JP Morgan Déjà Vu — There You Go Again Wall Street

JP Morgan announces a $2 billion loss in the derivatives market. What may sound like everyday news from Wall Street actually gives us a glimpse into the bizarre world of the US banking cartel. JP Morgan manages derivatives that are twice the dollar value of the bank's entire capitalization, and the derivatives market itself, estimated at $700 trillion, is 10 times larger than the GDP of the planet Earth. 

Major banks make incredibly huge gambles in this market with no fear of loss, because the government says they are too big to fail, so their losses are passed on to taxpayers. This $2 billion loss allows us to see the whole scam in just one event.

Wake Up America!

Ever wonder why getting a $200,000 mortgage in Kansas is so tough?  Because that is not where the biggest banks make their big money.

Yesterday’s news from JP Morgan Chase of a $2 billion trading loss makes clear how banks – those still too big to fail – make their real money.

The story of this $100 billion dollar bet by a shadowy trading operation gone “egregiously” wrong, in the words of the firm’s CEO,  sounds very 2007/08.

A small unit of JP Morgan virtually no one knows called CIO was placing huge derivative bets.  These enormous bets were at twice the risk the company said they were just a few weeks ago. (How very AIG-like.)

The London-based JP Morgan trader implicated in this is nicknamed  ”The Whale” or “Voldemort” from Harry Potter.  The group he runs had $350 billion of securities as of the end of last year, according to the Wall Street Journal.  That’s nearly twice the market cap of the bank itself, the largest in the U.S.  “Voldemort” reportedly made $100 million last year.

A few weeks ago his division’s bets caused such concern that The Wall Street Journal had the story on its front page, noting how the trades were making the debt market nervous.  In reaction, CEO Jamie Dimon said the worries were a “tempest in a teapot.”

This gets back to the topic no one wants to talk about, and possibly no one  understands.  Synthetic derivatives – Credit Default Swaps.  There is a $700 trillion derivatives market, that is 10x larger than the GDP of the planet earth.  How is such a large market possible?  Just like “Voldemort” did not have the $100 billion he bet with, there is no actual money to back this $700 trillion market.

No one we have spoken to over the years has explained how this is possible.

Which gets us back to where we began… JP Morgan has unlimited access to virtually free money from the Fed… They could loan it out to the middle class (of course they do some of that) but they can take that free money and make huge, incomprehensible bets in the hopes of huge profits – multimillion dollar bonuses and if it’s all just a house of cards, it’s OK because they are too big to fail. 

Original Article by Zunaira Zaki of ABC News

Two Billionaires Side With Greg Smith Against Goldman

We've said it before and will continue to do so.. Lloyd (Pig Eyes) Blankfein and the rest of the Goldman Sachs gang are the devil.

Wake Up America!

After resigning from Goldman Sachs with guns blazing and ink burning, former executive Greg Smith can guarantee there will be no love lost for him on Wall Street. Smith, who published a widely-discussed op-ed in Wednesday morning’s New York Times, has been mocked and doubted.

Two of Smith’s supporters, however, are among the world’s wealthiest: billionaires Jim Clark and Stephen Jarislowsky.

Clark, who re-joined this year’s Forbes Billionaires List after dropping off for three years, tells me via email that Smith’s criticism of Goldman’s treatment of its customers is “what I experienced over the four to five years” he entrusted some of his funds with the firm’s private wealth management division.

Smith, a former executive director and head of the Goldman’s U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, wrote in his op-ed: “Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as ‘muppets,’ sometimes over internal e-mail.”

Click here for full article

Economic Martial Law & Precious Metals

Radio interview with Investment Guru Gerald Celente. He outlines how bankers (calling themselves "Technocrats") are trying to monopolize the  world under their control. He also says he is still convinced gold and silver (and some cash) are the way to go.

How Much is The Minimum Wage? (Video)

This funny rant by a Brit echoes what many in the US feel. 

Warning...the language is a bit rough but it only highlights this guy's passionate views.

Look Who 'Has Stolen IDs and Fake Tax Returns'.. What's a Little Bank Fraud Between Friends, Anyway?

Did HSBC Bank Knowingly Launder Billions in Drug Money?

Making fraudulent loans to corporate accounts that existed in name only was a key part of an alleged money-laundering scheme by the global bank HSBC, according to a whistleblower who has provided WND with more than 1,000 pages of evidence.

The evidence includes customer account ledgers for dozens of companies through which the financial institution was laundering money each month, charges John Cruz, a former relationship manager for the bank’s southern New York region.

“A bank employee would first set up a bogus corporate account using a stolen corporate identification and the required personal identification to set up the account,” the whistleblower explained. “The loan request would go to HSBC underwriting in Buffalo and the loan would get approved, often on the basis of fraudulent tax returns and fraudulent documentation to support the loan.”

The series of articles on HSBC already has caused fallout for this reporter and for WND, which saw one of the articles temporarily blocked when HSBC filed a complaint with an Internet provider that turned out to be unwarranted. PayPal and American Express also have been implicated in the bank fraud.

HSBC reportedly is under investigation by a U.S. Senate committee, and WND has provided material to federal investigators.

Cruz said the scheme relied on corporate and personal information selected by identity theft to give the fraudulent account a sufficiently good credit history to justify the loan, even though all the supporting documentation, including tax returns, was fraudulent.

“Even when these fraudulent loans were declined, HSBC employees in on the scheme would simply call senior bank executives to have the loans approved, thereby effectively by-passing underwriting.

