JustThinking.us

Too bad he goes to babbling a bit about privacy issues at the end of this speech, because John Dingell hits it out of the park ... with men on ... and then some ... during the 1999 debate on the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act.  

Which legislation repealed those portions of the Glass Steagall act that seperated institutions that take customer's deposits from investment banks and insurance companies.

Too big to fail said Mr. Dingell in 1999.

Click on the above cartoon to link up to Khalil Bendib who I think is the above artist as I can't read the name ... at Otherworld.org

In case your wondering what Glass Steagall is in the first place, this vid provides a simple and sufficient answer to that question.

In a nutshell Glass Steagall is the shorthand name for legislation passed in 1933 that was specifically designed to help prevent another stock market crash ala 1929 and subsequent depression ala "The Great Depression".

It worked like a charm too ...... right up until the moment it was repealed.  

The following is a brief history lesson from Bill Moyers, followed by an interview with John Reed, former chairman and CEO of then Citicorp who along with Sandy Weil engineered the Citicorp merger with Travelers Group that screwed up everything.

Democrats are gonna hate this story as it totally blows up the notion that the powers that be within the Democrat party care one whit more about you than do those reprehensible fascists of the right.

It takes 36 minutes and is worthy of every second.

If you take the time to watch this, you'll at least have an understanding of what hit you.

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.

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.

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]

The great conceit amongst the great unwashed (that would be us) is as follows, “If we can just get our guys elected, then everything will be Ok.” 

Among the great things about the Internet is the fact that there is a site out there for everyone regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation or political affiliation.

Being a retired person enables me to spend many of my days skulking the Internet from the way farthest reaches of the left to the way farthest reaches of the right and everything in between, reading the partisan nonsense that passes for thought.

I have come to the unhappy conclusion that the political parties that supposedly represent the interests of both the left and the right are rotten at their very core and neither can be trusted with the people’s business.

Further, there is no party that represents the majority of the American people, those that reside in the middle. 

Liberal/Progressive Democrat types are always whining about a lack of “bipartisanship” within our elected governmental bodies. What bipartisanship of course means to your garden variety liberal/progressive type is that the right needs to agree completely with every thought they might have because they are good people and as good people they only want what is good for other people.  And by extrapolation anyone who disagrees with any tenet that a liberal/progressive person might hold to must be a bad person because all liberal/progressives are good people who only want what is good for other people.

Those people who identify themselves, as Conservative Republican’s really don’t care that much about bipartisanship as they are fully convinced that the left is populated by delusional whack jobs lacking even the tiniest clue about what really works.

Each side has been able to maintain at the very least a modicum of political power and maintain their rancorous debate for the better part of a generation.

The result of course has been a decade or more of gridlock on practically any issue you can think of, with one notable exception.

The National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1540) passed the Republican controlled House of Representatives by a vote of 283 to 136 having passed in the Democrat held Senate by a vote of 86-13 and was subsequently signed into law by Democrat President Barack Obama.

This bill includes a provision that enables the United States Military to arrest and hold without trial for an indefinite period of time any person the government deems to be a terrorist.

Now what you need to appreciate here is that opposition to this provision extends from the furthest reaches of the American left to the furthest reaches of the American right, from the ACLU to the Tea Party Patriots and beyond.

Test this out for yourself.

Ask anyone you know if they think it’s a good idea for the military to be able to arrest and hold indefinitely without trial an American citizen suspected of being a terrorist.

I’ve asked a raft of people, they mostly look at me like I’m an idiot to even suggest such a thing.

Yet Congress which exists to represent the will of the American people passes this bill with way majorities, and the President who ran on a promise of change signed it immediately.

In all my reading and what I find to be most interesting is that I can find no evidence that the American people's interest/concern about terror and terrorists even begins to approach that of our elected representatives.

With the exception of certain elements within the “Christian Right” who are pretty damn sure Islam is out to get 'em and in all fairness do have some evidence to support that notion, most Americans view “Terror” as an issue that pales in comparison to many other issues including jobs, healthcare, entitlements, deficits ..... you name it.

Yet both political parties remain terrorized and continue to sell “Terror” every time they seek to ...

And that is the very question you need to be asking yourself,  "Just what exactly is it, that they are seeking to do?"

From Rolling Stone Magazine and Matt Taibbi where/whom the photo and excerpt below were taken and The Wall Street Journal, here's a prime example of the rotted stench that is our government and the people we employ at the top.

The photo below is that of Walter Lukken, who having done such a masterful job regulating the commodities futures trading industry as acting Chairman of the CFTC (The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commision) has been made head of the Futures Trading Association, that industry's government Lobby.

Click the gears above for the two stories.

As you would expect, being a magazine piece, Taibbi's is the better read as it offers more background including the now legendary Billy Tauzin example of this practice, although one need always be mindful of Rolling Stones Magazine's propensity for confusing reporting with editorializing.

Recommended anyway.

Revolving Door: From Top Futures Regulator to Top Futures Lobbyist

While America focused on New Hampshire, a classic example of revolving-door politics took place in Washington, going almost completely unnoticed.

In this case, the hire involves Walter Lukken, who toward the end of the Bush years was the acting head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As the chief regulator of the commodities markets, it was Lukken’s job to spot and combat speculative abuses and manipulations that might have led to artificial price hikes and other disruptions.

In 2008, the last full year of his tenure, Lukken presided over some of the worst chaos in the commodities markets in recent history, with major disruptions in the markets for food products like wheat, cotton, soybeans, and rice, and energy commodities like oil.

The best line in The Wall Street Journal piece reads as follows.

When Mr. Lukken headed the CFTC, he backed a more flexible, "principles-based" approach to regulation, different from what was seen as the prescriptive and "rule-based" methods employed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which polices stock markets.

From THE GOLDEN TRUTH and Dave in Denver, here's a bit of holiday cheer.

Click anywhere below for the entire piece ... recomended as it makes perfect sense.

At least to us.

Think Your IRA Is Safe?  Better Think Again

The MF Global bankruptcy is a blueprint for how the Government and wealthy bankers will begin to take everything that is kept within the confines of the financial system.

Ten years ago I tried to tell many friends and acquaintances that housing prices would collapse and this country was headed for disaster and that the only only way to protect themselves financially was to load up on gold and silver.   Almost everyone looked at me like I needed my own floor in the mental health wing at Belleview Hospital in NYC.  Of course, that was back when gold was around $300/oz. and housing prices were on average about 50% higher than they are now.

As I run into these folks these days, they compliment me for my ability to see into the future and immediately want to know what I think will happen next.   My only logical response is to say that they don't want to know what I think because, just like 10 years ago, they'll think I'm crazy.   I add that I hope I'm wrong this time about what I think is coming but that I doubt that I am.

I bring this up because one of the things that I believe will eventually happen is that the Government will find a way to confiscate all retirement assets (IRA's/401k's).   But rather than outright taking them, they'll substitute them with some kind of retirement "annuity" that is funded with good old Treasury bonds.   Of course, by that point in time, the Treasury bond printing press will be working overtime to print currency the Government can use to stay afloat.

“The doctrine of habeas corpus goes back to before the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. 

It [Magna Carta] was an ancient Anglo-Saxon limitation on the power of government. If the feds held a prisoner, a writ of habeas corpus required them to ‘produce the body.’ The government had to either release the person or charge him with a crime. For more than 800 years, this gave people some protection against government.

But now, in the Year of Our Lord 2011, the Congress of the United States of America, with the complicity of POTUS, himself, has seen fit to deny the right of habeas corpus to American citizens.

Henceforth, the feds can capture you, put you in prison and waterboard you every day for the rest of your life. 

They don’t have to charge you with murder or jay-walking or any crime at all. They don’t have to let you talk to a lawyer. Or to your spouse. Or to your Congressman.

They don’t have to read you your rights or provide any evidence against you. Like the Argentines in the ’80s, they just ‘disappear’ you. And you’re gone forever…

We’re talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. 

It puts every single citizen American at risk.

Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us?

The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism.

So now the feds, whose salaries we pay, can spy on us with drones we paid for too.

They can send a swat team to disappear us ... and keep us in prison.

The genius of modern democracy is that it makes the citizen a party to his own enslavement.

Rather than give up 10% of his output to his feudal lord and master, he gives up 30% to 50% to his democratically-elected bosses.

They tell him what to do. And he believes he is giving the orders!”

Bill Bonner 12/20/2011

Click anywhere above for the entire Bill Bonner piece title "Power Corrupts"

Click on the above photo for a very quick and simple site on the Magna Carta.

Another one that is tough to watch.

Six months later, investigations continue as official stories change.

Nobody is under indictment.

One would think that a police department populated by people of even average intelligence would, if only for the sake of their own safety, be eager to rid themselves of abusive/murderous police officers and ingratiate themselves into the community.

This doesn't seem to be the case here.

Our strongly held opinion is that what you have here is a perfect example of the sense of entitlement and contempt for the citizenry of this country by them that are being paid far better than good money to serve and protect the citzenry of this country.

This contempt extends from the highest offices in the land to the local departments of formerly safe and peaceful California mountain communities.

Which communities would be safe and peaceful still were it not for government thuggery.

From Bloomberg News who had to go to court with the Fed and a consortium of banks in order to obtain the following story under the Freedom of Information Act.

Click on the photo below of Goldman Sachs' personal bag boys for the entire story.

Way super double highly recommended ... READ IT ... you need to understand this stuff.

Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress

The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.

What really irritates me about all of this is the fact that I could have gone and got that MBA, maybe a JD, moved to New York and become a thief, but noooooo.

American Readers

“US Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a ‘battlefield’ and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial. The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world.

The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself. The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday.

The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing…Now is the time to stop this bad idea.

Please urge your senators to vote YES on the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.”

These provisions are being reviled across the political spectrum.

There are a number of petitions available at sites ranging from the ACLU to Ron Paul.

We selected the ACLU to link up to only because our Senator Levin is a well known card carrying member with an 84% lifetime score.

Take a minute and decide if you think it's a good idea for the United States Military to be arresting American citizens and holding them indefinately without charge or trial, for any reason.

It is our opinion that the potential for abuse is staggering and that it is a certainty that if enacted these provisions will be abused.

As always when Congress comes after the freedoms of the citizenry it is in the interest of protecting us from terrorists.

It is becoming increasingly clear to us that the interests of "Terror" and Congress are dovetailing quite nicely.

Huron County Michigan Deputy Sheriff Ryan Swartz was dispatched to the scene of an accident between an automobile and a deer.

The deer evidently having failed to look both ways.

When he arrived he found the deer standing in the middle of the road, frozen from fear.

The following video is about what happened next.

Thanks to the little wiffer for sending this in.

Click anywhere above to link up to the paper.