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"Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves."
Norm Franz in Money and Wealth in the New Millennium, 2001

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: It’s All Legal, Folks! (E246)" [02/08/12] [25:45] "We discuss the supercommittee that runs America, the perils of Draghi’s “blitz” and the IMF turnaround on austerity for Greece. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Gonzalo Lira about austerity, printing and running.[...]" 

UK: "Chancellor George Osborne Takes On 'Anti-Business Culture' " [02/08/12]   "Chancellor Of The Exchequer George Osborne has vowed to fight an "anti-business culture" in the UK, warning that the row over bonuses and pay threatens to undermine the jobs and prosperity provided by the free market economy. The chancellor's comments came as Labour sought to keep up the pressure on David Cameron over "excessive" City pay, using a House of Commons debate to demand a repeat of the tax on bankers' bonuses. Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna dismissed suggestions that Labour was being "anti-business" by focusing on the massive rewards handed out to some of those at the top of the financial sector. Large bonuses in banks bailed out by the taxpayer should be paid only when they reflect "genuinely exceptional performance", he said. [...]"  

Commentary:  "Obama Freezes Iranian Government, Central Bank Assets in U.S." [02/07/12] "Obama has ordered new sanctions on the Islamic republic, including its Central Bank, in a move to enforce a law he signed in December. In a letter to Congress Monday, Obama said the tougher sanctions are warranted “particularly in light of the deceptive practices of the Central Bank of Iran and other Iranian banks.” He said the problems included the hiding transactions of sanctioned parties, the deficiencies of Iran’s anti-money laundering regime and the unacceptably high risk posed to the entire international financial system posed by Iran’s activities. The Central Bank sanctions were included as an amendment in the wide-ranging defense bill Obama signed into law at the end of 2011. The White House said Obama signed the executive order approving the sanctions on Sunday, well ahead of the six-month window he was afforded in the defense bill. Obama’s fresh swipe at Tehran come as the White House tries to both ratchet up pressure on the Islamic republic to abandon its nuclear program and dissuade Israel from launching a unilateral strike on Iran, a move that could roil the Middle East and jolt the global economy. [...]"  Related: "Executive Order -- Blocking Property of the Government of Iran and Iranian Financial Institutions"  

MSM: "Nigel Farage: 'For Greece It's Diplomacy At Gunpoint, And Portugal Is Next'" [02/06/12] [2:35] " Brussels, 1 February 2012 [...]"  Note: Transcript

MSM: "States Seek Currencies Made of Silver and Gold" [02/05/12] "A growing number of states are seeking shiny new currencies made of silver and gold. Worried that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. dollar are on the brink of collapse, lawmakers from 13 states, including Minnesota, Tennessee, Iowa, South Carolina and Georgia, are seeking approval from their state governments to either issue their own alternative currency or explore it as an option. Just three years ago, only three states had similar proposals in place. “In the event of hyperinflation, depression, or other economic calamity related to the breakdown of the Federal Reserve System … the State’s governmental finances and private economy will be thrown into chaos,” said North Carolina Republican Representative Glen Bradley in a currency bill he introduced last year. [...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: The Vaporized And The Deleted (E245)" [02/05/12] [25:44] "We discuss the vaporized and the deleted – the new American soap opera in which the assets, wealth, jobs and economy of the 99% have been stolen. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Daniel Collins of TheChinaMoneyReport.com about China’s imports of gold and their recent purchases of Germany’s legendary mittelstands. [...]" 

Commentary: "Counterfeit Value Derivatives: Follow the Bouncing Ball" [02/05/12] "Here is how the counterfeit value derivative con works. It’s a game of “I pretend, you pretend, we all pretend, and the taxpayer will pay in the end”.  [...]"  Note: Very succinct.

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Chutzpah Economics (E244)" [02/04/12] [25:45] "In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss chutzpah economics, unrequited transfers and shakedowns. In the second half of the show, Max talks to economist, Saifedean Ammous, about the standoff between Egypt and the IMF debt pushers as well as the war against the online free market by Hollywood middlemen. [...]" 

Commentary: "S.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions for Large Banks" [02/04/12] "Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street in the last decade, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments specifically meant to apply to fraud cases. By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.  [...]"  

Commentary: "Greece Warns It Will Soon Be In “Condition Of Absolute Poverty" [02/03/12] "And while the bankers (on both sides of the table) haggle about how to best leech Greece even dryer (with a solution due any hour, day, week now), the actual people are starting to wave the white flag of surrender. Because the opportunity cost of every additional coupon payment is having a direct, immediate and increasingly more dire impact on virtually every aspect of the economy. Kathimerini reports that “about 160,000 jobs will be lost this year in the commerce sector, according to the National Confederation of Greek Commerce (ESEE) as the constant decline in disposable income has led to a sharp drop in turnover and a steep rise in the number of enterprises shutting down.” Indicatively, the latest Greek employment figures per the IMF, show that 4.156MM people are employed. So commerce alone is about to lead to a 4% drop in total jobs. As the chart below shows, net of just this sector, Greek jobs are about to go back to 2010 levels. What this means for the Greek unemployment rate, and for GDP we leave to our readers, although the ESEE does a good job of summarizing what to expect: the “ESEE warns that soon Greece will be in a condition of absolute poverty.” And that, ladies and gents, is how Europe slowly but surely reentered the Feudal age, and what every other country in the European periphery that has a massive debt load, and no surplus (actually make that every country in the world), has to look forward to: absolute poverty, aka debt slavery. [...]" 

Commentary:  "European Fiscal Pact: Int’l. Financial Dictatorship" [02/02/12] "Monday’s meeting of the European Union in Brussels resulted in agreement of 25 of the 27 member states to inflict upon themselves and their hapless and increasingly powerless citizenry the tools of international fiscal dictatorship. The purpose of the “fiscal pact” is to enforce “budgetary discipline” so that the present euro crisis can be contained and future such crises averted. In the short run that means granting the European Central Bank (ECB) additional power to expand its reserves so that bailouts to failing countries can continue, subject to enforcement rules. In the longer run, the pact puts in place the primary tool of coercion, the European Stability Mechanism, to be effective in July. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said that initially the ESM will be limited to just €500 billion ($650 billion) but that the ultimate number “will be reassessed down the line.” Critics say that’s the entire purpose of the ESM: to set up the mechanism of control under the guise of providing bailout funds to members in need while installing ruling class elites (bankers with ties to Goldman Sachs) out of reach of the taxpayer class. Angela Merkel, German Chancellor and mouthpiece for the ESM, was clear: “It is an important step forward to a stability union. For those looking at the union and the euro from the outside, it is very important to show this commitment.” [...]" 

MSM: "Wall Street Lobbyists Could Severely Weaken Derivative Regulation" [02/01/12] "Some of the country's largest banks -- including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America -- are lobbying Congress to grant regulatory exceptions for derivatives traded outside the U.S. Each of these banks has at least half its assets in overseas operations, according to Bloomberg, meaning that hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of trading could lie outside the scope of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill if the lobbyists are successful. [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Starving The Economy (E243)" [01/28/12] [25:51] "We discuss banking zombies and clowns and their magical thinking on zero rates while starving the economy of interest income. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Ned Naylor-Leyland about the silver, gold, backwardation, manipulation and more. [...]" 

MSM: "Blythe Masters to Take Over as Chair of GFMA " [02/01/12] "We reported earlier that Monday's A.M. City reports that Blythe Masters is leaving JP Morgan to take over as the Head of Rates and Commodities at Deutsche Bank. Tyler Durden has contacted The Doc to advise he believes that Blythe is taking over for Deutsche Bank's Michele Faissola as head of the GFMA, and will also retain her role as head of Commodities at JPM. Rather than fleeing a sinking ship, apparently JP Morgan is attempting to widen their PM suppression influence into Europe.  [...]"  Note: She is the one who created CDOs and derivatives in the first place. I call her The Galactic Bitch, because she essentially caused the destruction of the entire economy of the planet.

MSM: "Germany's Desperate Plans Spark Fears Over 'Economic Occupation' In Europe" [02/01/12] "Greece roundly rejected a German plan, revealed last week, to hand power over the country's budget to the European Union as its failure to push through economic reforms continues to endanger the stability of the eurozone. That same weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she would be prepared to actively campaign for her French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, as he prepares to fight off a strong challenge from Francois Hollande - his socialist rival who has promised to renegotiate the EU's hard-won agreement over a continent-wide fiscal compact. Sarkozy dismissed the reports, saying that he was unaware that Merkel was able to vote in France. The damage may have been done. Both incidents highlight the concern that a new fiscal union is creating a momentum that will inevitably lead to an erosion of sovereignty in individual countries in the eurozone, and that electorates will begin to lose influence over their economic affairs. While appearing rational from a Northern European perspective, such reports play into a long-running suspicion in the periphery that the economic dominance of Germany may lead to it imposing its own social and economic models on the south. It is a dangerous game.  [...]" 

MSM: "Royal Bank of Scotland Ex-CEO Stripped Of Knighthood Over Financial Crisis" [02/01/12] "Former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Fred Goodwin, who led the bank into near collapse, has been stripped of his knighthood, the British government said Tuesday. The Cabinet Office said the knighthood had been "cancelled and annulled" because Goodwin had brought the honours system into disrepute. Revoking knighthoods is rare, but the government said "the scale and severity of the impact of his actions as CEO of RBS made this an exceptional case." Since he left RBS in 2008 with a multimillion-dollar pension as the bank was foundering, Goodwin has become, in the view of many Britons, a high-profile public villain of the financial crisis. [...]"  Note: Now he's called "Sir Fucksupalot".

Commentary: "Canadian Lawful Access Bills: 'Enormous Financial Burden' For Business" [02/01/12] "Better ways to interpret data, not more access to private information, is what law enforcement agencies need, according to opponents of the so-called “lawful access” bills – a set of proposed laws that would make it easier for police to access and track information about individuals through communication technologies such as the Internet, smartphones and other mobile devices. Last Friday, privacy advocates in academia, government, and public sectors got together in a symposium to explain why the bills should be strongly opposed. “My two main issues with these bills are that: 1) The powers given to the police and lack of judicial oversight erodes civil rights; and 2) this will be an enormous financial and management burden for telcos, ISPs (Internet service providers), social networks and other business,” said Ann Cavoukian, information and privacy commissioner of Ontario. Cavoukian, who has long espoused embedding privacy safeguards in technology and business processes through such initiatives as Privacy by Design and Privacy by Re-design, spearheaded last Friday's event that was aptly called Beware of ‘Surveillance by Design:' Stand up for freedom and privacy. [...]"  

MSM: "SEC Probes Deutsche Bank's 'Crap' Subprime CDOs" [02/01/12] "The Securities and Exchange Commission investigates a Wall Street behemoth over claims that it assembled and sold a package of subprime mortgage-backed securities at the behest of hedge fund king John Paulson without telling other investors that Paulson planned to short it. Sound familiar? Almost two years ago, Goldman Sachs was in the SEC's cross hairs over such an allegedly fraudulent scenario and ended up settling charges for $550 million, but not without becoming the poster boy for Wall Street shenanigans that helped crash the economy. Now, it's Deutsche Bank that is being probed by the SEC, Der Spiegel reports, for allegedly letting Paulson help pick "junk" mortgage-backed securities that went into a collateralized debt obligation without telling other investors that the hedge funder was shorting the CDO, called START. Deutsche Bank was the fourth-largest issuer of CDOs in the United States, but it has largely avoided the glare of a federal investigation while its competitors, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan, have all been probed by the SEC over how they marketed deals involving subprime mortgage-backed securities. The agency has come under criticism for that lapse, with particular focus on the fact that the SEC's enforcement chief, Robert Khuzami, previously worked as the general counsel at Deutsche Bank when it was packaging such CDOs. The bank gained a certain infamy for its role in packaging START, as well as other CDOs, during hearings led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) last year. It was revealed then that Deutsche banker Greg Lippman once advised a colleague to buy protection for the bank against START, emailing him: "Start is crap you should short because I bet we'll have to ... buyback cash ones next year." [...]"  

MSM: "Canada Housing Market Beginning To Resemble U.S.'s Subprime Mess" [02/01/12] "Canada’s financial regulator is growing worried that Canadian banks are following their American counterparts into the “subprime” mortgage market that blew up the financial system in 2008. According to documents obtained by Bloomberg under access to information laws, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) is concerned Canadian banks are becoming less strict in their issuance of mortgages, handing out house loans to people who can’t prove their income and to recent immigrants. These loans “have some similarities to non-prime loans in the U.S. retail lending market,” the OSFI reportedly wrote. However, the situation in Canada is not as out of hand as it had become in the U.S. prior to the housing market collapse. At the peak of the U.S. housing bubble, in 2006, about one-third of all mortgages issued in the U.S. were in the “subprime” category; by comparison, only about five per cent of Canadian mortgages go to recent immigrants and people with undocumented incomes. “It just speaks to the general easing in lending standards, which has contributed to a booming housing market,” economist David Madani of Capital Economics told Bloomberg. [...]"  

MSM: "Auction 2012: How The Bank Lobby Owns Washington" [01/31/12] [8:21] "Auction 2012 is a weeklong series in collaboration with "The Dylan Ratigan Show" and United Republic. When Washington puts policy on the auction block, bankers are consistently the highest bidders. The industry's most striking victory has been the watering down of post-financial crisis reforms, to the point that banks are now bigger than ever and the bonuses keep flowing. But Wall Street's campaign spending and lobbying power is so intimidating that banks have repeatedly stuck the public with the tab for their losses and no one in Washington stops them. [...]"  

MSM: "Sarkozy Announces French Financial Transaction Tax" [01/31/12] "French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced plans to introduce a tax on financial transactions. The 0.1% levy will be introduced in August regardless of whether other European countries follow suit. The tax is part of a package of measures set out by the president to promote growth and create jobs. "What we want to do is create a shockwave and set an example that there is absolutely no reason why those who helped bring about the crisis shouldn't pay to restore the finances," he said.  [...]"  

MSM: "Czechs And UK Refuse EU Agreement" [01/31/12] "Twenty-five of the 27 EU members agree to sign a fiscal pact setting up stricter rules to try to prevent future debt crises, with the UK and Czech Republic refusing. [...]"  

MSM: "Congress Moves to Ban Its Own Insider Trading" [01/31/12] "Soon, insider trading may be illegal for lawmakers, too. In an effort to boost its historically low approval rating, the Senate will today hold a procedural vote allowing it to later this week pass a bill banning Congress from trading on nonpublic info, or giving that info to others to trade on, the AP reports. Similar legislation is in the works in the House. The moves follow a series of reports on Congress' insider trading, including a November 60 Minutes piece throwing suspicion on John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Spencer Bachus. "We can start restoring some of the faith that's been lost in our government" by making Congress "play by the exact same rules as everyone else," says Kirsten Gillibrand, who wrote the Senate version. In the House, Eric Cantor is trying to expand the bill to hit not just stocks, but land deals and other investments as well. [...]"  Note: Now that the society is essentially over with, and they've got their millions.

MSM: "Freddie Mac Betting Against Struggling Homeowners" [01/31/12] "Freddie Mac, a taxpayer-owned mortgage company, is supposed to make homeownership easier. One thing that makes owning a home more affordable is getting a cheaper mortgage. But Freddie Mac has invested billions of dollars betting that U.S. homeowners won’t be able to refinance their mortgages at today’s lower rates, according to an investigation by NPR and ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom. These investments, while legal, raise concerns about a conflict of interest within Freddie Mac. “We were actually shocked they did this,” says Scott Simon, who heads the mortgage-backed securities team at the giant bond trading and investment firm called PIMCO. “It seemed so out of line with their mission, out of line with what Congress wanted them to do.” [...]" Related: "Bets Against Homeowners Must Stop, Freddie Mac Was Told" 

Commentary:  "Currency Warfare: What Are The Real Targets Of The E.U. Oil Embargo Against Iran?" [01/31/12]   "The end of Iranian oil exports to the European Union and the decline of the euro will directly benefit the United States and the American dollar. What the European Union is doing is merely weaken itself and giving the American dollar the upper hand in its currency rivalry against the euro. Moreover, should the euro collapse, the American dollar will quickly fill much of the void... Moreover, the rise in everyday prices, ranging from food to transportation, will not be limited to the European Union, but will have global ramifications. As prices rise on a global scale, the economies in Latin American, Caribbean, African, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Pacific countries will face new hardship...
  [...]" 

MSM: "Ratings Agencies Quizzed Over MF Global" [01/30/12] "Moody’s Investors Service “did not have any understanding” that MF Global, the failed futures broker, had placed a $6.3bn proprietary bet on the debt of troubled European sovereigns until about a week before the brokerage filed for bankruptcy, despite MF Global’s disclosure of the gamble some five months earlier in May. The revelation, made in a letter by the agency to Congress, comes as US lawmakers plan this week to grill executives at Moody’s and rival Standard & Poor’s on what they knew and when ahead of the broker’s collapse on October 31. The bankrupt brokerage is in lawmakers’ crosshairs due to some $1.2bn in missing customer funds. Three months after MF Global’s failure, investigators have yet to determine the whereabouts of the missing cash. S&P participated in a conference call on August 31 with MF Global’s top executives at which the agency was told that the brokerage’s regulators required it to boost the amount of capital held against those bonds, a disclosure MF Global made the next day to investors.  [...]"  

Commentary: "Elitist Rioters Run The Global Financial System, And They Are Using America To Create Hell on Earth" [01/30/12] "The elitist manipulators of human destiny and human history know that they have lost the trust of the people of the planet, but they're confident that an authoritarian global government will solve all their problems. They speak of a "new age" and a "new world order" and they plan to start World War III by attacking Iran which would mark the end of this dead age. Since war is the father of change, the mad men in the Western power elite need their big war with Iran to advance their plot for a new world order. Unleashing mass death, mass destruction, and mass misery upon the world is the only way these freaks can retain their absolute power over mankind in the new age that is already here. [...]" 

MSM: "At World Economic Forum, Fear of Global Contagion Dominates " [01/29/12] "They came, they feasted on smoked sturgeon and black truffle risotto, drank liquor paid for by global banks, endured dozens of security checks, and tried not to fall down in the snow. They talked about the perilous state of the global economy and the future of capitalism. Then, they headed back to their home countries -- many in chauffeured limousines, some by private jet. But as the people who run much of the planet wrapped up the annual festival of influence known as the World Economic Forum on Saturday, any sense of achievement was hard to discern. The participants arrived amid elevated unemployment in many economies, worries about government budget deficits, and fears that contagion from a financial crisis in Europe could infect the rest of the world. They went home with all of these worries intact, and perhaps reinforced. Nouriel Roubini, the economist who -- not for nothing -- is known as "Doctor Doom," noted that world leaders are divided on a great array of crucial issues, from arguments over trade imbalances and currency valuations to the threats posed by Iran and North Korea and the challenge of climate change.  [...] In private conversations here this week, senior officials from the United States, Europe and Asia expressed a mixture of resignation and alarm that Greece may yet default on its government debts, despite several efforts by eurozone members to cobble together a credible rescue. Some warned that such an outcome could spook investors into pulling funds out of larger economies such as Italy and Spain, raising the prospect of defaults in those countries. A few suggested this could eventually trigger the breakup of the eurozone and the end of its shared currency, an event that could produce panic rivaling that seen after the investment banking giant Lehman Brothers collapsed more than three years ago. In a riveting address here on Saturday, Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang recalled his place at the epicenter of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, and the experience of the 2008 global credit pullback, asserting that the current situation is worse. "I've never been as scared as now about the world, what is happening in Europe," he said. [...] "  

MSM: "Close Ties to Goldman Enrich Romney’s Public and Private Lives" [01/29/12] "When Bain Capital sought to raise money in 1989 for a fast-growing office- supply company named Staples, Mitt Romney, Bain’s founder, called upon a trusted business partner: Goldman Sachs, whose bankers led the company’s initial public offering. When Mr. Romney became governor of Massachusetts, his blind trust gave Goldman much of his wealth to manage, a fortune now estimated to be as much as $250 million. And as Mr. Romney mounts his second bid for the presidency, Goldman is coming through again: Its employees have contributed at least $367,000 to his campaign, making the firm Mr. Romney’s largest single source of campaign money through the end of September. ... His federal financial disclosure statements show Mr. Romney and his wife, their blind trusts and their family foundation to be prodigious consumers of the bank’s services. In 2011, Mr. Romney’s blind trust and the couple’s retirement accounts held as much as $36.7 million in at least two dozen Goldman investment vehicles, earning as much as $3 million a year in income. Mrs. Romney’s trust had at least $10.2 million in Goldman funds — possibly much more — earning as much as $6.2 million.  [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: The State of the Banana Republic (E242)" [01/28/12] [25:46] "In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss the State of the Banana Republic, the blowout at Apple with its profits “trapped” overseas and the gloomy State of the Stiff Upper Lip as UK family debts soar by nearly 50%. And, finally, Max and Stacy examine a proposal that bankers like Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon, should compete like strippers on the open job market. [...]" 

Commentary:  "The Silent Anschluss: Germany Formally Requests That Greece Hand Over Its Fiscal Independence" [01/28/12] "It was tried previously (several times) under "slightly different" circumstances, and failed. Yet when it comes to taking over a country without spilling even one drop of blood, and converting its citizens into debt slaves, Germany's Merkel may have just succeeded where so many of her predecessors failed. According to a Reuters exclusive, "Germany is pushing for Greece to relinquish control over its budget policy to European institutions [ZH: read ze Germans] as part of discussions over a second rescue package, a European source told Reuters on Friday." [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Killing Hollywood (E241)" [01/28/12] [27:38] "In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss killing Hollywood, poor Chris Dodd and how Mubarak’s fall brought about an assault on the internet. In the second half of the show, Max interviews Mike Ruppert about SOPA, the NDAA and Iranian oil. [...]" 

MSM: "Insider Trading Bill To Receive Senate Vote Next Week" [01/27/12] "A Senate bill banning the trading of corporate stocks by members of Congress based on nonpublic political information will see a vote next week, according to Democratic sources working on the bill. "It'll be on the floor next week, either hotlined or an actual vote," one source said of the bill, known as the STOCK Act. Hotlining refers to the process of moving a bill through by unanimous consent. A separate Democratic aide said that negotiations over amendments were still ongoing, which would make hotlining more difficult. A Democratic leadership aide, meanwhile, would only say that a vote was "possible." The STOCK Act, authored by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.), would ban trading by members of Congress guided by nonpublic economic or political information. It would also improve disclosures of all stock trades and other financial maneuvers by members of Congress, by requiring them to publicly detail each transaction within 30 days. Lawmakers are currently granted a full year of secrecy before disclosing such financial activities. The bill received a big boost on Tuesday when Obama called for its enactment during the State of the Union address. [...]" 

MSM: "Tobin Tax: David Cameron Criticizes The Idea In Davos" [01/27/12] "Thursday, January 26, in his speech to World Economic Forum in Davos , British Prime Minister felt that the timing of the proposed Tobin tax was "madness" and that it would cost to Europe about 500,000 jobs. Cameron added that the Franco-German tax on financial trading could lower the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the euro zone by about 200 billion euros. He then insisted that Europe's political leaders are walking in the footsteps of British economic policy under penalty of being faced with a situation "dangerous". Asking Europe to make "bold decisions" to overcome the crisis, Cameron highlighted the efforts to be made in three areas in 2012: [...]"  

Legal Case: "Citigroup Faces New $1 Billion Lawsuit Over CDO Fraud" [01/26/12] "Citigroup Inc was sued for fraud by Loreley Financing over nearly $1 billion worth of collateralized debt obligations purchased in 2006 and 2007. Citigroup is accused of defrauding Loreley into purchasing "fraudulent investments that are now worthless," Loreley said in a complaint filed Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Citi used the CDOs to offload the risks of toxic mortgage-backed securities on its books and to help preferred clients "short" the housing market, the lawsuit claims. The case is Loreley Financing v. Citigroup Global Markets, 650212/2012, New York State Supreme Court. [...]"  

Commentary: "7 People Charged In The FBI's Insider Trading Probe" [01/26/12] "The FBI finally made a move in a mounting insider-trading investigation with three early- morning arrests. News of the probe has been leaked in the press the last two years, and those who have been following the headlines can see familiar names and financial firms in the news today—Level Global, Diamondback Capital, SAC Capital, etc. Overall, federal officials have charged seven individuals with securities fraud. Of the seven, three were arrested, one surrendered and three have been informants that are cooperating in the case. So who are these seven and what exactly are the FBI claiming they each did? Officials will publicize the information today in a press conference at 1 p.m., but we've already gone through the court complaint and various media reports to find out. [...]"  

MSM: "Capitalism Seen in Crisis by Global Investors Citing Widening Inequalities" [01/26/12] "International investors say capitalism is in crisis, with almost one in three backing radical changes to the system, according to a Bloomberg survey. As the global financial and business elite gather in Davos for their annual forum, a majority in the Bloomberg Global Poll agree that income inequality hurts the economy and that governments need to do something to address it -- ideas at the heart of “Occupy” protests worldwide. Those surveyed also voice reservations about the financial industry’s role in society, with seven in 10 seeing at least some truth in the argument that banks have too much power over governments. “Capitalism is in crisis because there is a huge and growing disparity in income/wealth distribution in Western economies, and an equally divisive generational disparity,” poll participant Michael Derks, chief strategist for FXPro Financial Services broker in London, said in an e-mail. [...]"  

Commentary:  "Iceland Declares Independence from International Banks" [01/25/12] "Iceland is free. And it will remain so, so long as her people wish to remain autonomous of the foreign domination of her would-be masters — in this case, international bankers. This is just the latest in the long drama since 2008 of global institutions refusing to take losses in the financial crisis. Threats of a global economic depression and claims of being “too big to fail” have equated to a loaded gun to the heads of representative governments in the U.S. and Europe. Iceland is of particular interest because it did not bail out its banks like Ireland did, or foreign ones like the U.S. did. [...]"  

MSM: "$10 Million In Software Stolen From NY Fed By Chinese Contractor" [01/25/12] "Software code is one of the most valuable assets. To this end, they have many tough security precautions to keep control of it. But government organizations also have valuable computer code. Just look at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. According to a report in Reuters, a Chinese hacker stole some of its software code. The estimated value: about $10 million. What’s worse is that the alleged hacker was a contractor for the NY Fed. Basically, he just used an external drive to snag the software code. The good news is that the hacker has been arrested and charged with one count of stealing federal government property (the maximum sentence is 10 years). And yes, the NY Fed says it will beef up its security. Yet this should be a wake-up call for other government agencies to make sure its intellectual property is much more secure. [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Dangerous Species of Bankers (E240)" [01/24/12] [25:46] "In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss Google searching Davos; the Federal Open Market Committee getting high on its own money supply; bankers leaving the planet to live in parallel universes and the evidence for the manipulation of precious metals. [...]" 

Commentary:  "The Global Elite Are Hiding 18 Trillion Dollars In Offshore Banks" [01/24/12] "In recent days, the fact that Mitt Romney has millions of dollars parked down in the Cayman Islands has made headlines all over the world. But when it comes to offshore banking, what Mitt Romney is doing is small potatoes. The truth is that the global elite are hiding an almost unbelievable amount of money in offshore banks. According to shocking research done by the IMF, the global elite are holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore banks. And that figure does not even count any money being held in Switzerland. That is a staggering amount of money. Keep in mind that U.S. GDP in 2010 was only 14.58 trillion dollars. So why do the global elite go to such trouble to hide their money in offshore banks? Well, there are two main reasons. One is privacy and the other is low taxation.  [...]"  

MSM: "International Criminal Court in The Hague to Go After Financial Human Rights Abuses and Financial Terrorism" [01/24/12] "An international tribunal to settle financial disputes throughout the world has opened in the Dutch city of The Hague on Monday. The tribunal’s name, PRIME Finance, stands for Panel of Recognized International Market Experts in Finance. The team of judges includes almost 100 people, whose work will be supported by international legal and market experts. The establishment of new legal institution has been supported by the City of The Hague and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, and will be housed in The Hague’s Peace Palace. It is also home to the United Nations International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Sinking Ship In Credit Sea (E239)" [01/24/12] [26:40] "In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss captains of the financial industry abandoning ship while tripping into TARP. In the second half of the show, Max talks to former oil market regulator Chris Cook about the imminent collapse of the oil market and the role of Goldman Sachs, BP and passive investors in driving the price of oil. [...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Scam On Epic Scale (E238)" [01/24/12] [26:58] "In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss 419 scams and Tim Geithner’s gimp. In the second half of the show, Max talks to financial blogger and semi-retired Wall Street executive Warren E. Pollock about MF Global, wealth confiscation and bank holidays.[...]" 

MSM: "IMF Seeks $600 Billion More In Funds" [01/19/12] "The International Monetary Fund is seeking to boost its war chest by $600 billion to help countries reeling from the euro zone debt crisis, but some nations insist Europe must first do more to support its ailing members, international financial sources said on Wednesday. Group of 20 officials will discuss increasing IMF resources at a meeting in Mexico City on Thursday and Friday, the first under Mexico's 2012 presidency of the group of developed and emerging economies. [...] Emerging market countries such as China and Brazil have said they are willing to contribute new resources to the Washington-based global lender in exchange for greater voting power. Emerging market powers have repeatedly argued in recent times that their power at the IMF should be increased to reflect their growing clout in the world economy. Getting more resources from advanced economies, such as the United States, is going to be difficult, if not impossible. With a strained budget at home, some U.S. congressional Republicans have threatened to yank $100 billion in U.S. money to the IMF if the funds are used to bail out more euro zone countries. The White House is unlikely to want to take on the issue as President Barack Obama seeks reelection this year."  

UK: "Ireland Facing A Decade Of Austerity" [01/19/12] "... Last week, a leading Citigroup analyst claimed that Ireland’s state debt was unsustainably high, advising the government to make preparations for the extension of financial support from the EU and the International Monetary Fund immediately before the current bailout programme runs out next year. Willem Buiter stated that it made “good business sense” to avoid borrowing on the open market at 8 percent, as Ireland would have to do. Ireland was “not like Greece”, but nonetheless required additional help to control its debt burden, he said. [...] Representatives of the so-called troika—the EU, IMF and European Central Bank (ECB)—have insisted that cuts in social protection and welfare form the “bulk of savings” for the state. Its estimates suggest that in next year’s budget, there will be cuts of €3.5 billion, including €2.25 billion in spending cuts and €1.25 billion in tax hikes. The Irish Times described such a prospect as “unprecedented for Ireland.”"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Economics of Suicide (E237)" [01/19/12] [26:27] "In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, cover the great unmentionables: Ron Paul, Vermin Supreme and blackstonesucks.com. In the second half of the show, Max and Stacy discuss Treasury Secretary Geithner trying to coax China into committing economic suicide and learning your maths in America by counting slaves.[...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Wall Street Gangsta! (E236)" [01/18/12] [25:44] "In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss corruption with a clean face and Jamie "Spaghetti Face" Dimon. In the second half of the show, Max talks to investment adviser and blogger Michael Krieger about Ron Paul, the Fed and political futures.[...]" 

MSM: "FDIC Requires Big Banks to Have Breakup Plan" [01/18/12] "The largest banks must show how they would break up their assets if they were in danger of failing, under a rule approved Tuesday. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp voted to require banks with $50 billion or more in assets to submit so-called living wills. Seven banks with more than $250 billion in assets will have to show their plans by July 2012. The other 30 affected by the rule have until 2013. The FDIC also proposed a separate rule that would require banks with more than $10 billion in assets to conduct annual stress tests. The tests show how each bank is positioned to handle worsening economic conditions, such as increasing unemployment and falling home prices. The regulator put the rule out for public comment and is expected to finalize it by July. It will affect roughly 190 banks. Both rules were mandated under the 2010 financial overhaul. By requiring banks to have living wills, the government is trying to reduce the need for another Wall Street bailout like the one that took place during the 2008 financial crisis. The 37 banks affected by the rule hold roughly $4.1 trillion in insured deposits, or about 61 percent of U.S. insured deposits as of Sept. 30, 2011. The largest include JPMorgan Chase [JPM 34.91 -1.01 (-2.81%) ], Bank of America [BAC 6.48 -0.13 (-1.97%) ], Citibank [C 28.215 -2.525 (-8.21%) ], Wells Fargo [WFC 29.825 0.215 (+0.73%) ], U.S. Bank, PNC [PNC 61.24 -0.49 (-0.79%) ] and Bank of New York Mellon [BK 21.27 -0.18 (-0.84%) ]. Annual stress tests help the government monitor the financial strength of banks. The 19 largest U.S. banks already undergo annual stress tests, which are conducted by the Federal Reserve. The proposed stress tests would be in addition to those. Under the proposal, the banks would be required to submit reports on the results of their stress tests to regulators and to publish a summary of the results. The results show whether banks have enough cash and cash-like securities on their balance sheets to offset potential losses from risky loans. And they also show whether a bank is in position to withstand an economic downturn. [...]"  

MSM: "U.S. Treasury Dips Into Pension Funds To Avoid Debt Limit" [01/18/12] "The U.S. Treasury on Tuesday started dipping into federal pension funds in order to give the Obama administration more credit to pay government bills. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on Wednesday on the Obama administration's request to raise the country's legal debt limit to $16.394 trillion. However, unless the lower chamber and the Senate are able to shore up enough votes to block the White House request, the debt limit will be increased by $1.2 trillion next Friday and a repeat of last year's debt ceiling debacle will be averted.  [...] Geithner said Treasury started suspending reinvestments in a federal pension fund known as the G-Fund -- a tool Treasury has had to employ six times over the past 20 years in order to keep the country below the statutory debt limit. The Treasury Department has already tapped another seldom-used fund in order to allow the government to continue borrowing without running afoul of the country's laws. "  

MSM: "U.S. Lawmakers Proposed $1 Trillion In New Spending Last Year" [01/18/12] "Despite endless talk of spending cuts and fiscal restraint in Washington over the past year, lawmakers continued to act as though the government doesn't spend nearly enough. They introduced 874 bills in the House and Senate that would have boosted annual federal spending by more than $1 trillion if they'd all been signed into law, according to an analysis done for IBD by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. In contrast, lawmakers offered up just 215 bills to cut spending last year that would have reduced federal outlays by about half a trillion had they all been signed into law. [...]"  Note: It's interesting that Ron Paul wants to cut that same $1 trillion ... except that he is taking it out of the social programs and safety nets that the public has grown to depend on for their existence. Regardless, there will be NO cuts during 2012 because it's an 'election year' ....

Commentary: "Financial Clearing Houses: The Next Casualty Of The Crisis" [01/17/12] "Clearing houses -- the plumbers of high finance -- could become the next casualties of the crisis as regulators insist that banks run their riskiest and private trades through them. At the moment banks conduct over-the-counter trades between themselves: one to one dealings often involving multimillion-euro bets on differences in interest or other rates, the scale and complexity of which can be difficult to track. But with the financial crisis still raging and banks, hedge funds and governments alike faced with unforeseen levels of debt, regulators are now forcing this shadowy, $600-trillion industry into the light. The question being asked by industry insiders is whether the clearing houses, also known as central counterparties (CCPs), are any more secure. "What happens if they go bust? I can tell you the simple answer: mayhem. As bad as, conceivably worse than, the failure of large and complex banks," Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, said in October. Clearing houses, such LCH.Clearnet, Deutsche Boerse's Eurex Clearing and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's CME Clearing, sit between the parties at either end of a trade. They protect companies from default because they hold collateral on behalf of their numerous members that can be used to reimburse individual firms if one member becomes insolvent -- a standard model used in various exchange-traded markets around the world. But in taking on over-the-counter (OTC) products the concern is that the clearing houses will not have sufficient collateral to cover the scale of possible future positions. [...]"  

Commentary:  "Everything You Need To Know About Wall Street, In One Brief Tale"  Matt Taibbi [01/17/12] " If there was ever a news story that crystalized the moral dementia of modern Wall Street in one little vignette, this is it. Newspapers in Colorado today are reporting that the elegant Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado, will be closed to the public from today through Monday at noon. Why? Because a local squire has apparently decided to rent out all 94 rooms of the hotel for three-plus days for his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. The hotel’s general manager, Tony DiLucia, would say only that the party was being thrown by a "nice family," but newspapers are now reporting that the Daddy of the lucky little gal is one Jeffrey Verschleiser, currently an executive with Goldman, Sachs. At first, I couldn't remember how I knew that name. But then I looked it up and saw an explosive Atlantic magazine story, published last year, called, "E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out Of Millions." [...]" 

MSM: "Iran Rial Slides, 'Dollar' Text Messages Appear Blocked" [01/16/12] "Iran's currency has slid 20 percent against the dollar in the last week despite central bank intervention, and Iranians concerned about the economy said on Tuesday attempts to send text messages using the word "dollar" appeared to be blocked. The central bank reportedly pumped $200 million dollars into the market last Wednesday after new and much tougher U.S. sanctions prompted nervous Iranians to change rials into hard currency, accelerating a rise in the price of dollars on the open market. [...]" Related: "US Seeking To 'Close Down' Iran Central Bank" [01/13/12] below.

Commentary: "European Leaders Use Debt Downgrades To Argue For Austerity, And For Stimulus" [01/15/12] "European leaders sought to limit damage from a ratings agency’s downgrade of nine countries on Friday, or even turn the news to their advantage, saying that it showed the need to impose more austerity or else do more to stimulate growth. Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, said Saturday that the downgrade by Standard & Poor’s meant the euro area must speed up measures to create a more centralized currency union. “We are now challenged to implement the fiscal pact quickly,” Mrs. Merkel said in a statement Saturday, a day after S.& P. downgraded France, Austria and seven other countries — but not Germany. She added that leaders should not water down the agreement and instead quickly pass other measures they have agreed to, like limits on debt. In Italy, Prime Minister Mario Monti used the downgrades to bolster his argument that austerity alone would not solve the euro crisis. Europe needs to support “national efforts in favor of growth and employment,” Mr. Monti told the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, according to Bloomberg News.  [...]"   Note: Since the result of the downgrades is something the banks want, it smacks of background collusion between the rating houses and banks. Related: See below.

Webster Tarpley: "World Crisis Radio Update" [01/15/12]  MP3 Audio [120:00] Select Jan 14, 2012 podcast and click play arrow to listen, or download. Also available as two segments.   Europe  (Map)  European Financial situation, and more updates on the political arena. Related: See stories above and below, and in News and Developments.

MSM: "S&P Downgrades Eurozone Countries As Investors Avoid Eurozone Government Debt" [01/14/12]   "...S&P emphasized that more downgrades were likely. It has placed 14 eurozone countries on negative outlook, including France -- the second-largest economy in Europe -- Belgium, Italy, Spain and even the AAA-rated Netherlands and Finland. Just Slovakia and Germany -- Europe's largest economy and the leader in the eurozone debt crisis talks -- escaped from a negative outlook. Unlike during S&P's downgrade of the U.S.'s credit rating, which investors largely ignored as they continued to buy U.S. debt, European investors this time have preempted the rating cuts by already pulling investments out of the eurozone. [...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Death by Thousand Revelations (E235)" [01/14/12] [25:46] "Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss death by a thousand revelations and destroying the City to save the City. In the second half of the show, Max talks to author Nomi Prins, a former investment banker, about the role of JP Morgan in Jon Corzine’s MF Global crime. [...]" 

