Tag: Wall Street

  If you follow the financial news you will find it using temporary excuses for every set-back.

For instance, every year there will be several bad economics reports blamed on the weather. As if every winter storm is “unprecedented”.

 Likewise, all efforts by the government and Federal Reserve at fixing an economy are temporary as well. Which is all fine and dandy when the economy is suffering from something that is indeed temporary. Remember how 9/11 got blamed for a recession that was already 7 months old?

 But what if the problems with the economy are not temporary? What if they are structural?

How many years of extremely expensive “temporary fixes” must we endure before we take a good, hard look at the basic assumptions of the current economy? Two years? Three years?

 We are currently approaching the four years mark for “temporary” fixes in the credit markets with no end in sight.  

“They lay there, clinging to one another and trying to shield the more vulnerable parts of their bodies from the blows of the nightsticks, while the police hauled them apart and dragged them bodily into waiting patrol wagons.”

  – NY Times, March 31, 1948

 Every once in a while an underdog defeats a Titan.

This isn’t one of those times.

  It isn’t the victory of an underdog that inspires us so much as it is the incredible courage it takes to even challenge the overwhelming champion.

 Sixty-three years ago the labor movement took the fight literally to capitalism’s door-step in one of the most lopsided battles in history. The name of the underdog that championed the cause was Merritt David Keefe.

I took a break to enjoy the holiday, as I’m sure many of you did, but my inbox kept busy, and on Friday came a doozy, courtesy of the Washington Post.

You remember that little bit of a banking crisis we had a couple of years back, where banks around the world might have possibly, maybe, just a little, conspired in a giant scheme to package toxic mortgage loans into Grade A, investment-ready securities instruments, which then blew up in everyone’s faces to the tune of a whole lot of taxpayer bailouts?

Well all of a sudden, it looks like an agency of the Federal Government is looking to do something about it, in a real big way.

Last Friday the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced they’re suing 17 firms (I’ll give you a list, bit it’s pretty much all the usual suspects); depending on who you ask the Feds are seeking an amount as high as $200 billion.

As Joe Biden would say, it’s a big…well, it’s a big deal, anyway, and that’s why we’re starting the new week with this one.

  The world of international finance, as it is practiced today, is a giant Ponzi scheme. The largest and most powerful Ponzi scheme in history. One of the first Ponzi schemes in history to actually be supported by the political leaders of the world.

 However, all Ponzi schemes must end poorly. They are designed to have a built-in failure. A Ponzi scheme only works when increases in value. You can’t have suckers investors selling.

Everyone seems focused on this comment answer to a regular folk:

“Corporations are people, my friend.”

And to a degree they should be no matter what the corporate controlled supreme’s say. But it’s the Con phrase following that should also raise the ire:

“Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people.”

First, I’m not sure there’s any point to writing this. Aside from the fact this blog has fallen off rather dramatically, the subject of 9-11 is not a big favorite her or anywhere. However, I was taking a nice walk this morning and the though came into my head to write a diary on this subject. It may be one of my last ones–I’m kind of through being concerned about the political and cultural situation in this country. It has gone way too far into fantasy such that any kind of intelligent discussion is almost impossible since we have, even if we don’t admit it, lost sight of the foundations of Western Civilization which is the rationalistic “Great Conversation” as Mortimer Adler called it. Reasonable arguments go nowhere and are, in fact, automatically discounted usually as “conspiracy theories” since it is almost illegal to parse data and seek patterns. I will make absolutely no case for alternate explanations of 9/11, there’s no point–my beef is not with arguing the patterns that present themselves on the basis of available evidence–that’s a worthwhile argument. My beef is, as I’ve indicated, with the fact that any argument based on facts that goes contrary to beliefs that make people feel good is not only discounted but is utterly out of the question.

I want to examine, briefly, just how different the world is now than it was ten years ago. Frankly, if I think about it too deeply I want to weep not just for our political situation but for myself who is now living in an irrational world. I feel I am falling with no place to plant my feet and the sad part is that I see other people in the same situation only they don’t even know it. If you turn off your consciousness, if you devolve, morally, spiritually and intellectually then you are fine–that sense of “falling” I describe is not perceivable unless you are sensitive to the historical and spiritual dimension.  

For all those who had been hoping for swift but fair judicial treatment for criminal bank actions … dont hold your breath. “The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Office of Thrift Supervision have spent the past few days completing the settlements with some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp, Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup Inc. The pacts would resolve only part of a large probe involving a group of 50 state attorneys general and about a dozen federal agencies.” But don’t worry, banks won’t actually have to part with even one dollar:

For all the “investigations” into criminal behavior by the largest Wall Street banks it is Main Street that has felt the pain. According to the NYT some 6.7 million homes have already been lost in the housing bust, and another 3.3 million will be lost through 2012. According to Zillow a staggering $9 trillion in home equity has been lost since the real estate market peaked in June 2006.

Caused in large part by reckless lending and excessive risk taking by major financial institutions, no senior executives have been charged or imprisoned, and a collective government effort has not emerged. This stands in stark contrast to the savings and loan crises in the late 1980s. In the wake of that debacle, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail.

A lawsuit filed against the SEC over the Madoff ponzi scheme was ruled on Tuesday. The suit alleged that the SEC had been repeatedly tipped off to the Madoff situation and flat-out failed to address it.

In any event, a federal judge on Tuesday dismissed the suit, which alleged the SEC had acted with “gross negligence.” U.S. District Judge Laura Swain ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to “identify any specific, mandatory duty that the SEC violated.”

Nevertheless, Swain excoriated the SEC, calling its behavior “sloppy,” “uninformed,” and “irresponsible.”  That said, continued Swain, “that the conduct in question defied common sense and reeked of incompetency does not indicate that any formal, specific, mandatory policy was ‘likely’ violated.”

It has become all to apparent that in todays Washington, Wall Street environment that being a bumbling idiot, even to the point of criminal will only get you a “strongly” worded reprimand and, quite possibly, a promotion.  

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette

Dennis Kucinich electrified the crowd in Madison, WI with this speech, and declaration of Revolution.

Dennis Kucinich, the last Democrat in Washington left.

Transcript of this amazing speech is below the fold.