The public is angry. Why should the public pay for the bankers mistakes. Iceland blogger Halldor Sigurdsson

Who cleans up the mess when ignorant, greedy bankers rack up massive debt then go broke? The people of Iceland made a strong statement Saturday. The sins of big bankers and government regulators shouldn't fall on the citizens. By a 93% to 2% margin, they voted down a proposal requiring them to cover bad debt incurred by one of the nation’s oldest and largest banks. Covering the debt would have cost Iceland's 317,000 citizens around $17,000 each.

Iceland's national referendum was the first opportunity for the people of any nation to vote directly on who pays when the financial elite fail.

As citizens voted, Iceland's Prime Minister was dismissing the importance of the vote and promising to negotiate a payment scheme obligating citizen subsidies for bad debt created by Iceland's beyond-bad bankers.

Icelanders are struggling with a collapsed economy. Businesses are failing at a startling rate, unemployment is soaring, and the prospects for the future are simply not there. Yet the British and Dutch governments demand that their swindled citizens receive compensation from beleaguered Icelanders. Where were the British and Dutch central banks and politicians while their citizens were being fleeced? Aren't the rulers of these countries aware that the failed Icelandic bank was owned by wealth investors, not the citizens?

Numerian (Feb 15)  Posted by Michael Collins with permission of the author

From TPM, we get this little tidbit of news concerning Blackwater, a corporation so tarnished with corruption, gun running, muder, prostitution and rape of minors and other legal issues that they changed their name to Xe to try and dump the image they had built for themselves and other mercenary groups:

A lawsuit filed by two former employees of Blackwater charges that
the controversial security contractor defrauded the U.S. government,
including charging it for strippers and prostitutes, the New York Times reports.

Perhaps the most explosive charge in the lawsuit -- filed by a
married couple, Brad and Melan Davis, is that the company put a
Filipino prostitute in Afghanistan on its payroll under the "Morale
Welfare Recreation" category, then billed the government for her salary
and plane tickets.

I think TPM gets this story mostly right... But it seems that Blackwater/Xe may have actually been double billing for the prostitues' flights, as well as pretty much anyone else they could book on their privatized fraudulent err farce:

Bank of America Looks Like  First of Many

Michael Collins

"This merger (Bank of America and Merrill Lynch) is a classic
example of how the actions of our nation’s largest financial
institutions led to the near-collapse of our financial system," said
Attorney General Cuomo. "Bank of America, through its top management,
engaged in a concerted effort to deceive shareholders and American
taxpayers at large. This was an arrogant scheme hatched by the bank’s
top executives who believed they could play by their own set of rules.
In the end, they committed an enormous fraud and American taxpayers
ended up paying billions for Bank of America’s misdeeds." (Image)

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo's complaint filed in the New York Supreme Court, County
of New York against the Bank of America and two former top executives
has the potential to push that too big to fail entity off the edge of a very steep cliff. The charges of massive fraud are based on a compelling and exhaustive filing on February 4.

A trial will likely involve testimony by the current Bank of America CEO and President Brian Moynihan against defendants Kenneth Lewis, the bank's former CEO and board chairman, former chief financial officer (CFO) Joseph L. Price, and the bank itself. Price is currently in charge of BofA's credit card division.

The complaint charges fraud before, during and after the bank's
merger with struggling brokerage firm Merrill Lynch in late 2008. The
fraud cost bank shareholders and citizens billions of dollars. This is
the first major case brought against our nation's largest financial institutions. These are the same financial institutions and executives that nearly destroyed the economy.

From Bloomberg, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Co. and UBS AG have assets frozen by Italy:

Italy’s financial police are seizing 73.3 million euros ($102
million) of assets from Bank of America Corp. and a unit of Dexia SA as
part of a probe into an alleged derivatives fraud in the region of
Apulia.

Police are investigating losses on derivatives linked to the sale of
870 million euros of bonds sold by the regional government in 2003 and
2004, according to an e-mail from the prosecutor’s office in Bari
today. The banks misled the municipality, located in the heel of Italy,
on the economic advantages of the transaction and concealed their fees,
the prosecutor said.

The region, also known as Puglia, joins more than 519 Italian
municipalities that face 990 million euros in derivatives losses,
according to data compiled by the Bank of Italy. In Milan,
prosecutors seized assets from four banks including JPMorgan Chase
& Co. and UBS AG in April and requested they stand trial for
alleged fraud. Hearings started this month.

And BoA owned Merril Lynch is in deep doodoo too.

If our American politicians have sold their souls to the financial sectors (As has our SCROTUS) it doesn't mean the rest of the world will turn a blind eye to theft on a trillion dollar scale.

Triumph of the Money Party

Image cc

Health Care Reform DOA. Why the Surprise?

They Did what they Always Do

Michael Collins

The Money Party is a small group of enterprises and individuals who have most of the money in this country. They use that money to make more money. Controlling who gets elected to public office is the key to more money for them and less for us September 30, 2007

Dr. Howard Dean, MD, just said pull the plug on the current health care reform effort. The cure is worse than the disease according to the good doctor.

Why the surprise?

Last week the president announced that he's sending 30,000 troops to
Afghanistan without a declaration of war by Congress and without
Afghanistan posing a direct threat to the United States violating both
the United States Constitution and international law at the same time.

The bailed out Wall Street failures are paying back just enough of
their loans to the Treasury Department to allow a new round of huge bonuses.
At the same time, they continue to get tons of cash through the Federal
Reserve. Pay back a few billion, get seven trillion dollars  in credit.
Not a bad deal.

Triumph of the Money Party

Michael Collins

Today, McClatchy Newspapers added the how to the what Goldman did in its investment banking business.   Right after the 2008 election, Pro Publica
broke a story about Goldman urging key clients to dump California bonds
after Goldman had a big pay day from the state to sell the bonds in the
first place:

The number of foreclosure filings hit a record high in the 3rd quarter: "Despite signs of broader economic recovery,
number of foreclosure filings hit a record high in the third quarter -
a sign the plague is still spreading."

And banks are keeping losses off the books as they ignore the people that are not paying their mortgages:

JUAN GONZALEZ: And William Black, where is the outrage? It
seems to me, at this stage, with the—as the foreclosures continue to
escalate in numbers, and yet we’re seeing these enormous profits less
than a year after the financial crisis. There doesn’t seem to be the
kind of outrage, even in Congress, that there was six months or eight
months ago.

WILLIAM BLACK: There’s no palpable outrage, certainly not
in Congress. The reform efforts on derivatives, for example, are a
scandal. They exempt virtually all of the problem derivatives, and
they’re designed to exempt it. And that’s the bill that’s introduced,
and of course it’s likely to get worse with additional lobbying from
the special interests.

Link the things that you’ve just been talking about. You talked
about foreclosures reaching record highs. But in fact, foreclosures,
relative to delinquencies, are quite low compared to historical ratios.
In other words, banks have tons of folks who are not paying their
mortgages on time, and they’re not foreclosing. And the reason they’re
not foreclosing is, once you foreclose, you have to recognize losses
under the accounting rules. And the banks gimmicked the accounting
rules. They put pressure on Congress, and Congress put pressure on the
accounting profession to gimmick the accounting rules now about a year
ago. Now, these bonuses, of course, are paid compared to alleged
profits. What happens if you understate your losses dramatically? You
report much higher profits and much higher bonuses. So this is a web of
fraud, in which they are getting as much as they can before the place
goes to hell in a handbasket again.

Here we are neck deep in debt to pay off the gambling debts of the bankers and now they are completely ignoring their very real losses that are piling up at a record rate simply so they can keep the bonus money flowing into their own pockets:

The Dow is Up but Your House is Gone

So here we have another bankster scam being waged on the consuming public. The scam is to create another "too big to fail" scenario as they make record profits and pay out record bonuses by rigging their books.

But the good news is the Dow is up.

So you or someone you care about is likely without a job or looking for more work. But the elite are rigging the system again, and you are going to fix things next time by voting for a Republican.

And what are these bankers with their Enron style accounting doing to help the homeowners that are on the verge of losing their homes? You can be certain that they are still out there offering ARMs to unsuspecting victims of their financial rape of the world.

And as for you? You get nothing but shafted:

Absurdity upon Absurdity

Michael Collins

The health care debate and general political climate compound absurdity upon absurdity.

First we're told that our health care is only worth the time and
effort if the remedy has no negative impact on the budget.  No deficits
allowed.  The deficit risk defines your chances for health and
longevity.

GIVE IT BACK GOLDMAN!

Wall Street Welfare Queen Average
Bonuses $1.0 Million Per Employee

From the BBC, US fraud charge tycoon disappears:

The US financial authorities say they do not know the whereabouts of Sir Allen Stanford, who has been charged over an alleged $8bn (£5.6bn) fraud.

The Texan billionaire has not seen seen since Tuesday, when the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint.

Maybe they should contact Dick Cheney and get the address for that undisclosed location of his.

Is the United States of America the world's largest dealer of illegal drugs?  What about the world's largest gun runner?  For years our government has used the CIA, NSA & other super-secret 'intelligence' agencies to cultivate drug harvest and distribution in SE Asia and Afghanistan.  We offer 'aid' and 'trade' to countries in the forms of weapons and ammunition.  The drugs come home to the US to poison and kill our own population.  The weapons we sell are used either against us directly by people to kill others, who then seek to kill Americans.  Did the founding fathers envision a country that would become the world's largest debtor and blood merchant?

Last Friday, we posted an Open Thread with some videos that helped teach American Sign Language. Did anyone give it 'em a shot? They're reposted, below the fold. Today, this morning's Open Thread about Net Neutrality -- check it out.

Thiis piece, meanwhile, is nothing so educational or informative -- we're going to make note of a wonderful new way an insurance company is attempting to avoid paying out on a policy.

You might want to sit down for this.

From The Houston Chronicle (hat-tip DWoods12), insurance provider Great American Insurance Company is attempting to argue in a federal court that the smoke that killed three people in a 2007 fire in Houston was "pollution" and that surviving families shouldn't be compensated for their losses since the deaths were not directly caused by the actual flames:

Great American Insurance Company is arguing in a Houston federal court that the section of the insurance policy that excludes payments for pollution — like discharges or seepage that require cleanup — would also exclude payouts for damages, including deaths, caused by smoke, or pollution, that results from a fire.

[...snip...]

Great American has asked U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal to find that the deaths caused by the smoke, fumes and soot from the March 2007 fire set by a nurse working in the building will not be covered by the policy because there is a specific exclusion for pollution and it mentions smoke, fumes and soot.

The insurance company that carries the primary $1 million policy hasn't made this argument.

Aside from the story itself, it is curious to note the last name of the reporter who wrote this story for the Chronicle -- "Flood." A woman named Mary Flood (mary.flood@chron.com) wrote a story about an insurance company trying to get out of paying a claim on a fire insurance policy. Talk about ironic.

__________________________________________________________________________

These are really some disparate thoughts. Like everyone else, I have been following the BIIIIGGGG NNNNEEEWS Story,  the sad tale of the Governor of Illinois who tried to sell a Senate seat. Compare that with the smaller item.(judging by media coverage) --the Madoff $50 billion Ponzi Scheme that threatens the already vulnerable hedge funds and those who hold their paper..

 Bernard Madoff, former Head of the Nasdaq stock exchange has been arrested because he used the hedge funds that he manages to entice investors. It was a Ponzi scheme because the source of  financial returns to be expected on investments in the schem were misrepresented. (Ponzi schemes are pyramids in which earlier investments are paid off only when new people are suckored into putting their money behind the m.). Huffington Post reports that as this latest scheme has come to light, stock markets around the world are showing losses: