Showing posts with label criminal fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label criminal fraud. Show all posts
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Saturday, December 11, 2010
5 Signs the End is Near for the Criminal Banks
When will we get justice from the banksters? HINT: As soon as we demand justice and not a moment sooner.
Activist Post
Could it be any more clear? The international banks are proven criminal entities -- everyone knows it, and everyone is beginning to openly say it. Yet they are still apparently considered "Too-Big-to-Jail" by our public legislators.
Politicians from around the world continue to bow to the will of the banksters, whether they be in the private sector, privately-owned central banks, or global private banks, while the people continue to be brazenly looted to fund their criminal enterprise.
Our leaders are being forced by the international banks to give them public pensions and demand higher taxes without the consent of the voting public. So much for sovereign countries making their own laws. This, after these very bankers brought the nations of the world to their knees in the first place. The emperor is nearly naked for all to see; however, the final curtain to be pulled will thrust the angry populace well over the tipping point when they realize their servitude was purchased with fraudulent money.
It's all an illusion to enslave us. This insanity is about to end. We have the power to change our reality, but only if we have the collective awareness, courage and will to take it. The time for liberty and justice is here for free humans to live in a lawful society. We must immediately demand justice: seize the criminals' assets, release all debt prisoners, and reform our monetary system.
Here are 5 signs that the end is near for the criminal banks:
1. Global Awareness is growing among the peasants: Bloomberg recently reported that more than half of Americans polled want the Fed reined in or abolished. This poll indicates tremendous expansion of the public's knowledge of the Fed in America. This tipping point of awareness has already turned to rage in Europe.
2. Wikileaks to release Banking file: Regardless of what these new cables actually reveal, the WikiLeaks saga has hit center stage and will undoubtedly reveal a further wealth of criminal activity. This soap-opera-like, headline-grabbing story is guaranteed to penetrate even the laziest of mainstream news viewers.
3. Defaulting on Debt as a form of protest: The global awareness of the Greatest Bank Robbery of both individuals and governments already has led to a major shift in mentality regarding debt and one's obligation to pay it back. People are refusing to pay their credit cards (or not using them); walking away from mortgages; and are suing banks in the fraudulent mortgage scam. This is a movement that is beginning to recognize the system itself as an immoral one, so there is no moral obligation to further support criminality by participating. This is a massive paradigm shift which will have a "trickle-up" effect, as this mentality eventually asserts itself on governments to stop cooperating with the proven thieves of the banking industry. Governments will have to make the choice either to throw the banksters under the bus, or face their own possible collapse.
4. Ron Paul to chair Fed oversight: Author of End The Fed
, Ron Paul, was named chairman of the House subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy that oversees the Fed. He openly and repeatedly refers to the bankers as criminals in nearly every interview. This is clearly a sign that the Fed's days of running the plantation are coming to an end. Over 25 years in the making, Ron Paul finally will have his platform.
5. After-the-Fed debate heats up: The focus until this point has been to End The Fed. Now the focus has shifted to the assumption that the Fed's days are truly numbered. The time has arrived for groups advocating a new monetary policy to fiercely debate what type of system should replace the current private central bank. This preparation and debate indicates that a collapse of the current banking structure is a foregone conclusion.
The above points are being addressed simultaneously as discussion is increasing about the fact that it is mathematically impossible ever to pay off the fraudulent debt that has been created. Once this is realized by the majority, the end of the criminal banks will be seen not only as a near-term possibility; it will be seen as a self-evident necessity. It is, in fact, The Bankers or Us:
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Could it be any more clear? The international banks are proven criminal entities -- everyone knows it, and everyone is beginning to openly say it. Yet they are still apparently considered "Too-Big-to-Jail" by our public legislators.
Politicians from around the world continue to bow to the will of the banksters, whether they be in the private sector, privately-owned central banks, or global private banks, while the people continue to be brazenly looted to fund their criminal enterprise.
Our leaders are being forced by the international banks to give them public pensions and demand higher taxes without the consent of the voting public. So much for sovereign countries making their own laws. This, after these very bankers brought the nations of the world to their knees in the first place. The emperor is nearly naked for all to see; however, the final curtain to be pulled will thrust the angry populace well over the tipping point when they realize their servitude was purchased with fraudulent money.
It's all an illusion to enslave us. This insanity is about to end. We have the power to change our reality, but only if we have the collective awareness, courage and will to take it. The time for liberty and justice is here for free humans to live in a lawful society. We must immediately demand justice: seize the criminals' assets, release all debt prisoners, and reform our monetary system.
Here are 5 signs that the end is near for the criminal banks:
1. Global Awareness is growing among the peasants: Bloomberg recently reported that more than half of Americans polled want the Fed reined in or abolished. This poll indicates tremendous expansion of the public's knowledge of the Fed in America. This tipping point of awareness has already turned to rage in Europe.
2. Wikileaks to release Banking file: Regardless of what these new cables actually reveal, the WikiLeaks saga has hit center stage and will undoubtedly reveal a further wealth of criminal activity. This soap-opera-like, headline-grabbing story is guaranteed to penetrate even the laziest of mainstream news viewers.
3. Defaulting on Debt as a form of protest: The global awareness of the Greatest Bank Robbery of both individuals and governments already has led to a major shift in mentality regarding debt and one's obligation to pay it back. People are refusing to pay their credit cards (or not using them); walking away from mortgages; and are suing banks in the fraudulent mortgage scam. This is a movement that is beginning to recognize the system itself as an immoral one, so there is no moral obligation to further support criminality by participating. This is a massive paradigm shift which will have a "trickle-up" effect, as this mentality eventually asserts itself on governments to stop cooperating with the proven thieves of the banking industry. Governments will have to make the choice either to throw the banksters under the bus, or face their own possible collapse.
4. Ron Paul to chair Fed oversight: Author of End The Fed
, Ron Paul, was named chairman of the House subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy that oversees the Fed. He openly and repeatedly refers to the bankers as criminals in nearly every interview. This is clearly a sign that the Fed's days of running the plantation are coming to an end. Over 25 years in the making, Ron Paul finally will have his platform.5. After-the-Fed debate heats up: The focus until this point has been to End The Fed. Now the focus has shifted to the assumption that the Fed's days are truly numbered. The time has arrived for groups advocating a new monetary policy to fiercely debate what type of system should replace the current private central bank. This preparation and debate indicates that a collapse of the current banking structure is a foregone conclusion.
The above points are being addressed simultaneously as discussion is increasing about the fact that it is mathematically impossible ever to pay off the fraudulent debt that has been created. Once this is realized by the majority, the end of the criminal banks will be seen not only as a near-term possibility; it will be seen as a self-evident necessity. It is, in fact, The Bankers or Us:
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Saturday, November 27, 2010
Join in on the World's Biggest Bank Run This December
The simple act of removing all of our money from the banks, and doing so in mass on the same day - December 7th - would put a huge scare in the financial barons.
Robert E. Prasch
Alternet
"A spectre is haunting Europe." Its not the revolution that Karl Marx supposed would come about. Nor is it Parisian students and workers taking to the streets as in May 1968. It is the vision of hordes of Europeans striking back at those who caused the 2008 financial crash. This time, organizers are calling for the use of a new weapon, one available to any of us with a bank account. It is the simple act of removing all of our money from the banks, and doing so in mass on the same day - December 7th.
While it is hard to know who first thought of this marvelous act of political theater, it has begun to take serious traction in France and is now spreading across Europe. It has especially taken off since a ringing endorsement of the idea began making the rounds on YouTube and Facebook by the always amusing, and surprisingly thoughtful, ex-soccer star Eric Cantona. Cantona, already famous for his performances with Leeds United, Manchester United, and the French National Team, has remained in the public eye while developing new interests in photography, film, and live theater (Happily for the discerning taste of the French public, he is an excellent photographer, and in the latter endeavors he has the advantage of being mentored by a well-established and highly-talented young actress - his wife, Rachida Brakni).
Of late, the famously mercurial temper that Cantona exhibited on and off the soccer pitch has been redirected from rivals and unruly fans. A prominent target is French President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to create a ministry, museum, and mass public debate on "national identity, all of which Cantona publically ridiculed as "idiotic." His sights are now trained on the banking and financial system that he - correctly - holds responsible for France's current economic problems. This is important because Sarkozy and the EU leadership is using this crisis to erode welfare state protections even as ostensibly scarce public monies are deployed to shore up the banks most responsible for the problem.
Which brings us to the economics of a mass withdrawal of deposits from the banks. Will it bring about an actual bank run or financial crash? Certainly not. For one thing, an organized and deliberate action such as Cantona proposes lacks the element of panic so characteristic of bank runs. Additionally, the banks and the central banks overseeing them will have time to prepare for the event, and should be able to reallocate their holdings of cash, reserves, and other assets in advance. If necessary, banks can always borrow short-term funds on the inter-bank market or even directly from the central bank. A mass withdrawal should, however, shrink the profitability of banks, as retail deposits are normally considered cheap and stable sources of funds with which to finance loans. Large European banks, relative to their American peers, are more dependent on retail deposits, so they will especially miss these funds when the time comes to calculate profits and bonuses.
Read Full Article
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Alternet
"A spectre is haunting Europe." Its not the revolution that Karl Marx supposed would come about. Nor is it Parisian students and workers taking to the streets as in May 1968. It is the vision of hordes of Europeans striking back at those who caused the 2008 financial crash. This time, organizers are calling for the use of a new weapon, one available to any of us with a bank account. It is the simple act of removing all of our money from the banks, and doing so in mass on the same day - December 7th.
While it is hard to know who first thought of this marvelous act of political theater, it has begun to take serious traction in France and is now spreading across Europe. It has especially taken off since a ringing endorsement of the idea began making the rounds on YouTube and Facebook by the always amusing, and surprisingly thoughtful, ex-soccer star Eric Cantona. Cantona, already famous for his performances with Leeds United, Manchester United, and the French National Team, has remained in the public eye while developing new interests in photography, film, and live theater (Happily for the discerning taste of the French public, he is an excellent photographer, and in the latter endeavors he has the advantage of being mentored by a well-established and highly-talented young actress - his wife, Rachida Brakni).
Of late, the famously mercurial temper that Cantona exhibited on and off the soccer pitch has been redirected from rivals and unruly fans. A prominent target is French President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to create a ministry, museum, and mass public debate on "national identity, all of which Cantona publically ridiculed as "idiotic." His sights are now trained on the banking and financial system that he - correctly - holds responsible for France's current economic problems. This is important because Sarkozy and the EU leadership is using this crisis to erode welfare state protections even as ostensibly scarce public monies are deployed to shore up the banks most responsible for the problem.
Which brings us to the economics of a mass withdrawal of deposits from the banks. Will it bring about an actual bank run or financial crash? Certainly not. For one thing, an organized and deliberate action such as Cantona proposes lacks the element of panic so characteristic of bank runs. Additionally, the banks and the central banks overseeing them will have time to prepare for the event, and should be able to reallocate their holdings of cash, reserves, and other assets in advance. If necessary, banks can always borrow short-term funds on the inter-bank market or even directly from the central bank. A mass withdrawal should, however, shrink the profitability of banks, as retail deposits are normally considered cheap and stable sources of funds with which to finance loans. Large European banks, relative to their American peers, are more dependent on retail deposits, so they will especially miss these funds when the time comes to calculate profits and bonuses.
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The "‘War on Terror" is a Fraud
Global Research
The US is today, albeit temporarily, the world’s foremost power. It is a country whose people are blessed with wonderful qualities of the head and heart. They are honest, hardworking problem solvers, large-hearted, decent and deeply innocent. The emergence of the US as a power with the greatest ever reaches in human history is the result of a conscious and sustained effort on the part of Washington to make America a great power.
Central to this nation-building process was the key emphasis on cultivating and creating knowledge of nature, and of the high-level of integrity and commitment of the average American. However, the evolution of the US Public State, as a genuine democracy with the ability to unify mankind on a broad basis, has been derailed consistently, and perhaps irreversibly, by corporate cliques that have taken the US on the path of global conquest and exploitation of the poor but resource-rich countries. This path will eventually lead to USA’s defeat, beginning in Central Asia, and its rapid and bloody decline in a decade or two, unless, of course, the Americans can bring to book those criminal cabals which currently control, chain and exploit this great nation.
The corporations operate secretly, illegally and without regard for the deeper interests of the people or of humanity. Thus, the exploited countries see the US as a power of unprecedented and unmatched ruthlessness. The US is not only the greatest scientific force in history, but it is also the greatest subversive power ever to afflict this globe.
To murder a few million, to destroy countries and cultures, to plunder like no one has ever plundered before, to burn and to ravage the environment beyond imagination, is something that the US forces do in service of its corporate masters. As General “Howling” Jacob Smith told his troops during the Philippine war: “I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill and burn, the better you please me.” Or as the contemporary American writer Michael Ledeen wrote: “Every 10 years or so the US needs to pick up some crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.” This “business” is corporate business.
Corporations have gained ascendancy in the White House, the US legislative bodies and judiciary, as well as the US agencies, some of which, such as the CIA, were created on the persuasion of, and for Wall Street. This corporate ascendancy in US power structure is now a constant and deeply embedded feature of the American domestic and international politics. The people of the US are now out of the loop completely, and perhaps permanently. Therein lies the real danger to the future of mankind.
The current eruption of US militarism reflects the desperate urge of corporate cabals to hastily enslave mankind and apportion all its resources for the US elite, in the name of the US “people” and “civilisation” of course. It was Orwell who once wrote: “As I write highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.” What took the US into World War I was, more than anything else, the financial interests of the House of Morgan.
The House of Morgan enjoyed a very special relation with the British, who decided to borrow money for its war costs from the J.P. Morgan Bank. Without a British victory these loans would be lost. As noted in 1920 by Morgan’s partner Lamont: “The national debts of the world have increased by 210 billion or about 475 percent in the last six years.” Wilson had been elected on the slogan of keeping America out of the war, but he betrayed his people and entered World War I in the interest of US banking and business. This war, fought secretly for the control of petroleum reserves, resulted in an estimated 16 to 20 million deaths, half of them civilian.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission (TC) were set up by the Rockefeller family, the latter in 1973. These “think tanks” work perpetually for the interests of “Big Oil” and related businesses owned by the wealthiest families of the planet. Winston Lord, former US Ambassador to China and former CFR member, once said: “The Trilateral Commission does not run the world, the Council on Foreign Relations does that.” In 1973, David Rockefeller met with 27 heads of state, as well as the Pope and representatives of China and the USSR.
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Sunday, November 21, 2010
Goldman In Insider Trading Probe?
Rolling Stone
News leaked out today that the feds will soon be herding a whole pen full of Wall Street firms into court on insider trading charges, including, reportedly, our old friends Goldman, Sachs.
The basic charge here is that investment banks and other firms were leaking insider info about things like mergers to closely-allied hedge funds, who in turn placed the requisite bets on or against the companies in question.
The most interesting detail in the WSJ piece, to me, was a bit about an email sent by one John Kinnucan, a principal at an Oregon-based company called Broadband Research, to a number of his clients. The email reads, in part, as follows:
"Today two fresh faced eager beavers from the FBI showed up unannounced (obviously) on my doorstep thoroughly convinced that my clients have been trading on copious inside information… (They obviously have been recording my cell phone conversations for quite some time, with what motivation I have no idea.) We obviously beg to differ, so have therefore declined the young gentleman's gracious offer to wear a wire and therefore ensnare you in their devious web."
Aside from the amusing detail here in which Kinnucan brags about turning down an offer to cooperate with the feds (I ain't no stinking rat!) the thing to note here is the list of clients he sent this email to. Those include hedge-fund firms SAC Capital Advisors LP and Citadel Asset Management, and mutual-fund firms Janus Capital Group, Wellington Management Co. and MFS Investment Management.
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RELATED ARTICLE:
The Stock Market Rug is Being Pulled Out By Insiders
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Thursday, November 18, 2010
Seriously, Jail the Bankers or This Economy Will Never Fully Recover
By refusing to hold the corporate criminals at the heart of the housing crisis accountable for their crimes, we’re creating powerful incentives for future malfeasance.
Joshua Holland
Alternet
The Great Recession showed the world that the crimes that create the most victims are not committed by terrorists, gangbangers or drug traffickers, but by well-heeled crooks in Wall Street’s executive suites. Tens of millions of people have seen their jobs disappear and their pension funds fleeced, and had their homes taken out from under their feet as a result of the crash of Wall Street’s Great Casino. Yet so far, the culprits have been given little more than a slap on the wrist.
Failing to prosecute Wall Street’s high-flying crooks doesn’t only represent a great miscarriage of justice. Powerful voices within the economic establishment are now making the case that holding the bankers criminally culpable is necessary if we ever hope to stop our national economy from moving from one speculation-driven bubble to the next.
Nobel-prize winner Joe Stiglitz recently told AOL’s Daily Finance that major damage resulting from the financial disaster “has not really been taken on board, and that is confidence in our legal system, in our rule of law, in our system of justice.” His prescription? “I think we ought to go do what we did” in the wake of similar financial crises in the past, and “actually put many of these guys in prison.”
His argument is based not on the visceral satisfaction of seeing the high and mighty brought down a peg, but on cold economic grounds. At heart, economics is the study of incentives, and by refusing to hold the corporate criminals at the heart of the housing crisis accountable in any meaningful way, we’re creating powerful incentives for more malfeasance in the future.
As Stiglitz explained, “People have an incentive sometimes to behave badly, because they can make more money if they can cheat. If our economic system is going to work then we have to make sure that what they gain when they cheat is offset by a system of penalties.” With those penalties amounting to a small 5 percent or 10 percent tax on illegal profits, what’s to stop the crooks? “You're still sitting home pretty with your several hundred million dollars that you have left over after paying fines,” Stiglitz said.
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Alternet
The Great Recession showed the world that the crimes that create the most victims are not committed by terrorists, gangbangers or drug traffickers, but by well-heeled crooks in Wall Street’s executive suites. Tens of millions of people have seen their jobs disappear and their pension funds fleeced, and had their homes taken out from under their feet as a result of the crash of Wall Street’s Great Casino. Yet so far, the culprits have been given little more than a slap on the wrist.
Failing to prosecute Wall Street’s high-flying crooks doesn’t only represent a great miscarriage of justice. Powerful voices within the economic establishment are now making the case that holding the bankers criminally culpable is necessary if we ever hope to stop our national economy from moving from one speculation-driven bubble to the next.
Nobel-prize winner Joe Stiglitz recently told AOL’s Daily Finance that major damage resulting from the financial disaster “has not really been taken on board, and that is confidence in our legal system, in our rule of law, in our system of justice.” His prescription? “I think we ought to go do what we did” in the wake of similar financial crises in the past, and “actually put many of these guys in prison.”
His argument is based not on the visceral satisfaction of seeing the high and mighty brought down a peg, but on cold economic grounds. At heart, economics is the study of incentives, and by refusing to hold the corporate criminals at the heart of the housing crisis accountable in any meaningful way, we’re creating powerful incentives for more malfeasance in the future.
As Stiglitz explained, “People have an incentive sometimes to behave badly, because they can make more money if they can cheat. If our economic system is going to work then we have to make sure that what they gain when they cheat is offset by a system of penalties.” With those penalties amounting to a small 5 percent or 10 percent tax on illegal profits, what’s to stop the crooks? “You're still sitting home pretty with your several hundred million dollars that you have left over after paying fines,” Stiglitz said.
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Burma Needs Rule Of Law—But So Does U.S.
Vdare
Ten years of rule by the Bush and Obama regimes have seen the collapse of the rule of law in the United States. Is the American media covering this ominous and extraordinary story? No the American media is preoccupied with the rule of law in Burma (Myanmar).
The military regime that rules Burma just released from house arrest the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The American media used the occasion of her release to get on Burma’s case for the absence of the rule of law. I’m all for the brave lady, but if truth be known, "freedom and democracy" America needs her far worse than does Burma.
I’m not an expert on Burma, but the way I see it the objection to a military government is that the government is not accountable to law. Instead, such a regime behaves as it sees fit and issues edicts that advance its agenda. Burma’s government can be criticized for not having a rule of law, but it cannot be criticized for ignoring its own laws. We might not like what the Burmese government does, but, precisely speaking, it is not behaving illegally.
In contrast, the United States government claims to be a government of laws, not of men, but when the executive branch violates the laws that constrain it, those responsible are not held accountable for their criminal actions. As accountability is the essence of the rule of law, the absence of accountability means the absence of the rule of law.
The list of criminal actions by presidents Bush and Obama, Vice President Cheney, the CIA, the NSA, the US military, and other branches of the government is long and growing. For example, both President Bush and vice president Cheney violated US and international laws against torture. Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union responded to Bush’s recent admission that he authorized torture with calls for a criminal investigation of Bush’s crime.
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the ACLU reminded the US Department of Justice (sic) that "a nation committed to the rule of law cannot simply ignore evidence that its most senior leaders authorized torture."
Rob Freer of Amnesty International said that Bush’s admission "to authorizing acts which constitute torture under international law" and which constitute "a crime under international law," puts the US government "under obligation to investigate and to bring those responsible to justice."
The ACLU and Amnesty International do not want to admit it, but the US government shed its commitment to the rule of law a decade ago when the US launched its naked aggression--war crimes under the Nuremberg standard--against Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of lies and deception.
The US government’s contempt for the rule of law took another step when President Bush violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and had the National Security Agency bypass the FISA court and spy on Americans without warrants. The New York Times is on its high horse about the rule of law in Burma, but when a patriot revealed to the Times that Bush was violating US law, the Times’ editors sat on the leak for one year until after Bush was safely re-elected.
Holder, of course, will not attempt to hold Bush accountable for the crime of torture. Indeed, Assistant US Attorney John Durham has just cleared the CIA of accountability for its crime of destroying the videotape evidence of the US government’s illegal torture of detainees, a felony under US law.
Last February Cheney said on ABC’s This Week that "I was a big supporter of waterboarding." US law has always regarded waterboarding as torture. The US government executed WW II Japanese for waterboarding American POWs. But Cheney has escaped accountability, which means that there is no rule of law.
Vice president Cheney’s office also presided over the outing of a covert CIA agent, a felony. Yet, nothing happened to Cheney, and the underling who took the fall had his sentence commuted by President Bush.
President Obama has made himself complicit in the crimes of his predecessor by refusing to enforce the rule of law. In his criminality, Obama has actually surpassed Bush. Bush is the president of extra-judicial torture, extra-judicial detention, extra-judicial spying and invasions of privacy, but Obama has one-upped Bush. Obama is the president of extra-judicial murder.
Not only is Obama violating the sovereignty of an American ally, Pakistan, by sending in drones and Special Forces teams to murder Pakistani civilians, but in addition Obama has a list of American citizens whom he intends to murder without arrest, presentation of evidence, trial and conviction.
The most massive change brought by Obama is his assertion of the right of the executive branch to murder whomever it wishes without any interference from US and international law. The world has not seen such a criminal government as Obama’s since Joseph Stalin’s and Hitler’s.
On November 8, the US Department of Justice (sic) told federal district court judge John Bates that president Obama’s decision to murder American citizens is one of "the very core powers of the president." Moreover, declared the Justice (sic) Department, the murder of American citizens is a "political question" that is not subject to judicial review.
In other words, federal courts exist for one purpose only--to give a faux approval to executive branch actions.
If truth be known, there is more justice in Burma under the military regime than in the USA. The military regime put Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in her own home.
The military regime did not throw her into a dungeon and rape and torture her under cover of false allegations and indefinite detention without charges. Moreover, the military "tyrants" released her either as a sign of good will or under pressure from international human rights groups, or some combination of the two.
If only comparable good will existed in the US government or pressure from international human rights groups had equal force in America as in Burma.
But, alas, in America macho tough guys approve the virtual strip search of their wives and daughters by full body scanners and the grouping by TSA thugs of three-year old children screaming in terror.
Unlike in Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi fights for human rights, the sheeple in Amerika submit to the total invasion of their privacy and to the total destruction of their civil liberties for no other reason than they are brain dead and believe without any evidence that they are at the mercy of "terrorists" in far distant lands who have no armies, navies, or air forces and are armed only with AK-47s and improvised explosive devices.
The ignorant population of the "Great American Superpower," buried in fear propagated by a Ministry of Truth, has acquiesced in the total destruction of the US Constitution and their civil liberties.
Sheeple such as these have no respect anywhere on the face of the earth.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds
, The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America
, Alienation and the Soviet Economy: The Collapse of the Socialist Era
, Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy
, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice
.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds
, The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, Alienation and the Soviet Economy: The Collapse of the Socialist Era, Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
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Friday, November 12, 2010
Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners
Retired judges are rushing through complex cases to speed foreclosures in Florida
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone
The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This "rocket docket," as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on — securitized mortgages and laby rinthine derivative deals of a type that didn't even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn't to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.
The Real Reason America’s Cities and Towns Are Broke
The rocket docket wasn't created to investigate any of that. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork. The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville judge, the Honorable A.C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass on the street every 2.4 minutes.
Exclusive Excerpt: America on Sale, From Matt Taibbi's Griftopia
Foreclosure lawyers told me one other thing about the rocket docket. The hearings, they said, aren't exactly public. "The judges might give you a hard time about watching," one lawyer warned. "They're not exactly anxious for people to know about this stuff." Inwardly, I laughed at this — it sounded like typical activist paranoia. The notion that a judge would try to prevent any citizen, much less a member of the media, from watching an open civil hearing sounded ridiculous. Fucked-up as everyone knows the state of Florida is, it couldn't be that bad. It isn't Indonesia. Right?
Well, not quite. When I went to sit in on Judge Soud's courtroom in downtown Jacksonville, I was treated to an intimate, and at times breathtaking, education in the horror of the foreclosure crisis, which is rapidly emerging as the even scarier sequel to the financial meltdown of 2008: Invasion of the Home Snatchers II. In Las Vegas, one in 25 homes is now in foreclosure. In Fort Myers, Florida, one in 35. In September, lenders nationwide took over a rec ord 102,134 properties; that same month, more than a third of all home sales were distressed properties. All told, some 820,000 Americans have already lost their homes this year, and another 1 million currently face foreclosure.
Throughout the mounting catastrophe, however, many Americans have been slow to comprehend the true nature of the mortgage disaster. They seemed to have grasped just two things about the crisis: One, a lot of people are getting their houses foreclosed on. Two, some of the banks doing the foreclosing seem to have misplaced their paperwork.
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Rolling Stone
The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This "rocket docket," as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on — securitized mortgages and laby rinthine derivative deals of a type that didn't even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn't to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.
The Real Reason America’s Cities and Towns Are Broke
The rocket docket wasn't created to investigate any of that. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork. The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville judge, the Honorable A.C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass on the street every 2.4 minutes.
Exclusive Excerpt: America on Sale, From Matt Taibbi's Griftopia
Foreclosure lawyers told me one other thing about the rocket docket. The hearings, they said, aren't exactly public. "The judges might give you a hard time about watching," one lawyer warned. "They're not exactly anxious for people to know about this stuff." Inwardly, I laughed at this — it sounded like typical activist paranoia. The notion that a judge would try to prevent any citizen, much less a member of the media, from watching an open civil hearing sounded ridiculous. Fucked-up as everyone knows the state of Florida is, it couldn't be that bad. It isn't Indonesia. Right?
Well, not quite. When I went to sit in on Judge Soud's courtroom in downtown Jacksonville, I was treated to an intimate, and at times breathtaking, education in the horror of the foreclosure crisis, which is rapidly emerging as the even scarier sequel to the financial meltdown of 2008: Invasion of the Home Snatchers II. In Las Vegas, one in 25 homes is now in foreclosure. In Fort Myers, Florida, one in 35. In September, lenders nationwide took over a rec ord 102,134 properties; that same month, more than a third of all home sales were distressed properties. All told, some 820,000 Americans have already lost their homes this year, and another 1 million currently face foreclosure.
Throughout the mounting catastrophe, however, many Americans have been slow to comprehend the true nature of the mortgage disaster. They seemed to have grasped just two things about the crisis: One, a lot of people are getting their houses foreclosed on. Two, some of the banks doing the foreclosing seem to have misplaced their paperwork.
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It's Not the "Great Recession", It's the Great BANK ROBBERY
In case it's not crystal clear, this isn't the "Great Recession".
It's really the Great Bank Robbery.
First, there was the threat of martial law if the $700 Billion Tarp bailout wasn't passed. Specifically, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson warned Congress that there would be martial law unless the Tarp bailouts were approved.
As I pointed out last October:
The New York Times wrote on July 16th:
In retrospect, Congress felt bullied by Mr. Paulson last year. Many of them fervently believed they should not prop up the banks that had led us to this crisis — yet they were pushed by Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke into passing the $700 billion TARP, which was then used to bail out those very banks.Read Full Article
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