MSM: "US Seeking To 'Close Down' Iran Central Bank" [01/13/12] "The latest round of American sanctions are aimed at shutting down Iran's central bank, a senior US official said Thursday, spelling out that intention directly for the first time. "We do need to close down the Central Bank of Iran (CBI)," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity, while adding that the United States is moving quickly to implement the sanctions, signed into law last month. The sanctions, broadly aimed at forcing Tehran to shift course on its nuclear program, targeted Iran's crucial oil sector and required foreign firms to make a choice between doing business with Iran or the United States. Foreign central banks that deal with the Iranian central bank on oil transactions could also face similar restrictions under the new law, which has sparked fears of damage to US ties with nations like Russia and China. "If a correspondent bank of a US bank wants to do business with us and they're doing business with CBI or other designated Iranian banks... then they're going to get in trouble with us," the US official said. There are fears that increased sanctions on Iran's central bank could force the global price of oil to suddenly soar, and actually give Tehran a financial windfall on its existing oil sales. Rising oil prices could also crimp the fragile economic recovery in the United States and inflict pain on American voters in gas stations -- at a time when Obama is running for reelection next year.  [...]"  Note: More violations of international law. One country cannot legally 'pass laws' in some delusional reverie, seeking to enjoin another country in this manner.

Commentary:  "The New WH Chief Of Staff And Citigroup" [01/13/12] " Here is what Lew was doing in 2008 at the time the financial crisis exploded, as detailed by an excellent Huffington Post report from last year: [Lew] oversaw a Citigroup unit that profited off the housing collapse and financial crisis by investing in a hedge fund king who correctly predicted the eventual subprime meltdown and now finds himself involved in the center of the U.S. government’s fraud case against Goldman Sachs. ... It is his few years at Citi — in particular the one year he spent at its then-$54 billion proprietary trading, hedge fund and private equity unit — that’s likely to raise the most eyebrows in the coming weeks as Lew faces a Senate confirmation hearing. Especially his unit’s investments in a hedge fund that bet on the housing market to collapse — a reality suffered by millions of American homeowners. In particular, the Citigroup fund run by Lew, Citi’s Alternative Investments, invested heavily in the hedge fund of John Paulson, “who made billions off the deterioration of the housing industry by making bearish bets on securities tied to home mortgages — particularly subprime home mortgages.” One of Paulson’s largest bets at the time involved Goldman Sachs, which the SEC has now charged with “defrauding investors by creating and selling exotic securities tied to subprime home mortgages in 2007 without disclosing that they were handpicked by a hedge fund [Paulson] that was betting on them to fail.” [...]" 

MSM: "EU Threatens Hungary Over Refusal To Implement Austerity Policies And 'Authoritarian' New Constitution" [01/13/12] "The European Union has stepped up pressure on Hungary over the country's refusal to implement austerity policies and threatened legal action over its new constitution. The warnings escalated the standoff between Budapest and the EU, as Hungary negotiates fresh financial aid from Europe and the International Monetary Fund. Over the past months, the country's credit rating has been cut to junk by all three major rating agencies, unemployment is 10.6 percent and the country may be facing a recession.  [...]"  

Commentary: "Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street – Financial Elite Start Turning On Each Other" [01/12/12] "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… 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. [...]" 

Commentary: "Goldman's Latest PR Headache Has To Do With Islamic Bonds" [01/12/12] "Goldman Sachs is facing fresh controversy, this time in the Islamic world, Reuters reports. The claim sparking the outrage: in the prospectus for an Islamic bond, Goldman cited at a number of religious scholars as potentially approving the issuance. Now, three of those scholars have yet to reply to requests for approval and two say they have not even seen the prospectus for the transaction. Goldman's advisor on the deal, Asim Khan, said this did not impact the sharia credentials of the issuance, because the scholars in question were only listed as potential approvers. However, this is not the first controversy the transaction has encountered: Goldman's first sukuk, also the first by any U.S. bank, is already facing suggestions that it may contravene religious principles by using proceeds to lend money to clients for interest, accusations rejected by the bank's adviser. In order to conform to Islamic prohibitions against interest income, a so-called sukuk must represent ownership in assets and payments should be tied to the profitability of those assets. At maturity, the sukuk purchaser is due not the principal paid initially, but the current market-value of the assets. Because of these complexities, scholars have different interpretations of what can qualify as an Islamic bond, with some dismissing them outright, while others take a much more permissive view. [...]"   

Commentary:  "BofA, Citigroup Are Rumored Targets Of A New York Insurance Fraud Probe" [01/12/12] "Looks like our prediction that shady force-place insurance practices would be the next big scandal to come out of the mortgage crisis is finally ringing true. Bank of America and Citigroup are at the center of a New York state probe into claims they are among several big banks that have been overcharging consumers for insurance, Reuters reports. If you're scratching your head, here's the deal with force-place insurance:  When homeowners stop paying their home insurance, banks get to charge them with their insurance policy of choice. Usually, they'll send several notices to consumers in advance before finally implementing the new policy. These force-placed policies cost as much as 10 times the market price and although they're meant to protect the investors in mortgage- backed securities, they often just drive people into foreclosure. And when mortgage servicers own the insurer, both parties can drive up fees, essentially screwing over both investors and homeowners. Reuters's source claims JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo are wrapped up in the investigation as well, which is being spearheaded by the New York State Department of Financial Services.  The department is looking into whether the policies the banks issued to homeowners were issued by their own affiliates – violating antitrust law – and whether they took kickbacks for pushing policies from affiliated insurers.  Requests for comment sent to Citigroup, and Wells Fargo were not immediately returned Wednesday.
Spokespersons for Bank of America and Chase declined to comment.  [...]" 

MSM: "Chicago Mob Linked Alexi Giannoulias Heads Back To Banking With Post At BNY Mellon" [01/12/12] "The banker-turned-politician, who won a statewide race for Illinois treasurer and then lost to Republican Mark Kirk in a bid for President Barack Obama's former Senate seat, is joining the Chicago office of Bank of New York Mellon Corp. as senior adviser for strategic relationships. In the newly created post, Mr. Giannoulias, 35, will take on a business-development role for the New York-based bank's new wealth-management business in Chicago. [...]" 

MSM: "Greece Spends Bailout Cash On European Military Purchases" [01/11/12] "As Greek standards of living nose-dive, loans to households and businesses shrink still further, and Troika-imposed PSI discussions continue, there is one segment of the country's infrastructure that is holding up well. In a story on Zeit Online, the details of the multi-billion Euro new arms contracts are exposed as the European reach-around would be complete with IMF (US) and Europe-provided Greek bailout cash doing a full-circle into American Apache helicopters, French frigates, and German U-Boats. [...]"  Note: Now THAT is some existential journey that Greece is making. The whole money thing, with the accompanying discord caused by imposed austerity measures, has them so anxious that instead of using some imagination (they haven't any) they grab for the means to dispatch other people ... weapons .... such a childlike and immature approach, always present, here on Planet Stupid ...

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Hollywood Cons Congress (E234)" [01/11/12] [25:46] "In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss copyright and how Hollywood cons Congress by using Wall Street accounting. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Amir Taaki about hackers, piracy, technology and bitcoin.[...]" 

Commentary: "Bill Cohan: Wall Street Is A Cartel And Has Been Since The 1940's" [01/10/12] "After most recently addressing his ire at the mental instability of the executives running Wall Street's major institutions, Bill Cohan this week examines the shrinking competition among the largest Wall Street firms and makes a well-argued case that it represents a pattern of behavior stretching back to the 1940's. Specifically, Cohan dissects a 1947 anti-trust case that was brought against 17 firms for colluding to set prices for investment banking services. While the suit was thrown out in 1953 for what a judge deemed undue reliance on circumstantial evidence, Cohan thinks the government's argument "was spot on": [...]" 

MSM: "Blankfein: Romney's Gonna Win" [01/10/12] "The CEO of Goldman Sachs is apparently predicting Mitt Romney to win the Republican nomination and be well positioned to take the presidency, the New York Post reports. Lloyd Blankfein's forecast measures on the Who-Cares-Meter because Goldman Sachs successfully bet against subprime-mortgage debt (while a client allegedly created it) and picked Barack Obama to win the presidency. But Blankfein does have a horse in this race: He hates the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law, which critics say hurts big banks and ignores issues that led to the 2008 economic meltdown. “Goldman Sachs will not support Obama,” Blankfein was heard muttering at a dinner recently. The Post sounds confident that Blankfein's word—heard through the grapevine—is gold, but then he's under investigation for allegedly misleading a Senate committee looking into the firm's activities. [...]"  Note: He's blank, but he's not fine. He's a sequential (reincarnated retread) incarnation, doing his power and wealth trip. Blankfein knows a scoundrel when he sees one. Romney .. worth a quarter of a billion and wants to 'run it all' ... exactly the kind of sociopath who should not run anything. Things that he has managed have ruined a lot of people's lives ... what a loser and a parasite. 

MSM: "Iran, Russia Replace Dollar with National Currencies in Trade Exchanges" [01/09/12] "Speaking to FNA, Tehran's Ambassador to Moscow Seyed Reza Sajjadi said that the proposal for replacing US Dollar with Ruble and Rial was raised by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Astana on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting. "Since then, we have acted on this basis and a part of our interactions is done in Ruble now," Sajjadi stated, adding that many Iranian traders are using Ruble for their trade deals. "There is a similar interest in the Russian side," the envoy stated, adding that that Moscow is against unilateral sanctions on Iran outside the UN Security Council, specially the recent sanctions against Iran's Central Bank (CBI). "The move (imposing sanction on the CBI) is unacceptable. Russians have clearly announced that they will not accept these sanctions and Iran's nuclear issue is resolvable just through negotiations." [...]"  

Flashback: "William K. Black Describes Fraud And Liars Loans In The Economic Crisis" [01/09/12] [8:06]   Note: Excellent testimony in front of Congress by William K. Black .... he's the only one who laid out the bottom line truth about that nature of the crisus, out of all those who testified that day. "Actions by SEC members were acts of criminal negligence, except that the acts are not considered criminal when you are (doing your job as in your capacity as a federal employee)." See 2:31 through 3:12. This would have to mean that that various parts of the federal government itself are criminally corrupt, logically, and of course it's exactly the way it is. Note the impatience on the part of the Congressman as it rises as the truth is spoken by Black. Government And FED Complicity on Banking Mortgage Fraud.

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Spiral Of Debt Towards The Paranormal (E233)" [01/08/12] [25:45] "In this episode, we discuss Brits using payday loans to pay off interest only mortgages while Greeks bury their cash for fear of being Gaddafi’d by the banksters. In the second half of the show, Max talks to David Morgan of Silver-Investor.com about silver, Sprott and bonds.[...]" 

MSM: "Uncle Sam Goes After Swiss Bankers" [01/07/12] "Federal prosecutors claim three Swiss bankers conspired to help U.S. taxpayers hide more than $1.2 billion from the tax man. Defendants Michael Berlinka, Urs Frei and Roger Keller worked as client advisors at Wegelin & Co., the oldest private Swiss bank, and an institution that provides private banking, asset management and other services to well-heeled clients around the world, according to the 45-page complaint. Uncle Sam says the three men and unnamed co-conspirators opened and serviced undeclared accounts for at least 100 U.S. taxpayers at Wegelin [identified in the complaint as "Swiss Bank A"] from 2005 through 2010. These bank and securities accounts were "undeclared" because they were purposefully not reported to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the government says. A common technique for keeping such accounts under the radar is by creating and selling to U.S. taxpayers sham corporations and foundations, which are used as vehicles for holding the undeclared account. Prosecutors said that in addition to doing a lucrative business in such undeclared accounts, Berlinka, Frei and Keller, aided by accomplices, opened dozens of new undeclared accounts for U.S. taxpayers in 2008 and 2009 after UBS AG, another giant Swiss bank, closed its undeclared accounts business for U.S. taxpayers after "widespread news reports in Switzerland the United States that the IRS was investigating UBS for helping U.S. taxpayers evade taxes and hide assets in Swiss bank accounts." [...]" 

Commentary:  "Why Banks Shun 30 Million Americans " [01/07/12] "They are 30 million consumers, representing a quarter of U.S. households, who earn a collective $1.3 trillion a year. But banks don’t want to serve them, because they lose money. And the nonfinancial institutions who do serve them may not be offering them much value in the long term. Welcome to the world of the unbanked and underbanked, who in a weird twist may have fewer banking options after Congress passed legislation aimed at protecting them from high bank fees. So who will serve these consumers, who either use no mainstream financial services or have a checking or savings account but also utilize nonbank financial services such as check cashers, payday lenders, and pawnbrokers? A huge opportunity awaits someone. In the good old days, banks would have stepped in. They received substantial revenue from interchange and overdraft fees, which essentially subsidized checking and savings accounts. But financial reform passed by Congress in 2010 brought the so-called Durbin amendment, which slashed banks’ profits on debit card transactions, and Regulation E, which severely limited the overdraft fees that banks could charge. In response, many banks have instigated high fees that effectively discourage low-income customers from opening (or keeping) accounts. It’s not by accident. To get a sense of why banks aren’t terribly interested in serving low-income customers, take a look at the following example. Imagine it’s 2007, pre-crisis and pre-regulation.  [...]" 

Interviews: "Capital Controls Coming in the US: Governments Will Become More Desperate As Debt Piles Up" [01/06/12] " Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics - wide-ranging interview covering the possibility of capital controls in the US, stagflation in the near-term, and why gold is likely to head lower before heading much higher. [...]"  

Commentary:  "Code, Scan, Trade And Profit. A New Wave Of Computer Enabled Insider Trading" [01/05/12] "Rumors are circulating about a new Wall St. research service scam that goes like this… Research reports are written with both recommendations and coded phraseology that enables pre-market manipulation. The way it works – a report that gives recommendations also contains coded phraseology that programs trading bots on the exchange that ‘read’ the report and make various trades. Certain word, symbol and number combinations in the report are picked up by the bots who put on the trades based on the coded info. In the following research report – the report spells out a recommendation – that will make the trades put on as the result of the previous report profitable. Let’s say in January, the research says “We love tech. and big pharma” but hidden in the report is coded info that was picked up by trading bots who went long Co. X. The following report recommends Co. X, making those pre-trades profitable (while containing new coded messages for the trading bots in anticipation of the next report). This ‘research’ service is sold to traders for a hefty fee. It’s inside info that is virtually impossible to detect available to a firm’s best clients on a regular basis. Simply buy the service and enable your computer software that ‘reads’ the research to pick up the code that will trigger what trades will be profitable when the next report is published.  [...]"  

MSM: "MF Global Sold Assets To Goldman Before Collapse" [01/05/12] "MF Global unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of securities to Goldman Sachs in the days leading up to its collapse, according to two former MF Global employees with direct knowledge of the transactions. But it did not immediately receive payment from its clearing firm and lender, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM - News), one of the sources said. The sale of securities to Goldman occurred on October 27, just days before MF Global Holdings Ltd (Other OTC:MFGLQ.PK - News) filed for bankruptcy on October 31, the ex-employees said. One of the employees said the transaction was cleared with JPMorgan Chase. At the same time MF Global, which was run by former Goldman Sachs head Jon Corzine, was selling securities to Goldman to raise badly needed cash, the futures firm was also drawing down a $1.2 billion revolving line of credit it had with JPMorgan, according to one of the former MF Global employees. JPMorgan spokeswoman Mary Sedarat said the bank did not withold money because of the line of credit. She declined further comment on details of the transactions. [...]  "  

MSM: "Euro Breakdown Starts Now" [01/04/12] " Welcome to the year that the Eurozone begins its breakup and slides into certain doom—or so says one economic think tank in Europe. There is a 60% chance that "at least one country (and probably more) will leave" the euro in 2012, the head of the Centre for Economics and Business Research says. He adds that Greece's departure seems "pretty certain" and Italy will "more likely than not" follow suit, the Telegraph reports. CEBR gives the euro currency a 99% chance of failing over the next 10 years, and warns that a global depression may follow. Along the way, the think tank says, French and German banking systems could seek bailouts and even be nationalized, the Financial Post reports. For now, European leaders are trying to give Spain and Italy time to gain control over their debt. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that 2012 will be turbulent but that she will "do everything to strengthen the euro," Bloomberg reports. [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: From Russian Oil with Love (E231)" [01/04/12] [25:46] "We present an Eastern European special looking at Swiss franc mortgages in Hungary, bank runs in Latvia and the wisdom of austerity. In the second half of the show, Max talks to economist, Professor Constantin Gurdgiev, about the outlook for the Russian economy and banking sector in the event of a Eurozone collapse and also about what austerity has done for Ireland.[...]" 

Commentary:  "World's Biggest Economies Face $7.6 Trillion Bond Tab" [01/04/12] "Governments of the world’s leading economies have more than $7.6 trillion of debt maturing this year, with most facing a rise in borrowing costs.  Led by Japan’s $3 trillion and the U.S.’s $2.8 trillion, the amount coming due for the Group of Seven nations and Brazil, Russia, India and China is up from $7.4 trillion at this time last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Ten-year bond yields will be higher by year-end for at least seven of the countries, forecasts show. [...]" 

UK: "As Chances For Bank Loans Shrink, Britain's Small Firms Struggle" [01/03/12] "In Britain, the credit squeeze has sent businesses scrambling for alternative financing and fostered lending that bypasses the big banks. Scared by the euro debt crisis and a flat-lining economy, banks have been tightfisted with their money, refusing to issue many of the loans that companies desperately need to keep their operations running smoothly or to take them to the next level. That has added to concern that the world may be heading for another credit crunch hard on the heels of the last one, which was triggered by the 2008 financial crisis and helped tip the global economy into recession. [...]" 

Max Keiser - On The Edge: "Annual New Year’s Eve Economic Forecast With Karl Denninger" [01/02/12]   [23:01] "Karl Denninger returns to On the Edge for his annual New Year’s Eve forecast. First, he lists what he sees as the biggest stories of 2011 and forecasts the biggest trends, for 2012. Karl Denninger is the former CEO of MCSNet, a regional Chicago area networking and Internet company that operated from 1987 to 1998. [...]"  

Europe: "France's Future Hangs In Balance In 2012: Sarkozy" [01/02/12] "French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned on Saturday that the country's future hung in the balance in 2012 amid the eurozone debt crisis but said ratings agencies would not decide French policy. "France's destiny could once again be tipped" in 2012, Sarkozy said in a televised New Year's address. "Emerging from the crisis, building a new model for growth, giving birth to a new Europe -- these are some of the challenges that await us." "This crisis... probably the most serious since World War II, this crisis is not over," Sarkozy said.  [...]"  Related: "Papademos Warns Greeks Of Another Difficult Year Ahead" "... A very difficult year, marked by necessary but painful measures, is ending... a very difficult year is around the corner," Papademos said in his New Year's message. "We must pursue our efforts with determination... so that the crisis does not lead to a disorderly and catastrophic collapse. So that we can keep the euro," he said. Papademos -- who took the helm of a unity government in November to implement EU- and IMF imposed austerity measures to try to save the indebted nation from bankruptcy, said the first quarter will be particularly crucial. "We are living through the worst post-war national and international crisis.  [...]"| "Italian President Urges Sacrifices To Save Economy" "President Giorgio Napolitano on Saturday called on Italians to make sacrifices to prevent the "financial collapse of Italy". "Sacrifices are necessary to ensure the future of young people, it's our objective and a commitment we cannot avoid," he said in a New Year's speech to the nation. The eurozone's third largest economy, Italy sparked fears in 2011 that its toxic mix of low growth, high debt and spiraling borrowing costs could force it to seek a bailout like fellow eurozone members Greece, Ireland and Portugal. "No-one, no social group, can today avoid the commitment to contribute to the clean up of public finances in order to prevent the financial collapse of Italy," he said. "The sacrifices will not be in vain," he added, "especially if the economy begins to grow again."  [...]" | 

MSM: "Mystery Of The Missing $2 Million In Gold Bullion" [01/01/12] "The head of an insolvent mortgage company unloaded $2.2 million in gold and silver from his car at a Rexdale parking lot at night, according to his own testimony, and handed it to a man who has since disappeared. Court documents also tell of gold bullion and thousands of silver coins being ferried around the city in private cars, with no added security, from downtown banks to outlying business offices. [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Outrageous Predictions for 2012 (E230)" [01/01/12] [25:40] "In this episode Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, present a New Year’s special featuring outrageous predictions, bloopers and Berlusconi’s 2012 Bunga Bunga Guide to finance. They look back to some 2010 predictions that came true in 2011 and look at the future of European bank runs, rising US treasury yields and the Jim Rogers – Marc Faber Chinese showdown. [...]" 

