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Van Jones: Bank Settlement: $25B Down, $675B to Go

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Van Jones - Feb. 12 (News Analysis) - 'We must not forget the more than 14 million homeowners (one in five) whose homes are underwater, beneath a crushing total $700 billion in negative equity. We must not forget the more than 4 million families who have lost their homes.' Van Jones, Reader Supported News

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50-State, $25B Mortgage Settlement: Relief for Struggling Homeowners or Bailout for Big Banks?

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Feb. 10 (News Analysis) - The U.S. Justice Department has unveiled a record mortgage settlement with the nation's five largest banks to resolve claims over faulty foreclosures and mortgage practices that have indebted and displaced homeowners and sunk the nation's economy. While the deal is being described as a $25 billion settlement, the banks will only have to pay out a total of $5 billion in cash between them. We speak to one of the settlement's most prominent critics, Yves Smith, a longtime financial analyst who runs the popular finance website, "Naked Capitalism." "The settlement, on the surface, does look like it's helping homeowners," Smith says. "But, in fact, the bigger part that most people don't recognize is the way it actually helps the banks with mortgages on their own books... The real problem is that this deal is just not going to give that much relief." [includes rush transcript]

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Taibbi: Mortgage Fraud Settlement is More Like a Bailout Than Justice

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Kristen Gwynne - Feb. 10 (News Analysis) - Tabbi says that as more of the banks' bad behavior is exposed, it will become obvious that they must shut down to pay for their crimes, because the reparations necessary would bleed them dry. This settlement, he says, is a "kewpie doll" for victims of banker greed, and won't "stem the tide or turn the tables for these people."

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Ford may post best year since 1998

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Louisville Courier-Journal - By Bloomberg News - Jan. 26 (News Report) - Ford Motor Co., boosted by a one-time tax gain, may report its most profitable year since 1998, while weakness in Europe and Asia cut fourth-quarter earnings.

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Looking Back on a Century of the Fed’s BS

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

infowars.com - Jan. 23 (News) - Infowars.com | A timeline of the most amusingly disturbing speeches delivered by the Federal Reserve & Co.

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Nobody Understands Debt

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Paul Krugman - Jan. 02 (News Analysis) - 'In 2011, as in 2010, America was in a technical recovery but continued to suffer from disastrously high unemployment. And through most of 2011, as in 2010, almost all the conversation in Washington was about something else: the allegedly urgent issue of reducing the budget deficit. This misplaced focus said a lot about our political culture, in particular about how disconnected Congress is from the suffering of ordinary Americans. But it also revealed something else: when people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they're talking about - and the people wh

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President Obama’s view of fraud “from 40,000 feet” (without an oxygen mask)

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New Economic Perspectives - By William K. Black - Dec. 20 (Fact Check) - Hallucinations occur at high altitude when you become oxygen deprived. Let’s review the bidding on the Bush/Obama record in prosecuting the elite control frauds that drove the ongoing crisis. There are no convictions of the Wall Street elites that made, purchased, packaged, and sold millions of fraudulent liar’s loans. There are no federal prosecutions of the major banks that committed over 100,000 fraudulent foreclosures. There are a few settlements that sound like large dollar amounts, but are merely what even Obama concedes to be the (deeply inadequate) “cost of doing (fraudulent) business.” Fraud pays – it pays enormously and our elites now commit it with impunity as a means of becoming wealthy. We have just witnessed the travesty of Wachovia admitting to criminal conduct in their (grotesquely weak) settlement with the Department of Justice (which has a policy of no longer prosecuting large corporations that commit crimes) – and having the SEC refuse to require Wachovia to make similar admissions in its settlement. All this, the President implicitly or even explicitly concedes.

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Fed Report Finds Speculators Played Big Role in Housing Collapse

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

consumeraffairs.com - Dec. 17 (News) -

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The 'Squidding' of Goldman Sachs

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Matt Taibbi - Dec. 14 (News Analysis) - Earlier Monday, about 300 protesters in squid costumes surged outside the offices of Goldman Sachs investment bank shouting, "We fry calamari!" and "Everyone pays their tax - everyone but Goldman, Sachs!"

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Secretive Millionaires Funding Online Primary For 'Independent' White House Run

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Justin Elliott - Dec. 13 (Special Report) - Here’s what the group is not so upfront about: It’s fueled by millions of dollars of secret money, there is a group of wealthy, well-connected board members who have control over Americans Elect’s nominating process, and the group has myriad links to Wall Street.

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The Remarkable Political Stupidity of the 'Street' - you know, Wall Street

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich: - Dec. 10 (News Analysis) - 'Wall Street has blanketed America in a miasma of cynicism. Most Americans assume the reason the Street got its taxpayer-funded bailout without strings in the first place was because of its political clout. That must be why the banks didn't have to renegotiate the mortgages of Americans - many of whom, because of the economic collapse brought on by the Street's excesses, are still under water. Some are drowning.' Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

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Eliot Spitzer: 5 Ways to Make Banks Pay for Their Secret $7 Trillion Free Ride

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Eliot Spitzer - Dec. 06 (News Analysis) - Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. The bank, based on these representations, extended you the line of credit. Then, three years later, after fighting disclosure all the way, you were forced by a court to tell the truth

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Bank spending on lobbying on pace to hit record high again this year

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

www2.journalnow.com - Dec. 02 (News) -

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State sues five big US lenders

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

bostonglobe.com - Dec. 01 (News) -

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MF Global Bankruptcy: Portion Of Missing Customers' Funds Possibly Found At UK JPMorgan Chase

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - Nov. 29 (News Report) - Regulators are trying to determine what happened to the missing money and whether MF Global may have improperly mixed customer funds with its own, a violation of industry rules. The total shortfall at the brokerage is estimated to be just under $1 billion. Officials with MF Global and JP Morgan could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters outside regular U.S. business hours. A representative for MF Global trustee, James Giddens, was not available either.

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GOP’s Phantom Job Losses

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Eugene Kiely - Nov. 22 (News) - Ooops! Republicans — eager to show that President Obama’s oil and gas drilling policies “cost jobs” — have been using a number they now admit was more than three times too high. Even after they corrected their error (after we pointed it out), they started using a figure that is … More >>

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Bad Accounting Killed the US Economy

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

populist.com - By Bob Burnett - Nov. 02 (News Analysis) - In each case Dell accepted the proposal because from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly. However, the next time ASUSTeK came back, it wasn’t to talk to Dell. It was to talk to Best Buy and other retailers to tell them that they could offer them their own brand or any brand PC for 20% lower cost.”

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Wells Fargo is not your amigo

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Tim Fitzsimons - Oct. 29 (News Analysis) - The banking giant preys on minorities while its executives donate to anti-immigration Republicans

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What We Can Learn from Germany: How Countries With Publicly Owned Banks Do Better Than America

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Ellen Brown - Oct. 19 (Special Report) - [T]he demand isn't simply to make a public bank, but is to treat the banks generally as a public utility, just as you treat electric companies as a public utility.... Just as there was pressure for a public option in health care, there should be a public option in banking. There should be a government bank that offers credit card rates without punitive 30% interest rates, without penalties, without raising the rate if you don't pay your electric bill. This is how America got strong in the 19th and early 20th century, by essentially having public infrastructure, just like you'd have roads and bridges.... The idea of public infrastructure was to lower the cost of living and to lower the cost of doing business.

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Platinum Citizenship

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Dylan Ratigan - Oct. 17 (News Analysis) - We're all aware of the two tiered political system in which protesters can be run over by police scooters but marauders in suits are put on the President's jobs council to chuckle nervously at Occupy Wall Street. But behind the political inequality lies a new order of credit allocation. Tim Geithner created a two-tiered monetary system, a kind of money they have which you can't get. He wasn't alone in doing this. Financial institutions spent hundreds of millions of dollars influencing federal officials to coalesce a bailout while politicians treated them as a special class of super Americans. But he more than anyone else in the crisis period was the central figure in the creation of our current aristocratic monetary order.

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Citibank Arrests Customers for Trying to Close Accounts

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

economicvoice.com - By Richard Henley Davis - Oct. 17 (News Report) - This notion of removing money from the banks in order to bring them down is a genuine threat to the banking industry and we can expect more arrests by banks who are using the police force as their private security to prevent a collapse in their interests through mass deposit withdrawal.

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Occupy Times Square: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Swarm Midtown

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Whitney Snyder - Oct. 16 (News Report) - Thousands of anti-Wall Street protesters rallied in New York City's Times Square Saturday, buoyed by a global day of demonstrations in support of their monthlong campaign against corporate greed.

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Bank Of America Branch In California Reportedly Refuses To Allow Protesters To Close Accounts (VIDEO)

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Oct. 16 (News Report) - two women involved with the Occupy Santa Cruz movement in California walked into a Bank of America branch earlier this week and attempted to close their bank accounts. In response, the bank manager threatened to lock the doors and call the police on them. Her reasoning? You can't be a customer and a protester at the same time, the manager said.

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10 Things to Know About Wall Street's Rapacious Attack on America

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Les Leopold - Oct. 07 (News Analysis) - We are the 99 percent, and we demand our fair share. The irrefutable fact is that 99 percent of us really are being screwed by the 1 percent who are looting our country (actually it’s more like the top 1/10 of one percent). So if you still harbor any doubts that Wall Street is the right target, here are 10 reasons to consider:

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Occupy Wall Street March Gets Massive Turnout; 28 Arrested in Police Crackdown

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Oct. 06 (News Report) - Labor unions and students joined the growing Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City on Wednesday in the largest march since the protest began 20 days ago. Tens of thousands marched from Foley Square to Zuccotti Park, renamed “Liberty Plaza,” the site of the protest encampment where hundreds have been sleeping since Sept. 17. The march was peaceful ,but police later beat a handful of protesters with batons after they toppled a police barricade in an attempt to march down Wall Street. Police say a total of 28 people were arrested. We hear from eyewitnesses to an altercation between police and protesters at Wall Street. [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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