THE US GOVERNMENT HAS JUST DECLINED TO INDICT THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GREATEST REVERSE-ROBIN-HOOD ROBBERY IN HISTORY!!!

On Thursday in Washington, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported it's findings. And guess what? They found blame everywhere they looked ...but they couldn't see the fraud for the sleeze.

You can download this 696-page whitewash here. Or you can watch the TELL-IT-LIKE-IT-IS video below. The Bill Black videos that Prof. Hudson refers to can be found here.

You should be angry! Very angry!!! Not only did the big banks and banksters avoid indictment for the mega-crimes that crashed the western world's economies, but they also get to walk away with between $13- and $23-TRILLION of our taxpayer money dished out to cover their gambling debts.

The American working poor and middle class have just been tacitly reduced to serfdom ...and this is BEFORE they start cutting Social Security and Medicare to "reduce the deficit" that resulted from the greatest reverse-Robin-Hood rip-off in history!!!

Just how long are we going to tolerate this, folks?

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 theREALnewsnetwork .

January 28, 2011

Inquiry Doesn't Call Crisis Systemic Fraud

Michael Hudson: Financial Crisis Inquiry Report fails to call for criminal prosecutions against Wall Street



Bio

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971). ISLET engages in research regarding domestic and international finance, national income and balance-sheet accounting with regard to real estate, and the economic history of the ancient Near East. Michael acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide including Iceland, Latvia and China on finance and tax law.

Dylan Ratigan with Rep. Marcy Kaptur: MERS Whitewash and Fraudclosure Cover-Up -- Another Must-See Video!

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November 24, 2010

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Go here for original.

Go here to learn more about MERS.

DemocracyNow!: As Foreclosures Hit All-Time High, Wall Street on Pace to Hand Out Record $140B in Employee Bonuses

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped 10,000 for the first time in a year, as JPMorgan Chase reported massive profits in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that major US banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year—a record high. But on Main Street, foreclosures are also at record levels, and the official unemployment rate is expected to top ten percent. We speak to former bank regulator William Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

Post Script: Foreclosures: 'Worst three months of all time.'

Why isn't Obama turning to the Credit Unions?

Blogger's Note: I have been banking with the NRL Federal Credit Union for over 40 years with scarcely a glitch. One of my office mates, a technician, once served as an elected director of the NRLFCU. I believe that Mike served without pay and that the salaried officers are paid no more than standard Federal wages. Given the trillions of dollars recently lost by the largest banks, I am led to conclude that the competence (or honesty) of bank CEOs and managers decreases exponentially with the increasing magnitude their salaries, bonuses, stock options, and perks. So why is the government not restructuring the banks for which the taxpayers are now the majority stockholders (by virture of their being billed for the multi-trillion-dollar bailouts) along the lines of the nation's credit unions?

Why isn't Obama turning to the Credit Unions?
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
May 12, 2009

As hundreds of our hard-earned billions are being poured into corrupt, greed-driven, lethally inefficient banks, the Administration, Congress and corporate media have studiously avoided the one sector of the banking industry that actually works---the credit unions.

Throughout the United States there are hundreds of these people-powered banks that have succeeded and prospered while all around them the traditional banking has collapsed into ruin, taking our general economy with them.

Why?

Because unlike those private banks, the America's 10,000 not-for-profit credit unions are controlled by the people who deposit their money there. Loans are made only to members. The deposits are federally insured, and investments are monitored by the depositors and, allegedly, by federal regulators.

For the most part, their decisions are made democratically. Their boards of directors are elected. Increasingly those decisions have been oriented funneling resources into new green industries whose future is bright, and that actually serve that public rather than raping it.

To be sure, there are those credit unions that are plagued with problems. Like all institutions, they all have their flaws. As creatures of the democratic process, they are capable of making wrong decisions while driving those involved stark raving mad.

But by basic mandate, credit unions are ACCOUNTABLE, a concept almost completely lacking from those mega-banks "too big to let fail."

In fact, Obama's fiscal 2010 budget contains $234.6 billion in Community Development Financial Institution funds. Some $113 billions is earmarked for "financial issues in underserved communities," according to the Treasury Department, along with another $80 million for the new Capital Magnet Fund aimed at "enhancing investments in affordable housing opportunities for the very poorest Americans." This money, says a May 7 Treasury Department release, "should be a boon to Credit Unions."

The numbers are a great improvement over the Bush era. But they pale alongside the torrent of cash slushing into failed private banks.

Since the founding of the first true credit unions in Germany beginning in 1852, the institutions have spread throughout Europe, India and North America. The first came to the US in New Hampshire in 1909.

Edward A. Filene, the Boston merchant whose famous basement offered bargain clothing to working people, Basic principles include the idea that only members can borrow money from a credit union, and that the loans must be "prudent and productive." Because loans involve the money of a close-knit group, and must be approved by members whose money is at risk, the credit unions are a model of how the banking system might be remade.

On average about 10 of the nation's 10,000 credit unions fail each year. Because depositors' money is federally guaranteed, they may lose their bank, but not their deposits.

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Originally published by The Free Press (http://freepress.org).

The Folks Who Brought You this Financial Meltdown Are Still at the Helm

Robert Rubin - Alan Greenspan - Larry Summers

In his column of 29 March, Paul Krugman recalls the Time Magazine cover from 10 years ago that glorified Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, and Larry Summers as the “Committee to Save the World” who had “prevented a global financial meltdown—(thus) far.” Time credited them with leading the global financial system through a crisis, which in Krugman’s words “seemed terrifying at the time, although it was a small blip compared with what we’re going through now.”

