Know your BFEE: It wasn’t Obama who Looted the Treasury and Banks. It was Bush and his Cronies.

[Octafish]

I don’t understand why everybody blames President Obama. He didn’t even look the other way while Wall Street banksters offshored every dollar that wasn’t behind a glass frame or under a grandma’s mattress. He didn't sign the budgets that funded two illegal and immoral wars. He didn't give tax breaks to the nation's richest individuals and corporations, often the same who profit from these same wars.

No, it was George Walker Bush and his cronies who are to blame. And we were warned. Guess ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutwork missed the column.

The Reverse Robin Hood

by Bob Herbert
Published on Monday, June 2, 2003 by the New York Times

EXCERPT...

While the tax bill will lavish hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits on people higher up the income scale, it leaves this group of working families very ignominiously behind.

And readers of yesterday's Times learned that another group of some eight million mostly low-income taxpayers — primarily single people without children — will also be left behind, getting no benefit at all from the president's tax cuts. Forget about trickle-down. The goal of this administration is to haul it up.

SNIP...

But to really get a sense of the scandalous nature of this G.O.P. tax-cut scam, consider that the House and Senate negotiators also got rid of a number of measures in the Senate bill that would have saved billions of dollars by closing abusive corporate tax structures. The Center on Budget noted the following:

"As the Washington Post has reported, the Senate bill `included provisions to crack down on abusive corporate tax shelters, combat some accounting scams such as those pursued by Enron Corp., prevent U.S. companies from moving their headquarters to post office boxes in offshore tax havens such as Bermuda and limit grossly inflated deferred compensation plans for corporate executives.' "

The savings from those provisions would have been about $25 billion, much more than enough to cover the cost of Senator Lincoln's $3.5 billion attempt to give a bit of a break to several million working families.

SOURCE:

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0602-06.htm

No, no matter what Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch tell you: It was George W. Bush and his cronies who stole the Middle Class's Wealth. They've been working on it for decades. They just got real good at it recently.

Buffett Is Unusually Silent on Rating Agencies

By DAVID SEGAL
March 18, 2009
The New York Times

In his annual Berkshire Hathaway letter, Warren E. Buffett recently urged investors to pose tough questions at the shareholders meeting in May. Here is one on the mind of some Buffett watchers: When are you going to fix Moody’s?

Mr. Buffett, known as the Oracle of Omaha, owns a stake of roughly 20 percent in the Moody’s Corporation, parent of one of the three rating agencies that grade debt issued by corporations and banks looking to raise money. In recent months, Moody’s Investors Service and its rivals, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, have been prominent in virtually every account of the What Went Wrong horror story that is the financial crisis.

The agencies put their seals of approval on countless subprime mortgage-related securities now commonly described as toxic. The problem, critics contend, is that the agencies were paid by the corporations whose debt they were rating, earning billions in fees and giving the agencies a financial incentive to slap high marks on securities that did not deserve them.

At least 10 of the big companies that failed or were bailed out in the last year had investment-grade ratings when they went belly up — like deathly ill patients bearing clean bills of health.

Moody’s rated Lehman Brothers’ debt A2, putting it squarely in the investment-grade range, days before the company filed for bankruptcy. And Moody’s gave the senior unsecured debt of the American International Group, the insurance behemoth, an Aa3 rating — which is even stronger than A2 — the week before the government had to step in and take over the company in September as part of what has become a $170 billion bailout.

Mr. Buffett, 78, one of the world’s richest men, is known for piquant and unsparing criticism of his own performance, as well as the institutional flaws of Wall Street.

But on the subject of the conflict of interest built into the rating agencies’ business model, Mr. Buffett has been uncharacteristically silent — even though that conflict is especially glaring in his case because one of the companies that Moody’s rates is Berkshire. (Its Aaa rating, for the record, is the same as the one from Standard & Poor’s. Fitch downgraded Berkshire for the first time last week.)

SNIP...

Short-selling Berkshire Hathaway has recently become a popular strategy, according to a report in Bloomberg News. But betting against Mr. Buffett has never been a profitable strategy in the long term, and the company’s class A shares, which now trade at about $82,000, way off the 52-week high of $147,000, look tempting to many analysts.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/business/18buffett.html?hp

That's why I'd like to remind everybody who's heard even a minute of Corporate McPravda's spin on Bernie Madoff or gotten briefed on the latest mass murder or lucky lotto winner.



One thing I certainly don't want is these same turds who caused the problems to be left in charge of fixing them. Not only is that illogical, it's potentially (LOL) a matter of obstruction of justice.

We the People need to focus on and remember what these traitors and gangsters have done to America. We must demand Justice appoint those who have nothing to do with Wall Street Welfare to investigate them and solve the problems they started.

The IMF Rules the World

Will the Debtors Fight Back?

By MICHAEL HUDSON
CounterPunch
April 6, 2009

EXCERPT...

In today’s world, the easiest way to obtain wealth by old-fashioned “primitive accumulation” is by financial manipulation. This is the essence of the Washington Consensus that the G-20 support, using the IMF in its usual role as enforcer. The G-20’s announcement continues the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve bank bailout over the past half-year. In a nutshell, the solution to a debt crisis is to be yet more debt. If debtors can’t pay out of what they are able to earn, lend them enough to keep current on their carrying charges. Collateralize this with their property, their public domain, their political autonomy – their democracy itself. The aim is to keep the debt overhead in place. This can be done only by keeping the volume of debts growing exponentially as they accrue interest, which is added onto the loan. This is the “magic of compound interest.” It is what turns entire economies into Ponzi schemes (or Madoff schemes as they are now called).

