Hate Speech Makes a Comeback by Patrick J. Buchanan
" Perhaps Obama might begin his answer as he did, two decades before, in a Nov. 16, 1990, letter as president of Harvard Law Review:
"As someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review's affirmative action program when I was selected to join the Review last year, I have not personally felt stigmatized."
Friday, April 29, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Pat Buchanan: MSNBC, Media Helping Obama "Conceal" Records
Pat Buchanan: MSNBC, Media Helping Obama "Conceal" Records
Pat Buchanan defends why he is skeptical of President Obama's past."I'll tell you what. He went to Occidental College then suddenly he ends up at one of the best schools in the country, Columbia. He vaults from there to Harvard Law School. Suddenly he's on the Harvard Law Review. Suddenly he's the editor of Harvard Law Review. We've never seen any grades of the guy. These are legitimate questions," Buchanan said.Key quote: Pat Buchanan to Chris Matthews: "You're supposed to be a journalist."
Pat Buchanan defends why he is skeptical of President Obama's past."I'll tell you what. He went to Occidental College then suddenly he ends up at one of the best schools in the country, Columbia. He vaults from there to Harvard Law School. Suddenly he's on the Harvard Law Review. Suddenly he's the editor of Harvard Law Review. We've never seen any grades of the guy. These are legitimate questions," Buchanan said.Key quote: Pat Buchanan to Chris Matthews: "You're supposed to be a journalist."
Friday, April 22, 2011
Barack Hussein Hoover? by Patrick J. Buchanan
Barack Hussein Hoover? by Patrick J. Buchanan
" A Washington Post-ABC News poll found 78 percent of Americans oppose cutting spending on Medicare to reduce the deficit, and 69 percent oppose cutting Medicaid. Obama's plan to raise taxes on couples earning $250,000 a year or more wins the support of 72 percent of voters. A McClatchy-Marist poll found 2 in 3 Americans favoring raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000 but 4 in 5 voters opposing cutting Medicare or Medicaid. "
Very simple increase the tax rate on those making over $250,000 and reform Medicare & Medicaid.
" A Washington Post-ABC News poll found 78 percent of Americans oppose cutting spending on Medicare to reduce the deficit, and 69 percent oppose cutting Medicaid. Obama's plan to raise taxes on couples earning $250,000 a year or more wins the support of 72 percent of voters. A McClatchy-Marist poll found 2 in 3 Americans favoring raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000 but 4 in 5 voters opposing cutting Medicare or Medicaid. "
Very simple increase the tax rate on those making over $250,000 and reform Medicare & Medicaid.
PRINCE ALWALEED WHAT IS THE ANSWER ???
WHAT IS THE ANSWER PRINCE ALWALEED ???
Agreed that the US policy is shameful , but you give no solutions.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#42710916
Agreed that the US policy is shameful , but you give no solutions.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#42710916
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Republican Hypocrisy on Obamacare by Laurence M. Vance
Republican Hypocrisy on Obamacare by Laurence M. Vance
Laurence Vance says " Sign I saw at a pharmacy tonight when I pulled up to the drive-thru window: WE CANNOT SELL ANY PSEUDOEPHEDRINE PRODUCTS AT THE DRIVE-THRU...........
Thanks, Republicans. "
" ....One of the Republicans' main selling points in the congressional elections this year is their promise to repeal the Democratic health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. The fact that they didn't repeal anything after they gained control of the Congress in the 1994 election is a long-forgotten thing to most Americans. And no one salivating to vote Republican in the upcoming election seems to remember that nothing was repealed during the Bush years either — even when Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.
The simple truth is that once in power Republicans not only never reverse the legislative damage done by Democrats, they add to it.
Although I applaud any attempt by anyone in any party to repeal the monstrosity that is Obamacare, Republican hypocrisy on this issue is equally as reprehensible.
Republicans are good at opposing socialized medicine when it is Hillarycare or Obamacare, but not very good when it is Bushcare or Republicancare.
The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) provides federally-funded health insurance to children in families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid. It was created by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1997. Opposition to the program was slight, and negligible when it was up for reauthorization under President Bush. It is only under the Obama administration that some Republicans have suddenly voiced opposition to this income transfer program.
Then there is the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. This was instituted by a Republican-controlled Congress in 2003 and signed into law by a Republican president. This expansion of the welfare state was opposed by Democrats in far greater numbers than SCHIP was ever opposed by any Republicans. The overwhelming majority of Republicans in the House and Senate now who were also in Congress in 2003 voted for the Republican version of health care reform even though they opposed Obamacare and now call for its repeal.
And who can forget the rationing and criminalization of over-the-counter allergy-relief products like Sudafed because they contain pseudoephedrine. This is due to the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act, which is title VII of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005. The justification for this ridiculous legislation is that pseudoephedrine may be used in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine. This is ultimately due to the liberty-depriving, life-destroying war on drugs, which was instituted by a Republican president, Nixon, who boldly claimed that within five years he would "stamp out drugs and declare the war won." The Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act imposes tremendous restrictions on buyers and merchants. Yet, it was passed overwhelmingly by a Republican-controlled Congress (unanimously in the Senate) and signed into law by a Republican president. "
Laurence Vance says " Sign I saw at a pharmacy tonight when I pulled up to the drive-thru window: WE CANNOT SELL ANY PSEUDOEPHEDRINE PRODUCTS AT THE DRIVE-THRU...........
Thanks, Republicans. "
" ....One of the Republicans' main selling points in the congressional elections this year is their promise to repeal the Democratic health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. The fact that they didn't repeal anything after they gained control of the Congress in the 1994 election is a long-forgotten thing to most Americans. And no one salivating to vote Republican in the upcoming election seems to remember that nothing was repealed during the Bush years either — even when Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.
The simple truth is that once in power Republicans not only never reverse the legislative damage done by Democrats, they add to it.
Although I applaud any attempt by anyone in any party to repeal the monstrosity that is Obamacare, Republican hypocrisy on this issue is equally as reprehensible.
Republicans are good at opposing socialized medicine when it is Hillarycare or Obamacare, but not very good when it is Bushcare or Republicancare.
The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) provides federally-funded health insurance to children in families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid. It was created by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1997. Opposition to the program was slight, and negligible when it was up for reauthorization under President Bush. It is only under the Obama administration that some Republicans have suddenly voiced opposition to this income transfer program.
Then there is the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. This was instituted by a Republican-controlled Congress in 2003 and signed into law by a Republican president. This expansion of the welfare state was opposed by Democrats in far greater numbers than SCHIP was ever opposed by any Republicans. The overwhelming majority of Republicans in the House and Senate now who were also in Congress in 2003 voted for the Republican version of health care reform even though they opposed Obamacare and now call for its repeal.
And who can forget the rationing and criminalization of over-the-counter allergy-relief products like Sudafed because they contain pseudoephedrine. This is due to the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act, which is title VII of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005. The justification for this ridiculous legislation is that pseudoephedrine may be used in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine. This is ultimately due to the liberty-depriving, life-destroying war on drugs, which was instituted by a Republican president, Nixon, who boldly claimed that within five years he would "stamp out drugs and declare the war won." The Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act imposes tremendous restrictions on buyers and merchants. Yet, it was passed overwhelmingly by a Republican-controlled Congress (unanimously in the Senate) and signed into law by a Republican president. "
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Boehner the enabler
Boehner the enabler
" Obama, Reid and Boehner lied to us. Boehner has got to go! Everyone who voted for this budget has got to go because they deceived us! Spending our money is one thing – but their lies, tricks and deceit are not acceptable under any circumstances. "
Obama increased spending $700 billion in two years. The "cut" of $352 million is only one-twentieth of 1 percent of $700 billion. Those 59 Republicans who voted against this budget understand this. They also understand that conservative Americans have been betrayed.
Obama, Boehner, and Reid all knew that this scam of a deal would not cut any spending, even though it cut the discretionary budget. They all knew that they were spinning the truth when they told America that they cut the discretionary budget without explaining that was not the same as cutting actual spending. They all knew that nothing could be done to defund Planned Parenthood, Obamacare and NPR once they were included in a budget that got approved by Congress and signed by the president.
And if they didn't know these things, then they are incompetent and should be fired. "
Steve McCann wrote: Obama's speech "was chock full of lies, deceit and crass fear-mongering. It must be said that [he] is the most dishonest, deceitful and mendacious person in a position of power I have ever witnessed" ("The Mendacity of Barack Obama," AmericanThinker.com, April 15, 2011).
McCann continued: "[His] performance was the culmination of four years of outright lies and narcissism that have been largely ignored by the media, including some in the conservative press and political class who are loath to call [him] what he is in the bluntest of terms: a liar and a fraud. That he relies on his skin color to intimidate, either outright or by insinuation [against] those who oppose his radical agenda only add to his audacity. It is apparent that he has gotten away with his character flaws his entire life, aided and abetted by sycophants around him. …"
Read more: When will Obama crack in public?
" Obama, Reid and Boehner lied to us. Boehner has got to go! Everyone who voted for this budget has got to go because they deceived us! Spending our money is one thing – but their lies, tricks and deceit are not acceptable under any circumstances. "
Obama increased spending $700 billion in two years. The "cut" of $352 million is only one-twentieth of 1 percent of $700 billion. Those 59 Republicans who voted against this budget understand this. They also understand that conservative Americans have been betrayed.
Obama, Boehner, and Reid all knew that this scam of a deal would not cut any spending, even though it cut the discretionary budget. They all knew that they were spinning the truth when they told America that they cut the discretionary budget without explaining that was not the same as cutting actual spending. They all knew that nothing could be done to defund Planned Parenthood, Obamacare and NPR once they were included in a budget that got approved by Congress and signed by the president.
And if they didn't know these things, then they are incompetent and should be fired. "
Steve McCann wrote: Obama's speech "was chock full of lies, deceit and crass fear-mongering. It must be said that [he] is the most dishonest, deceitful and mendacious person in a position of power I have ever witnessed" ("The Mendacity of Barack Obama," AmericanThinker.com, April 15, 2011).
McCann continued: "[His] performance was the culmination of four years of outright lies and narcissism that have been largely ignored by the media, including some in the conservative press and political class who are loath to call [him] what he is in the bluntest of terms: a liar and a fraud. That he relies on his skin color to intimidate, either outright or by insinuation [against] those who oppose his radical agenda only add to his audacity. It is apparent that he has gotten away with his character flaws his entire life, aided and abetted by sycophants around him. …"
Read more: When will Obama crack in public?
When will Obama crack in public?
When will Obama crack in public?
Mychal Massie says .......
" At a time when many Americans can barely afford Burger King and a movie, Obama boasts of spending a billion dollars on his re-election campaign. Questioned at a recent appearance about the spiraling fuel costs, Obama said, "Get used to it" – and with an insouciant grin and chortle, he told another person at the event, who complained about the effect high fuel prices were having on his family, to "get a more fuel-efficient car."
The Obamas behave as if they were sharecroppers living in a trailer and hit the Powerball, but instead of getting new tires for their trailer and a new pickup truck, they moved to Washington. And instead of making possum pie, with goats and chickens in the front yard, they're spending and living large at taxpayer expense – opulent vacations, gala balls, resplendent dinners and exclusive command performances at the White House, grand date nights, golf, basketball, more golf, exclusive resorts and still more golf.
Expensive, ill-fitting and ill-chosen wigs and fashions hardly befit the first lady of the United States. The Obamas have behaved in every way but presidential – which is why it's so offensive when we hear Obama say, in order "to restore fiscal responsibility, we all need to share in the sacrifice – but we don't have to sacrifice the America we believe in."
The American people have been sacrificing; it is he and his family who are behaving as if they've never had two nickels to rub together – and now, having hit the mother lode, they're going to spend away their feelings of inadequacy at the taxpayers' expense."
Mychal Massie says .......
" At a time when many Americans can barely afford Burger King and a movie, Obama boasts of spending a billion dollars on his re-election campaign. Questioned at a recent appearance about the spiraling fuel costs, Obama said, "Get used to it" – and with an insouciant grin and chortle, he told another person at the event, who complained about the effect high fuel prices were having on his family, to "get a more fuel-efficient car."
The Obamas behave as if they were sharecroppers living in a trailer and hit the Powerball, but instead of getting new tires for their trailer and a new pickup truck, they moved to Washington. And instead of making possum pie, with goats and chickens in the front yard, they're spending and living large at taxpayer expense – opulent vacations, gala balls, resplendent dinners and exclusive command performances at the White House, grand date nights, golf, basketball, more golf, exclusive resorts and still more golf.
Expensive, ill-fitting and ill-chosen wigs and fashions hardly befit the first lady of the United States. The Obamas have behaved in every way but presidential – which is why it's so offensive when we hear Obama say, in order "to restore fiscal responsibility, we all need to share in the sacrifice – but we don't have to sacrifice the America we believe in."
The American people have been sacrificing; it is he and his family who are behaving as if they've never had two nickels to rub together – and now, having hit the mother lode, they're going to spend away their feelings of inadequacy at the taxpayers' expense."
Andrew Breitbart's Righteous Indignation Toward the Left
Andrew Breitbart's Righteous Indignation Toward the Left
Conservative provocateur and right-wing media guru Andrew Breitbart’s new book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!, is out. The scandal-prone commentator spoke with The Daily Beast about that righteous indignation (he promises he’s usually quite laid back), the Shirley Sherrod episode, his picks for 2012, what he sees as the future of journalism, and his advice for Sarah Palin. He also goes after the media, Katie Couric, Tina Fey, John McCain, and surprisingly, Glenn Beck—although he says he doesn’t want Beck’s old job—all in the most colorful of terms. Breitbart may be indignant, but don’t call him angry.
Conservative provocateur and right-wing media guru Andrew Breitbart’s new book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!, is out. The scandal-prone commentator spoke with The Daily Beast about that righteous indignation (he promises he’s usually quite laid back), the Shirley Sherrod episode, his picks for 2012, what he sees as the future of journalism, and his advice for Sarah Palin. He also goes after the media, Katie Couric, Tina Fey, John McCain, and surprisingly, Glenn Beck—although he says he doesn’t want Beck’s old job—all in the most colorful of terms. Breitbart may be indignant, but don’t call him angry.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
THE BAILOUT: The Full House Debate
" And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. " Lord Acton (1834-1902) Gee, he didn't only vote for TARP, he supported it. Yeah, and he did exactly nothing about those Wall Street "problems" he rants about after the fact either, including refusing and failing to shut those bankbanks down and break them up.We've established what sort of snake Ryan is, which simply amplifies that his so-called plan is a farce and will do nothing to solve the problem.Ryan: "As bad as this is it could get a lot worse". It will get a lot worse. These bankster sellouts transfered the bank losses to the taxpayer. So unsurprising. How many politicians have to be discovered lying, supporting government growth, debt, etc. before we take the *pessimistic* view on ANY of them and make them PROVE through ACTUAL DEEDS that they are looking out for the citizens of this country ??? How many times are you to trust these evil men and women, only to be back-stabbed later, before you say, " ENOUGH IS ENOUGH !!! " Here's a link to big baby Boehner's TARP whine, plus Paul Ryan can't even explain to Neil Cavuto why TARP is necessary. BUSTED. http://dailybail.com/home/busted-tarp-loving-wall-street-puppets-new-gop-leadership-ca.html All the talk about "Taxpayers getting their money back" when Wall Street recovers is just such utter nonsense and always has been. There is no money. Now, 2 1/2 years later, Wall Street has recovered but the debt is far higher today than it was at the time. WHAT MONEY BACK ??? Taxpayers are on the hook for even more now. He said at 2:21:20 that if Wall Street can't get what it wants, it will shut down credit and cripple the economy. Quote: "This wall street crisis is becoming a main street crisis - credit shuts down, businesses can't pay payroll, student can't get loans, no car loans, no money for seniors." Well - Wall Street got bailed and and has been partying since. BUT MAIN STREET IS STILL A MESS !!! All that he said would have happened is STILL GOING TO HAPPEN & SHOULD HAPPEN !!! IT HAS TO HAPPEN TO END THIS SCAM !!! COLLAPSE THIS BULL ALREADY !!! ENOUGH !!!! The woman who appeared right after Ryan asks the questions : Where were the cops - the regulators - and why are we bailing out the shysters, not the victims ??? You vote for these jackasses you deserve what you get you stupid sheep. Click "play" to move 2:19:30 to start about right where pathetic Ryan makes warped excuses for his vote.
