Bill USA
Bill USA's JournalThe Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia - Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620Someday, it will go down in history as the first trial of the modern American mafia. Of course, you won't hear the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that. If you heard about it at all, you're probably either in the municipal bond business or married to an antitrust lawyer. Even then, all you probably heard was that a threesome of bit players on Wall Street got convicted of obscure antitrust violations in one of the most inscrutable, jargon-packed legal snoozefests since the government's massive case against Microsoft in the Nineties – not exactly the thrilling courtroom drama offered by the famed trials of old-school mobsters like Al Capone or Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo.
But this just-completed trial in downtown New York against three faceless financial executives really was historic. Over 10 years in the making, the case allowed federal prosecutors to make public for the first time the astonishing inner workings of the reigning American crime syndicate, which now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street.
The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime.
In fact, stripped of all the camouflaging financial verbiage, the crimes the defendants and their co-conspirators committed were virtually indistinguishable from the kind of thuggery practiced for decades by the Mafia, which has long made manipulation of public bids for things like garbage collection and construction contracts a cornerstone of its business. What's more, in the manner of old mob trials, Wall Street's secret machinations were revealed during the Carollo trial through crackling wiretap recordings and the lurid testimony of cooperating witnesses, who came into court with bowed heads, pointing fingers at their accomplices. The new-age gangsters even invented an elaborate code to hide their crimes. Like Elizabethan highway robbers who spoke in thieves' cant, or Italian mobsters who talked about "getting a button man to clip the capo," on tape after tape these Wall Street crooks coughed up phrases like "pull a nickel out" or "get to the right level" or "you're hanging out there" – all code words used to manipulate the interest rates on municipal bonds. The only thing that made this trial different from a typical mob trial was the scale of the crime.
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Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620#ixzz2Wt3YIyL9
Evidence revealed in law-suit shows cooperation of S&P & Moodys in Wall Street shakedown of America
It's always been recognized that S&P and Moodys played an essential part in the Trickle - Down - Deregulation disaster of '08 by issuing glowing credit ratings for mortgages they knew were junk. Now, documents revealed in a civil suit establish documentary evidence of S&P and Moodys knowing full well that the ratings they were issuing were fraudulent.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-crisis-154447818.html
[font size="3"]Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, documents that for the most part have never been seen by the general public, we now know that the nation's two top ratings companies, Moody's and S&P, have for many years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating in exchange for cash.
In incriminating e-mail after incriminating e-mail, executives and analysts from these companies are caught admitting their entire business model is crooked. [/font]
"Lord help our fucking scam?.?.?.?this has to be the stupidest place I have worked at," writes one Standard & Poor's executive. "As you know, I had difficulties explaining 'HOW' we got to those numbers since there is no science behind it," confesses a high-ranking S&P analyst. "If we are just going to make it up in order to rate deals, then quants [quantitative analysts] are of precious little value," complains another senior S&P man. "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of card[s] falters," ruminates one more.
Ratings agencies are the glue that ostensibly holds the entire financial industry together. These gigantic companies – also known as Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations, or NRSROs – have teams of examiners who analyze companies, cities, towns, countries, mortgage borrowers, anybody or anything that takes on debt or creates an investment vehicle.
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The World’s Biggest Coal Company Is Turning To Solar Energy To Lower Its Utility Bill
No doubt somebody beat me to this, but this bears repeating for those (like me) who don't get on here every day and may have missed it .....
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/06/2104601/the-worlds-biggest-coal-company-is-turning-to-solar-energy-to-lower-its-utility-bill/
The largest coal company in the world, Coal India, is aiming to cut its own utility bills by installing solar photovoltaic panels at its facilities across the country. The coal giant is seeking proposals from solar energy companies to build a modular 2 megawatt solar plant on 9 acres of its own land. This plant could be scaled to export power to the grid.
Not only is Coal India pursuing commercial solar power plants, it’s also “mulling” the installation of rooftop solar panels at the Ranchi Central Mine Planning and Design Institute, where it does mining research. The panels would go on “staff colonies” and in mining areas, with the goal of reducing the company’s energy bills.
Coal India explained the reason for these moves in its bid document:
“India has an abundance of sunshine and the trend of depletion of fossil fuels is compelling energy planners to examine the feasibility of using renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, and so on.”
This is a remarkable statement from the largest coal company in the world. Coal India produces 90 percent of India’s coal, and not only is it turning to solar as an efficient business practice, it understands India cannot power itself by coal. In fact, a coal-based electricity system is not reliable: solar energy is. And solar may be the only hope for much of rural India to become electrified after decades of failed grid expansion plans. With so much potential solar capacity across the country (see below for how much potential solar energy hits India every year), there is little wonder that even fossil fuel companies are looking to get in on the game.
A Pike Research report last year predicted that the global mining industry would invest $20 billion in renewable energy by 2020. Coal India may be among the first coal companies to commit to solar in the way it seems to be, though in 2012 a British coal mining museum in south Wales recently outfitted two rooftops with 400 solar panels. Neyvili Corp produces coal in India and is building a 10 megawatt solar power plant that could be upgraded to 25 megawatts, along with a 50 megawatt wind farm. Oil India has also started investments in wind and solar.
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Give Students Same Rate as Big Banks - Elizabeth Warren
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/06/20/student-loan-rates-elizabeth-warren-editorials-debates/2443589/Every time the government lends at a low rate to a borrower, it invests in that borrower. Right now, the government lends money every day to big banks at less than 1% interest. If Congress does not act before July 1, interest rates on new subsidized Stafford loans will double — and the government will be charging our students nine times as much as they charge big banks.
OUR VIEW: Let markets set the rates
Last month, I introduced the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act. The idea is simple: For one year, we should give students that same low 0.75% interest rate the big banks get.
Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, have introduced legislation to keep interest rates at their current 3.4% level for two years. Neither is a long-term fix. Instead, both are designed to give us some breathing room to keep rates from doubling while we tackle the problem of rising college costs and a trillion dollars in student loan debt outstanding.
[font color="red"]The student loan program has turned our young people into profit centers for the government.[/font] The Congressional Budget Office says we will make $51 billion in profit from this year's loans. Keep in mind — those are net profits, profits after accounting for the cost of borrowing the money and the cost of writing off bad debts.
Republicans have proposed plans that would generate even more profits for the government. According to the CBO, their plan would combine a floating interest rate and hefty new fees to produce an additional $16 billion in profits. Students cannot — and should not — pay more.
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Bank of Bob: 1 man's journey into microlending- most important article you'll read in your life?
the world is being massively held back (in terms of economic development and equity) by traditional modes of supplying capital to those with objectives but lacking the means. Traditional lenders have completely ignored those who don't already have wealth. But these are the people who can produce the greatest gains to society - if given the chance.
Bank of Bob: One man's venture into microlendinghttp://www.news-leader.com/usatoday/article/2435759
Q: You have a lot of good things to say about Kiva.org in your book. Are there any caveats you'd add?
A: I don't have a lot of caveats. The thing works: You do get paid back more than 99% of the time. If you go to a major Wall Street bank, rates are virtually nothing. If you deposit $25, a year later you have the same $25, plus a small pile of pennies. Through Kiva, you'd have the same $25, minus a small pile of pennies. And for that you could be helping someone in West Africa buy a cow or repair a taxi. I'd rather have that $25 helping a Bangladeshi fisherman and know what he's doing with it, than tossing it into a big Wall Street bank.
Q: What about the interest borrowers pay? Kiva.org funnels money to lenders, who get interest, but people who contribute to Kiva.org get no interest, right? Isn't there some concern that the local lenders charge a high interest rate?
A: At Kiva, you're lending money at no interest, and you're getting a negative 1% rate. A lot of Americans, when they look at the rates borrowers are paying in the field, those rates seem comparatively high. But in India, education loans are 9%, but the inflation rate is 7.5%. So you have to put the rates into local context. I never met a client in the field who complained about the interest rates.
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[font size="+1"]Kiva - Change a Life for $25: http://www.kiva.org/start[/font]
[font size="+1"]Change a life for $25[/font]
Every day, Kiva connects thousands of people to borrowers and partner institutions around the world, working together to create opportunity and alleviate poverty. It only takes $25 to get started.
Kiva lenders combat poverty daily by making small loans to borrowers around the world. We believe in fair access to affordable capital for people to improve their own lives.
Often only a relatively small amount of money stands in the way of Kiva borrowers and their dreams. Whether it’s a Kenyan farmer who needs $500 in order to double her grain production, or a young Bolivian woman who lacks the $1,500 tuition for nursing school, Kiva lenders provide a hand up to these and countless other borrowers.
Join us and make a loan today.
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Interested in changing the World? Try person to person aid. If enough of us do this, we just might change the World (in time).
Kiva home page
In Major Blow To Consumers, Supreme Court Protects Mega-Corporations From Liability
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/06/20/2189061/even-small-businesses-cant-shake-mega-corporations-chokehold-on-access-to-the-courts/In case it wasn’t clear already, the U.S. Supreme Court hammered home Thursday morning that it will protect the rights of corporations to force arbitration over the individuals’ access to the court system at any expense.
In a 5-3 ruling with Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused, Justice Antonin Scalia eviscerated almost any opportunity small merchants have to challenge alleged monopolistic practices by American Express in their credit card agreements.
Sound familiar? Earlier this term, the court turned back on procedural grounds a lawsuit alleging monopolistic practices by Comcast. A week after that, they turned back the claims of workers to challenge employer practices as a class. And in 2011, they issued one of the worst blows to consumer rights in years when they held that consumers challenging $30 fees could not sue together as a class. In each of these cases, the court’s procedural rulings mean the parties may never get to argue about whether these corporations actually violated the law. And as a consequence, these corporations may never be held accountable.
With Thursday’s ruling, the court added small businesses to the list of aggrieved parties whose access to the courthouse has been foreclosed by boilerplate contracts that prohibit parties from filing their challenge as a class, or from otherwise alleviating the immense cost of filing their claims individually. This time, the litigants were small businesses taking on American Express, and their lawyer was none other than conservative powerhouse Paul Clement. Clement has argued many of the major conservative court wins of the past few years, and his argument on the side of the plaintiffs was probably the last best shot at curbing the Roberts Court’s total perversion of the Federal Arbitration Act.