This is “equilibrium”, neoliberal style. In addition to paying an exorbitant basic interest rate, homeowners must pay a special 18 per cent indexation charge on their debts to reflect the inflation rate (the consumer price index) so that creditors will not lose the purchasing power over consumer goods. Labor’s wages are not indexed, so defaults are spreading and the country is being torn apart with bankruptcy, causing the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. The IMF approves, announcing that it can find no reason why homeowners cannot bear this burden!

Meanwhile, democracy is being torn apart by a financial oligarchy, whose interests have become increasingly cosmopolitan, looking at the economy as prey to be looted. A new term is emerging: “codfish republic” (known further south as banana republics). Many of Iceland’s billionaires these days are choosing to join their Russian counterparts living in London – and the Russian gangsters are reciprocating by visiting Iceland even in the dead of winter, ostensibly merely to enjoy its warm volcanic Blue Lagoon, or so the press is told.

The alternative is for debtor countries to suffer the same kind of economic sanctions as Iran, Cuba and pre-invasion Iraq. Perhaps soon there will be enough such economies to establish a common trading area among themselves, possibly along with Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil. But as far as the G-20 is concerned, aid to Iceland and “doing the right thing” is simply a bargaining chip in the international diplomatic game. Russia offered $4 billion aid to Iceland, but retracted it – presumably when Britain gave it a plum as a tradeoff.

SNIP...

The question is whether Iceland will let bankruptcy tear apart its economy slowly, transferring property from debtors to creditors, from Icelandic citizens to foreigners, and from the public domain and national taxing power to the international financial class. Or, will Iceland see where the inherent mathematics of debt are leading, and draw the line? At what point will it say “We won’t pay. These debts are immoral, uneconomic and anti-democratic.” Do they want to continue the fight by Enlightenment and Progressive Era social democracy, or the alternative – a lapse back into neofeudal debt peonage?

This is the choice must be made. And it is largely a question of timing. That’s what the financial sector plays for – time enough to transfer as much property as it can into the hands of the banks and other investors. That’s what the IMF advises debtor countries to do – except of course for the United States as largest debtor of all. This is the underlying lawless character of today’s post-bubble debts.

SOURCE...

http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson04062009.html

Now, I’ve got my own issues with Obama, but they can wait until a more convenient time for us. Right now, I’m interested in saving my kids’ future from the BFEE. I believe he is, too. And that's why we all need to do whatever we can to help him fix these problems he inherited from Bush.

[libodem]

1. I can't stand the unfairness of it all

I can not stand how Faux can out and out lie, and all the radio talkers and blame Obama. They said nothing about Bush for 8 long years and when Obama inherits the problem suddenly it's all his fault. I can't take it.

[Octafish]

5. Propaganda is an art form.

Allen Dulles called the Press something to be played, a Mighty Wurlitzer.

Journalism and the CIA: The Mighty Wurlitzer

by Daniel Brandt

EXCERPT...

The House investigation of the CIA, under Otis Pike, had more problems than the Senate investigation. The full House voted to suppress its committee's final report under pressure from the executive branch, at which point Daniel Schorr of CBS leaked a copy to the Village Voice. This report contained just twelve paragraphs on the topic of the CIA and the media, including the tidbit about the CIA's "frequent manipulation of Reuters wire service dispatches."<6> Another paragraph gave some idea of the scope of the CIA's efforts in this area:

Some 29 percent of Forty Committee-approved covert actions were for media and propaganda projects. This number is probably not representative. Staff has determined the existence of a large number of CIA internally-approved operations of this type, apparently deemed not politically sensitive. It is believed that if the correct number of all media and propaganda projects could be determined, it would exceed Election Support as the largest single category of covert action projects undertaken by the CIA.<7>

One enterprising researcher took this 29 percent figure, and extrapolating from figures on CIA expenditures for covert operations, found that the cost of propaganda in 1978 was around $265 million and involved 2,000 personnel. Comparing this to figures for other news agencies, he concluded that the CIA "uses far more resources in its propaganda operations than any single news agency.... In fact, the CIA propaganda budget is as large as the combined budgets of Reuters, United Press International and the Associated Press."<8>

CBS took Daniel Schorr off the air after he leaked the Pike committee report. This was most likely a convenient opportunity for William Paley, chairman of CBS, who didn't approve of Schorr's interest in the network's own CIA connection. Former CBS News president Sig Mickelson, who by 1976 was president of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, said that in October 1954, Paley called him into his office for a friendly discussion with two CIA officials. Schorr mentioned this on Walter Cronkite's show, and in an op-ed piece for the New York Times (Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the late publisher of the Times, had been cozy with the CIA also). "There are executives and retired executives," Schorr wrote, "who could help dispel the cloud hanging over the press by coming forward to tell the arrangements they made with the CIA."<9>

CONTINUED...

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/CIAPRESS.HTM

I know exactly how you feel, libodem. It's no wonder so few Americans know the spymasters also happen to run the nation's financial system.

[Skittles]

9. what kills me is it's not even well done propaganda

it's ridiculous but there are so many morons who fall for it

[AzDar]

2. K & R

:kick:

[Octafish]

14. This Crisis Is Way Bigger Than Dead Banks and Wall Street Bailouts

Thank you, AzDar! Here's a bit more on what's going on from an expert on the subject:

This Crisis Is Way Bigger Than Dead Banks and Wall Street Bailouts

By James Galbraith, Washington Monthly
Posted on March 23, 2009, Printed on March 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/132849/

Barack Obama's presidency began in hope and goodwill, but its test will be its success or failure on the economics. Did the president and his team correctly diagnose the problem? Did they act with sufficient imagination and force? And did they prevail against the political obstacles -- and not only that, but also against the procedures and the habits of thought to which official Washington is addicted?

