gets right to the point. The bankers testify to what? How great they do their jobs for the God of profit and greed is good? They are astounding for their arrogance and anytime I hear them ‘testify’ I am amazed that our so called elected representatives can keep a straight face while presiding over such a sham, then they send their sternly worded letters, or wag their fingers at them, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Where’s Glass Seagal restored or even the Sherman Act? No a move toward regulating these bastards, instead they are in charge and at it again.
Henry Hill: Didn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything. When I was broke, I’d go out and rob some more. We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking.
This was the second question Sanders asked; the sequence went as follows:
How did it come about that Congress deregulated Wall Street so they could do anything they want–sell worthless derivatives, feed the subprime mortgage business that got us where we are? How does it happen that over a year after the crisis, Congress has not yet acted in a forceful way to go forward with real financial reforms?
…snip…
[remember] the fact that over the last 10 years, the financial interests of Wall Street have spent over $5 billion dollars, yeah, $5 billion dollars on campaign contributions and lobbying…
Sanders goes on to give similar facts for Big Pharma and the MIC and concludes:
Big Money controls, to a very significant degree, the agenda [in Congress]…
Right now, the Supreme Court is looking for a possible overturn of… the “Austin Decision”. If that takes place…the coffers of all of the large corporations will be open for them to directly fund TV ads in this country…You’re gonna deal with the treasuries of large corporations…The answer, of course, is public funding of elections.
…snip…
We’ve got to pay attention about the power of Big Money in terms of their campaign contributions and their lobbying efforts.
Sony Kapoor is the Managing Director of Re-Define (Rethinking Development, Finance & Environment), an international Think Tank promoting financial system reform.
saying deregulation wasn’t going to be a problem, because if the bankers took advantage of it and bankrupted people, it would be bad for business.
I’ve heard that said about the oil and gas companies, too; that they would never break the regulations, because if they got caught they would get fined, and that would be bad for business.
When you can pull out of the whole thing with a zillion dollars, it really doesn’t matter very much to you anymore whether it was bad for business, I expect.
While many are the former, a good number are also in the latter category. They have found that robbing people from the inside is a lot easier, less messy, and mostly without consequences for them, than pulling those bank jobs from the outside:
The new generation of mobster who’s better educated and more diversified, shall we say, in their business techniques that this is a place that they can make a lot of money, launder a lot of money, infiltrate legitimate businesses…
Federal prosecutors charge that Mafia members engaged in racketeering, extortion and solicitation of murder in a securities fraud scheme that reached from New York to California…
The above article was written in 2000, and while the FBI and prosecutors at the time stated that such criminal activity would lead to quick “arrest, prosecution, and jail”, the criminals were still alive and well on Wall St. and in the Financial Sector in general, according to this 2008 warning of organized criminal involvement in the Energy and Financial Markets.
Meanwhile, the Congress and the President(s) pretend that the crooks bankers will police themselves.
They act as if the SEC or other equally ineffective regulators can/will find/arrest/prosectue/jail the crooks. They want us to believe that sternly worded lectures by Congress and the POTUS will shame these hardened criminals into suddenly going straight. Yeah, they started by foregoing their bonuses, right?
What can we do? Two things: Keep after Congress and the Administration to regulate, investigate and prosecute the crooks; and: Don’t give any “financial advisor”, “financial consultant”, “broker”, or banker complete control of your money. Check and double check their advice before allowing them to make investments for you. Educate yourself on the basics of investing. Then cross your fingers and hope for the best. Or: bury your money in the back yard 😉
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at fleecing the entire planet. fuck ’em. fuck every last one of them.
gets right to the point. The bankers testify to what? How great they do their jobs for the God of profit and greed is good? They are astounding for their arrogance and anytime I hear them ‘testify’ I am amazed that our so called elected representatives can keep a straight face while presiding over such a sham, then they send their sternly worded letters, or wag their fingers at them, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Where’s Glass Seagal restored or even the Sherman Act? No a move toward regulating these bastards, instead they are in charge and at it again.
…that over a year after the crisis, Congress has not yet acted in a forceful way to go forward with real financial reforms?”
This question was aked by Senator Bernie Sanders in the video
Sanders Unfiltered
This was the second question Sanders asked; the sequence went as follows:
Sanders goes on to give similar facts for Big Pharma and the MIC and concludes:
Sanders is right again!
… “what is the connection between your salaries and how much good you do for the majority of Americans?”
We can go down the picture from left to right and imagine what is in their minds:
Squinty: “majority of who?”
Pensive: “should I have sent our PR guy to this hearing?”
Sideways: “damn that aid is hot. I wonder if she knows I have a boat?”
Bulldog: “the nerve – what do they think we buy them for?”
Sad sack: “the majo-what of Americans? What’s that?”
… and one down the line
Sony Kapoor is the Managing Director of Re-Define (Rethinking Development, Finance & Environment), an international Think Tank promoting financial system reform.
FWIW, I stepped in on a thread at GOS where a few people were talking about who they missed you, Tocque. Thought you might like to know that
saying deregulation wasn’t going to be a problem, because if the bankers took advantage of it and bankrupted people, it would be bad for business.
I’ve heard that said about the oil and gas companies, too; that they would never break the regulations, because if they got caught they would get fined, and that would be bad for business.
When you can pull out of the whole thing with a zillion dollars, it really doesn’t matter very much to you anymore whether it was bad for business, I expect.
Honest, we didn’t know they caused cancer.
While many are the former, a good number are also in the latter category. They have found that robbing people from the inside is a lot easier, less messy, and mostly without consequences for them, than pulling those bank jobs from the outside:
The above article was written in 2000, and while the FBI and prosecutors at the time stated that such criminal activity would lead to quick “arrest, prosecution, and jail”, the criminals were still alive and well on Wall St. and in the Financial Sector in general, according to this 2008 warning of organized criminal involvement in the Energy and Financial Markets.
Meanwhile, the Congress and the President(s) pretend that the
crooksbankers will police themselves.They act as if the SEC or other equally ineffective regulators can/will find/arrest/prosectue/jail the crooks. They want us to believe that sternly worded lectures by Congress and the POTUS will shame these hardened criminals into suddenly going straight. Yeah, they started by foregoing their bonuses, right?
What can we do? Two things: Keep after Congress and the Administration to regulate, investigate and prosecute the crooks; and: Don’t give any “financial advisor”, “financial consultant”, “broker”, or banker complete control of your money. Check and double check their advice before allowing them to make investments for you. Educate yourself on the basics of investing. Then cross your fingers and hope for the best. Or: bury your money in the back yard 😉
I was originally planning on keeping Diane W longer, but you’re my new DK sigline, as follows:
“I refuse to lower my expectations of a society that has so much and allows so many to suffer. It is simply unacceptable.” – TocqueDeville
I don’t know how long I’ll be using quotes from teh banned there for sig lines. But there’s something about it that deeply appeals to me.
And the worst thing that can happen is I’ll have to get more involved in other blogs.
Thanks for all your good work.
Miep