Thursday, December 8, 2022

SQUANDERING AMERICA - NO ONE CAN DO IT FASTER THAN JOE BIDEN! - Congressional Report: Financial Technology Companies Fueled Billions in PPP Fraud

PROFILE OF A SOCIOPATH PARASITE GAMER LAWYER:

Saying Joe Biden has substance is like saying a toilet that doesn't flush is still a working toilet. Joe Biden has no substance, he's an empty shell of a man, a creature who has changed his beliefs the way normal people change their underwear, a puppet for the billionaire class and its radical left-wing allies, as well as teachers' unions, united in their elitist desire to keep the little guy down.

                                                                        MONICA SHOWALTER

Congressional Report: Financial Technology Companies Fueled Billions in PPP Fraud

hundred dollar bills
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty
4:14

A congressional report has found that obscure financial technology companies “with little to no oversight from lenders” have fueled rampant Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) fraud. The report estimates a total fraud of about $64 billion, with fintechs contributing significantly to that total.

Little-known financial tech companies, also known as “fintechs,” have taken ” billions in fees from taxpayers while becoming easy targets for those who sought to defraud the PPP,” an investigation by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis found.

The Select Subcommittee began its probe following reports that “fintechs participating in the PPP approved a high volume of fraudulent PPP loan applications.”

The PPP, which passed Congress in the spring of 2020, offered unprecedented support for small business owners to help them maintain operations and keep their employees throughout the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

No more than three years after the PPP went into effect, however, it is clear that small business owners were not the only ones to benefit from this program.

“At least tens of billions of dollars in PPP funds were likely disbursed to ineligible or fraudulent applicants, often with the involvement of fintechs, causing tremendous harm to taxpayers,” the congressional report states.

The report added that “fintechs were given extraordinary responsibility in administering the nation’s largest pandemic relief program — a responsibility that some of the fintechs that facilitated the highest volumes of loans were either unable or unwilling to fulfill.”

“Many of these companies appear to have failed to stop obvious and preventable fraud, leading to the needless loss of taxpayer dollars,” the congressional report reads.

One fintech called Kabbage had furloughed half of its employees who were tasked with assessing risk and reviewing accounts. Nonetheless, Kabbage continued funding PPP loans by outsourcing the work to “temporary contractors,” the report said.

“Despite the risk of fraud, Kabbage made staffing reductions throughout 2020 that likely weakened its capacity to address fraud,” the report read. “Press reports indicate that Kabbage furloughed employees in March 2020, anticipating a contraction in business during the pandemic, but that participation in the program ‘saved’ the struggling fintech.”

“After Kabbage’s acquisition by American Express in October 2020, PPP borrowers were left at the mercy of an underfunded and understaffed spin-off company that failed to properly service their loans and would later file for bankruptcy,” the report added.

Another fintech called Womply had fraud prevention practices described by lending partners as systems that were “put together with duct tape and gum.” The fintech was also accused of allowing “rampant fraud” to infiltrate the PPP.

A third fintech called Blueacorn — which received more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars via PPP processing fees — gave its employees little to no training on the loan underwriting process. They weren’t even instructed on how to spot a fake driver’s license.

Blueacorn loan reviewers who spoke to the Select Subcommittee said they had received poor training, and were pressured to “push through” PPP loans, even if they doubted the authenticity of the loan’s supporting documentation.

A former Blueacorn loan reviewer added that the company’s reviewers were “submitting PPP loans to the SBA the first minute of the first day” of their employment, despite having “no formal or informal training on loan underwriting.”

Additionally, these reviewers had “no training on how to properly identify and report fake government identification such as a driver’s license,” the ex-Blueacorn loan reviewer said.

The reviewers were also told “the faster the better,” and that each loan application review “should take you less than 30 seconds,” the congressional report said.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

The Silver Lining in Joe Biden’s Failed Economy

Corporate diversity consultants and woke journalists keep losing their jobs

 • December 7, 2022 4:20 pm

SHARE

President Joe Biden has presided over a failed economic recovery marred by rampant inflation and a Democratic megadonor's multibillion-dollar fraud scheme. Nevertheless, there is a silver lining to the sluggish economy: Corporate diversity consultants and left-wing hack journalists are getting fired at a rapid clip.

Major tech companies such as Meta, Amazon, and Twitter have cut thousands of jobs over the past several weeks. Fortune magazine reports that these layoffs are "decimating human resources and diversity teams." That's great news for America.

Last month, for example, the ride-hailing company Lyft cut 13 percent of its workforce. Hannah Said, the firm's "Diversity and Inclusion Business Partner," announced that she was fired along with the "majority" of her department. In that role, according to her LinkedIn profile, Said "strategically influenced Talent Acquisition/Recruitment through equitable hiring trainings, outreach and engagement activations, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Councils," among other things.

Dalana Brand, the "Chief of People and Diversity" at Twitter, resigned shortly after immigrant billionaire Elon Musk took over the social networking website and started firing people, including several leaders of the company's diversity-focused employee resource groups. Musk also reportedly dissolved "the entire human rights team." Whatever that means.

Media companies are also firing employees. BuzzFeed on Tuesday said it was cutting about 12 percent of its workforce. NPR announced a hiring freeze in an effort to cut $10 million from its annual budget. Newspaper chain Gannett has fired 600 employees since August. CNN has fired a number of partisan hacks, including conference call masturbator Jeffrey Toobin, and announced last week that hundreds more were likely to be terminated in the coming weeks.

Biden's presidency is certainly one of the saddest moments in American history, which is why it is so important to highlight these silver linings. There may be hope yet for our wonderful country.

Published under: Democratic PartyDiversityEconomyJoe BidenJournalists

Left-Wing Journalists Are Truly Some of the Worst People on the Planet

Protecting the powerful from the truth.

There is a great line in the great movie “Chasing Amy,” where one character tells another (who happens to be gay), “I feel a hate crime coming on” after they have an amusing back and forth. While writer/director Kevin Smith would likely hate my use of that line and everything about my politics, I don’t really give a damn because it’s funny and it fits how I feel when I watch leftist journalists operate in a post-Trump world (and I’m still a fan of Smith’s work anyway).

Think what you will of Donald Trump – personally, I could use a break from hearing about and from him – no one did more to expose the hypocrisy of the left than he did, and he didn’t actually do anything to cause it except to exist. Hillary Clinton was supposed to win in 2016, breaking the “glass ceiling” and ushering in an era of GOP destruction. Instead, she lost to this “monster,” setting off Democrats, both with and without press passes, into a rage-spiral that not only hasn’t stopped, but has only sped up. That included “conservatives” who seem to resent political victories they claimed they always wanted simply because they were done on his watch.

Donald Trump didn’t make them insane, his existence simply sped up the process – pulling back the curtain, or actually pulling the curtain and the rod off the wall completely. I truly despise them.

The reason for the title is watching these people “cover” the revelations of Twitter’s internal deliberations and actions on the Hunter Biden story before the 2020 election is something to behold that should make everyone sick, I know it does me. I won’t go so far as to say it would have changed the outcome of the election, but to pretend it couldn’t have is asinine. And the people pretending otherwise deserve a swift smack across the face with the cold, dead fish of reality, if only metaphorically.

But viewers and readers of the leftist media wouldn’t have any idea of the story at all. CBS News didn’t bother covering it at all. The Washington Post and New York Times burned their calories downplaying collusion between government and soon to be government officials and the silencing of a media outlet’s major story because they’re on the other team.

The Times downplayed the whole affair, writing, “Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi framed the exchanges as evidence of rank censorship and pernicious influence by liberals. Many others — even some ardent Twitter critics — were less impressed, saying the exchanges merely showed a group of executives earnestly debating how to deal with an unconfirmed news report that was based on information from a stolen laptop.” (Emphasis added)

This is telling that it’s a rehash of an old line of attack on the story – that it’s “hacked” info from a “stolen laptop.” When not pretending it was the most elaborate Russian spy game ever, leftists insisted the material was “stolen” and, therefore, shouldn’t be reported on because “standards of professionalism” or something. This is an industry that dines out on leaked information, classified/personal/whatever. If it’s useful to the left’s narrative they are all over it like a rash.