The president has an economic program. But there is, so far, no clear statement of the thinking behind that program, and there may not be one, until the first report of the new Council of Economic Advisers appears next year. We therefore resort to what we know about the economists: the chair of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers; the CEA chair, Christina Romer; the budget director, Peter Orszag; and their titular head, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. This is plainly a capable, close-knit group, acting with energy and commitment. Deficiencies of their program cannot, therefore, be blamed on incompetence. Rather, if deficiencies exist, they probably result from their shared background and creed -- in short, from the limitations of their ideas.

SNIP...

The most likely scenario, should the Geithner plan go through, is a combination of looting, fraud, and a renewed speculation in volatile commodity markets such as oil. Ultimately the losses fall on the public anyway, since deposits are largely insured. There is no chance that the banks will simply resume normal long-term lending. To whom would they lend? For what? Against what collateral? And if banks are recapitalized without changing their management, why should we expect them to change the behavior that caused the insolvency in the first place?

The oddest thing about the Geithner program is its failure to act as though the financial crisis is a true crisis -- an integrated, long-term economic threat -- rather than merely a couple of related but temporary problems, one in banking and the other in jobs. In banking, the dominant metaphor is of plumbing: there is a blockage to be cleared. Take a plunger to the toxic assets, it is said, and credit conditions will return to normal. This, then, will make the recession essentially normal, validating the stimulus package. Solve these two problems, and the crisis will end. That's the thinking.

SNIP...

In short, if we are in a true collapse of finance, our models will not serve. It is then appropriate to reach back, past the postwar years, to the experience of the Great Depression. And this can only be done by qualitative and historical analysis. Our modern numerical models just don't capture the key feature of that crisis -- which is, precisely, the collapse of the financial system. If the banking system is crippled, then to be effective the public sector must do much, much more. How much more? By how much can spending be raised in a real depression? And does this remedy work? Recent months have seen much debate over the economic effects of the New Deal, and much repetition of the commonplace that the effort was too small to end the Great Depression, something achieved, it is said, only by World War II. A new paper by the economist Marshall Auerback has usefully corrected this record. Auerback plainly illustrates by how much Roosevelt's ambition exceeded anything yet seen in this crisis:

government hired about 60 per cent of the unemployed in public works and conservation projects that planted a billion trees, saved the whooping crane, modernized rural America, and built such diverse projects as the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh, the Montana state capitol, much of the Chicago lakefront, New York's Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge complex, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Yorktown. It also built or renovated 2,500 hospitals, 45,000 schools, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 7,800 bridges, 700,000 miles of roads, and a thousand airfields. And it employed 50,000 teachers, rebuilt the country's entire rural school system, and hired 3,000 writers, musicians, sculptors and painters, including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.

In other words, Roosevelt employed Americans on a vast scale, bringing the unemployment rates down to levels that were tolerable, even before the war -- from 25 percent in 1933 to below 10 percent in 1936, if you count those employed by the government as employed, which they surely were. In 1937, Roosevelt tried to balance the budget, the economy relapsed again, and in 1938 the New Deal was relaunched. This again brought unemployment down to about 10 percent, still before the war.

The New Deal rebuilt America physically, providing a foundation (the TVA's power plants, for example) from which the mobilization of World War II could be launched. But it also saved the country politically and morally, providing jobs, hope, and confidence that in the end democracy was worth preserving. There were many, in the 1930s, who did not think so.

What did not recover, under Roosevelt, was the private banking system. Borrowing and lending -- mortgages and home construction -- contributed far less to the growth of output in the 1930s and '40s than they had in the 1920s or would come to do after the war. If they had savings at all, people stayed in Treasuries, and despite huge deficits interest rates for federal debt remained near zero. The liquidity trap wasn't overcome until the war ended.

It was the war, and only the war, that restored (or, more accurately, created for the first time) the financial wealth of the American middle class. During the 1930s public spending was large, but the incomes earned were spent. And while that spending increased consumption, it did not jumpstart a cycle of investment and growth, because the idle factories left over from the 1920s were quite sufficient to meet the demand for new output. Only after 1940 did total demand outstrip the economy's capacity to produce civilian private goods -- in part because private incomes soared, in part because the government ordered the production of some products, like cars, to halt.

All that extra demand would normally have driven up prices. But the federal government prevented this with price controls. (Disclosure: this writer's father, John Kenneth Galbraith, ran the controls during the first year of the war.) And so, with nowhere else for their extra dollars to go, the public bought and held government bonds. These provided claims to postwar purchasing power. After the war, the existence of those claims could, and did, establish creditworthiness for millions, making possible the revival of private banking, and on the broadly based, middle-class foundation that so distinguished the 1950s from the 1920s. But the relaunching of private finance took twenty years, and the war besides.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/132849/this_crisis_is_way_bigger_than_dead_banks_and_wall_street_bailouts/

Gee. That's a shock! War rebuilt, not just the economy, but the banking system. Afterward in the go-go economy, industry built the middle class.

[MagickMuffin]

3. I just WISHED for once the Bushies were held ACCOUNTABLE

Somehow they always manage to skirt away Scot Free. Preston, Poppy, Neil, GW, and Jeb apparently printed up a lot of "Get Out of Jail Free" cards.

I surely was hoping that Obama would do something about it, since he campaigned on the theory that those who abused the law would suffer the consequences. "Because we are a Nation of Laws!"

Thanks for adding more info, even tho I've been fully aware of the BFEE for a long long time.

:hi: Octafish

[mod mom]

12. Just think, if the feds had acted on Prescott Bush's involvement in the coup against FDR

we might have been saved from years of BFEE murder, rape and pillaging. This should be the lesson learned. DON'T SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG!

1934: The Plot Against America

DEPARTMENTNo CommentBYScott HortonPUBLISHEDJuly 28, 2007
I’m back from the land of heather and thistles, not to mention wee drams and lukewarm ale, but on my way out a friend at the BBC alerted me to this, a not-to-miss program on the BBC this morning, accessible over the next several days by internet. It’s the story of the Plot Against America. I don’t mean the Philip Roth novel, nor even the Sinclair Lewis book, It Can’t Happen Here, but rather the historical events upon which these two works of fiction were based.

In November 1934, federal investigators uncovered an amazing plot involving some two dozen senior businessmen, a good many of them Wall Street financiers, to topple the government of the United States and install a fascist dictatorship. Roth’s novel is developed from several strands of this factual account; he assumed the plot is actually carried out, whereas in fact an alert FDR shut it down but stopped short of retaliatory measures against the plotters. A key element of the plot involved a retired prominent general who was to have raised a private army of 500,000 men from unemployed veterans and who blew the whistle when he learned more of what the plot entailed. The plot was heavily funded and well developed and had strong links with fascist forces abroad. A story in the New York Times and several other newspapers reported on it, and a special Congressional committee was created to conduct an investigation. The records of this committee were scrubbed and sealed away in the National Archives, where they have only recently been made available.

The Congressional committee kept the names of many of the participants under wraps and no criminal action was ever brought against them. But a few names have leaked out. And one is Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the incumbent president. Prescott Bush was of course deep into the business of the Hamburg-America Lines, and had tight relations throughout this period with the new Government that had come to power in Germany a year earlier under Chancellor Aldoph Hitler. It appears that Bush was to have formed a key liaison for the group with the new German government.

Prescott Bush, of course, went on to service as a U.S. Senator from Connecticut, and his son, George H.W. Bush emerged from World War II as a hero.

-snip

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000651



The Whitehouse Coup
Monday 23 July 2007



The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.




http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

[Octafish]

18. Justice Department audit says politics affected hirings

Hiya, MagickMuffin! You don't need a Get Out of Jail Free card when you own the jails.

As the official story shows, there are lot of holes to explore. The foxes and the chicken bones have got to be somewhere.

Justice Department audit says politics affected hirings

By Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 29, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Top aides to former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales employed a
political and ideological litmus test to weed out candidates for career and other positions at the Justice Department, an internal department report concluded Monday.

The audit by the department's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that former Gonzales aides Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson violated department policies and federal civil-service laws.

Both Goodling and Sampson left the Justice Department last year amid the tumult surrounding the alleged politicization of its ranks under Gonzales that included the politically charged firing of nine U.S. attorneys. It was unclear whether either individual would be disciplined since they had left government.

Gonzales himself was generally unaware of his aides' actions, and took steps to head off untoward hiring practices when he became aware of them, the report concluded. Gonzales' lawyer issued a statement Monday saying the findings vindicate the former attorney general.

The report provides a more detailed examination of questionable moves by Goodling and others that emerged in congressional hearings last year. Goodling, after receiving a grant of congressional immunity, acknowledged before the House Judiciary Committee that she had "crossed a line" and allowed political and other impermissible factors to affect her hiring decisions.

Goodling was the White House liaison at the Justice Department; Sampson was Gonzales' chief of staff.

The latest disclosures include a finding that Goodling rejected the application of a career terrorism prosecutor who wanted to work at Justice Department headquarters because his wife was active in local Democratic politics.

CONTINUED...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-justice29-2008jul29,0,5266095.story

We may not need to, but just to make sure, let's keep reminding AG Holder about what we know regarding DoJ and the BFEE. Going by what he's doing in regards to ex-Sen Stevens (R-Palinland), he may be doing things the right way. Heh heh heh.

Thank you for giving a damn, my Friend. For years, we've been real -- not just virtual -- pals, which makes our path so much less lonely and our burdens so much the lighter.

[Cant trust em]

4. I don't blame Obama for the banking mess

but I do think that the way the banking crisis is being handled puts too much power back in the hands of the people who got us here. There's a cultural problem there that Larry Summers and Tim Geithner are a part of. I'm not one of those DUers who thinks that Obama is trying to sell us out, but I don't think this problem is being solved aggressively enough.

[Octafish]

19. The Geithner-Summers Plan: Even Worse Than We Thought

Agree 100-percent, Cant trust em.

Obama may be doing is like the adage: "It takes a thief to catch a thief."

The Geithner-Summers Plan: Even Worse Than We Thought

By Jeffrey Sachs, Huffington Post
Posted on April 8, 2009, Printed on April 8, 2009

Two weeks ago, I posted an article showing how the Geithner-Summers banking plan could potentially and unnecessarily transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth from taxpayers to banks. The same basic arithmetic was later described by Joseph Stiglitz in the New York Times (April 1) and by Peyton Young in the Financial Times (April 1). In fact, the situation is even potentially more disastrous than we wrote. Insiders can easily game the system created by Geithner and Summers to cost up to a trillion dollars or more to the taxpayers.

Here's how. Consider a toxic asset held by Citibank with a face value of $1 million, but with zero probability of any payout and therefore with a zero market value. An outside bidder would not pay anything for such an asset. All of the previous articles consider the case of true outside bidders.

Suppose, however, that Citibank itself sets up a Citibank Public-Private Investment Fund (CPPIF) under the Geithner-Summers plan. The CPPIF will bid the full face value of $1 million for the worthless asset, because it can borrow $850K from the FDIC, and get $75K from the Treasury, to make the purchase! Citibank will only have to put in $75K of the total.

Citibank thereby receives $1 million for the worthless asset, while the CPPIF ends up with an utterly worthless asset against $850K in debt to the FDIC. The CPPIF therefore quietly declares bankruptcy, while Citibank walks away with a cool $1 million. Citibank's net profit on the transaction is $925K (remember that the bank invested $75K in the CPPIF) and the taxpayers lose $925K. Since the total of toxic assets in the banking system exceeds $1 trillion, and perhaps reaches $2-3 trillion, the amount of potential rip-off in the Geithner-Summers plan is unconscionably large.

The earlier criticisms of the Geithner-Summers plan showed that even outside bidders generally have the incentive to bid far too much for the toxic assets, since they too get a free ride from the government loans. But once we acknowledge the insider-bidding route, the potential to game the plan at the cost of the taxpayers becomes extraordinary. And the gaming of the system doesn't have to be as crude as Citibank setting up its own CPPIF. There are lots of ways that it can do this indirectly, for example, buying assets of other banks which in turn buy Citi's assets. Or other stakeholders in Citi, such as groups of bondholders and shareholders, could do the same.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/135532/the_geithner-summers_plan%3A_even_worse_than_we_thought/

I don't understand all the machinations, but I do enough to note that we do live in interesting times, my Friend. That's why I, too, would like to see those responsible do some hard time.

[Cant trust em]

24. I know that I'm massively in the minority here, but seeing bankers in jail doesn't do much for me

I feel like they effectively lobbied Congress to make their bad deeds legal. They did their job of finding and exploiting loopholes. I'm much more interested in changing the rules to make sure that they cannot perpetrate these acts again.

They should be blamed and forced out. Awareness of the problem should create the regulatory framework to make sure that this never happens again.

I'm not trying to apologize for them or cover it up, but somehow seeing them behind bars doesn't make me feel any better. It certainly doesn't make my IRA increase in value.

[MisterP]

6. said the guy who knows who Meyer Lansky is... :-P n/t

[Octafish]

20. Global Economic Collapse Means Boom Times for Criminal Syndicates

Thanks for reminding me, MisterP. An economic collapse doesn't necessarily have to be bad for everybody.

Global Economic Collapse Means Boom Times for Criminal Syndicates

By Michael T. Klare, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on April 7, 2009, Printed on April 8, 2009

In all catastrophes, there are always winners among the host of losers and victims. Bad times, like good ones, generate profits for someone. In the case of the present global economic meltdown, with our world at the brink and up to 50 million people potentially losing their jobs by the end of this year, one winner is likely to be criminal activity and crime syndicates. From Mexico to Africa, Russia to China, the pool of the desperate and the bribable is expanding exponentially, pointing to a sharp upturn in global crime. As illicit profits rise, so will violence in the turf wars among competing crime syndicates and in the desperate efforts by panicked governments to put a clamp on criminal activity.

SNIP...

The Rise of the Narco-state

These developments and others like them naturally beg the question: To what extent can any increases in violent crime in the coming period be attributed to the global economic meltdown?

Certainly the situation in Mexico suggests a close correlation. Like other countries dependent on exports to the United States, Mexico has been reeling from the current crisis. Total exports fell 32% in January, while automobile exports -- a major source of economic activity in Mexico's border states -- fell by 50% in the first two months of 2009. By one account, Mexico's export factories have lost 65,000 jobs since October, a number that experts believe understates the loss. Many economists now predict a painful 5% contraction in the Mexican economy in 2009.

One Mexican export business, however, is thriving in bad times: the drug trade. With so many people out of work or facing diminished incomes, the attraction of being employed by it has certainly risen. By some estimates, illegal trafficking, mainly to the United States, nets the Mexican drug cartels nearly $25 billion each year, making this one of the country's most lucrative industries, and despite an attempted government crackdown, there seems to be no downturn in sight. True, narco-traffickers risk being apprehended and doing jail time, but so many of Mexico's police and court officers are evidently on cartel payrolls that the likelihood of that happening remains modest for higher level operatives. With other job opportunities for poor young men dwindling, the appeal of easy money -- not to mention the faux glamour of an outlaw's life -- must seem irresistible to many.

The crackdown on drug trafficking being conducted by the Mexican government with strong U.S. backing has, paradoxically, made the narcotics trade more appealing as a profession. This is so because increased drug seizures have driven up the street price of drugs, thereby increasing profits for those who succeed in eluding the police and antidrug agents. Given the general economic environment, this is certain to prove a self-perpetuating system that will continue to lure ambitious or desperate young men into the drug trade.

As Professor Francisco E. González of Johns Hopkins University suggests in explaining this predicament in Current History magazine, "(I)t goes without saying that conditions of hopelessness and extreme life choices abound in developing countries such as Mexico. As long as these conditions persist, and as long as the system put in place to counter the narcotics trade leads to the generation of exceptional profits, there will continue to be individuals willing to play this lottery."

In fact, this observation applies no less well to many other countries suffering from severe economic distress. Take Guinea-Bissau and its neighbor Guinea, both essentially indigent countries that are widely described as "narco-states" (that is, states whose political and economic institutions have been thoroughly infiltrated by the Latin American drug cartels). Guinea-Bissau holds the ninth spot from the bottom on the overall U.N. human development index released in December, which measures living standards, health, and quality of life globally. In terms of gross domestic product per capita, however, it's fifth from the bottom, just ahead of Liberia and Burundi. Hardly surprising, then, that a government almost incapable of otherwise generating income is thought to be heavily penetrated by the cartels.

According to UN officials, Guinea-Bissau reaps as much as $1 billion per year in illegal proceeds from the drug trade, a vast bounty in a country so poor. Drug trafficking "is indeed a factor in the current crisis," observes Carlos Cardoso, a researcher at the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa. "Drug trafficking seems to involve the military. Given the ubiquity of the military in political life, anything that affects it, affects the state."