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GOP passes 'Obediant, Barefoot and Pregnant' Bill ('wimmen should be') in House
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/18/abortion-bill-house-vote/2435353/It stands no chance of becoming law under the Obama administration. The White House issued a veto threat Monday, calling the bill an "assault on a woman's right to choose." The Democratic Senate also has not scheduled a vote on the legislation.
However, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, justified the vote as a response to the recent murder conviction of Philadelphia physician Kermit Gosnell for abortion procedures conducted in his medical clinic. "Listen, after this Kermit Gosnell trial and some of the horrific acts that were going on, the vast majority of the American people believe in the substance of this bill, and so do I," Boehner said.
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The legislation stirred a heated debate in the House. The majority of Democrats opposed the legislation and argued that House Republicans— 88% of whom are white males —were out of touch with women.
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[font size="3"] The standard Republican twisted view of reality is evident in Boehner's screwball 'rationale' for the bill. If this bill became law it would INCREASE the number of Gosnells victimizing desperate women. [/font]
GOP passes 'Obediant, Barefoot and Pregnant' Bill ( wimmen should be) in House
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/18/abortion-bill-house-vote/2435353/It stands no chance of becoming law under the Obama administration. The White House issued a veto threat Monday, calling the bill an "assault on a woman's right to choose." The Democratic Senate also has not scheduled a vote on the legislation.
However, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, justified the vote as a response to the recent murder conviction of Philadelphia physician Kermit Gosnell for abortion procedures conducted in his medical clinic. "Listen, after this Kermit Gosnell trial and some of the horrific acts that were going on, the vast majority of the American people believe in the substance of this bill, and so do I," Boehner said.
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The legislation stirred a heated debate in the House. The majority of Democrats opposed the legislation and argued that House Republicans— 88% of whom are white males —were out of touch with women.
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[font size="3"] The standard Republican twisted view of reality is evident in Boehner's screwball 'rationale' for the bill. If this bill became law it would INCREASE the number of Gosnells victimizing desperate women. [/font]
In quest for greater efficiency in ICE's ethanol (& methanol) could provide a much needed boost
http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/alcoholengines.aspxIf a 650 horsepower IndyCar Series race car can run on 100 percent ethanol, without compromising performance or safety, so can a personal automobile or truck. Forget any negative criticisms you may have heard about corn ethanol and listen to the truth—Alcohol is a better fuel than gasoline.
100% alcohol is a superior fuel for spark ignition internal combustion engines; but only if the engine is optimized to run on alcohol. The flex-fuel E-85 cars and trucks available today have gasoline engines that are not optimized to use alcohol.
[font color="blue"]“The Flex-Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) produced today, use fairly typical gasoline engines, which, because they must retain dual-fuel capability, are not able to take full advantage of the favorable combustion characteristics of alcohols.
“Engines optimized for alcohol fuel use, on the other hand, may yield efficiencies that exceed that of state-of-the-art diesel engines—or, about one third higher than that of FFV engines. In earlier engine research at EPA with neat [100%] methanol and ethanol, for example, over 40% brake thermal efficiency was achieved over a relatively broad range of loads and speeds, with peak levels reaching over 42%. Similar work has also been performed with E85, yielding up to 20% fuel economy improvement over baseline gasoline engines.”[/font]
Economical, High-Efficiency Engine Technologies for Alcohol Fuels size: 134 Kb - 10 pages
— By Matthew Brusstar, U.S. EPA National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory, and Marco Bakenhus, FEV Engine Technology, Inc.
Ethanol Engine efficiency exceeds gasoline engines, giving greater miles per gallon (MPG) with ethanol fuel:
High Efficiency and Low Emissions from a Port-Injected Engine with Alcohol Fuels
— By Matthew Brusstar, Mark Stuhldreher, David Swain and William Pidgeon, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency size: 70 Kb - 7 pages
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Immigration Bill Would Slash Deficit, Congressional Budget Office Finds
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/us/politics/boehner-says-he-wont-push-through-an-immigration-bill.html?_r=0WASHINGTON — Congressional budget analysts said Tuesday that legislation to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws would cut close to $1 trillion from the federal deficit over the next two decades and lead to more than 10 million new legal residents in the country.
A long-awaited analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that the benefits of an increase in legal residents from immigration legislation currently being debated in the Senate — which includes a pathway to citizenship — would outweigh the costs.
The report estimates that in the first decade after the immigration bill is carried out, the net effect of adding millions of additional taxpayers would decrease the federal budget deficit by $197 billion, even with higher spending on border security and government benefits. Over the next decade, the report found, the deficit reduction would be even greater — an estimated $700 billion, from 2024 to 2033.
The report was quickly seized on by backers of the bill as a boost to its prospects. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and one of the bill’s authors, said the report “debunks the idea that immigration reform is anything other than a boon to our economy.”
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