The only way we fix this bullshit is for all Americans to wake up and collectively point in one direction.

I really don't give a shit who wrote this. Additionally, I give proper due that Republicans were named as complicit enablers.

Only the truth matters, regardless of who tells it.


The Obama defenders can light their hair on fire starting now..........

Elizabeth Warren for President 2016.

Agree totally, mick063. Professor Black says honest government is the answer to what ails the nation.

It's no wonder the S&L crook Charles Keating said: "Get Black. Kill him dead." The once-billionaire must've been speaking figuratively, of course.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

To demonstrate how messed up things are, Black says the current crisis is 1,000 times worse than the S&L Crisis, yet the FBI has only 1/5th the number of agents assigned to investigate Wall Street fraud.

Here's the best part: There are a LOT of still honest people in government. We the People can -- and WILL win. The reason is TRUTH is on our side. Plus, Elizabeth Warren, a sizable number of Democrats and Republians.

Last edited Wed Jul 24, 2013, 12:44 AM - Edit history (1)

Some investigations were simply stopped dead in their tracks.

In 2008, the FBI complained that they could not properly investigate the housing collapse because so many assets were tied up with the war on Terrorism.

Since then, the Dept. of Justice has declined to investigate the 2008 collapse, largely leaving it to the New York and California Attorney Generals. After the states had provided enough information to make the endeavor worthwhile to pursue at the federal level, Eric Holder comes out with his "Too big to prosecute" bullshit.

Currently we are building massive surveillance capability to counter terrorism, meanwhile, a man from Goldman Sachs has a seat on the cabinet, and Goldman Sachs has been recently implicated with manipulating copper and aluminum prices. All this, despite the fact that the Joint Chiefs of Staffs have declared that economic instability trumps terrorism as the primary threat to US Security.

But for some reason, we must build that giant fucking server center in Utah.

"Heckuva Job Larry!", says the President.

FBI saw threat of mortgage crisis

A top official warned of widening loan fraud in 2004, but the agency focused its resources elsewhere.

By Richard B. Schmitt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 25, 2008

WASHINGTON — Long before the mortgage crisis began rocking Main Street and Wall Street, a top FBI official made a chilling, if little-noticed, prediction: The booming mortgage business, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, was starting to attract shady operators and billions in losses were possible.

"It has the potential to be an epidemic," Chris Swecker, the FBI official in charge of criminal investigations, told reporters in September 2004. But, he added reassuringly, the FBI was on the case. "We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis," he said.

Today, the damage from the global mortgage meltdown has more than matched that of the savings-and-loan bailouts of the 1980s and early 1990s. By some estimates, it has made that costly debacle look like chump change. But it's also clear that the FBI failed to avert a problem it had accurately forecast.

Banks and brokerages have written down more than $300 billion of mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments in the last year or so as homeowner defaults leaped and weakness in the real estate market spread.

SNIP…

Most observers have declared the mess a gross failure of regulation. To be sure, in the run-up to the crisis, market-oriented federal regulators bragged about their hands-off treatment of banks and other savings institutions and their executives. But it wasn't just regulators who were looking the other way. The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, are supposed to act as the cops on the beat for potentially illegal activities by bankers and others. But they were focused on national security and other priorities, and paid scant attention to white-collar crimes that may have contributed to the lending and securities debacle.

Now that the problems are out in the open, the government's response strikes some veteran regulators as too little, too late.

Swecker, who retired from the FBI in 2006, declined to comment for this article.

But sources familiar with the FBI budget process, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the growing fraud problem, say that he and other FBI criminal investigators sought additional assistance to take on the mortgage scoundrels.

They ended up with fewer resources, rather than more.

CONTINUED…

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgagefraud25-2008aug25,0,6946937.story

if they allowed derivatives to remain legal.

Summers and Greenspan and a few others, drove her out of her job for being too smart and too honorable to play the game they were playing with our futures.

I cannot think of a worse choice for this job than the rogue, Summers.

Last edited Tue Jul 23, 2013, 11:29 PM - Edit history (1)

He's publically admitted that he thinks criminal activity is wrong. Take what he says with a dash of salt.

Regards,

Third-Way Manny

"Silverado" Neil Bush has a history as a real BFEE Desperado. The guy was a Director of Silverado savings and loan, a crooked S&L that sent multi-million dollar loans to friends and family that were never repaid. The bailout cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.

Of course, it's only money. His gentle ex-wife understood enough to keep her wug shut.

He was literally laughing at them. It was amazing.

Remember, 1988 was the year that the S&L industry, which had been plundered throughout the Reagan-Bush administration by a horde of crooks, began to have all its rot exposed. Vice President Bush managed to keep some of it under cover until after the election – particularly the role of his son Neil, who had been on the board of the infamous Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan of Denver. (The bank’s chairman took out insurance, so to speak, by helping to raise $300,000 for Bush’s presidential race.) Silverado – or “Desperado,” as buffs of the S&L crime wave called it – ultimately went bottom up (costing taxpayers an estimated $1 billion, not counting interest) because of bad debts, among which were the $132 million that Neil’s two partners in an oil company defaulted on. One of Neil’s partners sold some office buildings to Silverado for several times their economic worth; Neil, as a board member, voted to approve the purchases. For his conflict of interest, Neil would later pay a $50,000 fine and become known, in some circles, as the “poster boy of bunko banking.”

There was so much smoke rising from the Silverado ledgers that bank examiners had wanted to close down the establishment in the summer of 1988, but that would have inevitably spotlighted the Republican candidate’s son. According to Time magazine, a phone call from the White House – the identity of the person on that end of the line is still unknown – persuaded the examiners to hold off until December 9 before putting a lock on Silverado’s door. The Bush boys have been amazingly adept at using the elder George’s political rank to swing business deals (some of them a bit sticky), raise gobs of money, and cover up business blunders. And they do it without much attention or criticism from the mainstream press.

SOURCE: http://www.texasobserver.org/1179-what-fertilized-the-bushes/

apply to the sociopathic 1%.

Another economic aristocrat



DURec

http://www4.pictures.gi.zimbio.com/Obama+Meets+Members+Credit+Card+Industry+White+KbzKb61n_Mml.jpg

Eight reasons not to hire Larry Summers for Fed chief

By Jerry Mazza
Posted on June 3, 2013 by Jerry Mazza

Last Wednesday, I heard Perianne Boring, a new reporter on RT.com, report that Ben Bernanke was planning to resign as head of the Federal Reserve and that Larry Summers name had been mentioned as a replacement. I flashed back to four years ago and an article I wrote called “Bankrupting the world,” which said that Tim Geithner was just the face, the voice, behind the PPPIP (Public Private Partnership Investment Program) giveaway to America’s top commercial banks to restore what amounts to $200 trillion in their cumulative derivative debt.

I can say today that it’s even more apparent that Larry Summers was the corrupt brain behind the give-away and should go. Today, I can give you the same eight reasons why he shouldn’t be the Head of the notorious Federal Reserve Bank.

First: Summers and his backers persuaded Obama they had the best way to solve the worst financial crisis in history, that is, hand the keys to the banking system to a gang of hedge fund thieves.

Nevertheless, a number of “real” economists, like professor and noted author James Galbraith (son of FDR’s economic adviser John Galbraith), and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, warned that the bailout schemes would make things go from bad to worse.

They argued that to save the US banking system, it needed reorganization under bankruptcy protection. Additionally, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker, who headed the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, reiterated even more resolutely in a speech in New York City that the current system had to be reorganized in a Glass-Steagall framework, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Apparently, Summer’s notorious ego blew and his penchant for job-losing got the better of him. He actually had the chutzpah to tell President Obama he wasn’t going to continue working in the same arena with Volcker. In the army, you get shot for that or spend a long time looking at brick walls. Yet the novice president, perhaps intimidated or brainwashed, feeling he really needed Summers and Geithner to make things happen, quietly charged Volcker instead to head a tax-code review to close corporate loopholes, and streamline tax laws to generate revenue.

This was announced by OMB Director Peter Orszag, who said the review had a December 4 deadline, and the code, some 96 years old, needed simplifying to reduce tax evasion and what he termed “corporate welfare.” This is like being two touchdowns behind in the fourth quarter and you put your second-string quarterback in because the first one isn’t hacking it and is having a fit on the sidelines. Not good.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that as soon as Volcker butted heads with Summers: first over timing of regulatory reform, second, over the larger question of bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, there would be major conflict. After all, Summers spent all of 1999 wrecking the act as Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary, replacing it with his fellow free-marketer friends’ Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The latter killed the parts of The Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited commercial banks from getting into the mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations game.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act also split supervision of banking conglomerates among a host of different government agencies, creating an oversight disaster. The Glass-Steagall Act would have allowed Congress to simply break down the US’s five largest banking conglomerates into their smaller components, and to determine which were solvent enough to continue, and which were too broke to live. So a lot was on the table. Yet, Obama, like a Manchurian Candidate gave the nod to Summers and not to Volcker to proceed with “Summers plan.”

SNIP...

Third: back in 1998 Summers testified in Congress against regulating the derivatives market. He actually said we could trust Wall Street.

“The parties to these kinds of contracts,” Summers pronounced, “Are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies and most of which are already subject to basic safety and soundness regulation under existing banking and securities laws.” Is this our Wall Streeters he’s talking about? Bernie Madoff? Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein? AIG FC’s, Joseph Cassano? You’re kidding?

Summers ladled even more praise on over-the-counter derivatives, blocking all moves to regulate them right up through 2000. He waxed patriotic, calling them “an important component of the American capital markets and a powerful symbol of the kind of innovation and technology that has made the American financial system as strong as it is today.” As strong as it is today, as I wrote then, it happened to be April Fool’s Day, 2009. Of course, after Summers retired from the Treasury, he took a high level management position at D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund famous for its omertầ (Mafia’s conspiracy of silence).

CONTINUED...

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/9793

And it's not ours.

and ignoring her warning.

sexist, greedy, Wall St. elitist.

.

is he being forced into appointing Summers?

Doesn't seem to be a problem anymore for some of the PTB. They now just view it as a perk, like having your own personal lobbying firm or special interest group. Like pouring countless dollars into campaign funds. Like MONEY.

$$$

Conspiratorial Wink (detail) by Michael Samuels

The Truth in Plain English:



Gosh, Rex. I'm so old that I can remember when America had more than a few leaders who put the People ahead of profits. Oh well. Thanks to DU, we can be very heartened to know there are so many who remember there are more important things in life than money.

I can remember a time when we had real leaders and not just wall street, business suits disguised as leaders.

statement, and leave that one up top here with a real person that brought tragedy to millions of people, perhaps led to the early death of thousands, and helped wreck our economy for decades. With Obama's hearty handshake and smile.

No accounting for taste, I guess.

- He did what he was hired to do. He and his buddies worked to protect his master's backsides from the likes of us. And no matter how you cut it up, no matter which direction you point your finger, in the end we let them.

Because they've learned how to exploit our weaknesses, in order to diffuse our strengths.....

K&R
[center]
[/center]

That's why I'm checking out. No more work, no more money. I will be as much of a pain in the ass as I legally can.

To the folks that think this is a team sport, I promise to leave the top of the ballot blank for Hillary, and I'll try to talk as many others into doing the same, as I can.

Then......I can't be accused of "letting it happen."

He seems like a decent guy, that Obama, but he surrounds himself with assholes.

Hmmm...

Ms. Clinton or Gov Christie become president, all the same "players" like Clapper, Mueller, Comey, Alexander, Bernanke, Summers, etc, etc, will still be in control.

...still be in control."

Terrifying, but true.

and if the American people could pull themselves away from the Kardashians, they could learn something from the man.

The Two Documents Everyone Should Read to Better Understand the Crisis

As a white-collar criminologist and former financial regulator much of my research studies what causes financial markets to become profoundly dysfunctional. The FBI has been warning of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud since September 2004. It also reports that lenders initiated 80% of these frauds.1 When the person that controls a seemingly legitimate business or government agency uses it as a "weapon" to defraud we categorize it as a "control fraud" ("The Organization as 'Weapon' in White Collar Crime." Wheeler & Rothman 1982; The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. Black 2005). Financial control frauds' "weapon of choice" is accounting. Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime -- combined. Control fraud epidemics can arise when financial deregulation and desupervision and perverse compensation systems create a "criminogenic environment" (Big Money Crime. Calavita, Pontell & Tillman 1997.)

CONTINUED...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/the-two-documents-everyon_b_169813.html

Control Fraud

I'll have to read the entire article. Thanks!

When the people who set-up the Bank Bailout get jobs and the people who tried to stop it get the shaft. And this is repeated, ad nauseum, to form a pattern that is repeatedly IGNORED. Then, we have a problem. A really big problem.

It explains Just-Us, the Secret Government: When a select few get to run things, things will benefit the select few.

It goes back to this:

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Adm. Gene Laroque warned us about the Secret Government.

Secret Government is un-American. Otherwise, the People would prosecute the crew who ripped off the banks. And they would pay in restitution of every penny they stole. May it come sooner, rather than later, AzDar. The survival of the nation is depending on it.

...first, add the usual rushpublican obstructionism and maybe even a filibuster for old times sake. Then I would suspect there are several Democrats (Warren, Franken) and Bernie Sanders who would have a bunch of questions for Mr. Summers that could be quite embarassing. Add to that the corporate media would smell the chum in the water and dig into his history at Harvard...not a pretty picture. I sure hope the administration thinks real hard before they try to pull this one off...