JUSTICE

JUSTICE? 

 

Dee Finney's blog

start date July 20, 2011

today's date January 23, 2013

page 430

TOPIC:  THE UNTOUCHABLES:  THE WALL STREET BANKERS:  JUSTICE?

1-23-13 - DREAM - I was working on a web page, using quotes from men, but I didn't understand what was going on really.

I woke up to a low pitched voice on TV and the man was talking about 'bankers'.

I fell asleep and went back to working on the web page, now about bankers, again using quotes on the page.

When I woke up around 3 a.m.,  I didn't know who I had been watching on TV before the dream and I HAD to know.

It took me a couple of hours of searching because I didn't even know what station had been on and Joe was sleeping.

Finally, about 4:30 a.m. I was able to ask Joe what was watching, and he said he fell asleep but it was still recorded.  So I rushed into the bedroom and discovered, it was the PBS Frontline show called "The Untouchables"  and it was the show about Eliot Spitzer wanting Wall Street bankers to be charged with fraud and do jail time for all those mortage fraud cases where people had lost their homes and some people are still losinig their homes, going bankrupt and becoming poor, some without homes, some even living in their cars over this fraud.

None of this affected me personally because we rent an old farmhouse that is slowly falling apart, but our kids were affected, lost their homes and cars and went bankrupt. 

Why am I dreaming about this now? 

APPARENTLY, IT'S CONNECTED TO AGENDA 21 WHICH WE HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT PREVIOUSLY

*************

Too Big To Jail? The Top 10 Civil Cases Against the Banks

The Justice Department’s initial response to the financial crisis did not take long to materialize. In June 2008, three months before the Lehman Brothers collapse, the department brought its first criminal case, charging two former Bear Stearns executives withsecurities fraud for their alleged roles inflating the housing bubble.

A little more than a year later, a jury found the executives not guilty, dealing the DOJ an early setback. Since then, government investigations into the crisis have almost exclusively centered on civil charges, which requires prosecutors establish guilt beyond a preponderance of the evidence. The bar is higher in criminal cases, requiring they prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Here are 10 of the most prominent of those cases to date. In nearly all, the government won multi-million dollar settlements, but the companies and officials involved were not required to admit wrongdoing.

Bank of America + Citigroup + Countrywide Financial + Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Goldman Sachs + IndyMac + JPMorgan Chase + JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse + Washington Mutual

 

Bank of America

In October 2012, the Department of Justice brought civil charges against Bank of America, alleging the firm defrauded taxpayers by misrepresenting the quality of loans it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The case centers around a lending program started at Countrywide Financial, the California mortgage originator purchased by Bank of America in 2008. According to the complaint, Countrywide eliminated checks on loan quality as part of a streamlining effort referred to inside the company as “the Hustle.” It then sold the loans to Fannie and Freddie, leading to heavy losses at the U.S.-backed mortgage giants. Fannie and Freddie would later seek a combined $188 billion in federal aid. “The fraudulent conduct … was spectacularly brazen in scope,” according to the complaint. Prosecutors said they would seek at least $1 billion in damages. The case is ongoing.

Citigroup

Securities and Exchange Commission v. Citigroup, Inc.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2010 case against Citigroup and two of its executives marked a pair of firsts. The case was the first time the commission brought charges against bank executives for their involvement with subprime mortgage bonds. It was also the first case to ask whether banks kept shareholders well enough informed about the health of their balance sheets during the crisis.

In its complaint, the SEC alleged that during the summer and fall of 2007, Citigroup “made a series of material misstatements” suggesting it had $13 billion worth of mortgage-related assets that were losing value. What Citigroup failed to disclose, according to the SEC, is that it was also exposed to another $43 billion in similar assets that would go on to sour. By the time Citi told investors about them in November 2007, the assets had been downgraded by the major credit rating agencies.

Citigroup agreed to pay a $75 million penalty to settle the charges. The two executives named in the complaint — Gary Crittenden and Arthur Tildesley, Jr. — were fined $100,000 and $80,000, respectively.

Securities and Exchange Commission v. Brian H. Stoker

Not every trial ends with a jury issuing a call to arms to the losing prosecutor, but that is what happened in the case of former Citi executive Brian Stoker.

Stoker was on trial for his role in the sale of exotic mortgage-related securities. In 2007, he helped develop sales materials for $1 billion worth of collateralized debt obligations, or CDO’s, whose value was tied to the housing market. Stoker misled investors,according to the SEC, by not disclosing that Citigroup helped choose the underlying mortgage securities in the CDO and then bet against it.

In July 2012, a jury ruled that Stoker was not liable. In a rare move, however, it issued a statement that read, “This verdict should not deter the S.E.C. from investigating the financial industry, to review current regulations and modify existing regulations as necessary.” As the jury’s foreman later told The New York Times, “I wanted to know why the bank’s C.E.O. wasn’t on trial … Citigroup’s behavior was appalling.”

Citigroup paid $285 million to settle the case. Credit Suisse, which managed a portfolio of bonds used as collateral in the deal, agreed to a $2.5 million penalty.

Countrywide Financial

Before the crisis, Angelo Mozilo was best known as the Bronx-born son of a butcher who rose to build the nation’s largest mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial. After the bubble burst, he became the first prominent executive to be penalized for his role in the meltdown.

The SEC charged that Mozilo misled investors about Countrywide’s lending practices, citing e-mails in which he referred to its products as “toxic” and “poison.” When the credit squeeze hit, Countrywide’s financing rapidly dried up. In July 2008, it was taken over by Bank of America.

The next year, Mozilo would faces charges of securities fraud and insider trading in a civil suit brought by the SEC.  In October 2010, he settled the case, agreeing to a $67.5 million penalty that also barred him from serving as an officer or director for any publicly traded company. Two colleagues also named in the suit agreed to pay an additional $5.65 million.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee roughly half of all U.S. home loans,  exist to help keep the mortgage market afloat. During the crisis, however, the two firms verged on the brink of collapse, costing taxpayers approximately $188 billion in rescue funds.

In December 2011, the SEC filed charges against six former Fannie and Freddie executives who nearly sunk the mortgage giants, alleging they knowingly misled investors about their exposure to risky subprime loans.

According to the SEC, Fannie told investors in 2007 that it had less than $5 billion in subprime loans on its books. The SEC said the true figure was closer to $43 billion. Similarly, in 2006, Freddie disclosed between $2 billion and $6 billion worth of subprime loans, far short of the $141 billion the SEC alleged was on the books.

Fannie and Freddie entered into agreements accepting responsibility for its conduct, though neither admitted or denied the charges. For their part, the six executives named in the case promised to challenge the government, arguing that the companies consistently disclosed the makeup of their loan portfolios. The cases are ongoing.

Goldman Sachs

To date, the biggest penalty to emerge from the crisis is the $550 million settlement that Goldman Sachs agreed to in July 2010.

The case stemmed from a mortgage security called Abacus 2007-AC1. The SEC allegedGoldman misled investors by failing to reveal that the hedge fund manager who created Abacus, John Paulson, was betting against the same mortgage bonds that made up the security. The firm did not formally admit to the allegations in the settlement, but did acknowledge that marketing materials for Abacus “contained incomplete information.”

The case against Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman vice president named in the complaint, is scheduled for trial in July.

IndyMac

IndyMac specialized in Alt-A loans, the type of risky mortgages that banks once lent to borrowers who declined to prove their incomes or net worth. The strategy failed, and when federal regulators seized IndyMac in July 2008, it was the second largest bank failure in U.S. history.

In February 2011, the SEC accused three former IndyMac executives of making false and misleading statements about the bank’s health in quarterly filings. S. Blair Abernathy, a former chief financial officer with the firm, settled for $100,000. He also forfeited $25,000 in earnings. Michael Perry, the firm’s former CEO, paid an $80,000 penalty. Charges against a second CFO, A. Scott Keys, were dismissed by a federal judge in May 2012.

JPMorgan Chase

Before being bought out by JPMorgan Chase in 2008, executives at Bear Stearns had a term for an underperforming home loan: a “s*** breather.” Nonetheless, the company packaged such loans into mortgage-backed securities, and then sold them with the knowledge that the underlying assets were likely to default, according a civil suit filed against JPMorgan in October.

The case, which is still pending, was the first to be filed by a federal task force established by the Obama administration to investigate alleged mortgage fraud. In all, investors lost approximately $22.5 billion, according to the complaint, or roughly one-quarter of the original principal balance of $87 billion.

JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse

The SEC won a combined $417 million settlement from JPMorgan and Credit Suisse in November over charges that the two firms misled investors in the sale of troubled mortgage securities.

The JPMorgan case, announced alongside the Credit Suisse settlement, dated back to the 2006 sale of $1.8 billion of mortgage-backed securities. JPMorgan assured investors that only four loans used as collateral in the securities were at least 30 days delinquent, when according to the SEC, more than 600 were past due. JPMorgan made $2.7 million on the deal, the SEC said, while investors lost at least $37 million.

Credit Suisse, meanwhile, was faulted for keeping $55.7 million in cash settlements it received from mortgage lenders for problem loans it purchased and then turned into mortgage-backed security trusts.

JPMorgan paid $296.9 million to settle the charges, while Credit Suisse paid $120 million.In a statement, Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC’s enforcement division, called the shoddy mortgage products sold by both banks “ground zero in the financial crisis.”

Washington Mutual

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation brought its first civil action against a major bank CEO in 2011 with a case against three former Washington Mutual executives.According to the complaint, the executives “focused on short term gains to increase their compensation, with reckless disregard for WaMu’s longer term safety and soundness.”

WaMu ultimately lost billions as a result of the strategy. The FDIC sought $900 million in penalties. The executives named in the case — Kerry Killinger, the bank’s former CEO, Stephen Rotella, its former president, and David Schneider, its former home loans president — eventually agreed to a $64 million settlement, however all but $400,000 of that amount was covered by insurance policies taken out by WaMu on behalf of their executives.

“Fraud Was … the F-Bomb”

To hear some on Wall Street tell it, no one saw the financial crisis coming. As Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, explained to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, “In mortgage underwriting, somehow we just missed … that home prices don’t go up forever.”

Others were less confident. In fact, well before the housing bubble burst, alarm bells were starting  to sound among key players in the mortgage industry: due diligence underwriters.

Due diligence underwriters are paid by banks to assess the risk of buying mortgage portfolios. In the run-up to the crisis, they were among the first to suspect that loosening loan standards could pose a potentially catastrophic threat to the economy.

Several due diligence underwriters — most speaking publicly for the first time — told FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith that it wasn’t uncommon to see school teachers claiming salaries of $12,000 a month on their mortgage applications, or electricians moving from $500 a month in rent to homes worth $650,000. The only problem — their supervisors didn’t seem to want to hear about it.

“Fraud in the due diligence world, fraud was the F-word or the F-bomb,” said Tom Leonard. “You didn’t use that word,”

One of Leonard’s peers, Eileen Loiacono, saw much of the same.

“You couldn’t say the word ‘fraud’ because we couldn’t prove that it was fraud. … Even if we suspected, we had to say, ‘This appears to be incorrect.’ You would never say, ‘This looks fraudulent.’”

In The Untouchables, premiering tonight, FRONTLINE examines why not one Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for fraud tied to the sale of bad mortgages. Through interviews with prosecutors, government officials and industry whistleblowers, the film raises new questions over whether senior bankers either ignored or contributed to fraud while inflating the bubble through the purchase and securitization of shoddy loans.

The Untouchables airs tonight on most PBS stations, (check your local listings here) or you can watch it online, starting at 10 pm EST.

 


THE LATEST

Did Wall St. Get Away With It? Live Chat Wed. 2 pm ET

January 22, 2013, 10:52 pm ET · 

Join us for a live chat on “The Untouchables” with producer Martin Smith and New York Times DealBook reporter Peter Eavis at 2pm ET on Wednesday, January 23rd. You can leave a question now.

Blowing the Whistle on the Mortgage Bubble

January 22, 2013, 9:44 pm ET · 

Well before the 2008 financial meltdown, mortgage industry insiders discovered a ticking time-bomb that they say went up to the very top of Wall Street. What did they find? Who did they warn? And what happened to their warnings?

