Tag: corruption

  What is a criminal enterprise? According to the FBI, a criminal enterprise is:

 a group of individuals with an identified hierarchy, or comparable structure, engaged in significant criminal activity. These organizations often engage in multiple criminal activities and have extensive supporting networks…

 The FBI defines organized crime as any group having some manner of a formalized structure and whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities.

  So have the big banks engaged in multiple criminal activities whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities?

 Consider just the past month:

  For four years, since the start of the financial crisis, people have been asking the question, “Why is the economy so sluggish?”

 There are all sorts of reasons, all sorts of reforms that could be implemented, but weren’t. However, one of the most important reasons seems to have been forgotten by almost everyone.

   The experts keep telling us not to worry because “America has the most dynamic economy in the world.” Roughly translated, that means “Companies can lay off people at will.”

  Those experts have forgotten that there are two factors in a “dynamic economy” and only one of them is labor. The forgotten factor is – competition – and the primary enemy of competition is monopolies, not labor.

 Famous investor George Soros warned the other day of very severe consequences if the Euro wasn’t saved.

 “It seems to me that one still doesn’t understand what would happen if the euro collapsed,” Soros told the Swiss magazine in an e-mailed pre-release of tomorrow’s edition. “It would lead to a banking crisis that would be totally out of control.”

He even used the term “new Great Depression”. It sounds serious, especially since many have come out and said that the cost of saving the Euro is too high. Some say the chances of the Euro’s survival is 50-50, and that the Euro-bond plan would be nothing more than a band-aid.

So while everyone worries about a Great Depression 2.0, we overlook the fundamental reasons why the economy remains so weak.

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.  

AFL-CIO blog site about rallies-link in graphic

If you thought you didn’t have a reason to participate in the April 4th “We Are One” {face book page link} rallies around the country this report will certainly plant that needed seed as they continue trying to destroy what America once was building successfully, through it’s workers!

6omin. 3 April 2011, if you missed this it’s a must watch and or read!  

Got a simple little story for you today of a multinational corporation that wants to build a great big cement plant in North Carolina really, really, bad, and the local opposition to what appears to be a corrupt and distorted decision process.

Two local activists in particular have drawn the ire of Titan Cement, the Grecian corporation who seeks to build the plant-and because the Company doesn’t like what the activists have been saying about what the impact of that plant will likely be or how the deal’s going down…they’re suing Kayne Darrell and Dr. David Hill, residents of North Carolina’s New Hanover County, and the two folks who are doing the complaining the Company dislike the most.

The Company further claims that they were slandered and defamed by the damaging statements that were uttered by the two at a county commissioners’ meeting and that they have lost goodwill and the chance to do business with certain parties as a result of these statements.

But what if everything the Defendants said was not only true…but provably so-and the Company was, maybe…just looking to shut people up by sending teams of lawyers after them?

As I said, it’s a simple story today-but it’s a good one.

In this final section, I’ll cover the portion of our talk in which we discussed the differences and distinctions in government between the House and Senate.  Stevenson was a first-hand witness to their devolution for eleven years while a member of the Senate.  Having won a special election in 1970 to serve out the remainder of a term vacated when a Senator died in office, Stevenson then won a full term in his own right.  By its conclusion, burned out and disillusioned, he decided that nearly two full terms was enough for him.  He instead returned to his home state of Illinois, preparing to run for Governor.  That is quite a story in and of itself, and one I will leave for those who wish to read his new book, again titled simply, The Black Book.

So many of our causes, passions, and movements could be characterized in terms of David versus Goliath, requiring superhuman strength to set right.  At the outset, the odds are stacked against us.  Business corruption must not be allowed to metastasize, lest the country be utterly eviscerated by it.  Environmental pollutants must not destroy our fragile ecosystem.  The military must have its spending curtailed in order to prevent massive waste and a swelling national debt, a belief held even by  those who do not object to the very existence of a military.  The prison-industrial complex must not be allowed to grow ever larger, while it incarcerates men of color at rapidly growing rates.  It’s easy to get burned out, knowing the vast size and sweep of these problems, and easier still to believe that no amount of effort expended for any length of time will make one iota’s worth of difference either way.

Bobby Kennedy . . .

Whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children.  Whenever we do this, the whole nation is degraded.  Too often, we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force, too often, we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.

The degradation is far worse now than it was in the last year of Bobby Kennedy’s life.  Those who build their lives and careers on the shattered dreams of others control everything–the corporations, the banks, the media, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and that presidency Obama has turned into a dream shattering ride into a firestorm.    

Welcome to Dresden.  

Welcome to the slaughterhouse of shattered dreams.

Where the only thing the votes of We the People determine is whether we burn or bleed to death.

I encountered the phrase “humble dependence” in a book I was reading this morning.  Though in the context of the text it was meant to refer to a relationship between God and man or woman, I couldn’t help but wonder  aloud about our own human dependencies.  Are any earthly dependencies, regardless of the context or the situation, truly humble, deferring to superior judgment and guidance?  For example, how much of any romantic relationship in which we are a part is not founded on some degree of purely selfish need?  I myself know that the fear of being alone has driven me to make decisions based on impulsive short-term need, rather than long-term good sense.  Even if we are aware of it, even if we have the therapy bills and scars to prove it, and even our self-awareness is evident to all, is there still not a degree of self-interest involved as we search for others or engage in our own journey?