Click here to view the embedded video.

“These guys on Wall Street, they don’t render any services at all. They don’t help the economy any except their own employees, their own little family.” — protester Paul Akers

“Wall Street has taken so much money from the American people and haven’t given anything back, and it’s absolutely absurd.” — Jim Brown, operating engineer

“Our lives and our livelihoods are all bound together,” he said. “We are one country! When greed runs amok on Wall Street it means lost jobs and shut stores on Main Street. We need to go back to basics where good jobs, not bad debts drive our growth, an economy where Wall Street is the servant, not the master of Main Street.”

He put a number on the carnage. “Eight million jobs destroyed and 3 million more never created – that’s the price of greed.”

AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka via t r u t h o u t | A New Blueprint for Taking on Wall Street.

Add to that the homes lost, taxes that will never be collected, social services costs of taking care of the unemployed, families decimated by poverty, etc. The carnage is much greater than anyone wants to admit.

Last week Senators Sherrod Brown and Ted Kaufman unveiled the “SAFE Banking Act” with a clear purpose: Breaking up the big banks.

The proposal places hard leverage and size caps on financial institutions. It is well crafted and based on a great deal of hard thinking, according to economist Simon Johnson. And, as suggested on the front page of The New York Times, it has the potential to draw a significant amount of support.

When the financial crisis first engulfed the world, wrote William Greider, opinion leaders rushed to explain it as a freak of nature — a “perfect storm” that arrives once a century. Subsequent revelations destroyed that nonsense. “Like famines, financial crises are man-made. This one was made in America–invented on Wall Street and enabled by Washington complicity, Democrats and Republicans alike.”

[...]

Fortunately, the perfidy of the mega-banks has not gone unnoticed, and Brown and Kaufman’s bill represents the first legislative effort to confront the problem. Stressing the need for more competition among smaller banks and increased business lending, the senators believe that the largest financial institutions present a prohibitive risk to our economy.

The bill would place a cap on any financial institution, limiting its total assets to three percent of GDP (that would lower to two percent for banks, and three percent for non-bank institutions). Currently, the six largest banks have holdings that equal 63 percent of GDP. The Safe Banking Act would also impose a ten percent cap on any bank holding company’s share of insured deposits.

As Brown said when introducing the legislation, “If we’re going to prevent big banks from putting our entire economy at risk, we need to place sensible size limits on our nation’s behemoth banks. We need to ensure that if banks gamble, they have the resources to cover their losses.”

via Taking it to the Banks.

Frankly, I’d like to see 63% of Wall Street behind bars for the rest of their lives. No way should they be keeping their jobs, and especially no way should they be collecting one red cent of any sort of bonus. Use that bonus money to create more jobs by loaning to small businesses… or even providing grants. How about endowing a few scholarships to universities, or adopting a university and help keep them from slashing their budget? No way does one exec deserve a $9M bonus if the employing corporation required a taxpayer bailout.

“How does that differ from going out to Caesar’s Palace, the sports book, and making a wager on the outcome of an athletic contest?” Senator John McCain of Arizona asked C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein.

But the Republicans’ whacking of Wall Street’s wise guys lost a little of its punch when you knew that they were ducking out to the Senate floor, trying to thwart Democrats’ efforts to pass a bill tightening regulation of Wall Street. Republicans ignored the contradiction in this, the same way Goldman Sachs ignored the conflict in betting against the product it sold to clients.

President Obama bashed Wall Street to pose as a tough populist. The S.E.C. dragged itself away from porn long enough to make an example of Goldman Sachs to shore up its image as a strict enforcer. And Goldman Sachs came to Washington to try to recover an image for integrity.

As Americans lost homes and lined up for jobs, Goldman made $13 billion in 2009, and Blankfein got a bonus of, as he haltingly admitted to McCain, “um, um, nine million.”

“The idea that Wall Street came out of this thing just fine, thank you, is something that just grates on people,” Delaware Senator Ted Kaufman told Blankfein. “They think that you didn’t just come out fine because it was luck. They think that you guys just really gamed this thing real, real well.”

Baby-faced Josh Birnbaum, the former managing director who urged betting against subprime mortgages, did not polish the firm’s reputation with his elitist smirk and name-dropping of Wharton.

“Mr. Birnbaum, do you know what a stated income loan is?” Senator Kaufman asked.

“I think it’s just what it sounds like,” Birnbaum replied, like a petulant schoolboy in detention.

The Goldman crowd was certainly cosmopolitan. Blankfein dropped a Latin phrase (Goldman had a “de minimis” business in direct home loan mortgages) and French peppered Senate Exhibit No. 62, from the petite, handsome Fabrice Tourre, the S.E.C. target who called himself “the fabulous Fab” in a 2007 e-mail.

“More and more leverage in the system, l’edifice entier risqué de s’effondrer a tout moment. … Seul survivant potentiel,” gushed the highflying Frenchman charged with creating subprime mortgage investment deals intended to fail. That translates loosely to: the cheese stands alone.

Continuing to talk about himself in the third person, he wrote, “Standing in the middle of all these complex, highly levered, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of those monstruosities!!! Anyway, not feeling too guilty about this. …”

In an e-mail to his girlfriend, he called his “Frankenstein” creation “a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: ‘Well, what if we created a “thing,” which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?’ ”

In another e-mail to her, he blithely joked that he was selling toxic bonds “to widows and orphans that I ran into at the airport.” At least the Fabulous Fab had the good manners to cloak his feelings of fabulousness in front of the committee and put on an earnest mask. Luckily for Goldman, greed may trump ethics. The firm’s stock closed higher Tuesday. Wholesale olive oil closed higher as well.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Olive Oil and Snake Oil – NYTimes.com.

We speak with investigative journalist, filmmaker, and author Danny Schechter, ‘the News Dissector.’ His latest film features interviews with industry insiders to reveal how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity. It’s called “Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time.”

via Democracy Now!

Lost in the haze of the hoopla surrounding the insurance reform bill was some big news on the financial reform front. On March 19, Bloomberg won its lawsuit against the Federal Reserve for information that could expose which “too big to fail” banks in the United States are walking zombies and which banks were merely rotting.

Bloomberg, which has done some of the best reporting on the financial crisis, is also leading the charge on the fight for transparency at the Federal Reserve and in the financial sector. While many policymakers and reporters were focusing their attention on the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout bill passed by Congress, Bloomberg was one of the first to notice that the TARP program was small change compared to the estimated $2-3 trillion flowing out the back door of the Federal Reserve to prop up the financial system in the early months of the crisis.

Way back in November 2008, Bloomberg filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking the Fed what institutions were receiving the money, how much, and what collateral was being posted for these loans. Their basic argument: when trillions in taxpayer money is being loaned out to shaky institutions, don’t the taxpayers deserve to know their chances of being paid back?

Not according to the Fed. The Fed declined to respond, forcing Bloomberg to sue in Federal Court. In August of 2009, Bloomberg won the suit. With the backing of the big banks, the Fed appealed, and this month, Bloomberg won again. A three judge appellate panel dismissed the Fed’s arguments that the information was to protect “confidential business information” and told the Fed that the public deserved answers.

via Could Bloomberg Lawsuit Mean Death to Zombie Banks? | Center for Media and Democracy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department criminal antitrust case.

A government list of previously unidentified “co- conspirators” contains more than two dozen bankers at firms also including Bank of America Corp., Bear Stearns Cos., Societe Generale, two of General Electric Co.’s financial businesses and Salomon Smith Barney, the former unit of Citigroup Inc., according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24.

The papers were filed by attorneys for a former employee of CDR Financial Products Inc., an advisory firm indicted in October. The attorneys, as part of their legal filing, identified the roster as being provided by the government. The document is labeled “list of co-conspirators.”

None of the firms or individuals named on the list has been charged with wrongdoing. The court records mark the first time these companies have been identified as co-conspirators. They provide the broadest look yet at alleged collusion in the $2.8 trillion municipal securities market that the government says delivered profits to Wall Street at taxpayers’ expense.

via JPMorgan, Lehman, UBS Named in Bid-Rigging Conspiracy (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.

Why haven’t the co-conspirators been indicted? This is a violation of U.S. anti-trust law. Too big to fail, so we gave them bailouts. Too big to jail? I don’t think so, and they ARE possessed of corporate personhood after all. Right, SCOTUS?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has unveiled legislation to tame the financial markets. The bill would create a consumer protection bureau to write regulations governing all lending transactions. (March 15)

As of July 1, the Federal Reserve will require that banks obtain a customer’s consent before they can charge them overdraft fees for A.T.M. transactions and debit purchases; many banks now automatically enroll customers.

In anticipation of the new Fed rule, some banks have begun marketing campaigns to encourage their customers to opt in to overdraft protection to keep the dollars flowing.

Several bills have been introduced in Congress that would go beyond the Fed’s rules on overdraft fees.

Bank of America, by deciding to scrap overdraft charges on debit card purchases instead, is hoping to bolster its reputation with consumers at a time when anger at banks for their role in the financial crisis remains high.

via Bank of America Plans to End Overdraft Fees on Debit Card Purchases – NYTimes.com.

Good! And I hope the rest of the banks follow suit.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obama must now prime the pump to get us out of a multi-pronged mess left over from the Bush crowd and seven years of Republican control. Republicans chose to look the other way and ignore the financial chicanery going on right in front of them, while the income gap between the very wealthy and average workers grew to unprecedented levels — while productivity was the highest it has EVER been. Their only prescription for every ill: take two tax-cuts for those already wealthy, and call me in the morning. 255 years ago their rallying cry would have been “Let them eat cake.”

The income gap is one trend that the corporations, and their conservative CEOs and friends, see no problem with. They tell workers to work harder, knowing that wages have been stagnant for decades even while productivity has been at record levels. However, without an economically viable, employed middle class spending money like the good little consumers  they are, there can be no economic recovery. Job cuts mean less consumer spending and more business failures.

Let’s hear from the moron who introduced the legislation that de-regulated the financial industry in the first place… John “S&L” McCain – Remember this?… “The fundamentals of the economy are strong…” This falsehood was flouted first by the Bush Administration, and then by Republicans, and conservative pundits throughout the news media, while we were actually headed over the abyss (and I even called it a good nine months to a year before it happened). Even the tough talking, war mongering, corporation loving conservatives don’t have the right stuff to call it like it is… a world-wide financial markets meltdown brought on by mainly Republican policies and regulatory neglect. So did they truly not know, or were they lying? I believe they were lying and McCain was truly ignorant (McCain had no clue when he said the “fundamentals” were workers, heck, he couldn’t even remember how many homes he owned). And that isn’t the only lie that circulated in the media. Remember…

“We don’t torture” and “We’re not spying on Americans without a warrant” and “We didn’t betray any CIA agents” and “Brownie did a heckuva job” and “We didn’t lie to Pat Tillman’s mother” and “We’re making great progress in Iraq” and “There are WMDs in Iraq” and “Saddam has ties to Al Qaeda” and “We’ll be greeted as liberators” and “Iraqi oil will pay for the war” and “John McCain is not like Bush”. STOP LYING STOP LYING STOP LYING STOP LYING… JUST FUCKING STOP!

The actual fundamentals of the US economy are deficit numbers, inflation numbers, import/export numbers, employment numbers, wages/earnings numbers and other “metrics” that can be measured over time. A fundamental is a measurable metric. And type of employment is also a factor — contrary to GWB, I would NEVER assert that flipping burgers is part of the manufacturing sector, it’s part of the service industry, and there is no way anyone can afford to support themselves or buy a home on those wages, even if a shyster banker is willing to write a bad loan.

The surest way to insure our nation plunges into the worst depression we have ever seen is to keep listening to the propaganda-spewing conservative cranks — the very folks that drove the bus off this cliff. It was the ultra “free market” ideologues — along with the casino-mentality bankers and stock brokers on Wall Street trading derivatives — that got us into this mess, and most of them are still on the payroll.

Obviously we must put regulations back in place since deregulation was one of the primary factors in the economy’s demise. There were reasons for those regulations, but conservatives from both parties got in the way of reason and now we all must pay for their blundering and plundering, but with no jobs, we can’t pay. I think throwing out all the Golden Parachutes is the first step.  If a CEO and “top” management took a company into the ditch, the last thing they deserve are bonuses and special treatment.  They ought to be standing at the back of the unemployment line, behind all the employees and customers their actions have financially ruined. Republicans have forgotten why Teddy Roosevelt pushed anti-trust laws in the first place, or why FDR pushed banking regulations — to promote trust in the system ruined by the Great Depression.