Neighboring Guinea, once known as French Guinea, presents a very similar picture. Ruled until December 2008 by the military dictator Lansana Conté, it, too, had become a haven for South American narco-traffickers. "In the past few years, as Mr. Conté's health declined, Guinea drifted toward chaos," Lydia Polgreen wrote in the New York Times. "South American drug traffickers, who ship cocaine to Europe via West Africa, infiltrated the government at the highest levels. Mr. Conté's son Ousmane confessed on television to aiding the cocaine traffickers who had turned Guinea into a virtual narco-state." Lansana Conté died on December 23rd and power was usurped by a military junta headed by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara; the junta's young officers have pledged to clean up the country and oust the traffickers, but many Guineans express skepticism about their capacity to accomplish this Herculean task.

An environment of poverty and chaos has long prevailed in Somalia, home to the most determined and aggressive of the high-seas pirates. Of the 293 piracy incidents noted by the PRC in 2008, 111, or 38%, occurred in the Gulf of Aden or off the coast of Somalia. Many of the most daring incidents -- including the seizure of the Sirius Star -- also occurred in those waters. By their own account, many of the Somali pirates are former fishermen driven out of business when the collapsed Somali state could no longer protect the country's rich fishing grounds against predation by the highly organized fleets of other countries. Now penniless, these onetime fishermen have taken up piracy to support their families. "Killing is not in our plans," the hijacker of a guns-laden cargo ship told a reporter in October 2008. "We only want money so we can protect ourselves from hunger."

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/135383/

So, yay! There is some good news in all this. The thing is, will what goes around come around to nab the right ones, for once? Please?

[seemslikeadream]

7. The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One

Bill Moyers- Truths About Banking Fraud Reach Highest Levels of Govt - W. Black
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ4JXW_ErXQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ4JXW_ErXQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOA1RpK7ttg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMDLx_-f1L4

[Revlon10]

13. Must see video

Must see video, not complicated at all this mess that we are in, now lets go an reclaim our losses and out government

[Norrin Radd]

8. kr

[Octafish]

22. Cooking the Insurance Books - A Decade of Lax Regulation Lays Groundwork for Scandal

Hiya, Norrin Radd! Love the baby Rudolf. Here's Lucy Komisar warning us from 2004:

Cooking the Insurance Books

A Decade of Lax Regulation Lays Groundwork for Scandal

by Lucy Komisar, Special to CorpWatch
November 17th, 2004

In October, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed suit against the world’s largest insurance broker, Marsh, accusing it of rigging bids and receiving kickbacks in order to defraud clients such as other corporations, city governments, school districts and individuals of billions of dollars through inflated premiums.

“Greedy trial lawyers were the usual excuse for premium increases. Now we know that greedy corporations also have a starring role," Spitzer said, accusing several insurance companies as co-conspirators in making phony or inflated bids and paying kickbacks to the brokerage to get business.

Spitzer also announced that two executives from the insurance conglomerate American International Group (AIG) had already confessed to related criminal charges. But his investigations into AIG may have only scratched the surface. A paper trail stretching back a decade reveals that AIG used offshore shell companies to skirt the law.

The current scam which Spitzer has uncovered works like this: Marsh, an insurance broker, is supposed to find the best insurance policies for its clients from a wide range of companies. Instead it steered the policies to companies such as AIG that agreed to pay kickbacks. It solicited phony competitive bids for insurance contracts to deceive customers into thinking there was real competition for their business. Marsh made $800 million on kickbacks in 2003 alone – over half its $1.5 billion profit. With a 40-percent share of the global insurance brokerage market, its fraud drove up prices for everyone.

SNIP...

American International Group

SNIP...

Though it is an American company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, AIG makes extensive use of offshore jurisdictions such as Barbados, Bermuda and Luxembourg that are immune from U.S. regulatory and tax scrutiny. They help the company launder profits to evade U.S. taxes and hide insider connections in supposedly "arms-length" deals. This is especially important as the company has moved into financial services and asset management, handling the wealth of “high net-worth” clients -- the mega-rich.

Greenberg has enviable political clout, never so much in evidence as when, with the help of Henry Kissinger -- chair of AIG's international advisory committee and a paid consultant via Kissinger Associates – AIG became in 1995, the first company licensed to sell insurance in China. AIG was the only foreign firm that owned 100 percent of its license there.

The American International Group at its origins was linked to the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) the forerunner of the CIA. It grew from the Asia Life/C. V. Starr companies founded by Cornelius Starr who started his insurance empire in Shanghai in 1919, the first westerner to market insurance in China.

Starr served with the OSS during World War II, and the Starr Corporation, located in the same building as the OSS in New York, provided intelligence on shipping, manufacturing and industrial bombing targets in Asia and Germany. The companies' biggest shareholder was Starr International Company (SICO), a private holding company incorporated in offshore Panama and with principal executive offices in offshore Bermuda, to avoid U.S. regulation and taxes. Starr left Greenberg a large block of Starr International stock.

Lax Regulators Give AIG a Free Pass

At Spitzer’s press conference, New York State Insurance Superintendent Gregory V. Serio said: "This has gone from an inquiry into failure to disclose compensation to an active investigation of bid rigging and improper steering. This certainly proves the adage that where there is smoke, there is fire." But AIG’s comportment could not have been much of a surprise to Serio, who was New York’s deputy insurance superintendent in the late 90s. That’s when New York and three other states gave the powerful company a pass on some very questionable practices. If they had paid attention to the smoke then, perhaps this billion-dollar fire wouldn’t have ignited.

In the late 90s, four state insurance departments New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania and California were aware that AIG was moving debt off its books via the use of an offshore shell company it secretly set up and controlled. But despite clear evidence of wrongdoing, no sanctions were ordered.

CONTINUED...

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11657aig

Small world. It needs big change. Too bad Uncle Sam didn't want to listen when something big could've been done to change the course we are on for a lot less money, pain and sacrifice. So now I'm in favor of sacrifice -- crooked CEOs' hearts offered up, Mayan style.

[rollingrock]

10. No, but neither is he doing anything to stop it

the looting that began under Bush continues to this day under a different name.

[Octafish]

28. Congress Pushing Covert Bailout to Save Big Finance and Screw Homeowners

Looting is Buy-Partisan. Those with the money can buy partisans to help them. Take Congress, please:

Congress Pushing Covert Bailout to Save Big Finance and Screw Homeowners

By Zach Carter, AlterNet
Posted on April 9, 2009, Printed on April 9, 2009

U.S. policymakers just dealt struggling homeowners another devastating financial blow by helping Wall Street banks cook the books on their mortgages.

The real outrage, however, is that federal policymakers know the strategy they're adopting screws borrowers: they did the same thing in the 1980s to save banks from overwhelming losses on loans they'd made to developing nations, with horrific consequences for the global economy.

Under intense pressure from Congress and the banking lobby, regulators have approved a new accounting rule that allows banks leeway to value troubled mortgages and debt-backed securities at inflated prices. Banks typically have to value these assets at market prices: the amount investors might pay for them.

But with the U.S. economy fighting for life under a mountain of foreclosures, investors have figured out that these loans -- and the byzantine securities into which they were "sliced and diced" -- are not actually worth very much. As a result, nobody is buying them; their "market" has disappeared.

So the banks now insist that hundreds of billions of dollars in debt-backed securities are not really worthless predatory garbage but merely assets being unfairly scorned by the trading markets. Their bargain-basement prices are artificially low.

So Big Finance has persuaded Congress and regulators to allow them to use secret proprietary "models" the banks own to assign values to these "toxic assets" without having to justify those numbers with concrete market information.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/135542/

Thank you for understanding what's going on, rollingrock. We the People need to shine some light on corruption. It doesn't appear many who represent us are willing, or even able, to do so.

[Karenina]

11. . .

[Octafish]

30. The Real Scandal of AIG

Hi, Karenina! Did I ever mention how un-democratic I find corporate behavior?



Conspiratorial Wink by Michael Samuels.

The Real Scandal of AIG

by Robert Reich
Posted March 15, 2009
The Real Scandal of AIG

The real scandal of AIG isn't just that American taxpayers have so far committed $170 billion to the giant insurer because it is thought to be too big to fail -- the most money ever funneled to a single company by a government since the dawn of capitalism -- nor even that AIG's notoriously failing executives, at the very unit responsible for the catastrophic credit-default swaps at the very center of the debacle -- are planning to give themselves $100 million in bonuses. It's that even at this late date, even in a new administration dedicated to doing it all differently, Americans still have so little say over what is happening with our money.

The administration is said to have been outraged when it heard of the bonus plan last week. Apparently Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner told AIG's chairman, Edward Liddy (who was installed at the insistence of the Treasury, in the first place) that the bonuses should not be paid. But most will be paid anyway, because, according to AIG, the firm is legally obligated to do so. The bonuses are part of employee contracts negotiated before the bailouts. And, in any event, Liddy explained, AIG needed to be able to retain talent.

AIG's arguments are absurd on their face. Had AIG gone into chapter 11 bankruptcy or been liquidated, as it would have without government aid, no bonuses would ever be paid; indeed, AIG's executives would have long ago been on the street. And any mention of the word "talent" in the same sentence as "AIG" or "credit default swaps" would be laughable if it weren't already so expensive.

Apart from AIG's sophistry is a much larger point. This sordid story of government helplessness in the face of massive taxpayer commitments illustrates better than anything to date why the government should take over any institution that's "too big to fail" and which has cost taxpayers dearly. Such institutions are no longer within the capitalist system because they are no longer accountable to the market. So to whom should they be accountable? When taxpayers have put up, and essentially own, a large portion of their assets, AIG and other behemoths should be accountable to taxpayers. When our very own Secretary of the Treasury cannot make stick his decision that AIG's bonuses should not be paid, only one conclusion can be drawn: AIG is accountable to no one. Our democracy is seriously broken.

SOURCE:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-real-scandal-of-aig_b_175105.html

No. They're not NAZIs. NAZIs were Them.

[Karenina]

31. Found this in the cyber cellar

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11657aig

Cooking the Insurance Books
A Decade of Lax Regulation Lays Groundwork for Scandal

by Lucy Komisar, Special to CorpWatch
November 17th, 2004


In October, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed suit against the world’s largest insurance broker, Marsh, accusing it of rigging bids and receiving kickbacks in order to defraud clients such as other corporations, city governments, school districts and individuals of billions of dollars through inflated premiums.
“Greedy trial lawyers were the usual excuse for premium increases. Now we know that greedy corporations also have a starring role," Spitzer said, accusing several insurance companies as co-conspirators in making phony or inflated bids and paying kickbacks to the brokerage to get business.
Spitzer also announced that two executives from the insurance conglomerate American International Group (AIG) had already confessed to related criminal charges. But his investigations into AIG may have only scratched the surface. A paper trail stretching back a decade reveals that AIG used offshore shell companies to skirt the law...

And this recent first-person account from the bowels of the Beast:

http://www.vdare.com/miano/081014_aig.htm

October 14, 2008

Obscenities, Chaos, H1-Bs—And High Reported Earnings: My Year With AIG

By John Miano

In my previous life before law school I worked as a computer programmer. For most of that time I worked for various computer consulting organizations, going from company to company as one project finished and I moved on to another.

The kind of experience exposed me to many management styles. I saw companies that were run well; other companies that were run not so well; and companies that were in pretty bad shape.

In the late 1990s the world of computer consulting took me to AIG.

Only superlatives can describe what I saw while working at AIG’s computer operation. It was the most mismanaged company of any type that I have ever seen. Nearly every company has some bad practices. AIG managed to adopt nearly every bad practice imaginable at the same time...

[bluesmail]

15. Meet the new banksters same as the old gangsters.

If the mob has a new name would we even know it?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

16. BFEE did start it but Obama is allowing it to go on with his choices in finance.

Did you see Bill Moyers on Friday with William Black?

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

[Uzybone]

17. Its mostly the idiots on the extremes that blame Obama already

most sensible people blame Bush and the financial institutions.

[Initech]

21. Yup, the republicons stole it, and left Obama to clean up the mess.

[earth mom]

23. Obama is protecting the BFEE. I'm really surprised that you aren't addressing that in your OP.

Octafish, I've been one of your biggest cheerleaders and always rec your threads, but I'm sorry, but I cannot ignore the fact that ever since Obama was elected he is doing everything to protect the status quo and all the crimes of * & Co.

Just look at these thread below. You've got to admit this is DAMNING evidence that Obama is aiding and abetting the BFEE!

Connect the Dots:

From the Wall Street theft of the century of taxpayer money:

MUST WATCH: William Black on Bill Moyers: Geithner & Obama continuing a Cover Up of Fraud

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5389122

To continuing and escalating war in the Middle East:

Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3816510

To allowing wiretapping to continue:

Countdown: Prof. Turley on Obama & Wiretapping - 'Dead Wrong on Unlawful Surveillance

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x293427



The BFEE corruption is alive and well and Obama is helping those bastards! Mission Accomplished!

[Octafish]

25. Behind the surge on Wall Street - The corruption is Buy-Partisan.

Thank you for the kind words, earth mom. I am in complete agreement with you.

Why would President Obama publicly ignore the growing list from Siegelman to Karzai and from Berezovsky to Bush? There is no logical reason for him to side with Power on every question, from Karachi to Houston.

I wanted the OP to express how I considered any attempt NOT to investigate the traitors and gangsters is an obstruction of justice, at the least. That goes for everybody in government. And, if they didn't own Congress and make their criminality legal, it would go for everybody in business, especially Wall Street.

Behind the surge on Wall Street

Tom Eley
Perspective
World Socialist Web Site
4 April 2009

EXCERPT...

The surge in the stock market shows that the American ruling elite is confident that the Obama administration will do everything in its power to protect the interests of the banks and finance capital.

First, there was Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's March 23 unveiling of the administration's plan to offload the banks' toxic assets. The markets had been steadily rising in anticipation of this announcement.

It should be recalled that when he first presented the administration's bank bailout plans the previous month (February 10), Geithner was roundly criticized for being vague as to precisely how the banks' losses were to be recovered. That announcement triggered a sharp sell-off that continued throughout the rest of February.

This time, Geithner made it clear that the government would provide unlimited funds to purchase the toxic assets of the banks at inflated prices, using taxpayer money. Even better, from the perspective of the finance industry, the plan was structured so as to guarantee big profits for hedge funds and other investment firms that participated in the scheme. In fact, Wall Street insiders had played a direct role in crafting the plan.

The new Wall Street bailout palpably boosted the confidence of the financial elite. On the day of Geithner's announcement, Wall Street celebrated with a demonstration of euphoria and greed, pushing the Dow up 497 points. Since then, the share values of the major banks and finance houses have paced the stock market rally.

Geithner's March 23 announcement coincided with the Obama administration's intervention into the scandal over lucrative bonuses awarded to traders and executives at the bailed-out insurance giant, American International Group (AIG). Obama made it clear that he would not bow to what the media derisively referred to as "populist" anger, and that he would oppose any serious limits on executive compensation.

To reassure Wall Street that his administration had no intention of limiting executive pay or otherwise challenging the wealth and prerogatives of the financial aristocracy, Obama hosted a meeting of the top banking CEOs on March 27. The bankers left the White House praising Obama for his cooperation, one noting that "we are very much aligned with the administration."

Then came Obama's restructuring plan for General Motors and Chrysler. The markets reacted positively because, first, it demonstrated that industrial policy would remain completely subordinated to the interests of Wall Street and second, because it signaled an intensification in the exploitation of the working class through mass layoffs, wage cuts and the destruction of health benefits and pensions.

The banks and big investors have been further cheered by repeated assurances from Obama that his administration will undertake major cuts in social programs—including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Obama is promising that the working class will pay for the looming fiscal disaster resulting from the multi-trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street.

Finally, there was the announcement Thursday by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) weakening "mark-to-market" accounting rules and allowing banks to value their toxic assets at inflated prices. This was not only an immediate boost to banks' balance sheets and reported profits, it also showed that the government will give Wall Street a green light to continue the same methods of fraud and double bookkeeping that triggered the breakdown of the financial system in the first place.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/pers-a04.shtml

Now, it may that some sort of agreement -- a deal or, in the case of the Reich, extortion -- is in place. No public humiliation of the scoundrels may be required in exchange for the safety of his person and family.

If the reason is due to Obama and his Team being in cahoots with the BFEE devils, as may be the case from what we can see, I'm all against him and the War Party.

The BFEE are the worst. To beat them requires thinking outside the box. That's why I give Obama the benefit of the doubt.

[DesertDiamond]

26. Honest people don't blame Obama. Just the same lying scum who used to blame Clinton for everything.

[Richd506]

27. K & R

[Orwellian_Ghost]

29. It was all of 'em my friend

From Raygun to Glass-Steagall to Geithner and everything in between.