Legal Case: "Judge Rules Against Bank Of America For Harassment" [12/31/11]   "Bank of America Corp. and a debt collector it hired to go after deceased customers' debts violated state law by repeatedly calling a Florida woman about paying the credit-card bill of her late husband, a Florida state-court judge ruled this month. Judge Keith R. Kyle in Lee County, Fla., found that collection attempts by West Asset Management, an Omaha, Neb., firm working on behalf of Bank of America, amounted to harassment. The ruling clears the way for the plaintiff to get punitive damages from the collector, a unit of West Corp., and Bank of America, which is the second largest U.S. bank by deposits. A civil jury will determine the size of the award next year. [...]" Note: Collection Firm Was Hired by Bank of America to Pursue Dead Man's Debts.

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Jamie Dimon Suckles on Ben Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing (E229)" [12/30/11] [25:45] "We discuss London brokers shrinking, boycotting JP Morgan, boycotting the financial system and command and control credit derivatives. In the second half of the show, Max talks to JS Kim of SmartknowledgeU about the MF Global fraud and gold and silver.[...]" 

MSM: "Ex-Goldman Sachs Analyst: "Major War" Coming End Of 2012" [12/29/11] [3:26] "Massive conflict will prompt stock market collapse, predicts cycle strategist Nenner. When cycle forecaster Charles Nenner told the Fox Business network yesterday that the Dow Jones was set to collapse to the 5,000 level on the back of a "major war" that will shake the globe at the end of 2012, hosts David Asman and Elizabeth MacDonald sat in stunned silence. Nenner, a former technical analyst for Goldman Sachs, is head of the Charles Nenner Research Center, which purports to be able to predict market trends with a computer program based around pattern forecasting and securities analysis. Nenner predicted the stock market and housing collapse over two years before the fall of Lehman Brothers. [...] According to Nenner, who studies war and peace cycles, the collapse will be initiated by "a major war starting at the end of 2012 to 2013," a startling claim to which the host David Asman merely responded, "wow"."  

MSM: "UK Prepares Emergency Measures For Euro Collapse To Prevent An Influx Of People And Money" [12/29/11] "Ministers are considering draconian plans to prevent a flood of money and people heading to Britain from Europe if the ailing single currency collapses. Experts fear that the collapse of the euro would lead to the widespread movement of both people and money – with potentially damaging consequences for Britain if left unchecked. The Treasury has drawn up contingency plans to prevent investors shifting huge sums of cash from the Eurozone to Britain – amid fears it could lead to a surge in the value of the Pound. [...]"  

UK: "British Shoppers Set For New Year Debt Crisis After Record £4.3billion Is Spent Over The Last Two Days In Sales" [12/29/11] "The nationwide Christmas shopping spree has renewed fears of an alarming increase in personal debt as Britons get carried out with the euphoria of bargain hunting. Debt advice organisations are today bracing themselves for a huge upsurge in consumers admitting to money problems after drastically overspending their festive budget. [...]" 

Commentary:  "Obama Nominates Carlyle Group Partner to The Federal Reserve" [12/28/11] "While on vacation in Hawaii, Obama tapped Jerome Powell to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Powel served as the undersecretary for finance under the president George H. W. Bush and was a partner of The Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is a massive private equity firm and one of the largest defense contractors in the world. They're made up of some of the most influential policymakers over the last five administrations including both Bush presidents, former Secretary of State James Baker III, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former Clinton Chief of Staff Mack McLarty, and former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt to name a few. Other notable investors in The Carlyle Group include the bin Laden family and the Saudi Royal Family. Coincidentally, George H. W. Bush was meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington on the morning of September 11th with one of Osama Bin Laden's brothers. This is not the first time Barack Obama has placed Bush Sr.'s minions into influential positions. In August 2010, Daniel F. Akerson, a managing director of the Carlyle Group, in what was called a "surprise move" was named the CEO of General Motors (GM), otherwise known as Government Motors. Once again, Obama reveals that change will remain absent under his leadership, and the military-industrial complex will continue to garner powerful positions during his administration. [...]"  Related: "The Iron Triangle - The Carlyle Group Exposed" [9:56] Part 2 [9:59]| Part 3 [9:43]| Part 4 [9:54]| Part 5 [7:05] "The rise of one of the most powerful and influential and secretive firms in Washington. The company is called The Carlyle Group. And in the wake of the events of September 11th and the invasion of Iraq, its power and influence have become significantly stronger. The company operates within the so-called iron-triangle of industry, government and the military. Its list of former and current advisers and associates includes a vast array of some of the most powerful men in America and indeed around the world. This program exposes the history of the Carlyle Group, from it's inception as a private equity firm to it's present status as one of the largest defense contractors in the world. [...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Parasites With Bailouts (E228)" [12/28/11]   [25:48] "This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert present their bah-humbug special, taking a closer look at claims that the top 1% have more 'skin' in the game. They'll also question the intentions of the 'well-meaning' people who drive Kenyans off their land, and could be doing more harm than good with malaria vaccines. They also talk to independent journalist, Thomas C. Mountain, about charity in Africa and China's investments.[...]" 

Commentary:  "Federal Judge Takes On Wall Street" [12/28/11] "With his neatly barbered white beard and his calm, careful demeanor, 68-year-old Judge Jed S. Rakoff seems too mild-mannered to be the fierce foe of corporate greed that his admirers see. And yet it is a measure of how timid our politics have become that this federal judge is widely viewed as the only man in government with the cojones to take on the banking corporations that nearly destroyed the American economy in 2008 and that seem, for the most part, unrepentant. [...] He recently made headlines by refusing to ratify a $285 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citicorp, which had been accused of packaging and selling mortgage-backed securities it knew were toxic and then profiting by betting against those securities. In the face of such egregious (and unfortunately, fairly common) behavior among the big banks at the height of the mortgage frenzy of the late '00s, the SEC allowed Citi to avoid the admission of any wrongdoing; to plead only to negligence and not to fraud; and to pay a fine that was less than half of what the bank's customers lost and barely more than what the bank made. What incensed Rakoff was not so much the result -- although that was bad enough -- but the SEC's willingness to settle without a full airing of the facts -- indeed, without any airing of the facts. If, as Justice Brandeis famously said, "sunlight is the best disinfectant," the SEC was proposing -- as it almost always does in such cases -- to curtain off the whole matter. [...]"  

MSM: "SEC Ups Its Game to Identify Rogue Firms " [12/27/11] "It is the Securities and Exchange Commission's new "most-wanted" list: a chart covered with handwritten notes, yellow highlighter and the names of about 100 hedge funds. The hedge funds have one thing in common: Their performance seems too good to be true, with some trouncing the overall market and others churning out modest results without ever suffering a down month. Some funds on the list stumble but still always outperform rival hedge funds. "There is serious fraud in this space, and we have been attacking it," said Bruce Karpati, co-chief of the SEC's asset-management enforcement unit. The hedge-fund chart dominates a corner of his lower Manhattan office. The list is the low-tech product of a high-tech effort by the SEC to crack down on fraud at hedge funds and other investment firms. After the agency failed to detect the $17.3 billion Ponzi scheme by Bernard L. Madoff, who wowed investors with steady returns over several decades, SEC officials decided they needed a way to trawl through performance data and look for red flags that might signal a possible fraud. [...]"  

Legal Case: "Strange Tale of Billions in U.S. Bonds" [12/27/11] "A man from suburban Philadelphia claims to have 735 $1 billion Federal Reserve Bonds stashed in a bank outside the city, and that 15 more have yet to be returned to him by a scheming agent from the Department of Homeland Security [...]"  

MSM: "Global Economy 2012: 'A Tale Of Two Worlds' " [12/26/11] "Europe faces another year of dismal economic performance in 2012 that will weigh on global growth, but emerging markets and the United States should at least keep the world economy moving in the right direction. There are several reasons why next year may be nothing to look forward to, according to Reuters polls from the last few months. Many of the world's biggest developed economies are heading into recession, global stock markets look set to recoup only a fraction of their heavy losses in 2011, oil prices will head lower, and asset managers are unsure where best to invest. And these could be the best-case scenarios. [...]"  

MSM: "Huge Corporations Gear Up For Upcoming Tax Battle" [12/26/11] "Huge U.S. corporations are forming lobbying groups to try to influence what could become the hottest congressional debate over comprehensive tax reform in a generation. The newest organization calls itself the Tax Reform Coalition. Backed by companies including American Express Co and Xerox Corp, it filed paperwork with Congress this week to register as a lobbying group. The coalition's registration suggests it will have a broad portfolio, lobbying on "issues related to corporate tax reform," but no one involved would answer questions on Friday. It joins an increasingly crowded playing field of lobbying groups and politicians strategizing for what Washington will look like in 2013 following national elections in November 2012. Another lobbying group, the RATE Coalition, was formed in October and pushes for a cut in the 35 percent tax rate on corporate profits. WIN America Campaign, a third group, has been advocating since March for a tax holiday for profits that U.S. companies made overseas. Its supporters include multinationals and Washington's largest business lobbying group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [...]" 

MSM: "China And Japan Agree To Start Talks On Free Trade Deal" [12/26/11] "Japan and China agreed to start formal talks early next year on a free trade pact that would also include South Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Sunday after talks that showed the deepening bonds between Asia's two biggest economies. Japan also said it was looking to buy Chinese treasury debt, and the two governments agreed to enhance financial cooperation. [...] China has been Japan's biggest trading partner since 2009. In 2010, trade between the two nations grew by 22.3 percent compared to levels in 2009, reaching 26.5 trillion yen ($339.3 billion), according to the Japan External Trade Organization. [...]"  

MSM: "Records Provide Insight Into Fed's Huge Loans To Banks At Crisis Peak" [12/26/11] "Add up the emergency loans the Federal Reserve distributed to banks between 2007 and 2009 -- when the American economy lurched closer to collapse than anyone had previously thought possible -- and it's an impressive picture. On Friday, Bloomberg News made available the fullest version yet of its data on Fed emergency lending, a subject the news organization has written about numerous times in the past year. The Bloomberg release includes records of about 50,000 transactions the Fed made through seven different financial mechanisms. At their peak, these seven programs represented $1.2 trillion in loans to banks and financial institutions -- the high-water mark of a massive, systemic bailout whose details the country's central banking authority has not always seemed eager to divulge. [...]" 

Commentary:  "A Very Scary Christmas And An Incredibly Frightening New Year" [12/25/11] "Can you hear that? It almost sounds like a little bit of peace and quiet. This year, the holiday season has been fairly uneventful, and for that we should be very grateful. But it isn't going to last long. 2012 is going to be a much more difficult year for the U.S. economy and the global financial system than 2011 has been. So if things are going well for you right now, enjoy this little bubble of peace and tranquility while you can. Because while things may look calm on the surface right now, the truth is that this is a very scary Christmas for financial professionals and world leaders. Most of them know how fragile the global financial system is at the moment. Most of them know that we are living in the greatest bubble of debt, leverage and financial risk that the world has ever seen. As I wrote about the other day, world leaders would not be throwing huge bailouts around like crazy if everything was going to be just fine. The truth is that we are rapidly approaching another financial crisis that may end up being even worse than the horrific crash of 2008. Despite unprecedented efforts by the European Central Bank, the yield on 10 year Italian bonds is nearly up to 7 percent again. Keep an eye on the yield on 10 year Italian bonds. That is going to be one of the most important financial numbers in the world in the coming months. But Italy is not the only problem.  [...]" 

MSM: "World Banks Brace For Euro Collapse" [12/25/11] "Banks around the world are preparing for the possible collapse of the euro as fears of the European debt crisis increase. Several banks are even installing systems capable of coping with trading in old European currencies. Meanwhile finance firms, corporations, and different governments have also turned to plans that aim at preparing them for harsh times. Regulators have asked banks in the US and UK to provide updates on readiness levels in case of a possible euro collapse. Some corporate firms have also started transferring their cash on a daily basis out of European countries, including debt-ridden Greece instead of once every two weeks. Europe has for months grappled with an economic and financial crisis. Insolvency now threatens in-debt countries such as Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain. Since its formation, the European Union had been a haven for those seeking refuge from war, persecution and poverty in other parts of the world. The worsening debt crisis, however, has forced European governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms. Tens of thousands of Europeans are migrating from their homelands as a result of these difficulties. There are fears that more delays in resolving the eurozone debt crisis could push not only Europe, but also much of the rest of the Western world back into recession.  [...]"  

MSM: "Price Waterhouse Cooper Faces Up To £1m Fine Over JP Morgan Securities' Audits" [12/25/11] "The Accounting and Actuarial Disciplinary Board, a subcommittee of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), is expected to announce the penalty in the New Year. Sources close to the case claim the fine will be between £500,000 and £1m, which is around 2pc of the £34m initially envisaged by some. The Financial Services Authority slapped a £33.2m penalty on JP Morgan Securities Limited (JPMSL) last year for not properly separating client money from the firm's accounts. An average of £5.5bn wasn't fully segregated in an error that went undetected by auditor PwC between 2002 and 2008. At the auditor's hearing last month the AADB claimed it was seeking fines that top the £1.2m sanction against Coopers & Lybrand in 1999.  [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Merry X-Max & Happy New GIABO! (E227)" [12/25/11]   [26:37] "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, look back on 2011 from GIABO to Tango Down, the fight against bankster occupation has been setting the global agenda. From the banking scandal headlines, they look at Greek woes, suckling bankers and Blythe Masters' immaculately conceived Credit Default Swap. They also discuss the circle of Hell that former prosecutor, William K. Black suggests is just punishment for Septic Tank Scum banksters and the bizarre view that President Obama has from 40,000 feet.[...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report:  (E226)" [12/24/11]   [26:57] "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, after revealing that the Lizard King is back, discuss the radical redistribution of gold and silver holdings in the US and the radical experiment in the UK to have capitalism without capital. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Professor Steve Keen about the UK’s financial sector debt which is at least four times larger than America’s was before the global financial crisis[...]" 

MSM: "Lieberman Caught Passing Insider Information to Hedge Fund Managers" [12/23/11] "To counter Republican opposition, Democrats needed votes from Messrs. Lieberman and Nelson, who said they had major concerns with a robust government-insurance plan. As negotiations neared a resolution, JNK Securities and its hedge-fund clients met a half-dozen lawmakers in the U.S. Capitol. Among those who spoke to the hedge funds were Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Carper on Dec. 8, according to their offices. The roster included Viking Global’s Scott Zinober and Karsch Capital’s Eric Potoker. The broad outlines of an agreement had been circulating for days, but the lawmakers confirmed they were close to a deal that discarded the public insurance plan, a boost to private insurers. Viking, a hedge fund that manages $13.8 billion, bought six million shares of Aetna in that fourth quarter of 2009, according to regulatory filings. Karsch, which manages $2.4 billion, bought half a million Aetna shares during the same period, according to regulatory records. Shares of Aetna rose 14% in the fourth quarter. [...]"  Related: "Lieberman Says SEC Can Prosecute Congressional Insider Trading"  

UK: "HMRC Served With Legal Papers Over 'Sweetheart' Tax Deal For Goldman Sachs" [12/23/11]   [0:00] "Lawyers have served legal papers on HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) after issuing proceedings in the High Court over an alleged "sweetheart" tax deal. Campaigners UK Uncut Legal Action are seeking a declaration that the agreement by which banking giant Goldman Sachs was allowed to skip a multimillion-pound interest bill on unpaid tax on bonuses was unlawful. They also want £20 million allegedly involved to be returned to the public purse. The deal was highlighted earlier this week when tax chiefs were criticised by MPs for allegedly bending rules to do favours for big firms at a cost of millions to the taxpayer. The Public Accounts Committee warned that millions more were at risk unless procedures were tightened. Its report called for safeguards to be put in place to avoid the impression that HMRC enjoyed an "unduly cosy" relationship with major companies. Goldman Sachs was allowed to skip the interest bill after the country's top tax official Dave Hartnett was wrongly advised there was a "legal impediment" to collecting it. The potential cost to the taxpayer is officially put at £8 million but the committee was given evidence from a whistleblower that the sum could be as high as £20 million. [...]" 

Commentary: "NY Times Reports That The “Roughly $200 Million That JPMorgan Chase Received Is Said To Be Entirely Customer Money" [12/22/11] "Those farmers, traders, and other assorted customers of busted trading firm MF Global probably won't like hearing the news that JP Morgan got money it was owed, on the day before it filed for bankruptcy, The New York Times reports. And even worse in the hunt for the missing $1 billion in customer funds after the collapse of former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine's trading firm, The Times reports that the "roughly $200 million that JPMorgan Chase received is said to be entirely customer money." There were other transfers to other, unspecified trading partners on October 28, the day before MF Global filed its bankruptcy papers, as well, the paper reports. Meanwhile, customers have only gotten back a third of their money and are short roughly $1.2 billion. For its part, JP Morgan apparently questioned the source of the money itself, asking for assurances that it wasn't coming from customers (which it didn't get). [...]"  

Commentary: "London Trader - "There are Tremendous Silver Shortages" [12/22/11] "... SLV (iShares Silver Trust) is over 20 million ounces short on the silver they are supposed to have in the vaults to back the shares which have been issued. The silver isn’t there. So there are people who purchased SLV to own physical silver, but all they have is shares that aren’t backed by the physical silver. [...]"  Related: "J.P. Morgan Getting Squeezed In Silver Market? (SLV, JPM)" [12/05/11] (Background)

Commentary: "The Pound Is About To Hit Turbulence" [12/22/11] "According to the McKinsey Global Institute, Britain’s total debt, which is composed of private, public and financial sector borrowing, is the highest in the world. Official figures have put UK government debt at around £900bn, which is equivalent to 60 per cent of GDP, however, if the financial sector interventions are included, Britain’s total debt figure reaches £2.24 trillion, or 147 per cent of GDP. That ratio puts Britain on a par with Greece and Spain, making its AAA rating highly suspect. Up to now he UK has enjoyed relative calm in its credit markets, but if its sovereign debt comes under assault, it could face a nightmare scenario of high inflation and a massive contraction, as its debt service costs begin to rise. If UK debt faces a run by the shorts – much like the Club Med economies of Europe – the Bank of England will have no choice but to monetise the debt as the buyer of last resort. The irony of the situation is that while Germany remains fixated on the inflationary implications of an accommodative monetary policy, the true victim of high inflation could be the UK, since it already carries the highest baseline price levels in the G-20. The UK economy spent most of 2011 under the radar, as focus in the currency market was squarely on the Eurozone. Throughout 2011, cable has been able to trade above the $1.5000 figure, but in 2012 that support level could crumble fast and the pair could see much greater volatility as its credit worthiness comes under question. [...]"    