Exhibit 1 is a HSBC list of fraudulent bank loans made by various employees, all of whom used the same bogus USER ID here redacted as 433***36. All customer and bank employee information has been redacted from this report to respect privacy restrictions.

Each line item in Exhibit 1 represents a different loan made to a different fraudulent company.

Cruz noted that all of the Social Security numbers are legitimate numbers used by the HSBC identity thieves to establish the account.

“None of companies listed were functioning companies, and the loan files lacked critical documentation including source of repayment,” Cruz said.

The whole point was to steal hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars from HSBC itself, Cruz alleged, through the fraudulent loans drawn from bank income. As a result, the net earnings of the bank were depressed and the loan loss transferred to the shareholders once the loans defaulted.

“Once the loans were made, checking accounts were established by HSBC employees for the fraudulent corporations, and the loan proceeds were transferred into the corporate accounts,” he explained. “Once the loan funds were in the fraudulent corporate accounts, HSBC employees in on the scheme could wire the money out of the accounts to locations not recorded in the account bank statements.”

Exhibit 2 is another HSBC internal bank record documenting fraudulent loans. The user ID of the bank employee making the loans is again 433***86, a number multiple bank employees utilized when setting up bogus corporate accounts for fraudulent loans.

Exhibit 2: HSBC internal report documenting alleged fraudulent loan activity

Every time Cruz saw suspicious loan activity, he reported it – through emails, faxes and telephone calls.

When he realized his reports with senior management and bank security were being ignored, Cruz began wearing a wire so he could record conversations with bank employees in which the discussions confirmed their awareness of the fraudulent activity and their unwillingness to do anything to stop it.

He also began printing out reports documenting fraudulent loans and keeping a record of his emails that he could remove from the bank location for safekeeping.

Exhibit 3 is a memo Cruz wrote in his attorney’s office shortly before he was terminated by HSBC, to be sent to his direct management supervisor at HSBC.

In the memo, Cruz explained the methodology in which fraudulent loans were being created by HSBC employees. He also detailed his efforts to bring the information to bank security officers.

The names of the bank officers discussed in the memo have been redacted to respect privacy.

Exhibit 3: John Cruz memo to HSBC bank management

“The only result of the memo was that the bank took disciplinary action against me,” Cruz said. “I reported the fraud, and I was reprimanded for not bringing in more business. I was told that my job was not to report fraud, but to bring in more business. Since I refused to bring in new business from fraudulent accounts, I marked myself for termination.”

In February 2010, Cruz was terminated from HSBC for poor job performance; he had been at HSBC since January 2008.

After leaving the bank, Cruz attempted through his attorney to turn his information over to the Department of Homeland Security.

“DHS didn’t even respond,” he said. “We didn’t get as much as a letter from DHS, despite the repeated calls and emails my attorney made to DHS in the attempt to get their attention.”

Cruz has no idea how much money went through HSBC in fraudulent loan activity. The amount that he observed and was not able to print out ran into the billions of dollars, he estimates.

“Every day I went to work, I began to wonder how many fraudulent accounts I would find that day,” he said. “But every time I found something suspicious, the reaction I got from bank management and bank security was, ‘Shut up and do your job.’”

Article by Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., and a WND senior staff reporter. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command." Corsi's latest book is "Where's the REAL Birth Certificate?"

The Federal Reserve's Explicit Goal: Devalue The Dollar 33%

 

The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) has made it official:  After its latest two day meeting, it announced its goal to devalue the dollar by 33% over the next 20 years.  The debauch of the dollar will be even greater if the Fed exceeds its goal of a 2 percent per year increase in the price level.

An increase in the price level of 2% in any one year is barely noticeable.  Under a gold standard, such an increase was uncommon, but not unknown.  The difference is that when the dollar was as good as gold, the years of modest inflation would be followed, in time, by declining prices. As a consequence, over longer periods of time, the price level was unchanged.  A dollar 20 years hence was still worth a dollar.

But, an increase of 2% a year over a period of 20 years will lead to a 50% increase in the price level.  It will take 150 (2032) dollars to purchase the same basket of goods 100 (2012) dollars can buy today.  What will be called the “dollar” in 2032 will be worth one-third less (100/150) than what we call a dollar today.

The Fed’s zero interest rate policy accentuates the negative consequences of this steady erosion in the dollar’s buying power by imposing a negative return on short-term bonds and bank deposits.  In effect, the Fed has announced a course of action that will steal — there is no better word for it — nearly 10 percent of the value of American’s hard earned savings over the next 4 years.

Why target an annual 2 percent decline in the dollar’s value instead of price stability?  Here is the Fed’s answer:

“The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) judges that inflation at the rate of 2 percent (as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, or PCE) is most consistent over the longer run with the Federal Reserve’s mandate for price stability and maximum employment. Over time, a higher inflation rate would reduce the public’s ability to make accurate longer-term economic and financial decisions. On the other hand, a lower inflation rate would be associated with an elevated probability of falling into deflation, which means prices and perhaps wages, on average, are falling–a phenomenon associated with very weak economic conditions. Having at least a small level of inflation makes it less likely that the economy will experience harmful deflation if economic conditions weaken. The FOMC implements monetary policy to help maintain an inflation rate of 2 percent over the medium term.”

In other words, a gradual destruction of the dollar’s value is the best the FOMC can do.

Here’s why:

First, the Fed believes that manipulation of interest rates and the value of the dollar can reduce unemployment rates.

The results of the past 40 years say the opposite.

