Tag: Banking

  The mayor of Kabul was back at his desk the day after was sentenced to four years for corruption. Afghanistan is awash in only one kind of money these days – drug money.

  One of the poorest nations on Earth exports $10 million every day in drug money, most of it right out of Kabul airport, and the world’s bankers are hooked on it like junkies. In fact, this drug money probably did more to save the world’s banking system than all the government bailouts.

 Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

  Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

We have been told that Wall Street Investment firms are “Too big to Fail” — But that does NOT Mean they are “Too Big for Accountability”!

The Question boils down to,

Who Does the Congress Represent anyways —

The American People, or the Global Bankers (and their Lobbyists) ?

And Will the People bother to care about Wall Street Regulation this time around?

Since I’m assuming we will, here’s some essential background on the Wall Street Meltdown mess:

Credit Default Swap (CDS)

What Does Credit Default Swap (CDS) Mean?

A swap designed to transfer the credit exposure of fixed income products between parties.

http://www.investopedia.com/te…

CDS’s are an easy way to transfer Credit Risk — Check!

Way back in March of 2009, Rachel explained the “Highway Robbery” which happened on Wall Street, using a few simple word-pictures. (ie. simple Frames).  These perhaps deserve a quick review …

Rachel Maddow – Cops and Robbers

Link to Rachel’s very humorous  Clip

Great Framing Rachel! … I love it, when Progressive Talkers, make learning FUN! The simpler the Word-Pictures, the better the Frame!

“Is our childrens learning?” as George W. used to ask.  

Could be, … Maybe we just needed to “Turn the Page” …

Elizabeth Warren was appointed chair of a newly created Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which is charged with keeping tabs on the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector – including Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

Warren however, has had some “Trouble” getting straight forward answers … as she explained to the Boston Globe:

Reading Pluto’s piece on Chase, America’s soon-to-be most hated bank, and thought to myself “Johnny, now normally you have an economic and civil libertarian bent,but you also believe that when the market fails the gov’ steps in and vice versa.”  This got me thinking (the white russian helps), President Obama is pushing right now for that “public option” (yes, I know, Medicare for all, but so far that ain’t the deal we’re getting) for health care, maybe its time we look at one for banking?

A black hole gravitationally sucks in everything that comes near it, and nothing can return from the other side of the event horizon once sucked in.

Banks lending money is one of the major, if not THE major way they produce revenue and profit. In any business, when sales are down you do everything you can do to increase sales revenue – or you go bust – UNLESS you can produce revenue another way.

Yet the real message coming through is that the banks BANKERS seem to have decided that they do not want to increase revenue in any other way than simply taking it from taxpayers instead of lending to generate revenue.

This leads me to suspect that they have no intention of returning to providing the “product” they have always provided to generate revenue, but instead have decided to simply and openly steal it, and that the current economic crisis is not something the government is trying to correct but is instead actively a partner in intentionally manufacturing.

With government help. With Geithner’s help. With the presidents help.

We have a big problem. The problem is not the economic crisis.

What is “government”?

“Very simply, it is an agency of coercion. Of course, there are other agencies of coercion — such as the Mafia. So to be more precise, government is the agency of coercion that has flags in front of its offices.”

   –Harry Browne

Thomas Ferguson is an American political scientist and author who studies and writes on politics and economics, often within an historical perspective. He is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is also a contributing editor for The Nation.

Today Ferguson talks with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the banking crisis and the black hole at the center of the crisis, the Obama administrations response so far to it, and about something he thinks really needs to be done that is not being done.

Real News – March 25, 2009 – 12 minutes 25 seconds

Obama should save the banks, not the bankers

Tom Ferguson: Stimulus package is dangerously small; plan for toxic assets shovels money to bankers

The Washington Post reports that while most of the United States was distracted by the bank bailout legislation in late-September as the markets melted, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson quietly and illegally deregulated the tax law for the U.S. banking industry.

Paulson gave away a Quiet windfall by issuing a five-sentence notice.

The change to Section 382 of the tax code — a provision that limited a kind of tax shelter arising in corporate mergers — came after a two-decade effort by conservative economists and Republican administration officials to eliminate or overhaul the law, which is so little-known that even influential tax experts sometimes draw a blank at its mention. Until the financial meltdown, its opponents thought it would be nearly impossible to revamp the section because this would look like a corporate giveaway, according to lobbyists.

The reason it would look like a corporate giveaway is because it is a corporate giveaway — as much as $140 billion. Most tax lawyers think Paulson acted illegally, but Congress seems unwilling to call foul so not to risk being blamed for worsening the financial mess.

Now she has the time to Grieve for her Son, Killed in Iraq only a short time ago, Her Reality!!

I was just sent the following:

painting from Sweep Da Leg

Recently, I needed some money so I could complete a project I was working on.  So I called up my friend, Tom, and I asked him if I could have $10,000.  He said he’d have to discuss it with his spouse, but then called by later and said, “Sure.  Happy to do it.  When can you pay it back?”

It’s the last sentence that’s the issue here.  Can you imagine my outrage that he wanted to be paid back, that he wasn’t just going to give me the cash?  I need a better set of friends.  I need friends who will just give me money when I say I need it.  I need friends who make gifts and don’t appear to expect anything in return.      

Maybe I should have responded to his request for repayment by telling him that very, very bad things would happen not just to him, but also to his family, and that they would all be afflicted for the next seven generations if he didn’t just pony up the cash and drop the repayment talk.  I wouldn’t explain how this would happen, or provide details.  I’d just emphasize how very, very bad things would be for him, etc etc.  It’d just be a strong threat of very bad things.  If I had said that, I think he probably would have thought I was committing a crime, trying to extort funds from him by threatening him and his family.

Maybe if I had been making many big monetary gifts contributions to Tom for the past decade, he would have considered my request for payment a “pay back” of some sort.  But I don’t have any relationships like that, where it’s about me buying a potential, future favor.  I just try to be generous when friends ask for something.  And I always ask when they will pay it back.  And I hope my friends will be generous when I ask for something.  And I don’t ask if I think that there’s any chance that I cannot pay it back.

If I lent my friends money for a business venture, I’d expect them to give me some stock in the company, or a promissory note that paid interest.  I’d expect to be protected and to be paid back. Silly  me.

So evidently, Wall Street has far better friends in Congress than I have in my life.  I hope that’s not true, but if the bailout bill passes, it will prove the point.

Maybe I could have the right kind of friends if I started befriending a new class of people, people I presently disdain for being fools and suckers.  Who else will make a gigantic gift to people who apparently don’t need it and expect nothing in return?

Please tell your Congressperson to vote no.  Not one centavo.  Not one cent.  Not one penny.  Please email and FAX and telephone them.