Speaking of rashes, the Hunter Biden story was of no interest, so it was dismissed as “stolen,” even though the chain of custody of the laptop was never in doubt or the legality of the repair shop’s ownership after it was abandoned was irrefutable. Hunter was a junkie/drunk/prostitute frequenter, the only people who didn’t know this were people who didn’t want to know it. That a junkie wouldn’t be mindful of where their stuff is or concerned with forfeiting ownership of that property, especially when they have plenty of money and don’t need that property to sell to buy more drugs, surprises no one. Still, leftists pretended the idea that it was abandoned was insane.

The evidence of the Biden family’s involvement and benefitting from Hunter’s businesses was unhelpful and needed to be buried. When CBS News finally got around to “verifying” the laptop was real, their 5-minute story explaining how they contacted computer experts who (pretty easily) verified it’s real involved no mentions of any of the content on the laptop and no follow up reporting on it either. It’s gross.

Worse was the way MSNBC treated it. Watch this segment on the Symone Sanders show (I don’t know what it’s called, nor do I care) with Michael Steele, MSNBC’s token “Republican” (challenge: find one issue on which Steele is still conservative on. I’ll wait.) It is clear from watching it that neither host nor guest know anything about the story as neither remotely address details. What they do have is talking points, likely fed to them by producers via the DNC. I’m embarrassed for them.

If NBC News had standards everyone involved in this segment would be fired. It is in no way designed to inform an audience, it is designed to discourage the audience from consuming anything related to the story – meant to prevent curiosity or investigation and perpetuate ignorance. You can disagree with the conclusions of what the story means, but to be as stupid and lazy as Steele is (to say nothing of his wholesale sell-out of everything he once professed to believe) would embarrass a kindergartener. But Mike is just happy to hammer his easy money checks. Gross.

There isn’t a single left-wing outlet that did any honest reporting on the story. Armies of flying monkeys – Ben Collins, Brandy Zadrozny, etc. – were dispatched to make sure their audiences stayed, unquestioningly, on the Democrat thought plantation. Like the entirely to of the Biden family business scandals (how did a family with no skills or abilities make so many millions in industries they had no knowledge of, but political influence over?), no efforts were spent trying to refute the facts, only to discourage anyone from learning about them. It’s not “I read these documents so you don’t have to,” it’s “You don’t need to read these documents at all, nor do you need to investigate anything related to this story. Trust me, there’s nothing there.” If journalism had an opposite, that would be it.

If “journalism” were a protected class (not just a favored one by the left), the thoughts I have toward the people earning large sums of money allegedly practicing it would be a hate crime, were they acted on. As it stands, they aren’t practicing journalism, they engage in protection. They are engaged in actively keeping their audiences ignorant out of fear they might, with access to unapproved information, draw conclusions inconvenient to the power establishment. They’ve gone from “We speak truth to power” to “We protect the powerful from the truth.” It’s a hell of thing to watch and absolutely justifies my contempt for all of them.

Sponsored by the New York Federal Reserve, participants in this plan include banking giants like Wells Fargo, Citigroup, HSBC, and Mastercard, just to name a few.


cut and paste youtube links

BANKSTERS: GLOBAL PARASITES

the criminal bank HSBC - CHINESE BANKSTERS TO THE WORLD'S BIGGEST CRIMINALS INCLUDING THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS.

no one has served the banksters more than hillary and billary clinton and the bankster regime of obama, eric holder and 'credit card' joe biden - all parasite gamer lawyers!

Banksters: The Untouchable Bank (Global Finance Scandal Documentary) | Real Stories


Project Cedar: Inside the Plot to Destroy the U.S. Dollar

jb-b-d-spon-640x480
2:36

The following content is sponsored by Paradigm Press.

On November 15, 2022, several of the world’s biggest banks agreed to a shocking new plan — one that could lead to a complete overthrow of the U.S. dollar as we know it.

