The Multi-trillion-dollar Embezzlement and Fraud that Wall Street and Washington are Committing

     It is rare for me to reprint articles written by others.  I usually research my articles and cite several useful articles in the process.  The following article, though, deserves to be reprinted in full, with only a few added comments from me.  I've taken the liberty of highlighting important passages.  

US lawmakers are accomplices to financial industry’s immorality

Political ‘donations’ — more appropriately, legalized bribery — are fueling the injustice wrought by financial institutions and their selfish excesses

By Thomas Friedman / NY Times News Service, NEW YORK

(reprinted in the Taipei Times, November 2, 2011)

     Citigroup is lucky that former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was [allegedly] killed when he was. His [alleged] death diverted attention from a lethal article involving Citigroup that deserved more attention because it helps to explain why many average Americans have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The news was that Citigroup had to pay a US$285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of US dollars that they would go bust.

     It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. As the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) civil complaint noted, in 2007, Citigroup exercised “significant influence” over choosing US$500 million of the US$1 billion worth of assets in the deal and the global bank deliberately chose collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, built from mortgage loans almost sure to fail.     According to the Wall Street Journal, the SEC complaint quoted one unnamed CDO trader outside Citigroup as describing the portfolio as resembling something your dog leaves on your neighbor’s lawn.

     “The deal became largely worthless within months of its creation,” the Journal added. “As a result, about 15 hedge funds, investment managers and other firms that invested in the deal lost hundreds of millions of US dollars, while Citigroup made US$160 million in fees and trading profits.”

     Citigroup, which is under new and better [better for whom?  Don't forget that this article was written by a hack for the corporate-owned media.] management now, settled the case without admitting or denying any wrongdoing. James Stewart, a business columnist for the Times, wrote Citigroup’s flimflam made “Goldman Sachs mortgage traders look like Boy Scouts. In settling its fraud charges for US$550 million last year, Goldman was accused by the SEC of being the middleman in a similar deal, allowing hedge fund manager John Paulson to help choose the mortgages and then bet against them without disclosing this to the other parties. Citigroup dispensed with a Paulson figure altogether, grabbing those lucrative roles for itself.” 

     (On Thursday, the US District Court judge overseeing the case demanded that the SEC explain how such serious securities fraud could end with the defendant neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing.) [The American Action Report's Realistic Dictionary says that the name Goldman Sachs came from the words gold + man + saxophone.  It's an instrument, mostly brass, so that banksters can have congressmen dance to their tune.]

     This gets to the core of why all the anti-Wall Street groups around the globe are resonating. I was in Tahrir Square in Cairo for the fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and one of the most striking things to me about that demonstration was how apolitical it was. 
     [In a large part, that's also true of the Tea Parties and the Occupy Movement.  Pompous asses in the corporate media never seem to tire of ridiculing the protesters for their lack of expertise in economics, business, political science, and other fields.  The protesters do know, however, that they're hurting, where they were kicked, and who kicked them.  Pompous asses like Peter Schiff are telling them, in effect, "Since you're not experts as I am, you must not have a problem.  Go back to sleep."  Hell, the "experts" are the ones who caused the problem!  Oh, one more comment on Schiff's pomposity.  He seemed to be implying that the Wall Street protesters could be part of the 1% like him, if they only followed the "free market system."  The truth is, the Wall Street protesters have no hope or desire to be reincarnated as part of the inbred Schiff, Rothschild, and Warburg families.  Take a look at this marriage announcement from 1916 here. That should reveal the hypocrisy of the Rothschild who has infiltrated Ron Paul's campaign as an adviser.] 
     When I talked to Egyptians, it was clear that what animated their protest, first and foremost, was not a quest for democracy — although that was surely a huge factor. It was a quest for “justice.” Many Egyptians were convinced that they lived in a deeply unjust society where the game had been rigged by the Mubarak family and its crony capitalists. Egypt shows what happens when a country adopts free-market capitalism without developing real rule of law and institutions.

     However, then, what happened to us? Our financial industry has grown so large and rich it has corrupted our real institutions through political donations. As US Senator Dick Durbin bluntly said in a 2009 radio interview, despite having caused this crisis, these same financial firms “are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they, frankly, own the place.”  [No, they share ownership with a criminal syndicate blasphemously calling itself Israel.  The Israeli regime, which has no need of foreign aid, is the world's largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.  Add to that the trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives America has lost fighting wars under false pretenses, benefiting no one but the Israeli regime.  America's "best friend in the Middle East?  Not hardly.  To read about Israel's covert war against the United States, click here.]

     The US Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. [That's only the tip of the iceberg.  Those crooks are continuously passing bills that siphon money from the Treasury and into their business interests.] One consumer group using information from Opensecrets.org calculates that the financial services industry, including real estate, spent US$2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to last year, which was more than the healthcare, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Why are there 61 members on the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services? So many lawmakers want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street.

The US can’t afford this any longer. It needs to focus on four reforms that don’t require new bureaucracies to implement:

1) If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big and needs to be broken up. We can’t risk another trillion-US dollar bailout;

2) If US banks’ deposits are federally insured by US taxpayers, it can’t do any proprietary trading with those deposits — period;

3) Derivatives have to be traded on transparent exchanges where we can see if another AIG is building up enormous risk;

4) Finally, an idea from the blogosphere: US lawmakers should have to dress like NASCAR drivers and wear the logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real-estate firms that they’re taking money from. The public needs to know.

     Capitalism and free markets are the best engines for generating growth and relieving poverty — provided they are balanced with meaningful transparency, regulation and oversight. The US lost that balance in the last decade. If it doesn’t get it back — and there is now a tidal wave of money resisting that — it will have another crisis. If that happens, the cry for justice could turn ugly. Free advice to the financial services industry: Stick to being bulls. Stop being pigs.
     [The author of this article is giving Congress too much of a break.  Congressmen are not just accomplices; they're perpetrators.  Take the 2009 Bankster Bailout Bill, for example.  The bailout, which saved no homeowner's home, and for which the banksters lost nothing, was a theft of $700 million.  The bill ended up costing $1.2 billion because congressmen festooned the bill with funds earmarked for investments congressmen had made.  That amounts to a $500 million embezzlement benefiting no one but the congressmen and their cronies.  To see how your congressman voted on this criminal act, click here.]

"The Dating Game" and Public Elections

Most of y'all remember The Dating Game, a television show that aired in various forms from 1965 on and off through the 1990's. I couldn't help thinking of The Dating Game when I watched a presidential “debate” between George H. W. Bush and Jack Kemp in 1988. They even sat on stools like Dating Game contestants.
That's how we choose our elected officials these days. Does it work any better for Dating Game participants than it works for American voters? Whether it does or doesn't, what does that mean for voters today? Let's see.
Imagine you're watching a segment of The Dating Game back in the 1960's or 1970's. “Bachelor Number Three” is someone very much like you. “Bachelor Number Two” is a basketball player and college senior named Tom Selleck—before he became the star of Magnum, P.I. “Bachelor Number One” is Rodney Alcala, an accomplished serial killer, rapist, drug abuser, sadist, and psychopath with a criminal record as long as your arm.
In reality, Tom Selleck and Rodney Alcala never appeared onstage together. Tom Selleck appeared on The Dating Game in 1965 and again in 1967, both times as “Bachelor Number Two.” Rodney Alcala appeared as “Bachelor Number One” on The Dating Game in 1978.
Tom Selleck wasn't chosen on either occasion. Rodney Alcala was chosen on the one time that he appeared on The Dating Game. How did that happen? It happened the same way that candidates for public office get elected or defeated.
Rodney Alcala carefully studied the answers of winning contestants on The Dating Game, and that's the kind of answers he gave when his potential “date” on the show asked questions of him. Tom Selleck probably gave sincere answers and may have come across as a less interesting person than the winning contestants.
Candidates, if they're to succeed, study the kind of answers that get votes and those are the kind of answers they give the voters. It's no coincidence that, if you place Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign platform next to Barack Obama's 2008 platform, you'll see striking similarities. It's no coincidence that both platforms lay unused after the election. Obama ran against Bush's policies but, once elected, follows the same policies, allowing for a slight compass correction.
Rodney Alcala, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and our congressmen were chosen largely on their words and not on their deeds. Don't just read their lips; watch their hands.
What Rodney Alcala did with his lips on The Dating Game is completely at variance with what he did with his hands. He didn't just rape, torture, and murder his victims; he tortured them until they passed out; then he revived them so he could prolong their agony. After at least two such murders, a woman on The Dating Game, going by his words, decided that Alcala was someone she wanted to date. That sounds a lot like Bush, Obama, and many of our congressmen.
Bush spent $3 trillion of our money on a war based on lies, killing over a million Iraqi civilians in the process. Obama, with his lips, ran on a platform promising to end the genocide of Iraq. With his hands, he continues the genocide. In so doing, Bush and Obama rival Cambodia's Pol Pot. Congress, whom we elected, is supporting all that. Now they're getting ready to support an Israeli invasion of Iran, a country that hasn't started a war with another country in 360 years. We can end this madness by voting those accessories to mass murder out of office. In the meantime, we can contact our congressmen and tell them to back away from starting another war.
Bush spent $500 billion, borrowed against us, the taxpayers and our descendants, for a “bailout” that didn't save even one homeowner from foreclosure but protected the ill-gotten gains of Wall Street banksters, with no transparency or accountability. Obama multiplied that amount until it totaled several trillion dollars. Congress approved all that. We should hold our congressmen accountable by voting them out of office. Don't forget that there's a presidential election in another two years.
Recently, Congress approved a bill that's supposedly for “affordable health care.” It doesn't make health care affordable for even one American, but it enriches Big Pharma and insurance companies by trillions of dollars over the next ten years, at our expense. Congress, whom we elected, approved all that. Click to see how your senators and congressman voted.
If we base our electoral decisions on what our congressmen tell us in the heat of a campaign, we'll deserve more of the same. Check up on your congressman and senators and see how they voted on the issues that most matter to you. If you're still in doubt, vote him out.

Is Your Congressman a Prostitute?

Maybe you’ve seen the 1990 Julia Roberts movie Pretty Woman. In case you were fortunate enough to have missed it, I’ll give you a brief synopsis.
Richard Gere plays Edward Lewis, a money-obsessed, power-obsessed Manhattan big shot that pays a prostitute (Vivian, played by Julia Roberts) to masquerade as his girlfriend for a week. Notwithstanding anything you may have read about prostitutes in Ezekiel 23 or anywhere else, it’s considered a romantic movie. Leave it to Hollywood to make something that squalid appear romantic.
In a memorable scene that reminds me of Congress, Edward Lewis (Gere) lends Vivian (Roberts) his credit card, and she spends thousands of dollars on clothes. The Hollywood writers managed to give the viewers the feeling that Vivian was somehow entitled to all that money and to spend it with no sense of restraint whatsoever.
To draw a closer analogy between Pretty Woman and our not-so-pretty congressmen, let’s suppose Edward was using the company credit card intended for necessary expenses. Let’s further suppose that you had your life savings or retirement fund invested in the company that had issued the credit card to Edward. To wrap it up, let’s suppose that Vivian were your wife (or, if you’re a woman, let’s suppose she’s a he, and he’s your husband.) Now you have a picture of the relationship between Manhattan power brokers and the congressmen we elected to further our interests.
It gets worse. In the movie, Edward Lewis neglects Vivian almost every hour of every day, bringing her out only on social occasions. There’s at least an element of monogamy in their relationship. With Congress, it’s more like an orgy hosted by Roman Emperor Caligula. The invited guest include such sordid characters as Manhattan banksters, the pharmaceutical racketeers, war profiteers, health insurance shake-down artists, money changers, and lawyers.
Congressmen fall into prostitution in pretty much the same ways as other prostitutes.
Some, like Japan’s “comfort women” during World War II, are lured by promises of personal fulfillment while being of service to something larger than themselves. Once in, they find they are trapped.
Congressmen who fall into this category may (or may not) be rescued. Certain others enter the trade with one eye open. They’re total opportunists, but they set self-imposed limits which they mistake for principles. They promise themselves that they won’t end up like such-and-such another congressman. They always do. The odds are strongly against their ever being rescued.
Then, of course, there are the ones who are completely corrupt and know exactly what they’re doing. My religion and my experience teach me that even the worst prostitute (congressional and otherwise) may yet be redeemed. We start by removing them from the environment in which they get into trouble.
What about your congressman? For our opening discussion, let’s take a look at how each member of Congress voted on the “$700 billion bailout,” which quickly ballooned to $1.2 trillion in order to provide a $500 billion in bribes for congressmen. Once it was signed into law, it turned into a blank check costing the taxpayers $14 trillion with almost no accountability. Since then, several bills have been passed in an attempt to correct the problem after the money had already been stolen.
Is your congressman a prostitute or a faithful public servant? Prepare a barf bag before you click here. Your congressman's voting record may not be a pretty sight.