The Fed’s finger prints in the form of monetary manipulation are all over the dozen financial crises and spikes in unemployment we have experienced since abandoning the gold standard in 1971.  The financial crisis of 2008, caused in no small part by the Fed’s efforts to stimulate the economy by keeping interest rates too low for, as it turned out, way too long is but the latest example of the Fed failing to fulfill its mandate to achieve either price stability or full employment.

The Fed’s most recent experience with Quantitative Easing also belies the entire notion that monetary manipulation can spur the economy.  Between November 2010 and June 2011, the Fed tried to spur economic growth by purchasing $600 billion in Treasury securities, flooding the banking system with reserves and keeping interest rates low.  In response the economy, which had been growing at a 3.4% annual rate, slowed to a 1% annual rate in the first half of 2011.  Once, the Fed stopped supplying all of that liquidity, economic growth in the second half of the year accelerated to a 2.3% annual rate.

Second, the Fed does not use real time indicators of the price level.  Instead, it views inflation through the rear view mirror of the trailing increases in the PCE.  And, even when it had evidence of rising inflation — as it did in the first quarter of last year — it chose to temporize, betting that the spike in inflation would prove temporary.

This spike in inflation did prove temporary, as Fed Chairman Bernanke predicted at the time, but not for the reasons — a slack economy — that he cited.  Instead, the growing debt crisis in Europe led to a massive shift in deposits out of the euro and into the dollar — an event totally out of the Fed’s control.  Yet, this increase in the demand for dollars was far more important than any action taken by the Fed because it increased the value of the dollar and produced a slowdown in the inflation rate.

What we are left with is a trial and error monetary system that depends on the best judgment of 19 men and women who meet every six weeks around a big table at the Federal Reserve in Washington.  At the end of a day and a half of discussions, 11 of them vote on what to do next.  The error the members of the FOMC fear most when they vote is deflation.  So, they have built in a 2% margin of error.

Given the crudeness of the tools the FOMC uses to set monetary policy, allowing for such a margin of error is no doubt prudent.  For example,  when the economy slowed in the first half of last year, inflation picked up, accelerating to a 6.1% annual rate during the second quarter.  And, when the economic growth accelerated in the second half, inflation slowed.  These results are the precise opposite of what the Fed’s playbook says are supposed to happen.

The best the Fed can do — an average debauch in the dollar’s value of 2% a year while producing recurring financial crises and a more cyclical economy — is demonstrably inferior to the results produced by the classical gold standard.  Here’s just one example.   The largest gold discovery of modern times set off the 1849 California gold rush and increased the supply of gold in the world faster than the increase in the output of goods and services.  The price level in the U.S. did increase by12.4 percent over the next 8 years.  That translates into an average of just 1.5% a year.  The gold standard at its worst was better than the best the Fed now promises to do with the paper dollar.

The Fed’s best is hardly good enough.  The time has arrived for the American people to demand something far better — a dollar as good as gold.

Article by Charles Kadler, Forbes.com

Banks Got Free Money From Fed - No Bailout For Americans, Only Bankers (Video)

Corrupt Federal Reserve is loyal only to their masters..most of whom are not even from this country. Bankers own the US and it is time to face the truth.

Wake Up America!

Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street – Financial Elite Start Turning On Each Other

Finally, after trillions in fraudulent activity, trillions in bailouts, trillions in printed money, billions in political bribing and billions in bonuses, the criminal cartel members on Wall Street are beginning to get what they deserve. As the Eurozone is coming apart at the seams and as the US economy grinds to a halt, the financial elite are starting to turn on each other. The lawsuits are piling up fast. Here’s an extensive roundup:

Time to put your Big Bank shorts on! Get ready for a run… The chickens are coming home to roost… The Global Banking Cartel’s crimes are being exposed left & right…

Prepare for Shock & Awe…

Well, well… here’s your Shock & Awe:

First up, this shockingly huge $196 billion lawsuit just filed against 17 major banks on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bank of America is severely exposed in this lawsuit. As the parent company of Countrywide and Merrill Lynch they are on the hook for $57.4 billion. JP Morgan is next in the line of fire with $33 billion. And many death spiraling European banks are facing billions in losses as well. 

FHA Files a $196 Billion Lawsuit Against 17 Banks 

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), today filed lawsuits against 17 financial institutions, certain of their officers and various unaffiliated lead underwriters. The suits allege violations of federal securities laws and common law in the sale of residential private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS) to the Enterprises.

Complaints have been filed against the following lead defendants, in alphabetical order:

1. Ally Financial Inc. f/k/a GMAC, LLC – $6 billion
2. Bank of America Corporation – $6 billion
3. Barclays Bank PLC – $4.9 billion
4. Citigroup, Inc. – $3.5 billion
5. Countrywide Financial Corporation -$26.6 billion
6. Credit Suisse Holdings (USA), Inc. – $14.1 billion
7. Deutsche Bank AG – $14.2 billion
8. First Horizon National Corporation – $883 million
9. General Electric Company – $549 million
10. Goldman Sachs & Co. – $11.1 billion
11. HSBC North America Holdings, Inc. – $6.2 billion
12. JPMorgan Chase & Co. – $33 billion
13. Merrill Lynch & Co. / First Franklin Financial Corp. – $24.8 billion
14. Morgan Stanley – $10.6 billion
15. Nomura Holding America Inc. – $2 billion
16. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC – $30.4 billion
17. Société Générale – $1.3 billion

These complaints were filed in federal or state court in New York or the federal court in Connecticut. The complaints seek damages and civil penalties under the Securities Act of 1933, similar in content to the complaint FHFA filed against UBS Americas, Inc. on July 27, 2011. In addition, each complaint seeks compensatory damages for negligent misrepresentation. Certain complaints also allege state securities law violations or common law fraud. [read full FHFA release]

You can read the suits filed against each individual bank here. For some more information read Bloomberg: BofA, JPMorgan Among 17 Banks Sued by U.S. for $196 Billion. Noticeably absent from the list of companies being sued is Wells Fargo.

