Cherchez la Verite: If only every American could watch these interviews and understand what is said here, millions would take to the streets when Obama and the Congress get set pass the "Grand Bargain," which is truly the "Grand Betrayal" -- aka legislative theft of American's social safety net. Bill Black is one of the top economists in the country and also a white-colar criminologist who sent over a thousand savings-and-loan CEOs to jail in the early 1990's for kind of financial crimes now committed with impunity by today's "too-big-to-fail" banks, whose CEOs have been rewarded, rather than jailed for their mega-crimes, protected by the likes of Tim Geithner and Jack Lew. Matt Taibbi is an investigative reporter who has been exposing in Rolling Stone magazine the criminality of the big banks and the government that coddles them.

Monday, January 14, 2013

If only every American could watch these interviews and understand what is said here, millions would take to the streets when Obama and the Congress get set pass the "Grand Bargain," which is truly the "Grand Betrayal" -- aka legislative theft of American's social safety net. Bill Black is one of the top economists in the country and also a white-colar criminologist who sent over a thousand savings-and-loan CEOs to jail in the early 1990's for kind of financial crimes now committed with impunity by today's "too-big-to-fail" banks, whose CEOs have been rewarded, rather than jailed for their mega-crimes, protected by the likes of Tim Geithner and Jack Lew. Matt Taibbi is an investigative reporter who has been exposing in Rolling Stone magazine the criminality of the big banks and the government that coddles them.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2013 Original Here

"Failure of Epic Proportions": Treasury Nominee Jack Lew’s Pro-Bank, Austerity, Deregulation Legacy

Former bank regulator William Black and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi join us to dissect the career of Jack Lew, President Obama’s pick to replace Treasury Secretary Timothy Geither. Currently Obama’s chief of staff, Lew was an executive at Citigroup from 2006 to 2008 at the time of the financial crisis. He backed financial deregulation efforts while he headed the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton. During that time, Clinton enacted two key laws to deregulate Wall Street: the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Black, a white-collar criminologist and former senior financial regulator, is the author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One." A contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, Taibbi is the author of "Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History." [Original includes rush transcript]

FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2013 Original Here

Matt Taibbi & William Black on Bailout Secrets & How New Foreclosure Deal Spares Banks from Justice

Four years after the massive bailout that rescued Wall Street, we look at the state of the financial sector with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi and former financial regulator William Black. In a new article for Rolling Stone, Taibbi argues the government did not just bail out Wall Street, but also lied on the financial sector’s behalf, calling unhealthy banks healthy and helping banks cover up how much aid they were getting. The government’s approach to the banks came under new scrutiny this week after it reached an $8.5 billion settlement for improprieties in the wrongful foreclosures on millions of American homeowners, including flawed paperwork, robo-signing and wrongly modified loans. The settlement will end an independent review of all foreclosures, meaning the banks could be avoiding billions of dollars in further penalties, in addition to criminal prosecution. [Original includes rush transcript]