-yearly World Economic Outlook was prepared for this week’s spring meetings of the 189-nation IMF and its sister lending organization, the World Bank. Those meetings, along with a gathering of finance ministers and central bankers of the world’s 20 biggest economies, are being held virtually for the first time in light of the coronavirus outbreak.
In its latest outlook, the IMF expects economic contractions this year of 5.9 percent in the United States, 7.5 percent in the 19 European countries that share the euro currency, 5.2 percent in Japan and 6.5 percent in the United Kingdom. China, where the pandemic originated, is expected to eke out 1.2 percent growth this year. The world’s second-biggest economy, which had gone into lockdown, has begun to open up well before other countries.
Worldwide trade will plummet 11 percent this year, the IMF predicts, and then grow 8.4 percent in 2021.
Last week, the IMF’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, warned that the world was facing “the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression.’’ She said that emerging markets and low-income nations across Africa, Latin America and much of Asia were at especially high risk. And on Monday, the IMF approved $500 million to cancel six months of debt payments for 25 impoverished countries so they can help confront the pandemic.
Just three months ago, the IMF had forecast that more than 160 countries would register income growth on a per-capita basis. Now, it expects negative per-capita income growth this year in 170 countries.
The IMF cautioned Tuesday that its latest forecast is shrouded by unknowns. They include the path that the virus will take; the effectiveness of policies meant to contain the outbreak and minimize the economic damage; and uncertainty over whether, even many months from now, people will continue to isolate themselves and depress spending as a precaution against a potential resurgence of the virus.
On a hopeful note, the IMF noted that economic policymakers in many countries have engineered what it calls a “swift and sizable’’ response to the economic crisis. The United States, for instance, has enacted three separate rescue measures, including a $2.2 trillion aid package — the largest in history — that is meant to sustain households and businesses until the outbreak recedes and economic life begins to return to normal.
That package includes direct payments to individuals, business loans, grants to companies that agree not to lay off workers and expanded unemployment benefits. And Congress is moving toward approving a possible fourth economic aid measure.
Meghan Clem, CEO of the wedding and party-planning company Intertwined Events, says she is hoping that some government loans come through so she can continue to pay her staff. The next two to three months will likely be the worst of the crisis for Intertwined Events.
“All events have been canceled or postponed to the fourth quarter, so we are seeing a full stop of revenue for May, June and likely July,” said Clem, whose company is based in Irvine, California.
Some countries can’t afford sufficiently aggressive rescue plans, the IMF said, and “may require external support.” Georgieva has said that the IMF is prepared to commit its $1 trillion in lending capacity to support nations that need help in dealing with the pandemic.
The IMF is also calling on countries to work cooperatively to fight the pandemic.
“Countries urgently need to work together to slow the spread of the virus and to develop a vaccine and therapies to counter the disease,’’ the lending agency said.

President Barack Obama oversaw the channeling of trillions of dollars to the banks and financial markets in order to pay off the debts of the bankers and speculators, whose reckless and criminal activities had led to the crisis, and make them richer than ever.

Both of Obama’s Attorney Generals, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, were chosen by the banks because they were from law firms that had long protected big banks from their victims.

A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech has been at least $400,000 a clip.

“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”

JPMorgan is not the exception; it is the rule. Virtually every major bank that operates on Wall Street has settled charges of fraud and criminality on a staggering scale

Why aren’t the Wall Street criminals prosecuted? 


In May 2012, only days after JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon revealed 

that his bank had lost billions of dollars in speculative bets, President 

Barack Obama publicly defended the multi-millionaire CEO, calling 

him “one of the smartest bankers we’ve got.” What Obama did not 

mention is that Dimon is a criminal.


OBAMA CRONY DONORS 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.


THE LONG HISTORY of BARACK OBAMA and HIS CRIMINAL 
BANKSTER DONORS JP MORGAN… STILL LOOTING AMERICA AND THE WORLD!



This is the unadulterated voice of finance capital speaking. It should be recalled that JPMorgan is deeply implicated in the speculative operations that have devastated the lives of hundreds of millions of workers around the world. In March of this year, a US Senate committee released a 300-page report documenting the criminal practices and fraud carried out by JPMorgan, the largest bank in the US and the world’s biggest dealer in derivatives. Despite the detailed revelations in the report, no action will be taken against the bank’s CEO, Jamie who enjoys the personal confidence of the US president.

 assault on America – THE OBAMA – JP MORGAN

Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.

“Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”

Why aren’t the Wall Street criminals prosecuted? 

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


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

INCEST! The case of bankster-owned Barack

Obama and crony Jamie Dimon of JP

MORGAN… their looting continues!

INCEST! THE CASE OF BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA and CRONY JAMIE DIMON

- White House sued for covering up crimes of JPMorgan

White House sued for covering up crimes of JPMorgan 

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

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/02/obamas-crony-banksters-give-american.html

'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.'

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.

Sanders called JPMorgan’s CEO America’s "biggest corporate socialist" — here’s why he has a point

 

Sen. Bernie Sanders called JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon the “biggest corporate socialist in America today” in recent ad


PAUL ADLER
FEBRUARY 13, 2020 9:59AM (UTC)
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Sen. Bernie Sanders called JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon the "biggest corporate socialist in America today" in a recent ad.
He may have a point — beyond what he intended.
With his Dimon ad, Sanders is referring specifically to the bailouts JPMorgan and other banks took from the government during the 2008 financial crisis. But accepting government bailouts and corporate welfare is not the only way I believe American companies behave like closet socialists despite their professed love of free markets.
In reality, most big U.S. companies operate internally in ways Karl Marx would applaud as remarkably close to socialist-style central planning. Not only that, corporate America has arguably become a laboratory of innovation in socialist governance, as I show in my own research.
Closet socialists
In public, CEOs like Dimon attack socialist planning while defending free markets.
But inside JPMorgan and most other big corporations, market competition is subordinated to planning. These big companies often contain dozens of business units and sometimes thousands. Instead of letting these units compete among themselves, CEOs typically direct a strategic planning process to ensure they cooperate to achieve the best outcomes for the corporation as a whole.
This is just how a socialist economy is intended to operate. The government would conduct economy-wide planning and set goals for each industry and enterprise, aiming to achieve the best outcome for society as a whole.
And just as companies rely internally on planned cooperation to meet goals and overcome challenges, the U.S. economy could use this harmony to overcome the existential crisis of our age — climate change. It's a challenge so massive and urgent that it will require every part of the economy to work together with government in order to address it.
Overcoming socialism's past problems
But, of course, socialism doesn't have a good track record.
One of the reasons socialist planning failed in the old Soviet Union, for example, was that it was so top-down that it lacked the kind of popular legitimacy that democracy grants a government. As a result, bureaucrats overseeing the planning process could not get reliable information about the real opportunities and challenges experienced by enterprises or citizens.
Moreover, enterprises had little incentive to strive to meet their assigned objectives, especially when they had so little involvement in formulating them.
A second reason the USSR didn't survive was that its authoritarian system failed to motivate either workers or entrepreneurs. As a result, even though the government funded basic science generously, Soviet industry was a laggard in innovation.
Ironically, corporations — those singular products of capitalism — are showing how these and other problems of socialist planning can be surmounted.
Take the problem of democratic legitimacy. Some companies, such as General ElectricKaiser Permanente and General Motors, have developed innovative ways to avoid the dysfunctions of autocratic planning by using techniques that enable lower-level personnel to participate actively in the strategy process.
Although profit pressures often force top managers to short-circuit the promised participation, when successfully integrated it not only provides top management with more reliable bottom-up input for strategic planning but also makes all employees more reliable partners in carrying it out.
So here we have centralization — not in the more familiar, autocratic model, but rather in a form I call "participative centralization." In a socialist system, this approach could be adopted, adapted and scaled up to support economy-wide planning, ensuring that it was both democratic and effective.
As for motivating innovation, America's big businesses face a challenge similar to that of socialism. They need employees to be collectivist, so they willingly comply with policies and procedures. But they need them to be simultaneously individualistic, to fuel divergent thinking and creativity.
One common solution in much of corporate America, as in the old Soviet Union, is to specialize those roles, with most people relegated to routine tasks while the privileged few work on innovation tasks. That approach, however, overlooks the creative capacities of the vast majority and leads to widespread employee disengagement and sub-par business performance.
Smarter businesses have found ways to overcome this dilemma by creating cultures and reward systems that support a synthesis of individualism and collectivism that I call "interdependent individualism." In my research, I have found this kind of motivation in settings as diverse as Kaiser Permanent physiciansassembly-line workers at Toyota's NUMMI plant and software developers at Computer Sciences Corp. These companies do this, in part, by rewarding both individual contributions to the organization's goals as well as collaboration in achieving them.
While socialists have often recoiled against the idea individual performance-based rewards, these more sophisticated policies could be scaled up to the entire economy to help meet socialism's innovation and motivation challenge.
Big problems require big government
The idea of such a socialist transformation in the U.S. may seem remote today.
But this can change, particularly as more Americans, especially young ones, embrace socialism. One reason they are doing so is because the current capitalist system has so manifestly failed to deal with climate change.
Looking inside these companies suggests a better way forward — and hope for society's ability to avert catastrophe.
Paul Adler, Professor of Management and Organization, Sociology and Environmental Studies, University of Southern California
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Why aren’t the Wall Street criminals prosecuted? 


In May 2012, only days after JPMorgan Chase’s 

Jamie Dimon revealed that his bank had lost 

billions of dollars in speculative bets, President 

Barack Obama publicly defended the multi-

millionaire CEO, calling him “one of the smartest 

bankers we’ve got.” What Obama did not 

mention is that Dimon is a criminal.


JPMorgan is not the exception; it is the rule. Virtually every major bank that operates on Wall Street has settled charges of fraud and criminality on a staggering scale. In 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 630-page report on the financial crash of 2008 documenting what the committee chairman called “a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest and wrongdoing.”

These multiple crimes by serial lawbreakers have had very real and very destructive consequences. The entire world has been plunged into an economic slump that has already lasted more than five years and shows no signs of abating. Tens of millions of families have lost their homes as a result of predatory mortgages pushed by JPMorgan and other Wall Street banks. 

Amid poverty wages and tax cuts for the rich

"This decades-long ruling class offensive was accelerated in response to the 2008 financial crisis. President Barack Obama oversaw the channeling of trillions of dollars to the banks and financial markets in order to pay off the debts of the bankers and speculators, whose reckless and criminal activities had led to the crisis, and make them richer than ever. At the same time, he imposed a restructuring of the auto industry based on a 50 percent across-the-board pay cut for new-hires and an expansion of temporary and part-time labor,"

The devastating human cost of the plundering of society by the corporate-financial oligarchy is registered in declining life expectancy, rising mortality and record suicide and drug  addiction rates.

BARACK OBAMA AND HIS CRONY BANKSTERS set themselves on America’s pensions next!

 http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/04/obamanomics-assault-on-american-middle.html

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.