And the suits just keep coming…

Click here to see complete article

By David DeGraw - ampedstatus.org 

Federal Reserve Lent Banks Nearly $8 TRILLION During Crisis Without Asking ANYONE’S Permission!

The Federal Reserve is as “Federal” as FedEx! This private banking cartel being allowed to run our economy is one of the greatest criminal acts ever perpetrated against the citizen’s of this country. 

The Federal Reserve is robbing Americans blind.

Wake Up America!

While the nation's largest banks were publicly reassuring nervous investors of their stability during the height of the financial crisis, they were also quietly approaching the Federal Reserve, hat in hand. The total price tag: $7.77 trillion, many times the amount of the better-known TARP bailout.

The magnitude of the government's assistance to struggling banks allowed them to grow even bigger and continue paying executives billions in compensation, a report in Bloomberg Markets January issue said Monday.

A win in court against a group representing the banks and a FOIA request filed by Bloomberg LP revealed the extent of the central bank's largesse - as well as the $13 billion in profits banks earned from those bailouts. The so called "big six" - JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley - accounted for $4.8 billion of that total - nearly a quarter of their net income during that time. 

Those borrowed trillions were a deeply-buried secret. It appears that even high-ranking Fed officials didn't know about the scale of the handouts. According to Bloomberg, then-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Gary H. Stern “wasn’t aware of the magnitude,” and unnamed sources say that even top aides to Treasury Department head Henry Paulson were kept in the dark. 

The six biggest banks in the country received a total $160 billion in TARP funds, but as much as $460 billion from the Fed, raising the question as to how and why this nearly $8 trillion in loans, guarantees and limits remained under wraps for so long. According to the Fed, the massive scale of banks' borrowing - and the red ink that prompted it - had to be kept secret to avoid spooking investors and prompting a panic or bank runs that would have had even more devastating consequences on the shaken economy. 

The Fed defended its actions back then by contending that the biggest financial institutions in the country were too big to fail - a phrase that has become a bone of contention among lawmakers, some of whom argue that a "too big to fail" bank is one that's too big to exist.

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown sponsored a bill last year that would cap a bank's non-deposit liabilities at 2 percent of gross domestic product, and crack down on workarounds banks currently use to bypass a 1994 law that prohibits any one bank from holding more than 10 percent of all deposits in the country.

Original Source

The Moral Example of UC Davis Students. If America Needs A Turning Point, This Is It. (Video)

This video should shock every American who has a conscience, every American who loves this country and what it stands for! What you are witnessing might just as easily be the actions of some totalitarian regime; Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, Myanmar….

A line of students sitting on the ground, heads bowed. A police officer dressed in riot gear walking up to them, holding a pepper spray gun. He theatrically raises his arm, as if about to carry out an execution, and presses the trigger. A foul-looking orange spray shoots out.

Methodically, deliberately, he walks to the end of the line, saturating each student. He might as well be casually spraying bug spray. When he reaches the end he begins walking back in the other direction, spraying each of them again. The students huddle in obvious pain. People in the crowd nearby gasp in shock and began chanting, "Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!"

This event is powerfully symbolic. It is about contempt from those in power and the wanton use of force against the powerless.

We have seen similar things over and over again in the past few years. We have seen it in banks lobbying for public handouts and then denying relief to millions of exploited homeowners. We have seen it in tax breaks and bonuses for the rich while millions of Americans are out of work. We have seen it in church and university officers abusing children and then covering it up. We have seen it in the censorship of climate science performed in the public interest. We have seen it in the absurd declaration that corporations are "people" and entitled to spend billions of dollars to elect representatives that they will then own. We have seen it everywhere we turn.

The police officer is Congress. Our banks. Our clerics.

The students are us.

If I had to sum up the attitude of America's governing classes in one word, I would say: contempt.

We are seeing the beginning of a worldwide movement to fight for dignity and intelligent, collective governance.

It is time for UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to resign. I simply cannot fathom a university administrator bringing riot police onto campus to assault peacefully demonstrating students. At the most, campus police could have simply carried them away. In her blog, Duke prof (and former teacher of mine) Cathy Davidson deftly dissects the craven claim that tent camps present "health and safety concerns." And Bob Ostertag, a UC Davis prof, shows how the administration lost its moral compass.

People say that the Occupy movement has not been clear in its demands. I would say that their demands could not be more obvious.

They are already being articulated everywhere: the New York Times, the Huffington Post, Salon.com, the New Yorker. They are full of luminous writers: Nicholas Kristof. Paul Krugman. Gail Collins. Hendrik Herztberg. George Packer. Steve Coll, Bill McKibben. Dozens of intelligent books have appeared on the shelves in the past few years, examining the country's problems and offering thoughtful proposals for reform.

They want a fairer tax system. They want a sane energy policy that addresses climate change and searches for cleaner ways to power our civilization. They want a government that is not wholly owned by the rich. They want access to justice and education. They want a reasonable hope of getting and keeping a job that gives them a living wage and the ability to invest for the future.

They want a rational health care system that they can afford. They want government policy that is driven by thoughtful attention to rational research, not ideology. They want a transparent government that holds the powerful accountable. They want a government that understands the importance of investing now in human capital and infrastructure.

The obstacles to reform seem overwhelming. The country's far right has systematically obstructed every attempt to change things for the better. The electorate seems hopelessly divided. For decades, it has voted to create legislative deadlock. Despite the overwhelming failure of the Bush administration, half of the country has not grasped how utterly the Republican philosophy of governance has been discredited. The Democrats are uncoordinated and have no coherent philosophy at all. In our Internet age, the media are so fragmented that no single idea can seem to hold the country's attention for long. America has never seemed more divided and paralyzed in living memory.

Nonetheless, America's two most famous recent political movements - the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street - have taught us several things. It is possible to get the country's attention. And getting its attention is equivalent to setting its agenda. 

Occupy Wall Street needs to start setting a moral example. Moral examples move people to action. I am very proud of the students at UC Davis, both the ones who remained seated, heads down, and the ones in the crowd surrounding them. They vastly outnumbered the police officers. They could have torn them apart. I have no doubt that many of them wanted to. I wanted to.

But, as Gandhi and Martin Luther King so well understood, nonviolent resistance is extraordinarily powerful. It shows who holds the moral high ground. It reveals the thugs and bullies in high places for who they are. It creates sympathy and evokes principled action. It clears the way for thoughtful men and women of conscience and character to speak out for rational courses of action.

I think we have just reached a turning point.

Article by Michael Corost, Ph.D Original Source

JP Morgan "Donates" $4.6 Million to NYPD. Money Can't Buy You Love But It CAN Buy Protection (Video)

Corrupt Wall Street Bankers Resort To Paying For Protection Now That John Q. Public Is Rising Up Against Them. Are We Going To Stand Idly By As Daddy Warbucks Buys The Favors Of Taxpayer Paid Law Enforcement?

Wake Up America!

JPMorgan Chase recently "donated" an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation.

The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD's main data center.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing "profound gratitude" for the company's donation.

"These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe," Dimon said. "We're incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work." 

 

Watch the video below to see just how "safe" NYDP goons are keeping those bankers.

Citi Is Latest To Hike Fees On Checking Accounts. Bankers Know We Are Too Weak To Fight Back

Big Bankers Are Sticking It To Us Again. Their Message: If You Impose Regulations On What We Can Charge For One Of Our Profit Centers, We Will Ram It Up Your A*s On Another. Aren’t You Sick And Tired Of This Yet? How Much More Are You Going To Take, Sheeple?

Wake Up America!

The fees keep coming. Citi is the latest big bank to slap customers with a round of fee hikes. This time, on its checking accounts.

Starting in December, customers who hold its mid-level Citibank Account will be charged $20 a month if they fail to maintain a minimum balance of $15,000 in their combined accounts. Previously, account holders had to carry a minimum balance of $6,000.

At the same time, customers who have the bank's EZ Checking account will start being charged $15 a month if they don't carry a minimum balance of $6,000. Citi says it is phasing out the EZ Checking package, which currently carries no monthly fee for balances over $1,500, and is instead offering customers either the Citibank Account or its Basic Banking account, which also carries a fee.

Last month, Citi said it is hiking the fee on its Basic Banking account from $8 to $10. Customers will be able to avoid paying the $10 fee by either maintaining a minimum balance of $1,500 or by making one direct deposit and one automatic online payment through their checking account each month, said Citi.

Currently, account holders must make five transactions per month in order to avoid paying the fee and there is no minimum balance requirement.
9 most annoying bank fees

Citi's fee hikes come just days after Bank of America announced it would charge a $5 fee for debit card purchases. Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase Sun Trust and Regions Financial have all also rolled out similar fees in select markets in recent weeks.

"The regulatory environment has changed a great deal -- particularly with the Durbin Amendment -- and we're seeing the results of that now," said Claes Bell, banking reporter with Bankrate.com. Going forward, "we're going to see more large national banks announce fees."

With the new regulation that caps how much revenue banks can get from the swipe fees they collect from merchants, banks must look for other ways to cover that lost income, explained Nessa Feddis, vice president and senior counsel of the American Bankers Association.

"We don't expect to pay nothing to ride the train, it's the same thing with a checking account," she said.
Bank accounts: Get a fair shake, not a shakedown

Citibank said it chose not to charge a debit card fee because its customers did not want it. "There's a reason why we structured it this way," said Catherine Pulley, spokeswoman for Citi. There are also no hidden fees, Pulley added, and customers will benefit from free online bill pay and free access to non-Citi ATM machines.

While the majority of checking accounts were free last year, less than half now come without a price tag, according to a recent study from bank-comparison site Bankrate, which looked at 243 interest and 238 non-interest accounts.

Like Citi's new offerings, 92% of checking accounts have fee waivers, meaning that if you can meet certain financially requirements, most checking accounts are -- or could become -- free.

Article by Jessica Dickler, CNN Money

Trader: "The Governments Don't Rule the World, Goldman Sachs Rules the World." (Video)

We've been saying it for years. Goldman Sachs is EVIL!

Wake Up America!

Goldman Sachs rules the world and the Euro zone is poised to crash, according to trader Alessio Rastani.

"This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are going to sort things out," Rastani said on an interview with BBC on Monday morning. "The governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world."

The statement came towards the end of an almost three and a half minute interview in which Rastani warned viewers to "get prepared" for the inevitable: "The savings of millions of people are going to vanish" in less than a year, he said.

"This economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait thinking this will go away, just like a cancer it's going to grow and it's going to be too late," he continued.'

Fear over the fragility of the European economy has become pronounced in recent weeks. Prompted in part by concerns that the region could enter recession and affect the global economy, stocks composing the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered their worst week since 2008 last week, according to Reuters.

In spite of statements like Rastani's, Euro policymakers continue to press ahead with possible reforms. Currently, they are working to bolster their 440 billion-euro rescue fund, after being criticized by leaders from both China and the U.S. for letting Greece's debt crisis already wreak havoc on global stocks, according to Reuters.

But the crash will be good news for traders, Rastani told the stunned BBC anchors.

"For most traders we don't really care about having a fixed economy, having a fixed situation, our job is to make money from it," he said. "Personally, I've been dreaming of this moment for three years. I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession."

Rastani said traders aren't the only ones who can benefit from the crisis.

"When the market crashes... if you know what to do, if you have the right plan set up, you can make a lot of money from this."

Article by Jillian Berman, Huffington Post

Slouching Toward Guatemala

This is a great piece written by Fred Reed. 

Wake Up America or we WILL be slouching toward Guatemala!

God it's wonderful – really diverting in a macabre sort of way, at least if you have a diseased sense of humor and enough Padre Kino red. Which I do. As I write the world's only delusional superflower, perennially in love with itself, navel-gazing as narcissistically as ever, ignorant, self-indulgent, gurbling like an insane relative in the attic and fondling electro-trinkets from Japan, is broke. Yes, we see a beautiful dive from the high board, two somersaults and a half-twist, into the Third World. And so richly deserved.
 

Congress, a collection of whores, con-men, and penny-ante sharpers from East Jesus, Nebraska, ponders the Great Question: Default now, and admit manfully to being the economic lepers everyone else already knows we are? Or raise the debt ceiling, keep spending like a spoiled Swarthmore sophomore with daddy's credit card, and collapse a bit later?
 

It's just lovely. The World’s Greatest Economy holding out the begging bowl to China. “Alms? Alms for the poor?” Maybe I don't have enough Padre Kino after all. Maybe there isn't enough.
 

On the lobotomy box, congressmen come and go, not talking of Michelangelo, like mayflies but without the brains, calling each other names. They seem to think that they are in an off-year election. I mean, it's only the future of the country. What, me worry? What if a huge cosmic flyswatter came down on Cap Hill and turned them into barely historical smears? How the hell do you start a cosmic flyswatter?
 

The Republicans want to protect the wars, the rich, and the military companies. The Democrats want to protect the entitlements. Well, OK, I guess killing Afghans matters more than feeding Granny in Spokane. Unless of course you are Granny. Who really cares? I mean, how many “defense” contracts does she have?
 

But actually the Dems have the best of the argument of national security. Entitlements are our friend. Welfare is the price we pay for not having the cities burn. Mailbox money is our protection, not gaudy aircraft carriers like the USS Thundertrinket, zooom-kerpow.
 

It's the Empire, stupid. You want spending cuts? Easy, if you don't want to rule the world for three more years before going down history's cloaca. Pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Japan, and NATO tomorrow. Pull out. Pull out. Coitus interruptus. Stop wasting precious engineering talent and nonexistent money on pointless funsy weapons of no utility: the F35, the Airborne Laser.
 

Come to think of it, don't bother. It's too late. The only sensible answer is cheap Mexican red. The US really is poised to enter Central America. You know, continental drift. It can't be stopped. South Korea and Finland among others are far more advanced in their internets. Health care in America is first-priced and second-rate. The country is thirty-third in infant mortality. Schooling would be pathetic if we could raise it to that level, the universities largely farces. The Russians and Chinese have manned space programs; we don't. Industry flees Gringolandia or has fled. The great moiling gerbiltry out there hasn't figured it out. 

Wait.
 

I hear babbling about “the recovery.” Which recovery is that? There ain't none, boys and girls. There won't be one. We are not in a temporary recession or correction or what have you. We are going poor. The last dance just finished, and the band is leaving.
 

And it is self-inflicted. There is, I grant you, a pleasing monumentality about truly phenomenal stupidity. A certain brilliance is needed to be so witless. In this sense the American political system is a work of genius, relying on the principle of Sufficient Ditz-Rabbitry.
 

You don't need to fool all of the people all of the time. Enough of the people, enough of the time is entirely adequate. Lincoln knew this but, being a politician, didn't point it out. Here is the basis of what Americans believe to be a democracy. Curious: Mexicans know they have a corrupt government, but Americans don't. In the US, books are written about the scams and cons and rips practiced on the public. Few read them, though, and those who do already know what is in them. Enough of the people, enough of the time. If the talking heads on the blinking hamster-diverter don't talk about the swindles, the rubes never know.
 

The country is in fact ruled by the interlocking directorates of Wall Street, Washington, and the media, Triamese twins joined at the head and aimed at sucking money from the easily fleeced. We're not talking Senior Civics and the Federalist Papers. It's straight drain-the-dullards. And it works. Boy does it.
 

Can you name anything in America today that is not a disguised fraud? Credit cards are not a convenience, but a way of luring suckers into borrowing crippling amounts of money at usurious interest. The sub-prime circus was carefully designed to do just what it did. 

There's the student-loan racket, and Big Pharma: A tiny bottle of ophthalmic salt water from Bausch & Lomb, called Muro, costs $23 in Washington, and about $6 in Mexico. That's our government, fixing prices that weren't broken. Pure Third World.
 

I dunno. What's going to happen when what's left of the cream-flow dries up? Maybe it's the Padre Kino, but...in the last depression of '29, most of the country was rural or close. People, many of them, lived on farms, and didn't need much money.
 