Sponsored by the New York Federal Reserve, participants in this plan include banking giants like Wells Fargo, Citigroup, HSBC, and Mastercard, just to name a few.

The pilot program — dubbed “Project Cedar” — would convert regular U.S. dollars into a brand-new type of dollar, which could have massive implications for all American citizens.

But “Project Cedar” is just the second step in a complete overhaul of the U.S. banking system.

The first step was announced on March 9, 2022, when President Biden signed Executive Order 14067.

This Executive Order gave legal provisions for this new U.S. dollar and could give the U.S. government unprecedented control over your money and freedom.

In fact, it could even pave the way for things like:

  • Legal government surveillance of all U.S. citizens
  • Total control over your bank accounts and purchases
  • And the ability to silence all dissenting voices for good

“I’ve been warning about this for months,” says renowned macroeconomist Jim Rickards.

“Now with the launch of ‘Project Cedar’, the wheels are fully in motion — and I don’t believe anything can stop it.”

Mr. Rickards is one of the world’s foremost financial experts and has been a respected advisor to the CIA, the Pentagon, and multiple U.S. presidents.

The way he sees it, this is the start of a sinister new plot against everyday Americans.

“We’re in for a major upheaval of the U.S. dollar,” he says.

“In fact, I predict the 3rd Great Dollar Earthquake has already started…

“The first was Roosevelt confiscating private gold in 1934…

“The second was Nixon abandoning the gold standard in 1971…

“Now,” he says, “This plan could pave the way for ‘retiring’ the U.S. dollar — and replacing it with a disturbing new alternative.”

In his critical new presentation, he reveals the shocking truth about this new threat to the U.S. dollar…

And why every single American citizen needs to know about it.

Click here to watch this urgent new presentation from Jim Rickards now.

US Banks Warn of Recession as Inflation Takes Toll on Consumers, Stocks Plummet

 • 

SHARE

By Saeed Azhar and Noor Zainab Hussain

NEW YORK (Reuters)—The biggest U.S. banks are bracing for a worsening economy next year as inflation threatens consumer demand, according to executives Tuesday.

JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon told CNBC that consumers and companies are in good shape, but noted that may not last much longer as the economy slows down and inflation erodes consumer spending power.

"Those things might very well derail the economy and cause this mild to hard recession that people are worried about," he said.

Consumers have $1.5 trillion in excess savings from pandemic stimulus programs, but it may run out some time in mid-2023, he told CNBC. Dimon also said the Federal Reserve may pause for three to six months after raising benchmark interest rates to 5%, but that may "not be sufficient" to curb high inflation.

The U.S. central bank last month raised rates by 75 basis points during its fourth consecutive meeting to 3.75%-4%, but it also signaled hopes to shift to smaller hikes as soon at its next meeting.

Major banks' shares fell sharply on the day after a lineup of top bankers outlined the risks for the economy. Bank of America slid more than 4%; Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley each fell more than 2% and Citigroup Inc slid more than 1%.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told investors at a Goldman Sachs financial conference that the bank's research shows "negative growth" in the first part of 2023, but the contraction will be "mild."

The lender's investment-banking fees will probably decline 55% to 60% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, while trading revenue will likely rise 10% to 15%, Moynihan said.

"Economic growth is slowing," Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said at the same conference. "When I talk to our clients, they sound extremely cautious."

In banking, the job market remains "surprisingly tight" and competition for talent is "as tough as ever," he said.

However, some banks are cutting staff. Morgan Stanley has reduced about 2% of its workforce, a source familiar with the company's plans said on Tuesday. The job cuts, first reported by CNBC, affect about 1,600 positions and follow workforce reductions at Goldman and Citigroup.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, the world's largest asset manager BlackRock Inc has frozen hiring except for critical roles, Chief Financial Officer Gary Shedlin said.

"We're trying to be a little more prudent," he said.

(Reporting by Lananh Nguyen and Saeed Azhar in New York and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Megan Davies and Carolina Mandl; Editing by Richard Chang and Stephen Coates)

No comments: