Raining Money

Here is a story that tells it all about the condition of the US today and who in the US controls the strings of this puppet government. The numbers relating to these dollar figures are so large that they boggle the mind. Yet it was all kept secret until now and even then did not even make front page news. The bankers took the cash and lied to the public about their financial security. Anybody else would be prosecuted for fraud like that by the SEC but since these people pull all the strings nothing has happened to them or will happen to them. If you are going to steal money steal enough of it to pay for your defense lawyer or just get into this group of super elite then you won't even need the lawyer because you already have the DAs, judges and politicians in your pockets so you won't need a lawyer.

It is a sad state of affairs for the general American public who pays for all this and still supports their government. These guys do a real slick job of conning the American patriots into believing that everything is fine and will stay fine if you just keep voting for our puppets and ignore that Occupy Wall Street group. This is serious criminal activity on a record smashing scale of heists and is just covered up as patriotic hogwash.

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LVDMGO1A74E901-5CG1C7JPCU5J1O688G3J3C73JE



November 28, 2011 3:17 PM text size: TT
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress


Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

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

Saved by the 2007-2010 bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

While Fed officials say that almost all the loans were repaid without losses, details that emerge from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.

“When you see the dollars the banks got, it's hard to make the case these were successful institutions,” said Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. “This is an issue that can unite the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street.”

The size of the bailout came to light after Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, won a court battle against the Fed and a group of the biggest banks called Clearing House Association LLC. The amount of money the central bank parceled out dwarfed the Treasury Department's better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

Few people were aware of this, partly because bankers didn't disclose the extent of their borrowing. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon told shareholders in March 2010 that his bank used the Fed's Term Auction Facility “at the request of the Federal Reserve to help motivate others to use the system.” He didn't say that the New York-based bank's total TAF borrowings were almost twice its cash holdings or that its peak borrowing of $48 billion came more than a year after the program's creation.

On Nov. 26, 2008, Bank of America Corp.'s then-CEO Kenneth Lewis wrote to shareholders that he headed “one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world.” He didn't say that Bank of America owed the Fed $86 billion that day. Bank of America's borrowing peaked at $91.4 billion in February 2009.

Howard Opinsky, a JPMorgan spokesman, declined to comment, as did Bank of America's Jerry Dubrowski.

The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, has been lending money to banks since just after its founding in 1913. Starting in August 2007, when confidence in banks began to wane, it created a variety of ways to bolster the financial system with cash or easily traded securities. By the end of 2008, the central bank had established or expanded 11 lending facilities catering to financial firms that couldn't get short-term loans from their usual sources.

“Supporting financial-market stability in times of extreme market stress is a core function of central banks,” said William English, director of the Fed's Division of Monetary Affairs. “Our lending programs served to prevent a collapse of the financial system and to keep credit flowing to American families and businesses.”

The central bank initially released lending data in aggregate form only. Who borrowed and how much were kept from public view. The secrecy extended even to top aides of then- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who managed TARP, say two former senior Treasury officials who requested anonymity.

The six biggest U.S. banks, which received $160 billion of TARP funds, borrowed as much as $460 billion from the Fed, measured by peak daily debt. Morgan Stanley was the top borrower with a peak of $107 billion on Sept. 29, 2009.

That was eight days after then-CEO John Mack said the firm was “in the strongest possible position.” Mark Lake, a spokesman for the bank, declined to comment.

With the help of the Fed's secret loans, America's largest financial firms got bigger during the crisis. Part of the boost came from a hidden subsidy -- the Fed's below-market interest rates. The subsidy can be estimated using a figure banks call “net interest margin.” It's the difference between what they earn on loans and investments and their borrowing cost. To calculate how much banks stood to make, Bloomberg multiplied their tax-adjusted net interest margins by their average Fed debt during the time they took emergency loans.

The 190 firms for which data were available would have produced income of $13 billion, assuming all of the bailout funds were invested at the margins reported, the data show. Citigroup Inc. would have taken in the most, with $1.8 billion.

Total assets held by the six biggest U.S. banks increased 39 percent to $9.5 trillion on September 30, 2011, from $6.8 trillion on the same day in 2006, according to Fed data.

Six banks holding so many assets is “un-American,” said Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “All of these gargantuan institutions are too big to regulate. I'm in favor of breaking them up and slimming them down.”

That wasn't the policy advocated by the Obama administration. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner opposed an April 2010 proposal by Brown, the Ohio senator, and Ted Kaufman, the former Delaware Senator, both Democrats, which would have forced the six banks to shrink.

The big six -- JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley -- took 63 percent of the Fed's emergency-loan money as measured by peak daily borrowing, the data show.

Combined, the six spent $29.4 million on lobbying in 2010, a 33 percent increase from 2006, according to OpenSecrets.org. Lobbying by the American Bankers Association, a trade organization, increased at about the same rate, OpenSecrets.org reported.

Lobbyists argued that bigger banks are more stable, better able to serve large companies and more competitive internationally, and breaking them up would cause “long-term damage to the U.S. economy,” according to a November 2009 letter to Congress from the Financial Services Forum, an advocacy group made up of the CEOs of 20 of the largest financial firms.

Kaufman countered that some banks are so big that their failure could trigger a chain reaction in the financial system. So-called too-big-to-fail banks have an advantage over smaller firms: Their borrowing costs are lower because lenders believe the government won't let them go under. The perceived safety net creates what economists call moral hazard -- the belief that bankers will take greater risks because they'll enjoy any profits while shifting losses to taxpayers.

According to Kaufman, Geithner visited his Capitol Hill office to argue that the issue of limiting bank size was too complex for Congress. The Treasury secretary preferred that international bank supervisors, meeting in Basel, Switzerland, make rules increasing the amount of money banks need to hold in reserve, Kaufman said. Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Geithner, declined to comment.

Geithner knew which banks received Fed assistance and how much they got. Lawmakers didn't. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, and Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who co-sponsored the financial reform law that bears his name, Dodd-Frank, among others, said they were kept in the dark.

The Senate defeated the Brown-Kaufman proposal, 60 to 31. Bank supervisors meeting in Switzerland did mandate minimum reserves that institutions will have to hold. Those rules can be changed by individual countries. They take full effect in 2019.

Meanwhile, Kaufman said, “we're absolutely, totally, 100 percent not prepared for another financial crisis.”

--Editors: Robert Friedman, John Voskuhl

To write a letter to the editor, send an e-mail to bloombergmag@bloomberg.net or type {MAG }

-0- Nov/28/2011 15:17 GMT


Then here is another story where the judge must not have gotten the memo from the head bankers. I hope this judge has good personal security.

Associated Press

NEW YORK — A federal judge in New York has struck down a $285 million settlement that Citigroup reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission, citing a need for truth about the financial markets.

Judge Jed Rakoff rejected the settlement Monday. The deal would have imposed penalties on Citigroup even as it allowed the company to deny allegations that it misled investors on a complex mortgage investment. The SEC has accused the bank of betting against the investment in 2007 and making $160 million, while investors lost millions.

The judge wrote that there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth about the financial markets. He set a July 16 trial date for the case.
—Copyright 2011 Associated Press

Cookie Monster's Occupy Explanation

This is an item I enjoyed on the web today. Very astute.

Occupy
"Cookie Monster" Offers Best Explanation Yet for Occupy Wall Street
By Alan Scherstuhl Fri., Oct. 21 2011 at 2:05 PM
Comments (214)
Categories: Occupy
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cookie_monster.jpg
"C is for Corporate Malfeasance"
​A guy calling himself Cookie Monster has written what looks to us like the most clear and persuasive explanation for the Occupy movement we've seen anywhere, a copy-and-pastable screed that everyone should send to their crazy aunts and skeptical grandfolks.

Admittedly, we don't know for sure that the following bit of Cookie Monster/#OWS brilliance was penned by a guy. But it turned up in an Onion AV Club comment thread on an article about how some "Muppet insiders" are feeling squeamish about that upcoming new Muppet movie, and to argue the fundamentals of the American economy in such a forum seems awfully boyish, so the evidence is good enough for us.

(The Av Club, remember, is the not made-up Onion site that lavishes serious attention on everything that matters in pop culture, especially Community. And Cookie Monster, remember, is these days a reformed glutton, so who better to school the world on the ways of the 1 percent?)

Anyway, this "Cookie Monster" -- who writes in full-on, dead-perfect, no-article Cookie-ese -- has long been one of the AV Club's best gimmick commenters, but also one of the Internet's most astute and thoughtful writers, period. The AV Club should sign him (?) up immediately, because, seriously, he ranks right up there with Sean O'Neal and Steven Hyden -- the site's sharpest writers.

Anyway, here's a burst of Cookie truth that should be copy-and-pasted everywhere all across the Internet. Today, we are all Cookie Monsters!

(Note: We cleaned up one typo.)

Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worker make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn't all moved to China.

Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country's infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.

Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system -- your friends on Wall Street -- and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).

It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy -- knowing full well what could and would happen -- putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.

That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not "there always going to be rich people". That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.

See the original comment here.

(There's also a great Cookie Monster follow up, in which he says "In theory, this country a democracy, where everyone who share resources also have say in how resources used. In practice, ordinary monster have very little say, and super-rich basically do whatever they want and make government do whatever they want.")

And Sean O'Neal's piece on the Muppet movie is pretty hilarious.

And, hey, did you know that on November 17 Ann Coulter was talking about OWS on the radio and said "Remember the lesson from my book: It just took a few shootings at Kent State to shut that down for good."

Here's that and six other awful things she said.
--

Follow Alan Scherstuhl on Twitter at @studiesincrap, and SF Weekly's The Snitch blog @TheSnitchSF

Occupy Elections

I was talking to a great friend yesterday about the Occupy movement. She is a veteran demonstrator since the Vietnam war and anti nuke demonstrations of the 70's and 80's. She has been hauled off to jail from numerous demonstrations. She has marched and voiced her opinion for about 40 years. She also votes in every election. When I was talking to her I mentioned about how the press generally refers to the Occupy movement as an anarchist group of lazy spoiled parasites or something similar. She responded with a description of an organizing and planning meeting for the Occupy Oakland group.

The group makes all its decisions by consensus according to her. She described a meeting with about 1400 people present that was making plans for a future demonstration. Everything was put to a vote after the discussions were finished. They elected their platform for what to do and say as well as when and where. Each point was put to the vote of the entire group.

That does not sound very anarchistic to me. It sounds more like true democracy in action. Like the kind of democracy this country was founded on. Our founding fathers were considered radicals and called other names just like these Occupy members are being called names all the time in the media. The differences between the portrayal of the Occupy movement by the media and the reality of who they are and how they operate is astounding. Occupy members are generally well educated, hard working people who believe in the principles of our founding fathers and who vote regularly. Many of them are veterans of service in the military and professionals in many fields. They want to save this country not tear it down.

The media continues to try to spin them as anti-American spoiled idiots. Maybe the media should investigate their stories a little bit instead of just spouting politically motivated smear campaigns like they are doing. Occupy members will vote in future elections and there are lots of members. The few instances of violence associated with the Occupy movement are condemned by the vast majority of members. It would not surprise me at all if many of the violent acts were actually perpetrated by planted undercover anti-Occupy infiltrators as well as by individuals that just like to riot for any reason and who took advantage of the demonstration to get their kicks. I would like to see the arrests compared to other unrelated riots to see how many were common names in all of the riots.

The Oakland General strike is a good example of this. There were thousands of demonstrators marching most of the day with no violence but a few dozen individuals started violence after the main General Strike was over. The majority of the media only wanted to cover the small violent group. Several undercover police were photographed during the demonstration and were later identified. I seriously doubt if they were the only infiltrators present and active.

In the end it will come down to elections. The media is making a mistake thinking the Occupy members do not vote. They do vote and will vote in the future.

Who reads This?

I checked out my stats for viewers of this blog and I admit that since I stopped blogging about my travels the number of visits has declined. That is no surprise to me. I wish I had the energy to continue the travel blog and maybe one day I will resume it but for now all I am doing is babbling about pretty much nothing. My recent posts are not exactly earth shattering insights into the depths of human interest. Such is life.

My health has been better for about three months with way lower pain and better mobility. My brain has bounced back from the edge of emptiness to almost normal. Of course normal is not exactly exciting. The heat in Bakersfield is responsible for my improved health. However, the heat is now gone. Winter is quickly settling in. This morning there was frost everywhere and the hills around town were snow capped. My car windows were iced over. With the drop in temperature my pain is already climbing back up. My mobility is decreasing and my muscles are starting to spasm much more than they have been for the last few months. Soon I will likely be back in high levels of pain. I am not sure I can survive this return. We shall see.

When I checked my viewer stats I also noted that only about one out of six readers is from the United States and the rest are from all over the globe. Also the non Americans tended to read the entire blog but the Americans just glanced at it and moved on. Why is this? Don't Americans search for anything but porn on the internet? Most of the American visits used searches like "Costa Rica Prostitutes" or "girls at the beach" or something similar to those. The rest of the world searches for various place names or famous tourist spots and activities like "San Andres Island," "History of the Incas" or "Aztec ruins." It seems to me like the American viewers just don't care about the rest of the world but rather just in their own personal pleasure. That is a bad sign for the future of the United States. The downfall of many civilizations has been self indulgence with little regard or care for others. It sank the Romans and it will also sink the U.S.