Your government at work for the banks ... part 2

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 01/21/2012 - 16:44

 

This from Reuters who unlike most of the rest of our national media, has recently awakened to the smell of coffee and is now rolling.

Ah well, better late than never.

Not a week goes by that somewhere in my reading somebody doesn't marvel that more than 3 years into this mess nobody is in jail or even under indictment for all of the fraud and basic malfeasance that has taken place at the banks.

Here's your likely answer.

As always click anywhere below for the entire story.

Highly educational.

 

Insight: Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks

 

 

(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn't brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks' offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.

 

Change you can believe in.

 

The Man Who Busted the Banksters

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 01/21/2012 - 06:41

 

I had never heard of Ferdinand Pecora.

The fact that his name is never mentioned in anybody's high school government class is a damnable shame.

He should have a day all his own in every government class at every school in every state of this union.

As an aside, his book is presently going for $550.00 at Amazon.

The following excerpt is taken from a short story at Smithsonian.com titled "The Man Who Busted The Banksters.

Click anywhere below for the entire piece.

Way super double highly recommended ..... plus ... and then some.

 

 

Just months before Hoover left office, Pecora was appointed chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking and Currency.  Assigned to probe the causes of the 1929 crash, he led what became known as the “Pecora commission,” making front-page news when he called Charles Mitchell, the head of the largest bank in America, National City Bank (now Citibank), as his first witness.

“Sunshine Charley” strode into the hearings with a good deal of contempt for both Pecora and his commission.  Though shareholders had taken staggering losses on bank stocks, Mitchell admitted that he and his top officers had set aside millions of dollars from the bank in interest-free loans to themselves.  Mitchell also revealed that despite making more than $1 million in bonuses in 1929, he had paid no taxes due to losses incurred from the sale of diminished National City stock ..... to his wife.  

Pecora revealed that National City had hidden bad loans by packaging them into securities and pawning them off to unwitting investors.  (Ever heard that one before?)  By the time Mitchell’s testimony made the newspapers, he had been disgraced, his career had been ruined, and he would soon be forced into a million-dollar settlement of civil charges of tax evasion.  “Mitchell,” said Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, “more than any 50 men is responsible for this stock crash.”

 

Whoa, a regulator actually doing his job.

As opposed to a regulator spending his time working on his next job.

 

To quote Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran speaking to the UN 9/23/2011

Submitted by Roanman on Fri, 01/20/2012 - 06:03

 

"Approximately, three billion people of the world live on less than 2.5 dollars a day, and over a billion people live without having even one sufficient meal on a daily basis; 

Forty-percent of the poorest world populations only share five percent of the global income, while twenty percent of the richest people share seventy-five percent of the total global income.

More than twenty thousand innocent and destitute children die every day in the world because of poverty. In the United States, eighty percent of financial resources are controlled by ten percent of its population, while only twenty percent of these resources belong to the ninety percent of the population ...

Which country's military spending exceeds annually a thousand billion dollars, more than the military budgets of all countries of the world combined?

...What is the justification for the presence of hundreds of US military and intelligence bases in different parts of the world, including 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, 87 in South Korea, 83 in Italy, 45 in the United Kingdom,and 21 in Portugal?

Does this mean anything other than military occupation?"

 

If it ain't Goldman Sachs, it's J.P. Morgan

Submitted by Roanman on Thu, 01/19/2012 - 19:39

 

From Reuters.

It's always interesting when the thieves start turning on each other.

Click on the photo for the entire story.

 

In MF Global, JPMorgan again at center of a financial failure

 

Thu Jan 19, 2012 10:18am EST

 

(Reuters) - In late October, as MF Global Holdings Ltd teetered toward bankruptcy, Jon Corzine phoned his close-knit circle of Wall Street friends for help.

His firm, facing demands from customers and other firms for cash, needed to sell billions of dollars in securities to raise the money. As the week progressed, MF Global executives came to believe that JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of MF Global's primary bankers and a middleman moving that cash, was dragging its feet in forwarding the funds.

 

Scroll down one post to see who the boys are supporting in this years presidential election, having supported Obama in 2008.

 

To quote Fred Reed once again

Submitted by Roanman on Wed, 01/18/2012 - 17:21

 

As previously discussed, we love Fred Reed.

Click on Fred's photo to link up to his outstanding and provacative site

 

Vote? Why? ...

I want to roll back the onrushing police state and return to constitutional government. ...

Who do I vote for? ...

I want to end our stupid wars, now. Yesterday.

Who do I vote for?

There is no anti'war candidate (ERP). Obama sends the troops anywhere he can think of, and all the Republicans want to attack Iran. I want to reduce the military by half and end the militarization of the country that is bankrupting us.

Who do I vote for? (ERP) 

I want to reduce the size of government, get rid of the departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Commerce, toss the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and so on. What candidate wants to do these things? Republicans talk a good show, but which of them actually wants to cut?

I want to end affirmative action, which means governmental favor for some citizens over others, and rely on merit. No candidate speaks of this.

Who do I vote for?

I want to end the empire, quit meddling in the business of other countries, get out of South Korea, Japan, and NATO. I don't want to be the world's mommy.

Who do I vote for?

I want to reform America's dysfunctional system of taxation, go to a sales tax or flat tax or value-added tax, anything to get IRS off our backs. It isn't the amount of taxation that I dislike, but the intrusiveness, mystery, complexity, and lack of recourse.

Who do I vote for?

I want to reform the public schools, outlaw teachers unions, requires decent GRE scores from teachers, cut the propaganda and outlaw drugging of students.

Who do I vote for?

Why vote at all?

Nothing of substance is on the table, other than the desire of Republicans to attack Iran. 

The elections are supposed to indicate the presence of democracy, but they do not. Elections do not determine policy but only the division of spoils. An election in which candidates take no positions becomes a high-school popularity contest.

The way to have elections without having a democracy is to let the people vote, but not on anything.

Having a one party system called by two names is a technically slick way of disenfranchising the public without their noticing. In a parliamentary system all manner of politics would gain expression in proportion to their prevalence in the population.

With two identical parties, no dissenting view can ever gain office.

A masterly dodge, this.

 

Nobody around here has clue one what (ERP) means.

 

SOPA

Submitted by Roanman on Wed, 01/18/2012 - 06:07

 

The following is completely plagiarized from Wikipedia.

 

 

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors.

 

The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.[2] Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.[3]

 

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites.

 

The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.[4]

 

 

 

All the World's Gold

Submitted by Roanman on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 18:02

 

This "info graphic" was sent to us in response to this morning's post from the same info address that sent us the Beatles vid.

Whoever you are, keep up the good work.

The following is from Numbersleuth which is a new site to us.

The thing is a little busy maybe but jam packed with just the kind of useless information we love to whip out at parties in an effort to make people thinnk we're a whole lot smarter than we really are.

Click anywhere below for a much larger/easier to read version.

 

All The World's Gold
From: Number Sleuth

Some facts and figures about the Gold we got

Submitted by Roanman on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 07:54

 

The following calculations were compiled or figured by R.E. Mcmaster.

I haven't checked them, but probably will to the extent I'm able to this evening.

It mostly feels about right.

 

There are $30 trillion in currencies worldwide.

All the gold ever mined would fit in a 62.3 ft. cube.

All the gold ever collected, panned and mined since the time of Jesus is worth approximately $7 trillion at today's price.

There are 158,000 tonnes of gold above ground, 86% of which is held by central banks, investors, and jewelry owners.

This means there are 4.8 billion ounces of gold above ground globally, of which 2.1 billion ounces, 43% is in jewelry, religious and art items, official reserves of 1 billion ounces, industrial use of 530 million ounces, and 1.1 billion ounces in private hands.

The market cap of all gold that is above ground, including central bank reserves (30,717 tonnes as to 10/11), is equal to only 1.4% of global financial assets. Combined central bank gold reserves rose in 2009 by 425.4 metric tons to 30,116.9 tons, an increase of $13.3 billion (2009 average prices), the first increase since 1988.

Central banks hold 18% of all the world’s gold ever mined.

 

To quote Casey Stengel over and over and .....

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 01/15/2012 - 07:04

 

Never make predictions, especially about the future.

Good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice-versa.

All right , line up alphabetically according to your height.

Don't cut my throat, I may want to do that later myself.

Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.

I got players with bad watches - they can't tell midnight from noon.  

We are in such a slump that even the ones that are drinkin' aren't hittin'.

You gotta learn that if you don't get it by midnight, chances are you ain't gonna get it, and if you do, it ain't worth it.

Don't drink in the hotel bar, that's where I do my drinking. (To Whitey Ford)

I came in here and a fella asked me to have a drink. I said I don't drink. Then another fella said hear you and Joe DiMaggio aren't speaking and I said I'll take that drink.

I don't like them fellas who drive in two runs and let in three.

I was not successful as a ball player, as it was a game of skill.

Old timers games, weekends, and airplane landings are alike. If you can walk away from them, they're successful.

If we're going to win the pennant, we've got to start thinking we're not as good as we think we are.

Now there's three things that can happen in a ball game: you can win, you can lose, or it can rain.

Managing is getting paid for home runs that someone else hits.

The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.

Son, we'd like to keep you around this season but we're going to try and win a pennant.

Nobody knows this but one of us just got traded to Kansas City.

I feel greatly honored to have a ballpark named after me, especially since I've been thrown out of so many.

You got to get twenty-seven outs to win.

Most games are lost, not won.

You gotta lose 'em some of the time. When you do, lose 'em right.

The Yankees don't pay me to win every day, just two out of three.

Without losers, where would the winners be?

You have to go broke three times to learn how to make a living.

There comes a time in every man's life, and I've had plenty of them.

The trick is growing up without growing old.

 

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