JPMorgan Chase records the biggest profit of any bank in US history

 
JPMorgan Chase, the most valuable private bank in the world, made $36.4 billion in 2019, the biggest annual profit of any bank in American history. The news, reported Tuesday, sent the company’s stock up by 2 percent. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the company took in $8.5 billion, also a record, making it the tenth largest publicly traded company in the world, with a market cap of $437 billion.
JPMorgan Chase’s record profits were joined by Morgan Stanley, which also reported both record profits and record revenues for 2019, sending its stock price surging 6.6 percent on Thursday.
News of these record gains came as the six largest US banks revealed that they saved a combined $32 billion last year from President Donald Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cut. The tax windfall was up from 2018 for all but one of the banks. JPMorgan’s tax cut went from $3.7 billion in 2018 to $5 billion last year.
At Wednesday’s signing ceremony for the phase one trade deal with China, attended by an array of corporate executives, Trump turned to Mary Erdoes, a top executive at JPMorgan Chase. Calling the bank’s earnings report “incredible,” he joked, “Will you say, ‘Thank you, Mr. President,’ at least?”
The tax cuts for the corporations and the rich,
enacted with only token opposition from the 
Democrats, are only one factor in the surge 
in profits over the past year. When stocks 
plunged at the end of 2018, Trump stepped 
up his demand that the Federal Reserve 
reverse its policy of gradually raising interest 
rates to more normal levels, following years 
of near-zero rates in the aftermath of the 2008
financial crisis. Acting as the mouthpiece of 
Wall Street, he demanded that the Fed begin 
cutting rates once again in order to pump 
more cash into the financial markets.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell dutifully complied, cutting interest rates three times in 2018 and assuring the markets that he had no intention of raising them again any time soon. Then, beginning in the late fall, the Fed began pumping tens of billions of dollars a week into the so-called “repo” overnight loan market, resuming the money-printing operation known as “quantitative easing.”
This de facto guarantee of unlimited 
public funds to backstop stock prices has 
produced record highs on all of the major 
US indexes, sending billions more into the
private coffers of the rich and the super-
rich.
These measures are a continuation and intensification of policies carried out on a bipartisan basis for four decades to redistribute wealth from the working class to the corporations and the financial elite. They have effected a fundamental restructuring of class relations in America, drastically lowering the social position of the working class. Decent-paying, secure jobs have been wiped out and largely replaced by poverty-wage, part-time, temporary and contingent employment—the so-called “gig” economy exemplified by corporations such as Amazon and Uber.
This decades-long ruling class offensive was accelerated in response to the 2008 financial crisis. President Barack Obama oversaw the channeling of trillions of dollars to the banks and financial markets in order to pay off the debts of the bankers and speculators, whose reckless and criminal activities had led to the crisis, and make them richer than ever. At the same time, he imposed a restructuring of the auto industry based on a 50 percent across-the-board pay cut for new-hires and an expansion of temporary and part-time labor.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) has actively participated in this process, enshrining the new “flexible” labor system in sellout contracts in 2015 and 2019. This template of expendable, benefits-free labor has become the new norm for labor relations across the country and throughout the world.
Meanwhile, state, local and federal government programs have been dramatically slashed. Education, housing, Medicaid and food stamps have been particularly hard hit. This process has been accelerated under Trump, along with the removal of occupational safety and environmental regulations, with no opposition from the Democrats, who represent sections of the financial elite and wealthy upper-middle class.
The devastating human cost of the plundering
of society by the corporate-financial oligarchy 
is registered in declining life expectancy, 
rising mortality and record suicide and drug 
addiction rates. A recent study by the Brookings 
Institution found that 53 million people in the US—44 percent of 
all workers—“earn barely enough to live on.” The study found that
the median pay of this group was $10.22 per hour, around 
$18,000 a year. Thirty seven percent of those making $10 an 
hour have children. More than half are the primary earners or 
“contribute substantially” to family income.
Similarly, a Reuters report from 2018 found that the average income of the bottom 40 percent of workers in the United States was $11,600.
A recent study by Trust for America’s Health found that in 2017 “more than 152,000 Americans died from alcohol- and drug-induced fatalities and suicide.” This was highest number ever recorded and more than double the figure for 1999. Among those in their 20s and early 30s, the prime working life age, drug deaths have increased more than 400 percent in the last 20 years.
At the other pole of society, the Dow Jones Industrial index is now double what it was at its peak in 2007, prior to the implosion of the financial system. Between March 2009 and today, the Dow has risen from 6,500 to over 29,000. The stock market, buttressed by central bank and government policy, has become the central instrument for funneling wealth from the bottom of society to the top. As a result, the top 10 percent of society now owns about 70 percent of all wealth, whereas the bottom 50 percent has, effectively, nothing.
In the midst of this orgy of wealth accumulation at the very top of society, every demand of workers for jobs, decent pay, education, housing, health care and pensions is met with the universal response: “There is no money.” Hundreds of thousands of teachers have struck over the past two years to demand the restoration of funds cut from the public schools and substantial increases in pay and benefits. None of their demands have been met. The same applies to auto workers who struck for 40 days last fall to demand an end to two-tier pay systems and the defense of jobs.
JPMorgan’s $36.4 billion profit in 2019 is 
more than half the education budget of the 
US federal government.
Meanwhile, Americans are deeper in debt to JPMorgan and the other banks than at any time in history. Collective consumer debt in the United States approached $14 trillion last year. Credit card debt has surpassed $1 trillion for the first time. Auto debt is at $1.3 trillion and mortgage debt is now $9.4 trillion. Student loan debt has increased the fastest, surging from $500 billion in 2006 to $1.6 trillion today.
These are the conditions, rooted in the historical bankruptcy and crisis of the capitalist system, that have sparked a global upsurge in the class struggle and the growth of anti-capitalist and pro-socialist sentiment. The past year has seen a dramatic expansion of working class struggle that is only a glimpse of what is to come. India, Hong Kong, Mexico, the United States, Puerto Rico, Lebanon, Iraq, France, Chile and Brazil are only some of the places where mass struggles have erupted.
What is becoming increasingly clear to hundreds of millions of people around the world is that the social problems confronting humanity in the 21st century—poverty, debt, disease, global warming, war, fascism, the assault on democratic rights—cannot be solved so long as this parasitic and oligarchical financial elite continues to rule. The turn is to the American and international working class—to unite, take power and seize control of the wealth which it produces to ensure peace, prosperity and equality for all people.

