Michael Collins

(March 10) Wall Streets is headed toward international pariah status thanks to two recent actions by the European Union (EU).

On Tuesday, the EU announced that it was banning Wall Street banks from the lucrative government bond business in Europe. They didn't express official concern or fire off a warning shot. They simply banned Wall Street from financing government bond deals like the one Goldman Sachs sold to Greece. The Guardian pointed out that Wall Street bond business from European governments has gone down over the last two years. Now the business is gone period. In effect, the EU has labeled Wall Streets business tactics as too dangerous for their governments to handle.

Then on Wednesday, the President of the European Commission said that the EU was considering a ban on government debt speculation through Credit Default Swaps (CDS) President José Manuel Barroso announced that, "the Commission will examine closely the relevance of banning purely speculative naked sales on Credit Default Swaps of sovereign debt." While not an outright ban, the threat of banning CDS on national debt would be a major loss for the world's financial speculators, particularly those in the United States and Great Britain.

This is a front line report on the class war.   Edwin Girdle (The Colonel)
had an excellent business going until he needed a loan after the shock
of 2008.  The banks that got billions weren't lending and there was no
help anywhere else in the "safety net."  His story is compelling and
clear.  Noted at Jerome Doolittle's blog at SmirkingChimp.com who first posted this and reprinted with Mr. Girdle's permission. Michael Collins

For three years I owned and operated a mini-market/gas station in a
Cincinnati, Ohio suburb. I bought an already existing store using all
the assets I had, including my 401K funds, after being down-sized from
my middle-management career of 22 years (in one of the many industries
which the U.S. can no longer keep onshore).

Things went along fairly well and the business grew as I acquired a
large clientele of regular customers from the local construction
companies, other business owners, and the Ford plant. My girlfriend and
I worked 90+ hour workweeks and, along with help from a few part-time
employees, we operated 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
In other words, I was a real practitioner of the kind of
free-enterprise capitalism that our windbag politicians and business
leaders praise to the heavens while making sure it doesn’t apply to
them.

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.

ENABLING ACTS FOR AN ERA OF GREED

The Money Party at Work

Michael Collins

Huge majorities in both houses of Congress voted for legislation to allow the biggest bank heist of all time.   But this time, it was the banks pulling the heist.

Our financial system looks ruined beyond repair.  The credit default swaps crisis is 40 or so times bigger than the real estate meltdown over subprime derivatives.  The top 25 banks in the United States are loaded down with $13 trillion in credit default swaps and the deal is coming unraveled.  If we accept the highly dubious assumption that the debt from the financial meltdown needs to be repaid by us, were looking at $43,000 a citizen right now.  And we're just starting.

It didn't get that way by accident.  There was special legislation that enabled the current crisis.

originally posted 2009-04-12 21:29:02 -0500, bumped by carol

Elizabeth Warren was appointed chair of a newly created Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which is charged with keeping tabs on the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector - including Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

Warren however, has had some "Trouble" getting straight forward answers ... as she explained to the Boston Globe:

Keeping tabs on the bailout

By Elizabeth Warren -- April 12, 2009

    Elizabeth Warren: There's a major problem and a minor problem. The minor problem is documentation. I've spent four weeks now looking for someone who can give me the details of the stress test so that we can do an independent evaluation of whether the stress test is any good.

    We get: "someone will call [you] right back." Only the call doesn't come. The major problem is ...

Originally posted 2009-03-25 12:16:37 -0500, bumped by carol.

I feel wiped out. And it’s not from the flu. It’s from the financial news. Several people I know lost their families’ life savings that were invested with Wall Street wizard Bernie Madoff. My bank, which has been on a buying spree of failing financial firms, was insured by AIG. Not long ago, the president of the United States—the one with a Harvard MBA degree—was urging Americans to switch from Social Security to private investment accounts. Yeah, sure. The only reliable income I have right now is a Social Security check.

June 27, 1936: “What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.” March 21, 2009: “... the rest of us can't afford to demonize every investor or entrepreneur who seeks to make a profit.” The Washington Post has available the full text of President Obama’s press conference this evening. Near the end of his remarks, the President said:

Bankers and executives on Wall Street need to realize that enriching themselves on the taxpayers' dime is inexcusable, that the days of outsized rewards and reckless speculation that puts us all at risk have to be over.

Why “have to be over”? Why not “are over”?

At the same time, the rest of us can't afford to demonize every investor or entrepreneur who seeks to make a profit. That drive is what has always fueled our prosperity, and it is what will ultimately get these banks lending and our economy moving once more.