In his OpEdNews column of 27 March “History Lesson: And These Are the People We Expect to Fix Things Now?” Dave Lindorff recalls the event that opened the way for today’s financial meltdown. It was the repeal back in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had been enacted expressly to prevent the very kinds of malpractice by banks and insurance companies that brought on the Great Depression. Much of Lindorff’s material was drawn from a 5 November 1999 article in the New York Times by Stephen Labaton, from which I’ve selected three quotes below.

Then-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers (who is presently Director of President Obama’s Economic Council and a chief architect of the current multi-trillion-dollar bailout/giveaway to A.I.G. and the giant banks):

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century. This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota:

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010. I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Then-Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota:

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis. Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''

The bill repealing Glass-Steagal1 was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House by 362 to 57 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

So now in 20:20 hindsight, who should President Obama choose to lead us out of this mess? Well, Paul Wellstone was killed in an airplane crash in 2002 (which many folks believe to have been suspitious). Thank God, Byron Dorgan was spared though. But, go figure ...Obama picked Summers! And also Geithner, who in 1999 was a protégé of Robert Rubin, another of the Time Magazine cover guys billed as the “Committee to Save the World.”

So the very same characters that got us into this mess have been tasked with getting us out of it ...and their idea seems to be to pump trillions of un-audited taxpayer dollars into the banking system that they personally set up to fail in the first place.

How many trillions? Well, in his 27 March OEN column “Obama’s Latest No Banker Left Behind Scheme,” Stephen Lendman does some totaling:

“So hyped by advance fanfare, Timothy Geithner unveiled his Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) on March 23, the latest in a growing alphabet soup of handouts topping $12.5 trillion and counting - so much in so many forms, in "gov-speak" language, with so many changing and moving parts, it's hard for experts to keep up let alone the public, except to sense something is very wrong. They're being fleeced by a finance Ponzi scheme, sheer flimflam...”

Lendman’s article is almost encyclopedic at 7 pages, but one small paragraph near the end knocked my socks off! It was this mention of the sinister core of the financial crisis, the Credit Default Swaps (CDS), gleaned from an important cautionary article by Martin D. Weiss:

“...the money spent or committed by the government so far is also too much for another, relatively less-known reason: Hidden in an obscure corner of the derivatives market is a unique credit default swap that virtually no one is talking about — contracts on the default of United States Treasury bonds. Quietly and without fanfare, a small but growing number of investors are not only thinking the unthinkable, they're actually spending money on it, bidding up the premiums on Treasury bond credit default swaps to 14 times their 2007 level. This is an early warning of the next big shoe to drop in the debt crisis — serious potential damage to the credit, credibility, and borrowing power of the United States Treasury.”

The mainstream media repeatedly touts U.S. Treasuries as "ultra secure" investments. This makes me wonder... Are the "masters of the universe" and their media arm setting up to con Americans into transferring what little is left of their retirement savings into “ultra safe” Treasuries ...where they will be exposed the crash of the dollar? In such an event, the already ultra-rich bankers and hedge-fund managers would be positioned to make still another killing by cashing the CDS they’ve written against working America’s last stash. This day could well come if and when foreign governments sense the dollar is doomed and begin dumping their U.S. Treasury holdings.

But Paul Krugman in his column of April 2^nd (thankfully not April 1^st!) argues that the Chinese simply own too many T-bills ($2 trillion worth) to even think of selling them, knowing that this would create a panic causing the whole world to sell off their T-bills, instantly driving their values into the abyss (while kicking U.S. interest rates into the stratosphere). So I sure hope he’s right about “China’s Dollar Trap.”

TAXPAYERS ARISE! The True Meaning of Cramer-v.-Stewart Debate

Every U.S. taxpayer should watch this edition of The Daily Show: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Keep you ear open to how many times either Jon Stewart or Jim Cramer mentions the fact that banks have been using "35-to-one leverage" in their derivatives trading. What exactly does this mean? Well, it means that they were betting 35 times their net worth that the markets would go up, up, up ...forever.

And when they finally found out that it was all just a bubble, which would not continue inflating forever (surprise!), they suddenly found themselves up to their keisters in debt for 35 times their net worths!!!

What to do???

Oh, no problema. The government, acting as agent for the taxpayer, would commit the taxpayers to pay their debt! Swee...eet for most of the billionaire bankers (though too bad about the few like Madoff, whose guilt was much easier to expose)! Too bad too for the taxpayers that they elected a government that was immediately willing to lay this mountainous debt on their innocent backs...

...or did they really elect their government? Jon Stewart now needs to invite on to The Daily Show representatives of the national TV news community that failed to report a single word of the abounding evidence of the election theft that has been going on for the past decade...

If anyone has the slightest doubt that some of our “elected” representatives and officials are covering up the election fraud committed on their behalves, watch Tucson local TV newscaster Bud Foster interviewing attorney Bill Risner regarding evidence of election theft in Pima County, AZ. (It comes out in this interview that LOCAL Democrats -- AND REPUBLICANS! -- are now united in their desire to expose this fraud ...while AZ Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, has repeatedly frustrated Risner's lawsuits for access to public records that would finally reveal the truth!)