GO GET THEM BANKS
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-13/banks-to-pay-victims-of-botched-foreclosures-in-settlement-with-regulators.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/business/14prosecute.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
" ....Officials from the Justice department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and 10 state attorneys general met with banks today, the second such meeting to negotiate a global settlement, Associate U.S. Attorney General Tom Perrelli said. The group is discussing potential fines and whether servicers should be required to reduce the principal on some home loans..."
What about people who had their home stolen due to malfeasance or worse by these servicers ??? How about some criminal indictments ??? Shocking but No Justice Department involvement in these cases "Fines" a slap on the wrist !!!
" Iowa Attorney General Thomas J. Miller, who is leading the talks on behalf of the states, said today’s agreements won’t limit his pursuit of penalties. In March, the attorneys general called for changes to foreclosure practices and mandatory loan modifications, including mortgage principal write downs. "
Let see some real action & penalties like jail time for these felons.
“There will be civil money penalties. The issue is time and amount,” acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh told reporters in a conference call.
The Federal Reserve issued a statement saying it plans to announce fines, calling them “appropriate.”
Absolutely. We can't lock people up or break up companies, revoke bank charters even though the OCC has the right to do so, and The Feds can revoke membership too.
If the penalty for robbing the local " Stop-n-Rob "
(convenience store) was a monetary penalty that was limited to the amount of the loot you stole, the store would be robbed every fifteen minutes !
" The agreements drew immediate fire from critics who said they could undermine the broader negotiations. Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat and member of the Financial Services Committee, called the orders “disappointing. ”
Oh Maxine ! Who writes appropriations bills ?
Why hasn't Congress risen and told Justice that unless there are criminal prosecutions that the DOJ will be zeroed in appropriations process, shutting it down?
I know, I know - it's better to whine. That way you can claim to be "outraged" rather than actually getting off your ass and doing something about the problem!
Why wasnt that admission also an admission of guilt for fraud on the court ??
Legal chicanery and corrupt judges are the banksters' stoutest allies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/business/14prosecute.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
" ....Officials from the Justice department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and 10 state attorneys general met with banks today, the second such meeting to negotiate a global settlement, Associate U.S. Attorney General Tom Perrelli said. The group is discussing potential fines and whether servicers should be required to reduce the principal on some home loans..."
What about people who had their home stolen due to malfeasance or worse by these servicers ??? How about some criminal indictments ??? Shocking but No Justice Department involvement in these cases "Fines" a slap on the wrist !!!
" Iowa Attorney General Thomas J. Miller, who is leading the talks on behalf of the states, said today’s agreements won’t limit his pursuit of penalties. In March, the attorneys general called for changes to foreclosure practices and mandatory loan modifications, including mortgage principal write downs. "
Let see some real action & penalties like jail time for these felons.
“There will be civil money penalties. The issue is time and amount,” acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh told reporters in a conference call.
The Federal Reserve issued a statement saying it plans to announce fines, calling them “appropriate.”
Absolutely. We can't lock people up or break up companies, revoke bank charters even though the OCC has the right to do so, and The Feds can revoke membership too.
If the penalty for robbing the local " Stop-n-Rob "
(convenience store) was a monetary penalty that was limited to the amount of the loot you stole, the store would be robbed every fifteen minutes !
" The agreements drew immediate fire from critics who said they could undermine the broader negotiations. Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat and member of the Financial Services Committee, called the orders “disappointing. ”
Oh Maxine ! Who writes appropriations bills ?
Why hasn't Congress risen and told Justice that unless there are criminal prosecutions that the DOJ will be zeroed in appropriations process, shutting it down?
I know, I know - it's better to whine. That way you can claim to be "outraged" rather than actually getting off your ass and doing something about the problem!
Why wasnt that admission also an admission of guilt for fraud on the court ??
Legal chicanery and corrupt judges are the banksters' stoutest allies.
BANKS WALK SO CAN YOU !!!
TOKYO: A Morgan Stanley property fund failed to make $3.3 billion in debt payments by a deadline on Friday, handing over the keys to a central Tokyo office building to Blackstone and other investors, the largest repayment failure of its kind in Japan. The $4.2 billion MSREF V real estate fund missed its April 15 deadline to repay 278 billion yen($3.3 billion) worth of debt packaged in commercial mortgage-backed securities on the 32-storey Shinagawa Grand Central Tower, a property which has seen its value plunge, two people involved in the transaction said.
Why did they do it ???
They walked because it made sense as a business decision to jingle-mail the building.
Go see a lawyer and an enrolled agent (a form of CPA) and if, in your judgment in consultation with legal and accounting advice, it makes sense to walk and tell the bank to FO, do it.
Don't give me any crap about morals or ethics - the standards you're using are the very standards the bankster jackals are themselves using !!!
Why did they do it ???
They walked because it made sense as a business decision to jingle-mail the building.
Go see a lawyer and an enrolled agent (a form of CPA) and if, in your judgment in consultation with legal and accounting advice, it makes sense to walk and tell the bank to FO, do it.
Don't give me any crap about morals or ethics - the standards you're using are the very standards the bankster jackals are themselves using !!!
Saturday, April 16, 2011
One man with courage makes a majority. - President Andrew Jackson
Nemo me impune lacesset
“No one will provoke me with impunity!”
“No one will provoke me with impunity!”
Pageant of Locusts by J. Paul Henderson
Pageant of Locusts by J. Paul Henderson " Three years ago, although it seems like just yesterday, all the major television networks were preempting their reality shows and other quality fare with two mini-series known as the Democrat and Republican conventions. For as long as I could hold my dinner down I watched, incredulous, as the four-year locusts paraded, one by one, across the television screen. The stages were filled with has-beens, wannabes, winners and losers. At the Democrat convention, the winner was some guy named Barack – or Barry something or other. Some guy who can’t even seem to recall where he was born, who was whisked from obscurity into the limelight by forces as yet unknown. That alone made it good theater. But adding to the interest was his choice of a running mate. To "balance" the ticket, he chose a painfully dull old white man. Over on the Republican side the clear winner was John McCain, who over the course of his unfortunately long political career, had sold himself out to so many special interests that whores were complaining he was giving them a bad name. His choice for vice president was some chick from Alaska no one had ever heard of. "
PART II ...BANKS ARE GREEDY THIEVES ! GOVERNMENT IS CORRUPT & INEPT !!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7361572n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.6
http://axcessnews.com/index.php/articles/show/id/21511
THE BANKS , LAWYERS AND THE COURT SYSTEM IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!
" That is confirmed daily across the USA. Let's face it. the majority of loan mods are a joke if they don't reduce your principal. " Hey Bank, you won't reduce my principal to current market value ??? NO DEAL !!!!"
" ... If Joe 6 pack or Susie soccer mom forges documents or attempts embezzlement they go to JAIL ! These bankers , lawyers and judges are no better. They need to be held accountable. This is a FEDERAL PROBLEM. Everyone needs to go here and tell the man who is in charge of OUR Federal government.
Check out these great sites for information on robo signers, forgery of documents, MERS,etc. Read & see more: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7361572n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.6#ixzz1Ji7ZjQBN
http://www.foreclosurehamlet.org/
http://www.4closurefraud.org/
http://www.msfraud.com/
http://www.fruaddigest.com/
It is time for the People to step up, get educated and go after all these con men & corrupt courts bums !!! All of them, but most especially the lying Attorneys in robes that favor their frat brothers at the expense of their oath, public trust and the very People that the position exists to protect !!!! The judges apparently get paid by the banksters when they become judges and every time a case goes in their favor. "
" As Thomas Jefferson's said "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
" Is this the AMERICAN DREAM ???
Let's hope CBS News /60 minutes continue this investigation; there are still many unethical and systematic practices to expose by both big corporations , banks , wall street & big government. "
" Why has not the FDIC and the FBI prosecuted the CEO's CFO's and Board of directors of these corrupt banks!!! They have ALL commited fraud !!! Why are their doors still open for business !!! Nothing can get fixed so long as they are allowed to stay open. They will continue to commit fraud to try and cover their butts. Each of those companies need to have their doors closed to lending. All of them stripped of their lending authority. The useless FDIC talks a good game. Well put up or shut up. If your going to let them continue doing business as usual, knowing what you know about the fraud what does that say about our watchdogs ? "
" Get real. This issue is already part of the massive corruption of the courts, because these pieces of shit judges should have looked at the documentation in the first place when the cases were heard by the courts. The magistrates, judges and the lawyers talk to each other over drinks at the bar and make agreements without the best interest of the homeowner at heart.
American justice ??? Don't make me laugh !!! "
"American citizens need to stick together during this time. Isn't it the American Dream to own a home and one day actually own it ??? Or start a small business and watch it grow. The banks make it impossible for so many middle class or working stiffs to achieve thier goals and the whole reason is pure greed. How sad that the American Dream has been shattered and so few care. "
The best part of all of this is that the Dodd-Frank Act is actually going to REWARD these very same corrupt banks by pushing mortgage brokers out of business.
Do a Google search on loan officer compensation rule or go to
http://www.facebook.com/pages/National-Association-of-Mortgage-Brokers-NAMB/134445796889 or http://www.facebook.com/NAIHP "
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.
http://axcessnews.com/index.php/articles/show/id/21511
THE BANKS , LAWYERS AND THE COURT SYSTEM IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!
" That is confirmed daily across the USA. Let's face it. the majority of loan mods are a joke if they don't reduce your principal. " Hey Bank, you won't reduce my principal to current market value ??? NO DEAL !!!!"
" ... If Joe 6 pack or Susie soccer mom forges documents or attempts embezzlement they go to JAIL ! These bankers , lawyers and judges are no better. They need to be held accountable. This is a FEDERAL PROBLEM. Everyone needs to go here and tell the man who is in charge of OUR Federal government.
Check out these great sites for information on robo signers, forgery of documents, MERS,etc. Read & see more: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7361572n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.6#ixzz1Ji7ZjQBN
http://www.foreclosurehamlet.org/
http://www.4closurefraud.org/
http://www.msfraud.com/
http://www.fruaddigest.com/
It is time for the People to step up, get educated and go after all these con men & corrupt courts bums !!! All of them, but most especially the lying Attorneys in robes that favor their frat brothers at the expense of their oath, public trust and the very People that the position exists to protect !!!! The judges apparently get paid by the banksters when they become judges and every time a case goes in their favor. "
" As Thomas Jefferson's said "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
" Is this the AMERICAN DREAM ???
Let's hope CBS News /60 minutes continue this investigation; there are still many unethical and systematic practices to expose by both big corporations , banks , wall street & big government. "
" Why has not the FDIC and the FBI prosecuted the CEO's CFO's and Board of directors of these corrupt banks!!! They have ALL commited fraud !!! Why are their doors still open for business !!! Nothing can get fixed so long as they are allowed to stay open. They will continue to commit fraud to try and cover their butts. Each of those companies need to have their doors closed to lending. All of them stripped of their lending authority. The useless FDIC talks a good game. Well put up or shut up. If your going to let them continue doing business as usual, knowing what you know about the fraud what does that say about our watchdogs ? "
" Get real. This issue is already part of the massive corruption of the courts, because these pieces of shit judges should have looked at the documentation in the first place when the cases were heard by the courts. The magistrates, judges and the lawyers talk to each other over drinks at the bar and make agreements without the best interest of the homeowner at heart.
American justice ??? Don't make me laugh !!! "
"American citizens need to stick together during this time. Isn't it the American Dream to own a home and one day actually own it ??? Or start a small business and watch it grow. The banks make it impossible for so many middle class or working stiffs to achieve thier goals and the whole reason is pure greed. How sad that the American Dream has been shattered and so few care. "
The best part of all of this is that the Dodd-Frank Act is actually going to REWARD these very same corrupt banks by pushing mortgage brokers out of business.
Do a Google search on loan officer compensation rule or go to
http://www.facebook.com/pages/National-Association-of-Mortgage-Brokers-NAMB/134445796889 or http://www.facebook.com/NAIHP "
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.
TEMUJIN SAYS NATO TALKS TOUGH BUT .....
TEMUJIN SAYS NATO TALKS TOUGH BUT .....
But is a farce . Talks tough does nothing { like the GOP } .The clowns that run NATO can not even get rid of a fifth rate thug & dictator. Give them rebels the guns and support to win. This war should have been ended weeks ago.
The Soviets would have kicked NATO ass had there ever been a real shooting war.
But is a farce . Talks tough does nothing { like the GOP } .The clowns that run NATO can not even get rid of a fifth rate thug & dictator. Give them rebels the guns and support to win. This war should have been ended weeks ago.
The Soviets would have kicked NATO ass had there ever been a real shooting war.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Obama blows up the bridge
Obama blows up the bridge PAT SAYs.... " We may be about to enter a maelstrom. No big budget deal is brokered. The deficit endures, and another looms in 2012. To finance them, the Fed borrows at the rate of $30 billion a week wherever it can. But as countries begin to choke on U.S. debt, the market starts to dry up. To attract investors, the Fed must raise interest rates, which sends bond prices sinking and forces interest rates up across the economy. With interest rates rising, gas prices rising and inflation rising, the squeeze is on, and there is talk of a double-dip recession. And if that happens, Obama is toast. But, then, so are we "
Haylee Cain: A Remarkable Year
Finding Haylee a home and a familyMaking a Difference: Donna and Judson Emens took it upon themselves to help a young girl with cerebral palsy, forming their own special family in Tuscumbia, Ala. NBC Newstation Clare Duffy reports. click link below to see more on this great child: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/38600663#38600663 Alabama Family Trust for the Benefit of Haylee Cain 120 Oslo CircleBirmingham, AL 35211 Hitting home Cheryl Laura Allenbaugh, Nightly News producer, writes: " When I first saw Haylee's story it hit home for me. In college, looking for a way to pay for tuition, I ended up as a home health care aide. Every evening I traveled to various group homes for patients with mental disabilities and took them shopping, balanced the check book, and generally helped in the upkeep of the home. It sounds simple, but it was mentally exhausting... though it didn't compare to my morning job - caring for Cheryl, a woman with cerebral palsy. Cheryl was in her early 40's and living at home with her 85 year old mother. Cheryl's cerebral palsy was advanced to the point where she couldn't sit up, or feed herself and it took me almost a month before I was able to understand her limited speech. Despite her difficulty communicating, she was extremely smart - weekly Scrabble games at her house were a humbling experience for those brave enough to take her on. Every morning it was my job to get her up and ready for work. She designed greeting cards through a computer program at the local center that catered to individuals with disabilities. She was capable of more but she needed constant supervision - even in her wheelchair she sometimes slid to the side and couldn't right herself - but she loved her job and was always very happy to go. She worked 8 to 5 and in the evenings, either I of another aide would come back to feed her dinner, spend the evening chatting or playing games and then put her to bed. Weekends always involved loading her up in the van and going out to lunch, watching our local orchestra in the park, or visiting whatever fair was in town. I even saw a Beach Boys concert with her. I complained the whole way there - she enjoyed laughing at me as I sang the songs the whole way home. My junior year of college, I was offered a well paying job in television production that I couldn't turn down. I left pretty suddenly so I don't know what happened to Cheryl but at the same time, I do. Everyone who worked with her knew what was going to happen. Her mom was not doing well. Shortly before I left, she had suffered a heart attack. She needed the health care aides around more often and since we helped with her finances we all knew that she was going through the family savings quickly. There was no way Cheryl could pay to have a 24 hour home health care aide so we knew that when her mom would eventually pass away, she would lose her house, her job and her only family member the same day. She had no other options. She would be going to a nursing home. When I started there, Cheryl would often joke to me that she was going to come stay with me. I would joke back, "How could I leave you, Cheryl?" For her though, it wasn't a joke. When I told her I was quitting my job, she didn't speak to me for the last week I worked there. I was yet another person who wasn't really going to save her from her inevitable fate. Haylee, the woman we profile in tonight's Making a Difference report, was promised too over the years. It's easy to say you'll help but what the Emenses, the family that brought her in, are doing is truly remarkable - they are saving her. But there are thousands of Cheryls out there. Spending their 40's, 30's, even their 20's in nursing homes - all in peak mental condition and aware of their surroundings. Not every person can be adopted - it's not a feasible answer - but hopefully the Emenses, and all the people who are working to support them, can inspire the system to change. If you'd like to help Haylee, a trust has been set up in her name. Alabama Family Trust for the Benefit of Haylee Cain120 Oslo CircleBirmingham, AL 35211 Dr. Dennis Steele is an advocate for change to help people like Haylee.
FOOD prices: World Bank warns millions face poverty !!!
Food prices: World Bank warns millions face povertyClick to play
World Bank's president urges leaders not to ignore food inflation
Global EconomyChina booms as inflation tops 5%
Indian inflation rate hits 8.9%
Bric China summit seeks influence
Jobhunters lose hope in Portugal
The World Bank has warned that rising food prices, driven partly by rising fuel costs, are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty.
World food prices are 36% above levels of a year ago, driven by problems in the Middle East and North Africa, and remain volatile, the bank said.
That has pushed 44 million people into poverty since last June.
A further 10% rise would push 10m more below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 (76p) a day, the bank said.And it warned that a 30% cost hike in the price of staples could lead to 34 million more poor.
The World Bank estimates there are about 1.2 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day.
"More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and volatile food prices," said World Bank president Robert Zoellick.
Food price changes Q1 2010 to Q1 2011
Source: World Bank Development Prospects Group
Maize 74%
Wheat 69%
Palm oil 55%
Soybeans 36%
Beef 30%
Rice -2%
"We have to put food first and protect the poor and vulnerable, who spend most of their money on food." Mr Zoellick was speaking before IMF and World Bank spring meetings later this week.
The gatherings will be attended by finance ministers and central bankers including Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, and Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King.
The World Bank says prices of basic commodities remain close to their 2008 peak, with the prices of wheat, maize and soya all rocketing. The only exception is rice, which has fallen slightly in price in the past year.
The bank suggests a number of measures to help alleviate the impact of high food prices on the poor.
They include encouraging food-producing countries to ease export controls, and to divert production away from biofuels production when food prices exceed certain limits.
Other recommendations include targeting social assistance and nutritional programmes to the poorest, better weather forecasting, more investments in agriculture, the adoption of new technologies - such as rice fortification to make it more nutritious, and efforts to address climate change.It also said financial measures were needed to prevent poor countries being subject to food price volatility.
World Bank's president urges leaders not to ignore food inflation
Global EconomyChina booms as inflation tops 5%
Indian inflation rate hits 8.9%
Bric China summit seeks influence
Jobhunters lose hope in Portugal
The World Bank has warned that rising food prices, driven partly by rising fuel costs, are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty.
World food prices are 36% above levels of a year ago, driven by problems in the Middle East and North Africa, and remain volatile, the bank said.
That has pushed 44 million people into poverty since last June.
A further 10% rise would push 10m more below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 (76p) a day, the bank said.And it warned that a 30% cost hike in the price of staples could lead to 34 million more poor.
The World Bank estimates there are about 1.2 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day.
"More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and volatile food prices," said World Bank president Robert Zoellick.
Food price changes Q1 2010 to Q1 2011
Source: World Bank Development Prospects Group
Maize 74%
Wheat 69%
Palm oil 55%
Soybeans 36%
Beef 30%
Rice -2%
"We have to put food first and protect the poor and vulnerable, who spend most of their money on food." Mr Zoellick was speaking before IMF and World Bank spring meetings later this week.
The gatherings will be attended by finance ministers and central bankers including Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, and Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King.
The World Bank says prices of basic commodities remain close to their 2008 peak, with the prices of wheat, maize and soya all rocketing. The only exception is rice, which has fallen slightly in price in the past year.
The bank suggests a number of measures to help alleviate the impact of high food prices on the poor.
They include encouraging food-producing countries to ease export controls, and to divert production away from biofuels production when food prices exceed certain limits.
Other recommendations include targeting social assistance and nutritional programmes to the poorest, better weather forecasting, more investments in agriculture, the adoption of new technologies - such as rice fortification to make it more nutritious, and efforts to address climate change.It also said financial measures were needed to prevent poor countries being subject to food price volatility.
Morale to the Left, Morale to the Right, and Not a Stop to Think by Fred Reed
Morale to the Left, Morale to the Right, and Not a Stop to Think by Fred Reed " .......But you can’t tell fresh young troops, “You’re maybe a bit above average, but the Afghans are much tougher people, having been raised fighting and living on dried goat-meat, and they know the terrain, whereas you will have no idea where you are and your equipment and tactics are badly suited for the region, so it’s going to be hard slogging.” Not optimal for recruiting. More profoundly, men in combat arms want to feel inexorable, deadly, the best. Whether they actually are doesn’t occur to them until the war starts. A satisfying state of mind is what is wanted. This preference for mood over reality runs through their careers.The career military attracts people who run from the merely abnormal to the frankly weird. .......They are authoritarian by nature, comfortable in a rigid, hierarchical, and conformist society that most of us would find equally unbearable and absurd. Suppose your boss told everyone in the office that they had to wear exactly the same clothes and stand at attention in the morning to that he could determine whether they had dressed themselves correctly. Militaries start with odd material.......Then they inculcate in themselves an exaggerated sense of their own powers, a sort of Terminator complex......."
Thursday, April 14, 2011
AMERICA IS BANKRUPT..... GET IT !!!
YOU DON'T HEAR THIS ON THE NIGHTLY NEWS......
Out in the real world China is busy forming it’s own alliances, looking at alternative currency arrangements, and helping to bury the dollar.
BUT BACK IN SUPERPOWER AMERICA THE DECLINE CONTINUES ......
RINO’s and gullible children should not be taken seriously and you’d better get it together real soon or it’s over - plain and simple America !!!
If House Republicans vote for the bipartisan compromise, they should be run out of Washington by the tea party movement and voted out of office.
What started out as $38.5 billion in cuts, turned into around $14 billion in cuts and a bunch of accounting gimmicks. Each new day brings new disgusting revelations. According to the Congressional Budget Office, “total federal outlays will still rise by approximately $177 billion.” Yes, that says “rise” not “decrease.”
More startling, the Congressional Budget Office reports that the deficit will only be cut by $352 million. That’s million with an “m”. The budget deficit will be $1.6 trillion this year.
Republicans who vote for this compromise are lying to the American people that they get how serious the problem is. The one silver lining is that this will hopefully radicalize freshman Republicans against anymore leadership deals.
But it’s not just Republican stupidty the republic must be worried about. Barack Obama spoke yesterday and forgot to mention the facts that under the great Obama, gas prices have risen more than 100% from when he took office, food prices have gone up, and every dollar every American brings home buys less and less.
The man started his speech praising the free market and the rugged individualism of the American people, while ignoring that under his Presidency more Americans are on food stamps than at any time in American history and it is the inept & corrupt Obama administration, not the free market, that is picking winners and losers in the marketplace . Thus destroying the nation.
According to Mark Knoller at CBS News, “Even if every provision of President Obama’s deficit reduction plan is enacted - and he concedes it won’t be - there still won’t be a balanced budget on the horizon. And the National Debt will continue to expand by trillions of dollars.”
Knoller continued, “The Obama plan is designed to reduce deficit spending over the next 12 years by $4 trillion dollars. If every penny of that $4 trillion in deficits is eliminated, the government’s own budget projections show that trillions of dollars more in deficits would remain in place.”
The time has come to realize weAmerica is being played by both sides of a one party hydra. There are those who are members of the political class and then there are the rest of the country and it is now apparent that while the political class might have ones with a “D” after their names and others with an “R”. The truth is they have much more in common with each other than they do with flyover America. At Primary time , get rid of every one that votes for this bill and if that doesn’t clean them out do it again until fiscal sanity comes back.
You clearly can’t trust Tammy Fae Boenner any more than you can trust Barack " Barry " Obama. Boehner is not the solution, he is the problem. Is $350 million is the best Boehner could negotiate ??? America has a deficit that equals $350 million EVERY TWO HOURS !!!
Given the timidity of the Republican leadership in the House, it is unlikely that there will be any serious improvement in the fiscal crisis during the next two years. However, like all Ponzi schemes must fail eventually and when it does, it won’t matter that our elected politicians have been inept. The house of cards will collapse on itself.
Out in the real world China is busy forming it’s own alliances, looking at alternative currency arrangements, and helping to bury the dollar.
BUT BACK IN SUPERPOWER AMERICA THE DECLINE CONTINUES ......
RINO’s and gullible children should not be taken seriously and you’d better get it together real soon or it’s over - plain and simple America !!!
If House Republicans vote for the bipartisan compromise, they should be run out of Washington by the tea party movement and voted out of office.
What started out as $38.5 billion in cuts, turned into around $14 billion in cuts and a bunch of accounting gimmicks. Each new day brings new disgusting revelations. According to the Congressional Budget Office, “total federal outlays will still rise by approximately $177 billion.” Yes, that says “rise” not “decrease.”
More startling, the Congressional Budget Office reports that the deficit will only be cut by $352 million. That’s million with an “m”. The budget deficit will be $1.6 trillion this year.
Republicans who vote for this compromise are lying to the American people that they get how serious the problem is. The one silver lining is that this will hopefully radicalize freshman Republicans against anymore leadership deals.
But it’s not just Republican stupidty the republic must be worried about. Barack Obama spoke yesterday and forgot to mention the facts that under the great Obama, gas prices have risen more than 100% from when he took office, food prices have gone up, and every dollar every American brings home buys less and less.
The man started his speech praising the free market and the rugged individualism of the American people, while ignoring that under his Presidency more Americans are on food stamps than at any time in American history and it is the inept & corrupt Obama administration, not the free market, that is picking winners and losers in the marketplace . Thus destroying the nation.
According to Mark Knoller at CBS News, “Even if every provision of President Obama’s deficit reduction plan is enacted - and he concedes it won’t be - there still won’t be a balanced budget on the horizon. And the National Debt will continue to expand by trillions of dollars.”
Knoller continued, “The Obama plan is designed to reduce deficit spending over the next 12 years by $4 trillion dollars. If every penny of that $4 trillion in deficits is eliminated, the government’s own budget projections show that trillions of dollars more in deficits would remain in place.”
The time has come to realize weAmerica is being played by both sides of a one party hydra. There are those who are members of the political class and then there are the rest of the country and it is now apparent that while the political class might have ones with a “D” after their names and others with an “R”. The truth is they have much more in common with each other than they do with flyover America. At Primary time , get rid of every one that votes for this bill and if that doesn’t clean them out do it again until fiscal sanity comes back.
You clearly can’t trust Tammy Fae Boenner any more than you can trust Barack " Barry " Obama. Boehner is not the solution, he is the problem. Is $350 million is the best Boehner could negotiate ??? America has a deficit that equals $350 million EVERY TWO HOURS !!!
Given the timidity of the Republican leadership in the House, it is unlikely that there will be any serious improvement in the fiscal crisis during the next two years. However, like all Ponzi schemes must fail eventually and when it does, it won’t matter that our elected politicians have been inept. The house of cards will collapse on itself.
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE WHEN TSA TOUCH KIDS ???
No Wonder the Airlines Caved
by Christopher Manion
" Remember how airport security was going to be conducted by the airlines, and not the government? But they quietly got bipartisan billions after 9-11, from a government that failed major league, big time, to protect them, their passengers, and the country.
Folks might howl today, but the airlines will never want to take over security again. If they did, their “security agents” would all be hauled off to jail for life — for molesting children like this government thug did, without penalty, of course, assaulting a six-year old girl. If someone had done that to this TSA agent’s daughter at her home, her father would have had every right to shoot them on the spot. But after this TV appearance, it’s unlikely that this girl and her family will ever be able to fly from an American airport again.
Psychologists tell us that child abuse damages a person for life. A six-year-old girl knows nothing about government, but everything about a traumatic violation of her modesty. To her, all abusers are alike: monsters who will be in her nightmares for life, images that will be seared into her neurological system. And once children are told that the “authority figure” can criminally abuse them, the prospective abuser can cleverly adopt authoritative behaviors (and even wear a knockoff TSA uniform!) to mimic the government thugs and have their way with them.
TSA agents, awaken from your dull slumber. The shield of government protection from arrest and incarceration cannot protect your soul from the searching eye of the Divine Author of Justice, whom we will all meet at the end our days. Forget the “terrorists” — rebuke your superiors and the policies they have designed to accustom adults and children alike to government intrusion, crime, abuse, and debasement. Stand up for the children, demand that you be given another assignment, or quit. Refuse all immoral behavior, even if you’re “just following orders.”
Because someday, as Sophie Scholl said from the prisoner’s dock to the Nazi judge, “Sie werden stehen, wo ich stehe” — “You will be standing where I am standing now.”"
by Christopher Manion
" Remember how airport security was going to be conducted by the airlines, and not the government? But they quietly got bipartisan billions after 9-11, from a government that failed major league, big time, to protect them, their passengers, and the country.
Folks might howl today, but the airlines will never want to take over security again. If they did, their “security agents” would all be hauled off to jail for life — for molesting children like this government thug did, without penalty, of course, assaulting a six-year old girl. If someone had done that to this TSA agent’s daughter at her home, her father would have had every right to shoot them on the spot. But after this TV appearance, it’s unlikely that this girl and her family will ever be able to fly from an American airport again.
Psychologists tell us that child abuse damages a person for life. A six-year-old girl knows nothing about government, but everything about a traumatic violation of her modesty. To her, all abusers are alike: monsters who will be in her nightmares for life, images that will be seared into her neurological system. And once children are told that the “authority figure” can criminally abuse them, the prospective abuser can cleverly adopt authoritative behaviors (and even wear a knockoff TSA uniform!) to mimic the government thugs and have their way with them.
TSA agents, awaken from your dull slumber. The shield of government protection from arrest and incarceration cannot protect your soul from the searching eye of the Divine Author of Justice, whom we will all meet at the end our days. Forget the “terrorists” — rebuke your superiors and the policies they have designed to accustom adults and children alike to government intrusion, crime, abuse, and debasement. Stand up for the children, demand that you be given another assignment, or quit. Refuse all immoral behavior, even if you’re “just following orders.”
Because someday, as Sophie Scholl said from the prisoner’s dock to the Nazi judge, “Sie werden stehen, wo ich stehe” — “You will be standing where I am standing now.”"
THIS WHOLE SOCIETY IS CORRUPT
Take Me Out to the Gulag
by William Grigg
" As portrayed in the book Game of Shadows by Mark Fairnaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Barry Bonds — who was a Cooperstown-bound, three-time MVP in 1998 — succumbed to pathological jealousy as that year’s home-run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa monopolized the attention of the fans and media. We’ve subsequently learned that both McGwire and Sosa, like scores of other stars, were using performance-enhancing drugs. This was something the invertebrates running the corporatist MLB establishment were willing to allow in order to rebuild fan interest following The Year Without a World Series (1994).