Too Big To Jail? The Top 10 Civil Cases Against the Banks

January 22, 2013, 9:44 pm ET · 

In nearly every major legal case to emerge from the crisis, government prosecutors have won multi-million dollar settlements, but companies and officials have not been required to admit wrongdoing.

Were Bankers Jailed In Past Financial Crises?

January 22, 2013, 9:43 pm ET · 

Not one Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for fraud related to the subprime crisis. How does that compare to past downturns?

Phil Angelides: Enforcement of Wall St. is “Woefully Broken”

January 22, 2013, 9:42 pm ET

The current system of enforcement in the financial services industry has done little to deter pervasive fraud, says the former chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Lanny Breuer: Financial Fraud Has Not Gone Unpunished

January 22, 2013, 9:42 pm ET

Prosecutors are holding Wall Street to account for the financial crisis, but success should not be measured solely by the number of convictions to date, says the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.

Ted Kaufman: Wall Street Prosecutions Never Made a Priority

January 22, 2013, 9:41 pm ET

The lack of high-level prosecutions from the financial crisis can be traced to the Obama administration’s ambivalence to upset the banks, the former U.S. senator told FRONTLINE.

As Deadlines Loom for Financial Crisis Cases, Prosecutors Weigh Their Options

January 22, 2013, 9:40 pm ET · 

For more than four years, regulators have struggled to successfully prosecute a Wall Street bank or its executives for alleged misconduct during the financial crisis. Now, time may be running out.

“Fraud Was … the F-Bomb”

January 22, 2013, 10:29 am ET · 

Well before the housing bubble burst, alarm bells were beginning to sound among key players in the mortgage industry: due diligence underwriters.

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The world government exposed

1

old map of worldThat we live in a world of “Agenda Politics” is absolutely clear. Governments come and go, but the agenda never changes. Policies left incomplete by one government are taken up with gusto by the next. Civil servants get involved in writing party manifestos.

One of the most obvious of the agendas that our politicians are pushing is that of “World Government”. The British Parliament is now subservient to so many foreign bodies and institutions it is hard to keep count.

This is not a new agenda. It has been pushed since before the twentieth century by, among others, the “rat pack” of the Huxleys, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and the like. And it finds its expression in a host of organisations, “think” tanks, NGOs and committees.

The most obvious example of those organisations, of course, is Julian Huxley’s United Nations.

It was Franklin Roosevelt who first coined the term “United Nations”. His vision, however, was for a forum of sovereign nations; a world apart from what the United Nations has become.

Perhaps a less obvious path to world government is the Commonwealth, and a question which has long been on our minds is, which is the path which is most likely to get us there?

A hint came in July 2010, when the Queen addressed the UN General Assembly. She said:

This September, leaders will meet to agree how to achieve the Millennium Development Goals when each nation will have its own distinctive contribution to make … Since I addressed you last, the Commonwealth, too, has grown vigorously to become a group of nations representing nearly two billion people. It gives its whole-hearted support to the significant contributions to the peace and stability of the world made by the United Nations and its Agencies. Last November, when I opened the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, I told the delegates that the Commonwealth had the opportunity to lead. Today I offer you the same message.

The implications of this are staggering. Here, the British monarch is telling the world that she is creating the largest power bloc within the United Nations; a power bloc with 54 votes, compared to the single vote of, say, the USA, Russia or China.

TheCommonwealthistheBritishEmpire

Contrary to rumour, the British Empire never went away. Commonwealth nations never, in reality, obtained independence from Britain. Instead, they simply went through a process of devolution; home rule instead of direct rule. Puppet presidents and prime ministers to replace Viceroys and Governors.

In any case, the British Empire was never really about Britain, and has certainly never been about the British people. It was, and remains, a corporate financial “empire”; an international trading empire based on the looting of nations and the trafficking of drugs. For a while, that corporate infrastructure was effectively nationalised, and took on the appearance of being a British political empire, rather than a corporate financial one.

After the second world war, however, “empire” became unfashionable. It was time to move to the next phase of the globalist agenda, so the empire shrunk into the shadows. The colonies were restructured and the embryonic institutions of World Government were formed.

Today it has raised its ugly head above the parapet once again with renewed vigour, and once again, we stare into the jaws of a now truly global, corporate, communitarian monster.

british royal family

A return to feudalism

The apex of the pyramid of feudal power is the monarch. In Britain, our monarch and her family get involved in a wide range of activities, some commercial, some not. One area the British Royal Family has been involved in is environmentalism, particularly so-called “Sustainable Development”.

Both Prince Philip and Prince Charles push the idea that humanity is a parasite on the face of the earth; Philip perhaps a little more openly since he has expressed his desire to be reincarnated as a virus which would solve what he views as the global population problem.

Nonetheless, both father and son head up the global environmental push for massive depopulation, limiting of technology except where it oppresses and limiting access to natural resources.

Prince Philip’s World Wildlife Fund is directly responsible for the deaths of many, many people through it’s interference, for example, with irrigation programmes right around the world which would feed millions.

But it is Prince Charles’ Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum which, along with the IMF, World Bank and the United Nations have really been pushing the sustainable development policy, including the UN’s “Agenda 21”.

Agenda21

Agenda 21 is a term which has mostly been dropped these days. Too many people became too aware of what it was – a modern form of feudalism.

Agenda 21 designed a global movement, coordinated through a global to local action plan to create world government in accordance with certain objectives. Let’s look at some of its key policy objectives:

 

Now, consider the policies coming out of our own government:

 

So while the term “Agenda 21” has been dropped, the policies it represented absolutely have not. They have simply been transformed into the Big Society and the Millennium Development Goals. The agenda remains, and at its heart is the drive for world government.

United Nations flag

The Leadership Agenda

Let’s look again at what we said about Agenda 21 above – “a global movement, coordinated through a global to local action plan”. A key facet of that action plan is to push the agenda down to the most local levels in society.

One mechanism for achieving that has been the absolute destruction of our education system. The inability of our teachers to teach has nothing to do with their capability as teachers, but rather the imposition of ever more ridiculous processes and procedures, which bar them from teaching effectively. The deliberate dumbing down of entire generations of children guarantees that those children will grow up as more “sustainable” human beings, because stupid adults earn less and therefore consume less. Stupid adults are incapable of recognising delphi technique when it is being used upon them. Stupid adults are incapable of understanding the lessons of history, or of Shakespeare.
But stupid adults still need leadership, and it is through the massive increase in “leadership” training that the world government agenda is being implemented. Please see our One World Governance series for more on this.

As stated above, the apex of the pyramid of feudal power is the monarch. Historically, the military stronghold from which such power was wielded was the castle. One such stronghold is Windsor Castle.

Windsor Castle is home of the Windsor Leadership Trust. St George’s House College states that:

Through a unique portfolio of programmes and consultations, held at St George’s House, Windsor Castle, we provide opportunities for leaders to develop their own leadership wisdom and insight. Leaders from all sectors take part, including business, government, military, religion, and not-for-profit.

St George’s House was founded in 1966 by H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh and the then Dean of Windsor, Robin Woods, as a place where people of influence and responsibility in every area of society can come together to explore and communicate their views and analysis of contemporary issues.

The website of the World Bank contains a page dedicated to a ‘Leadership Program: Windsor Meeting, July 2007. It reads:

Following consultations on the establishment of a Global Leadership Initiative (GLI) to generate support – globally – for leadership development interventions, a second meeting of the core group for the Initiative (GLI) took place in Windsor, UK, from July 8 to 10 2007. Organisations represented at this meeting were UNDP, DfID, CIDA, the Windsor Leadership Trust, and the World Bank (PRMPS and WBIGP).

All meetings at the Windsor Leadership Trust are held under the Chatham House Rule which the majority of UK Column readers would associate with Julia Middleton’s Common Purpose.

ConnectionsbetweentheMonarchy,commonpurposeandtheUnitedNations

The Windsor 2012 Annual Lecture held on Monday 28th May this year was given by Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick QPM, of The Metropolitan Police.

Dick was the policewoman in charge of the operation that led to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, mistaken for a suicide bomber at (London’s) Stockwell tube station,  According to the response to a Freedom of Information request by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) dated 8th September 2008, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick attended a training course run by Common Purpose whilst serving with Thames Valley Police (TVP).

Researchers have also discovered that Dr. Kate Ardern MB ChB, MSc , FFPH, Executive Director of Public Health for the Borough of Wigan, and graduate of Merseyside Common Purpose (1999) is also an Alumnus of the Windsor Leadership Programme with which she has an ongoing involvement.

In ‘Developing Tomorrow’s Leaders, CBI Guide to Leadership’ by Prof John Adair (published by Windsor Leadership Trust in September 2007):

Public leadership programmes should be used selectively. Their chief value is to get managers out of their corporate silos and cross-fertilising with managers from a wide variety of organisations. Recommended programmes in this context include those of the Windsor Leadership Trust, the Whitehall and Industry Group, the Campaign for Leadership and Common Purpose.

In 2009 John Adair was made United Nations Chair of Strategic Leadership. Based in Turin, he has launched a strategic leadership programme in association with the UN.In Chapter 1 of her book ‘Beyond authority: Leadership in a changing world’’ Julia Middleton, CEO Common Purpose writes:

Society needs leaders who can overcome the silo problem inside their organisation – and then move across different spheres of activity outside it and connect them too. Then, perhaps, we can start to shift the ‘silo problem’ in society as well.

Amongst the Windsor Leadership Trust Movers and Shakers Autumn 2011 we discover Oliver Mack, WLP February 2001 now Chief Operating Officer at Common Purpose.

The Windsor Leadership Trust supports the Clore Leadership programme. The Clore Leadership programme is supported by Common Purpose. The relationship between these organisations is incestuous in nature.

According to Linkedin Doug King LVO MA is Assistant Private Secretary to The Queen. He is a Common Purpose 20:20 graduate and Windsor Leadership Trust Alumni.

queen phil thrones

CSC Leaders

Windsor Leadership Trust is not the only training organisation that Prince Philip has set up, however.

According to the Linked In Page of Sam Stewart, Plymouth based Director of CSC Leaders and ex-regional director of Common Purpose, CSC Leaders:

…will assemble 100 of the most exceptional individuals from across the Commonwealth with the purpose of tackling challenges that business, governments and society face today and build global relationships needed by the leaders of tomorrow . CSCLeaders is the renewal of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences and represents a partnership between HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences (UK Fund) and Common Purpose, the international leadership organisation operating in 18 countries which has been giving people the inspiration, skills and connections to become better leaders both at work and in society for over 21 years. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences were first initiated by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh … The Conferences have continued to run every six years or so, hosted by a different Commonwealth country.

WorldGovernmentviatheUNortheCommonwealth

Our research has led us to conclude that the Commonwealth is well on its way to becoming the key power bloc leading us to World Government, via the United Nations. It would appear that the question is not whether one or the other will take us there, since both are. As for who is pushing the agenda, so far all paths lead us back to the British Crown.

DON’T MISS:
- The Prince and the Pedophile: Charles’ connections to pedophilia networks
 - Royal family enjoys veto power in all British govt. affairs
 - Prince Philip: Is this the sickest man in the UK
 - Bilderberg elite angry over “constant exposure”
 - Queen gets a 20% pay rise…are you f#@king serious?
 - Austerity for people, prosperity for Queen
 - How to Change our World: Tipping the Balance of Power

Source: http://www.ukcolumn.org/article/multiple-paths-lead-one-world-government

 


rense.com
Spitzer Was Silenced
Elliot's Mess And The $200 Million Bailout
By Greg Palast
3-14-8
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an 'escort' $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush's new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.
Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there's a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush's man Bernanke was using ours.
This week, Bernanke's Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks' mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers' bordello: Eliot Spitzer.
Who are they kidding? Spitzer's lynching and the bankers' enriching are intimately tied.
HOW? FOLLOW THE MONEY.
The press has swallowed Wall Street's line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn't afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That's blaming the victim.
Here's what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the 'sub-prime' mortgage and it's variants including loans with teeny 'introductory' interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called 'Countrywide' became America's top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chuck of these 'sub-prime's.
Here's how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 a month payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain't worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the 'discount' they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. Grinnings move into their Toyota.
Now, what kind of American is 'sub-prime'. Guess. No peeking. Here's a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren't 'stupid', they had no choice. They were 'steered' as it's called in the mortgage sharking business.
"Steering," sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called 'fraudulent conveyance' or 'predatory lending' under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.
But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hardy "it was OK now to steer'm, fake'm, charge'm and take'm."
BUT THERE WAS THIS ANNOYING PARTY-POOPER.
The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.
Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush's regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of 'federal pre-emption', Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.
Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer's investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush's banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.
Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others joined the sharkfest: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup's Citibank made mortgage usury their major profit centers. They did this through a bit of financial legerdemain called 'securitization.'
What that means is that they took a bunch of junk mortgages, like the Grinnings, loans about to go down the toilet and re-packaged them into 'tranches' of bonds which were stamped 'AAA' - top grade - by bond rating agencies. These gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe investments to US school district pension funds and town governments in Finland (really).
When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide's top man, Angelo Mozilo, will 'earn' a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.
BUT THERE WERE RUMBLINGS THAT THE PARTY WOULD SOON BE OVER.
Angry regulators, burned investors and the weight of millions of homes about to be boarded up were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide's stock was down 50%, and Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf sheiks who now control its biggest share blocks.
Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That's Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.
The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the 'public treasure' and got to keep the Grinning's house. There was no 'quid' of a foreclosure moratorium for the 'pro quo' of public bail-out. Not one family was 'saved,' but not one banker was left behind.
Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo's Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company's stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.
And that very same day the bail-out was decided - what a coinkydink! - the man called "The Sheriff of Wall Street" was cuffed.
SPITZER WAS SILENCED.
Do I believe the banks called Justice and said "Take him down today!" Naw, that's not how the system works. But the big players knew that unless Spitzer was taken out, he would create enough ruckus to spoil the party. Headlines in the financial press, one was 'Wall Street Declares War on Spitzer' - made clear to Bush's enforcers at Justice who their number one target should be. And it wasn't Bin Laden.
It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the bone-headed choice to order take-out in his Washington Hotel room. He had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:
'Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which he federal government was turning a blind eye.'
Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline: 'was the 'Predator Lenders' Partner in Crime.' The President, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet.
Spitzer wrote: When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably."
FALLEN ON HIS OWN GUN
But now, the Administration can rest assured that this love story - of Bush and his bankers - will not be told by history at all ''now that the Sheriff of Wall Street has fallen on his own gun.''
A note on 'Prosecutorial Indiscretion.'
Back in the day when I was an investigator of racketeers for government, the federal prosecutor I was assisting was deciding whether to launch a case based on his negotiations for airtime with 60 Minutes. I'm not allowed to tell you the prosecutor's name, but I want to mention he was recently seen shouting: "Florida is Rudi country! Florida is Rudi country!"
Not all crimes lead to federal bust or even public exposure. It's up to something called 'prosecutorial discretion.'
Funny thing, this "discretion." For example, Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, paid Washington DC prostitutes to put him diapers (ewww!), yet the Senator was not exposed by the US prosecutors busting the pimp-ring that pampered him.
Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer - rarely done in these cases - was made at the 'discretion' of Bush's Justice Department.
Or maybe we should say, 'indiscretion.'
************
www.GregPalast.com
Greg Palast, former investigator of financial fraud, is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

Eliot Spitzer: Wall Street bankers expect big paychecks — even ...

current.com/shows/viewpoint/videos/eliot-spitzer-wall-street-bankers-expect...

Sep 27, 2012 ... "We don't begrudge others the well-earned fruits of their labor, yet we do resent an attitude of entitlement without obligation." —Eliot Spitzer.

Eliot Spitzer - LIBOR Mega scandal (total corruption) - YouTube

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZWDemn_njg

Jul 5, 2012 ... Viewpoint - host Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone contributing editor ... Libor interest rate--rigging scandal engulfing the banking industry.

 

John Lear - UFOs and Aliens

www.greatdreams.com/John-Lear.htm
It's the result of the international bankers saying, 'You tear down these barriers, and you meet the West half way, give your people some freedom, the West is ...

Dee Finney's blog - March 5, 2012 - page 160 MIND CONTROL ...

www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012/dee-blog160.html
Mar 5, 2012 – ... that the nucleus of all evil stems from those who control the monies of the world, whom we generally refer to as the International Bankers.

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