Also, obviously, we must provide a safety net to workers and their families that are currently losing their homes, their health insurance, and their livelihoods, until they can secure long-term employment. Deficits suck, but not spending to help those truly in need sucks worse. Without a working middle class, we are going to slam so hard when we hit bottom, it will make the Great Depression look like a mild recession in comparison. And remember, we don’t have small family farms or the skilled labor to bootstrap families when we do finally hit bottom. We also don’t have the manufacturing base to provide good jobs, generate tax revenue and products for export. Outsourcing, though deplorable, only accounts for maybe 2-4% of all job losses, so don’t blame the Third World for stealing our jobs. This is not their fault. Greed drove the transnational big corporations to use more technology to do the jobs our workers used to have at a much lower cost. These corporate free marketeers did not give a flying fuck about the workers they left behind in their wake, despite all their MBA talk about “team members” and corporate loyalty. They certainly displayed none of that loyalty when they cut jobs and busted labor unions, did they?

Worried about deficits? Who the fuck isn’t?! But how will we ever pay down debt in America, if we can’t get our spiralling economy healthy again? Nothing says misery and suffering and poverty like NO JOBS, and no hope. Milton Friedman’s ideas about laissez-faire capitalism sound great, if you can trust the capitalists… and we trusted them, and this is where it got us. The free trade fundamentalist irrational devotion to laissez-faire has been leading to this moment since Reagan. And I don’t want to hear anyone mention “Trickle Down” theory… we all know that doesn’t work, never has and never will. It’s a big lie designed to placate the masses and inspire consumer confidence while further enriching the already wealthy.

America, wake up, pull the wool from your eyes and realize that we are reaching a point of no return. Wait. Did you hear that? Yes that was the sound of another American company hitting the pavement like a grand piano hurtling from the 110th floor going a hundred miles an hour.

There has been widespread public anger against the hubris of the banks, who are regarded as being to blame for the financial crisis. Their bonus policies, which have persisted even after the system has been bailed out by the taxpayer, have been attacked by politicians and the media. But what I can’t understand is why there has not been even greater protest at the pay gap between top and bottom. It is not just the bankers who have been plundering the spoils from an economy on its knees. Executive pay has raced away in recent years, becoming divorced from that of workers, and even from the performance of the companies these directors are running.

As a society, we have allowed the rewards for economic growth to flow to the top. The trickle-down effect whereby benefits would flow to the lower paid has largely been a myth.

[...]

High levels of executive pay are not just an issue for the companies who employ those directors. It is an issue for society as a whole. In The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, point out that unequal ­societies suffer from a range of problems. Countries such as the US, Britain and Portugal, where the top 20% earn seven, eight or nine times more than the lowest 20%, scored noticeably higher on all social problems at every level of society than in countries such as Sweden and Japan, where the differential is only two or three times higher at the top.

via While we brace for the pain of cuts, executive pay soars | Deborah Hargreaves | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Trickle-down was a myth way back when Reagan touted it. The only trickling down that’s occurred is executives pissing on the wage slaves, then laughing all the way to the bank, the broker, and their vacation home in the Cayman Islands.

Since there’s a federal “minimum wage” why isn’t there a federal “maximum wage”… say, a percentage maximum based on the lowest wage in a company. That way profitability would float all boats, not just the yachts at the top of the corporation.

Can someone shut these banking industry narcissists up?

[..]

The industry’s inability to see, much less admit, any culpability, and hence the need for root and branch reform, is pathological. The reaction of the bank chiefs, at least as depicted by Schwarzman, is utter denial. It’s as if someone who drove his car at 150 miles an hour, lost control, plowed through several houses but miraculously survived (only by virtue of going to the head of the line in the emergency room). He is miffed that what is left of the wreck has been impounded and he is forced to go to the police station and explain himself, and might have to pay fines, have his driver’s license suspended, or face other restrictions as a result of his reckless and destructive conduct.

via Schwarzman Says Kowtow to Banks or They Will Strangle the Economy « naked capitalism.

God, I wish. It’s like Gordon Gekko never went to prison, and of course, these assholes didn’t but should. But what do you expect when the idiots that were in charge are still in charge? I’ll make a prediction: 2 or 3 more big financial crashes without real reform.

(BTW, Michael Douglas will reprise the role of Gekko in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps which is coming out in April.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

The worst of the bad guys, nearly everyone agrees, are the so-called Big Six: JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Experts believe the first four alone hold at least 40 percent of our nation’s deposits and half of all bank assets.

