Mega Banks, ATF True Culprits Behind Mexican Drug and Gun Violence

Πηγή: Old - Thinker News
By Daniel Taylo
May 5 2013

President Obama, during a recent visit to Mexico, pointed the finger at American’s use of illegal drugs and guns for Mexico’s plague of violence. “Much of the root cause for violence that has been happening here in Mexico, for which so many Mexicans have suffered, is the demand for illegal drugs in the United States,” Obama said. He continued, “Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.”

The fact is, this story goes much deeper. It is true that there is a demand for drugs in the united states, but we should ask these vital questions: Who has facilitated this situation? Who is supporting the drug lords? Looking into this story, we can reasonably conclude that the American people are scapegoats for the crimes of money laundering banks and the ATF.

As reported by Bloomberg in 2010, mega banks including Wells Fargo (Bailed out with $36 billion in taxpayer money in 2008) and Bank of America (Which began giving credit cards to illegal aliens with no social security numbers in 2007) were caught laundering money to Mexican drug cartels. In total over $300 billion was laundered in operations that were blatantly ignored by Wachovia, now part of Wells Fargo. Among other illegal activities, the money bought planes used to deliver narcotics. After paying a measly $160 million in fines – and “promising not to do it again” – Wachovia is officially off the hook for its crimes.

Drug lords would have a hard time exerting their authority without armaments. Fortunately for them, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) kindly supplied weapons in operation Fast and Furious. The operation allowed guns to be sold to suspected Mexican drug dealers to be “tracked.” Not surprisingly, Fast and Furious weapons have been found at crime scenes in Mexico. Can this be chalked up to a “botched operation,” or is there a conscious intent to use it for wider objectives?

CBS news uncovered documents in 2011 that showed the ATF discussing Fast and Furious as a means to justify tighter gun control measures. Now, President Obama is pointing to this violence and proclaiming the same objectives. In his version of reality the American people – in their wanton lust for guns and drugs – are to blame.

It is vitally important that the official narrative on this issue be deconstructed. The establishment will ride on its white horse proclaiming ignorance of any wrongdoing. In fact, it will use the violence it generates to elevate itself over the people even further.

NY AG Schneiderman sues banks, accusing them of deceit in use of electronic mortgage registry

Flashback: Last year, some mortgage lenders and government officials took action after discovering that many mortgage documents were mishandled.

Πηγή: Washington Post
By AP
Feb 3 2012

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York’s attorney general on Friday accused some of the nation’s largest banks of deceit and fraud in using an electronic mortgage registry that he said puts homeowners at a disadvantage in foreclosures while saving banks over $2 billion.

Democrat Eric Schneiderman sued Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo over their use of the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc., or MERS, claiming the banks submitted court documents containing false and misleading information that appeared to provide the authority for foreclosures when there was none.

The lawsuit also names the registry operator, MERSCORP Inc. of Virginia.

Schneiderman claims the MERS system has eliminated homeowners’ ability to track property transfers through traditional public records. He said the electronic system now stores that data and is plagued by inaccuracies and what the lawsuit calls “faulty and sloppy document preparation and execution practices.”

“The banks created the MERS system as an end-run around the property recording system, to facilitate the rapid securitization and sale of mortgages,” Schneiderman said Friday. “Once the mortgages went sour, these same banks brought foreclosure proceedings en masse based on deceptive and fraudulent court submissions, seeking to take homes away from people with little regard for basic legal requirements or the rule of law.”

MERS spokeswoman Janis L. Smith promised to fight the lawsuit. She said the company complies with all laws and county and state recording regulations.

“Federal and state courts around the country have repeatedly upheld the MERS business model, and the validity of MERS as legal mortgagee and nominee for lenders,” she said.

J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America declined comment. There was no immediate comment from Wells Fargo.

MERS was set up by banks to rapidly package and sell mortgages as securities without recording each transaction in county records offices. Complaints allege among other things that homeowners have trouble responding to foreclosure actions and mortgage inaccuracies because MERS makes it difficult to find out who owns the mortgages.

“By creating this bizarre and complex end-around of the traditional public recording system, banks achieved their primary goal — over 70 million mortgage loans, including millions of subprime loans, have been registered in the MERS system and the industry has saved more than $2 billion in recording fees,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also claims that over the several years, “banks rapidly securitized and sold off millions of loans, often misrepresenting the quality and nature of the mortgages being transferred.”

Last month, President Barack Obama announced a new Justice Department fraud-fighting unit to bring together 55 prosecutors and federal and state investigators focusing on one of the contributing causes behind the financial crisis — the collapse of residential mortgage-backed securities. Obama named Schneiderman as co-chairman to pull together state and federal probes into the bubble that led to the market crash.

Delaware officials have said MERS has sown confusion among consumers, investors and other stakeholders in the mortgage finance system. Officials claim the company has damaged the integrity of Delaware’s land records system and lead to unlawful foreclosure practices.

The Massachusetts attorney general sued the banks and MERS in December and Delaware’s attorney general has sued MERS Corp.

Bank of America to pay $335M in settlement with DOJ over Countrywide discriminatory loans

According to the 2011 Fortune 500 list, these firms are the nation’s biggest.

Πηγή: Washington Post
By AP
Dec 21 2011

Bank of America has agreed to pay $335 million to resolve allegations that its Countrywide unit engaged in a widespread pattern of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers.

The settlement with the U.S. Justice Department was filed Tuesday with the Central District court of California and is subject to court approval. The DOJ says it’s the largest settlement in history over residential fair lending practices.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America Corp. bought the nation’s largest subprime lender, Countrywide Financial Corp., in 2008.

The settlement amount will be used to compensate victims of Countrywide’s discriminatory mortgage loans from 2004 through 2007.

Dozens Arrested at Bank of America Offices

A Bank of America sign is seen outside a bank branch in Arlington, Virginia, on August 19, 2011

Πηγή: abcnews
By AP
Oct 1 2011


Police have arrested two dozen protesters for trespassing during a demonstration against Bank of America's foreclosure practices at the banking giant's offices in downtown Boston.

The Boston Herald reports ( http://bit.ly/ohHrLa ) that the event was an act of civil disobedience that the organizers intended to send the message that the lender's practices were unfair.

"They wanted to be arrested, and we obliged," Boston police Commissioner Edward F. Davis told the newspaper.

Organizers say about 3,000 people joined the protest.

Bank of America spokesman T.J. Crawford dismissed the demonstration as a publicity stunt.

There was no mention of Bank of America's planned debit card fees, which recently have generated headlines and frustrated customers nationwide.

Reports: Bank of America considers huge job cuts

Πηγή: The Examiner
By AP
9 Sep. 2011


Bank of America is considering cutting at least 10 percent of its work force as part of a massive restructuring, according to published reports.

The Wall Street Journal said that officials at the Charlotte, N.C. bank have discussed cutting 40,000 employees, or 14 percent of its 288,000 total staff. Bloomberg put the job cuts at about 10 percent. They each cited people that were not identified by name.

A spokesman for Bank of America wasn't immediately available to comment before business hours on Friday.

Bank of America Corp. has already cut at least 6,000 jobs this year as part of its reorganization under CEO Brian Moynihan, who has been in the top spot since last year. Moynihan earlier this week unveiled a shake-up in the bank's management ranks, announcing that two key officers will leave and the promotion of two others to share the chief operating officer role.

The bank, still struggling under the weight of toxic mortgage loans, says the moves are part of "delayering and simplifying" operations. It has more employees than most of its major competitors, and top executives have stressed the need to eliminate redundancies resulting from past acquisitions.

The Journal said that most of the job cuts are expected to be made on its consumer side. It got rid of 63 unprofitable branches between April and June and said it plans to close 750 of its nearly 6,000 locations in the next several years.

Bank of America Corp. started a cost cutting program called New BAC in the spring. Moynihan said Tuesday that the second phase of New BAC will begin next month and run through March.

Its shares slipped 5 cents to $7.15 in premarket trading Friday.

U.S. Sues 17 Big Banks Over Mortgages

Πηγή: FoxBusiness

By Ronald D. Orol
September 02, 2011

WASHINGTON -- A federal U.S. agency on Friday afternoon sued seventeen major banks, arguing that they misrepresented the quality of mortgage securities they put together and sold in the run-up to the bursting of the housing bubble. The Federal Housing Finance Agency sued the banks over soured mortgages including charges against Bank of America Corp. over $6 billion in soured mortgages. It also sued Citigroup Inc. [S: C] over $3.5 billion in mortgages, Barclays over $4.98 billion in loans.
.

First Federal Reserve Audit Reveals Trillions in Secret Bailouts

Πηγή: The World News
By Matthew Cardinale

Monday, 29 August 2011

ATLANTA, Aug 28 (IPS) - The first-ever audit of the U.S. Federal Reserve has revealed 16 trillion dollars in secret bank bailouts and has raised more questions about the quasi-private agency's opaque operations.

"This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for
everyone else," U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, said in a statement.

The majority of loans were issues by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY).

"From late 2007 through mid-2010, Reserve Banks provided more than a trillion dollars. in emergency
loans to the financial sector to address strains in credit markets and to avert failures of individual
institutions believed to be a threat to the stability of the financial system," the audit report states.

"The scale and nature of this assistance amounted to an unprecedented expansion of the Federal
Reserve System's traditional role as lender-of-last-resort to depository institutions," according to the
report.

The report notes that all the short-term, emergency loans were repaid, or are expected to be repaid.

The emergency loans included eight broad-based programmes, and also provided assistance for certain
individual financial institutions. The Fed provided loans to JP Morgan Chase bank to acquire Bear Stears,
a failed investment firm; provided loans to keep American International Group (AIG), a multinational
insurance corporation, afloat; extended lending commitments to Bank of America and Citigroup; and
purchased risky mortgage-backed securities to get them off private banks' books.

Overall, the greatest borrowing was done by a small number of institutions. Over the three years,
Citigroup borrowed a total of 2.5 trillion dollars, Morgan Stanley borrowed two trillion; Merryll Lynch,
which was acquired by Bank of America, borrowed 1.9 trillion; and Bank of America borrowed 1.3
trillion.

Banks based in counties other than the U.S. also received money from the Fed, including Barclays of the
United Kingdom, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (UK), Deutsche Bank (Germany), UBS (Switzerland),
Credit Suisse Group (Switzerland), Bank of Scotland (UK), BNP Paribas (France), Dexia (Belgium),
Dresdner Bank (Germany), and Societe General (France).

"No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation
without the direct approval of Congress and the President," Sanders wrote.

In recent days, 'Bloomberg News' obtained 29,346 pages of documentation from the Federal Reserve
about some of these secret loans, after months of fighting in court for access to the records under the
Freedom of Information Act.

Some of the financial institutions secretly receiving loans were meanwhile claiming in their public
reports to have ample cash reserves, Bloomberg noted.

The Federal Reserve has neither explained how they legally justified several of the emergency loans, nor
how they decided to provide assistance to certain firms but not others.

"The main problem is the lack of Congressional oversight, and the way the Fed seemed to pick winners
who would be protected at any cost," Randall Wray, professor of economics at University of Missouri-
Kansas City, told IPS.

"If such lending is not illegal, it should be. Our nation really did go through a liquidity crisis - a run on
the short-term liabilities of financial institutions. There is only one way to stop a run: lend reserves
without limit to all qualifying institutions. The Fed bumbled around before it finally sort of did that,"
Wray said.

"But then it turned to phase two, which was to try to resolve problems of insolvency by increasing Uncle
Sam's stake in the banksters' fiasco. That never should have been done. You close down fraudsters,
period. The Fed and FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Commission) should have gone into the biggest
banks immediately, replaced all top management, and should have started to resolve them," Wray said.

Renewed questions about the Federal Reserve have inspired some young activists to organise grassroots
protests across the U.S.

"Since its creation by the U.S. Government in 1913, the Federal Reserve has created so much new
money out of thin air that it has destroyed 95 percent of the dollar's value," Joseph Brown, a college
student and one of the organisers of a recent protest of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said.

"This hidden inflation tax benefits Wall Street and the government, but hurts the poor and those living
on fixed incomes, such as senior citizens, the most," Brown said.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit itself was the result of at least two years of
grassroots lobbying. IPS reported in June 2009 a wide bi-partisan coalition of Members of Congress had
co-sponsored legislation to audit the Federal Reserve.

The audit was ordered as an amendment by Sanders as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act - a major banking overhaul passed by President Barack Obama and the U.S.
Congress in 2010.

"I think this (the first ever GAO audit) was a good start to uncovering what the Fed did so that we can
begin to determine whether similar actions should ever be permitted again," Wray wrote, adding, "my
preliminary answer is a resounding no."

The GAO also found existing Federal Reserve policies do not prevent significant conflicts of interest. For
example, "the FRBNY's existing restrictions on its employees' financial interests did not specifically
prohibit investments in certain non-bank institutions that received emergency assistance," the report
stated.

The GAO report noted on Sep. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the President of the FRBNY, was
granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric, while at the same time the
Federal Reserve granted bailout funds to the same two companies.

"No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit
on the Fed's board of directors or be employed by the Fed," Sanders said.

The GAO is currently working on a more detailed report regarding Federal Reserve conflicts of interest,
which is due on Oct. 18, 2011.