Too Big To Jail: Wall Street Executives Unlikely To Face Criminal Charges, Source Says

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, accompanied by Attorney General Eric Holder, speaks at the Justice Department in Washington, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012, after Holder announced the formation of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group.

Πηγή: Huffington Post
By Ben Hallman
Sept 9 2012

A last-ditch effort by federal and state law enforcement authorities to hold Wall Street accountable for nearly bringing down the U.S. economy is unlikely to lead to any criminal charges against big bank executives, according to a source close to the investigation.

Barring a "hail mary pass," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is still ongoing, the members of a task force President Barack Obama formed in January to investigate fraud in the residential mortgage bond industry will instead most likely bring civil lawsuits against some of the banks involved, though it isn't clear when these cases might come.

That means any penalties for those accused of fraud or other misconduct would be measured in dollars, not jail terms.

A spokesman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a co-head of the task force and the driving force behind its formation, declined to comment.

Adora Andy, a Department of Justice spokeswoman, said in a statement that "all appropriate remedies, civil and criminal, are on the table."

"As always, if working group members uncover evidence of fraud or other illegal conduct, we will pursue such conduct aggressively," Andy said.

The subprime mortgage bubble popped more than five years ago, triggering a full-fledged economic meltdown. Since then, the question confronting regulators and government prosecutors has been whether the banks that drove the market's expansion simply made terrible business decisions, or committed fraud in order to reap short-term profits.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a number of civil lawsuits, has alleged the latter (as a regulatory agency, the SEC cannot bring criminal suits). But with the exception of one failed case against Bear Stearns in 2009, the Department of Justice, which historically would lead any criminal effort, has declined to criminally prosecute those who created the financial instruments built out of toxic mortgage loans.

By pooling investigative resources, it was hoped that the Justice Department, the SEC and a handful of state attorneys general, led by Schneiderman, could accomplish what the agencies had mostly failed to deliver on their own: a sense of justice, however fuzzily defined.

But from the start, the task force -- officially, the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group -- has been dogged by critics questioning the seriousness of the effort, and by concerns that the legal timeframe in which investigators must bring cases is coming to a close.

Civil cases, if and when they are filed, could lead to large financial penalties and possibly aid for struggling homeowners. Yet it seems unlikely that such a result will satisfy those whose anger sparked the Occupy Wall Street movement, or even many middle-class Americans who may wonder how, in contrast to other financial crises, this one could end with none of the people who seemingly helped orchestrate it behind bars.

"Without accountability, the unending parade of megabank scandals will inevitably continue," Neil Barofsky, the former watchdog over the $700 billion bank bailout fund and a frequent critic of the Obama administration's response to the financial crisis, recently told The Huffington Post.

How and why the government chose this path will be the subject of debate for years to come. Some say prosecutors lacked resources. Others assert that the complexity of the financial transactions makes it virtually impossible to prove criminal intent in court, where prosecutors must convince a jury of guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." In a civil action, by contrast, the bar is lower: jurors need only conclude that "a preponderance of evidence" indicates guilt.

One former prosecutor said a simpler human dimension may also be preventing government lawyers from filing criminal charges: the basic fear of losing a big case.

"Losing has a chilling effect, because no one wants to take a spin like that and come out on the short end," said Cliff Stricklin, a former prosecutor who worked on the Enron task force and also successfully prosecuted Qwest Communications chief executive Joseph Nacchio for accounting fraud. (Nacchio is currently serving a seven-year sentence in a federal prison.)

"[Losing a case] makes you wonder if there was indeed a crime, and if so, how you go about proving it," Stricklin said. "It is a signal to the public that either the government is jumping to conclusions or isn't competent."

CATASTROPHE OR CRIME?

Mary Jo White, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, adheres mostly to the view that the financial crisis was a catastrophe, but not a crime. Now a prominent defense attorney at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, White said she thinks calls from some quarters for more criminal prosecutions are unwarranted.

"The financial crisis was so expensive and so many people were injured that one's instinct is to think that there must have been massive wrongdoing from the top on down," she said.

But criminal cases must be built on compelling evidence, not suppositions, and evidence of broad-based misconduct that would rise to that level doesn't exist, White said.

"I don't think the criticism is fair," White said.

William Black, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a prominent former bank regulator, is in the camp that thinks prosecutors have missed a massive opportunity.

"They don't get the whole concept of looting," he said.

Black, who worked with prosecutors to develop some of the 1,100 criminal cases that emerged from the Savings & Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, said that Wall Street accounting fraud flows from a simple recipe: grow by buying high-interest loans, leverage the business by borrowing lots of money and keep next to nothing in reserve against losses.

"You are mathematically guaranteed to report record profits," he said.

But those profits are based on a fiction, he said, one that costs investors when the bank collapses -- and in some cases, can cost taxpayers too.

Financial firms like Goldman Sachs profited tremendously by purchasing loans described widely in the industry as "liar's loans," Black said. These loans were made without the borrower having to prove income, or even that he or she had a job.

"It makes no sense that an honest lender would ever make liar's loans," he said. Nor does it make sense that a sophisticated bank like Goldman, which runs an entire business based on the ability to calculate risk, would purchase such dangerous loans without knowing that they were toxic, he said.

Indeed, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission produced evidence last year which suggests that Goldman Sachs traders knew these investments were more dangerous than they were letting on to their customers. Internally, they characterized offerings as "junk" and "monstrosities" even as they offloaded the mortgage bonds onto investors, according to the report.

The SEC came to the same conclusion when investigating whether the bank had misled investors about a product known as Abacus. That probe led to a $550 million settlement in 2010.

The SEC has won $2.2 billion in penalties stemming from financial crisis-related cases, though it has been dogged by complaints -- most notably from federal judge Jed Rakoff -- that its fines are too small and that it doesn't target individuals often enough. An SEC spokesman declined comment.

Still, the agency's efforts to pursue financial crisis fraud far outstrip those of the Justice Department.

The government's lone criminal case related to the creation of complex mortgage investments came in 2009, when a federal jury declined to convict two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers accused of lying to investors about the soundness of the securities they were selling.

Last month, the Justice Department announced that it had dropped a probe of Goldman Sachs, launched after the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that the bank sold investments "in ways that created conflicts of interest with the firm’s clients and at times led to the bank's profiting from the same products that caused substantial losses for its clients.”

There was "not a viable basis" to bring criminal charges against the bank or its employees, the Justice Department said in a statement explaining its decision.

LAST CHANCE FOR PROSECUTORS

Obama's multi-agency mortgage task force was supposed to succeed where previous investigations had failed.

"This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans," Obama said in his State of the Union address in January.

The goal of the new unit was to drill down into the sophisticated financial instruments the banks created to package and sell mortgages in a search for fraud. But the group was met with skepticism from many legal experts, who wondered how this effort would be any different from previous investigations.

The group got off to a rocky start. Three months after its formation, it had failed even to secure office space. In May, Schneiderman told the Wall Street Journal that he wanted more resources and wished that investigators at his partner agencies would pick up the pace.

According to the Justice Department, the investigation is now in full swing.

More than 200 investigators are on the job, "devoting significant resources to investigate and prosecute misconduct by financial institutions in the origination and securitization of mortgages," the agency said in a statement.

The DOJ has issued 30 civil subpoenas in the past four months, it said, and the SEC has issued more than 300 -- though that number includes pre-existing investigations.

The New York attorney general's office, HuffPost previously reported, is now investigating several major institutions.

But if none of these cases yield a criminal indictment, who, if anyone, is to blame?

Schneiderman, though he never promised criminal cases, is likely to attract some criticism for the lack of prosecutions due to his aggressive advocacy for the task force. Last year, Schneiderman led an insurgency against a robo-signing settlement shaping up between state attorneys general and five large banks. His goal, he said, was to preserve his ability to continue an investigation he had opened in the spring into possible fraud that led to the housing bubble and crash.

The states leading the negotiations dispute that Schneiderman's ability to continue his investigation was ever in doubt. Nevertheless, his initial opposition to what became a $25 billion deal led directly to the creation of the task force

Schneiderman co-leads the task force, along with Robert Khuzami, the enforcement director of the SEC; Lanny Breuer, the head of the criminal division at the Justice Department; Stuart Delery, the head of Justice's civil division; and John Walsh, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado.

Though each of these entities are sharing documents and resources, it is up to the individual agencies to file charges.

The biggest challenge for Schneiderman, who took office in January 2011, was the ticking clock. Most mortgage bonds were packaged and sold in 2006 or earlier, and the statute of of limitations on most types of fraud cases is five years from the commission of the alleged wrongdoing.

It is possible to extract "tolling" agreements from a business or individual under investigation that effectively extends the allotted time in which to bring a case, in exchange for more lenient treatment. But Schneiderman would have had to enact tolling agreements in very short order after taking office. It isn't clear whether a bank or an individual would accept such an agreement in a criminal case if they knew the statute of limitations was about to run out.

It is also true that while the New York attorney general's office has the authority to bring criminal fraud cases, it historically almost never does. Like the SEC, the office instead typically files lawsuits with the expectation of wringing a settlement -- and political bragging points -- out of a Wall Street firm. It's part of the recipe that both Andrew Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer used to pave their way to a governorship.

Instead, the attorney general's office typically defers to the Department of Justice, which has a large team of experts parked in the U.S. attorney's office just a few blocks away in lower Manhattan. But instead of taking on Wall Street's top executives, that office has focused on alternate cases -- such as the recent prosecution of hedge fund king Raj Rajaratnam, who was convicted of insider trading.

Stricklin, now in private practice at the Bryan Cave law firm in Denver, said that he doesn't know whether there was criminal conduct in the run-up to the financial crisis.

"The truth is more complicated than can be explained in sound bites," he said.

But he has seen, he said, a decline in the talent level of those working white-collar cases at agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department, which over the past decade have diverted some of the most talented people over to counterterrorism.

"The government needs to decide if it is really going to tackle white-collar crime or not, and if so it needs to allocate resources," he said.

Otherwise, the result will be fewer cases, and more losses, Stricklin said.

"It always matters to bring solid criminal cases where you are holding people accountable," he said. "But the worst signal is not to do nothing, but to do something partway."

Morgan Stanley Unit Fined Over Trader’s $1.3 Billion Bet

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney “detected the trading activity by a former employee that occurred three years ago, stopped it promptly, reported it to regulators, and has since added new controls designed to prevent a reoccurrence,” Christine Jockle, a spokeswoman for the unit, said in an e-mailed statement.

Πηγή: Bloomberg
By Laura Marcinek and Donal Griffin
August 16 2012

Morgan Stanley (MS) Smith Barney, the brokerage venture of Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. (C), was fined $450,000 after a trader amassed a $1.3 billion bet in 2009, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority records show.

The brokerage didn’t have enough controls in place to detect that Jared Weinryt, 31, had breached his $116 million trading limit as he made overnight bets on futures, Finra said this month. The trades led to losses for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney of about $14.9 million, according to Finra.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney “detected the trading activity by a former employee that occurred three years ago, stopped it promptly, reported it to regulators, and has since added new controls designed to prevent a reoccurrence,” Christine Jockle, a spokeswoman for the unit, said in an e-mailed statement. Photographer: Chip East/Bloomberg

Regulators are pressing Wall Street to heighten risk controls after multibillion-dollar trading losses at UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), the collapse of MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MFGLQ) after a $6.3 billion bet on European debt, and Knight Capital Group Inc. (KCG)’s $270 million loss caused by faulty software.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney “detected the trading activity by a former employee that occurred three years ago, stopped it promptly, reported it to regulators, and has since added new controls designed to prevent a reoccurrence,” Christine Jockle, a spokeswoman for the unit, said in an e-mailed statement.

The brokerage employed Weinryt from 2006 to 2009, Finra records show. He bought and sold futures, agreements to trade assets at set prices and dates. Investors sometimes buy futures as a bet on price fluctuations and sell them before the delivery date. Weinryt traded in futures tied to U.S. sovereign debt and Eurodollars, according to Finra.

Market Turned

Weinryt’s futures bets totaled about $744 million at the end of the trading day on July 14, 2009, exceeding his $116 million limit, according to a document posted on Finra’s website. His bets swelled to about $1.33 billion as he continued trading overnight, the document shows.

The market turned against Weinryt the next morning and he tried to reduce the bets, incurring losses, according to Finra. The brokerage cut off Weinryt’s access to the trading system in late morning on July 15 and liquidated the contracts by the next day. Total losses were $14.9 million, Finra said.

The industry regulator suspended Weinryt from trading for two months and fined him $7,500 earlier this year, records show. He consented to the sanctions without admitting or denying the findings, according to Finra. Weinryt declined to comment.

He now works in the institutional fixed-income sales division of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida-based Kiley Partners Inc., which trades securities including municipal bonds, U.S. government bonds and corporate debt.

“We were delighted to have an opportunity to employ a smart and talented employee like Jared Weinryt,” Chief Executive Officer Michael Kiley said yesterday in a phone interview. He “does a great job for us and his clients.”

Morgan Stanley owns 51 percent of the Smith Barney brokerage, which has more than 17,000 advisers and $1.74 trillion in client assets. Citigroup, the third-largest U.S. lender, owns the rest and is in the process of selling an additional 14 percent stake to Morgan Stanley. Both banks are based in New York.

Why Goldman Sachs, Other Wall Street Titans Are Not Being Prosecuted

Protesters hold signs during a demonstration outside the Goldman Sachs San Francisco headquarters in San Francisco, July 31, 2012.

Πηγή: The Daily Beast
By Peter Schweizer
August 14 2012

The Justice Department's decision not to prosecute Goldman Sachs in a financial-fraud probe is another sign of the cronyism that has kept Attorney General Eric Holder from taking action against other big Wall Street firms, says Peter Schweizer.

On Thursday the Department of Justice announced it will not prosecute Goldman Sachs or any of its employees in a financial-fraud probe.

The news is likely to raise the ire of the political left and right, both of which have highlighted one of the most inconvenient facts of Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department: despite the Obama administration’s promises to clean up Wall Street in the wake of America’s worst financial crisis, there hasnot been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions.

Why is that? In a word: cronyism.

Take Goldman Sachs, for example. Thursday’s announcement that there will be no prosecutions should hardly come as a surprise. In 2008, Goldman Sachs employees were among Barack Obama’s top campaign contributors, giving a combined $1,013,091. Eric Holder’s former law firm, Covington & Burling, also counts Goldman Sachs as one of its clients. Furthermore, in April 2011, when the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a scathing report detailing Goldman’s suspicious Abacus deal, several Goldman executives and their families began flooding Obama campaign coffers with donations, some giving the maximum $35,800.

That’s not to say Holder’s Justice Department hasn’t gone after any financial fraudsters. But the individuals the DOJ’s “Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force” has placed in its prosecutorial crosshairs seem shockingly small compared with the Wall Street titans the Obama administration promised to bring to justice.

Consider the following small-time operators as listed on the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force website:

• “Three Connecticut Women Charged with Overseeing ‘Gifting Tables’ Pyramid Scheme.” Three women in their 50s and 60s were indicted for conspiracy, tax, and wire-fraud charges. “These arrests should send a strong message to all who threaten the financial health of our communities,” one federal agent declared.