Today most of the population is utterly dependent on remote mechanized farms winch are dependent on supplies of gasoline and chemicals and then on trucks to take the crop to cities that, if the foregoing chain broke down, could not possibly support themselves. The discovery that food doesn't really come from Safeway will astonish.
 

I guess I'm paranoid, and no real unrest and disruption could really occur. I guess. I mean, probably. I think. And that's a good thing, because with so many people dependent on entitlements, to the extent that they can't eat without them, and everything dependent on intricate systems that can't handle chaos – hooboy. Think: What happens to skyscrapers if there's no electricity for elevators?
 

I say invest in drug cartels. Some say gold, but you can't smoke gold. When times get bad people want booze, grass, crack, scag, crank, Oxys, and maybe shrooms for the more advanced. Investment is low, and governmental interference has proved minimal.
 

I hope I'm crazy. I'd better be

Written by Fred Reed, Fred On Everything

Banks Always Get Their Bailout

 

When are we going to say enough is enough? When are we going to tell our elected leaders that their job is to represent OUR interests and not those of their rich taskmasters? When??

Wake Up America!  This is YOUR land.. Take It Back!!

The fix is always in with the Big Banks.

The biggest fix was when they were declared "too big to fail," which guaranteed they'd get a taxpayer bailout, even though some of them deserved to fail, or at least deserved to be broken up. But since they had their hooks in with the politicians, they got the bailouts.

They always get the bailouts.

The latest bailout is Greece. Now, you hear a lot about a bailout for Greece, but it's not for Greece -- it's a bailout for the banks, the banks that gambled on Greek debt. Banks bought Greek debt because the Greek bonds offered really high interest rates. They offered high returns, because they were really risky bets, just like the sub-prime instruments of a few years back. And just like the sub-prime market, the Greek bond market turned out to be too good to be true. The returns were spectacular because the underlying product was lousy.

But instead of taking their losses, the banks are relying on their collection agencies -- the IMF and their friends in government -- to get their money back. The fix is in, again.

So taxpayers -- both here and in Greece -- are going to be paying off rich bankers who made lousy bets, again! It's the scam of all time, and no one seems to care. No one, except us, and, hopefully, you.

Article by David Asman, FoxBusiness

Homeowners Foreclose On Bank Of America. Sweet Justice! (VIDEO)

Let's hope this is the beginning of a trend! Let Big Banks know that they are subject to the same rules as the rest of us and maybe they will start to play fair. 

Wake Up America.. We CAN slay the giants 

  

Sweet Justice! 

That's how foreclosure defense attorney Todd Allen described the feeling of going to a Bank of America branch in Naples, Fla. to seize their assets.

Faced with a pair of sheriff's deputies locking down his building, the branch manager capitulated and handed over a check for $2,534. The sum was to cover Allen's fees from a case where he represented clients that the bank had tried to foreclose on -- despite the fact that they paid for their home in cash.

According to the News-Press in Fort Myers, Bank of America opened their case against Warren and Maureen Nyergers in February of 2010 and voluntarily dropped it two months later, but never coughed up for the couple's legal fees as ordered by a judge.

Sheriff's deputies, movers, and the Nyergers' attorney went to the bank and foreclosed on it. The attorney gave instructions to to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and any cash in the teller's drawers.

After about an hour of being locked out of the bank, the bank manager handed the attorney a check for the legal fees.

The foreclosure nightmare started when Warren and Maureen Nyerges paid cash for a home owned by Bank of American in the Golden Gate Estates. They never had a mortgage whatsoever. But, the bank fouled it up and wound up issuing a foreclosure through their attorney.

The couple took their case to court and after a year and a half nightmare the foreclosure was dropped. A Collier County judge said Bank of America has to pay the couple's $2,534 legal fees for the error. After more than five months the bank still hadn't paid up. So, the homeowners' attorney did just what the bank would do to get their money, legally seize their assets.

"I instructed the deputy to go in and take desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets, including cash in the drawers," Attorney Todd Allen told WINK News.

Outside the Bank of America on Davis Boulevard, several deputies stood by with movers ready to start hauling out the bank's office supplies and furniture.

Inside, the homeowners' attorney was locked out of the bank manager's office by deputies while the bank manger tried to figure out what to do.

Allen says the manager was visibly shaken, "Having two Sheriff's deputies sitting across your desk, and a lawyer standing behind them, demanding whatever assets are in the bank can be intimidating. But, so is having your home foreclosed on when it wasn't right."

After about an hour the bank finally cut a check to satisfy the debt, and no furniture was taken. A representative for Bank of America issued a statement saying they are sorry for the delay in issuing funds. They claim the original request went to an outside attorney who is no longer in business.

As for Allen, he calls this a symptom of a larger problem he sees often in the courts, where banks don't perform their due diligence on foreclosure cases. "As a foreclosure defense attorney this is sweet justice."

Click here to see video

Article courtesy of Wink News 

Los Angeles Shows Some Cajones and Gets Tough with Banks for Foreclosure Blight

They're At It Again! Big Banks Acting As Though They Are Not Subject To The Same Rules As Everyone Else. Now They Don't Want To Take Responsibility For the Properties They Have Foreclosed On. Bankers Are Pushing Their Weight Around and Collecting Huge Profits While Expecting Others To Pay Their Bills. 

This Insanity Has To Stop! Wake Up America!!

Lenders say they're owners "in name only" and don't have to pay for upkeep.

