Tag: industry

Yes, Now the Banks Really Do Own Everything

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

“The banks own the place.” Sen. Dick Durban said that back in 2009 when he was trying to get 60 votes lined up for bankruptcy reform. at the time he was referring to Congress.

“And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place,” he said on WJJG 1530 AM’s “Mornings with Ray Hanania.” Progress Illinois picked up the quote.

The banks have now gone beyond just financing. According to Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone, in their most devious scam yet, ” Banks are no longer just financing heavy industry. They are actually buying it up and inventing bigger, bolder and scarier scams than ever

Most observers on the Hill thought the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 – also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act – was just the latest and boldest in a long line of deregulatory handouts to Wall Street that had begun in the Reagan years. [..]



…it would take half a generation – till now, basically – to understand the most explosive part of the bill, which additionally legalized new forms of monopoly, allowing banks to merge with heavy industry. A tiny provision in the bill also permitted commercial banks to delve into any activity that is “complementary to a financial activity and does not pose a substantial risk to the safety or soundness of depository institutions or the financial system generally.”

Complementary to a financial activity. What the hell did that mean?[..]

Today, banks like Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs own oil tankers, run airports and control huge quantities of coal, natural gas, heating oil, electric power and precious metals. They likewise can now be found exerting direct control over the supply of a whole galaxy of raw materials crucial to world industry and to society in general, including everything from food products to metals like zinc, copper, tin, nickel and, most infamously thanks to a recent high-profile scandal, aluminum. And they’re doing it not just here but abroad as well: In Denmark, thousands took to the streets in protest in recent weeks, vampire-squid banners in hand, when news came out that Goldman Sachs was about to buy a 19 percent stake in Dong Energy, a national electric provider. The furor inspired mass resignations of ministers from the government’s ruling coalition, as the Danish public wondered how an American investment bank could possibly hold so much influence over the state energy grid [..]

(B)anks aren’t just buying stuff, they’re buying whole industrial processes. They’re buying oil that’s still in the ground, the tankers that move it across the sea, the refineries that turn it into fuel, and the pipelines that bring it to your home. Then, just for kicks, they’re also betting on the timing and efficiency of these same industrial processes in the financial markets – buying and selling oil stocks on the stock exchange, oil futures on the futures market, swaps on the swaps market, etc.

Allowing one company to control the supply of crucial physical commodities, and also trade in the financial products that might be related to those markets, is an open invitation to commit mass manipulation. It’s something akin to letting casino owners who take book on NFL games during the week also coach all the teams on Sundays [..]



…The situation has opened a Pandora’s box of horrifying new corruption possibilities, but it’s been hard for the public to notice, since regulators have struggled to put even the slightest dent in Wall Street’s older, more familiar scams. In just the past few years we’ve seen an explosion of scandals – from the multitrillion-dollar Libor saga (major international banks gaming world interest rates), to the more recent foreign-currency-exchange fiasco (many of the same banks suspected of rigging prices in the $5.3-trillion-a-day currency markets), to lesser scandals involving manipulation of interest-rate swaps, and gold and silver prices.

But those are purely financial schemes. In these new, even scarier kinds of manipulations, banks that own whole chains of physical business interests have been caught rigging prices in those industries [..]

…When does the fun part start?

It would seem the “fun” has already begun for the banks while the pillaging continues under the watchful eyes of the congress, the Department of Justice and banking regulators.

Chris Hedges: Antidote to Defeatism

Activist and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Chris Hedges discusses the forces driving the acceleration of global decline,the military mind and the antidote to defeatism in a two part interview with Abby Martin on RT’s “Breaking the Set.”

Chris Hedges Part I: Crisis Cults and the Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Chris Hedges Part II: The Military Mind & the Antidote to Defeatism

Sex Industry Needs Serious Reforms

Cross-posted from Progressive Independence.

Earlier this spring, the Miami New Times published two articles about a teenage runaway who posed as a then-nineteen-year-old stripper from Nevada for Internet porn giant Reality Kings.  According to news reports, last year the then-fifteen-year-old stole the identity of Tyler Chanel Evans, who had helped her out only to have her identification card – and her entire identity – stolen.  The runaway delinquent then proceeded to rack up a criminal record using Evans’ name, causing the victim to be arrested several times for crimes she did not commit.

Manufacturing Tuesday or Monday part deux!

Yesterday I had hit on the situation going on with the automakers.  Originally, I had intended to include some other stories, but the first piece was large enough (perhaps too large?) that I realized that I had to push the other pieces. Well, as promised, we got some interesting stuff. First on the auto front a cool piece on zero emission cars.  Next we got fallout from biofuels and water preservation.  Third, it seems the Chinese aren’t so thirsty for the black stuff right now. Lastly could the current woes Australia’s mining sector tell us something?  

Why the push to failure?

Cross posted on

The Economic Populist


A Community Site for Economics Freaks and Geeks

Failure in war can be a bad thing.  Failure in business can be a personal loss, and in some instances a detriment to the economy.  With the recent calamity hitting the two largest mortgage lenders, not to mention other large American business concerns, it seems to a select few that failure is indeed a viable and good option.

A gamble with very high stakes is being openly promoted by adherents to a free-market orthodoxy.  These individuals, gaming on anger and the perceived loss of utility of these given enterprises, are pushing the public onto this wager.

Port Fourchon: Perpetual Motion Machine



Several Louisiana newspapers carried the Associated Press version of the Baton Rouge Advocate article on the Loren Scott & Associates study on the economic importance of the Port Fourchon energy complex.

In the style that has become expected of studies for hire, the report lays out the case for which it was produced, namely that getting more money to raise the road to the the port is a very important project. However, in making the case, it ignores the reason that the road must be raised – a sinking coast and rising sea levels.

Here are the opening paragraphs of The Advocate article:

Port Fourchon services 90 percent of the deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and even a brief interruption of services would cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, a study released Thursday shows.

The Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which commissioned the study, hopes the information will help convince Congress to fund upgrades and repairs to the area’s levee system and the $250 million shortfall for an elevated highway and bridge from Golden Meadow to Port Fourchon, port director Ted Falgout said.

It’s understandable that the Port Fourchon study would not mention the reasons the road must be raised are due, at least in part, to the significant energy industry contributions to the destruction of coastal marsh lands and the climate change producing the rising seas.

Homeland Farm Security Alert System w/ Poll!

Current Situation: So Blue It’s Purple – Past Critical

Two years ago Governor Eliot Spitzer said that parts of Upstate NY “look like Appalachia”.    He went on to say that he had a plan to fix it.  Well Gov. Spitzer, the farmers are waiting.  I am not a farmer, not yet anyway, but I intend to be one and have been talking with a few and have heard the same thing over and over…I can not afford to just farm, I have to have other avenues of income and the State is not supporting me in those efforts.

Another farm is now up for sale in Joe Bruno’s home town, Bruno and his thugs forced the farmer out by not allowing him to have a second source of income in the winter months on his own property. I asked the farmer what he made per acre of corn that he grew and he just laughed.  So it struck me that we have two major issues facing farmers in Upstate NY.  One, the price they are being paid, and two, not being allowed to do what it takes to keep the farm going.

I stopped to talk with a Dairy Farmer a little further north of Bruno’s town and was told that between the low price of milk on the farmer’s end and the high price of energy that this could be his final year.  He owns the most beautiful property with a stream and waterfall.  He invited me, a stranger, to go and take a dip the next time I was up that way as it might be the last time I’d have access to it.