• In March, 2012, the DOJ sent a property appraiser in Washington, D.C., to the slammer for 65 months for fraudulently inflated prices in a scheme to “flip” properties. The scheme was a small-time $1 million operation, a sharp contrast with the billions on Wall Street.

• The DOJ’s “get tough” on financial crime strategy included sending two health-care software company executives to the clink for 13 and 15 years.

• A Florida resident was charged and sentenced to 14 months in federal prison for falsifying documents, thereby resulting in the obstruction of an SEC investigation.

• Five people in California were charged with bid-rigging foreclosure auctions. The individuals have been charged with violating the Sherman Act and could face up to 10 years in jail.

• Federal officials went after 10 people in Las Vegas because they tried to “fraudulently gain control of condominium homeowners’ associations in the Las Vegas area so that the HAOs would direct business to a certain law firm and construction company.”

• The owner of a Miami company got 46 months in prison for creating fake loan applications.

• Four people in Tacoma, Wash., were indicted for conspiracy that caused a small bank to fail. Their crime: making false statements on loan applications and to HUD.

To be sure, financial fraud of any kind is wrong and should be prosecuted. But locking up “pygmies” is hardly the kind of financial-fraud crackdown Americans expected in the wake of the largest financial crisis in U.S. history. Increasingly, there appear to be two sets of rules: one for the average citizen, and another for the connected cronies who rule the inside game.

That could be changing, as critiques of Eric Holder’s lack of financial prosecutions have now come from the political left and right; indeed, battling cronyism may represent one of the rare points of common ground in today’s fractious political environment. As progressive Richard Eskow of the Huffington Post recently wrote: “More and more Washington insiders are asking a question that was considered off-limits in the nation's capital just a few months ago: Who, exactly, is Attorney General Eric Holder representing? As scandal after scandal erupts on Wall Street, involving everything from global lending manipulation to cocaine and prostitution, more and more people are worrying about Holder's seeming inaction—or worse—in the face of mounting evidence.”

Will bipartisan outrage boost the decibels in D.C. loud enough for Holder to hear and heed? We’ll see. He’s got at least three months to get moving.

Peter Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute and the William J. Casey Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 2008-09 he served as a consultant to the White House Office of Presidential Speechwriting and he is a former consultant to NBC News. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, Foreign Affairs, and elsewhere. His new book is Throw Them All Out.

Report: Cronyism, political donations likely behind Obama, Holder failure to charge any bankers after 2008 financial meltdown

In a March 15, 2012 file photo a trader works in the Goldman Sachs booth on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Πηγή: The Daily Caller
By Matthew Boyle
August 7 2012

A new report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) finds that President Barack Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s failure to criminally charge any top Wall Street bankers is likely a result of cronyism inside the Department of Justice and political donations made to Obama’s campaign.

Despite Obama’s and Holder’s “heated rhetoric” against Wall Street (in 2009, Obama blamed the 2008 financial collapse on “reckless speculation of bankers” while Holder charged that “unscrupulous executives, Ponzi scheme operators and common criminals alike have targeted the pocketbooks and retirement accounts of middle class Americans”), they haven’t “filed a single criminal charge against any top executive of an elite financial institution,” GAI wrote in its report, exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller.

GAI argues that the Obama administration’s decision to not go after Big Finance is due to senior DOJ leadership — Holder, Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, Associate Attorney General Tony West, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Deputy Attorney General James Cole and Deputy Associate Attorney General Karol Mason — who “all came to the DOJ from prestigious white-collar defense firms where they represented the very financial institutions the DOJ is supposed to investigate.”

The report details how Holder and Breuer both came to the DOJ from Covington & Burling, a “top-tier Washington law firm” with a client list that includes financial firms like Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, CitiBank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, ING, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wilmington Trust.

GAI said that President Obama’s decision to choose Holder, “a white-collar defense attorney from Covington,” as his attorney general, over a “more fiery prosecutor,” appears to have sent “a subtle signal to the financial community” that this administration isn’t going to actually do anything, despite the harsh words.

Cole, the report outlines, was with Bryan Cave LLP — “a white-shoe firm with A-list clients” — before becoming Holder’s right-hand man at the DOJ. One of Cole’s clients while at Bryan Cave LLP, the GAI report shows, was insurance and financial giant AIG.

Cole had done $20 million worth of work for AIG between 2004 and 2008, but his close ties with the company — which was “at the heart of the financial crisis largely because of its noncompliance in regulatory and compliance issues” — didn’t stop Obama or Holder from welcoming him aboard their administration.

The Obama administration’s decision to not appoint an independent counsel to investigate the MF Global scandal, despite more than 60 members of Congress demanding it, also reeks of cronyism, the GAI report details. Obama bundler and former Democratic New Jersy Gov. Jon Corzine was at the center of MF Global.

GAI points out how West — the DOJ’s no. 3 official — worked as a white-collar defense attorney for Morrison and Foerster before he came to the DOJ. Morrison and Foerster is currently providing legal representation to MF Global. Holder and Breuer’s old law firm — Covington & Burling — provided legal services to MF Global too, before MF Global sought bankruptcy protection.

GAI adds that the appearance of MF Global cronyism is “further complicated” by how Reid Weingarten — an attorney at Steptoe & Johnson — was selected to be MF Global treasurer Edith O’Brien’s lawyer.

“Weingarten previously served as Holder’s attorney following the controversial pardon of Marc Rich in the Clinton Justice Department,” the GAI report reads, adding that the blog Main Justice points out how Weingarten is “one of Holder’s best friends.”

In addition to those officials’ potential personal financial interests — were they to return to their old firms after their time at the DOJ ends — in avoiding investigating those big banks, GAI points out how “Obama’s top DOJ officials played prominent roles in his 2008 campaign.”

Holder, the nation’s top DOJ official, “co-chaired the campaign with Tony West, the DOJ’s third highest official.”

“No other modern administration has staffed the DOJ with big money fundraisers,” GAI wrote. “Holder bundled $50,000 for Obama’s 2008 campaign, while Perrelli, West, and Mason all bundled $500,000 for the campaign. West also helped Obama raised an estimated $65 million in California.”

GAI president Peter Schweizer told TheDC that cronyism appears to be infiltrating the halls of the DOJ with the Obama administration, and that it appears Holder’s team has no interest in fighting for accountability when it comes to Wall Street because he, Obama and the rest of the DOJ team have a financial interest in not enforcing those laws.

“When we think of cronyism and the problems of cronyism and crony capitalism, we think in terms of economic loss and gain,” Schweizer said in a phone interview. “What we’re showing here is that cronyism is now permeating our justice system. So, it’s not just a question of dollars and cents, it’s a question of whether you’re going to face legal jeopardy or not on what you’re doing.”

“The issue of a revolving door — people who go in and out of, for instance, the Department of Energy who go work for energy companies then come back to the Department of Energy — is always there,” Schweizer added. “But, we’re not used to associating the top leadership of the Justice Department with the revolving door. And, I think that’s what makes this so troubling — because you can’t trust them. All their financial interests are tied up with these large firms that do an enormous amount of business with Wall Street.”

In the report, GAI details how the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations both actually took down financial criminals — unlike the Obama administration. Between 2002 and 2008, for instance, GAI points out how a Bush administration task force “obtained over 1,300 corporate fraud convictions, including those of over 130 corporate vice presidents and over 200 CEOs and corporate presidents.”

“Clinton’s DOJ prosecuted over 1,800 S&L [savings and loans] executives, senior officials, and directors, and over 1,000 of them were sent to jail,” GAI adds.

But, despite having “promised more of the same,” especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Obama administration’s DOJ has not brought criminal charges against a single major Wall Street executive.

The Bush and Clinton administrations’ track records on prosecuting white-collar crime, and the Obama administration’s failure to do so, Schweizer said, is “evidence that this has less to do with some sort of partisan or philosophical issue.”

“I think it has to do with the fact that, previously, under Clinton or under Bush, you had senior people who were prosecutors — who not only had previous experience, but were actually active prosecutors,” Schweizer said. “The problem that you have at the Obama Justice Department, particularly bizarre at this time and place where we were coming off the financial crisis, is that they really have no recent prosecutors at the top of the Justice Department. They’re all white-collar criminal defense attorneys. That’s what’s so troubling. One would think that, given the financial crisis, and the widespread conduct, they would have at least carved out some senior positions for prosecutors who could really drill down on this. That’s what Clinton did, and that’s what Bush did.”

As one of many examples of where Holder’s DOJ could have gone after Wall Street but failed, GAI cites how Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin “proposed that the DOJ criminally investigate Goldman Sachs for its handling of the Abacus 2007-AC1 transaction” in an April 2011 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report. In that 635-page report, Levin and his staff — who are Democrats — recommended that Holder’s DOJ investigate potential crimes committed. Levin’s subcommittee and the Federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission both made formal referrals to the DOJ for investigation – and Forbes magazine ran an article with the headline, “Criminal Charges Loom for Goldman Sachs After Scathing Report.”

Nothing happened. But, over the course of the rest of 2011, Obama went on a massive fundraising drive down Wall Street.

“By the fall of 2011, Obama had collected more donations from Wall Street than any of the Republican candidates, and employees at Bain Capital had donated more than twice as much to Obama as they did to [Mitt] Romney, the firm’s founder,” GAI wrote in its report.

“In the weeks before and after the Senate report on Goldman Sachs, several Goldman executives and their families made contributions to Obama’s Victory Fund and related entities and some contributors maxed out at the largest individual donation allowed, $35,800.”

“Five senior Goldman Sachs executives wrote more than $130,000 in checks to the Obama Victory Fund,” GAI continued. “Two of these executives had never donated to Obama before and had previously only given small donations to individual candidates.”

While GAI said in the report that it would be a “reach to conclude that the Department of Justice dropped its criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs solely in response to large campaign contributions” from its executives, it certainly doesn’t pass the smell test — and calls for investigations continue.

Protectors of Wall Street

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reacts as he testifies before the House Committee on the Financial Services semi-annual monetary policy report on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 18, 2012.

Πηγή: Salon
By GLENN GREENWALD
July 26 2012

If you believe the Federal Reserve has done a fine job of managing monetary policy and trust it to continue to exert vast power with no accountability or transparency, then you are probably content with the status quo. But yesterday, “a powerful left-right coalition” in the House of Representatives — defying the Fed as well as a likely White House veto — voted overwhelmingly to enact Rep. Ron Paul’s bill to subject the Fed’s monetary policy to audits by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan and independent congressional agency. As Dennis Kucinich, one of 89 Democrats to vote for the bill, put it: “It’s time that we stood up to the Federal Reserve that right now acts like some kind of high, exalted priesthood, unaccountable to democracy.”

Despite the large bipartisan House majority in favor of the bill, it is almost certain, as Reuters put it, “to die in the Democrat-controlled Senate.” That’s because “Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, at one time expressed support for an audit — though he reportedly has changed his mind.” Indeed, despite substantial Democratic support for the bill (including some from the progressive wing, such as Kucinich, Jerry Nadler and Raul Grijalva), “every top Democratic leader [in the House] voted against the bill, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland.” As former Alan Grayson aide Matt Stoller documented yesterday, Democratic leaders did not merely oppose the bill but actively whipped against it, meaning they sought to pressure caucus members to stay in line and oppose it; but as he observes: “The Democratic leaders, despite whipping, barely got a majority of the caucus to vote no. This is a massive failure on their part, and shows how weak they are.”

It was this same left-right coalition, led by Paul and joined by liberal Democrats such as Alan Grayson, that succeeded in enacting an Audit the Fed bill back in 2010. Even though that 2010 bill was substantially weakened by the same forces that oppose the bill now — the Fed, the White House, and party leadership — that audit, once completed, “revealed 16 trillion dollars in secret bank bailouts and has raised more questions about the quasi-private agency’s opaque operations” and independently showed that the Fed ignored rules to aid the largest banks. Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose watered-down Audit the Fed amendment is what passed in the Senate in 2010, said this about the audit revelations:

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. . . . “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

The argument has always been that the Fed must be able to act with independence and secrecy and that transparency would undermine its credibility and lead to political interference in monetary policy; especially now, the ostensible concern is that Republicans will impede necessary measures. But as Stoller points out, none of the parade of horribles about which the Fed warned resulted from the 2010 audit, and more to the point, the Fed — prime enablers of banks, crony capitalism and oligarchy — has proven that it deserves neither the trust nor the credibility which it had previously commanded. It’s remarkable to watch the Democratic Party become its most devoted defenders. As Stoller said about yesterday’s vote: “It’s so tiresome to see the Democratic leadership take the side of Wall Street, over and over and over.”

Along those lines, Neil Barofsky, the Inspector General of the TARP bailout program from 2008 until 2011, has a must-read new bookentitled Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street. When he was serving as IG, I praised Barofsky’s independence and adversarial watchdog mentality several times when he was warning of the Treasury Department and Tim Geithner’s overarching devotion to the interests of Wall Street at the expense of everyone else. But this new book lays out the case as clearly and powerfully as it can be made that the Obama administration and Geithner, as The New York Times‘ Gretchen Morgenson put it, “eagerly served Wall Street interests at the public’s expense, and regulators were captured by the very industry they were supposed to be regulating.” She adds:

“The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true,” Mr. Barofsky said in an interview last week. “It really happened. These suspicions are valid” . . . .

Mr. Barofsky joins the ranks of those who believe that another crisis is likely because of the failed response to this one. “Incentives are baked into the system to take advantage of it for short-term profit,” he said. “The incentives are to cheat, and cheating is profitable because there are no consequences.”

As one very good review of the book began: “I sincerely did not think it would be possible at this point to lower my opinion of Tim Geithner. Nor did I think it possible, after the year and a half I just spent there, to make me think less of DC. . . . [F]ormer TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky has accomplished both with his just-published book Bailout.” Barofsky has been particularly critical of the Treasury Department’s failure to use the billions in funds allocated by Congress to help distressed homeowners as part of the HAMP program, on the ground that bankers — rather than ordinary Americans — were their only real concern (MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, citing this New York Times article on the administration’s HAMP failures, previously said that the “[White House's] foreclosure mitigation failure has been so egregious and cruel, it makes me question their motives on everything”).

Predictably, Barofsky, a life-long Democrat and 2008 Obama supporter, has now become a Prime Enemy of Democratic partisans and banker-loyal, establishment-protecting, status-quo-perpetuating apparatchiks (as yesterday’s vote demonstrates, there is substantial overlap between those two categories). When Barofsky left his job as IG in 2011, a cowardly Obama official — naturally allowed by aWashington Post reporter to hide behind a shield of anonymity — maligned him as being desperate for media attention and “consistently wrong about a lot of big things” (without specifying any of those things). In an interview this week with Charlie Rose, Geithner pronounced himself“deeply offended” at Barofsky’s claims (without actually refuting them or claiming they are inaccurate).

Several months ago, Obama economics adviser Austin Goolsbeedarkly announced on Twitter: “Seems Barofsky has agenda,” and when challenged by Barofsky for specifics, added: “If you consistently try to highlight anything negative that’s an agenda. That feels like what you’ve been doing” (as usual, anyone who criticizes Obama — even life-long Democrats and those who supported him in 2008 — must harbor secret, malicious motives). And now, after Morgenson’s positive words, The New York Times rushes to side with Geithner and the banks with its formal review today that harshly slams Barofsky’s book (both Jason Linkins and Yves Smith extensively document the dishonesty at the heart of that review).

In sum, Barofsky is as well-positioned as it gets to describe the priorities and loyalties of the economic policymakers inside the administration, and is one of the very few Washington officials with the independence and courage to do so. Unsurprisingly, his book presents the definitive case for how the Obama administration devoted itself to the interests of the very plutocrats who precipitated the financial crisis in the first place. Recall how former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, in his seminal 2009 article in The Atlantic entitled “The Quiet Coup,” described how corrupt oligarchies generally respond to a financial crisis:

Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or—here’s a classic Kremlin bailout technique—the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk—at least until the riots grow too large.

Last night, Barofsky was on The Rachel Maddow Show, talking to guest host Ezra Klein, and he described many of the ways that the Obama administration sought to protect banks and Wall Street at the expense of ordinary citizens, and also addressed what, on Twitter this morning, he called the “silly meme that because Wall Street supports Romney, it means the Obama Administration was tough on Too Big To Fail” [edited to fix Twitter abbreviations]. Needless to say, Mitt Romney is a fully faithful and devoted servant of the Wall Street industry that made him so rich, but as Barofsky details — using his first-hand, insider knowledge — those same interests are bountifully served by the current administration as well:

OWS Documentary: "History of an Occupation"

March 30 2012

Race, Gender, and Occupy
By Sweta Vohra and Jordan Flaherty, Fault Lines
A version of this article originally appeared on the Al Jazeera website

At a recent panel discussion on the Occupy movement, a left-leaning professor from New York University speculated that identity politics – the prioritizing of issues of race and gender in movements for justice – could be a plot funded by the CIA to undermine activism. While most commentators do not go this far, the idea that activists who focus on these issues are “undermining the struggle” has a long history within progressive organizing. And in Occupy Wall Street encampments around the country these debates have often exploded into public view.

For the past six months, we have been following the Occupy movement for a two-part documentary on Occupy for Fault Lines. We have spent weeks in conversation with activists as they have planned actions and struggled to keep their movement relevant through a cold winter. And organizers have told us repeatedly that they feel these discussions around race and gender, far from weakening the movement, have lent it strength and made organizing more accountable to the communities most affected by the economic crisis.

The process of challenging structural oppression has been difficult. We spoke to many women and people of color who felt pushed out of Occupy. Some activists, already bruised by dismissive media coverage, tried not to let these conflicts show. When internal conflicts would arise they tried to not let it happen on camera. But what we did observe are many fiercely intelligent activists dedicated to waging these struggles within Occupy and strengthening the movement with their work.

The 99 per cent

When people gathered in Zuccotti Park on September 17, the anger at corporate greed was a unifying call. This was a protest that in large part was about shifting power from the wealthy to the many. It was a mostly white crowd, but it sought to incorporate a wide range of voices.

The economic crisis in the US had made the white middle class question their future. Soaring unemployment rates, suffocating student loan debt, and thousands of foreclosures began to close in. This reality propelled the Occupy movement forward. And many feel that the presence of so many relatively privileged white people brought increased media attention and public sympathy.

Organizers told us they immediately saw the next step as needing to raise awareness among the many young people new to activism that came flocking to occupations. “It’s the job of the social justice movement to continue that conversation,” says Max Rameau, a co-founder of Take Back the Land, who has advised many of the Occupies.

He told us that occupiers need to “make sure this isn’t just a movement of the way white people have gone from being able to every day shop at particular malls, and now they have to shop at reduced, discount stores … this has to do, really, about inequality and long-term inequality, including communities who have suffered for years, not just because of the recent economic downturn.”

Many women reported harassment in the camp, and even assault – especially those that stayed overnight. “I think there were some (Occupy camps) that allowed homophobia and sexism to thrive in a really significant way,” says Rameau. “I think homophobia and sexism in society exist everywhere, but were allowed to thrive in some of these areas.”

Manissa Maharawal, a PhD student and Occupy activist, said: “I love the discourse of the 99 per cent. I think it’s great, I think it’s been really unifying. But I would like it to go along with saying something like: ‘We are the 99 per cent, but the way that we experience the 99 per cent can be very different’.”

Jack Bryson, a 49-year-old Black public service worker, became an activist after his sons witnessed the killing of their friend Oscar Grant at the hands of transit police in Oakland. When he heard that Occupy Oakland had named their camp Oscar Grant Plaza, he came to check it out. He was excited by what he found, but also thought many young white activists he met had a lot to learn about poverty and repression. “The black community, for 400 years, [have] always been the 99 per cent,” Bryson said. “Welcome to our world.”

Bryson was one of many who told us that Occupy activists needed to understand the ways in which communities of color experience the criminal justice system. He noted that Occupy Oakland had faced intense police repression. But, he told us, what many failed to realize was that police brutality is a daily fact of life in many communities. “Black, young men … would love to come out here. But what happens here, with the police? It happens on Saturday nights to Black young men leaving a nightclub, or a black young man going into a gas station and being followed by the police.”

Boots Riley, a hip-hop artist and Occupy Oakland organizer, told us that he hopes the Occupy movement can challenge the ways that people have viewed policing. “I think that what happens normally is the media has most of white America looking at people of color as deficient, savage, and when they see something happen to them by police they believe that it was somehow their fault,” says Riley. “Our ideas and views about the police are very tied in to our ideas and views about why people are poor.”

If OWS wanted to be a movement that was going to shift power in the US, these organizers felt it had to come to terms with the fundamental differences in the ways that communities of color experienced racism, how women experienced patriarchy, and how queer and transgender communities experienced homophobia and gender bias. If Occupy Wall Street wanted to talk about envisioning an alternative community, activists would first have to face their own privilege.

That awareness has involved active engagement by white anti-racists, as well as the activists of color who committed deeply to the movement, despite often facing attacks for bringing up issues of race and gender.

“I was totally impressed by the leadership that was coming from young people of color, young women of color,” activist and scholar Angela Davis told us in a conversation about Occupy camps she visited on the East coast.

“I think it’s good that there’s some white men getting involved, but they also have to recognize that, in order to be involved in this campaign of the 99 per cent against the one per cent, we have to recognize that the 99 per cent is hierarchically developed by itself.”

Davis told us that Occupy was indebted to a long history of direct action led by women and by people of color. She specifically noted the legacy of resistance in prisons, led by those behind bars. “Let’s recognize that we’re not artificially imposing these issues on the Occupy movement,” added Davis. “The Occupy movement has organically risen from those movements.”

For Lisa Fithian, one of many white activists who seeks to challenge race and gender bias in the movement, this consciousness raising is a crucial part of struggling for justice.”What I teach is that those with more privileges whether because your color of your skin, your gender, your education, whatever, how do you use those privileges strategically to raise those of all?”

“We have to take our privileges, become conscious and use them to actively change the social relationships, and access, and availability of resources,” she added.

Blocking the process

Manissa Maharawal, a South Asian woman, has been one of Occupy Wall Street’s most eloquent and passionate defenders. But she almost walked out of the movement on one of her very first visits to Zuccotti Park. When she, along with several people of color, stood up in front of hundreds of people to block a proposal at a very early Occupy Wall Street assembly, she felt anger and hostility from many of those present. She says it’s “still one of the more intimidating things that I’ve had to do in my life”. The proposal was for a document called the Declaration of the Occupation, and she felt language in the document erased oppression faced by people of color.

She did not want to have to block the proposal and face the angry stares of hundreds of people. However, says Maharawal, it’s something she had to do. “What struck me then was that if I want Occupy to be something that’s around for a long time in my life … it needs from the very beginning to be a movement that’s taking these things on,” she explained. “And that is thinking about not just corporate greed and financial institutions, but is thinking about how these things are connected to racism, to patriarchy, to oppression generally.”

Ultimately, Maharawal and others who agreed with her succeeded in changing the language of the declaration. Nearly two months later, one of the white male activists who had expressed his frustration with her came up to her to thank her for her intervention. “I’m really glad you did that, I learned a lot right then,” he told her.

“Making these connections is difficult, it’s been like constant work in this movement,” says Maharawal. But, she adds, “this stuff doesn’t feel like minutia, it feels fundamental to me”. She says this movement is about creating a real alternative to our current system, and, for her, that means fighting these systemic issues. “Why are we going to create a system that just re-creates all these oppressions? That recreates racism, that recreates oppression, that recreates gender hierarchy. Why would I want to be a part of that?”

Sweta Vohra and Jordan Flaherty are producers of Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines. Fault Lines presents two special programs on the Occupy movement premiering March 20 & 27.

Occupy Wall Street's March Against Police Brutality

Πηγή: Gothamist
By Christopher Robbins
March 25 2012

Fourteen demonstrators were arrested yesterday in a meandering march from Zuccotti Park to Union Square to protest NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and his department. A majority of the arrests were for disorderly conduct, though the NYPD did not choose to enforce a rule in Union Square which requires demonstrations larger than 20 people to obtain a permit.

Councilmembers Jumaane Williams and Ydanis Rodriguez, who have been supporters of the Occupy movement and fierce critics of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices, marched and acted as observers. "My primary job is to make sure everybody's rights are protected and nobody is harmed," Williams told the Guardian's Ryan Devereaux. "I think we're seeing the frustration and anger raised on both sides, the protesters and the police and I blame that squarely on the mayor and the commissioner."

Williams added that Commissioner Kelly (who makes a mean meatball) and Mayor Bloomberg "refuse to acknowledge there's a problem with the culture within the NYPD."

Political Tyranny of the Few and the Mankind

Πηγή: International.to World News
By Mahboob A. Khawaja

Dec 21 2011

The people’s revolution in America, Europe and across the globe called “Occupy Movement” has articulated inspiration from the struggle of the Egyptian people against the authoritarian tyranny at Tahrir Square to emerge as a force of courage and imagination for New Thinking and Change uniting the humanity as ONE against the tyranny of the few bankers, corporate warlords, billionaires, politicians and blood sucking draculas of the so called democracy who have never known homelessness, nor experienced poverty, unemployment and being outcastes in an overwhelming man-made class system of the few.

(On the US politicians) “A gregarious type who has a big ego; who speaks with a hypocritical forked-tongue to different audiences; who can deceive other people while looking them in the eye; a narcissistic who yet is so insecure or greedy that they can be bought-off by lobbyists and dance as their puppet while appearing to show leadership…” James A. Marples (“Any wheat in this political field?”)

America is a land of opportunities but its politics is primitive, egoistic and an obstruction to the innovative and creative thinking of the American masses. So much so, the common folks appear to have lost interest in the dull and non-productive politics of the 21st century US governance. If the CNN and Wolf Blitzer are to be believed of today’s reporting, American masses give only 16% approval grading and 83% disapprove the role and working of the present politically divided Congress. This outcomes of the assessment makes the legitimacy of the US politics irrelevant and in dire NEED of change and adaptability to the futuristic demands of a new age - a new generation so reasonably antagonistic to the traditional establishments kept disconnected with the people and operated solely by the lobbyists and corporate interests.

Strangely enough, President Obama was elected on the distinct premise of change and the political slogan “Yes we can.” Once in the powerhouse, he turned out to be dysfunctional as far as logic and intellectual needs of the people of the United States are concerned. Form the Audacity of Hope to “Yes we Can”, he defied all the implications of REASON and responsibility and preferred complacency and continuation of the bogus War on Terrorism, political killings of innocent people across the globe and reversing publicly made legal commitments to close the infamous Guantanobay Terror Prison, and to normalize relations with the Muslim world. Take a cool breathe, don’t be shocked, we are not at the end of history, all politicians are outcome of self-centered interests, egomaniac ideals and individualistic absolutism. They simply use the symbols of democracy and publicly funded apparatus to get votes and then imagine their own game plan to count people as digits, numbers and databank to enhance their own political agendas. Indeed, democracy now can be described as off the people, buy the people, and far the people.

In his letter James A. Marples (“Any wheat in this political field?” The Topeks Capital Journal: CJonline.com, USA, 11/26/2011) shares few interesting perspectives on the American politicians: “A gregarious type who has a big ego; who speaks with a hypocritical forked-tongue to different audiences; who can deceive other people while looking them in the eye; a narcissistic who yet is so insecure or greedy that they can be bought-off by lobbyists and dance as their puppet while appearing to show leadership…..Many good people capable of running for elected office can’t or won’t put themselves into the political arena. The campaign season is too lengthy and the political gauntlet is plagued by reporters who are part paparazzi and part-cockroaches.”

Across the globe, the people’s movements in some 82 or more countries called “Occupy the Wall Street” and the sitting-in protests of the left over 99% mankind - the voices of reason against the systematic economic, social and political cruelty of the 1% - a revulsion against the greedy norms of billionaires and economically generated nobles of the 21st century. The corporate sponsored media has carved up myths against the 99% living mankind, not knowing and understanding the pains and anguish of the deprived citizens of the same republic while asking for defined agendas and listing of demands as if it was a court drama of argumentation. Long time ago, Shakespeare must have sensed the play of human deceits and paradoxes to put into a proper context. While the rich indulged in conspiracy and corruption, “the destiny of people coincided with the destiny of their monarch and nobles.

The 99% people of the human kind occupying the civic centers across the globe, question the criterion of insane satisfaction implied in the so called zones of economic prosperity and maintaining higher standards of living – an economic fantasy of the human illumination. All man-made systematic notions of life, be it the former Communism or the current work in progress under the Capitalism aim at exclusion of the fullest human values: moral, social, economic, political, intellectual and spiritual, the planners see what they want to implement as suitable to the genius of the few controlling agents of influence- bankers, military-industrial complexes and owners of free market stuff. They cite religion as primitive and irrelevant to the modern age but throughout history man’s fullest skills, aspiration and success has flourished through the nature and scope of the system of belief- Divine Religions. Unlike economic forecasts and speculative reasoning, Divine revelations have helped the mankind to rediscover their sense of moral, social and spiritual originality and values and to frame a dynamic outlook of life harmonizing material and spiritual dimensions leading to peace, moral and intellectual freedom, new ideas and ideals for the future and a universal context to the besieged humanity. Thus facilitating the scattered mankind a focused forum to organize a universal character of unity – “WE THE PEOPLE” the beginning of the American Declaration of Independence, The UNO Charter, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and so many other global manifestos and statements - all have one way or other violated the very essence of the written covenants and victimized the large segment of mankind of which they were intended to be defending the cause. The 99% occupying protesters and victims of police brutalities - we the people could not gain what was promised to them by the solid covenants via the democratic system of governance - a clear travesty of moral, social and economic justice. Imagine what rational foundation is there for the democracy to be operational as a system of people’s governance.

James A. Marples (“Any wheat in this political field?” The Topeks Capital Journal: CJonline.com, USA, 11/26/2011) reminds the mankind:

“All of us are human. We are all sinners who have some portion of our past that would embarrass. Candidates should acknowledge shortcomings, not cover them up. Big money and established names dominate the field…..Out of a nation of more than 300 million souls why can’t we find some new, fresh faces? I’d rather see a motivated person of good character who might have little experience run for office than a dubious character with a long resume and fake Hollywood looks…….

I’d like to see lobbyists barred from personally wining and dining candidates or officials. And the ultimate term limit, one term for any state or federal office, should be imposed. Then, an elected official would be barred from government service of lobbying for three years, after which he or she could seek election or appointment of another state or federal position. Officials would be more apt to work for the peoples’ interests rather than their own. We need to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

Paul Craig Roberts (“Western Democracy: A Farce And A Sham”, 11/03/2011) points out that: “If you need more evidence of this mythical creature called “Western democracy,” consider that Western governments are no longer accountable to law…..In America the only thing that can ruin a politician is his interest in sex. A politician, for example, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, B. Obama, cannot be ruined by violating United States and international law or by treating the US Constitution as a “mere scrap of paper.” Bush and Cheney can take America to wars based entirely on lies and orchestrated deceptions. They can commit war crimes, murdering large numbers of civilians in the cause of “the war on terror,” itself a hoax. They can violate US and international laws against torture simply “because the president said so.” They can throw away habeas corpus, the constitutional requirement that a person cannot be imprisoned without evidence presented to a court. They can deny the right to an attorney. They can violate the law and spy on Americans without obtaining warrants. They can send due process to hell. In fact, they can do whatever they want just like Hitler’s Gestapo and Stalin’s secret police. But if they show undue interest in a woman or proposition a woman, they are dead meat.”

Gordon Duff Staff Writer and Senior Editor of Veterans Today (“DIPLOMAT, DRUG MULE OR TERRORIST?” 02/18/2011) spotlights the episode of Raymond Davis who killed two Pakistani national in cold blood murder at Lahore. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called him a “diplomat”, in reality he was a CIA operative contractor involved in subversive and illegal activities across that land of the poor and deprived, managed by the US aid dollars including the Pakistani government – the PPP –Zardari’s thug operative governance and the army Generals on regular US payroll. We now call it diplomacy explains Gordon Duff and the thugs are “diplomats.”

“We can only imagine what they do. We have seen their parties, gay sex orgies in Kabul. We have seen the photos from Abu Ghraib. We have seen the bodies, children, women, the aged, anyone unable to duck gunfire from the window of a Humvee or black Chevy Tahoe…. What is Raymond Davis? ….. Raymond Davis has supplied the answer. His training? Davis is “black ops.”…..“Black ops” is the friendly term for terrorism, usually reserved for our enemies. ….. What Davis is accused of isn’t new. Americans have been arrested for driving around Afghanistan, shooting people at random, throwing hand grenades into crowds. Americans haven’t been arrested for breaking into homes, dozens of them, murdering entire families “by mistake.” Americans haven’t been arrested for drone attacks that seem to leave rows of corpses, always so many children among them, burned and dismembered, just like the photos of the “precision attacks” on Gaza….Is America telling Pakistan that Davis and his friends were on “official business?” Have they explained exactly what that business is? I can’t wait to hear this one.

Hey, what does it matter. Pakistan is notoriously corrupt. Wait a couple of weeks, slip a few hundred thousand bucks into the right pockets and it will all be forgotten.”

Paul Craig Roberts (“Western Democracy: A Farce and A Sham”, 11/03/2011): sums up the global politics, the specialized generic discipline of the few who at best are the contemporary warlords – the gatekeepers of the global democratic governance – an institutionalized duplicity funded by the people, chosen by the people and works against the people in all its intents and purposes and only for the good of the FEW - the 1% in question by the 99% masses of the planet - that symbolizes the election psyche “democracy at work.”

“In Amerika today, or in the UK and the EU, anyone who tells the truth is a “threat.” Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who made public information leaked to him by US government sources horrified by the criminal actions of the United States government….. Western “civilization” is totally corrupted by American money. There is no integrity anywhere. For a decade Washington has been murdering women, children, village elders, and journalists in the name of the hoax “war on terror…..
The only terrorists Americans will ever experience are those funded by their own tax dollars within their “own” government. A people incapable of perceiving its real peril has no chance of surviving. America might be a military superpower, but it no longer exists as a free country with accountable government and a rule of law.”

The US and West European nations appear bankrupt, not just financially or intellectually but also morally, socially, politically and spiritually too. All can be traced back to their warmongering and passion to dehumanize and kill the mankind looking different in color and taste and ethnicity. Nationalism made them fight against the rest of the humanity. But mankind is alive and progressive, whereas the European nobles, warlords and hegemonic leaders have died in disgrace and humiliating manners. Nobody would remember them as we do Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Should the intelligent ones not learn a lesson from the living history?

(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja, an academic with special interests in global peace and security and conflict resolution, and comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of numerous publications in global affairs. His latest book includes: Arabia at Crossroads: Arab People Strive for Freedom, Peace and New Leadership. VDM Publishers, Germany, September 2011. Comments are welcome: kmahboob@yahoo.com)

New York, California hitting up millionaires, again

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, listens to State Senate Minority Leader John Sampson during a conversation, before a jobs bill signing ceremony held at Medgar Evers College on Friday, Dec. 9, 2011 in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Πηγή: Kyivpost
By AP
Dec 10 2011

Hollywood moguls and Manhattan stock brokers are facing a slap by the Occupy Wall Street movement as California and New York again target high-wage earners to address a continued fiscal crisis in the states.

On Wednesday, with the urging of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York raised its top tax rate on single filers making $1 million and joint filers making $2 million, a rate just slightly under the 2008 income tax surcharge that expires Dec. 31.

Earlier this month in California, Gov. Jerry Brown said he, too, wants to avoid further cuts to education and social services by proposing a ballot initiative asking voters to increase taxes. That could hit Californians making over $250,000 a year.

"Occupy turned the political conversation on its head," said Richard Brodsky, a senior fellow at the Wagner School at New York University. "Time was austerity and tax cuts were the only acceptable place to be. Now, income inequality and the 99 percent dominate practical politics. OWS paved the way; Cuomo and Brown seized the moment."

There's no evidence of a national groundswell after more than a dozen states tapped their well-heeled residents for temporary income tax hikes from 2006-2009. But while most of those states let their temporary tax increases lapse as scheduled, New York and California this month went back to seeking revenue from the wealthy.

Despite the political rhetoric, there's less need in either state to act to make their tax brackets more fair. California and New York already have more progressive systems than most states, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation based in Washington, D.C.

"California and New York are historically not going to be the most fiscally conservative states," said Mark Robyn, an economist with the Tax Foundation. "To say they reflect the overall country's attitude to taxing the wealthy at a disproportionate rate, that might be tenuous."

California and New York are also among only four states, with Washington state and Missouri, to show deficits in a midyear survey by the National Conference of Legislatures, said the group's Mandy Rafool.

California faces a $3.7 billion shortfall for the current fiscal year and projected $12.8 billion deficit in 2013. New York learned of an unexpected $350 million deficit this year, and a higher projected deficit for the 2012-13 fiscal year of $3.5 billion.

But Rafool said there's no inkling more states will follow California and New York, although tax revenues are growing only slowly in most states.

"It's an election year and we're seeing that revenues are recovering, spending is stable," Rafool said. "This is better than in the last four years. It's still not good, but it's better."

She said she'd be surprised if other states follow New York and California.

Instead, the common thread is that each state's finances are worse than most other states, and their Democratic leadership has felt pressure from the Occupy Wall Street movement and other progressives.

In New York, an Occupy Albany movement has camped outside the state Capitol all fall. At first, Cuomo, a Democrat who ran as a fiscal conservative last year, tried to evict them, only to be stymied by the local Democratic district attorney and mayor. Occupy Albany called Cuomo "Gov. 1 Percent" for opposing a millionaire tax and saying it would drive employers out of state. The Occupy Wall Street movement claims that there is growing inequality between the wealthiest 1 percent of the population and the remaining 99 percent.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party that Cuomo heads and his progressive allies continued to push for a new millionaire tax to avoid more cuts to education and health care.

In November, Cuomo made a hard left and pushed for the millionaire tax increase passed Wednesday that includes a modest, but rare middle class tax break. The package also provided more spending for jobs programs.

"My job as governor is to make the best decision at the time to meet the needs of the state at the time," Cuomo said Wednesday.

"You're seeing it play out on college campuses," said the California state Senate's Democratic leader, Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento. "You're seeing it play out in different communities throughout California. There's a real sense that the pendulum in terms of the way we've had to deal with these budget deficits, has gone too far."

But while there may be an immediate payoff in cash and politics, the long-term wisdom of soaking the rich has long been questioned.

"As many states face increasingly large budget shortfalls that are often related to economic cycles, leaning on high-income earners and small businesses to pick up a disproportionate amount of the bill raises serious equity concerns and is bad for government revenue stability," said Scott Drenkard, an analyst with the Tax Foundation.

He notes many businesses, 94 percent of which file as individuals, and high-income earners have the most volatile income. If the economy continues to slip, they will have less revenue and that could further hurt businesses or prompt them to flee.

New York and California already share another distinction: They have experienced some of the greatest flight of taxpayers from 1999 to 2009 and have tax structures considered among the least attractive to businesses, according to the Tax Foundation.

"It reminds me of the Bob Dylan song, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing," said Doug Muzzio, a Baruch College politics professor in New York City. He said continuing fiscal crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement could force the same consideration elsewhere.

"Without any real evidence except for what I've seen here, I would think that the other states almost invariably will have to examine it," he said.

Wall Street Analyst Tries to 'Save The Big Banks From Themselves'

Πηγή: abcnews
By SUSANNA KIM

Dec 3 2011

Mike Mayo says he is on the front lines of Occupy Wall Street's battle, which is unusual coming from a Wall Street analyst.

A widely-followed managing director of brokerage firm CLSA, Mayo, 48, says the "intersection" between Occupy Wall Street protesters and Wall Street analysts is "bigger than anyone realizes."

On the 10th anniversary of Enron's collapse this week, Mayo lamented that three failures that contributed to the Texas energy company's bankruptcy still remain: faulty incentives, accountability and government regulations.

"The abuses in our financial system haven't gone away even after Enron and WorldCom, even after the mortgage crisis," he told ABC News. "The same problems that got us into what were the largest corporate bankruptcies at the time are still in place."

Enron's $65.5 billion bankruptcy in 2001 was the largest before WorldCom surpassed it in 2002 when it was worth over $100 billion, according to Business Insider. But in 2008, the $327.9 billion Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Washington Mutual and nearly $700 billion bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers would dwarf both.

Mayo, based in New York City, is careful about describing how he feels about Occupy Wall Street, which has rallied against what the movement sees as "corporate greed" and a wide range of economic issues.

"My concerns sound like some of the same concerns of Occupy Wall Street," he said.

But Mayo, who has worked for a total of six banks, never mentions the Occupy Wall Street movement in his book, "Exile on Wall Street: One Analyst's Fight to Save the Big Banks from Themselves," released weeks ago by publisher Wiley. He said he finished his book long before the Occupy Wall Street movement started in September -- at the time of Enron's collapse, when he was fired by one of his previous employers, Credit Suisse.

"This is my story -- written because the problems that I started writing about the time of Enron still exist today," he said. "Hopefully the book brings more visibility to the issues in a way that is accessible to the person on the street."

Mayo's first foray into the world of finance was as a staffer at the Federal Reserve in the late 1980s and early 90s, when Alan Greenspan was chairman. Mayo's "hero," however, is Greenspan's predecessor, Paul Volcker, who is credited with ending the high inflation that plagued the U.S. in the 70s and 80s.

"I respect him most because he never bought into the line—invariably offered by bankers—that regulators should do what's best for the banks because that will do the most good for the country," Mayo writes in his book. "Instead, [the goal of the Fed] is to ensure that the banking industry remains stable and helps our economy thrive."

Mayo says he believes in free markets, but failed incentives, accountability and the role of government in the world of finance is corrupting them.

As a case in point, Mayo writes that the CEOs of SunTrust and KeyCorp each made more than $20 million from 2008 through 2010, while their companies lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

"That's not capitalism; that's entitlement," Mayo writes.

"If we don't get it right in the free markets, there's going to be more regulation," he told ABC News. "The choice has been ours to lose. Allow free markets to operate as they should or have additional regulation and other outsiders determine the course of the conversation."

Critics of financial regulatory agencies such as the Securites and Exchange Commission say they have not acted diligently in investigating scams like Enron. Some victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, the largest in history, blame the S.E.C. for having a blind eye to years of shady dealings. Many say the agencies do not have enough funding and power to regulate all malfeasance.

Mayo, at least, argues that companies should not be allowed to settle charges by the S.E.C. so easily, which he equates to just a slap on the wrist without admitting wrongdoing.

He applauded the dismissal this week by a judge in New York of a $285 million S.E.C. settlement with Citigroup over toxic mortgage securities. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff criticized regulators for hiding details from the public of Citigroup's alleged bets against mortgage investments in 2007, which led to investor losses.

Mayo said the dismissal was validation that settlements are not a deterrent to future wrongdoing.

"It's certainly a milestone but the problem is much bigger than any one decision by a judge about the S.E.C.," Mayo said about the judge's dismissal.

200 arrested as cops raid Occupy LA camp

A protester is arrested as Los Angeles police officers evict protesters from the Occupy Los Angeles encampment outside City Hall in Los Angeles Nov. 30, 2011.

Πηγή: CBS news

Nov 30 2011

LOS ANGELES - More than 1,400 police officers, some in riot gear, cleared the Occupy Los Angeles camp early Wednesday, driving protesters from a park around City Hall and arresting more than 200 who defied orders to leave. Similar raids in Philadelphia led to 52 arrests, but the scene in both cities was relatively peaceful.

Police in Los Angeles and Philadelphia moved in on Occupy Wall Street encampments under darkness in an effort to clear out some of the longest-lasting protest sites since crackdowns ended similar occupations across the country.

The Los Angeles officers staged for hours outside Dodger Stadium before the raid. They were warned that demonstrators might throw everything from concrete and gravel to human feces at them.

"Please put your face masks down and watch each other's back," a supervisor told them. "Now go to work."

The police operation was planned at night because downtown is mostly vacant, with offices closed, fewer pedestrians and less traffic, but a spokesman said it could make officers more vulnerable. "It's more difficult for us to see things, to see booby traps," Lt. Andy Neiman, told pool reporters. "Operating in the dark is never an advantage." Neiman said the force was prepared to deal with demonstrators holed up in the camp or those who had climbed up trees in the small park.

Before police arrived in large numbers in Los Angeles, protesters were upbeat and the mood was almost festive. A protester in a Santa Claus hat danced in the street. A woman showed off the reindeer antlers she had mounted on her gas mask.

Fireworks exploded in the sky at one point. Later, as helicopters hovered above, someone blew "The Star Spangled Banner" on a horn.

Campers planning to defend the camp and hold their ground barricaded entrances to the park with trash cans.

Gia Trimble, member of the Occupy LA media team, said a lot of people committed to the cause would stay and risk arrest. "This is a monumental night for Los Angeles," Trimble said. "We're going to do what we can to protect the camp."

In their anticipation of an eviction, the Los Angeles protesters designated medics designated with red crosses taped on clothing. Some protesters had gas masks.

Organizers at the camp packed up computer and technical equipment from the media tent.

Two men who constructed an elaborate tree house lashed bamboo sticks together with twine to push away any ladder police might use to evict them.

Members of the National Lawyers guild had legal observers on hand for an eviction.

As officers first surrounded the camp, hundreds of protesters chanted, "The people united will never be defeated."