PRITZKER - OBAMA ADDS TO HIS HAREM OF CORRUPT BANKSTERS

THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT

(THE LIST BELOW, WHICH DOESN’T MENTION TIM GEITHNER IS ONLY A DROP ON THE BOTTOMLESS BUCKET OF BANKSTER CRIMINALS EMPLOYED BY BARACK OBAMA)

If confirmed, Pritzker will join a cabinet that includes Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, who earned millions of dollars as an executive at Citigroup by betting against the housing market as it collapsed. Mary Jo White, Obama’s chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC)—the federal agency tasked with regulating the exchange of stocks and other securities—made millions as an attorney for banks including Bank of America and JP Morgan during the financial crash


OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM – A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS

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.


OBAMA HAS ALWAYS SERVED THE BILLIONAIRES AND BANKSTERS CLASS. It’s the rest of us who get the tax bills for their crimes, bailouts and handouts!

Senators forgive Penny Pritzker’s $80 million “mistake”

By Zac Corrigan
On the eve of her confirmation hearing, President Obama’s nominee for commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, admitted that she had underreported her 2012 income to the tune of $80 million, blaming a clerical error. Pritzker is worth an estimated $1.85 billion and would become the wealthiest US cabinet member in history. Her nomination underscores the increasingly plutocratic character of the Obama administration and the US government at large.
The $80 million in earnings that had been omitted were related to Pritzker’s role managing trust funds—financial instruments used by wealthy families to control vast sums of money across generations—and $54 million of it was related to an offshore fund based in the Bahamas. This admission comes in the wake of a recent study showing that as of 2012, wealthy Americans are hoarding up to $32 trillion in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes.
Pritzker has played an important role in the Democratic Party’s own finances for years. She was the chair of Obama’s 2008 campaign finance team, which raised over $778 million, a record at the time. She went on to co-chair—along with Chicago Mayor and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel—the president’s 2012 re-election campaign, which raised over $1 billion. She contributed $250,000 to Obama’s 2013 inauguration festivities. She is also a member of Obama’s Jobs Council, which advises the president on economic matters.
Pritzker’s record shows that Obama could hardly have picked someone more versed in the intricacies of modern financial swindling, nor more deeply immersed in the opulent world of the global elite, to “foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce”—such is the stated mission of the US Department of Commerce which she will head, pending congressional approval.
To begin with, Pritzker’s family is one of the wealthiest in Chicago. She is heiress to the Hyatt hotels fortune. She is a director of Hyatt Hotels Corp, which operates the luxury hotel chain and nursing homes, and whose profits are based on low-wage service work. A 53-year-old Hyatt hotel housekeeper who attended the hearing told the Chicago Tribune that she cleans 16 rooms a day for $14.60 an hour with no paid lunch break, and is working under an expired contract.
Especially scandalous is Pritzker’s involvement in the 2001 collapse of Superior Bank of Chicago, where as CEO she pioneered the predatory subprime lending practices that would lead to the financial crash of 2008. In May of 2001, Pritzker told bank employees in a written letter, “Our commitment to subprime lending has never been stronger and we are fully expecting to participate in restoring the bank’s presence.”

Two months later, Superior was closed and its $1.1 billion in paper assets were sold for $52 million to Charter One Financial, Inc. Depositors collectively lost millions of dollars that will never be repaid, while Pritzker and family nonetheless pocketed close to $200 million during their ownership of the bank.
When Senator John Thune (R-South Dakota) broached the subject of Superior at Thursday’s confirmation hearing, Pritzker’s crocodile tears seemed to satisfy. “I regret the failure of Superior Bank,” she said, calling it a situation she felt “very badly about.” Thune later commented, “I’m very impressed with her qualifications,” and told reporters he expected the committee to vote in favor of her nomination.
Pritzker was treated with kid gloves by senators at the hearing. When Illinois senators Dick Durbin (D) and Mark Kirk (R ) introduced her to the committee before the hearing, Kirk called her “a vibrant part of the Jewish world,” and Durbin noted admiringly that not only had she “inherited a few dollars,” but also she had “made a few dollars in her life.” Other senators who praised Pritzker during and after the hearing include Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who called her an “enthusiastic and unapologetic advocate of free trade,” and Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) who told the hotel heiress, “You know more about [foreign tourism] than most anyone else in this room.”
It is no mystery why senators from both parties are so enamored. Over half of them are millionaires, some many times over. In 2011, the median net worth of the Senate was $2.63 million. The chair of the Senate committee reviewing her nomination is Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia), great-grandson of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, net worth $86 million. John Kerry, who left the senate in February to become Obama’s new secretary of state, is worth many hundreds of millions through his wife’s inheritance of the Heinz Foods fortune.
This is a government of and for the rich. In an epoch of historic and ever-increasing levels of social inequality, profit is more and more acquired through risky financial speculation increasingly divorced from the production of real value. In politics, the ruling elite no longer feels it necessary to give lip service to government “of, by and for the people,” and multimillionaires and billionaires take on direct responsibility for running the government, setting policy and making and enforcing regulations.

THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT
If confirmed, Pritzker will join a cabinet that includes Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, who earned millions of dollars as an executive at Citigroup by betting against the housing market as it collapsed. Mary Jo White, Obama’s chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC)—the federal agency tasked with regulating the exchange of stocks and other securities—made millions as an attorney for banks including Bank of America and JP Morgan during the financial crash

Pritzker of the 1% serving Obama serve the 1%. THE INCEST OF OBAMA AND HIS CRONY CAPITALIST


OBAMA and his culture of BANKSTER LOOTING of America.

Is Penny Pritzker Obama’s newest BRIBESTER BANKSTER?

Obama warns against “cynicism” at Ohio State commencement address



“Pritzker has garnered broad support from Democrats and groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.”... these entities endorse Obama's assault on the American worker, our borders for more illegals, the Obama amnesty hoax to keep wages depressed and NO E-VERIFY!

PRITZKER IS ALL THE ABOVE!

“Pritzker has garnered broad support from Democrats and groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.”

OBAMA’S BILLIONAIRE NOMINEE FOR COMMERCE, PENNY PRITZKER… BILLION$$$$ MADE OFF HIRING CHEAP ILLEGAL LABOR??? show me even one dem billionaire that does not push for Obama’s agenda of OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY and NO ENFORCEMENT of LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT of ILLEGALS…even one!


Based in Chicago, Pritzker operates an international empire based on low-wage service work in Hyatt-operated hotels and nursing homes, along with several investment firms.
Pritzker has garnered broad support from Democrats and groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.”... these entities endorse Obama's assault on the American worker, our borders for more illegals, the Obama amnesty hoax to keep wages depressed and NO E-VERIFY!

PRITZKER IS ALL THE ABOVE!

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.

•           ISBN-10: 1596981091

•           ISBN-13: 978-1596981096

Michelle Malkin

No Shady Banking Buddy Left Behind



First Lady Michelle Obama's latest overseas jaunt is getting all the headlines. But President Obama's money-grubbing junket to Chicago may cost taxpayers far more in the long run. With his Gaultier-clad wife sashaying around the Spanish seaside, the lonely fundraiser-in-chief returned to Illinois to take care of some birthday-week business. Job One: Filling the Senate campaign coffers of his corruption-tainted political protege Alexi Giannoulias.

Mission accomplished. Obama's Thursday afternoon campaign event for Giannoulias, the beleaguered state treasurer of Illinois, reportedly raked in $1 million. Lagging behind his GOP opponent, liberal Republican Rep. Mark Kirk, Giannoulias has coveted one-on-one, grip-and-grin time with Obama for months. In addition to the cash, photo-ops and video of the Obama fundraising event that Giannoulias will milk from now until Election Day, the White House has dispatched Vice President Joe Biden, White House senior adviser David Axelrod and White House campaign management guru David Plouffe to boost Giannoulias' bid. Plouffe proclaimed Democrats "all in" for Giannoulias, whom he described as "a great progressive champion."

Obama gave his own personal seal of ethical approval, telling deep-pocketed donors this week: "I appreciate his strong sense of advocacy for ordinary Americans. You can trust him -- you can count on him." Uh-huh. And I've got a bridge to Hope and Change to sell you.

What would Giannoulias know about "ordinary Americans"? Giannoulias, 34, befriended Obama during pickup basketball games with an elite group that also included Michelle Obama's brother, Craig; Chicago edu-crat Arne Duncan (now Education Secretary); and hedge fund manager John Rogers (the ex-husband of the Obamas' ex-White House social secretary, Desiree Rogers). He spread his wealth and influence around early and often to support Obama's fledgling political career. He pitched in $7,000 in 2003-2004 to Obama's Illinois State Senate bids. He hosted fundraisers for Obama's U.S. Senate campaign in 2004 and for his presidential campaign in 2007.

Where'd the cash come from? Giannoulias' Greek immigrant family founded Chicago-based Broadway Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that loaned tens of millions of dollars to convicted mafia felons and faced bankruptcy after decades of engaging in risky, high-flying behavior. It's the place where Obama parked his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign funds. And it's the same place where a mutual friend of Obama and Giannoulias -- convicted Obama fundraiser/slum lord Tony Rezko -- used to bounce nearly $500,000 in bad checks written to Las Vegas casinos. This week, the Chicago Sun-Times revealed an additional $22.75 million Broadway Bank loan to a Rezko-owned business in 2006. Giannoulias held an ownership stake in the bank at the time.

Giannoulias served as Broadway Bank vice president and senior loan officer for four years. According to the Chicago Tribune, during Giannoulias' tenure, some $27 million of Broadway Bank's funny money went to mob crooks Michael "Jaws" Giorango and Demitri Stavropoulos. Giorango is a hustler who fronted a nationwide prostitution ring and was sentenced to six months in prison; Stavropoulos is behind bars for operating a multistate bookmaking ring. Giorango ran the $400-an-hour call girl operation out of high-rise luxury apartments in Chicago with the infamous "Gold Coast Madam," Rose Laws. Giorango and Stavropoulos used their Broadway Bank loans to start their own risky lending business for nontraditional borrowers unable to secure traditional bank financing.

Despite Giorango's criminal record exposed by the Tribune in 2004, Broadway Bank approved massive mortgages for him. Giannoulias' brother, Demetris, explained that as a "relationship bank," Broadway wouldn't just throw someone under the bus because of a "bad article." Instead, the bank went ahead and rubber-stamped a September 2005 loan for $3.4 million to buy a 32-unit Los Angeles apartment complex. The application falsely stated that the borrower, Giorango, had "not been convicted of a felony." Giannoulias oversaw the servicing of such shady loans totaling $11 million. Remember: He was no low-level staffer. He was, as he reminded supporters when he needed to deflect attention away from his youth, top management at Broadway Bank.

In January 2010, the bank entered a consent decree with federal and Illinois state regulators. It required Broadway Bank "to raise tens of millions in capital, stop paying dividends to the family without regulatory approval, and hire an outside party to evaluate the bank's senior management." The city's former inspector general blasted Giannoulias and his family for tapping $70 million worth of dividends in 2007 and 2008 as the real estate crash loomed. Broadway Bank was sitting on an estimated $250 million in bad loans. In late April, federal regulators shut it down. Cost to taxpayers: an estimated $390 million. Giannoulias refused to drop out of the race -- and instead used the company failure to argue that it made him (SET ITAL) more (END ITAL) qualified to serve in office: "I have a renewed vigor and a new perspective on just how horrible it is out there for so many people."

President Obama agrees: Abysmal failure should be rewarded with promotion. He's leaving no shady banking buddy behind.


Pandemic likely to exceed Great Recession in number of bankruptcies


The coronavirus pandemic that has sickened over 450,000 people in the United States and claimed thousands of lives will also create a surge in bankruptcies that is likely to eclipse that of the Great Recession.
“The assumption is that whatever happened in 2008 to 2009 in terms of bankruptcies, this is going to be worse," said Desmond Lachman, an economist at the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute. "So you’ve got to brace yourself for the whole wave of bankruptcies."
The surge of personal and business bankruptcies that began in 2008 because of the financial crisis reached its peak in 2010 when nearly 1.6 million bankruptcies were filed, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. In 2009, there were 1.4 million bankruptcies and 1.1 million in 2008, according to the organization.
Aaron Klein, a fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, thinks these numbers will be exceeded if the economic shutdown persists long enough to kill the Major League Baseball season, which has already postponed Opening Day because of the virus.
“You tell me when baseball starts and I’ll tell you [if we exceed Great Recession bankruptcies],” he said. “If baseball resumes on June 1, maybe not; if baseball resumes around the All-Star break, then maybe. If there is no season, definitely.”
Since the Great Recession the number of bankruptcies have declined, with roughly 774,000 bankruptcies being filed in 2019. The total number of bankruptcies also declined in the first quarter of 2020 by 5% when compared to bankruptcies filed during the first quarter of 2019, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI).
That is about to change. Economists from the Federal Reserve expect between 200,000 and 1 million bankruptcies will be filed over the next 12 months. The increase in filings is expected to start this month.
"We will likely see an increase in bankruptcies, starting with business filings in April and May, and increased consumer filings to follow,” ABI Executive Director Amy Quackenboss told the Washington Examiner via email, adding that “the magnitude of the increase in filings will depend on how long and deep the economic crisis goes on.”
Based on the most significant indicators, the economic damage from the pandemic already exceeds what occurred during the Great Recession.
On the jobs front, over the past three weeks more than 17 million workers have claimed unemployment benefits. Job losses totaled 8.7 million for the entire Great Recession.
For small businesses, the current crisis is likely to be grim, National Consumer Law Center attorney John Rao told the Washington Examiner.
“I think there is likely to be more small businesses affected by the pandemic than probably there were during the Great Recession,” he said.
Roughly 170,000 small businesses closed between 2008 and 2010. Over the last three months, 630,000 retailers have either permanently or temporarily closed their doors. Meanwhile, 1 in 4 small businesses say they are less than eight weeks away from closing permanently, according to polling by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The dire state for small businesses is due to their narrow profit margins. Restaurants, bars, and retail shops survive on paying traffic entering their stores. Commerce was not turned off during the Great Recession the way it has been in the past few weeks. Now, retailers wait for customers to return, which could be a long time coming since a vaccine for the coronavirus is not expected for another 12 to 18 months.
“You’re not getting rid of the coronavirus until you get the vaccine which is 12 to 18 months away,” Lachman said. “My expectation is that you’re not going to get people to go to restaurants. A big chunk of people are going to be scared. And these restaurants, they’re in very poor shape [financially] to begin with. Same thing with travel, hotels or car rental companies; they’re all going to be in trouble.”
When a business goes bankrupt it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s shutting down. For example, in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, debts are reorganized and the business remains open. On the other hand, in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, a business does close as its assets are liquidated and whatever money was raised goes to creditors.
Rao expects that bankruptcy courts will be able to handle the increased caseload, but the current work-from-home order could complicate things if filings start pouring in this month as expected. Like other workers, court employees are working from home.
“The real question will be if the surge occurs at a time when we’re still doing everything remotely. Hopefully, that will not be the case because that’s when there will be particular challenges for the courts to do everything remotely,” he said.
Rao noted that under normal circumstances creditors would gather in a single room and ask questions about the insolvency. These meetings are now done remotely, which adds time to completing the bankruptcy trial.
“There is the logistics of it because they are federal courts and they need to keep a record of everything that they’re doing,” he said.

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