Prior to 1998, Bonds — like his late father Bobby, and his godfather, the immortal Willie Mays — was a multi-dimensional player blessed with a wiry build. But at 33 he was confronting career mortality. Although he had “never used anything more performance-enhancing than a protein shake from the health food store,” write Fainaru-Wada and Williams, Bonds made a calculated decision to become a “juicer.” With the help of steroids obtained through an outfit called the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), Bonds up-armored his musculature: Where he had been a sleek speedster with consistent power, he became a one-dimensional dreadnought, which was exactly what the MLB corporate culture of the time demanded.
“Of the five best offensive seasons in Bonds’s career, four came after he was thirty-five years old,” note Fairnaru-Wada and Williams. This in itself is not remarkable: Of Henry Aaron’s 755 career home runs, roughly one-third came after he had reached that age, which is near-geriatric in baseball terms. Bonds’a late-career improvement, however, was unprecedented. Prior to 2001, when he hit 73 home runs, Bonds had never hit more than 49 in a season. Additionally, he was 38 years old in 2002 when he won his first batting title, hitting .370.
“Henry Aaron never hit 50 home runs in a season, so you’re going to tell me that [Bonds] is a greater hitter than Henry Aaron?” mused Reggie Jackson in reaction to Bonds’s twilight power surge. “There is no way you can outperform Aaron and Ruth and Mays at that level.”
Clearly, concluded Jackson, “somebody is guilty of taking steroids.” That is to say that Bonds’ career stats were debased by his inflated physique.
To get some sense of where Bonds stands when his stats are adjusted for physique inflation, consider the following. In 1927, Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs accounted for 14 percent of the American League’s total that year. To duplicate that single-season feat, Bonds would have to hit about 340 home runs–or a little less than five times the number of those in his record-setting year.
Performance-enhancing substances were pervasive in MLB clubhouses, but with the game being re-engineered around long-ball pyrotechnics, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig wasn’t inclined to press the matter. It can thus be said that baseball found its economic salvation in statistical inflation. This sort of thing came naturally to Selig, who, as Welch points out, “spent his term helping owners soak taxpayers for more than $5 billion in baseball welfare” through stadium subsidies.
There is a certain symmetry at work here. Babe Ruth’s Major League career began in 1914, just months after the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax were inflicted on the American economy. In due course, the gang responsible for those abominations created the IRS, which would eventually employ the bilious little twit named Jeff Novitzky.
Major League Baseball’s statistical inflation has done no tangible harm to anyone. The monetary debasement practiced by the Regime Novitzky served so faithfully has literally resulted in widespread death and destitution. So, naturally, Barry Bonds may be headed for prison despite the fact that the Feds couldn’t prove that he had actually committed a definable criminal offense. However, the bovine specimens who composed the jury, not wanting to injure the feelings of the prosecutors, gave them a consolation prize by ruling that Bonds had somehow committed some unspecified form of “obstruction.”
Americans who are willing to countenance this spectacle have forever forfeited the right to condemn the former Soviet Union, or any other totalitarian society, whether historical or contemporary. "
by William Grigg
" As portrayed in the book Game of Shadows by Mark Fairnaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Barry Bonds — who was a Cooperstown-bound, three-time MVP in 1998 — succumbed to pathological jealousy as that year’s home-run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa monopolized the attention of the fans and media. We’ve subsequently learned that both McGwire and Sosa, like scores of other stars, were using performance-enhancing drugs. This was something the invertebrates running the corporatist MLB establishment were willing to allow in order to rebuild fan interest following The Year Without a World Series (1994).
Prior to 1998, Bonds — like his late father Bobby, and his godfather, the immortal Willie Mays — was a multi-dimensional player blessed with a wiry build. But at 33 he was confronting career mortality. Although he had “never used anything more performance-enhancing than a protein shake from the health food store,” write Fainaru-Wada and Williams, Bonds made a calculated decision to become a “juicer.” With the help of steroids obtained through an outfit called the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), Bonds up-armored his musculature: Where he had been a sleek speedster with consistent power, he became a one-dimensional dreadnought, which was exactly what the MLB corporate culture of the time demanded.
“Of the five best offensive seasons in Bonds’s career, four came after he was thirty-five years old,” note Fairnaru-Wada and Williams. This in itself is not remarkable: Of Henry Aaron’s 755 career home runs, roughly one-third came after he had reached that age, which is near-geriatric in baseball terms. Bonds’a late-career improvement, however, was unprecedented. Prior to 2001, when he hit 73 home runs, Bonds had never hit more than 49 in a season. Additionally, he was 38 years old in 2002 when he won his first batting title, hitting .370.
“Henry Aaron never hit 50 home runs in a season, so you’re going to tell me that [Bonds] is a greater hitter than Henry Aaron?” mused Reggie Jackson in reaction to Bonds’s twilight power surge. “There is no way you can outperform Aaron and Ruth and Mays at that level.”
Clearly, concluded Jackson, “somebody is guilty of taking steroids.” That is to say that Bonds’ career stats were debased by his inflated physique.
To get some sense of where Bonds stands when his stats are adjusted for physique inflation, consider the following. In 1927, Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs accounted for 14 percent of the American League’s total that year. To duplicate that single-season feat, Bonds would have to hit about 340 home runs–or a little less than five times the number of those in his record-setting year.
Performance-enhancing substances were pervasive in MLB clubhouses, but with the game being re-engineered around long-ball pyrotechnics, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig wasn’t inclined to press the matter. It can thus be said that baseball found its economic salvation in statistical inflation. This sort of thing came naturally to Selig, who, as Welch points out, “spent his term helping owners soak taxpayers for more than $5 billion in baseball welfare” through stadium subsidies.
There is a certain symmetry at work here. Babe Ruth’s Major League career began in 1914, just months after the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax were inflicted on the American economy. In due course, the gang responsible for those abominations created the IRS, which would eventually employ the bilious little twit named Jeff Novitzky.
Major League Baseball’s statistical inflation has done no tangible harm to anyone. The monetary debasement practiced by the Regime Novitzky served so faithfully has literally resulted in widespread death and destitution. So, naturally, Barry Bonds may be headed for prison despite the fact that the Feds couldn’t prove that he had actually committed a definable criminal offense. However, the bovine specimens who composed the jury, not wanting to injure the feelings of the prosecutors, gave them a consolation prize by ruling that Bonds had somehow committed some unspecified form of “obstruction.”
Americans who are willing to countenance this spectacle have forever forfeited the right to condemn the former Soviet Union, or any other totalitarian society, whether historical or contemporary. "
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon
(CBS) On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat."In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends."According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million."We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency's balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records."The director looked at me and said 'Why do you care about this stuff?' It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing a good job," said Minnery.He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off."They have to cover it up," he said. "That's where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can't do the job."The Pentagon's Inspector General "partially substantiated" several of Minnery's allegations but could not prove officials tried "to manipulate the financial statements."Twenty years ago, Department of Defense Analyst Franklin C. Spinney made headlines exposing what he calls the "accounting games." He's still there, and although he does not speak for the Pentagon, he believes the problem has gotten worse."Those numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year," he said.Another critic of Pentagon waste, Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, commanded the Navy's 2nd Fleet the first time Donald Rumsfeld served as Defense Secretary, in 1976.In his opinion, "With good financial oversight we could find $48 billion in loose change in that building, without having to hit the taxpayers
Sunday, April 10, 2011
BANKS ARE GREEDY THIEVES ! GOVERNMENT IS CORRUPT & INEPT !!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/01/60minutes/main20049646.shtml
ok once again for those who missed it.
Sheila Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is inept or corrupt or both. This is criminal behavior. People should be going to jail. Any judge in any court across this nation that accepted any of these fake papers is as corrupt as the banks & aide and abets perjurers. And any honest Judge that actually looked at the totally false documents presented would throw the case out and charge the banks with contempt of court. This should be on every news show nightly and morning spread the word to all you know .HEY 60 MINUTES LOOK INTO THE BANKS & DEBT GOING AFTER PEOPLE FOR CREDIT CARD DEBIT IT IS JUST AS BAD WITH THE FRAUDLENT DOCUMENTS PRESENTED ….AND JUST AS ILLEGAL !!!
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH SPREAD THE WORD READ THE COMMENTS BELOW
Part one …..
“
BANKS ARE GREEDY THIEVES ! GOVERNMENT IS CORRUPT & INEPT !!!
The middle class homeowner can not win in the corrupt courts that allow these fraudulent foreclosures to continue. An American middle-class that built & made this nation great at one time. No longer .This collusion & sabotage by the evil bankers and crooks on wall street have destroyed this nation. Where is the outrage ???
Why no class action law suit ???
Why no criminal charges ???
More importantly why any property owner in ALL 50 states is not going to the fixed court proceedings demanding the proper , correct and appropriate legal documents.
****DISCLAMER I AM NOT A LAWYER & I DO NOT PLAY ONE ON TV. I AM NOT GIVING ANY LEGAL ADVICE JUST ASKING VALID QUESTIONS. AND VOICING MY OPINION GUARANTEED UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT !!!***
FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS DO NOT LET THE BANKS , LAWYERS & COURTS BULLY YOU
Demand that (Qualified Written Request - QWR) which requires your lender to Produce the Original Signed Mortgage Note upon request be presented.
It is a fact that over 40% of lenders nationwide have lost your original
signed mortgage deed. The significance is that if they can't prove that they
have it, then they can NOT legally foreclose upon you. Plain & simple folks.
The problem is that lenders have been getting away with murder on this issue because they know that property owners do not know their rights. However, as former President Harry Truman said years ago, "The buck stops here!!!" Enough is enough and too much is too much. Property owners MUST take the bull by the horn (whether you are in distress with your mortgage or not) and ensure that your lender legally owns your mortgage. Make demands to the lender to
the "Produce The Note" strategy and the lenders may not comply. In the
interim foreclosures can be stopped based upon this fact and you can
stay in your home (MORTGAGE FREE) ! Once a foreclosure is stopped using this strategy it is ILLEGAL for your lender to restart the foreclosure process
without proving that they can do ,in fact, hold The Note! If they do, they are in
violation of the Fair Debts Collection Act, RESPA Laws and you can sue
them, report them to their local Bar Association { ANOTHER USELESS ORGINAZATION IN SOME STATES , BUT YOU HAV3E TO TRY & FIGHT , FIGHT, FIGHT !!! },
60 Minutes goes out and finds the people who were committing mass fraud, and they freely are telling their story on TV, yet the Justice Dept, OCC & FDIC can't find a single person to charge in this trillions dollar bank heist ???
However even with the documentation to prove the infractions, the government fails to enforce the laws.
This is not just a civil matter but an criminal matter yet today after the airing of this piece these bank are not shut down for violating US laws. This is why the Nation is still dealing with this financial crisis because Obama does not want to enforce those responsible for cause the crisis because he picking winner and loser in this alleged Capitalistic society.
Federal Government has put trillions into these banks and which make them partners Wall Street. If corporations were treated like individuals, there would be an cease & desist orders place on them all, until some type of trial to determine if charges were to be brought.
Some lying rats want to point to a legal contract and the fact that payments was not paid, however it can't be proven who a payment was owed too ! The reason for the forgeries is because banks know that when the separation of the Notes & and security instruments (Deeds of Trust) is done that the debt is not longer is attached to the properties.
Some are wanting to say that the Note automatically has control of property, however that not true because the Deeds is put up for collateral and is separated and does not control whether owner of debt can execute ownership right because it does not belong to them. Once the title is separated from the Note the debt is not longer attached to the properties, thus the reason for the forgeries.
Since this tv program has aired what has the Federal Government done about this report by 60 Minutes and where are the other news medias on this subject ???
It is like homeowners are slaves and have no rights and Obama { What a joke } as a Constitutional lawyer is unaware of unlawful seizure !!!
The only reason we are even at this point is because of the pressure by the State Attorney Generals. Obama's modification programs have only provide cover for banks who are allowed to manipulate this procedure and not offer HAMP modifications, but to just a select a few borrowers in some dog & pony show of compliant, but instead the banks mostly process borrowers for some bogus in-house modification that does not address a payment reduction that solve the issue. Obama is a partner to the crime committed by not having Atty Gen Holder enforce the law !!
Extremely disturbing was that the head of the FDIC (who does not oversee mortgages or banks-the Comptroller of the Currency [OCC] does) also confirmed that banks and mortgage companies have committed extensive fraud-so extensive that it outdoes any fraud heretofore in history. Her recommended remedy. She thinks that the congress should pass laws that limit the banks' and mortgage companies' liability !!! She needs to hand in her resignation immediately !!!
It is outrageous that a government official implicitly admits to having knowledge of widespread, rampant fraud and other criminal activities on the part of the same banks that drove this nation into economic devastation, then has the audacity to promote protecting the perpetrators under the guise that seeking just retribution would further undermine our economy. This is unacceptable and she should be removed from her position.
Deal with the OCC there are many people more happy to share their horror stories, i.e., complaints dismissed even though the OCC has in their possession voluminous evidence that documents disturbing and troubling wrongdoing on the part of the mortgage bank including flagrant criminal activity. OCC & FDIC lets turn a blind a eye for we are complicit in this injustice. Government is the problem not the solution.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Like the attorney in the 60 minutes story, People are as mad as hell and are standing up and standing strong. For their rights The time is at hand for all those thru out the land to encourage others to band together and demand that our rights be protected and our voices heard !!!
The federal government has been turning a deaf ear and blind eye to these criminal activities as well as being hostile to those people that have asked that they (the OCC) do their jobs; but, until this 60 minutes piece, many folks were unaware that they were also promoting protecting the criminals that have committed fraud and caused yet more unneeded economic devastation to US families, communities and this beloved country.
The Feds know all about the fraud, Obama knows about the fraud, the congress knows about the fraud , the courts know about the fraud Hell any nit wit with half a brain knows about the fraud , everybody knows but nobody is doing anything. Why ? Because somebody is going to lose big time if they can't find this paperwork, who wants to pay off a mortgage that won't give you a guarantee you paid the right person.
So, since somebody is going to get hurt either the little people who are what makes this country run, not big shot corrupt politicians , corrupt judges , corrupt lawyers or Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or Donald Trump, it’s the common people.
Then all that bailout money was a waste because they are going to go belly up again in short order. So, given those choices they have decided to go the least painful route and let the people take it on the chin. it's cheaper that way, either way, the taxpayer ends up paying. If the greedy bankers fail again due to their fraud the ignorant sheep will once again be picking up the tab for that costly mess too. Must be nice to have special privileges, FRAUD PROTECTION, you can lie and get away with it. “
To be continued……..
ok once again for those who missed it.
Sheila Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is inept or corrupt or both. This is criminal behavior. People should be going to jail. Any judge in any court across this nation that accepted any of these fake papers is as corrupt as the banks & aide and abets perjurers. And any honest Judge that actually looked at the totally false documents presented would throw the case out and charge the banks with contempt of court. This should be on every news show nightly and morning spread the word to all you know .HEY 60 MINUTES LOOK INTO THE BANKS & DEBT GOING AFTER PEOPLE FOR CREDIT CARD DEBIT IT IS JUST AS BAD WITH THE FRAUDLENT DOCUMENTS PRESENTED ….AND JUST AS ILLEGAL !!!
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH SPREAD THE WORD READ THE COMMENTS BELOW
Part one …..
“
BANKS ARE GREEDY THIEVES ! GOVERNMENT IS CORRUPT & INEPT !!!
The middle class homeowner can not win in the corrupt courts that allow these fraudulent foreclosures to continue. An American middle-class that built & made this nation great at one time. No longer .This collusion & sabotage by the evil bankers and crooks on wall street have destroyed this nation. Where is the outrage ???
Why no class action law suit ???
Why no criminal charges ???
More importantly why any property owner in ALL 50 states is not going to the fixed court proceedings demanding the proper , correct and appropriate legal documents.
****DISCLAMER I AM NOT A LAWYER & I DO NOT PLAY ONE ON TV. I AM NOT GIVING ANY LEGAL ADVICE JUST ASKING VALID QUESTIONS. AND VOICING MY OPINION GUARANTEED UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT !!!***
FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS DO NOT LET THE BANKS , LAWYERS & COURTS BULLY YOU
Demand that (Qualified Written Request - QWR) which requires your lender to Produce the Original Signed Mortgage Note upon request be presented.
It is a fact that over 40% of lenders nationwide have lost your original
signed mortgage deed. The significance is that if they can't prove that they
have it, then they can NOT legally foreclose upon you. Plain & simple folks.
The problem is that lenders have been getting away with murder on this issue because they know that property owners do not know their rights. However, as former President Harry Truman said years ago, "The buck stops here!!!" Enough is enough and too much is too much. Property owners MUST take the bull by the horn (whether you are in distress with your mortgage or not) and ensure that your lender legally owns your mortgage. Make demands to the lender to
the "Produce The Note" strategy and the lenders may not comply. In the
interim foreclosures can be stopped based upon this fact and you can
stay in your home (MORTGAGE FREE) ! Once a foreclosure is stopped using this strategy it is ILLEGAL for your lender to restart the foreclosure process
without proving that they can do ,in fact, hold The Note! If they do, they are in
violation of the Fair Debts Collection Act, RESPA Laws and you can sue
them, report them to their local Bar Association { ANOTHER USELESS ORGINAZATION IN SOME STATES , BUT YOU HAV3E TO TRY & FIGHT , FIGHT, FIGHT !!! },
60 Minutes goes out and finds the people who were committing mass fraud, and they freely are telling their story on TV, yet the Justice Dept, OCC & FDIC can't find a single person to charge in this trillions dollar bank heist ???
However even with the documentation to prove the infractions, the government fails to enforce the laws.
This is not just a civil matter but an criminal matter yet today after the airing of this piece these bank are not shut down for violating US laws. This is why the Nation is still dealing with this financial crisis because Obama does not want to enforce those responsible for cause the crisis because he picking winner and loser in this alleged Capitalistic society.
Federal Government has put trillions into these banks and which make them partners Wall Street. If corporations were treated like individuals, there would be an cease & desist orders place on them all, until some type of trial to determine if charges were to be brought.
Some lying rats want to point to a legal contract and the fact that payments was not paid, however it can't be proven who a payment was owed too ! The reason for the forgeries is because banks know that when the separation of the Notes & and security instruments (Deeds of Trust) is done that the debt is not longer is attached to the properties.
Some are wanting to say that the Note automatically has control of property, however that not true because the Deeds is put up for collateral and is separated and does not control whether owner of debt can execute ownership right because it does not belong to them. Once the title is separated from the Note the debt is not longer attached to the properties, thus the reason for the forgeries.
Since this tv program has aired what has the Federal Government done about this report by 60 Minutes and where are the other news medias on this subject ???
It is like homeowners are slaves and have no rights and Obama { What a joke } as a Constitutional lawyer is unaware of unlawful seizure !!!
The only reason we are even at this point is because of the pressure by the State Attorney Generals. Obama's modification programs have only provide cover for banks who are allowed to manipulate this procedure and not offer HAMP modifications, but to just a select a few borrowers in some dog & pony show of compliant, but instead the banks mostly process borrowers for some bogus in-house modification that does not address a payment reduction that solve the issue. Obama is a partner to the crime committed by not having Atty Gen Holder enforce the law !!
Extremely disturbing was that the head of the FDIC (who does not oversee mortgages or banks-the Comptroller of the Currency [OCC] does) also confirmed that banks and mortgage companies have committed extensive fraud-so extensive that it outdoes any fraud heretofore in history. Her recommended remedy. She thinks that the congress should pass laws that limit the banks' and mortgage companies' liability !!! She needs to hand in her resignation immediately !!!
It is outrageous that a government official implicitly admits to having knowledge of widespread, rampant fraud and other criminal activities on the part of the same banks that drove this nation into economic devastation, then has the audacity to promote protecting the perpetrators under the guise that seeking just retribution would further undermine our economy. This is unacceptable and she should be removed from her position.
Deal with the OCC there are many people more happy to share their horror stories, i.e., complaints dismissed even though the OCC has in their possession voluminous evidence that documents disturbing and troubling wrongdoing on the part of the mortgage bank including flagrant criminal activity. OCC & FDIC lets turn a blind a eye for we are complicit in this injustice. Government is the problem not the solution.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Like the attorney in the 60 minutes story, People are as mad as hell and are standing up and standing strong. For their rights The time is at hand for all those thru out the land to encourage others to band together and demand that our rights be protected and our voices heard !!!
The federal government has been turning a deaf ear and blind eye to these criminal activities as well as being hostile to those people that have asked that they (the OCC) do their jobs; but, until this 60 minutes piece, many folks were unaware that they were also promoting protecting the criminals that have committed fraud and caused yet more unneeded economic devastation to US families, communities and this beloved country.
The Feds know all about the fraud, Obama knows about the fraud, the congress knows about the fraud , the courts know about the fraud Hell any nit wit with half a brain knows about the fraud , everybody knows but nobody is doing anything. Why ? Because somebody is going to lose big time if they can't find this paperwork, who wants to pay off a mortgage that won't give you a guarantee you paid the right person.
So, since somebody is going to get hurt either the little people who are what makes this country run, not big shot corrupt politicians , corrupt judges , corrupt lawyers or Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or Donald Trump, it’s the common people.
Then all that bailout money was a waste because they are going to go belly up again in short order. So, given those choices they have decided to go the least painful route and let the people take it on the chin. it's cheaper that way, either way, the taxpayer ends up paying. If the greedy bankers fail again due to their fraud the ignorant sheep will once again be picking up the tab for that costly mess too. Must be nice to have special privileges, FRAUD PROTECTION, you can lie and get away with it. “
To be continued……..
COURTS ARE CORRUPT...NO JUSTICE !!!
YOU DO NOT SEE THIS ON THE NIGHTLY NEWS !!!
http://www.slate.com/id/2290036/pagenum/all/#p2
Cruel but Not Unusual Clarence Thomas writes one of the meanest Supreme Court decisions ever !!!
" In 1985, John Thompson was convicted of murder in Louisiana. Having already been convicted in a separate armed robbery case, he opted not to testify on his own behalf in his murder trial. He was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison—14 of them isolated on death row—and watched as seven executions were planned for him. Several weeks before an execution scheduled for May 1999, Thompson's private investigators learned that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have cleared him at his robbery trial. This evidence included the fact that the main informant against him had received a reward from the victim's family, that the eyewitness identification done at the time described someone who looked nothing like him, and that a blood sample taken from the crime scene did not match Thompson's blood type. In 1963, in Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must turn over to the defense any evidence that would tend to prove a defendant's innocence. Failure to do so is a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights. Yet the four prosecutors in Thompson's case managed to keep secret the fact that they had hidden exculpatory evidence for 20 years. Were it not for Thompson's investigators, he would have been executed for a murder he did not commit. Both of Thompson's convictions were overturned. When he was retried on the murder charges, a jury acquitted him after 35 minutes. He sued the former Louisiana district attorney for Orleans Parish, Harry Connick Sr. (yes, his dad) for failing to train his prosecutors about their legal obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. A jury awarded Thompson $14 million for this civil rights violation, one for every year he spent wrongfully incarcerated. The district court judge added another $1 million in attorneys' fees.
A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict. An equally divided 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed again. But this week, writing on behalf of the five conservatives on the Supreme Court and in his first majority opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas tossed out the verdict, finding that the district attorney can't be responsible for the single act of a lone prosecutor.
The Thomas opinion is an extraordinary piece of workmanship, matched only by Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion, in which he takes a few extra whacks at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent. (Ginsburg was so bothered by the majority decision that she read her dissent from the bench for the first time this term.) Both Thomas and Scalia have produced what can only be described as a master class in human apathy.
Their disregard for the facts of Thompson's thrashed life and near-death emerges as a moral flat line. Scalia opens his concurrence with a swipe at Ginsburg's "lengthy excavation of the trial record" and states that "the question presented for our review is whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors." But only by willfully ignoring that entire trial record can he and Thomas reduce the entire constitutional question to a single misdeed by a single bad actor. Both parties to this case have long agreed that an injustice had been done. Connick himself conceded that there had been a Brady violation, yet Scalia finds none.
Everyone else concedes that egregious mistakes were made. Scalia struggles to rehabilitate them all. One of the reasons the truth came to light after 20 years is that Gerry Deegan, a junior assistant D.A. on the Thompson case, confessed as he lay dying of cancer that he had withheld the crime lab test results and removed a blood sample from the evidence room. The prosecutor to whom Deegan confessed said nothing about this for five years. While Scalia pins the wrongdoing on a single "miscreant prosecutor," Ginsburg correctly notes that "no fewer than five prosecutors" were involved in railroading Thompson. She adds that they "did so despite multiple opportunities, spanning nearly two decades, to set the record straight."
While Thomas states the question as having to do with a "single Brady violation," Ginsburg is quick to point out that there was far more than just a misplaced blood sample at issue: Thompson was turned in by someone seeking a reward, but prosecutors failed to turn over tapes of that conversation. The eyewitness identification of the killer didn't match Thompson, but was never shared with defense counsel. The blood evidence was enough to prove a Brady violation, but it was the tip of the iceberg. "
http://www.slate.com/id/2290036/pagenum/all/#p2
Cruel but Not Unusual Clarence Thomas writes one of the meanest Supreme Court decisions ever !!!
" In 1985, John Thompson was convicted of murder in Louisiana. Having already been convicted in a separate armed robbery case, he opted not to testify on his own behalf in his murder trial. He was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison—14 of them isolated on death row—and watched as seven executions were planned for him. Several weeks before an execution scheduled for May 1999, Thompson's private investigators learned that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have cleared him at his robbery trial. This evidence included the fact that the main informant against him had received a reward from the victim's family, that the eyewitness identification done at the time described someone who looked nothing like him, and that a blood sample taken from the crime scene did not match Thompson's blood type. In 1963, in Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must turn over to the defense any evidence that would tend to prove a defendant's innocence. Failure to do so is a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights. Yet the four prosecutors in Thompson's case managed to keep secret the fact that they had hidden exculpatory evidence for 20 years. Were it not for Thompson's investigators, he would have been executed for a murder he did not commit. Both of Thompson's convictions were overturned. When he was retried on the murder charges, a jury acquitted him after 35 minutes. He sued the former Louisiana district attorney for Orleans Parish, Harry Connick Sr. (yes, his dad) for failing to train his prosecutors about their legal obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. A jury awarded Thompson $14 million for this civil rights violation, one for every year he spent wrongfully incarcerated. The district court judge added another $1 million in attorneys' fees.
A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict. An equally divided 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed again. But this week, writing on behalf of the five conservatives on the Supreme Court and in his first majority opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas tossed out the verdict, finding that the district attorney can't be responsible for the single act of a lone prosecutor.
The Thomas opinion is an extraordinary piece of workmanship, matched only by Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion, in which he takes a few extra whacks at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent. (Ginsburg was so bothered by the majority decision that she read her dissent from the bench for the first time this term.) Both Thomas and Scalia have produced what can only be described as a master class in human apathy.
Their disregard for the facts of Thompson's thrashed life and near-death emerges as a moral flat line. Scalia opens his concurrence with a swipe at Ginsburg's "lengthy excavation of the trial record" and states that "the question presented for our review is whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors." But only by willfully ignoring that entire trial record can he and Thomas reduce the entire constitutional question to a single misdeed by a single bad actor. Both parties to this case have long agreed that an injustice had been done. Connick himself conceded that there had been a Brady violation, yet Scalia finds none.
Everyone else concedes that egregious mistakes were made. Scalia struggles to rehabilitate them all. One of the reasons the truth came to light after 20 years is that Gerry Deegan, a junior assistant D.A. on the Thompson case, confessed as he lay dying of cancer that he had withheld the crime lab test results and removed a blood sample from the evidence room. The prosecutor to whom Deegan confessed said nothing about this for five years. While Scalia pins the wrongdoing on a single "miscreant prosecutor," Ginsburg correctly notes that "no fewer than five prosecutors" were involved in railroading Thompson. She adds that they "did so despite multiple opportunities, spanning nearly two decades, to set the record straight."
While Thomas states the question as having to do with a "single Brady violation," Ginsburg is quick to point out that there was far more than just a misplaced blood sample at issue: Thompson was turned in by someone seeking a reward, but prosecutors failed to turn over tapes of that conversation. The eyewitness identification of the killer didn't match Thompson, but was never shared with defense counsel. The blood evidence was enough to prove a Brady violation, but it was the tip of the iceberg. "
False Convictions: Another Sorry Legacy of 'Progressivism' by William L. Anderson
False Convictions: Another Sorry Legacy of 'Progressivism' by William L. Anderson " However, in the end it was the "professionals" who not only were lying, but also were acting under outright delusion, and their delusion was supported by other "professionals." Should one step back even further, one can see a pattern emerging, one that not only is disturbing but also one that has its roots in the Progressive Movement of more than a century ago, when American intellectuals, businessmen, and politicians joined to overthrow a social order that was responsible for transforming American society from a backwoods, agrarian country into an industrial powerhouse. While "Progressives" were and are championed by the intellectual elite and media pundits as "reformers" who are trying (against those backward capitalists) to make society better, in reality they undermined human liberty in order to impose an order that could move in no direction but toward tyranny. One of the things "Progressives" did was to take many occupations and "professionalize" them. They introduced occupational licensing and they also were able to formalize and organize the "justice" apparatus into a mechanism in which "professionals" would transform the process of investigating crimes and seeking judgment and punishment for perpetrators. Instead of having a system that drew heavily upon community participation, "Progressives" reasoned that the professional police, prosecutors, and "expert" witnesses would not be bound by emotion but would act according to their pure training and knowledge. The system we have today is one in which the "professionals" run everything, from the police investigators to the judges and prison administrators, and it simply is awful. " YOU DO NOT SEE THIS ON THE NIGHTLY NEWS !!! http://www.slate.com/id/2290036/pagenum/all/#p2 Cruel but Not Unusual Clarence Thomas writes one of the meanest Supreme Court decisions ever !!! " In 1985, John Thompson was convicted of murder in Louisiana. Having already been convicted in a separate armed robbery case, he opted not to testify on his own behalf in his murder trial. He was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison—14 of them isolated on death row—and watched as seven executions were planned for him. Several weeks before an execution scheduled for May 1999, Thompson's private investigators learned that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have cleared him at his robbery trial. This evidence included the fact that the main informant against him had received a reward from the victim's family, that the eyewitness identification done at the time described someone who looked nothing like him, and that a blood sample taken from the crime scene did not match Thompson's blood type. In 1963, in Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must turn over to the defense any evidence that would tend to prove a defendant's innocence. Failure to do so is a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights. Yet the four prosecutors in Thompson's case managed to keep secret the fact that they had hidden exculpatory evidence for 20 years. Were it not for Thompson's investigators, he would have been executed for a murder he did not commit. Both of Thompson's convictions were overturned. When he was retried on the murder charges, a jury acquitted him after 35 minutes. He sued the former Louisiana district attorney for Orleans Parish, Harry Connick Sr. (yes, his dad) for failing to train his prosecutors about their legal obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. A jury awarded Thompson $14 million for this civil rights violation, one for every year he spent wrongfully incarcerated. The district court judge added another $1 million in attorneys' fees. A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict. An equally divided 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed again. But this week, writing on behalf of the five conservatives on the Supreme Court and in his first majority opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas tossed out the verdict, finding that the district attorney can't be responsible for the single act of a lone prosecutor. The Thomas opinion is an extraordinary piece of workmanship, matched only by Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion, in which he takes a few extra whacks at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent. (Ginsburg was so bothered by the majority decision that she read her dissent from the bench for the first time this term.) Both Thomas and Scalia have produced what can only be described as a master class in human apathy. Their disregard for the facts of Thompson's thrashed life and near-death emerges as a moral flat line. Scalia opens his concurrence with a swipe at Ginsburg's "lengthy excavation of the trial record" and states that "the question presented for our review is whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors." But only by willfully ignoring that entire trial record can he and Thomas reduce the entire constitutional question to a single misdeed by a single bad actor. Both parties to this case have long agreed that an injustice had been done. Connick himself conceded that there had been a Brady violation, yet Scalia finds none. Everyone else concedes that egregious mistakes were made. Scalia struggles to rehabilitate them all. One of the reasons the truth came to light after 20 years is that Gerry Deegan, a junior assistant D.A. on the Thompson case, confessed as he lay dying of cancer that he had withheld the crime lab test results and removed a blood sample from the evidence room. The prosecutor to whom Deegan confessed said nothing about this for five years. While Scalia pins the wrongdoing on a single "miscreant prosecutor," Ginsburg correctly notes that "no fewer than five prosecutors" were involved in railroading Thompson. She adds that they "did so despite multiple opportunities, spanning nearly two decades, to set the record straight." While Thomas states the question as having to do with a "single Brady violation," Ginsburg is quick to point out that there was far more than just a misplaced blood sample at issue: Thompson was turned in by someone seeking a reward, but prosecutors failed to turn over tapes of that conversation. The eyewitness identification of the killer didn't match Thompson, but was never shared with defense counsel. The blood evidence was enough to prove a Brady violation, but it was the tip of the iceberg. "
Cooking Meth: How Government Manufactured a Drug Epidemic by Roger Roots
Cooking Meth: How Government Manufactured a Drug Epidemic by Roger Roots " Since the early 1990s – in response to efforts by Congress to require prescriptions to purchase such products – pharmaceutical companies and retailers such as Target, Walgreens, CVS and Winn-Dixie have restricted sales of pseudoephedrine-containing products. Purchasers have been limited to buying small quantities and required to show I.D. to purchase them. In 2005, Congress passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act (CMEA) as an amendment to the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act. The CMEA requires record-keeping and identification of all sales and reports to law enforcement of any "suspicious" transactions. Purchasers are limited to "3.6 grams of pseudoephedrine base" per day and 9 grams per month. (Buying more than that is a federal misdemeanor.) (Ironically, the very first arrest under the CMEA occurred when an Iowa allergy sufferer named Tim Naveau was prosecuted in 2006 for purchasing too much Claritin D. Naveau had stocked up on the allergy medication because his teenage son, who was also an allergy sufferer, needed several packages because he was headed off to a church camp.) An Epidemic of Entrapment Restrictions on the purchase of meth precursor chemicals have been a boon to law enforcement entrapment schemes. For years, undercover government agents have been have been launching, building, supplying, and then busting meth manufacturing operations. Claims of entrapment are so closely linked to methamphetamine manufacturing cases that most meth-lab conviction appeals focus on officer conduct rather than defendant conduct. "
And This Year’s Nobel Prize in Doublethink Goes To… by Simon Black
And This Year’s Nobel Prize in Doublethink Goes To… by Simon Black " Romer appeared Thursday on the Daily Ticker, leaving no doubt that she should be the undisputed frontrunner for the Nobel Committee’s much anticipated Doublethink Prize. Warning, do not watch this video while eating: food projectile WILL permanently damage your computer. Romer begins her remarks to the interviewer Aaron Task: “There are tools that we can use, and I think it’s shameful that we’re not using them.” Trillions of dollars of government spending, debt monetization, and money creation isn’t enough. Romer wants us digging ditches with teaspoons. "
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
BANKS ARE CORRUPT !!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20049744-10391709.html?tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.1
Sheila Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is inept or corrupt or both. This is criminal behavior. People should be going to jail. Any judge in any court across this nation that accepted any of these fake papers is as corrupt as the banks & aide and abets perjurers. And any honest Judge that actually looked at the totally false documents presented would throw the case out and charge the banks with contempt of court. This should be on every news show nightly and morning spread the word to all you know . HEY 60 MINUTES LOOK INTO THE BANKS & DEBT GOING AFTER PEOPLE FOR CREDIT CARD DEBIT IT IS JUST AS BAD WITH THE FRAUDLENT DOCUMENTS PRESENTED ….AND JUST AS ILLEGAL !!!
Sheila Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is inept or corrupt or both. This is criminal behavior. People should be going to jail. Any judge in any court across this nation that accepted any of these fake papers is as corrupt as the banks & aide and abets perjurers. And any honest Judge that actually looked at the totally false documents presented would throw the case out and charge the banks with contempt of court. This should be on every news show nightly and morning spread the word to all you know . HEY 60 MINUTES LOOK INTO THE BANKS & DEBT GOING AFTER PEOPLE FOR CREDIT CARD DEBIT IT IS JUST AS BAD WITH THE FRAUDLENT DOCUMENTS PRESENTED ….AND JUST AS ILLEGAL !!!
Rush Limbaugh: Katie Couric destroyed CBS News
Rush Limbaugh: Katie Couric destroyed CBS News She is a joke like her newscast !!!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Drowning in debt
Drowning in debt " It stands to reason that the only real source of revenue for the federal government is us, the taxpayer. The only way the government can continue to fuel its insatiable appetite is by taxing us more, which in fact is continually the case. But where does it end? When we're taxed at 100 percent? And even then, do you honestly think the money would be used to pay down debt? Get real. I don't think the yahoos in Washington have the faintest clue – not an inkling – of what it's like here on the front lines of Real America. We must rattle the cages of our elected officials as much as possible, demanding fiscal restraint; we must scream and holler and send emails and march in tea-party rallies – but in the meanwhile, you'd better start taking some individual action. Sell the unneeded stuff. Pay off your debts. Take care of yourself. While I won't go so far as to recommend we abandon our vigilance opposing what the government is doing to ruin our nation, I am suggesting there comes a point when we recognize we're banging our heads against a brick wall. What can YOU – Charlie Smith – and YOU – Martha Jones – do to keep our government solvent? Nothing. Not a thing. Zip, zilch, nada. "
Friday, April 1, 2011
Extend and Pretend Is Wall Street's Friend by Jim Quinn
Extend and Pretend Is Wall Street's Friend by Jim
A heads up from the wise man Joe Silvergold A must read.....
42 comments Posted on 30th March 2011
“We now have an economy in which five banks control over 50 percent of the entire banking industry, four or five corporations own most of the mainstream media, and the top one percent of families hold a greater share of the nation’s wealth than any time since 1930. This sort of concentration of wealth and power is a classic setup for the failure of a democratic republic and the stifling of organic economic growth.” - Jesse – http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/ Source: Barry Ritholtz “All of the old-timers knew that subprime mortgages were what we called neutron loans — they killed the people and left the houses.” - Louis S. Barnes, 58, a partner at Boulder West, a mortgage banking firm in Lafayette, Colo The storyline that has been sold to the public by the Federal government, Wall Street, and the corporate mainstream media over the last two years is the economy is recovering and the banking system has recovered from its near death experience in 2008. Wall Street profits in 2009 & 2010 totaled approximately $80 billion. The stock market has risen almost 100% since the March 2009 lows. Wall Street CEOs were so impressed by this fantastic performance they dished out $43 billion in bonuses over the two year period to their thousands of Harvard MBA paper pushers. It is amazing that an industry that was effectively insolvent in October 2008 has made such a spectacular miraculous recovery. The truth is recovery is simple when you control the politicians and regulators, and own the organization that prints the money. A systematic plan to create the illusion of stability and provide no-risk profits to the mega-Wall Street banks was implemented in early 2009 and continues today. The plan was developed by Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and the CEOs of the criminal Wall Street banking syndicate. The plan has been enabled by the FASB, SEC, IRS, FDIC and corrupt politicians in Washington D.C. This master plan has funneled hundreds of billions from taxpayers to the banks that created the greatest financial collapse in world history. The authorities had a choice. This country has bankruptcy laws. The criminally negligent Wall Street banks could have been liquidated in an orderly bankruptcy. Their good assets could have been sold off to banks that did not take their extreme greed based risks. Bond holders and stockholders would have been wiped out. Today, we would have a balanced banking system, with no Too Big To Fail institutions. Instead, the years of placing their cronies within governmental agencies and buying off politicians paid big dividends for Wall Street. Their return on investment has been fantastic. The plan has been as follows: In April 2009 the FASB caved in to pressure from the Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Wall Street to suspend mark to market rules, allowing the Wall Street banks to value their loans and derivatives as if they were worth 100% of their book value. The Federal Reserve balance sheet consistently totaled about $900 billion until September 2008. By December 2008, the balance sheet had swollen to $2.2 trillion as the Federal Reserve bought $1.3 trillion of toxic assets from the Wall Street banks, paying 100 cents on the dollar for assets worth 50% of that value. In November 2009 the Federal Reserve and IRS loosened the rules for restructuring commercial loans without triggering tax consequences. Banks were urged to extend loans on properties that had fallen 40% in value as if they were still worth 100% of the loan value. By December 2008 the Federal Reserve had moved their discount rate to 0%. For the last two years, the Wall Street banks have been able to borrow from the Federal Reserve for free and earn a risk free return of 2%. The Federal Reserve has essentially handed billions of dollars to Wall Street. When it became clear in October 2010 that after almost two years of unlimited liquidity being injected into the veins of zombie banks was failing, Ben Bernanke announced QE2. He has expanded the Fed balance sheet to $2.6 trillion by injecting $3.5 billion per day into the stock market by buying US Treasury bonds. Bernanke’s stated goal has been to pump up the stock market. While taking credit for driving stock prices higher, he denies any responsibility for the energy and food inflation that is spurring unrest around the world. The Federal Reserve has increased the monetary base by $500 billion in the last three months in a desperate attempt to give the appearance of recovery to a floundering economy. Beginning on December 31, 2010, through December 31, 2012, all noninterest-bearing transaction accounts are fully insured, regardless of the balance of the account, at all FDIC-insured institutions. The unlimited insurance coverage is available to all depositors, including consumers, businesses, and government entities. This unlimited insurance coverage is separate from, and in addition to, the insurance coverage provided to a depositor’s other deposit accounts held at an FDIC-insured institution. When You’re Losing – Change the Rules Wall Street banks had absolutely no problem with mark to market rules from 2000 through 2007, as the value of all their investments soared. These banks created products (subprime, no-doc, Alt-A mortgages) whose sole purpose was to encourage fraud. Their MBA geniuses created models that showed that if you packaged enough fraudulent loans together and paid Moody’s or S&P a big enough bribe, they magically became AAA products that could be sold to pension plans, municipalities, and insurance companies. These magnets of high finance were so consumed with greed they believed their own lies and loaded their balance sheets with the very toxic derivatives they were peddling to the clueless Europeans. They didn’t follow a basic rule. Don’t crap where you sleep. When the world came to its senses and realized that home prices weren’t really worth twice as much as they were in 2000, investment houses began to collapse like a house of cards. The AAA paper behind the plunging real estate wasn’t worth spit. After Lehman Brothers collapsed and AIG’s bets came up craps for the American people, the financial system rightly froze up. After using fear and misinformation to ram through a $700 billion payoff to Goldman Sachs and their fellow Wall Street co-conspirators through Congress, it was time begin the game of extend and pretend. Market prices for the “assets” on the Wall Street banks’ books were only worth 30% of their original value. Obscuring the truth was now an absolute necessity for Wall Street. The Financial Accounting Standards Board already allowed banks to use models to value assets which did not have market data to base a valuation upon. The Federal Reserve and Treasury “convinced” the limp wristed accountants at the FASB to fold like a cheap suit. The FASB changed the rules so that when the market prices were not orderly, or where the bank was forced to sell the asset for regulatory purposes, or where the seller was close to bankruptcy, the bank could ignore the market price and make up one of its own. Essentially the banking syndicate got to have it both ways. It drew all the benefits of mark to market pricing when the markets were heading higher, and it was able to abandon mark to market pricing when markets went in the toilet. “Suspending mark-to-market accounting, in essence, suspends reality.” – Beth Brooke, global vice chair, at Ernst & Young Wall Street desired all the billions of upside from creating new markets for new products. Their creativity knew no bounds as they crafted MBOs, MBSs, CDOs, CDSs, and then chopped them into tranches, selling them around the world with AAA stamps of approval from the soulless whore rating agencies. When the net result of a flawed system of toxic garbage paper was revealed, there was no room at the exits for the stampede of investment bankers. The toxic paper was on the banks’ books and no one wanted to admit the greed induced decision to purchase these highly risky, volatile “assets”. The trade had not gone bad, the ponzi scheme had unraveled. Suspending FASB 157 has been an attempt to hide this fraudulent business model from investors, regulators and the public. By hiding the true value of these assets, the financial system has never cleared. The banks remain in a zombie vegetative state, with the Federal Reserve providing the IV and the life support system. Let’s Play Hide the Losses Part two of the master cover-up plan has been the extending of commercial real estate loans and pretending that they will eventually be repaid. In late 2009 it was clear to the Federal Reserve and the Treasury that the $1.2 trillion in commercial loans maturing between 2010 and 2013 would cause thousands of bank failures if the existing regulations were enforced. The Treasury stepped to the plate first. New rules at the IRS weren’t directly related to banking, but allowed commercial loans that were part of investment pools known as Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits, or REMICs, to be refinanced without triggering tax penalties for investors. The Federal Reserve, which is tasked with making sure banks loans are properly valued, instructed banks throughout the country to “extend and pretend” or “amend and pretend,” in which the bank gives a borrower more time to repay a loan. Banks were “encouraged” to modify loans to help cash strapped borrowers. The hope was that by amending the terms to enable the borrower to avoid a refinancing that would have been impossible, the lender would ultimately be able to collect the balance due on the loan. Ben and his boys also pushed banks to do “troubled debt restructurings.” Such restructurings involved modifying an existing loan by changing the terms or breaking the loan into pieces. Bank, thrift and credit-union regulators very quietly gave lenders flexibility in how they classified distressed commercial mortgages. Banks were able to slice distressed loans into performing and non-performing loans, and institutions were able to magically reduce the total reserves set aside for non-performing loans. If a mall developer has 40% of their mall vacant and the cash flow from the mall is insufficient to service the loan, the bank would normally need to set aside reserves for the entire loan. Under the new guidelines they could carve the loan into two pieces, with 60% that is covered by cash flow as a good loan and the 40% without sufficient cash flow would be classified as non-performing. The truth is that billions in commercial loans are in distress right now because tenants are dropping like flies. Rather than writing down the loans, banks are extending the terms of the debt with more interest reserves included so they can continue to classify the loans as “performing.” The reality is that the values of the property behind these loans have fallen 43%. Banks are extending loans that they would never make now, because borrowers are already grossly upside-down. Extending the length of a loan, changing the terms, and pretending that it will be repaid won’t generate real cash flow or keep the value of the property from declining. U.S. banks hold an estimated $156 billion of souring commercial real-estate loans, according to research firm Trepp LLC. About two-thirds of commercial real-estate loans maturing at banks from now through 2015 are underwater. Media shills proclaiming that the market is improving, doesn’t make it so. The chart below details the delinquency rates from 2007 through 2010 as reported by the Federal Reserve: Real estate loans Consumer loans All Booked in domestic offices All Credit cards Other Residential Commercial 2010 4th Qtr 9.01 9.94 7.97 3.71 4.17 3.10 2010 3rd Qtr 9.77 10.90 8.69 4.03 4.60 3.39 2010 2nd Qtr 10.02 11.32 8.74 4.25 5.07 3.37 2010 1st Qtr 9.78 10.97 8.66 4.63 5.76 3.48 2009 4th Qtr 9.48 10.29 8.74 4.64 6.36 3.48 2009 3d Qtr 9.00 9.67 8.57 4.72 6.51 3.61 2009 2nd Qtr 8.19 8.69 7.84 4.85 6.75 3.69 2009 1st Qtr 7.19 7.89 6.55 4.62 6.50 3.52 2008 4th Qtr 5.99 6.57 5.49 4.29 5.65 3.37 2008 3rd Qtr 4.88 5.26 4.66 3.73 4.80 3.05 2008 2nd Qtr 4.21 4.39 4.15 3.55 4.89 2.80 2008 1st Qtr 3.56 3.70 3.50 3.48 4.76 2.76 2007 4th Qtr 2.89 3.06 2.75 3.41 4.60 2.66 2007 3rd Qtr 2.40 2.78 1.98 3.20 4.41 2.48 2007 2nd Qtr 2.01 2.30 1.63 2.99 4.02 2.37 2007 1st Qtr 1.77 2.03 1.43 2.93 3.97 2.29 Delinquency rates on residential and commercial loans in early 2007 were in the range of 1.5% to 2.0%. Now the MSM pundits get excited over a decline from 8.7% to 8.0%. These figures show that even after trillions of Federal Reserve and Federal Government intervention, delinquencies remain four times higher than normal. In the real world, cash flow matters. Payment of interest and principal on a loan matters. Actual market values matter. According to Trepp, LLC, a data firm specializing in commercial data, non-performing commercial real estate loans makes up 72% of the $320 million in non-performing loans reported by banks in February. These figures are after the “extremely” relaxed definition of non-performing allowed by the Federal Reserve. The game is ongoing. Misinformation abounds. The SEC now issues press releases saying they are worried that banks are covering up losses, when they were involved in encouraging the banks to cover-up their losses. Last week the SEC announced they have become concerned that extend and pretend, along with another practice known as “troubled debt restructuring” that allows banks to break loans into pieces, may have been abused in order to diminish the volume of reserves banks are holding. What a shocking revelation. Who could have known? Are You Smarter than a Wall Street CEO? The Federal Reserve paid shills and Wall Street front men are out in droves declaring that TARP was a success and the banking system is recovering strongly. Columnists like Robert Samuelson declare TARP was a great investment and will profit the taxpayer. Samuelson says that the Treasury has recouped $244 billion of the $245 billion it invested in banks and that, when it winds down its last investments, it likely will show a $20 billion profit from the banks. This type of propaganda is ludicrous, as Barry Ritholtz succinctly points out: “No, we are not profitable on the bailouts. TARP has $123B to go before breakeven, and the GSEs are $133B in the hole. All told, the Taxpayers have a long way to go before we are breakeven. That’s before we count lost income from savings, bonds, etc., the increased costs of food stuff and energy due to inflation (the Fed’s has done this on purpose as part of their rescue plan), the higher fees the reduced competition of megabanks has created, and the future costs our Moral Hazard will have wrought in increased risks and disasters.” – Barry Ritholtz Source: Barry Ritholtz Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have hundreds of billions in bad loans sitting on their balance sheets. Their total cost to taxpayers will reach $400 billion, and never be repaid. The Federal Reserve has over $1 trillion in toxic assets on its balance sheet, off loaded by the TARP recipient banks in 2009. The taxpayer will never be repaid for this toxic waste. The government is implementing the Big Lie theory. If you tell a big lie often and loud enough, the non-thinking masses will believe it. That leaves us with today’s fantasy world. The reality on the ground does not match the rhetoric coming from the government, Wall Street and the corporate mainstream media. The truth is as follows: The vacancy rate for office space in the U.S. is currently 16.5%. The vacancy rate for industrial space in the U.S. is currently 14.2%. The vacancy rate for retail space in the U.S. is currently 13%. Delinquencies within collateralized debt obligations in commercial real estate loans rose to 14.6% in February. The increase signals a trend of higher delinquencies in the segment. Signs of pressure surfaced as early as January when the delinquency rate on CDOs within commercial real estate loans hovered well above 13%. According to Moody’s, CRE prices are down 4.3% from a year ago and down about 43% from the peak in 2007. The delinquency rate on loans packaged and sold in commercial mortgage-backed securities rose to a record 9.2% in February, according to a March 15 report by Moody’s. Regional and local community banks have as much as 80% of their balance sheets tied up in commercial real estate, and very few other sources of significant fee income to offset CRE losses. CRE once had an estimated national value of $6.5 trillion. Today it stands at an optimistic $3.5 trillion. There are 1.8 million homes seriously delinquent, in the foreclosure process or REO that are not currently listed for sale. There are about 2 million current negative equity loans that are more than 50% “upside down”. Home prices are off 31.3% from the peak. The Composite 20 is only 0.7% above the May 2009 post-bubble bottom and will probably be at a new post-bubble low soon. In the face of this data, mouthpieces for the Federal Reserve go before Congress and try to paint an optimistic picture. ”While we expect significant ongoing CRE-related problems, it appears that worst-case scenarios are becoming increasingly unlikely,” Patrick Parkinson, the Federal Reserve’s director of banking supervision and regulation, told Congress. Parkinson said that since the beginning of 2008 through the third quarter of 2010, commercial banks had incurred almost $80 billion of losses from commercial real estate exposures. Banks are estimated to have taken roughly 40% to 50% of losses they will incur over this business cycle, he said. The Federal Reserve will be forced by the Federal Courts to reveal the banks they have saved from failure since 2008 by funneling billions of practically interest free tax payer dollars into their hands. The Fed is expected to release this week documents related to discount window lending from August 2007 to March 2010, including the peak month of October 2008, when loans hit $111 billion. It will be revealed they kept alive hundreds of banks that should have died. Shockingly, the supposedly taxpayer protecting Dodd-Frank law exempts past discount window lending from an audit by the Government Accountability Office, that’s examining much of the central bank’s other crisis-era programs. That champion of the little people, Barney Frank, said such disclosures might have “a negative market effect. If people saw the data the next day, they come to the conclusion that the bank must be in trouble.” Openness and transparency are evidently grey areas for Mr. Frank. Despite the non-disclosures, free Fed bucks, accounting fraud and uninterested regulators, over 300 banks managed to go out of business in the last two years, essentially bankrupting the FDIC. Have no fear. The Treasury gave the FDIC an unlimited line of credit with your money. It is fascinating that every Friday afternoon the FDIC announces approximately three bank failures. Steady as she goes. No panic. Just a slow trickle of failure. But the reality is much worse than the show. Despite the gimmicks of extending and pretending, there are 900 banks essentially insolvent sitting on the FDIC “Problem” list. This is after closing the 300 banks. There are at least a couple hundred billion of losses in the pipeline, to be funded by the American people/Chinese lenders. A critical thinking American might ask, if things are getting better, why does the number of troubled banks continue to rise week after week, month after month? One year ago the website http://www.businessinsider.com/ listed the 10 major regional banks with the highest risk from commercial real estate loans. These 10 banks had $133 billion of commercial real estate loans on their books. Most, if not all, are still in business today. The fact is those real estate loans are worth 30% to 50% less than they are being carried on the books. A true valuation of these loans would put all 10 of these banks out of business. They are dead banks walking. In a world where transparency, honesty, and true free markets reigned supreme, these banks would pay for their poor risk taking choices. They would be liquidated and their assets would be sold off to banks that did not make horrific lending decisions. Failures would fail. Bank CRE Loans (bil.) % of Tier 1 Capital NY Community Bank $22.0 915% Wintrust Financial Corp. $3.4 419% M&T Bank $20.8 378% Synovus $11.2 376% Wilmington Trust $4.0 369% Marshall & Iisley $13.8 283% Zions Bancorporation $13.4 253% Regions Financial $28.3 218% UMB Bank $1.3 156% Comerica $14.3 97% How could anyone deny the world is back on track after examining the following chart? It should warm your heart to know that Financial Profits have amazingly reached their pre-crash highs. All it took was the Federal Reserve taking $1.3 trillion of bad loans off their books, overstating the value of their remaining loans by 40%, borrowing money from the Fed at 0%, relying on the Bernanke Put so their trading operations could gamble without fear of losses, and lastly by pretending their future losses will be lower and relieving their loan loss reserves. The banking industry didn’t need to do any of that stodgy old school stuff like make loans to small businesses. Extending and pretending is much more profitable. The big four of JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo should have undergone orderly bankruptcy liquidation in 2008. They took on a vast amount of leverage and a vast amount of risk. Their greedy bets went bad. In a true capitalist system, they would have failed. Instead, in our crony capitalist system, they were bailed out by taxpayers and continue to function as zombie banks pretending to be healthy. They reported profits of $34.4 billion in 2010. Every dime of these profits was generated through accounting entries that relieved their provisions for loan losses. These “brilliant” CEOs who virtually destroyed the worldwide financial system in 2008, looked into their crystal balls and decided their loan losses in the future would be dramatically lower. I’ll take the other side of that bet. I dug into their SEC filings to get the information in the chart below. Just the fact that Citicorp and Bank of America have still not filed their 10K reports after 3 months tells a story. Bank Source CRE Mortgages Credit Card Total Loans Loss Reserve % of Loans JP Morgan 12/31 10K $53,635 $174,211 $137,676 $692,927 $32,266 4.7% Citicorp 9/30 10Q $79,281 $209,678 $216,759 $654,311 $43,674 6.7% Bank of America 9/30 10Q $77,062 $394,007 $142,298 $933,910 $43,581 4.7% Wells Fargo 12/31 10K $129,783 $337,105 $22,375 $757,267 $23,022 3.0% These four “Too Big To Fail” bastions of crony capitalism have $340 billion of commercial real estate loans on their books. That’s a lot of extending and pretending. Just properly valuing those loans at their true market value would wipe out most of their loan loss reserves. I wonder if Vikrim and his buddies have noticed that home prices have begun to plunge again. Deciding to not foreclose on home occupiers that haven’t made a mortgage payment in two years is not a long term strategy. These four banks have $1.1 billion of outstanding mortgage debt on their books. I wonder what a 20% further decline in home prices will do to these loans. Throw in another half a billion of credit card loans to Americans being hammered by soaring energy and food prices and you have a toxic mix of future losses. These banks are gonna need a bigger boat. The game of extend and pretend at the expense of the American working middle class is growing old. When this game is over, Wall Street will be looking for another bailout. The American people will not fall for the lies again. Wall Street’s oppression reeks of greed and disgrace. They are liars and thieves. They have pillaged and stolen all that was left to steal. I will be surprised if they get out alive. Well you are my accuser, now look in my face Your opression reeks of your greed and disgrace So one man has and another has not How can you love what it is you have got When you took it all from the weak hands of the poor? Liars and thieves you know not what is in store There will come a time I will look in your eye You will pray to the God that you always denied The I’ll go out back and I’ll get my gunI’ll say, “You haven’t met me, I am the only son”
A heads up from the wise man Joe Silvergold A must read.....
42 comments Posted on 30th March 2011
“We now have an economy in which five banks control over 50 percent of the entire banking industry, four or five corporations own most of the mainstream media, and the top one percent of families hold a greater share of the nation’s wealth than any time since 1930. This sort of concentration of wealth and power is a classic setup for the failure of a democratic republic and the stifling of organic economic growth.” - Jesse – http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/ Source: Barry Ritholtz “All of the old-timers knew that subprime mortgages were what we called neutron loans — they killed the people and left the houses.” - Louis S. Barnes, 58, a partner at Boulder West, a mortgage banking firm in Lafayette, Colo The storyline that has been sold to the public by the Federal government, Wall Street, and the corporate mainstream media over the last two years is the economy is recovering and the banking system has recovered from its near death experience in 2008. Wall Street profits in 2009 & 2010 totaled approximately $80 billion. The stock market has risen almost 100% since the March 2009 lows. Wall Street CEOs were so impressed by this fantastic performance they dished out $43 billion in bonuses over the two year period to their thousands of Harvard MBA paper pushers. It is amazing that an industry that was effectively insolvent in October 2008 has made such a spectacular miraculous recovery. The truth is recovery is simple when you control the politicians and regulators, and own the organization that prints the money. A systematic plan to create the illusion of stability and provide no-risk profits to the mega-Wall Street banks was implemented in early 2009 and continues today. The plan was developed by Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and the CEOs of the criminal Wall Street banking syndicate. The plan has been enabled by the FASB, SEC, IRS, FDIC and corrupt politicians in Washington D.C. This master plan has funneled hundreds of billions from taxpayers to the banks that created the greatest financial collapse in world history. The authorities had a choice. This country has bankruptcy laws. The criminally negligent Wall Street banks could have been liquidated in an orderly bankruptcy. Their good assets could have been sold off to banks that did not take their extreme greed based risks. Bond holders and stockholders would have been wiped out. Today, we would have a balanced banking system, with no Too Big To Fail institutions. Instead, the years of placing their cronies within governmental agencies and buying off politicians paid big dividends for Wall Street. Their return on investment has been fantastic. The plan has been as follows: In April 2009 the FASB caved in to pressure from the Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Wall Street to suspend mark to market rules, allowing the Wall Street banks to value their loans and derivatives as if they were worth 100% of their book value. The Federal Reserve balance sheet consistently totaled about $900 billion until September 2008. By December 2008, the balance sheet had swollen to $2.2 trillion as the Federal Reserve bought $1.3 trillion of toxic assets from the Wall Street banks, paying 100 cents on the dollar for assets worth 50% of that value. In November 2009 the Federal Reserve and IRS loosened the rules for restructuring commercial loans without triggering tax consequences. Banks were urged to extend loans on properties that had fallen 40% in value as if they were still worth 100% of the loan value. By December 2008 the Federal Reserve had moved their discount rate to 0%. For the last two years, the Wall Street banks have been able to borrow from the Federal Reserve for free and earn a risk free return of 2%. The Federal Reserve has essentially handed billions of dollars to Wall Street. When it became clear in October 2010 that after almost two years of unlimited liquidity being injected into the veins of zombie banks was failing, Ben Bernanke announced QE2. He has expanded the Fed balance sheet to $2.6 trillion by injecting $3.5 billion per day into the stock market by buying US Treasury bonds. Bernanke’s stated goal has been to pump up the stock market. While taking credit for driving stock prices higher, he denies any responsibility for the energy and food inflation that is spurring unrest around the world. The Federal Reserve has increased the monetary base by $500 billion in the last three months in a desperate attempt to give the appearance of recovery to a floundering economy. Beginning on December 31, 2010, through December 31, 2012, all noninterest-bearing transaction accounts are fully insured, regardless of the balance of the account, at all FDIC-insured institutions. The unlimited insurance coverage is available to all depositors, including consumers, businesses, and government entities. This unlimited insurance coverage is separate from, and in addition to, the insurance coverage provided to a depositor’s other deposit accounts held at an FDIC-insured institution. When You’re Losing – Change the Rules Wall Street banks had absolutely no problem with mark to market rules from 2000 through 2007, as the value of all their investments soared. These banks created products (subprime, no-doc, Alt-A mortgages) whose sole purpose was to encourage fraud. Their MBA geniuses created models that showed that if you packaged enough fraudulent loans together and paid Moody’s or S&P a big enough bribe, they magically became AAA products that could be sold to pension plans, municipalities, and insurance companies. These magnets of high finance were so consumed with greed they believed their own lies and loaded their balance sheets with the very toxic derivatives they were peddling to the clueless Europeans. They didn’t follow a basic rule. Don’t crap where you sleep. When the world came to its senses and realized that home prices weren’t really worth twice as much as they were in 2000, investment houses began to collapse like a house of cards. The AAA paper behind the plunging real estate wasn’t worth spit. After Lehman Brothers collapsed and AIG’s bets came up craps for the American people, the financial system rightly froze up. After using fear and misinformation to ram through a $700 billion payoff to Goldman Sachs and their fellow Wall Street co-conspirators through Congress, it was time begin the game of extend and pretend. Market prices for the “assets” on the Wall Street banks’ books were only worth 30% of their original value. Obscuring the truth was now an absolute necessity for Wall Street. The Financial Accounting Standards Board already allowed banks to use models to value assets which did not have market data to base a valuation upon. The Federal Reserve and Treasury “convinced” the limp wristed accountants at the FASB to fold like a cheap suit. The FASB changed the rules so that when the market prices were not orderly, or where the bank was forced to sell the asset for regulatory purposes, or where the seller was close to bankruptcy, the bank could ignore the market price and make up one of its own. Essentially the banking syndicate got to have it both ways. It drew all the benefits of mark to market pricing when the markets were heading higher, and it was able to abandon mark to market pricing when markets went in the toilet. “Suspending mark-to-market accounting, in essence, suspends reality.” – Beth Brooke, global vice chair, at Ernst & Young Wall Street desired all the billions of upside from creating new markets for new products. Their creativity knew no bounds as they crafted MBOs, MBSs, CDOs, CDSs, and then chopped them into tranches, selling them around the world with AAA stamps of approval from the soulless whore rating agencies. When the net result of a flawed system of toxic garbage paper was revealed, there was no room at the exits for the stampede of investment bankers. The toxic paper was on the banks’ books and no one wanted to admit the greed induced decision to purchase these highly risky, volatile “assets”. The trade had not gone bad, the ponzi scheme had unraveled. Suspending FASB 157 has been an attempt to hide this fraudulent business model from investors, regulators and the public. By hiding the true value of these assets, the financial system has never cleared. The banks remain in a zombie vegetative state, with the Federal Reserve providing the IV and the life support system. Let’s Play Hide the Losses Part two of the master cover-up plan has been the extending of commercial real estate loans and pretending that they will eventually be repaid. In late 2009 it was clear to the Federal Reserve and the Treasury that the $1.2 trillion in commercial loans maturing between 2010 and 2013 would cause thousands of bank failures if the existing regulations were enforced. The Treasury stepped to the plate first. New rules at the IRS weren’t directly related to banking, but allowed commercial loans that were part of investment pools known as Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits, or REMICs, to be refinanced without triggering tax penalties for investors. The Federal Reserve, which is tasked with making sure banks loans are properly valued, instructed banks throughout the country to “extend and pretend” or “amend and pretend,” in which the bank gives a borrower more time to repay a loan. Banks were “encouraged” to modify loans to help cash strapped borrowers. The hope was that by amending the terms to enable the borrower to avoid a refinancing that would have been impossible, the lender would ultimately be able to collect the balance due on the loan. Ben and his boys also pushed banks to do “troubled debt restructurings.” Such restructurings involved modifying an existing loan by changing the terms or breaking the loan into pieces. Bank, thrift and credit-union regulators very quietly gave lenders flexibility in how they classified distressed commercial mortgages. Banks were able to slice distressed loans into performing and non-performing loans, and institutions were able to magically reduce the total reserves set aside for non-performing loans. If a mall developer has 40% of their mall vacant and the cash flow from the mall is insufficient to service the loan, the bank would normally need to set aside reserves for the entire loan. Under the new guidelines they could carve the loan into two pieces, with 60% that is covered by cash flow as a good loan and the 40% without sufficient cash flow would be classified as non-performing. The truth is that billions in commercial loans are in distress right now because tenants are dropping like flies. Rather than writing down the loans, banks are extending the terms of the debt with more interest reserves included so they can continue to classify the loans as “performing.” The reality is that the values of the property behind these loans have fallen 43%. Banks are extending loans that they would never make now, because borrowers are already grossly upside-down. Extending the length of a loan, changing the terms, and pretending that it will be repaid won’t generate real cash flow or keep the value of the property from declining. U.S. banks hold an estimated $156 billion of souring commercial real-estate loans, according to research firm Trepp LLC. About two-thirds of commercial real-estate loans maturing at banks from now through 2015 are underwater. Media shills proclaiming that the market is improving, doesn’t make it so. The chart below details the delinquency rates from 2007 through 2010 as reported by the Federal Reserve: Real estate loans Consumer loans All Booked in domestic offices All Credit cards Other Residential Commercial 2010 4th Qtr 9.01 9.94 7.97 3.71 4.17 3.10 2010 3rd Qtr 9.77 10.90 8.69 4.03 4.60 3.39 2010 2nd Qtr 10.02 11.32 8.74 4.25 5.07 3.37 2010 1st Qtr 9.78 10.97 8.66 4.63 5.76 3.48 2009 4th Qtr 9.48 10.29 8.74 4.64 6.36 3.48 2009 3d Qtr 9.00 9.67 8.57 4.72 6.51 3.61 2009 2nd Qtr 8.19 8.69 7.84 4.85 6.75 3.69 2009 1st Qtr 7.19 7.89 6.55 4.62 6.50 3.52 2008 4th Qtr 5.99 6.57 5.49 4.29 5.65 3.37 2008 3rd Qtr 4.88 5.26 4.66 3.73 4.80 3.05 2008 2nd Qtr 4.21 4.39 4.15 3.55 4.89 2.80 2008 1st Qtr 3.56 3.70 3.50 3.48 4.76 2.76 2007 4th Qtr 2.89 3.06 2.75 3.41 4.60 2.66 2007 3rd Qtr 2.40 2.78 1.98 3.20 4.41 2.48 2007 2nd Qtr 2.01 2.30 1.63 2.99 4.02 2.37 2007 1st Qtr 1.77 2.03 1.43 2.93 3.97 2.29 Delinquency rates on residential and commercial loans in early 2007 were in the range of 1.5% to 2.0%. Now the MSM pundits get excited over a decline from 8.7% to 8.0%. These figures show that even after trillions of Federal Reserve and Federal Government intervention, delinquencies remain four times higher than normal. In the real world, cash flow matters. Payment of interest and principal on a loan matters. Actual market values matter. According to Trepp, LLC, a data firm specializing in commercial data, non-performing commercial real estate loans makes up 72% of the $320 million in non-performing loans reported by banks in February. These figures are after the “extremely” relaxed definition of non-performing allowed by the Federal Reserve. The game is ongoing. Misinformation abounds. The SEC now issues press releases saying they are worried that banks are covering up losses, when they were involved in encouraging the banks to cover-up their losses. Last week the SEC announced they have become concerned that extend and pretend, along with another practice known as “troubled debt restructuring” that allows banks to break loans into pieces, may have been abused in order to diminish the volume of reserves banks are holding. What a shocking revelation. Who could have known? Are You Smarter than a Wall Street CEO? The Federal Reserve paid shills and Wall Street front men are out in droves declaring that TARP was a success and the banking system is recovering strongly. Columnists like Robert Samuelson declare TARP was a great investment and will profit the taxpayer. Samuelson says that the Treasury has recouped $244 billion of the $245 billion it invested in banks and that, when it winds down its last investments, it likely will show a $20 billion profit from the banks. This type of propaganda is ludicrous, as Barry Ritholtz succinctly points out: “No, we are not profitable on the bailouts. TARP has $123B to go before breakeven, and the GSEs are $133B in the hole. All told, the Taxpayers have a long way to go before we are breakeven. That’s before we count lost income from savings, bonds, etc., the increased costs of food stuff and energy due to inflation (the Fed’s has done this on purpose as part of their rescue plan), the higher fees the reduced competition of megabanks has created, and the future costs our Moral Hazard will have wrought in increased risks and disasters.” – Barry Ritholtz Source: Barry Ritholtz Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have hundreds of billions in bad loans sitting on their balance sheets. Their total cost to taxpayers will reach $400 billion, and never be repaid. The Federal Reserve has over $1 trillion in toxic assets on its balance sheet, off loaded by the TARP recipient banks in 2009. The taxpayer will never be repaid for this toxic waste. The government is implementing the Big Lie theory. If you tell a big lie often and loud enough, the non-thinking masses will believe it. That leaves us with today’s fantasy world. The reality on the ground does not match the rhetoric coming from the government, Wall Street and the corporate mainstream media. The truth is as follows: The vacancy rate for office space in the U.S. is currently 16.5%. The vacancy rate for industrial space in the U.S. is currently 14.2%. The vacancy rate for retail space in the U.S. is currently 13%. Delinquencies within collateralized debt obligations in commercial real estate loans rose to 14.6% in February. The increase signals a trend of higher delinquencies in the segment. Signs of pressure surfaced as early as January when the delinquency rate on CDOs within commercial real estate loans hovered well above 13%. According to Moody’s, CRE prices are down 4.3% from a year ago and down about 43% from the peak in 2007. The delinquency rate on loans packaged and sold in commercial mortgage-backed securities rose to a record 9.2% in February, according to a March 15 report by Moody’s. Regional and local community banks have as much as 80% of their balance sheets tied up in commercial real estate, and very few other sources of significant fee income to offset CRE losses. CRE once had an estimated national value of $6.5 trillion. Today it stands at an optimistic $3.5 trillion. There are 1.8 million homes seriously delinquent, in the foreclosure process or REO that are not currently listed for sale. There are about 2 million current negative equity loans that are more than 50% “upside down”. Home prices are off 31.3% from the peak. The Composite 20 is only 0.7% above the May 2009 post-bubble bottom and will probably be at a new post-bubble low soon. In the face of this data, mouthpieces for the Federal Reserve go before Congress and try to paint an optimistic picture. ”While we expect significant ongoing CRE-related problems, it appears that worst-case scenarios are becoming increasingly unlikely,” Patrick Parkinson, the Federal Reserve’s director of banking supervision and regulation, told Congress. Parkinson said that since the beginning of 2008 through the third quarter of 2010, commercial banks had incurred almost $80 billion of losses from commercial real estate exposures. Banks are estimated to have taken roughly 40% to 50% of losses they will incur over this business cycle, he said. The Federal Reserve will be forced by the Federal Courts to reveal the banks they have saved from failure since 2008 by funneling billions of practically interest free tax payer dollars into their hands. The Fed is expected to release this week documents related to discount window lending from August 2007 to March 2010, including the peak month of October 2008, when loans hit $111 billion. It will be revealed they kept alive hundreds of banks that should have died. Shockingly, the supposedly taxpayer protecting Dodd-Frank law exempts past discount window lending from an audit by the Government Accountability Office, that’s examining much of the central bank’s other crisis-era programs. That champion of the little people, Barney Frank, said such disclosures might have “a negative market effect. If people saw the data the next day, they come to the conclusion that the bank must be in trouble.” Openness and transparency are evidently grey areas for Mr. Frank. Despite the non-disclosures, free Fed bucks, accounting fraud and uninterested regulators, over 300 banks managed to go out of business in the last two years, essentially bankrupting the FDIC. Have no fear. The Treasury gave the FDIC an unlimited line of credit with your money. It is fascinating that every Friday afternoon the FDIC announces approximately three bank failures. Steady as she goes. No panic. Just a slow trickle of failure. But the reality is much worse than the show. Despite the gimmicks of extending and pretending, there are 900 banks essentially insolvent sitting on the FDIC “Problem” list. This is after closing the 300 banks. There are at least a couple hundred billion of losses in the pipeline, to be funded by the American people/Chinese lenders. A critical thinking American might ask, if things are getting better, why does the number of troubled banks continue to rise week after week, month after month? One year ago the website http://www.businessinsider.com/ listed the 10 major regional banks with the highest risk from commercial real estate loans. These 10 banks had $133 billion of commercial real estate loans on their books. Most, if not all, are still in business today. The fact is those real estate loans are worth 30% to 50% less than they are being carried on the books. A true valuation of these loans would put all 10 of these banks out of business. They are dead banks walking. In a world where transparency, honesty, and true free markets reigned supreme, these banks would pay for their poor risk taking choices. They would be liquidated and their assets would be sold off to banks that did not make horrific lending decisions. Failures would fail. Bank CRE Loans (bil.) % of Tier 1 Capital NY Community Bank $22.0 915% Wintrust Financial Corp. $3.4 419% M&T Bank $20.8 378% Synovus $11.2 376% Wilmington Trust $4.0 369% Marshall & Iisley $13.8 283% Zions Bancorporation $13.4 253% Regions Financial $28.3 218% UMB Bank $1.3 156% Comerica $14.3 97% How could anyone deny the world is back on track after examining the following chart? It should warm your heart to know that Financial Profits have amazingly reached their pre-crash highs. All it took was the Federal Reserve taking $1.3 trillion of bad loans off their books, overstating the value of their remaining loans by 40%, borrowing money from the Fed at 0%, relying on the Bernanke Put so their trading operations could gamble without fear of losses, and lastly by pretending their future losses will be lower and relieving their loan loss reserves. The banking industry didn’t need to do any of that stodgy old school stuff like make loans to small businesses. Extending and pretending is much more profitable. The big four of JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo should have undergone orderly bankruptcy liquidation in 2008. They took on a vast amount of leverage and a vast amount of risk. Their greedy bets went bad. In a true capitalist system, they would have failed. Instead, in our crony capitalist system, they were bailed out by taxpayers and continue to function as zombie banks pretending to be healthy. They reported profits of $34.4 billion in 2010. Every dime of these profits was generated through accounting entries that relieved their provisions for loan losses. These “brilliant” CEOs who virtually destroyed the worldwide financial system in 2008, looked into their crystal balls and decided their loan losses in the future would be dramatically lower. I’ll take the other side of that bet. I dug into their SEC filings to get the information in the chart below. Just the fact that Citicorp and Bank of America have still not filed their 10K reports after 3 months tells a story. Bank Source CRE Mortgages Credit Card Total Loans Loss Reserve % of Loans JP Morgan 12/31 10K $53,635 $174,211 $137,676 $692,927 $32,266 4.7% Citicorp 9/30 10Q $79,281 $209,678 $216,759 $654,311 $43,674 6.7% Bank of America 9/30 10Q $77,062 $394,007 $142,298 $933,910 $43,581 4.7% Wells Fargo 12/31 10K $129,783 $337,105 $22,375 $757,267 $23,022 3.0% These four “Too Big To Fail” bastions of crony capitalism have $340 billion of commercial real estate loans on their books. That’s a lot of extending and pretending. Just properly valuing those loans at their true market value would wipe out most of their loan loss reserves. I wonder if Vikrim and his buddies have noticed that home prices have begun to plunge again. Deciding to not foreclose on home occupiers that haven’t made a mortgage payment in two years is not a long term strategy. These four banks have $1.1 billion of outstanding mortgage debt on their books. I wonder what a 20% further decline in home prices will do to these loans. Throw in another half a billion of credit card loans to Americans being hammered by soaring energy and food prices and you have a toxic mix of future losses. These banks are gonna need a bigger boat. The game of extend and pretend at the expense of the American working middle class is growing old. When this game is over, Wall Street will be looking for another bailout. The American people will not fall for the lies again. Wall Street’s oppression reeks of greed and disgrace. They are liars and thieves. They have pillaged and stolen all that was left to steal. I will be surprised if they get out alive. Well you are my accuser, now look in my face Your opression reeks of your greed and disgrace So one man has and another has not How can you love what it is you have got When you took it all from the weak hands of the poor? Liars and thieves you know not what is in store There will come a time I will look in your eye You will pray to the God that you always denied The I’ll go out back and I’ll get my gunI’ll say, “You haven’t met me, I am the only son”
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