A dead dog lies among the knee-high weeds, a sign to Guillermo Elenes that the burned out, boarded up house is being used as a dump. Inside, soiled diapers, fast-food trash and the strewn beer and vodka bottles indicate squatters have been living there.

The dumping ground-crash pad serves as a squalid symbol of how the foreclosure crisis is riddling communities with blight because no one wants to shoulder the responsibility of maintaining foreclosed homes.

"There's one on every block," said Elenes, a community organizer with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment in Watts, a low-income South Los Angeles neighborhood pockmarked with foreclosed homes. "All we want is for the banks to step up and be good citizens."

Communities across the nation have made little progress in getting banks to maintain foreclosed properties, and as the ongoing crisis matures and bank-owned homes fall into advanced stages of disrepair, cities and residents are getting desperate. In a keenly watched move this month, Los Angeles forged a new strategy — it sued one of the world's major financial institutions, Deutsche Bank, to force it to take care of 166 properties, both vacant and renter-occupied, charging the blue-chip German giant has turned into the city's largest slumlord.

"The buck stops with the owner of record. We're saying, 'You are an owner like any other owner,'" said Julia Figueira-McDonough, deputy city attorney.

Not according to Deutsche or other banks. They say they aren't really the owners, despite the fact that their name appears on the property title. They also say they are not responsible for maintenance.

Representatives of Deutsche, as well as U.S. Bank, BNY Mellon and HSBC — three other major lenders that Los Angeles is investigating with an eye to suing, all said that loan servicers are responsible for property upkeep, as well as tasks such as sending default notices, modifying loans, selling homes, and collecting rent and mortgage payments.

"We're there in name only," said Teri Charest, spokeswoman for U.S. Bank. "We're trustees. We have a very limited role."

The real owners, the banks say, are the holders of the mortgage-backed securities — financial instruments comprising a pool of mortgage loans that are held in a trust and sold. The banks maintain they are simply distributors of the proceeds from the securities — the payments of a homeowner's loan principal and interest — to the investors.

Although the bank contracts the loan servicer, the bank's role does not include pressing servicers to properly maintain the trust's assets on behalf of its beneficiaries, bank representatives said. U.S. Bank, however, has sent notices to loan servicers that they must maintain properties in accordance with applicable laws, a statement said.

Loan servicers, however, usually have a contract loophole that allows them an easy out from the maintenance burden.

Typically, they're only required to spend money on upkeep if they believe the outlay is recoverable, according to Laurence Platt, a Washington D.C. lawyer who has represented banks in foreclosure-related litigation.

"Who pays for a pig in a poke?" he said. "This is a collateral issue of the whole foreclosure crisis."

Calls to two of the country's largest loan servicers — Ocwen Financial Services of West Palm Beach, Fla., and Statebridge Co. of Denver, Colo. — were not returned. Houston-based Litton Loan Servicing declined to answer questions from The Associated Press. Many servicers are also owned by Wall Streeters such as Wells Fargo.

The issue of loan servicers is an attempt to dodge responsibility, Figueira-McDonough said, because the banks are the owners of record, plus have a fiduciary duty to their trust beneficiaries.

Officials in Los Angeles and other cities say they're infuriated with the back-and-forth finger-pointing while an epidemic of eyesores is devastating neighborhoods.

"We're left holding the bag. Someone has got to be held accountable," said Robert Triozzi, law director for the city of Cleveland, which unsuccessfully sued Deutsche Bank over different foreclosure-related issues three years ago. "Not only have these institutions caused this mess, they have continued to perpetuate it."

Silvia Lobato of South Los Angeles just wants repairs to the one-bedroom apartment she's been renting for the past 14 years — named as one of the neglected Deutsche Bank properties in the city's lawsuit.

The kitchen sink plumbing has a leak that has caused the unit to rot and breed worms. The bathroom ceiling is covered with mildew. A city inspector told her the gas connection to the water heater is dangerous. Mice scramble in the walls.

Everything was fine until the owner lost the duplex two years ago, said Lobato, who lives in the apartment with her three kids and another mother and her three children. Since then, she's been unable to get the landlord to make repairs.

"I call and call. They say they don't have the money. I pay $680 a month in rent," she said. "I worry about the kids in these conditions."

Governments have tried various tactics.

Los Angeles, like many cities, last year enacted an ordinance mandating that banks register defaulting properties and pay a $155 fee so the city can track the property and collect funds for expenses.

But despite the penalty of $100,000 fines for non-registration, the ordinance hasn't worked because it relies on banks to self-report the properties. "There's been minimal compliance," said Figueira-McDonough.

Other cities, including Fort Lauderdale, Fla., have tried to crack down by declaring unkempt homes "public nuisances," and charging owners, including banks, with the cost of boarding up windows and mowing lawns. In cases where no owner can be found or bills are unpaid, a lien is placed on the property.

Residents, incensed about homes on their blocks turning into drug dens, gang hangouts and vermin nests, are galvanizing.

Watts resident Lynn Mottley drives around her neighborhood looking for telltale signs of foreclosure, such as chain link fences with no trespassing signs, jotting down the addresses in a notebook she keeps in her car.

Mottley, an activist with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the Home Defenders League, reports the addresses to the city and to lahoodwinked.com, an activist website that encourages residents to list foreclosed properties so the city can pursue owners for upkeep.

Her notebook keeps filling up. "Wow, there's another one," she said, driving by a ramshackle bungalow with broken windows and an overgrown, junk filled yard. "Who wants to live next to this? Something has to be done."

Article by Christina Hoag, Associated Press