But despite ANWF’s nationwide rallies — which remained relatively small, though attended by voters of all political stripes — breaking up the banks has never been on the legislative table. That may be one reason why Move Your Money has garnered so much excitement. It does not seek to force people on the Hill or in the White House, many of whom are indebted to banking interests, to act.

Instead, Move Your Money calls for direct action by regular people who are irate at the overly cautious pace of financial reform.

“Our money has been used to make the system worse — what if we used it to make the system better?” wrote Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson — she of the Huffington Post, he of the Roosevelt Institute — in their campaign introduction. They framed Move Your Money as a New Year’s resolution for all (most) Americans who feel abandoned by their massive, bailed-out banks.

via Fury at Wall St. Banks Fuels Public Action for Move Your Money Campaign | Economy | AlterNet.

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You’ve heard plenty about the big banks’ role in the Great Recession, but their headaches are about to get worse.

At a packed hearing today, the Senate investigations subcommittee led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) shed new light on banks’ negligence and wrongdoing—and this time it’s not credit-default swaps or derivatives but money laundering and arms dealers. The hearing, held in conjunction with a 325-page report by the subcommittee, focused on four detailed cases of foreign money pouring in the United States and the ways in which American banks, lobbyists, lawyers, and other businessmen aided that money laundering. “For the United States, which has so much riding on global stability, corruption is a direct threat to our national interests,” Levin said in his opening statement. “The stories we uncovered are striking in their misuse of our financial system.”

In essence, the hearing and the report highlighted how institutions like Bank of America, HSBC, and Citibank snoozed when it comes to due diligence and investigating their clients, while notorious arms dealers, sons of despotic politicians, and even shady central banks channeled millions upon millions into the US to buy planes, sports cars, and luxury houses. Singling out HSBC, whose anti-money laundering compliance director testified at the hearing, Levin slammed the bank for actually encouraging the Central Bank of Angola—whose clients include many questionable red-flagged individuals, or “Politically Exposed Persons”—to move millions to an offshore bank in the Bahamas beyond the reach of British financial laws. “You claim that you’re a leader in anti-money laundering rules and enforcement,” Levin told HSBC’s Wiecher Mandemaker. Yet ”you facilitate people evading the law of your own country.”

via Banks Snooze, Arms Dealers Win | Mother Jones.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For worried Democrats, the sudden return of Social Security privatization as a fashionable  nostrum among Republicans should lift their gloom. Or it would if only the Democratic leaders understood what to do when their opponents deliberately step into a messy dogpile again.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a pair of the most outspoken conservatives in Congress, are trying to revive plans to transform Social Security into a system of private accounts (while cutting benefits for anyone under 55 years old). Speaking for Republicans on the House Budget Committee, Ryan proposes a “road map” for Social Security that strongly resembles the old Bush plan. The Ryan version would phase in individual accounts funded by an increasing portion of FICA taxes, limited to investments in a list of approved funds and “guaranteed” by the federal government. Meanwhile, Hensarling simply asserted on “Hardball” that “you can get better healthcare and better retirement security if you go to a defined contribution plan,” which is the same idea.

Junking social insurance for private accounts is a Republican obsession — and a Wall Street fantasy — that dates back decades (see “The Raw Deal” for a history of the recurring right-wing campaigns to kill Social Security and their financing by the corporate elite). While there are many sound arguments to maintain the current system with a few actuarial tweaks, the most compelling is the disastrous corporate stewardship of the financial markets in recent years.

via Joe Conason – Salon.com.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the grand tradition of his predecessor Eliot Spitzer, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is generating tons of publicity by whacking Wall Street with a big fat stick. But even if you are predisposed to dismiss the civil fraud suit his office filed Thursday against former Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis and former chief financial officer Joseph Price as political grandstanding designed to smooth Cuomo’s path into the governor’s mansion this November, the 90-page lawsuit still makes for some great reading.

We’ve got BofA executives, in sworn testimony, directly contradicting previous sworn testimony and then failing to “recollect” their earlier conversations with state investigators. That’s kind of ballsy. We’ve got a BofA treasurer worriedly telling CFO Price that he didn’t want to be talking some day in the future about the topic they were then discussing — huge losses at Merrill Lynch — “through a glass wall over a telephone.” And we’ve got a mysterious smoking gun: the summary firing, without explanation, immediately following a shareholder’s vote to approve BofA’s acquisition of Merrill, of BofA’s general counsel Tim Mayopoulos; the man, as described in the suit, “who knew too much.”