Commentary: "Hedge Funds And Sovereign Wealth Funds Gambling On Hunger By Speculating On Food Supply" [12/21/11] "2011 was a wild ride. One spring morning, cocoa futures dropped 12% in less than a minute. Corn ascended to all-time peaks and sugar fluctuated more in one day than it used to in a month. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, railed against speculators in coffee, while PepsiCo forecast its own medium-term commodity cost increases to exceed $1bn. All of which meant a bumper crop for the world's commodity exchanges – even those that used to be backwaters, like the Kansas City Board of Trade and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, both of which recorded their highest electronic trading volumes in history. It was a volatile year, and the volatility posed problems for the food industry. Faced with a high-stakes game of price-shifting basic ingredients, the world's largest food processors and retailers put out the call for maths PhDs and economic modellers to theorise and implement ever-more complex risk-management strategies just so they could keep up with the second-by-second spikes and dips of grain and livestock futures. In the meantime, high-frequency traders and momentum-driven hedge funds made it their business to speculate on food. [...] But just as food is no ordinary widget, speculation in commodity markets is not simply a matter of financial predation. "The high prices of food have resulted in accumulations of inventories at the same time as people can't afford food," said Bar-Yam, who noted that the Arab spring was triggered by the food-price bubble. In fact, Necsi's quantitative model of speculation predicted the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and warned that if food prices remain inflated, riots and revolutions will go global sometime between July 2012 and August 2013. "We are at a critical point," said Bar-Yam. "We don't have a stay-the-course option right now.[...]"  

MSM: "Investors Lose Faith in Stocks As Billions Pour Out of Funds" [12/21/11] "Investors appeared to have lost faith in stocks this year. Just over a week ago, equity mutual funds globally had the second-biggest one-day outflow of money in 2011, capping four straight weeks of net redemptions, according to data from EPFR Global. Investors appeared to have lost faith in stocks this year. Just over a week ago, equity mutual funds globally had the second-biggest one-day outflow of money in 2011, capping four straight weeks of net redemptions, according to data from EPFR Global. [...]"  

MSM: "2 Investment Bankers Among 5 Killed In Small Plane Crash In New Jersey" [12/21/11] [0:35]  

Investigations: "Countrywide Gave Four Members Of Congress Discounted Loans, Investigators Allege" [12/20/11] "Four House lawmakers received VIP discounted loans from the former Countrywide Financial Corp., the lender whose subprime mortgages was largely responsible for the nation's foreclosure crisis, according to congressional investigators. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, declined to name the four but has told the House Ethics Committee that it should investigate the lawmakers. Congressional sources said three of the four are Republicans. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation. [...]"  Related: "CBS 60 Minutes - Prosecuting Wall Street Fraud At Citigroup And Countrywide - DOJ On The Defensive" [14:28] Part 2 [12:43]

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: The Maxinator: Hasta La Vista, Bankster! (E225)" [12/20/11]   [27:24] "This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss the Maxinator, downgrade rampages and food fights between Sarkozy and Cameron. In the second half of the show, Max and Stacy look at the victims of banking fraud, from the Alabama poor cut off from water supplies to the small ranchers who lost it all when MF Global was run into the ground by former Goldman Sachs banker and ex-New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine. [...]" 

MSM: "Fed To Embrace Global Banking Rules" [12/20/11] "The US Federal Reserve is expected to embrace a new global framework that requires giant financial institutions to hold extra capital, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Citing unnamed people familiar with the situation, the newspaper said the Fed's decision to accept the rules laid out by regulators in Basel, Switzerland, could come before Christmas. It is a defeat for big US banks that argued the guidelines needn't be so strict, the report said. They contended the Basel approach could prompt them to reduce lending and hurt the economy. Internal estimates from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision showed JP Morgan Chase & Co would have to hold 2.5 percent of extra capital as a percentage of risk-weighted assets, on top of the 7-percent base that all institutions will be required to hold, The Journal noted. Many of JP Morgan's US competitors will likely be required to maintain extra cushions of between one percent and two percent, the paper said. But these numbers are not final, and the Basel surcharge will not phase in until 2016, the report pointed out. [...]"  

MSM: "British Banking Shake Up Has Been Confirmed" [12/20/11] "The British government says it will legislate sweeping changes in banking regulation that are aimed at protecting the economy from excessive risk but could prove costly for the country's major banks. Treasury chief George Osborne, speaking in Parliament on Monday, confirmed that the government will press ahead with changes recommended by the Independent Commission on Banking, including the separation of retail banking from riskier investment banking. Osborne left many details still to be decided, but promised that the government would publish legislative proposals in the first half of next year and enact them by 2015. New regulations would be effective in 2019, as the Independent Commission proposed. "We want to separate high street (retail) banking from investment banking to protect the British economy, protect British taxpayers and make sure that nothing is too big to fail," Osborne said. Britain suffered three major bank failures because of the credit crisis: mortgage lender Northern Rock and two giant banks, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland. The legislation will require banks to make their retail activities wholly separate, concentrating on serving individuals and small- and medium-sized businesses. Services for large corporations might be placed either in the retail bank or outside. [...]"  

Commentary:  "British Prepare Evacuation Plans Ahead of Spain and Portugal Collapse" [12/20/11] "British Foreign Office personnel have proposed emergency evacuation plans for their citizens living throughout Europe, especially in Spain and Portugal. As tensions over the survivability of the Euro mount, the government warns that a collapse of the banking sector and the European monetary unit may make it impossible for those with assets in affected countries, including bank deposit accounts and homes, to access their funds and evacuate to Britain. The drastic proposals emerged as a former Security Minister warned expats could be left stranded and destitute by the break-up of the single currency. Brits who invested their savings in their adopted countries may not be able to withdraw cash and could even lose their homes if banks call in loans, worried ministers are warning. The Foreign Office is preparing to bring them back from Spain and Portugal if the two countries are forced out of the euro, triggering a banking collapse.  [...]"  

Absurdities: "Derivatives Exchange Looks To Offer Political Contracts" [12/20/11] "The North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex) has filed a notice with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to offer "Political Event Contracts" on the 2012 election, bringing a such betting to a regulated marketplace. Like InTrade and other prediction betting sites, Nadex will allow buyers and sellers to evaluate the likelihood of, say, President Barack Obama winning reelection, by taking a position on a contract that pays out $100 if he wins or $0 if he loses. Yossi Beinart, the CEO and President of Nadex, said the market is primarily aimed with retail investors who want to hedge their positions based on the outcome of the presidential election or which party controls each chamber of Congress. “The public will benefit from federal oversight of these markets. Elections matter and investors have a huge interest in their outcome as there will undoubtedly be economic consequences,” Beinart said. “Indeed, the public benefits of Political Event Contracts go beyond mere risk management. These contracts also provide a real-time gauge of voter sentiment, which can be more valuable and more accurate than public opinion polls.” Beinart said the company has been considering offering such contracts for years, but hasn't been able to because the regulatory framework wasn't set. He said the Dodd-Frank bill gave the CFTC the ability to regulate such a market, allowing Nadex to make the offering this year. The CFTC has 10 days to respond to the filing, and barring any concerns, the first regulated bets on the 2012 election will take place on January 4th, 2012. Yossi Beinart, the CEO and President of Nadex, said the market is primarily aimed with retail investors who want to hedge their positions based on the outcome of the presidential election or which party controls each chamber of Congress. [...]"  Note: Derivatives are a fraudulent product and the market for them should not even exist. That no one is looking at this is absolutely absurd, but not unexpected. Elections can be undermined and steered in certain directions, and insider 'betting' will exist. Just another chapter in the fall of this civilization. Notice that the CEO of Nadex is Yossi Beinart (More) an Israeli.  As of mid-2006, the company had two major investment partners: The Chicago Board Options Exchange purchased a minority stake in HedgeStreet in February 2006 and assists in marketing the company's "hedgelets". In March 2006, Norwest Venture Partners provided a multi-million dollar investment in the company. In 2007, UK based IG Group announced intent to acquire HedgeStreet and later in the year completed the purchase of the company. Soon after the acquisition, IG Group renamed HedgeStreet to the North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex).

MSM: "US Offers 11 Swiss Banks Deal To Avoid Criminal Charges" [12/19/11] "U.S. officials are offering 11 Swiss banks, among them Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX), a deal that allows them to avoid criminal prosecution in exchange for revealing full details of their U.S. offshore business to Washington, a paper reported on Sunday. Famed for the care with which it protects account holders' anonymity, the Alpine state has been forced to act by a series of U.S. probes into alleged tax evasion by Americans concealing their assets in Swiss banks. In 2009, the Swiss parliament approved a deal to allow UBS to reveal details of around 4,450 U.S. clients and pay a $780 million fine to end lengthy tax proceedings that had threatened the future of the country's biggest bank. The Swiss government has been in talks with U.S. authorities for months to try to get an investigation into 11 banks dropped, in return for expected hefty fines on the banks and the handing over of the names. Credit Suisse , Julius Baer  and Basler Kantonalbank are among the banks under investigation. [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Exotic Pet Banking Fraudsters (E224)" [12/18/11]   [26:35] "This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss Keiser’s GIABO soup for the protesting person of the year and the true cost of bankers. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Leah McGrath Goodman about the price of oil and MF Global. [...]" 

MSM: "European Markets Slip Into Red After Downgrades For Barclays, Goldman And Four More Global Banking Giants" [12/17/11] "European markets slipped into the red this afternoon as traders digested a downgrade for six global banking giants, including Barclays. The FTSE 100 had spent the whole day trading in positive territory before finally succumbing to persistent fears surrounding the debt crisis, and closing 13.5 points down to 5,387.3. Credit agency Fitch dropped Barclays from an 'AA–' rating to an 'A', while US giants Goldman Sachs and Bank of America were also downgraded. The German and French markets closed 0.5-0.8 per cent down after Fitch also cut its ratings for France's BNP Paribas, Germany's Deutsche Bank and Switzerland's Credit Suisse. The mass downgrade heightened fears of a new credit crunch as the global banking system struggles to deal with massive levels of debt. [...]"  

MSM: "Bail-out Bombshell: Fed "Emergency" Bank Rescue Totaled $29 Trillion Over Three Years" [12/17/11] "While the 99% suffered hardship, a new study shows that the Fed propped up buddies in the banking industry and a vast shadow banking system far beyond what anyone has guessed. In reality, no less than $29.616 trillion is the total emergency assistance provided by the Fed to foreign and domestic entities during the Global Financial Crisis. Let’s repeat that: $29 trillion. This astounding number is over twice U.S. gross domestic product, the nominal value of all goods and services produced for the year 2010. This is the total of the bailout as calculated by Nicola Matthews and myself as part of the Ford Foundation project, A Research And Policy Dialogue Project On Improving Governance Of The Government Safety Net In Financial Crisis. We will be presenting the results of our analysis in a series of papers published by the Levy Economics Institute, the first of which, “29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed’s Bailout by Funding Facility and Recipient,” is already available here.  [...]"  

Exposé: "Max Keiser: JP Morgan's Dimon Ordered Corzine to Pillage MF Global Personal Accounts Or Be Killed" [12/16/11] [13:35] Part 2 [15:09]| Part 3 [14:22]| Part 4 [14:56]| "Alex talks with former trader Max Keiser about MF Global and how the dubious congressional testimony of John Corzine about the missing $1.2 billion of client funds may ultimately land him in jail. [...]"  Note: Alex Jones interview with Max Keiser. Start time advanced on first video to point where Keiser comes on.

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Möbius Strip of Fraud (E223)" [12/15/11]   [25:40] "We discuss re-hypothecating Alec Baldwin’s cake and eating it too. And, as Al Capone before him, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon complains of the thankless task of being a “public benefactor”. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Reggie Middleton about German debt and MF Global. [...]" 

Interview: "JP Morgan Crashed MF Global To Avert COMEX Failure, They Stole All The Accounts That Were Going To Take Delivery" [12/15/11] 3 Video clips and transcript. Related: "Was The "Collapse" Of MF Global Premeditated?"  

MSM: "Italy Risks "Social Explosion" Over Austerity: Union Chief " [12/15/11] "CGIL leader Susanna Camusso told Reuters that Prime Minister Mario Monti's government was "deeply conditioned" by its need for support from the party of his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, and its austerity plan spared the rich and demanded excessive sacrifices from ordinary Italians. "We see every risk of a social explosion," Camusso said in an interview, warning that anger was rising over a pension reform she said was unnecessary, measures that cut already weak purchasing power and a worsening labor market. [...]"  

RT Interview: "Nigel Farage: Bully Boys in Brussels Building Europrison" [12/15/11]   [4:36] "The Greek economy - already teetering on the brink - has taken another turn for the worse. That's the verdict coming from IMF officials. Austerity inspectors visited the country to check whether it's meeting the conditions set up by international creditors. If the demands aren't fulfilled, Greece won't get a second lifeline of one hundred and thirty billion euros. And another debt-ridden Eurozone economy - Italy - is undergoing a further round of belt-tightening, as its lower house of Parliament is about to vote for more austerity measures. Nigel Farage, MEP and leader of the UK independence party, says the hands of Eurozone strugglers are tied while they are trapped within the bloc. [...]"  Related: "The Great Escape of Britain from the EU: Nigel Farage" [2:47] Longer Version [5:02] 

Commentary: "FBI Estimates That 80 Percent Of All Mortgage Fraud Involves Collaboration Or Collusion By Industry Insiders" [12/14/11] "The data demonstrate conclusively that most liar’s loans were fraudulent, which means that there were millions of fraudulent mortgage loans because liar’s loans became common (Credit Suisse estimates that they represented 49% of new originations by 2006). The data also demonstrate that even minimal underwriting of the loan files was sufficient to detect the overwhelming majority of such fraudulent liar’s loans. No honest, rational lender would make large numbers of liar’s loans. The epidemic of mortgage fraud was so large that it hyper-inflated the housing bubble, which allowed refinancing to further extend the life of the bubble (and the depth of the ultimate Great Recession. In the cases where there have been even minimal investigations (New Century, Aurora/Lehman, Citi, WaMu, Countrywide, and IndyMac) senior lender officials were aware that liar’s loans were typically fraudulent. The lenders could not make an honest business out of selling overwhelmingly fraudulent mortgages. [...]"  Related: "Banksters Sued By Massachusetts Attorney General" [12/13/11] [10:50] Note: Hats off to AG. Coakley for showing courage and integrity.

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: (E222)" [12/14/11]   [28:00] "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss virtual dollars and American plots and tinned goods and small-caliber weapons. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Detlev Schlichter about elastic money and financial crises.[...]" 

Commentary: "When Sovereign Debt Is No Longer Risk-Free" [12/14/11] "The European debt crisis may force banking regulators to diminish the central role of government bonds in planned rules designed to make the financial system safer. As they fine-tune the new regulations, scheduled to take effect starting in 2013, the officials face a balancing act between acknowledging investors’ loss of confidence in sovereign debt and the need to avoid undermining governments’ credibility. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which coordinates regulations for 27 nations around the world, approved preliminary guidelines, known as Basel III, in 2010. The rules govern, among other things, how much cash and other liquid assets banks must have on hand to withstand short-term funding crises. Basel III’s so-called liquidity coverage ratio calls for banks to hold enough “high-quality liquid assets”—mainly cash and government debt—to survive 30 days of stress. [...]"  

MSM: "EU Summit Proposals Fail To Calm Global Financial Markets" [12/13/11] "Friday’s European Union summit produced an agreement to pursue stricter budget rules for the single currency area and also to have euro zone states and others provide up to 200 billion euros ($267 billion) in bilateral loans to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help tackle the crisis. But Moody’s Investor Service said it still plans to review the ratings on EU sovereign credit as the agency expressed doubt that the proposed measures will do much to resolve the crisis. That marked a sharp change from Friday, when the market rallied on hopes that European leaders finally had presented a unified front to tackle the problem. “It appears that Europe’s nightmare has not gone away after all, with investors rethinking Friday’s immediately positive response,” Andrew Wilkinson, chief economist strategist at Miller Tabak, said in his morning note. “The single euro currency is once again trawling the depths of despair as investors weigh the prospect of further interest rate cuts as further reason to take pot shots at the unit.” [...]"  

UK: "Bankers A Huge Drain On Society:  Costing the rest of us £8.40 for every £1 they produce" [12/13/11] "A study by think-tank the New Economics Foundation found the average banker destroys ­£42million a year in value while creating just £5million. Meanwhile hospital cleaners on £6.26 an hour are worth £10 for every £1 they cost because they prevent superbugs, saving the economy a fortune. The shock figures fly in the face of claims that bankers like Barclays boss Bob Diamond – paid £4.4million in 2010/11 – are worth vast ­bonuses because of their ­contribution to the economy. Their drain on the country is caused by the cost of bailing out banks brought to their knees by the credit crunch and the ­devastating impact of the ­crisis their recklessness caused. NEF found that tax ­accountants who help the rich cut their bill were even worse value, ­costing us £47 for every £1 they create. Meanwhile low-paid public sector workers like nursery ­workers and bin men were found to more than earn their wages. Helen Kersley from the NEF said: “We get a huge tax ­contribution from the City but it pales into insignificance next to the damage from the financial crisis in terms of unemployment, bailing out banks and leaving us with a massive public debt.” [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Gold-for-Bonds & Debts-for-What?! (E221)" [12/11/11]   [26:35] "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss central banks and governments ‘saving the day’ and hostage-taking paper, silver markets and gold for bonds in Japan. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Satyajit Das, author of Extreme Money, about the European debt crisis. [...]" 

MSM: "In Debt Crisis Deal, Europe Unites Behind Germany" [12/10/11] "European leaders, meeting until the early hours of Friday, agreed to sign an intergovernmental treaty that would require them to enforce stricter fiscal and financial discipline in their future budgets. But efforts to get unanimity among the 27 members of the European Union, as desired by Germany, failed as Britain refused to go along. In a day of historic, seemingly tectonic shifts in the architecture of Europe, all 17 members of the European Union that use the euro agreed to the new treaty, along with six other countries that wish to join the currency union eventually. Three stragglers, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Sweden entered the fold later, after a strong diplomatic push. Twenty years after the Maastricht Treaty, which was designed not just to integrate Europe but to contain the might of a united Germany, Berlin had effectively united Europe under its control, with Britain all but shut out. Though not a perfect solution, because it could be seen as institutionalizing a two-speed Europe, the intergovernmental pact could be ratified much more quickly by parliaments than a full treaty amendment. Crucially, the deal was welcomed immediately by the new head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi.  [...]"  Note: We've heard Webster Tarpley say plenty about Mario Draghi ...

MSM: "US Investors Pulled Whopping $6.7 Billion From Markets Last Week" [12/09/11] " US retail investors pulled a whopping $6.7 billion from domestic equity funds: the most since the week after US downgrade when a near record $23 billion was withdrawn. Only unlike then when the market bombed, this time it simply kept rising, and rising, and rising. In other words, every ES point higher serves no other purpose than to provide an even more attractive point for the bulk of that now extinct class known as investors to call it a day, and pull their cash out of this unprecedented shitshow that central planning has converted the market into. And for those keeping score, a total of $123 billion has now been pulled from stocks in 2011, well over the $98 billion withdrawn in 2010. [...]" 

MSM: "Americans' Net Worth Plummets As Corporations Stockpile Cash" [12/09/11] "Americans' wealth last summer suffered its biggest quarterly loss in more than two years as stocks, pension funds and home values lost value. At the same time, corporations raised their cash stockpiles to record levels. Household net worth fell 4 percent to $57.4 trillion in the July-September quarter, according to a Federal Reserve report released Thursday. It was the sharpest drop since the tumultuous period after the September 2008 bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Brothers. And it was the second straight quarterly fall. Household wealth, or net worth, is the value of assets like homes, bank accounts and stocks, minus debts like mortgages and credit cards. Lower net worth can hurt the economy. When people feel poorer, they spend less. That slows growth. Businesses typically then cut back on hiring and expansion. Stock market declines, in particular, have held back Americans' quest to recover losses from the 2008 financial meltdown. The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index tumbled about 14 percent in the July-September period, ending a streak of four quarterly increases. The decline was driven by worries about Europe's debt crisis and the U.S. economy. Stocks have rebounded about 9 percent since last quarter ended. But the S&P index is still about 21 percent below its peak of four years ago. [...]"  Related: "Corporate America Sitting On Solution To Jobs Crisis, Report Finds" [12/07/11] "Corporate America is sitting right on top of the solution to the nation's employment crisis, according to a new report from a group of University of Massachusetts economists. If America's largest banks and non-financial companies would just loosen their death-grip on a chunk of the $3.6 trillion in cash they're hoarding and move it into productive investments instead, the report estimates that about 19 million jobs would be created in the next three years, lowering the unemployment rate to under 5 percent. "There is no reason that the U.S. needs to remain stuck in a long-term unemployment crisis," Robert Pollin, lead author of the report and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, said in a statement accompanying the report's release Tuesday. "Getting the banks and corporations to move their hoards into productive investments and job creation requires carrots and sticks -- policies such as a new round of government spending stimulus as well as taxes on the banks' excess reserves -- that can both strengthen overall market demand and unlock credit markets for small businesses," Pollin said. [...] Even as the nation continues to confront massive unemployment, the nation's biggest companies have been hoarding cash. Banks have been able to borrow the money essentially for free from the Federal Reserve, so why not? In fact, according to the Federal Reserve (Table L.109, line 28), banks are sitting on $1.6 trillion in reserves -- about 8,000 times the $20 billion they held in 2007. Meanwhile, non-financial companies are keeping their profits liquid, rather than plowing them back into investments, to the tune of about $2 trillion. Together, that amounts to almost a quarter of the U.S. gross domestic product. Pollin and his colleagues figured that even accounting for a massive safety cushion, at least $1.4 trillion of those reserves should be considered excess. Meanwhile, the report notes, small business are having a hard time getting anyone to lend them money. The report concludes that investing the $1.4 trillion in private businesses would generate an enormous surge in employment. It recommends that the money in particular be channeled toward "small businesses that face larger than normal credit constraints; more labor intensive businesses; and businesses that generate large social as well as private benefits. [...]"  

Commentary:  "All Dark on the Offshore Horizon: Capital Flight Accelerates as Austerity Looms" [12/08/11] "The strain Western state budgets have been experiencing in the aftermath of the financial crisis that exploded in 2008 has no parallel since the end of the Second World War, and has riveted attention everywhere to questions of taxation and budget expenditures. The measurement and assessment of income inequality has become a hot topic, and populations are becoming much more aware now of class divisions. Recent research has identified that inequality has intensified in recent decades, and that the consequences of inequality are significantly worse than expected. Inevitably, pressure to rectify the yawning wealth gap is building around the Western world, spearheaded by the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US and a wide variety of groups elsewhere. [...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Economics is the New Rock’n'Roll (E220)" [12/07/11]   [27:22] "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss Hank ‘Baldface’ Paulson, liquidity shortfalls and Joe Pot of Marmite. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Rick Ackerman about Goldman’s death dive and MF Global’s crimes against the markets. [...]" 

MSM: "German Politician: Euro Downgrade Is an American Plot" [12/08/11] "Standard & Poor’s warning that no less than fifteen eurozone states, including Germany, could lose their AAA credit rating has been met with howls of protest from leading German politicians. The general secretary of the Social Democratic party (SPD), Andrea Nahles, described the Standard and Poor’s announcement as “shameless.” Former German finance minister Peer Steinbrück, also of the SPD, spoke of a “provocation” and urged the European Commission to subject the rating agencies to “far stricter regulation.” The current German economics minister, Philipp Rösler of the ostensibly pro-free market Free Democratic Party (FDP), employed somewhat more measured tones, stiffly commenting, “Germany will not let itself to be impressed by the day-to-day and very short-lived judgment of a single ratings agency.” But it was Rösler’s colleague Rainer Brüderle who had perhaps the most extreme reaction. Brüderle is the chair of the FDP group in the German Bundestag. “I am no fan of conspiracy theories,” Brüderle told the German business daily Handelsblatt, “But sometimes it is hard to avoid the impression that some American ratings agencies and fund managers are working against the euro zone.” [...]"  Note: Not exactly. Ultimately it's a British plot.

MSM: "Bank Of England’s 'Quantitative Easing' Steals 25% Of Pensioner’s Savings In UK" [12/08/11] "The average savings pot among people aged 55 and over has fallen 27% over the past year as more households dip into funds to meet day-to-day living costs, a report by Aviva says. The company said it had been an "annus horribilis" for those in the age bracket, with the average level of savings and investments now at £11,153 compared with last year's average of £15,262. While the figure has been skewed by the fact that more people started to save during the year, Aviva said it believed it also reflected a trend for households to raid savings accounts due to a reduction in their income. [...]" 

MSM: "Investors Flock To Growing $60 Billion Dollar Security Sector" [12/07/11] "Global investment in security industries is growing and is worth at least $60 billion, the latest analysis of trends in the sector by PricewaterhouseCoopers reported. More than half of that business was generated in the United States but business is growing worldwide. [...] The security industry business began to rise after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and subsequent terrorism and cybercrime incidents. Global cybersecurity spending is forecast to grow 10 percent every year in the next three to five years, PwC said. Private equity and the wider investor communities are drawn to the security industry because of recent growth in profits and have turned their attention to the sector for profit."  

MSM: "Financial Executives Likely Won't Face Criminal Charges For Role In Financial Crisis" [12/07/11] "Though often blamed with making the calls that led the country to the brink of collapse, financial executives likely won't face criminal charges for their practices during the financial crisis, according to a former top U.S. investigator. The Justice Department has decided that prosecution of financial executives is "better left to regulators" to take civil-enforcement actions, David Cardona, who was a deputy assistant director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation until last month, told the Wall Street Journal. "There's been a realization and a more deliberate targeting by the Department of Justice before we launch criminally on some of these cases," Cardona told the WSJ. Government officials haven't successfully prosecuted a single Wall Street executive or financial firm since the meltdown, despite many Americans and experts blaming them for the decisions that led to the housing crisis and subsequent financial panic, according to CBS News. [...]"

MSM: "Italy: Technocrat Monti Introduces New Drastic Austerity Package" [12/07/11] "In response to pressure from financial markets and European leaders, Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Monti, has moved quickly to introduce new austerity measures.  [...]"  Note: I see a lynch mob in the distance. Webster Tarpley talks about this guy.

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: 'Feckless Parents' vs. Reckless Banks (E219)" [12/07/11]   [27:48] "This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss feckless parents and fiscal unions. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Josh Brown of TheReformedBroker.com about social media snake oil and internet ponzis. [...]" 

MSM: " United States Decoupling From Europe" [12/07/11] "The world used to abide by the saying “when America sneezes the world catches a cold”. But after a lost decade in the USA that saying has come under fire and rightfully so. But an interesting thing is occurring as Europe catches a cold. America isn’t even sniffling. Some economists claim there is no way the USA can escape the downturn now being seen across Europe. I’m not so sure this is correct. There has been one very clear difference in Europe and the USA over the last few years. Although both regions have suffered from balance sheet recessions and sizable real estate bubbles (some parts of Europe more than others) the response has been entirely different. Europe, as a result of the flawed single currency and lack of political unity has imposed austerity on itself for the better part of the last few years. In many countries this has resulted in an environment that never even remotely resembled the recovery seen in other parts of the developed world. In fact, many of these countries are in full blown depressions. The United States, on the other hand, has been running steady 10% budget deficits throughout the last 3 years – there has been no real austerity. This has helped the private sector de-leverage without crushing economic growth. I’ve maintained an unpopular position over the last few quarters that the USA would “muddle through” as opposed to falling into recession. This position has been based on my idea of a continuing balance sheet recession in the USA combined with a government that, despite its inability to agree on most things, has not torpedoed the economy via austerity. [...]" 

Legal Case: "Bizarre Claim for $1 Trillion" [12/06/11] "An American expatriate in Bulgaria claims the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the Office of International Treasury Control and the Italian government conspired with a host of others to steal more than $1.1 trillion in financial instruments intended to support humanitarian purposes. The 111-page federal complaint involves a range of entities common to conspiracy theorists, including the Vatican Illuminati, the Masons, the "Trilateral Trillenium Tripartite Gold Commission," and the U.S. Federal Reserve. Plaintiff Neil Keenan claims he was entrusted in 2009 with the financial instruments - which included U.S. Federal Reserve notes worth $124.5 billion, two Japanese government bonds with a combined face value of $19 billion, and one U.S. "Kennedy" bond with a face value of $1 billion - by an entity called the Dragon Family, which is a group of several wealthy and secretive Asian families. "The Dragon family abstains from public view and knowledge, but, upon information and belief, acts for the good and better benefit of the world in constant coordination with higher levels of global financial organizations, in particular, the Federal Reserve System," Keenan claims. "During the course of its existence over the last century, the Dragon family has accumulated great wealth by having provided the Federal Reserve Bank and the United States Government with asset assignments of gold and silver via certain accounts held in Switzerland, for which it has received consideration in the form of a variety of Notes, Bonds and Certificates such as those described ... that are an obligation of the Federal Reserve System." [...]"  

MSM: "S&P Places 15 Euro Nations on Warning for Downgrade" [12/06/11] "Standard & Poor’s said Germany and France may be stripped of their AAA credit ratings as the debt crisis prompts 15 euro nations to be put on review for possible downgrade. The euro area’s six AAA rated countries are among the nations to be placed on a negative outlook, and their credit ratings may be cut depending on the result of a summit of European Union leaders on Dec. 9, S&P said today in a statement. The euro reversed its gains and U.S. Treasuries rose earlier today after the Financial Times reported that the credit-ranking firm planned to reduce six AAA outlooks. “Systemic stress in the eurozone has risen in recent weeks and reached such a level that a review of all eurozone sovereign ratings is warranted,” S&P said in a statement.  [...]"  Related: "Unprecedented Credit Cut Looms For Europe" "One of the world's leading credit-rating agencies has warned that it may carry out an unprecedented mass downgrade of European countries if regional leaders fail to reach an agreement on how to solve the debt crisis in a summit later this week. [...]"  

Commentary: "Claim: Clinton Collected $50K Per Month From MF Global" [12/06/11] "A former MF Global employee accused former president William J. Clinton of collecting $50,000 per month through his Teneo advisory firm in the months before the brokerage careened towards its Halloween filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Teneo was hired by MF Global’s former CEO Jon S. Corzine to improve his image and to enhance his connections with Clinton’s political family, said the employee, who asked that his name be withheld because he feared retribution. [...]" 

Commentary: "Governor Of The Bank Of Canada Is A Goldman Sachs Disciple" [12/06/11] "... The current Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, is a Goldman Sachs disciple, and has of course had his way smoothed by establishment publications like Time Magazine and the blatantly conservative Reader's Digest who named him "Most Trusted Canadian" just in case you had any doubts. Readers Digest, by the way, is now owned by Ripplewood Holdings founded by Tim Collins, a Bilderberg darling, as is Stephen Harper and other Canadians (Last year, the meeting was in Greece. Now, Greece is burning). At least one Goldman Sachs representative is on the Steering Cttee of the Bilderberg group. Carney is also the new Chair of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in charge of global financial institutions, his predecessor having been Mario Draghi, now president of the European Central Bank, and a former Goldman Sachs Vice Chair and Managing Director. Draghi is also a fellow of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard from which Michael Ignatieff was dispatched to destroy Canada's federal Liberal Party. These guys, no matter what their nationality, mostly studied at Yale, Oxford, Princeton, Harvard or a combination. It's an incestuous club at the helm. There oughta be a law, eh? Yet despite (or because of) the collective wisdom of their hive minds* and hands-on ministration, things are not looking good: [...]" 

MSM: "George Soros: Global Financial System On Brink Of Collapse" [12/06/11] "Concern is mounting that the Eurozone may break up because of market pressure on European sovereign debt, which could plunge Europe into a depression and the world into a recession. Observers are already worried that Europe could suffer a recession and subsequent slow growth for several years even if it averts a eurozone breakup, since products would remain expensive on the euro, making consumers more hesitant to buy them and forcing governments to curtail budgets even more as consumer spending falls.  [...]"  

MSM: "Former Countrywide Whistleblower: Mortgage Fraud "Systemic" [12/06/11] "Eileen Foster, a former executive vice president in charge of fraud investigations at mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, told CBS 60 Minutes reporter Steve Kroft that mortgage fraud was a common occurrence at the firm. Foster goes on to say that she faced illegal retaliation for filing reports investigating the fraud, alleging Countrywide fired her when she refused to lie to federal regulators on Countrywide's behalf. "From what I saw, the types of things I saw, it was, it appeared systemic," Foster said on 60 Minutes Sunday. "It wasn't just one individual or two or three individuals, it was branches of individuals, it was regions of individuals." [...] No top level finance executives have faced federal prosecution for actions related to the financial crisis, despite several reports, like Foster's, that allege fraud was a common practice. At the same time, as Federal prosecution of financial fraud falls to a 20-year low, over two thousand people have been arrested in connection with the Occupy Wall Street protests."  

UK: "Barclays Set To Pay Out £5 Billion To Investment Bank Staff" [12/05/11] "Barclays is reportedly planning to pay its investment banks an estimated £5 billion this year despite calls for restraint from Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King. Some 24,100 staff at Barclays Capital, the bank's investment arm, are in line to receive an average £210,000, the Sunday Times said, which would include all salaries, bonuses and other benefits. A £5 billion pay pot would mark a 10% decrease on last year's remuneration, but is still likely to provoke outrage from groups who have campaigned for a crackdown on City pay since the 2008 credit crunch forced taxpayers to bail out Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group and Northern Rock. Sir Meryvn, in his role as chairman of the Financial Policy Committee (FPC), last week recommended that banks consider limiting pay and dividends in order to maintain sufficiently high levels of capital to protect from potential future financial shocks, such as the collapse of the euro or a downgrade to the UK's credit rating. [...]"  Note: Well, I guess they aren't going to cooperate. The greed is so immense with these people.

MSM: "Bank Holding Companies To File Capital Plans" [12/05/11] "Bank holding companies with more than $50 billion in assets will have to submit annual capital plans to the Federal Reserve and notify the regulator before making any major capital disbursements such as stock-buy backs or dividend payments, under new rules adopted by the Fed's Board of Governors. [...]"    

MSM: "China The Savior: BRICS Cementing Euro-Deals" [12/05/11]   [3:07] "While Western economies are struggling, the East has seen rapid financial growth. China's presence in Europe can be felt more than ever, with Beijing making strategic investments, although it is still cautious about buying the continent's debt. [...]"  Note: "These could be tactical investments to prevent Europe from backing any US/Israeli war. If we're economically dependent on China, it's harder to gain European support for a war.  Italy has the world's 4th largest gold reserves... so China could take her gold rather than buying bad debt." 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Hang Paulson  (E218)" [12/04/11]   [25:39] "This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss big bazookas, dead whistleblowers and Hank Paulson. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Jon Thorisson about the new Eva Joly Institute and Iceland's ongoing fight for justice. [...]" 

Commentary:  "A Coincidence Theorist Gets Schooled On Rothschild And JPMorgan" [12/04/11] "This 1895 contract between the US Treasury and the Rothschilds (plus JP Morgan himself, and his father) in which a small consortium of bankers saved the US Government from default and pretty much made America their bitch (which we've been ever since) might also be of interest. [...]"  

UK: "Prepare For End Of The Euro, Banks Told" [12/04/11] "Alarm at the economic turmoil in Europe intensified last night after the Government admitted preparations for the chaotic collapse of the euro were being “stepped up”. Downing Street is understood to be embroiled in intensive “contingency planning” for Greece and possibly Italy, Spain and Portugal quitting the Euro zone. British banks have been urged by the City’s watchdog to brace themselves for the collapse of the single currency.  [...]"  

MSM: "Corzine Subpoenaed to Appear Before House Panel" [12/03/11] "Jon Corzine, the former head of bankrupt commodities brokerage firm MF Global, has been subpoenaed to testify about his role in the collapse before a congressional committee. [...]"

RT Interview: "No Solution To EU Crisis - Too Late To Save Euro" [12/03/11]   [4:38] "Economic analyst Michael Mross, says he agrees with the EU monetary chief, who warned the Eurozone is running out of time to tackle its debt. [...]"  Note: Within their system, there cannot be a common currency without a common bond market, and a common centralized government, and since the EU is actually a power grab by a few factions and now seen as undesirable, that's not going to happen.

MSM: "Senators Blast CFTC, Gensler For MF Global Mess" [12/02/11] "Republican lawmakers blasted the chairman of the U.S. futures regulator on Thursday for his agency's role in the collapse of MF Global and called his recusal from the investigation a way to "avoid the heat." The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and its chairman, Gary Gensler, are under pressure because of the quick collapse of the futures brokerage and for allegedly not policing the firm's bookkeeping closely enough. Investigators are searching for as much as $1.2 billion in missing customer money, which regulators have said the firm may have diverted for its own needs. Gensler recused himself from the CFTC's probe into MF Global after it filed for bankruptcy on October 31. Gensler and Jon Corzine, who resigned as chief executive of MF Global last month, worked together at Goldman Sachs Group Inc in the 1990s. "It looks to me like you're trying to avoid the heat," Senator Mike Johanns, a Republican, said of Gensler's decision to remove himself from the MF Global investigation. "You certainly didn't recuse yourself all of the other weeks and months and days while MF Global was doing what it was doing." [...]" 

MSM: "Federal Reserve Coordinates Global Effort For Central Bank Printing To Avoid 2012 Year Of Reckoning" [12/01/11] "The Federal Reserve, acting with five other central banks, took further steps Wednesday to make it cheaper for banks around the world to trade in U.S. dollars. The Fed — along with central banks of the Eurozone, England, Japan, Switzerland and Canada — announced a coordinated plan to lower prices on dollar liquidity swaps beginning on December 5, and extending these swap arrangements to February 1, 2013. The effort is meant to “ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses and so help foster economic activity,” the Federal Reserve said in a press release. Meanwhile, the People’s Bank of China also announced a plan to increase liquidity Wednesday by lowering its reserve requirement ratio for financial institutions by half a percentage point. [...] To prevent a lack of liquidity in the global financial system, The US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the central banks of Canada, Britain, Japan and Switzerland said in a joint statement that they have agreed to lower the cost of existing dollar swap lines by 50 basis points from December 5. Such a move is unprecedented and shows the extent of the problem. Other measures included setting up bilateral swap arrangements between the central banks so that any bank could tap additional liquidity in their own currencies if necessary. The swap arrangements are good through Feb 1, 2013.  Ref  [...] "  Note:  "This move by the Federal Reserve is almost unprecedented. Not only has the Federal Reserve coordinated a global efforts among Central Banks (both small and great, rich and poor) to print their way out of the Eurozone crisis- it also appears to be pushing an effort among banks and reassurance agencies to rewrite the maturity dates on Credit Default Swap contracts due for 2012 to February 2013- avoiding the entire doom-laden year of 2012 altogether. All of this was done virtually in secret and behind closed doors and is to go into effect on December 5, 2011- about 3 days before the EU summit convenes this year in Brussels on December 8-9th." 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Überdebten (E217)" [12/01/11]   [25:46] "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss Überdebten, financial eugenics and secret Fed loans. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Karl Denninger about MF Global, pepper spraying banksters and Occupy Wall Street.[...]"  

MSM: "All Of EU In Danger Of Credit Rating Downgrade" [12/01/11] "All European governments are in danger of having their credit ratings slashed due to the eurozone debt crisis, the influential agency Moody’s has warned. Several countries could end up having their ratings cut to so-called ‘junk’ status — a highly risky rating usually only given to heavily indebted companies. Moody’s said the credit standing of all European governments was under threat, adding that while it believed the eurozone would remain intact, countries could still lose their prized credit ratings. [...]"  

MSM: "Euro Finance Ministers Discuss Radical Ideas to Avert Global Crisis" [12/01/11] "With the entire global community relying upon Europe’s survival, aggressive action has become a matter of extreme urgency, as euro zone governments have 638 billion euros in past debts coming due in 2012, of which 40% needs to be refinance in the first four months of the year, according to Barclays Capital. Recent debt auctions have seen yields climbing in some of the euro zone’s largest economies, including Italy, where yields shot up Tuesday to above 7%, an unsustainable level on par with rates that forced Greece, Portugal, and Ireland to seek bailouts. [...]"  Note: A 24 month debt moratorium would be interesting, but it's too simple for them. 

MSM: "S&P Reviews 37 Global Banks, Downgrades Bulk" [12/01/11] "Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today said it reviewed its ratings on 37 of the largest financial institutions in the world by applying its new ratings criteria for banks, which were published on Nov. 9, 2011. See the Ratings List for the ratings on these banks, their core and highly strategic subsidiaries, and other subsidiaries that we took rating actions on as a result of applying our new criteria to their parents. We will review all ratings that we placed on CreditWatch within 90 days. Ratings on CreditWatch are designated as Watch Neg or Watch Pos in the list below.  [...]" Related: Full List PDF

Flashback:  "Euro Collapse Plus Iran Strike Equals Armageddon" [12/01/11] "It's starting to look like all those crazy 2012 prophecies might not be so wide of the mark after all. Even as the world is transfixed by the slow-motion implosion of the eurozone, reports are emerging that Israel might strike Iran's nuclear facilities early in the New Year. The unpredictable interaction two such epochal events could cause a global catastrophe like something out of a bad science fiction novel. Nowadays, it seems that almost every day the unthinkable not only becomes thinkable, but it actually happens. So it goes with the eurozone: The bloc seemed like a rock of stability until a couple of years ago, now it seems to have entered an irreversible tailspin. Economist Nouriel Roubini has recently joined many others in warning that "Italy may, like other periphery countries, need to exit the euro and go back to a national currency, thus triggering an effective break-up of the eurozone." Such an event could cause unprecedented economic devastation in Europe and around the world. [...] The combination of the onset of a second global Great Depression, a devastating banking crisis in Europe, fragmentation of the eurozone and rolling sovereign debt crises across the US and Europe is bad enough. This scenario is, in itself, a total catastrophe. Yet some serious economists say such outcomes are very possible within the next 12 months. However, few have thrown into the mix the ramifications of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities -- also likely within the next 12 months. The eurozone crisis and Iran's nuclear weapons program are widely seen as discrete and unrelated events. However, they could interact in potentially horrific ways. " 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Kleptocrats Go for Gold (E216)" [11/30/11]   [25:48] "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss lunatics for Italian gold and another failed debt auction in Germany. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Mark O'Byrne of Goldcore.com about the European debt crisis and Ireland's gold.[...]"  

MSM: "Henry Paulson Tipped Off Hedge Funds During Financial Crisis" [11/30/11] "... Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives -- at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.  [...]" 

Commentary: "How Iran Can Collapse All of the Bilderberg Banks and Governments" [11/30/11] "All the Iranians have to do is to announce the purchase ten billion dollars in silver and ten billion dollars in gold over the next 90 days. If the Iranians wanted to have fun, they would say they absolutely needed to buy gold because Russia and China will have to publish a gold backed currency after all the other currencies collapse. They will begin by backing the ruble and yuan with gold and fixing their exchange rates. We do not want to be excluded from world trade. After the dollar, the euro and the pound collapse, we will want to fix our currency to the Russian ruble and the Chinese yuan. If Americans want to import oil or anything else from overseas, all they will have to do is to buy gold at 2, 3 or 5 thousand dollars an ounce before proceeding with their purchases. [...]"  

Commentary:  "More Than 2 Years Later, Secrets Of Bailout Emerge" [11/29/11] " For more than two years, the Fed and the banks it bailed out during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis have kept many of the details of the massive, multi-trillion-dollar bailout a secret. But, thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests, 29,000 pages of bailout details are pouring out of the Fed at last, and those details are explained in an extended and damning report by Bloomberg Markets magazine. The Fed says there have been no losses, but Bloomberg argues that the secrecy surrounding the funding "enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger. [...]"  

MSM: "Fitch Keeps U.S. Credit Rating at ‘AAA’, Cuts Outlook to Negative" [11/29/11] "Fitch Ratings kept its pristine AAA rating on the U.S. on Monday, but the credit-ratings company downgraded its outlook to “negative” in the wake of the "Supercommittee’s failure to find $1.2 trillion in spending cuts". The development, which had been hinted at last week, could have been worse for the U.S. as Standard & Poor’s slashed its credit rating for the first time ever in August. However, Fitch warned that further deficit reduction efforts “will not be credible” if they solely rely on cutting discretionary spending. Economists have said Congress needs to quickly move to slash entitlement spending on programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. [...]"  

MSM: "European Recession Looming: OECD" [11/29/11] "The sense of financial difficulty in Europe deepened yesterday with predictions the euro zone and Britain could be entering recession and that every EU nation's credit rating could be hit unless urgent action is taken to halt the crisis. An updated growth report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said the debt crisis was now just one step away from plunging advanced economies into an abyss of recession and could trigger waves of bankruptcies and wealth destruction. And one of the world's three main ratings agencies, Moody's, warned even countries such as Germany may have to have their credit status revised - a move which would force them to pay higher borrowing costs ... Despite the glut of bad news, stocks rose after reports that the International Monetary Fund was readying a bailout for Italy. The markets in Milan, Frankfurt and Paris all registered upswings of more than 3 per cent after opening. But the IMF denied that talks on any such deal were taking place. [...]" 

MSM: "Federal Judge Blocks Major Bank's Mortgage Settlement" [11/29/11] "A federal judge blocked what would have been a $285 million mortgage settlement between Citigroup and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a tweet from The New York Times. If the deal had passed muster, it would have settled accusations that the bank misled mortgage investors when selling securities, according to a separate NYT report. Jed Rakoff, the judge that blocked the settlement, criticized the SEC's enforcement practices at a hearing on the settlement earlier this month. "Doesn't the S.E.C. have an interest in what the truth is?" Rakoff reportedly asked at the hearing. [...]"  

Legal Case: "Credit Rating Agencies Told They Can't Say Whatever They Want" [11/28/11] "A federal judge has said credit ratings are not always protected opinion under the First Amendment, a defeat for credit rating agencies in a lawsuit brought by investors who lost money on mortgage-backed securities. The November 12 decision was a little-noticed setback for McGraw-Hill Cos' Standard & Poor's, Moody's Corp's Moody's Investors Service and Fimalac SA's Fitch Ratings, which have long invoked First Amendment free speech protection to defend against lawsuits over their ratings. These agencies had argued that the Constitution protected them from claims they issued inflated ratings on more than $5 billion of securities issued in 2006 and 2007, and backed by loans from former Thornburg Mortgage Inc and other lenders. But the judge said the ratings were shared with too small a group of investors to deserve the broad protection sought. "The court rejects the rating agency defendants' arguments that the First Amendment provides any protection to them under the facts of this case," U.S. District Judge James Browning in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wrote in a 273-page opinion. Browning nonetheless dismissed claims accusing Moody's and Fitch, but not S&P, of misrepresentations, saying the investors did not adequately allege that the two agencies did not believe their ratings, or knowingly concealed their inaccuracy. He also said federal law preempts some arguments that the investors used to recover under New Mexico securities law. [...]"  

Commentary: "Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over: Bankers Have Seized Europe" Paul Craig Roberts [11/27/11] "On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35% of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private banks that hold the troubled sovereign debt from Greece, Italy, and Spain must accept part of the cost of their bailout by writing off some of the debt. The private banks want to avoid any losses either by forcing the Greek, Italian, and Spanish governments to make good on the bonds by imposing extreme austerity on their citizens, or by having the European Central Bank print euros with which to buy the sovereign debt from the private banks. Printing money to make good on debt is contrary to the ECB’s charter and especially frightens Germans, because of the Weimar experience with hyperinflation. Obviously, the German government got the message from the orchestrated failed bond auction. As I wrote at the time, there is no reason for Germany, with its relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the troubled countries, not to be able to sell its bonds. [...] In my opinion, the failed German bond auction was orchestrated by the US Treasury, by the European Central Bank and EU authorities, and by the private banks that own the troubled sovereign debt. My opinion is based on the following facts. Goldman Sachs and US banks have guaranteed perhaps one trillion dollars or more of European sovereign debt by selling swaps or insurance against which they have not reserved. The fees the US banks received for guaranteeing the values of European sovereign debt instruments simply went into profits and executive bonuses. This, of course, is what ruined the American insurance giant, AIG, leading to the TARP bailout at US taxpayer expense and Goldman Sachs’ enormous profits. If any of the European sovereign debt fails, US financial institutions that issued swaps or unfunded guarantees against the debt are on the hook for large sums that they do not have. The reputation of the US financial system probably could not survive its default on the swaps it has issued. Therefore, the failure of European sovereign debt would renew the financial crisis in the US, requiring a new round of bailouts and/or a new round of Federal Reserve “quantitative easing,” that is, the printing of money in order to make good on irresponsible financial instruments, the issue of which enriched a tiny number of executives.[...]"  Related: See below.

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Unemploy Wall Street (E215)" [11/27/11] [25:41]  "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss unemployed Wall Streeters looking for financial firms that practice 'integrity and honesty' and hedge fund managers crying 'boohoo' that JP Morgan has seized their MF Global funds. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Danny Schechter about plunder, the crime of our time, inspiring an economic justice movement"  Related: "Keiser Report: Corruptify! (E214)" [11/24/11] [25:45]  "Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss taxpayers in the West being pepper-sprayed with toxic debts while in China fraudsters receive five fingers of death. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Gregor Macdonald about Warren Buffett's investment in Japan and the cost benefit analysis of the energy policy of invading resource rich nations in order to liberate their oil." 

Commentary: "9 Final Ways The Bankster-Occupied U.S. Government Is Waging War Against America" [11/27/11] "1. Ideology. There is a dictatorship of the mind and spirit in America. The official ideology of the U.S. totalitarian state is counter-terrorism and national security. All domestic and foreign crimes are justified under the umbrella of security and defense. The false flag September 11 attacks served as the catalyst that brought this totalitarian ideology into being on a world stage. The attacks also had the effect of putting the American people into a psychological state of subservience towards the government and power elite. As a result, the free will of the American people has been destroyed. The minds of the people are directed at non-existent terrorists like Al Qaeda and non-threatening countries like Iraq and Iran for one single purpose: to generate insecurity in the individual so that he/she supports the false and permanent war on terror. Hans Barth wrote in his 1939 essay called, "Reality and Ideology of the Totalitarian State," that, "a people completely unified by a totalitarian policy and wholly integrated as a spiritual body, thus offering a foundation for a totalitarian state, is nothing but a flexible instrument for the use of the commander-in-chief in the pursuit of the totalitarian war," (Barth (1939); The Review of Politics, Volume 1, Issue 03, Pg. 275-306). The voice of dissent and 9/11 truth is the only way to break the totalitarian conditioning of the American people and the people of other Western countries. [...]"  Related:  "9 Ways The Hijacked Federal Government Is Waging War Against The American People" [11/10/11] | "9 More Ways The U.S. Government Is Waging War Against America " [11/18/11]  

MSM: "U.S. Congress Raids Healthcare Funds For Third Time" [11/26/11] "In cash-strapped Washington, President Obama’s $1 trillion health care law is presenting a tempting target for lawmakers seeking funds for other projects, as Congress last week raided the health care piggy bank for the third time in less than a year. Congress last week axed a part of Democrats’ signature domestic achievement to find $11 billion to cover the cost of repealing a withholding tax that otherwise would have hit government contractors in 2013. Mr. Obama signed that bill into law on Monday. The withholding bill follows two other efforts — one in December and another in April — that reworked the health care law to squeeze savings for other priorities. The December bill funded higher payments for doctors who treat Medicare patients, and the April legislation repealed a paperwork provision in the original health care law that businesses said would be onerous. All told, Congress and the president have tapped some $50 billion earmarked to pay for benefits and programs in the health care overhaul in future years to fund more-immediate spending needs. Both earlier efforts dealt with health care issues, but the bill Mr. Obama signed Monday marks the first time that the massive 2010 law has been tapped to fund something completely unrelated. “They don’t want to open it up. They’re getting forced to open it up now and then, but to open it up for budgetary reasons, I think the pressures are pretty real,” said former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin, who said it’s easier to cut future benefits than it is to cut programs that are already paying out. [...]"  

Commentary:  "Endangered Lawmakers Move To Back Bill Banning Congressional Insider Trading" [11/26/11] "Politically vulnerable lawmakers are lining up as co-sponsors of legislation that would ban congressional insider trading. A “60 minutes” report earlier this month indicated that members of Congress have been trading stocks based on knowledge gained from their positions, a practice that does not violate the law. Before the report, a House bill that would outlaw the practice only had nine co-sponsors. In the week following the “60 Minutes” segment, that number jumped to 92. Of the 83 additions, 19 are facing competitive reelection races  [...]"  Note:  How convenient for them, to temporarily support something that is literally impossible pass into law, so as to appear 'innocent' and 'untouched' ...

MSM: "German Bond Auction Fails" [11/25/11] "A “disastrous” sale of German benchmark bonds sparked fears on Wednesday the debt crisis was beginning to threaten even Berlin, with the Bundesbank forced to dig deep into its pockets to ensure the auction did not fail. In one of the least successful debt sales by Europe’s powerhouse economy since the launch of the single currency, the low returns offered — just 2 percent annually over 10 years — deterred investors made uneasy by the escalating cost of the crisis to Germany. That meant the central bank had to pick up 39 percent of the 6 billion euros of debt Germany had hoped to sell after commercial banks bought just 3.644 billion euros of the issue. [...]" 

MSM: "Lawmakers To Look At Corzine, Rating Firms' Ties: Report" [11/25/11]   "U.S. lawmakers plan to look into the relationship between bankrupt mid-size brokerage firm MF Global Holdings Ltd's former CEO Jon Corzine and the major credit-rating agencies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing a person familiar with the matter. [...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Big Bad Banks (E213)" [11/23/11] [27:47]  "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss the Koch Brothers and MF Global and Northern Rock and Richard Branson’s blonde hair and big, shiny teeth. In the second half of the show, Max talks to independent radio journalist Richard Thomas about Occupy LSX, poll tax riots and financial apartheid.."  Related: See stories below on MF Global, Corzine, etc. Koch brothers pulled out billions before MF Global crash.

MSM: "Congressional Panel Seeks to Question Corzine" [11/23/11] "A congressional panel plans to question MF Global executives, including Jon S. Corzine, about the downfall of the trading firm and the customer money that went missing in its final days, according to people familiar with the matter. The oversight unit of the House Financial Services Committee has tentatively scheduled a public hearing on MF Global for Dec. 15, one person said, and lawmakers plan to call as witnesses Mr. Corzine and Bradley Abelow, the firm’s chief operating officer and Mr. Corzine’s chief of staff when he was governor of New Jersey. [...]"  

MSM: "JPMorgan Sued by Germany's BayernLB Over Mortgage-Backed Securities" [11/23/11] "JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, was sued for fraud by German lender Bayerische Landesbank over losses on about $2.1 billion in mortgage-backed securities. JPMorgan units concealed the truth about the poor quality of the loans underlying the securities and knew that credit ratings misrepresented their risk, BayernLB said in a lawsuit filed yesterday in New York State Supreme Court. “This misconduct has resulted in astounding rates of default on the loans,” BayernLB said. Most of the securities have been downgraded to junk, it said. The lender said it believed the mortgage securities were safe investments based on representations about the quality of loans and credit ratings when it invested almost $2.1 billion in 57 offerings from 2005 to 2007, according to the complaint. The lawsuit names JPMorgan and other units of the New York-based bank as defendants. [...]"  

MSM: "Futures Plunge As Fed Discloses New Stress Test: Fears US Banks Will Need To Raise Tens Of Billions In New Capital" [11/23/11] "It appears that the key news of the day was not the fluff about the IMF which as we said was total non-news, but adverse news from the Fed which just announced that it is launching its 2012 bank stress test which unlike previous iterations may actually demand capital raises from US banks. Those banks are Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. The problem is that next steps will certainly involve tens of billions in capital raises demanded of the above six banks (and probably Jefferies) by the Fed. Not surprisingly, ES has collapsed on the news to just over 1180. [...]" 

MSM: "Anger Mounts As MF Global Clients See $3 Billion Still Stuck" [11/22/11] "Three weeks after MF Global's collapsed, furious former customers are still fighting for access to billions of dollars as they question why as much as two-thirds of their money is still stuck. While authorities have touted the fact that they are returning 60 percent of the collateral and cash that had been frozen in the wake of the broker's October 31 bankruptcy, a closer look shows that in fact only about 40 percent of customers' total funds have been authorized for release so far. The remainder, more than $3 billion, ostensibly remains on hand to cover a shortfall originally estimated by MF Global to regulators at just $600 million. [...]"  Related: "Corzine’s Broker License Expired Years Ago… FINRA Let Him Run MF Global Without One"  

MSM: "Ex-Madoff Trader Admits Faking Records Since '70s" [11/22/11] "Bernard Madoff's multibillion-dollar fraud began in the early 1970s with several employees working together to fake records when no trades actually took place, a former trader at Madoff's firm said in pleading guilty to criminal charges on Monday. The former trader, David Kugel, told a Manhattan federal court judge that he and two other longtime Madoff employees, Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi, used rates of returns on client statements that were pre- determined by Madoff himself. [...]"  Related: "Madoff Co-Conspirator Changes Plea To Guilty"   "David Kugel, 66, faces up to 85 years in prison and $170 billion in forfeiture, but he will remain free on a $3 million bail for at least six months as he helps the federal government build a case against his alleged co-conspirators. [...]"  

MSM: "U.S. Sued For $25 Billion Over AIG Takeover" [11/22/11] "A company run by former American International Group Inc Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg sued the U.S. government for $25 billion, calling the 2008 federal takeover of the insurer unconstitutional. The lawsuit marks an unusual effort to force the government to pay shareholders, who have seen AIG's stock price tumble 98 percent since the middle of 2007, when the insurer's risky bets on mortgage debt through credit default swaps began to falter. Greenberg's company, Starr International Co, also filed a lawsuit against the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose president at the time of the takeover was Timothy Geithner, now U.S. Treasury Secretary. Once AIG's largest shareholder, Starr said the government took a roughly 80 percent stake in AIG and charged an "punitive" 14.5 percent on federal loans without seeking a shareholder vote, hoping to provide a "backdoor bailout" for AIG trading partners such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. It said the bailouts that began on September 16, 2008, violated shareholders' rights to due process and equal protection, and a Fifth Amendment ban against taking private property for public use without just compensation, known as the "takings clause." Greenberg, 86, had led AIG for nearly four decades prior to his 2005 ouster. Starr once owned 12 percent of AIG. [...]"  Note:  Reincarnated retread ingrates.

MSM: "Bank Lobbying Firm Sends Out Memo To Undermine ‘Occupy Wall Street’" [11/21/11] "In an exclusive from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and the Huffington Post, a Washington D.C. lobbying firm has prepared a memo for its Wall Street bank clients informing them of ways to deal with “Occupy Wall Street” and the political fallout the movement may cause. The memo was written by the firm Clark, Lytle, Geduldig, and Cranford (CLGC), warning the the American Bankers Association (ABA) that Republicans could turn on them as a strategic move in next year’s elections due to Democratic pressure. CLGC proposed to the ABA an $800,000 price tag on receiving “opposite research” from the firm in order to create “negative narratives” about Occupy Wall Street and the politicians who support them. Hayes notes in his show Saturday morning that two of the firm’s members, Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, were aides for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh).  [...]" 

