background preloader

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed’s Secret Loans

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed’s Secret Loans
Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits. By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Fed Chairman Ben S. “These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. (View the Bloomberg interactive graphic to chart the Fed’s financial bailout.) Foreign Borrowers It wasn’t just American finance. Peak Balance Odds of Recession Bank of America’s bond-insurance prices last week surged to a rate of $342,040 a year for coverage on $10 million of debt, above where Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Secret History: And Why Barack Obama Must End It The Great American Bubble Machine | Politics News The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. Invasion of the Home Snatchers By now, most of us know the major players. But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. The Feds vs. They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. BUBBLE #1 The Great Depression Goldman wasn't always a too-big-to-fail Wall Street behemoth, the ruthless face of kill-or-be-killed capitalism on steroids —just almost always. Where to go?

Damn It or Fear It, the Forbidden Truth Is There's an Insurrection in Britain On a warm spring day, strolling in south London, I heard demanding voices behind me. A police van disgorged a posse of six or more, who waved me aside. They surrounded a young black man who, like me, was ambling along. They appropriated him; they rifled his pockets, looked in his shoes, inspected his teeth. Their thuggery affirmed, they let him go with the barked warning there would be a next time. For the young at the bottom of the pyramid of wealth and patronage and poverty that is modern Britain, mostly the black, the marginalized and resentful, the envious and hopeless, there is never surprise. Such is the truth of David Cameron's "sick society," notably its sickest, most criminal, most feral "pocket": the square mile of the City of London where, with political approval, the banks and super-rich have trashed the British economy and the lives of millions. Armstrong: "Mr. Howe: "Of course not ... what I am concerned about is a young man Mark Duggan ... the police blew his head off."

Jackie O tapes to reveal her and JFK's affairs and who she believed was behind his death She will allegedly reveal affair with actor William HoldenBelieved Vice-President Johnson was behind husband's assassination By Liz Thomas Updated: 17:20 GMT, 8 August 2011 Former first lady Jackie Kennedy is said to have made the tapes within months of JFK's assassination Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal. The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him. She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald – long claimed to have been a lone assassin – merely part of a much larger conspiracy. Texas-born Mr Johnson, who served as the state’s governor and senator, completed Mr Kennedy’s term and went on to be elected president in his own right.

OccupyStream - Live Revolution Fed's $1.2 Trillion In Financial Sector Loans 'A Classic Case Of Moral Hazard' During the 2008 financial crisis, when the nation's banking system seemed on the verge of collapse, President George W. Bush authorized a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry. The U.S. At the same time, and in the years that followed, the Federal Reserve was undertaking its own rescue operation, in the form of private, previously undisclosed loans to banks and other institutions -- lending as much as $1.2 trillion, nearly twice the amount of the Treasury bailout, according to a data analysis performed by Bloomberg News and published on Monday. The scope of the Fed's private lending had previously only been guessed at, but figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Bloomberg News show that the nation's central banker issued loans to more than 300 institutions between August 2007 and April 2010, including over 100 loans of $1 billion or more. "It's completely valid at some point to say, 'Who did the borrowing?'"

MAJOR BANK MORTGAGE FRAUD - Unearthed on 60 Minutes USA Who is Linda Green? Well, seeing that Linda’s signature is shown on more than 20 different bank documents as being their Vice President, you would presume that’s what Linda is, a VP of a 20 banks…. But hang on… How is it possible to be a VP of over 20 banks at the same time? Turns out, Wall Street cut corners when it created those mortgage-backed investments that triggered the financial collapse. Now that banks want to evict people, they’re unwinding these exotic investments to find, that often, the legal documents behind the mortgages aren’t there. So what did the banks do? They employed sweat shop style workplaces to forge mortgage paperwork. Watch the video to find out how the banks accomplished it and meet the real life Linda Greens’ . VIDEO: CBS 60 Minutes - Aired 4th March 2011 Join Wake Up World's Ever Evolving Social Communities

CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About... The "Occupy Wall Street" protests are gaining momentum, having spread from a small park in New York to marches to other cities across the country. So far, the protests seem fueled by a collective sense that things in our economy are not fair or right. But the protesters have not done a good job of focusing their complaints—and thus have been skewered as malcontents who don't know what they stand for or want. (An early list of "grievances" included some legitimate beefs, but was otherwise just a vague attack on "corporations." Given that these are the same corporations that employ more than 100 million Americans and make the products we all use every day, this broadside did not resonate with most Americans). So, what are the protesters so upset about, really? Do they have legitimate gripes? To answer the latter question first, yes, they have very legitimate gripes.

Exclusive: Goldman Sachs VP Changed His Name, Now Advances Goldman Lobbying Interests As Top Staffer To Darrell Issa By Lee Fang on August 18, 2011 at 3:21 am "Exclusive: Goldman Sachs VP Changed His Name, Now Advances Goldman Lobbying Interests As Top Staffer To Darrell Issa" Peter Haller, also known as Peter Simonyi, a former Goldman Sachs VP now working for Chairman Issa to block regulations on Goldman Sachs Has Rep. In July, Issa sent a letter to top government regulators demanding that they back off and provide more justification for new margin requirements for financial firms dealing in derivatives. Issa’s demand to regulators is exactly what banks have been wishing for. Haller, as he is now known, went by the name Peter Simonyi until three years ago. It’s not the first time Haller has worked the revolving door to help out Goldman Sachs. When he took over the chairmanship of the Oversight Committee this year, Issa dramatically shifted the committee’s focus away from its traditional role of investigating major corporate scandals. Update We have contacted the House Oversight Committee and Mr.

Mujahideen-e Khalq: Former U.S. Officials Make Millions Advocating For Terrorist Organization WASHINGTON -- The ornate ballroom of the Willard Hotel buzzed with activity on a Saturday morning in July. Crowded together on the stage sat a cadre of the nation's most influential former government officials, the kind whose names often appear in boldface, who've risen above daily politics to the realm of elder statesmen. They were perched, as they so often are, below a banner with a benign conference title on it, about to offer words of pricey wisdom to an audience with an agenda. That agenda: to secure the removal of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) from the U.S. government's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. A Marxian Iranian exile group with cult-like qualities, Mujahideen-e Khalq was responsible for the killing of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s, along with staging a handful of bombings. Onstage next to former FBI director Louis Freeh sat Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and current MSNBC talking head; former Vermont Gov.

How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue. Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. “If you have a bazooka, and people know you have it, you’re not likely to take it out,” he said. A Different Message At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended. Stock Wipeout

Police scramble to fight flash-mob mayhem Law enforcement is scrambling to monitor crime planning on the Web London, Philadelphia and other cities have faced flash mobs of violent youths this summer Police says they believe these groups organize on social-media sites Official: Authorities should befriend suspects on social media to diffuse potential crime (CNN) -- This week in Germantown, Maryland, it took less than a minute for a flash mob of teenagers to descend on a 7-Eleven, ransack shelves and make off with hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. It's going to take much longer for police in Montgomery County to figure out how to prevent it from happening again. "We had always thought flash mobs happen in big cities. We are unprepared. Police in Maryland are not alone in their scramble to find creative, affordable and efficient ways to fight mayhem from flash mobs -- groups of people who gather in one location quickly after being summoned online. All-female flash mob robbery in DC Violent flash mobs slowed by new curfew .

Thom Hartmann: Debt is Not Money "Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs." --Thomas Jefferson letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. Are we standing at the edge of a Great Inflation (like Weimar Germany), a second Republican Great Depression, or a return to the middle class prosperity of the Roosevelt/Eisenhower New Deal era? Until Americans understand the difference between "money" and "debt," odds are its going to be one of the first two, at least over the next few years. Money "Money" is a convenient replacement for barter in an economy. Debt "Debt" is not money.

Revealed: huge increase in executive pay for America's top bosses | Business John Hammergren, CEO of healthcare provider McKesson, earned $145m last year. Photograph: George Nikitin/AP Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation. America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The Guardian's exclusive first look at the CEO pay survey from corporate governance group GMI Ratings will further fuel debate about America's widening income gap. Last year's survey, covering 2009, found pay rates were broadly flat following a decline in wages the year before. Still, there are no bankers among this year's big winners.

Related: