"Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...and when yourealize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."
President James Garfield, 2 weeks before his assassination.
A foreclosure settlement between five major banks guilty of robo-signing and the attorneys general of the 50 states is pending for Monday, February 6th; but it is still not clear if all the AGs will sign. California was to get over half of the $25 billion in settlement money, and California AG Kamala Harris has withstood pressure to settle.
That is good. She and the other AGs should not sign until a thorough investigation has been conducted. The evidence to date suggests that robo-signing was not a mere technical default or sloppy business practice but was part and parcel of a much larger fraud, the fraud that brought down the whole economy in 2008. It is not just distressed homeowners but the entire economy that has paid the price, resulting in massive unemployment and a shrunken tax base, throwing state and local governments into insolvency and forcing austerity measures and cutbacks in government services across the nation. More...
Blankfein, 57, received 61,702 shares on Feb. 1, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The stock closed at $113.45 in New York that day. Goldman Sachs raised Blankfein's salary to $2 million last year from $600,000.
Goldman Sachs's 2011 earnings dropped 47 percent to the lowest level since 2008 on a second consecutive annual decline in fixed-income trading revenue. The New York-based firm reduced compensation 21 percent and eliminated 2,400 jobs. The stock fell 46 percent in 2011, more than the 18 percent drop in the S&P 500 Financials Index.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. left Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon's pay package for 2011 almost unchanged at about $23 million after trimming stock and options awards, according to a person with knowledge of the decision. More...
Wealth inequality is not such a big problem when you are at the top of the income pyramid.
In a sense, we are all now street journalists. Most famously, the name "Rodney King" would mean nothing to anyone today but for a bystander with a cell phone camera. As these devices have become all but ubiquitous, we ordinary citizens now have an unprecedented ability to record crimes in progress, regardless of what side of the law the perpetrators are on.
Or do we?
While police understandably have welcomed citizen recordings that help them with their cases, they are again understandably not so sanguine when they themselves are the potential lawbreakers. And they're hitting back. People filming unfolding events are routinely ordered away from the scene by the police, even if they happen to be standing on their own private property – and threatened with arrest if they don't put the camera away.
Now authorities are asserting their right to charge video- or audiographers of police events with crimes ranging from obstruction of justice to eavesdropping to illegal wiretapping. More...
Since most of the original Occupy encampments were evicted by wintertime, the question now is, what's next for activists? One of the most popular suggestions is "Occupy Our Homes," a campaign in which occupiers around the country would do actions at foreclosed houses or at bailed-out banks that are throwing people out of their homes.
Since so many people in America are dealing with insecurity about their homes, the shift to doing foreclosure prevention and anti-eviction actions allows new groups of people with a clear sense of their own connection to the struggle to engage with the Occupy movement. Social movements at their best are about helping people take their individual troubles and link them to a public problem and shifting the focus from trying to personally cope to taking collective action. More...
A University of Chicago economist says Antarctica or Guam would be better places than Chicago for the upcoming G8 and NATO summits, now scheduled for mid-May in the Windy City. Economist Allen Sanderson often questions large scale government subsidies for sports venues like Soldier Field for the Bears and U.S. Cellular Field for the White Sox. In the case of the NATO and G8 summits, Sanderson says there's a lot of downside for the city's reputation and little upside in the way of economic development.
"It's just a potential disaster," Sanderson said. "Again, I hope it's not. I hope things go really well and the city gets a real positive spin from it, but if you were betting in Las Vegas, you'd bet that's not going to be the outcome." More...
An LAPD press release states:
The Los Angeles Police Department will be providing support for a joint military training exercise in and around the great Los Angeles area. This will be routine training conducted by military personnel, designed to ensure the military's ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements.
Chris Hedges in an interview with Democracy Now speculated that, since the national security establishment, NSA, FBI and other agencies charged with protecting the country against terrorists actually lobbied against the NDAA, the true impetus for it was the fear among corporate elites of an expanding Occupy Wall Street movement this summer.
Hedges said:
"And I think, without question, the corporate elites understand that things, certainly economically, are about to get much worse. I think they're worried about the Occupy movement expanding. And I think that, in the end—and this is a supposition—they don't trust the police to protect them, and they want to be able to call in the Army." More...
John Boehner calls on the bankers, holds out his cup, and offers them total obeisance from the House majority if only they fill it. That's now the norm, and they get away with it. GOP once again means Guardians of Privilege.
Barack Obama criticizes bankers as "fat cats", then invites them to dine at a pricey New York restaurant where the tasting menu runs to $195 a person. That's now the norm, and they get away with it. The President has raised more money from banks, hedge funds, and private equity managers than any Republican candidate, including Mitt Romney. Inch by inch he has conceded ground to them while espousing populist rhetoric that his very actions betray. More...
It's worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They "fired" the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.
Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn't find oil, but that didn't stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls "an enviable standard of living."
There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn't expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral "democracy" was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change. More...
Allegedly, as much as $1.2 billion in customer funds have been "misplaced" which would appear to be clearly against the law. Customer funds are supposedly sacred in the brokerage/bank/etc. business. Should one of these custodians of investor funds go belly up because a proprietary trade (where the firm is supposedly risking its own capital) went wrong, then the customers should not be on the hook.
One of the causes of the MF blow up is related to re-hypothecation. Most brokers and asset managers in the US are allowed to hypothecate and/or re-hypothecate assets held in customer margin accounts. This works similarly to a mortgage. You own your home, but the bank that holds your mortgage has a claim on that asset if you fail to pay. In other words, despite the fact that you are the owner of the asset, the bank has a "hypothetical" claim against that asset through the lien on your house -- thus the term hypothecation. More...
The Wall Street Journal reported on January 19th that the Obama Administration was pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the "robo-signing" scandal. The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed. Investigation reveals that it did not just happen occasionally but was an industry-wide practice, dating back to the late 1990s; and that it may have clouded the titles of millions of homes. If the settlement is agreed to, it will let Wall Street bankers off the hook for crimes that would land the rest of us in jail – fraud, forgery, securities violations and tax evasion.
Whether massive robo-signing occurred is no longer in issue. The question that needs to be investigated is why it was being done. The alleged justification—that the bankers were so busy that they cut corners—hardly seems credible given the extent of the practice. More...
I had been trying to wrap my head around what happened with the Occupy Movement since the Department of Homeland Security coordinated destruction of most of the encampments around the country in November. The corporate mainstream media immediately moved onto more pressing issues like the Kim Kardashian divorce and Jessica Simpson's weight gain. The American public has been instructed by the media the Occupy story is history, just like the BP oil spill, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and the Egyptian revolution. In a society consumed by reality TV Occupy Wall Street was just another show.
Obama's signing of the NDAA, overwhelmingly supported by politicians of both parties, now gives the ruling class the ability to track down and imprison indefinitely any American citizen they consider a threat to their power, without charges. The only remaining thorn in their side is the internet. The internet has allowed critical thinkers to share information, organize resistance to the oligarchs, create communities of like-minded citizens, and allow individuals the opportunity to turn the tables and perform surveillance on the state. The state does not like an unfettered internet because it allows citizens to find the non-manipulated truth and undermines their mainstream media propaganda machine. Young people are less able to be manipulated. The introduction of abominable legislation like SOPA and PIPA are a blatant attempt by the governing elite to crush dissent by locking down the internet and eliminating sites that question their version of reality. More...
Consider the fact that the United States jails more people per capita than any other country in the world: 2.3 million Americans are currently behind bars, and a staggering 25% of those cases are for nonviolent drug offenses. Not only that, but the majority of those incarcerated for these offenses are predominantly African American. This is taking an unimaginable toll on their community. Empowering jurors with the knowledge of jury nullification might be a tremendous first step in correcting an out-of-control criminal "justice" system, and would have the added effect of boldly challenging a monstrous prison-industrial-complex.
There is a storied precedent for this right of juries, dating back to the year 1215 with the inception of the Magna Carta. Another "high profile" example of this can be found in the story of Pennsylvania's own William Penn. A more notable instance of the use of jury nullification can be found in the history of the Fugitive Slave Act during the 1850s. Indeed, the right of juries to nullify is embedded in our very own Bill of Rights. More...
It's no secret that the rich use their money to influence the ballot, but in this year's election cycle they have created a new, more insidious way to do it.
They are called super PACs and they are choosing your next President.
Super PACs (political action committees) have drawn attention in recent months because of their outsized influence on the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. These organizations can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, with the only restriction being that the super PAC cannot "coordinate" with the candidate.
In a super PAC, individual donations of $500,000 to a $1 million or more are not uncommon. "The sky's the limit,"Columbia Law Schoolcampaign-finance expert Richard Briffault told USA Today. "We are back to the pre-Watergate era of unlimited amounts of money." More...
It's musical chairs, and sooner or later the music is going to stop. Greece looks like it will be the first one standing, or in this case, falling down. Portugal could be next, or Spain, or Italy. Greece has more than $1.26 trillion (1 trillion euros) of public sector debt outstanding. Do you think that a real default isn't going to crush a lot of banks? Wake up. And if you think that Greece defaulting (or even forcing a 50% haircut on private investors, that would be banks, folks) wouldn't spill over into other countries and across the globe... wake up.
Ah, then there's that little downgrade thing that happened on Friday after European markets were closed. Just because the downgrade of the U.S. from AAA to AA+ didn't cause our borrowing costs to rise doesn't mean it isn't going to happen in Euroland.
It will happen. Downgrades will trigger new capital calls as margin requirements will increase to offset the lower quality of collateral, we're talking about the same collateral folks, the same sovereign bonds. It's an increasing pile, make that pyre, and it's going to self-ignite. More...
The Praetorian Class includes members of the Armed Services, federal, state and local law enforcement personnel as well as numerous militarized officials including agents from the DEA, Immigrations, Customs Enforcement, Air Marshalls, US Marshalls, and more. It also includes, although to a lesser extent, various stage actors in the expanding security theater such as TSA personnel. The main mission of the Praetorian Class is to keep the order of the day. This requires displaying an intimidating presence in their interactions with the Economic Class.
Another clear change is the physical appearance of members of the Praetorian Class. The uniforms transition from relatively inconspicuous attire to "battle uniforms" such are those now standard issue to both the military and law enforcement personnel. These optics reinforce the position of the Praetorian Class as maintainers of public order, convey a message of physical dominance and establish chronic low-level fear among the masses. Sometimes referred to as the militarization of the police force, this characterization traditionally refers to the increasing firepower in even municipal police departments. Frequently lost in this observation, however, is the psychological impact that such a heavily armed police presence has on the "civilian" population – specifically that it further separates the Praetorian Class from the Economic Class. More...
We live in an increasingly degraded country. Our politics are degraded and a laughing stock to the world. Our military is demoralized and degraded with soldiers urinating on dead civilians and awaiting deployment orders for the next illegal intervention. Our education system has been degraded with standards falling and pervasive defunding. Our transportation system, ditto.
I could go on, but I don't have to. We are all living the decline with downward mobility, jobless and foreclosures, to cite a few trends that make life so miserable for so many.
Now, our godlike financial ratings agencies have decided to degrade nine countries struggling to fix their financial crisis. The decision by Standard and Poors (Best renamed, "It is now Standard to Be Poor") to downgrade credit ratings for France, Italy, Austria and six other European countries signals those nations that Wall Street has them by the cojones. Their costs for borrowing will go up.
They are being warned: We are in Charge. Do as we say!More...
An electronic database called MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) has created defects in the chain of title to over half the homes in America. Counties have been cheated out of millions of dollars in recording fees, and their title records are in hopeless disarray. Meanwhile, foreclosed and abandoned homes are blighting neighborhoods. Straightening out the records and restoring the homes to occupancy is clearly in the public interest, and the burden is on local government to do it. But how? New legal developments are presenting some innovative alternatives.
The legal tide is turning against MERS and the banks, giving rise to some interesting possibilities for relief at the county level. Local governments have the power of eminent domain: they can seize real or personal property if (a) they can show that doing so is in the public interest, and (b) the owner is compensated at fair market value. More...
"Do you know who makes money?" challenges Bernard Lietaer, Belgian professor at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The answer turns out to be simple. The answer is unexpectedly simple, though it does have a chicken-and-egg quality: Whoever is in power in a society, creates its money. If you want to know who is in power, look for the money-maker.
James Robertson, speaking in London in 2000, points out that the banks have been enjoying a free-lunch table for many years. In three decades there have been 97 bank crashes in the world. That's an average of more than three a year. There's surely a lesson here: Part One of the lesson is that money is made out of nothing but the trust between you and me and the system. Part Two of the lesson is also very simple; it's "heads I win, tails you lose". If the banks are successful, they keep the profits. If they fail, the public pays. More...
The question: Is This Land Made for You and Me - or for the Super-Rich?
Answer: The ownership of this land is as tightly owned and controlled as is the land in countries dominated by oligarchies. Half of the territory of the United States is held by government (although the rights to extract natural resources from the public domain are awarded almost without compensation to the rest of us). Of the other half of the land area, roughly 95% is held by just 3-5% of the population (even when ownership of corporate shares of stock is considered).
The monopolization of the land and natural resources of this nation is one of the most serious and least discussed issues covered by the media or anyone else.
Civic decay revealed itself dramatically in 2011 as millions of young people across the country occupied parks and town squares in a fruitless effort to correctly point out how the ruthless oligarchs inhabiting Wall Street bank executive suites, Mega-corporation boardrooms, the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building, and the hallways of Congress had pillaged the wealth of the middle class through inflation, taxation, fraud and outright thievery. The majority of over-medicated, lethargic, uninterested, ignorant Americans yawned at this selfless display of courage and civil disobedience as they chose to occupy lines for hours to get the latest iPad or $3 waffle-maker at Wal-Mart. Delusional, non-thinking dolts across the land watched on their 60 inch HDTVs as young protestors got clubbed, beaten, tear gassed, tasered, maced, and brutalized by paid mercenaries for the ruling oligarchy. They treated the horrific scenes of brutality as if it was just one of their 30 favorite reality TV shows.
Despite controlling the media, the money and the levers of power in Washington D.C., those in power cannot spin the reality of a middle class being systematically wiped out by the policies put in place by the corporate fascist oligarchs running this country. As Wall Street profits and bonuses flow like honey, the lines at food banks look like the lines at Best Buy on Black Friday and homeless shelters overflow with former members of the middle class. The ministry of propaganda (BLS, BEA) reports improving economic conditions while the number of Americans in the food stamp program has jumped from 38 million when the recession officially ended in late 2009 to 46.3 million today. Having 15% of the population surviving on food stamps is surely a sign of economic recovery. More...
Seven big banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, US Bank, and Wells Fargo – are set to dole out year-end bonuses in the coming weeks. The banks do not release data on compensation until early next year, but it is possible to estimate the size of this year's compensation pool based on data from the first three quarters of 2011 (note that compensation pools include salaries, benefits, and bonuses).
Press reports have suggested that Wall Street bankers will face a pay cut this year, but based on figures from the third quarter, compensation pools at the big banks are on track to be slightly larger than last year's record breaking number: a combined $156 billion in total compensation. More...
I gained access to the Baker County Jail and five other immigration detention centers as a researcher, working for Colorlines.com's publisher, the Applied Research Center. ICE intermittently allows researchers from human rights groups to enter the facilities to interview detainees and check on conditions. Until recently, the facilities have been almost entirely closed and when I mention to immigration advocates that I've spent time in the jails, they look at me with bewilderment. The interiors of detention centers might as well be black sites, cast off the political map except for the rare instances of abuse so egregious that they blip onto our ethical radar.
America's immigration detention centers are in the business of warehousing men and women who have suffered trauma—the sorts of people whom reasonable governments should aim to protect, and indeed whom the U.S. has laws to protect. Instead, they are locked up, thrown into these legal purgatories and traded as pawns in a political and financial game. More...
Tyranny is not a word to be used lightly. It is an accusation of a deliberate attack on basic liberty. It is especially not to be used in regard to partisan politics. Tyranny is something more fundamental and more noxious. So why did the Lebanon Daily News use that accusation in an editorial last Sunday?
The paper was condemning as tyranny and as "extremism writ large," Senate Bill 1867, The National Defense Authorization Act. That bill, which passed the Senate on a vote of 93 – 7, deserves the accusation and an appropriate response.
The bill is so shrouded in stealth and duplicity that it has the smell of conspiracy. The main provisions were drafted in private by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain but without consultation with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Intelligence Committee, the Defense Department, the FBI or the Intelligence Community. The word is apparently out that no one is to challenge or discuss this bill. And the entirety of the mainstream media is a willing accomplice. More...
The Bush/Obama regimes have put the foundation in place for imprisoning critics of the government without due process of law. The First Amendment is being all but restricted to rah-rah Americans who chant USA! USA! USA! Washington has set itself up as world prosecutor, forever berating other countries for human rights violations, while Washington alone bombs half a dozen countries into the stone age and threatens several more with the same treatment, all the while violating US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions by torturing detainees.
Washington rounds up assorted foreign politicians, whose countries were afflicted with civil wars, and sends them off to be tried as war criminals, while its own war crimes continue to mount. However, if a person exposes Washington's war crimes, that person is held without charges in conditions that approximate torture.
The past year gave us other ominous tyrannical developments. President Obama announced that he had a list of Americans whom he intended to assassinate without due process of law, and Homeland Security, itself an Orwellian name, announced that it had shifted its attention from terrorists to "domestic extremists." The latter are undefined and consist of whomever Homeland Security so designates. More...
The language of the bill President Obama will sign is crystal clear on most key issues -- and it is repugnant. Condemnation of President Obama is intense, and growing, as a result of his announced intent to sign into law the indefinite detention bill embedded in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). These denunciations come not only from the nation's leading civil liberties and human rights groups, but also from the pro-Obama New York Times Editorial Page, which today has a scathing Editorial describing Obama's stance as "a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency" and lamenting that "the bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can't go into them all," as well as from vocal Obama supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, who wrote yesterday that this episode is "another sign that his campaign pledge to be vigilant about civil liberties in the war on terror was a lie." In damage control mode, White-House-allied groups are now trying to ride to the rescue with attacks on the ACLU and dismissive belittling of the bill's dangers.
For that reason, it is very worthwhile to briefly examine — and debunk — the three principal myths being spread by supporters of this bill, and to do so very simply: by citing the relevant provisions of the bill, as well as the relevant passages of the original 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), so that everyone can judge for themselves what this bill actually includes. More...
Another article on the consequences of this unAmerican bill.
The United States financial situation, which appears to be insoluble at the moment, could end up dwarfing the euro debt crisis. It is hard to trust our financial system when we see the theft of millions of customer dollars as in the current MF Global scandal. The disappearing $1.2 billion is only part of the story.
Regulators in charge of investigating MF Global were supposed to safeguard clients money. Instead the regulators shut customers out of their segregated accounts, basically stole the money, and used it to pay off creditors like JP Morgan. Segregated accounts are like safety deposit boxes that should not be touched under any circumstances.
The money never belonged to MF Global and it was not theirs to give but the regulators allowed this to happen. More...
While on vacation in Hawaii, Obama tapped Jerome Powell to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Powel served as the undersecretary for finance under the president George H. W. Bush and was a partner of The Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is a massive private equity firm and one of the largest defense contractors in the world.
They're made up of some of the most influential policymakers over the last five administrations including both Bush presidents, former Secretary of State James Baker III, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former Clinton Chief of Staff Mack McLarty, and former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt to name a few.
Other notable investors in The Carlyle Group include the bin Laden family and the Saudi Royal Family. Coincidentally, George H. W. Bush was meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington on the morning of September 11th with one of Osama Bin Laden's brothers. More...
In May, President Obama extended the Patriot Act for four more years, renewing the federal government's powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists. "It's an important tool for us to continue dealing with an ongoing terrorist threat," Obama said.
Three aspects of the widening net of state security monitoring of Americans involve the use of drones, GPS tracking, "smart" drivers licenses and the increasing use of face recognition capabilities.
In December 2011, North Dakota law enforcement officials raided a remote farm seeking six missing cows. Using a military-like assault plan, local police got help from the state highway patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. They also employed a Predator B drone. The military-like campaign resulted in the arrests of Susan and Rodney Brossart and seven of their children. This is the first known arrest of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator drone. More...
Both urban and suburban America were badly hammered by the financial meltdown and recession – leading to stubbornly high unemployment, widespread foreclosures and "underwater" homes, high food and gas prices and sharp cutbacks in government and private social services. But the overall impact has been worse in suburban areas, because many low-skilled jobs disappeared along with the plants and businesses that once provided employment. Other companies shifted their business strategy towards developing a high-skill, high-tech labor force.
The 10-year surge in suburban poverty is putting enormous budgetary pressure on county and local governments and non-profits, which are struggling to meet a rising demand for social services, counseling and financial assistance. The number of students qualifying for subsidized lunches in Conyers, an Atlanta suburb, grew by 63 percent this year, compared with a 46 percent increase in 2006. Many suburban areas of Columbus, Ohio, have also seen their subsidized lunch enrollment more than double over the past five years, the Columbus Post Dispatch reported earlier this year. More...
Most major Occupy encampments have been dispersed, but they live on in a flurry of lawsuits in which protesters are asserting their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and challenging authorities' mass arrests and use of force to break up tent cities.
Lawyers representing protesters have filed lawsuits — or are planning them — in state and federal courts from coast to coast, challenging eviction orders and what they call heavy-handed police tactics and the banning of demonstrators from public properties. Protester lawsuits are now beginning to wend their way through the legal system, and attorneys say more are likely on the way. More...
Once you understand how the machinery of the American voting system actually works, you're going to feel a little stunned, as if you came home from a three month vacation to discover you left your keys hanging in the front door.
Did you know that no one - not even an election supervisor - is allowed to view the software?
Did you know that the Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois just hacked a Diebold Accuvote touch-screen voting machine by remote control with $26 in computer parts?
We know these things because a small group of American election integrity activists have been working tirelessly, without much recognition or compensation, to compile a mountain of evidence. More...
Little by little, in the name of fighting terrorism, our Bill of Rights is being repealed. The 4th amendment has been rendered toothless by the PATRIOT Act. No more can we truly feel secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects when now there is an exception that fits nearly any excuse for our government to search and seize our property. Of course, the vast majority of Americans may say "I'm not a terrorist, so I have no reason to worry." However, innocent people are wrongly accused all the time. The Bill of Rights is there precisely because the founders wanted to set a very high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty. To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured.
The dangers in the NDAA are its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial. It is now no longer limited to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, but anyone accused of "substantially supporting" such groups or "associated forces." How closely associated? And what constitutes "substantial" support? What if it was discovered that someone who committed a terrorist act was once involved with a charity? Or supported a political candidate? Are all donors of that charity or supporters of that candidate now suspect, and subject to indefinite detainment? Is that charity now an associated force? More...
Interview on RT television with Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, on the CIA's refusal to process a FOIA records request about the spy agency's role in the coordinated crackdown against Occupy encampments.
If terrorists ever target Fargo, N.D., the local police will be ready.
In recent years, they have bought bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets, like those used by soldiers in foreign wars. For local siege situations requiring real firepower, police there can use a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. Until that day, however, the menacing truck is mostly used for training runs and appearances at the annual Fargo picnic, where it's been displayed near a children's bounce house.
Fargo, like thousands of other communities in every state, has been on a gear-buying spree with the aid of more than $34 billion in federal government grants since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. No one can say exactly what has been purchased in total across the country or how it's being used, because the federal government doesn't keep close track. State and local governments don't maintain uniform records. More...