From Franklin Roosevelt’s first fireside chat, “On the Bank Crisis,” Sunday, March 12, 1933

As a result we start tomorrow, Monday, with the opening of banks in the twelve Federal Reserve bank cities -- those banks which on first examination by the Treasury have already been found to be all right. This will be followed on Tuesday by the resumption of all their functions by banks already found to be sound in cities where there are recognized clearing houses. That means about 250 cities of the United States.

Posted with permission of Nicholas Benton, Owner/Editor of the Falls Church News Press.

Mark to Market’ & Hocus Pocus

by Nicholas Benton

It is sheer madness that Wall Street types insist some changes in the rules of accounting can turn around the global economy.

 Fixation on such exotic notions as the mark-to-market and up-tick rules only perpetuates the "smoke and mirrors," and completely misses the mark on what's really wrong to begin with. 

The typical Wall Street operative, like an accountant, has as his life's objective evening out balance sheets to conform them, among other things, to investor expectations. Therefore, if there are rules that make it hard for that to happen, there are howls to change the rules.

It has been by following stock market and typical accounting principles that many U.S. newspapers, for example, are now on the brink of bankruptcy. Faced with shortages in revenues, newspapers cut non-revenue generating costs. So, newsrooms were gutted while preserving advertising sales staffs.

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal..

"We face a monumental economic challenge that goes far beyond anything being discussed in the U.S. Congress or the corporate press. The hardships imposed by temporarily frozen credit markets pale in comparison to what lies ahead. Even the significant funds that the Obama administration is committed to spending on economic stimulus will do nothing to address the deeper structural causes of our threefold financial, social, and environmental crisis. On the positive side, the financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and that markets work best when deregulated. This creates an opportune moment to open a national conversation about what we can and must do to create an economic system that can for work for all people for all time.”

Internationally renowned social scientist and historianDavid Korten wrote those words in the introduction of his new book, Agenda For A New Economy: From Phantom Wealth To Real Wealth, scheduled to be released by Berrett-Kohler Publishers tomorrow.

Some of you may have previously read Korten’s 1995 international bestseller, When Corporations Rule the World. Longtime readers/listeners of the Intrepid Liberal Journal may also recall my August 2007 podcast interview with Korten about his book, The Great Turning: From Empire To Earth Community. You can learn more about Korten’s background by clicking here and reading the introductory text to that podcast.

When I returned to the United States in 1990 after spending most of the previous six years in Africa, one of the first books I read was Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker. I wanted to catch up with a culture that had moved away while I was away. It boggled my mind; all I could think of was Sammy Glick, in Budd Schulberg's classic What Makes Sammy Run? It turns out that I wasn't wrong to make that connection. Schulberg, who is now 94, has spent his life since creation of Sammy fending off those who would thank him for providing a roadmap to Hollywood success.

If Free Markets are the supposed Engine of Growth,

Why do they always seem to lead to a "money grab",
a greedy "land rush", with the Tax payer ALWAYS picking up the Bill?

Why do the Rich, always manage to get richer?

While those who "play by the rules", just manage to get "pink slips" and foreclosure notices?

And an endless pile of Bills?

Securities and Exchange Commission Chief Christopher Cox alluded to $55 trillion in credit default swaps recently, at least a tip off that the problem is far greater than any $700 billion bank bailout can begin to fix.

There remains no transparency regarding how the nine banks that were partially nationalized by the U.S. Treasury last week are using those hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Are they using the money to ease credit and get capital-starved American businesses going again, or are they using it to cover their insolvent leveraged obligations, instead. Who knows?

Promoted. -- GH

Now she has the time to Grieve for her Son, Killed in Iraq only a short time ago, Her Reality!!

I was just sent the following:

Friday was an historic day. At 11am, Jocelyne Voltaire was scheduled to lose her home in Queens Village, the home she had lived in for the past 20 years, the home where she raised her four children. Unable to keep up her skyrocketing mortgage payments, Jocelyne watched in horror as her home was put on the auction block. This amazing video clip by American News Project brought Jocelyn's plight to our attention.

Read more

Bailout Bill Defies Will of the People

Promoted as jamess provides us with information that all of us need to know more about to help understand our current crisis - standingup

In the Olden Days (B.D. -- Before Deregulation)

1) you want to buy a House

2) you put 10-20% down and got a mortgage loan, after intensive scrutiny of your income and creditworthiness

3) you spend 30-years making monthly Mortgage Payments

4) you take Ownership of your Home, free and clear.

5) IF you fail to make Mortgage Payments, for 3 months or more, a Snidely Whiplash character would show up from the Bank, and promptly put you out on the street.

Fortunately (or unfortunately?) in these 21st century days of Investment Banks and Hedge Funds, riding herd in a "wild west" electronic economy with little to NO Oversight, you may still default on your Mortgage -- yet too often it seems, that No One really knows, exactly WHO owns your House, when you do ...