The lawsuit charges Lewis and Price with a dazzling switcheroo.

via How the World Works – Salon.com.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms” needed by the public. “The fact is,” Dodd said, “I am frustrated, and so are the American people.” He charged that Wall Street’s intransigence was the reason for Congress’s failure to pass any bill to regulate the Street. “The refusal of large financial firms to work constructively with Congress on this effort borders on insulting to the American people who have lost so much in this crisis.”

In other words, it isn’t Congress’s fault. It isn’t the Senate Banking Committee’s fault. It certainly isn’t Dodd’s fault. The reason more than a year has passed since the biggest bailout in the history of the world and nothing has been done to prevent a repeat performance — even as the biggest banks are doling out more than $30 billion of bonuses, even as Goldman Sachs is awarding its big traders $16 billion in bonuses (more than the $13 billion Goldman collected from taxpayers via the bailout of AIG), even as AIG itself is handing out bonuses — the reason is … what, exactly, Senator? Because the Street has sent an army of lobbyists to Capitol Hill?

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought Congress was in charge of passing legislation, not Wall Street.

via Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. – Salon.com.

The 325-page report by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which will conduct a hearing on Thursday, sheds new light on how banks like Citigroup, Wachovia and Bank of America unwittingly shifted hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of African politicians, their relatives and associates.

The banks ended up closing or restricting the accounts and cooperated with the subcommittee, offering comments on individual transactions.

In all cases, the Senate report says, the banks ignored controls intended to prevent money laundering and related screens on PEP, meaning politically exposed persons — high-risk clients from corrupt countries.

The report recommends strengthening regulations against money laundering at banks and revoking exemptions for lawyers and other third parties from restrictions on money laundering in the USA Patriot Act. It recommends that Congress pass laws requiring people who form corporations to disclose the true owners.

The report, brimming with bank statements and internal e-mail messages, contains four case studies.

“Together, these four case histories demonstrate the need for the United States to strengthen its PEP controls to prevent corrupt foreign officials, their relatives and close associates from using U.S. professionals and financial institutions to conceal, protect and utilize their ill-gotten gains,” it says.

via Senate Cites Lax Rules for Illicit Money Transfers – NYTimes.com.

These are the same banks that taxpayers bailed out.

*I’ve been looking for a link to the “report” cited in the news stories related to this, but can’t seem to find this exact report.

Exposing this entirely legal labyrinth of ownership took years of interagency pick-and-ax work. In the end it demonstrated how nefarious activity — even as high profile as this — can go on for years, right under authorities’ noses. It’s also meant that tenants of the prestigious Manhattan property have been paying millions in rent to Tehran every year — $4.5 million in 2007 alone. Last November, more than 30 years after the Islamic revolution, U.S. officials moved to take over all of Alavi’s U.S. properties and bank accounts, spread over five states.

Officials say “countless investigations” end with the outlaws disappearing down these perfectly legal rabbit holes — and it’s a growing frustration. All criminals need to launder their illicit earnings, and our lax incorporation requirements make the U.S. a highly attractive domicile. Only two states, Alabama and Alaska, bother to ask the names of the real owners. After incorporation, these anonymous companies can open U.S. bank or brokerage accounts, or obtain credit cards, all of which lend some U.S. legitimacy — the better to evade scrutiny or entrap more victims. In fact, the U.S. just might be the world’s biggest washing machine for dirty money.

[...]

Other notable users of U.S. shell companies: Viktor Bout, the notorious Russian arms trafficker; the Sinaloa drug-trafficking cartel; and Semion Mogilevich, the “brainy don” of Russian mafia dons, recently named on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List.

via America’s Business Law Protects International Crime – TIME.

Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts.

[...]

The singer Billy Bragg has reiterated calls for bonuses at RBS to be capped as he prepared to withhold his taxes in protest. The entertainer was supposed to pay his tax by midnight last night. He told crowds at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park: “Millions are already facing stark choices: are they willing to work longer hours for less money, or would they rather be unemployed? I don’t see why the bankers at RBS shouldn’t be asked the same.”

via Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs ‘expecting $100 million bonus’ – Times Online.

Indeed. Blankfein works no harder than the lowest wage earner does… hard work is hard work, no matter what you do or how much you’re paid.

Extended interview with top TARP cop, Harvard Professor, Elizabeth Warren. Shes sassy and real and tells it like it is…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alan Grayson discusses executive compensation in the House Financial Services Committee with Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz, Lucian Bebchuk and Nell Minow. Why is Grayson among the very few public representatives really standing up for America? (I’d count Kucinich, Sanders, and a few others in that group.) Is every other representative completely spineless or beholden to corporations and their lobbyists? Check their campaign contributions, you’ll see what I mean. Grayson is an inspiration right now. We need more Democrats and Independents speaking out like this. BTW, you can subscribe to Grayson’s YouTube channel so you don’t miss a single video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The risk that deteriorating government finances could push economies into full-fledged debt crises tops a list of threats facing the world in 2010, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.

Major world economies have responded to the financial crisis with stimulus packages and by underwriting private debt obligations, causing deficits to balloon. This may have helped keep a worse recession at bay, but high debt has become a growing concern for financial markets.

The risk is particularly high for developed nations, as many emerging economies, not least in Latin America, have already been forced by previous shocks to put their fiscal houses in order, the WEF think tank said in its annual Global Risks report ahead of its meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

“Governments, in trying to stimulate their economies, in fighting the recession, are (building) unprecedented levels of debt and therefore there is a rising risk of sovereign defaults,” said John Drzik, Chief Executive of management consultancy Oliver Wyman, which was one of the contributors to the WEF report.

He said higher unemployment levels could follow, with associated social and political risks.

The report placed unsustainable debt levels and the looming shadow of the financial crisis among the top three risks, alongside underinvestment in infrastructure — one of the fastest rising risks — and chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes driving up health costs and reducing growth.

Other looming threats including the risk of asset price collapse, risks connected to Afghanistan and a potential slowdown in Chinese growth which could hit employment, fuel social unrest and hurt exports through the region and beyond.

via Sovereign defaults top 2010 risk hitlist | Reuters.

Whether you’re an environmentalist or someone who’s looking at peak energy or peak other things, green is an answer but green itself is very resource intensive.

That is a quandary that we haven’t faced up to in any way, shape or form. We just don’t get it. There are a lot of major dots that have to be connected and we haven’t started that. We are really far behind.

And really far behind the Chinese, for that matter — way, way, way behind in switching to green technology. In 2010 they’re already the leading producer of hydroelectric and solar power and by 2011 will be the leading producer of wind power. They are literally outspending us on their smart grid by 200 to one. They have allocated $670 billion to their smart grid expenditures, their electric grid. We’re spending about $3.5 billion.

This is not good.

via How to Deal With the Coming Economic Crisis – CNBC.

On the substance, a financial reform that’s too weak will provide nothing more than the illusion of stability, and by creating that illusion could actually make the next crisis worse. On the politics, the Obama administration desperately needs to distance itself from Wall Street; a deal that the street likes will, almost by definition, be political poison.

So what to do? The House has passed a pretty good bill; but the Senate should try for something stronger, not weaker. Crucially, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency must be in the bill; it’s a good idea economically, but even more important, it’s essential to making the case that this is not a bill of the bankers, by the bankers, for the bankers.

Oh, and put that Obama bank tax before Congress too, ASAP.

What if all of this faces uniform opposition from Republicans, with the support of some Democrats? That’s easy: make them vote against it. Expose the hollowness of their populist posing. And do what can be done with simple majority votes: I’m not a parliamentary expert, but as I understand it a bank tax could be enacted through reconciliation, bypassing the filibuster.

In short, take on the banks — and force those who are covering for them into the open.

via A Note On Financial Reform – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

Commission member Douglas Holtz-Eakin put his finger on another problem with these impressive sounding numbers: “While mortgage fraud was important, it is the magnitude of the financial crisis that is central,” he said. Mortgage brokers did not have the capacity to collapse the global economy. It took major banks and securities firms with the ability to package and peddle toxic assets around the globe to do that. But in the year and a half since the Wall Street titans blew a hole in the economy and forced the government to pony up some $14 trillion in rescue funds, not one employee of a major Wall Street firm is behind bars. Not even AIG executive Joseph Cassano, who was labeled the “Man Who Crashed the World” by Vanity Fair.

Compare this to what happened after the S&L crisis 20 years ago, which cost taxpayers approximately $350 billion in today’s dollars. According to Department of Justice statistics, no fewer than 1,852 S&L officials were prosecuted and 1,072 were jailed. 500 were top officers.

What is going on here? Don’t we believe in holding people accountable any more?

via Too Big to Fail, Not Too Big for Jail | Center for Media and Democracy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As the President continues to work on immediate job creation, he discusses his proposal for a new fee on the largest financial institutions to ensure that every cent of taxpayer assistance gets paid back. Saying that, “we’re not going to let Wall Street take the money and run,” he goes on to discuss the ongoing push to make sure banks can never put our economy at risk again.

“Now, like clockwork, the banks — and politicians who curry their favor — are already trying to stop this fee from going into effect,” he said in the address. “The very same firms reaping billions of dollars in profits, and reportedly handing out more money in bonuses and compensation than ever before in history, are now pleading poverty. It’s a sight to see.”

Yes, and many of those politicians who curry the favor of bankers are in the President’s own party. That’s probably why he didn’t name them.

Meanwhile, the President has pledged $100 million in aid to Haiti. And he has put in a request for $708 billion for the defense budget, with $33 billion supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Please note what is spent to provide aid to those living in abject poverty who have just suffered a horrific disaster v. the amount spent on waging multiple wars… this is absolutely obscene.

$100 million v $741 billion.

SAVING LIVES v WAGING DEATH.

And when we look at bailing out Wall Street and shoring up our economy — that they wrecked — we’re looking at a figure of approximately $11 trillion as of right now.

$100 million v $11 trillion… even more obscene.

Fuck you, Wall Street Corporatists.

This is predictable: Wall Street is messing with you.

At a Paris conference on new approaches to capitalism last week, Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told reporters that “Wall Street is talking up the recovery because it would like to sell stocks.” This is consistent with the financial industry’s shady tactics that David Corn and Kevin Drum discussed last Friday on Bill Moyers’ Journal. Instead of acting morally, Wall Street executives will do whatever they can to make a buck. And it’s all legal under our easygoing financial regulations.

In the current issue of Mother Jones, Stiglitz attacks this moral bankruptcy head on. If we know that these economic villains knowingly trashed our economy, he asks, why do we let them get away with it?

via Joseph Stiglitz: Wall Street is Fooling You… Again | Mother Jones.

Wall Street has a lot to apologize for, but contrition would be more convincing if it came with accountability: a resignation or a decision to forswear bonuses and certainly a pledge to stop trying to block desperately needed financial reforms.

Americans come as well equipped to apologize as anybody. Five minutes on the neighborhood playground will confirm that parents still try their best to instill in their children the merits of saying “I’m sorry.”

True contrition is a rare thing in the American corner office, probably because when children become corporate executives they have lawyers who patiently explain how such good manners could get them in trouble in the land of legal liability. In bankers, this is compounded by a sense that they are truly doing God’s work — not merely gambling with taxpayers’ money.

At play here, we suspect, are both tactics and a sense of history. Legend has it that during the reign of King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette responded to her hungry subjects’ demand for bread by declaring, “Let them eat cake.” In hindsight, an apology might have been a better idea. Mr. Blankfein still has his job.

via Editorial – Are They Really? – NYTimes.com.

They aren’t sorry, but they could certainly be made to feel genuine sorrow were they locked behind prison walls for the genuine human suffering they’ve caused worldwide. Fake apologies not accepted.

The moneychangers do not EVER do “God’s work”… how insulting. But then, I guess they can afford to insult the suffering masses (and yes, even God) for true accountability never touches them. And their words of contrition are simply platitudes, signifying nothing. Their money and other assets should be taken from them and spent to create millions of good-paying jobs so that taxes can replenish the nation’s coffers to fund programs for those who are still looking for work and for those who cannot work.

Let them eat ramen three times a day.

What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.

The window for change is rapidly closing. Health care, Afghanistan and the terrorism panic may have exhausted Washington’s already limited capacity for heavy lifting, especially in an election year. The White House’s chief economic hand, Lawrence Summers, has repeatedly announced that “everybody agrees that the recession is over” — which is technically true from an economist’s perspective and certainly true on Wall Street, where bailed-out banks are reporting record profits and bonuses. The contrary voices of Americans who have lost pay, jobs, homes and savings are either patronized or drowned out entirely by a political system where the banking lobby rules in both parties and the revolving door between finance and government never stops spinning.

via Op-Ed Columnist – The Other Plot to Wreck America – NYTimes.com.