There is a sense that from here on, anything goes. The politicians will do whatever they find convenient, because there is no longer anything to stop them – not an electorate that is jealous of its freedoms and certainly not the Constitution, which is now just a playhouse for judicial imagineering. No one can know what's coming next from the government and the financial system it has fostered, but for many of us there is an awful suspicion that we are not going to like it.
Most Americans still have yet to stick a single financial toe across the border, but more and more are considering it. Many, perhaps millions of toes are now twitching at the thought. Their owners want to end their absolute dependence on what happens in the US. They want to prepare for whatever is coming down the road, even though they don't know what it will be. They want to be as ready as possible, even though their worries can only guess at what's ahead. More...
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for reform of the Federal Reserve, is sharply criticizing the Federal Reserve today after Bloomberg news reported that the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions during the 2008 bailout. Kucinich recorded a video for his website before going to the floor of the House of Representatives to call upon Congress to reclaim its Constitution primacy over monetary policy.
As grievous as the lack of accountability in the executive branch may be, Americans have still held out some hope for accountability in the economic realm, chiefly as regards the major Wall Street banks and the specialized mortgage lenders (Countrywide being the most famous) that did so much to foment the financial crisis. The contours of the criminality are sufficiently clear. To consider just one of many vectors, mortgage lenders systematically and surreptitiously falsified documentation from mortgage loan applicants, so as to ensure the approval of these loans, and payment for themselves when they sold ownership of the loans on to banks, for repackaging into MBS (mortgage-backed securities) the banks hawked worldwide.
It is worth a moment to contemplate the scale of just this one dimension of Wall Street crime in the lead-up to the crisis of 2008. According to former Citigroup VP Richard Bowen, who led the group evaluating mortgages bought from lenders like Countrywide, about 60% of 2006 vintage mortgages were defective. He reported this up channels to the top of consumer lending group, but the business was highly profitable, so the bank took no corrective action. It continued to declare that the mortgages underlying its MBS met internal Citigroup lending standards. The defective rate hit 80% in 2007. Bowen notified everyone at the very top of Citi, including the Board of Directors and CEO Charles Prince. But Prince took no action, and signed off on SEC filings that all within his company and its MBS offerings was in order, thus leading investors worldwide over a cliff. More...
Exactly ten years ago Argentina suffered a full-scale financial and governmental collapse. That was the end-result of over a decade of doing exactly what the IMF, international bankers, rating agencies and global "experts" told us to do.
Argentina's economy all but collapsed; people took to the streets banging pots and pans, screaming and yelling, calling all bankers 'thieves, criminals, crooks, swindlers and robbers' but… the big mega-bank bronze gates all remained tightly shut. No one got their money back.
Clearly, this was a massive banker-orchestrated, government-backed robbery of the assets and savings of 40 million Argentinians.Half our population quickly fell below the poverty line, GDP contracted by almost 40% in 2002, millions lost their jobs, their savings, their homes to foreclosures, their livelihoods and yet… not one single bank folded or collapsed!
So, "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators, lend me your ears! You haven't got a chance! The global money masters already made their financial war game exercise in Argentina. More...
Transnational giants are the dominant institution of our time - especially financial ones with money power control of everything.
They decide who governs and how, who serves on courts, what laws are enacted, and whether or not wars are waged. Corporate dominance, especially financial power, and democratic values are incompatible.They operate ruthlessly as private tyrannies. They're predators. We're prey, and every day we're eaten alive. They do it because they can, and in America by mandate.
Publicly owned US corporations, including financial ones, must serve shareholders by maximizing equity value through higher profits. They do it by exploiting nations, people and resources ruthlessly. Social responsibility doesn't matter. Neither does being worker-friendly, a good citizen, or friend of the earth. Bottom line priorities alone matter. Failure to pursue fiduciary responsibilities means possible dismissal or shareholder lawsuits.
Yet nothing in America's Constitution or statute laws endow corporations with their rights. They usurped them by co-opting Washington, the nation's courts, state capitals, and city halls. As a result, over half the world's largest economies are corporations. Financial ones controlling the power of money are most dominant. More...
Here is the smoking gun. Days after the MF Global bankruptcy was filed, and a vast array of deliveries in silver were expunged. The silver vault inventory tells the story of the crime. JPMorgan simply converted what should have been MF Global client silver into JPM licensed vaults. Review the timeline. MF Global declared bankruptcy on October 31st. About a week later the CME began reporting that 1.4 million ounces of Registered silver was unaccounted for and unavailable for delivery, including 627,182 ounces from non-cartel banks. About 7 to 10 days afterwards, JPMorgan suddenly reported a deposit of 613,738 ounces into Eligible vaults. Exactly seven days later, JPMorgan adjusted this silver into Registered vaults. JPMorgan had not seen one significant silver deposit in months prior to this bountiful day. Great work on the part of the Silver Doctors to decipher the story. The charade continues before the USCongress. They are told of claims that investigators are searching avidly for the missing funds. They know where the funds are, in JPMorgan London accounts. They told us they were avidly looking for Madoff Funds too. They know where those funds are too, in the Land of Yodels. Reckoning is coming.
Big bank failures are coming. Unspeakable debt monetization is coming. Flash events are coming. More vanishing acts for private accounts are coming. Divergence in the gold price is coming that will shut down the COMEX altogether during a parade of lawsuits, but probably not prosecution. National debt defaults are coming. The new 2012 year will prove to be a tumultuous year, will chaos reigning and the global monetary system laid to waste. More...
In a fresh sign of bankster desperation, we recently learned that they have pushed lease rates for gold to the lowest, negative level in history – i.e. they are paying people more money to "borrow" their gold than at any other time. We know this is a sign of desperation, because back in the real world, buyers are paying premiums near record-highs to buy their (real) gold.
There are numerous implications regarding this latest bankster tactic to suppress the gold market, but before getting into those let's explore all of the reasons why bankers like "leasing gold" in the first place. The starting point is to note that it is with gold-leasing that we see the beginnings of the banksters' 100:1 leverage in the gold market. More...
Obama won't prosecute CIA torturers, Wall Street crooks, other corporate criminals, lawless war profiteers, or other venal high-level civilian or government officials. Instead, expect him to sign into law (or at least tacitly approve) indefinite military detentions of US citizens allegedly associated with terrorist groups, with or without corroborating evidence.
Post-9/11, US freedoms and other democratic values dramatically eroded. Enactment of police state provisions in the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act comes closer to ending them entirely. On December 5, the ACLU headlined, "Indefinite Detention, Endless Worldwide War and the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)," saying: Enactment of this measure will authorize "the military to pick up and imprison people, including US citizens, without charging them or putting them on trial." More...
Within days after my article on due process and presumption of innocence, the U.S. Senate voted to empower the U.S. military to apprehend and detain indefinitely anyone in America, based on the whim of the soldier or military commander, and it will probably eventually include any armed agent of government including local police. As Jacob Hornberger noted, this new provision will codify the U.S. as just another one of many dictatorships throughout world history.
Sen. Lindsey Graham commented that, "If you're an American citizen and you betray your country, you're not going to be given a lawyer," in his un-American opposition to due process and his approval of apprehending and detaining innocent civilians indefinitely. But, as I asked in my earlier article: Who will determine whether or not one has "betrayed one's country"? Graham and the other pro-dictatorship government bureaucrats do not seem able to distinguish between someone who actually has acted (or been found guilty of acting) against one's fellow Americans and someone who is accused of doing so. Graham wants to empower all military personnel (and probably any armed government official) to detain indefinitely those who are merely accused of doing something, without evidence brought forward, without having a lawyer, without access to their families, no due process whatsoever. This is a banana republic dictatorship, and it is thoroughly un-American, thoroughly anti-liberty. More...
Has anyone asked themselves this question: where would our country's economy be right now, if they had enforced banking regulations as vigorously as they enforce park rules?
It is ironic that so many in this country have fallen for the corporate media propaganda that seeks to divide the masses and have us fight each other. They wish to accomplish this so that we do not focus on those who pillaged the economy and Treasury and left the devastation of millions without jobs, millions of families foreclosed upon and left in the streets to fend for themselves, the 50 million without health insurance, and the record nearly 46 million now on food stamps.
This is a standard divide and conquer tactic so that we are focused on each other, rather than on the perpetrators. The corporate media drivel tells us that these victims are lazy, and need to work harder to find jobs. The same corporate media where the rich pay other rich people to tell the middle class to blame poor people.
Does anyone else find it odd how so many millions became so lazy and shiftless after the financial overlords trashed our economy in 2008?More...
According to the Initial Report from a landmark independent forensic audit of the Venango County, PA, touch-screen voting system --- the same system used in dozens of counties across the state and country --- someone used a computer that was not a part of county's election network to remotely access the central election tabulator computer, illegally, "on multiple occasions." Despite the disturbing report, as obtained by The BRAD BLOG and posted in full below, we may never get to learn who did it or why, if Venango's County Commissioners, a local judge, and the nation's largest e-voting company have their way. And that's not all we won't get to find out about.
When pressed to explain why he believed the the County Commissioners and their legal representatives had been working so hard for months to keep the audit from happening, Adams told us bluntly: "They know there's something wrong." More...
The protesters — maybe 100 or so — had gathered in the center of the floor and were dancing and chanting, "Occupy Brookfield!" A long line of police began to form in the periphery, and John and the other media people dispersed to take pictures. As the police formed an outer circle to surround the large group, the crowd began to disperse. Many of the protesters headed up the marble staircase away from the cops, and a small group bolted up a nearby escalator.
That was when everything escalated completely out of control. The escalator was stopped. Suddenly, the outer circle of cops was swarming in and violently pushing people away. John had been standing near the crowd, taking video. I was about 20 feet from him, and when I looked back in his direction, I saw his blue hood on the ground. I ran toward him and slid to the ground, leaning in between people's knees to take pictures. John was face down on the ground being handcuffed, his glasses flung across the floor and people screaming, "Stop, stop, he didn't do anything!" More...
A fundamental concept that lies at the very heart of the present Financial Model can be found in the way huge parasitic profits on the one hand, and catastrophic systemic losses on the other, are effectively transferred to specific sectors of the economy, throughout the entire system, beyond borders and public control.
As with all models, the one we suffer today has its own internal logic which, once properly understood, makes that model predictable. The people who designed it know full well that it is governed by grand cycles having specific expansion and contraction stages, and specific timelines. Thus, they can ensure that in bull market times of growth and gigantic profits (i.e., whilst the system, grows and grows, is relatively stable and generates tons of money out of nothing), all profits are privatised making them flow towards specific institutions, economic sectors, shareholders, speculators, CEO and top management & trader bonuses, "investors", etc who operate the gears and maintain the whole system properly tuned and working.
However, they also know that – like all roller coaster rides – when you reach the very top, the system turns into a bear market that destabilises, spins out of control, contracts and irremediably collapses, as happened to Argentina in 2001 and to the better part of the world since 2008, then all losses are socialised by making Governments absorb them through the most varied transference mechanisms that dump these huge losses onto the population at large (whether in the form of generalised inflation, catastrophic hyperinflation, banking collapses, bail-outs, tax hikes, debt defaults, forced nationalisations, extreme austerity measures, etc). More...
Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It should have welcomed new financial regulation as a means of restoring public trust. Instead, it's busily shredding new regulations and making the public more distrustful than ever. The Street's biggest lobbying groups have just filed a lawsuit against the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, seeking to overturn its new rule limiting speculative trading.
For years Wall Street has speculated like mad in futures markets – food, oil, other commodities – causing prices to fluctuate wildly. The Street makes bundles from these gyrations, but they have raised costs for consumers. In other words, a small portion of what you and I pay for food and energy has been going into the pockets of Wall Street. It's just another hidden redistribution from the middle class and poor to the rich. More...
Nearly eight months after the original FOIA request, the State Department has finally released … 11 cables. Federal censors have helpfully redacted them, making it easy to see, by a simple act of comparison (which the ACLU performs for us, here), precisely which sections the State Department wants hidden. Missing are a dirty dozen cables the government refused to release – despite those cables having already been leaked, published and analysed in virtually every major national and international media venue – again, because they were classified as secret or deemed to contain sensitive information.
Administration officials unleashed plenty of hyperbole and hysteria when the cables were first published. But it turned out that none of the information in them actually endangered American citizens, allies or informants. They did, however, prove embarrassing for the US and many foreign leaders. Because it turned out that claims about national security were often an excuse to prevent us from seeing our government engaged in unethical, unconstitutional and, sometimes, illegal practices. These ran the gamut from extraordinary renditions, detentions and torture to shaking down other governments in an attempt to influence their political processes and tamper with their criminal justice systems. More...
With encampments being closed across the country it is important to remember the end goal is not to occupy public space, it is to end corporate rule. We seek to replace the rule of money with the rule of people. Occupying is a tactic but the grand strategy of the Occupy Movement is to weaken the pillars that hold the corporate-government in place by educating, organizing and mobilizing people into an independent political force.
The elites are foolish to think they will stop this movement by closing occupations. The Occupy Movement will evolve in new and unpredictable ways that will make the elites wish for the days of mere public encampments. The 1% should know they will be held accountable. The people have found their voice and will not be silenced. The era of the rule of money is nearing its end. More...
On November 27, Bloomberg News reported the results of its successful case to force the Federal Reserve to reveal the lending details of its 2008-09 bank bailout. Bloomberg reported that by March 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion in below-market loans and guarantees to rescuing the financial system; and that these nearly interest-free loans came without strings attached.
We have been distracted here and in Europe by a sudden panic over our "sovereign debt" crises, when the real crisis is that our debt is NOT sovereign. We are indentured to a Wall Street money machine that creates our money and lends it back to us at interest, money our sovereign government could be creating itself, with full democratic oversight and accountability to the people. We have forgotten our roots, when the American colonists thrived on a system of money created by the people themselves, debt-free and interest-free. The continued dominance of the Wall Street money machine depends on that collective amnesia. The fact that this memory is surfacing again may be the machine's greatest threat—and our greatest hope as a nation. More...
How are you going to buy food, gas, water, get some cash from the ATM when everything is empty. There is no way you can get out from your house when curfew is declared and how about the mobs, rioters and looters that are roaming the streets. How about some firearms to protect your family? Have you stock up enough dry foods and water for the next 1-2 months? Have you got cash in hand because you can't buy your necessity with gold bars and coins.
So the next question is, how are you going to prepare for the coming crisis? What you need to do? We provide the following guidelines for you to follow so that even though the crisis may strike tomorrow, next week, next month or next year you will be prepared. More...
A national effort to reclaim vacant properties has one of the country's largest lenders scrambling.
The financial website Zero Hedge has allegedly obtained a memo from Bank of America's field services operation warning, "We need to make sure we are all prepared."
Vocal New York organizer Sean Barry told Raw Story Tuesday that an action known as "Occupy Our Homes" would place foreclosed and homeless families in otherwise-vacant homes. That effort began Tuesday with over 40 events in more than 20 cities. More...
So what does Draghi (head of the European Central Bank) want? He wants his ministers to control national budgets, he wants more money diverted from working people into an over-bloated financial system, he wants his own appointments in positions of power (ie–check Italy and Greece's new "technocratic" governments), he wants to dictate economic policy, he wants to abolish the welfare state and the social safety net, he wants to keep Europe in a permanent state of Depression ("austerity measures") so more of the Euro Zones's wealth flows to the 1 percent at the top.
Take a good look: This is the future of European democracy; one country after another stuffed into a fiscal straitjacket while their public assets are privatized, their unions are crushed, and their sovereignty is surrendered to unelected bankers and eurocrats.
Europe is being handed over to big finance on a silver platter. This isn't a crisis; it's blackmail. More...
What you are about to read should absolutely astound you. During the last financial crisis, the Federal Reserve secretly conducted the biggest bailout in the history of the world, and the Fed fought in court for several years to keep it a secret. Do you remember the TARP bailout? The American people were absolutely outraged that the federal government spent 700 billion dollars bailing out the "too big to fail" banks. Well, that bailout was pocket change compared to what the Federal Reserve did. As you will see documented below, the Federal Reserve actually handed more than 16 trillion dollars in nearly interest-free money to the "too big to fail" banks between 2007 and 2010. So have you heard about this on the nightly news? Probably not.
Not only did the Federal Reserve give 16.1 trillion dollars in nearly interest-free loans to the "too big to fail" banks, the Fed also paid them over 600 million dollars to help run the emergency lending program. According to the GAO, the Federal Reserve shelled out an astounding $659.4 million in "fees" to the very financial institutions which caused the financial crisis in the first place.
In addition, it turns out that trillions of dollars of this bailout money actually went overseas. According to the GAO audit, approximately $3.08 trillion went to foreign banks in Europe and in Asia. More...
We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.
Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant. The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. More...
The Eurozone debt crisis has replaced the U.S. financial crisis as the disaster du jour. But make no mistake: U.S. taxpayers will be paying the tab for the U.S. crisis for years.
That's evidently not true of the banking sector, however, whose massive financial-crisis windfall is just now coming to light. In its January issue, Bloomberg Markets magazine reveals that - at the March 9, 2009 nadir of the financial crisis - the U.S. Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to rescuing the American financial system. That total was more than half the value of all that was produced in the U.S. economy for that entire year.
While this was going on however, it was a deep, dark secret. The Fed never let on, for instance, that American banks were in such deep trouble that they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 8, 2008 - "their neediest day," Bloomberg said.
But here's the best part: Many of the biggest banks have ended up doing great as a result of the central bank's largesse. More...
As I observe the zombie like reactions of Americans to our catastrophic economic highway to collapse, the continued plundering and pillaging of the national treasury by criminal Wall Street bankers, non-enforcement of existing laws against those who committed the largest crime in history, and reaction to young people across the country getting beaten, bludgeoned, shot with tear gas and pepper sprayed by police, I can't help but wonder whether there is anyone home. Why are most Americans so passively accepting of these calamitous conditions? How did we become so comfortably numb? I've concluded Americans have chosen willful ignorance over thoughtful critical thinking due to their own intellectual laziness and overpowering mind manipulation by the elite through their propaganda emitting media machines. Some people are awaking from their trance, but the vast majority is still slumbering or fuming at erroneous perpetrators.
The oligarchy of moneyed interests have done a spectacular job convincing the working middle class they should be angry at 20 year old OWS protestors, illegal immigrants and the inner city welfare class, rather than the true culprits – the Federal Reserve, Wall Street banks and mega-corporations. This is a testament to the power of propaganda and the intellectual slothfulness of the average American. U.S. based mega-corporations fired 864,000 higher wage American workers between 2000 and 2010, while hiring almost 3 million workers in low wage foreign countries, using their billions in cash to buy back their own stocks, and paying corporate executives shamefully excessive compensation. The corporate mainstream media treats corporate CEO's like rock stars as if they deserve to be compensated at a level 185 times the average worker. More...
Something happened in September 2011 so unexpected that no politician or pundit saw it coming.
Inspired by the Arab Spring and uprisings in Europe, sparked by a challenge from Adbusters magazine to show up at Wall Street on September 17 and "bring a tent," and encouraged by veteran New York activists, a few thousand people gathered in the financial district of New York City. At the end of the day, some of them set up camp in Zuccotti Park and started what became a national—and now international—movement.
The Occupy movement, as it has come to be called, named the source of the crises of our time: Wall Street banks, big corporations, and others among the 1% are claiming the world's wealth for themselves at the expense of the 99% and having their way with our governments. This is a truth that political insiders and the media had avoided, even while the assets of the top 1% reached levels not seen since the 1920s. But now that this genie is out of the bottle, it can't easily be put back in. More...
While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.
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. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night's Republican debate. 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. More...
If Germany's creditworthiness is in doubt, how can Germany be expected to bail out other countries? Evidence that Germany's failed bond auction was orchestrated is provided by troubled Italy's successful bond auction two days later.
Strange, isn't it. Italy, the largest EU country that requires a bailout of its debt, can still sell its bonds, but Germany, which requires no bailout and which is expected to bear a disproportionate cost of Italy's, Greece's and Spain's bailout, could not sell its bonds. In my opinion, the failed German bond auction was orchestrated by the US Treasury, by the European Central Bank and EU authorities, and by the private banks that own the troubled sovereign debt.
My opinion is based on the following facts. Goldman Sachs and US banks have guaranteed perhaps one trillion dollars or more of European sovereign debt by selling swaps or insurance against which they have not reserved. The fees the US banks received for guaranteeing the values of European sovereign debt instruments simply went into profits and executive bonuses. This, of course, is what ruined the American insurance giant, AIG, leading to the TARP bailout at US taxpayer expense and Goldman Sachs' enormous profits. More...
The purpose of this paper is to highlight how hegemonic American economic doctrine has infected global economics in creating a surreal plutocratic corporatocracy, or in other words, what's black is white, what's up is down, what's safe is risky, you get the idea!
"President George W. Bush bestowed on his [then] intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye."
What this means folks, if institutions like J.P. Morgan, Goldman or Morgan Stanley are deemed to be integral to U.S. National Security - can be "legally" excused from reporting their true financial condition – including KEEPING TWO SETS OF BOOKS. More...
Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organized Occupy movement well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.
So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organized suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.
Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us. More...
Let me start with the nexus of power and money in this country. That nexus resides exactly where Wall Street and Washington intersect. Each serves the other and the middle-class be damned. You see, the "revolving door" metaphor that's so often used to describe the relationship between Wall Street and Washington isn't exactly accurate.
The reality is that there is no revolving door. There are no doors at all. It is more like one giant corridor where all the water cooler talk is about paying for campaigns, paying lobbyists, and paying bonuses. There's a reason why Goldman Sachs is derisively referred to as "Government Sachs." The flow of executives and operatives between Goldman and Washington, and even other world governments and central banks for that matter, is legendary.
I can't point out all the connections - there are simply too many. But I will point out a few that you may not be aware of. More...
Check the article below to see how the financial industry is the top recipient of government subsidies.
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"Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...and when yourealize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."
A foreclosure settlement between five major banks guilty of robo-signing and the attorneys general of the 50 states is pending for Monday, February 6th; but it is still not clear if all the AGs will sign. California was to get over half of the $25 billion in settlement money, and California AG Kamala Harris has withstood pressure to settle. 
Blankfein, 57, received 61,702 shares on Feb. 1, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The stock closed at $113.45 in New York that day. Goldman Sachs raised Blankfein's salary to $2 million last year from $600,000. 
In a sense, we are all now street journalists. Most famously, the name "Rodney King" would mean nothing to anyone today but for a bystander with a cell phone camera. As these devices have become all but ubiquitous, we ordinary citizens now have an unprecedented ability to record crimes in progress, regardless of what side of the law the perpetrators are on.
Since most of the original Occupy encampments were evicted by wintertime, the question now is, what's next for activists? One of the most popular suggestions is "Occupy Our Homes," a campaign in which occupiers around the country would do actions at foreclosed houses or at bailed-out banks that are throwing people out of their homes.
A University of Chicago economist says Antarctica or Guam would be better places than Chicago for the upcoming G8 and NATO summits, now scheduled for mid-May in the Windy City. Economist Allen Sanderson often questions large scale government subsidies for sports venues like Soldier Field for the Bears and U.S. Cellular Field for the White Sox. In the case of the NATO and G8 summits, Sanderson says there's a lot of downside for the city's reputation and little upside in the way of economic development.
An LAPD press release states:
John Boehner calls on the bankers, holds out his cup, and offers them total obeisance from the House majority if only they fill it. That's now the norm, and they get away with it. GOP once again means Guardians of Privilege. 
It's worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They "fired" the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.
Allegedly, as much as $1.2 billion in customer funds have been "misplaced" which would appear to be clearly against the law. Customer funds are supposedly sacred in the brokerage/bank/etc. business. Should one of these custodians of investor funds go belly up because a proprietary trade (where the firm is supposedly risking its own capital) went wrong, then the customers should not be on the hook. 
The Wall Street Journal 
Consider the fact that the United States jails more people per capita than any other country in the world: 2.3 million Americans are currently behind bars, and a staggering 25% of those cases are for nonviolent drug offenses. Not only that, but the majority of those incarcerated for these offenses are predominantly African American. This is taking an unimaginable toll on their community. Empowering jurors with the knowledge of jury nullification might be a tremendous first step in correcting an out-of-control criminal "justice" system, and would have the added effect of boldly challenging a monstrous 
It's no secret that the rich use their money to influence the ballot, but in this year's election cycle they have created a new, more insidious way to do it.
It's musical chairs, and sooner or later the music is going to stop. Greece looks like it will be the first one standing, or in this case, falling down. Portugal could be next, or Spain, or Italy. Greece has more than $1.26 trillion (1 trillion euros) of public sector debt outstanding. Do you think that a real default isn't going to crush a lot of banks? Wake up. And if you think that Greece defaulting (or even forcing a 50% haircut on private investors, that would be banks, folks) wouldn't spill over into other countries and across the globe... wake up.
The Praetorian Class includes members of the Armed Services, federal, state and local law enforcement personnel as well as numerous militarized officials including agents from the DEA, Immigrations, Customs Enforcement, Air Marshalls, US Marshalls, and more. It also includes, although to a lesser extent, various stage actors in the expanding security theater such as TSA personnel. The main mission of the Praetorian Class is to keep the order of the day. This requires displaying an intimidating presence in their interactions with the Economic Class.
We live in an increasingly degraded country. Our politics are degraded and a laughing stock to the world. Our military is demoralized and degraded with soldiers urinating on dead civilians and awaiting deployment orders for the next illegal intervention. Our education system has been degraded with standards falling and pervasive defunding. Our transportation system, ditto.
An electronic database called MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) has created defects in the chain of title to over half the homes in America. Counties have been cheated out of millions of dollars in recording fees, and their title records are in hopeless disarray. Meanwhile, foreclosed and abandoned homes are blighting neighborhoods. Straightening out the records and restoring the homes to occupancy is clearly in the public interest, and the burden is on local government to do it. But how? New legal developments are presenting some innovative alternatives.
"Do you know who makes money?" challenges Bernard Lietaer, Belgian professor at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The answer turns out to be simple. The answer is unexpectedly simple, though it does have a chicken-and-egg quality: Whoever is in power in a society, creates its money. If you want to know who is in power, look for the money-maker.
Answer: The ownership of this land is as tightly owned and controlled as is the land in countries dominated by oligarchies. Half of the territory of the United States is held by government (although the rights to extract natural resources from the public domain are awarded almost without compensation to the rest of us). Of the other half of the land area, roughly 95% is held by just 3-5% of the population (even when ownership of corporate shares of stock is considered).
Civic decay revealed itself dramatically in 2011 as millions of young people across the country occupied parks and town squares in a fruitless effort to correctly point out how the ruthless oligarchs inhabiting Wall Street bank executive suites, Mega-corporation boardrooms, the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building, and the hallways of Congress had pillaged the wealth of the middle class through inflation, taxation, fraud and outright thievery. The majority of over-medicated, lethargic, uninterested, ignorant Americans yawned at this selfless display of courage and civil disobedience as they chose to occupy lines for hours to get the latest iPad or $3 waffle-maker at Wal-Mart. Delusional, non-thinking dolts across the land watched on their 60 inch HDTVs as young protestors got clubbed, beaten, tear gassed, tasered, maced, and brutalized by paid mercenaries for the ruling oligarchy. They treated the horrific scenes of brutality as if it was just one of their 30 favorite reality TV shows.
Seven big banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, US Bank, and Wells Fargo – are set to dole out year-end bonuses in the coming weeks. The banks do not release data on compensation until early next year, but it is possible to estimate the size of this year's compensation pool based on data from the first three quarters of 2011 (note that compensation pools include salaries, benefits, and bonuses).
I gained access to the Baker County Jail and five other immigration detention centers as a researcher, working for Colorlines.com's publisher, the Applied Research Center. ICE intermittently allows researchers from human rights groups to enter the facilities to interview detainees and check on conditions. Until recently, the facilities have been almost entirely closed and when I mention to immigration advocates that I've spent time in the jails, they look at me with bewilderment. The interiors of detention centers might as well be black sites, cast off the political map except for the rare instances of abuse so egregious that they blip onto our ethical radar.
Tyranny is not a word to be used lightly. It is an accusation of a deliberate attack on basic liberty. It is especially not to be used in regard to partisan politics. Tyranny is something more fundamental and more noxious. So why did the Lebanon Daily News use that accusation in an editorial last Sunday?
The Bush/Obama regimes have put the foundation in place for imprisoning critics of the government without due process of law. The First Amendment is being all but restricted to rah-rah Americans who chant USA! USA! USA! Washington has set itself up as world prosecutor, forever berating other countries for human rights violations, while Washington alone bombs half a dozen countries into the stone age and threatens several more with the same treatment, all the while violating US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions by torturing detainees. 
The language of the bill President Obama will sign is crystal clear on most key issues -- and it is repugnant. Condemnation of President Obama is intense, and growing, as a result of his announced intent to sign into law the indefinite detention bill embedded in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). These denunciations come not only from the nation's leading civil liberties and human rights groups, but also from the pro-Obama New York Times Editorial Page, which today has a scathing Editorial describing Obama's stance as "a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency" and lamenting that "the bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can't go into them all," as well as from vocal Obama supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, who wrote yesterday that this episode is "another sign that his campaign pledge to be vigilant about civil liberties in the war on terror was a lie." In damage control mode, White-House-allied groups are now trying to ride to the rescue with attacks on the ACLU and dismissive belittling of the bill's dangers.
While on vacation in Hawaii, Obama tapped Jerome Powell to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Powel served as the undersecretary for finance under the president George H. W. Bush and was a partner of The Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is a massive private equity firm and one of the largest defense contractors in the world.
In May, President Obama extended the Patriot Act for four more years, renewing the federal government's powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists. "It's an important tool for us to continue dealing with an ongoing terrorist threat," Obama said.
Both urban and suburban America were badly hammered by the financial meltdown and recession – leading to stubbornly high unemployment, widespread foreclosures and "underwater" homes, high food and gas prices and sharp cutbacks in government and private social services. But the overall impact has been worse in suburban areas, because many low-skilled jobs disappeared along with the plants and businesses that once provided employment. Other companies shifted their business strategy towards developing a high-skill, high-tech labor force.
Most major Occupy encampments have been dispersed, but they live on in a flurry of lawsuits in which protesters are asserting their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and challenging authorities' mass arrests and use of force to break up tent cities.
Once you understand how the machinery of the American voting system actually works, you're going to feel a little stunned, as if you came home from a three month vacation to discover you left your keys hanging in the front door.
Little by little, in the name of fighting terrorism, our Bill of Rights is being repealed. The 4th amendment has been rendered toothless by the PATRIOT Act. No more can we truly feel secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects when now there is an exception that fits nearly any excuse for our government to search and seize our property. Of course, the vast majority of Americans may say "I'm not a terrorist, so I have no reason to worry." However, innocent people are wrongly accused all the time. The Bill of Rights is there precisely because the founders wanted to set a very high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty. To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured.
If terrorists ever target Fargo, N.D., the local police will be ready.
There is a sense that from here on, anything goes. The politicians will do whatever they find convenient, because there is no longer anything to stop them – not an electorate that is jealous of its freedoms and certainly not the Constitution, which is now just a playhouse for judicial imagineering. No one can know what's coming next from the government and the financial system it has fostered, but for many of us there is an awful suspicion that we are not going to like it.
As grievous as the lack of accountability in the executive branch may be, Americans have still held out some hope for accountability in the economic realm, chiefly as regards the major Wall Street banks and the specialized mortgage lenders (Countrywide being the most famous) that did so much to foment the financial crisis. The contours of the criminality are sufficiently clear. To consider just one of many vectors, mortgage lenders systematically and surreptitiously falsified documentation from mortgage loan applicants, so as to ensure the approval of these loans, and payment for themselves when they sold ownership of the loans on to banks, for repackaging into MBS (mortgage-backed securities) the banks hawked worldwide.
Exactly ten years ago Argentina suffered a full-scale financial and governmental collapse. That was the end-result of over a decade of doing exactly what the IMF, international bankers, rating agencies and global "experts" told us to do. 
Transnational giants are the dominant institution of our time - especially financial ones with money power control of everything. 
Here is the smoking gun. Days after the MF Global bankruptcy was filed, and a vast array of deliveries in silver were expunged. The silver vault inventory tells the story of the crime. JPMorgan simply converted what should have been MF Global client silver into JPM licensed vaults. Review the timeline. MF Global declared bankruptcy on October 31st. About a week later the CME began reporting that 1.4 million ounces of Registered silver was unaccounted for and unavailable for delivery, including 627,182 ounces from non-cartel banks. About 7 to 10 days afterwards, JPMorgan suddenly reported a deposit of 613,738 ounces into Eligible vaults. Exactly seven days later, JPMorgan adjusted this silver into Registered vaults. JPMorgan had not seen one significant silver deposit in months prior to this bountiful day. Great work on the part of the 
In a fresh sign of bankster desperation, we recently learned that they have pushed lease rates for gold to the lowest, negative level in history – i.e. they are paying people more money to "borrow" their gold than at any other time. We know this is a sign of desperation, because back in the real world, buyers are paying premiums near record-highs to buy their (real) gold.
Obama won't prosecute CIA torturers, Wall Street crooks, other corporate criminals, lawless war profiteers, or other venal high-level civilian or government officials. Instead, expect him to sign into law (or at least tacitly approve) indefinite military detentions of US citizens allegedly associated with terrorist groups, with or without corroborating evidence. 
Within days after my article on due process and presumption of innocence, the U.S. Senate voted to empower the U.S. military to apprehend and detain indefinitely anyone in America, based on the whim of the soldier or military commander, and it will probably eventually include any armed agent of government including local police. As Jacob Hornberger noted, this new provision will codify the U.S. as just another one of many dictatorships throughout world history. 
Has anyone asked themselves this question: where would our country's economy be right now, if they had enforced banking regulations as vigorously as they enforce park rules? 
According to the Initial Report from a landmark independent forensic audit of the Venango County, PA, touch-screen voting system --- the same system used in dozens of counties across the state and country --- someone used a computer that was not a part of county's election network to remotely access the central election tabulator computer, illegally, "on multiple occasions." Despite the disturbing report, as obtained by The BRAD BLOG and posted in full below, we may never get to learn who did it or why, if Venango's County Commissioners, a local judge, and the nation's largest e-voting company have their way. And that's not all we won't get to find out about.
The protesters — maybe 100 or so — had gathered in the center of the floor and were dancing and chanting, "Occupy Brookfield!" A long line of police began to form in the periphery, and John and the other media people dispersed to take pictures. As the police formed an outer circle to surround the large group, the crowd began to disperse. Many of the protesters headed up the marble staircase away from the cops, and a small group bolted up a nearby escalator.
A fundamental concept that lies at the very heart of the present Financial Model can be found in the way huge parasitic profits on the one hand, and catastrophic systemic losses on the other, are effectively transferred to specific sectors of the economy, throughout the entire system, beyond borders and public control.
Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It should have welcomed new financial regulation as a means of restoring public trust. Instead, it's busily shredding new regulations and making the public more distrustful than ever. The Street's biggest lobbying groups have just filed a lawsuit against the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, seeking to overturn its new rule limiting speculative trading.
Nearly eight months after the original FOIA request, the State Department has finally released … 11 cables. Federal censors have helpfully redacted them, making it easy to see, by a simple act of comparison (which the ACLU performs for us, here), precisely which sections the State Department wants hidden. Missing are a dirty dozen cables the government refused to release – despite those cables having already been leaked, published and analysed in virtually every major national and international media venue – again, because they were classified as secret or deemed to contain sensitive information. 
With encampments being closed across the country it is important to remember the end goal is not to occupy public space, it is to end corporate rule. We seek to replace the rule of money with the rule of people. Occupying is a tactic but the grand strategy of the Occupy Movement is to 
On November 27, Bloomberg News reported the results of its successful case to force the Federal Reserve to reveal the lending details of its 2008-09 bank bailout. Bloomberg reported that by March 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion in below-market loans and guarantees to rescuing the financial system; and that these nearly interest-free loans came without strings attached. 
How are you going to buy food, gas, water, get some cash from the ATM when everything is empty. There is no way you can get out from your house when curfew is declared and how about the mobs, rioters and looters that are roaming the streets. How about some firearms to protect your family? Have you stock up enough dry foods and water for the next 1-2 months? Have you got cash in hand because you can't buy your necessity with gold bars and coins. 
A national effort to reclaim vacant properties has one of the country's largest lenders scrambling.
So what does Draghi (head of the European Central Bank) want? He wants his ministers to control national budgets, he wants more money diverted from working people into an over-bloated financial system, he wants his own appointments in positions of power (ie–check Italy and Greece's new "technocratic" governments), he wants to dictate economic policy, he wants to abolish the welfare state and the social safety net, he wants to keep Europe in a permanent state of Depression ("austerity measures") so more of the Euro Zones's wealth flows to the 1 percent at the top.
What you are about to read should absolutely astound you. During the last financial crisis, the Federal Reserve secretly conducted the biggest bailout in the history of the world, and the Fed fought in court for several years to keep it a secret. Do you remember the TARP bailout? The American people were absolutely outraged that the federal government spent 700 billion dollars bailing out the "too big to fail" banks. Well, that bailout was pocket change compared to what the Federal Reserve did. As you will see documented below, the Federal Reserve actually handed more than 16 trillion dollars in nearly interest-free money to the "too big to fail" banks between 2007 and 2010. So have you heard about this on the nightly news? Probably not.
We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.
The Eurozone debt crisis has replaced the U.S. financial crisis as the disaster du jour. But make no mistake: U.S. taxpayers will be paying the tab for the U.S. crisis for years.
As I observe the zombie like reactions of Americans to our catastrophic economic highway to collapse, the continued plundering and pillaging of the national treasury by criminal Wall Street bankers, non-enforcement of existing laws against those who committed the largest crime in history, and reaction to young people across the country getting beaten, bludgeoned, shot with tear gas and pepper sprayed by police, I can't help but wonder whether there is anyone home. Why are most Americans so passively accepting of these calamitous conditions? How did we become so comfortably numb? I've concluded Americans have chosen willful ignorance over thoughtful critical thinking due to their own intellectual laziness and overpowering mind manipulation by the elite through their propaganda emitting media machines. Some people are awaking from their trance, but the vast majority is still slumbering or fuming at erroneous perpetrators. 
Something happened in September 2011 so unexpected that no politician or pundit saw it coming.
While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.
If Germany's creditworthiness is in doubt, how can Germany be expected to bail out other countries? Evidence that Germany's failed bond auction was orchestrated is provided by troubled Italy's successful bond auction two days later.
The purpose of this paper is to highlight how hegemonic American economic doctrine has infected global economics in creating a surreal plutocratic corporatocracy, or in other words, what's black is white, what's up is down, what's safe is risky, you get the idea!
Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organized Occupy movement well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.
Let me start with the nexus of power and money in this country. That nexus resides exactly where Wall Street and Washington intersect. Each serves the other and the middle-class be damned. You see, the "revolving door" metaphor that's so often used to describe the relationship between Wall Street and Washington isn't exactly accurate.