MSM: "Britain ‘Will Join Euro Before Long’, Says German Finance Minister" [11/20/11] "Wolfgang Schäuble said that, despite the current crisis in the eurozone, the euro will ultimately emerge as the common currency of the entire European Union. He said he “respects” Britain’s decision to keep the pound, but insisted that the survival and eventual stabilisation of the euro will convince non-members to join the currency club. “This may happen more quickly than some people in the British Isles currently believe,” he added. Mr Schäuble also said Germany will stand firm on its call for a financial transaction tax that Britain believes would badly harm the City of London.  [...]"  Related: "Germans Try To Kill Off Pound" "Britain will soon be forced to scrap the pound and join the euro, one of Germany’s most senior figures said yesterday. In a chilling threat to UK sovereignty, German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble predicted that all Europe would one day use the single currency. “It will happen perhaps faster than some in the British Isles currently believe,” he said. His sinister warning followed the emergence of a secret German plan to build a powerful new economic government for the eurozone and block an EU referendum in Britain. A leaked German foreign ministry memo detailed plans for a new European Monetary Fund. It also claimed the EU’s treaty could be altered to centralise more power without triggering a vote. In a further sign of growing German supremacy within the EU, David Cameron was yesterday rebuffed by Chancellor Angela Merkel in talks over how to tackle the euro crisis. Last night British opponents of the EU were horrified by the bellicose threat to Britain’s economic independence. Tory MP Peter Bone said: “I would be happy to have a bet with the German finance minister that the euro will disappear before the pound. It is a completely absurd suggestion that will never happen.” Fellow Tory backbencher Douglas Carswell said: “It is a tragedy that a continent of millions of hard-working people is run by clowns like this.” And UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said: “This German bullying is deeply unpleasant and the sooner we leave the EU the better.” Dr Schauble, who has used a wheelchair since being shot in an assassination attempt in 1990, is nicknamed “Dr Strangelove” in diplomatic circles. [...]"  

Gerald Celente: "Trends In The News - Criminal Mafia Enterprise" [11/20/11] [7:23]   

MSM: "Goldman Faces Lawsuits Over $15.8 Billion In Mortgages" [11/20/11] "Goldman Sachs Group Inc faces lawsuits over $15.8 billion worth of mortgage securities, the bank said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday, a more than 30-fold increase from the amount disclosed three months earlier. The aggregate figure, which is up from $485 million previously, does not represent how much money Goldman management estimates it may lose on the litigation. Goldman lifted that estimate of "reasonably possible" losses to $2.6 billion from $2 billion. The bigger dollar figures come as investors in mortgage-backed bond deals have raced to take legal action or enter settlement negotiations before statutes of limitations expire, and as investors continue to worry about banks' exposure to big lawsuits. [...]"  

MSM: "Money Has Been Privatised By Stealth" UK [11/20/11] "Martin Wolf, one of the experts who sat on the independent commission on banking, put it bluntly, saying in the Financial Times that "the essence of the contemporary monetary system was the creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks' often foolish lending". Here's how it works. When you ask the bank for the money to buy a one-bedroom box in London, the money that appears in your account isn't borrowed from some prudent grandmother's life savings. In fact, the bank simply types those numbers into your account, creating brand new money that you can now spend. As other banks do exactly the same, the amount of money in the economy grows and grows. Every new mortgage creates new money, which pushes up house prices just a little more and forces the next buyer to borrow even more from the banks. (A more detailed and fully-referenced explanation of this process is given in the book Where Does Money Come From? published by the New Economics Foundation.) Through this process of creating money, banks have been able to inflate the money supply at a rate of 11.5% a year, pushing up the prices of houses and pricing out an entire generation. [...] Incredibly, the law that makes it illegal to print your own tenners at home has never been updated to apply to the electronic money that is now created by banks. As we began to use electronic money to make the vast majority of payments, cash became less important and the power to create money shifted to the banks that caused the crisis. Without anyone noticing, the power to create money was privatised by stealth. So while criminal gangs manage to create about £2.5bn of fake cash each year, the banks collectively create more than £100bn a year without breaking a single law. Their reward for doing so is the interest that is currently being collected on nearly every pound in existence. The cost to the rest of us is a lifetime in debt. [...]  This brings us to a very simple solution to the financial crisis. Many of the current protesters might be surprised to hear that the answer to our current crisis comes from a former Tory prime minister. Back in 1844, Sir Robert Peel realised that metal coins, which at that time were the only legal form of money, had been superseded by new paper notes issued by banks. These paper notes were lighter and more convenient, and therefore much more popular. Peel's 1844 Bank Charter Act took the power to create paper money away from the banks and placed it back under control of the Bank of England. We should now do exactly the same with the power to create electronic money. My own organisation, Positive Money, has even drafted the legislation that would be required to do this. [...] " 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Vampire Banker Hunter (E212)" [11/20/11] [25:56] "Every week Max Keiser looks at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines. This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss the tiny rule changes and the Zombies behind the collapse of MF Global. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, a Keiser- Celente 2012 bumper sticker spotted! In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews Barry Ritholtz about the big lie that bankers did not cause the crisis and what MF Global means to the markets."

MSM: "Chinese Fund Managers Sentenced To Death After Cheating Investors Out Of 1 Billion USD" [11/19/11] "Two brothers and their father were sentenced to death on Monday for cheating 15,000 investors out of over $1.1 billion in east China’s Zhejiang province. Ji Wenhua, president of the Yintai Real Estate and Investment Group, was sentenced to death for the crime of fund-raising fraud, said the Intermediate People’s Court in the city of Lishui, where the company was based. However, his brother, Ji Shengjun, and father, Ji Linqing, could be spared execution as their death penalties have a two-year reprieve. The family, along with others, had illegally raised over 7.04 billion yuan ($1.12 billion) between 2003 and 2008 before they were taken into police custody in 2008, holding the truth from investors that their company had been losing money for years, according to the court. A third brother, Ji Yongjun, was sentenced to life imprisonment. The four men also had their political rights deprived for life and personal property confiscated. The court also sentenced two other people involved in the case to three years in prison each. [...]"  

Commentary: "Italy: The Cabinet Of Mario Monti—A Government Of The Banks" [11/19/11]   "Italy’s new emergency government is a government of big business and the international banks. It has not been democratically elected, but instead was installed following pressure from the financial markets by the 86-year-old former Communist Party member and current Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano. Just a week before the swearing-in ceremony the interest rates on 10-year government bonds had climbed to a record high of 7.5 percent. This proved to be the decisive factor for Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation. [...]" Related: "Italy's Monti Forms Politician-Free Government" [11/17/11] " Economist Mario Monti has been officially sworn in as PM—formally ending Silvio Berlusconi's 17-year-long run of political dominance—and he formed a new Italian government that doesn't include a single politician. Instead, he drew from the ranks of bankers, diplomats, and business executives. Explaining why his Cabinet contained no one from Italy's fractious political parties, Monti said that his talks with party leaders led him to the conclusion "that the non-presence of politicians in the government would help it."  [...]" 

Commentary: "MF Global Money Now “Missing” After Reports It Was Sent To JP Morgan" [11/19/11] "Over $600 million dollars in customer funds that was transferred out of MF Global in a wave of suspicious trades before the collapse of the financial broker has now been declared “missing,” despite the fact that reports earlier in the month stated the money had been placed in an account with Wall Street giant JP Morgan. clients of MF Global and its subsidiaries, including prominent trends forecaster Gerald Celente, were shocked to learn that their accounts had been emptied by Chapter 11 trustees. The looting took place in the days before MF Global’s collapse following revelations that the broker was exposed to crisis-hit European debt bonds. However, weeks beforehand, billionaire investors like the Koch brothers had the miraculous foresight to withdraw all their money, prompting accusations that big players got a ‘heads up’ in advance of the firm’s collapse. “The missing $600 million has still not been located despite an army of regulators, investigators, lawyers and others descending on the disgraced futures brokerage to conduct a search. Judging from media reports, people are still at a complete loss to explain how so much in client money could just disappear,” reports Fierce Finance. News reports concerning the notion that the money has seemingly vanished into thin air are absent any mention of prior reports that confirmed the funds had been deposited with JP Morgan Chase. On November 4, the Financial Times reported that hundreds of millions in looted funds from customers’ accounts later “turned up at JPMorgan Chase, the failed broker-dealer’s custody bank.”
Citing a report in the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business also reported that MF Global, “recently discovered that about $659 million of its customer segregated accounts resided in an account at banking heavyweight JPMorgan Chase (JPM).” However, after JP Morgan claimed the funds found in its account “isn’t the missing money” stolen from MF Global clients, the story went cold, despite MF Global executives claiming otherwise. Either MF Global or JP Morgan are lying. The lawyer for James Giddens, the trustee supervising the liquidation of the MF Global, said “Exactly what happened, I don’t think anyone knows,” in reference to the missing $600 million. Thousands of irate customers have been told they will only get around 60 per cent of the money back that was in their accounts, a total release of $520 million, despite the fact that Giddens has access to more than $1.4 billion. [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: In Debt We Trust (E211)" [11/18/11] [25:56] "We discuss simple thieves and honest graft. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock about the European debt crisis and the MF Global missing funds crisis."

Gerald Celente: "What Actually Happened With MF Global" [11/18/11]   [7:54] Related: RT Interview: "Celente Enraged As His MF Global Gold Account Taken" [11/16/11]   [5:56] | "Gerald Celente Speaks About Politics And Morality" [1:08] Flashback: "Gerald Celente: The Great Depression of 2012"    [10:36] Note: From November 2009.

Commentary:  "Why Bloomberg Fights Occupy Wall Street " [11/17/11] [6:40] "Why is New York City major Michael Bloomberg defending raids on Zuccotti Park to destroy the Occupy Wall Street protests? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down. [...]" 

MSM: "Fed Now Largest Owner of U.S. Government Debt—Surpassing China" [11/17/11] "At the close of business on Tuesday, the debt of the federal government exceeded $15 trillion for the first time–with the largest single owner of the publicly held portion of that debt being the Federal Reserve. Over the past year, as the Federal Reserve massively increased its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities and entities in China marginally decreased theirs, the Fed surpassed the Chinese as the top owner of publicly held U.S. government debt. In its latest monthly report, the Federal Reserve said that as of Sept. 28, it owned $1.665 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. That was more than double the $812 billion in U.S. Treasury securities the Fed said it owned as of Sept. 29, 2010. [...]"  Note:  All the government has to do is nationalize the Fed, and cancel the debt.

MSM: "Beyond Insider Trading: Here's How Members Of Congress Get Rich Off Earmarks" [11/16/11] "Schweizer's explosive new exposé, has pulled back the lid on congressional insider trading, revealing the shocking regularity with which elected officials use their legislative positions to reap financial rewards. This 'honest' graft is by no means limited to using inside knowledge to play the stock market. Schweizer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institute, reports that members of Congress are also making a killing in real estate, using federal funds to boost their personal land holdings. Like Congress's questionable trading practices, mixing real estate investments with taxpayer money is technically legal. Actually, it's pretty easy for members of Congress to get rich off of federal projects — land deals are more difficult to detect than trades, and land, unlike stocks, doesn't have a set price. Members of Congress aren't required to disclose if a land deal would benefit them personally. In the corporate world, using company money for personal financial gain would at minimum get you fired. But in Congress, the practice is not only legal, but common. [...]"  

MSM: "Sen. Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov’t Grant" [11/16/11] "In the new blockbuster tell-all Throw Them All Out, investigative reporter and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer reveals that on November 18, 2009, Sen. Feinstein and her husband invested $1 million into Amyris Biotechnologies, a “green” company focused on plant-based renewable fuels and chemicals. The Feinsteins’ million-dollar investment was their only stock transaction for the entire year. Feinstein, however, had good reason to feel that all her investment eggs were secure in the biotech basket, because just weeks after her seven-figure investment in Amyris, the company scored a $24 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to build a pilot plant where altered yeast would turn sugar into hydrocarbons. The company went public the following year with an IPO that raked in $85 million. Currently, it’s unclear exactly how much money Senator Feinstein and her husband made off their investment, “but it’s safe to assume that they did well,” concludes Schweizer. [...]"  

Commentary: "Law Professor: Of Course Congressional Insider Trading Is Totally Illegal" [11/16/11] "The hot story of the day is this Congressional insider trading business, which was popularized by 60 Minutes last night. The basic gist: Congressmen are allowed to trade on whatever they want without legal ramifications, and in fact have a fantastic track record of beating the market. But the whole thing is hogwash according to Indiana Law Professor Donna Nagy. In this paper titled Insider Trading, Congressional Officials, and Duties of Entrustment, Nagy argues that it doesn't really make sense to say Congress is exempt from insider trading laws, since the illegality of insider trading is mostly established by the courts, and through the relatively vague SEC rule 10b5-1. [...]  Professor Tamar Frankel’s recent book and earlier writings on fiduciary law and duties of entrustment can help us to see precisely why insider trading by members of Congress and legislative staffers is already illegal under present law and why enactment of the proposed STOCK Act is not only unnecessary, but would also narrow considerably the present law that would apply to their securities transactions in the absence of an explicit statutory prohibition. Drawing from Professor Frankel’s extensive work, and from prior applications of fiduciary principles in congressional disciplinary actions and Executive Branch prosecutions of members of Congress for honest-services fraud, this Article argues that members of Congress and legislative staffers owe fiduciary-like duties of trust and confidence to a host of persons including the citizen-investors whom they serve, as well as the federal government, other members of Congress, and government officials outside of Congress who rely on their loyalty and integrity. Based on these duties of entrustment, this Article concludes that congressional officials engage in deception, and therefore violate Rule 10b-5, if they trade securities on the basis of material nonpublic information obtained through congressional service. [...] "  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Corporations Fear OWS (E210)" [11/16/11] [25:57] "We discuss the Good, The Bad and the Schving Schving of making companies scared by putting risk back onto their balance sheet. We also discuss clients getting smoked through massive ploys in the commodity markets. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews Mike Maloney of GoldSilver.com and ProtectNSurvive.com about the latest in the precious metals market and about a $15 trillion Dow."

Commentary: "Banker Coup: Goldman Sachs Takes Over Europe" [11/15/11] "Precisely as we warned all along, the very financial terrorists responsible for the economic collapse have now exploited the crisis to pose as saviors and oversee a banker coup – with Goldman Sachs stooges now in control of both Italy and the European Central Bank. The objective of the coup is to exploit the euro debt crisis as a vehicle through which to create a European federal superstate that will transfer all remaining control over national affairs to Brussels. The globalists have already started the process, hand-picking two unelected stooges to replace democratically elected Prime Ministers in Greece and Italy. Silvio Berlusconi was the Colonel Gaddafi of Europe. Despite his personally loathsome character, Berlusconi was proving to be an obstacle for the banker coup and was hastily dismissed, not by the will of the people, but as Time’s Stephen Faris explains, by an action of insiders who control the markets. [...] Berlusconi’s replacement is the ultimate globalist stooge, former EU Commissioner Mario Monti, an international advisor for Goldman Sachs, the European Chairman of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission and also a leading member of the Bilderberg Group. Monti is a safe pair of hands for the next stage of the banker coup, when the euro crisis will be hijacked to concentrate even more power into the hands of the very people who caused it in the first place. “This is the band of criminals who brought us this financial disaster. It is like asking arsonists to put out the fire,” commented Alessandro Sallusti, editor of Il Giornale, a Milan newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family. [...] Similarly, when Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou dared to suggest the people of Greece be allowed to have their say in a referendum, within days he was dispatched and replaced with Lucas Papademos, former vice-President of the ECB, visiting Harvard Professor and ex-senior economist at the Boston Federal Reserve. Papademos and Monti have been installed as unelected leaders for the precise reason that they “aren’t directly accountable to the public,” notes Faris, once again illustrating the fundamentally dictatorial and undemocratic foundation of the entire European Union. [...]" Related: "Resignation Of Italy’s Berlusconi Clears Way For “Technocratic” Government Chosen By The Banks" "Following a fast track procedure whereby both houses of the Italian parliament agreed to punitive austerity measures dictated by the banks, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced his resignation on Saturday. His standing down as premier clears the way for the appointment of a “technocratic” government led by the economist Mario Monti, as ordered by the financial elite and its instruments, the European Union and the IMF. [...]" 

Commentary:  "Newly-Installed Greek Government Pledges Continued Cuts" [11/15/11] "After being sworn in on Friday, Greece’s new Prime Minister Lucas Papademos made clear his government would continue the reactionary, deeply unpopular program of cuts implemented by his predecessor, George Papandreou, at the behest of the major banks. Papademos declared in his first speech to parliament that the main task of his government is “to carry out the decisions of the [October European Union] summit, and to apply economic policies linked to these decisions”. In particular he discussed job cuts, lowering wages in the public sector, and the deregulation of skilled professions. This refers to measures passed by the parliament on October 20, that have yet to be implemented, but are required to obtain the last €8 billion tranche from the EU bailout fund, according to Papademos. Without this money Greece could go bankrupt by mid-December. [...]"  

Corbett Report: "G20 and the Global Financial Infrastructure" [11/14/11] [9:48] "Last week’s G20 Summit in Cannes, France is already being written off as a bust by the international financiers who were hoping to bolster the fledgling European Financial Stability Fund with international support and to implement a new global financial services tax which they claim will be the long-term solution to the ongoing global economic meltdown. [...]"  Note: "Investigative Journalist Daniel Estulin reveals the death threat that caused Greek PM Papandreou to renege on his promise of a bailout referendum for the Greek people. According to Estulin’s sources, Papandreou’s abrupt turnabout was the result of a direct threat from Sarkozy and the Eurozone powers. Sarkozy threatened Papandreou with death if he went forward with the national referendum on Greek debt. The Greek PM was threatened  on both sides, first by people within Greece and then by the banking criminals .Papandreou chose a way out to save his own skin and divert the blame on the next PM...a former ECB banker. If the ECB & IMF get away with this robbery, Greece will spiral into chaos and revolution. Watch for scapegoat violence ..."

MSM: "Congress Insider Trading On 60 Minutes" [11/14/11] [4:00] "Nobody would talk to us." That's what 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft says happened when he tried to get members of Congress to talk about "insider trading" on Capitol Hill. It turns out that it is not illegal for member of Congress to make stock trades using inside information they learn while working on legislation, and Steve had some questions about some specific stock trades. [...]"  Related: See article below, entitled ""Congress Members Took Part in Insider Trading: Abramoff" [11/13/11] and related stories.

MSM: "Europe’s €1 Trillion (£854bn) Rescue Fund Has Been Forced To Buy Its Own Debt" [11/14/11] "Eurozone bail-out fund has to resort to buying its own debt.  [...]" Related: "European Ponzi Goes Full Retard As EFSF Found To Monetize… Itself" "We have long mocked and ridiculed the Fed for being the ultimate ponzi instrument: after all, why worry, when your central bank will buy up almost three trillion in US paper in about 2 years (a very comforting fact for US politicians who never have to fear that those trillions in new porkbills, pardon fiscal stimulus programs, may end up without funding). Well, as it turns out those wily veteran bankers from across the Atlantic have just one upped America yet again. According to the Telegraph, the abysmal, and barely successful, 3 EUR billion issuance of EFSF bonds (which was originally supposed to be 10 EUR billion, on its very very gradual climb to 1 EUR trillion) had one more very curious feature to it, aside from confirming that it is Dead On Arrival as expected. It turns out that in addition to being the most convoluted and complex creation ever conceived by JPM which is advising Europe on coming up with structured finance products that are so complex nobody will ask any questions and will automatically assume someone else has done the homework, it is also the quintessential ponzi instrument. The Telegraph reports that the already reduced 3 EUR billion "target was only met after the EFSF resorted to buying up several hundred million euros worth of the bonds." You read that right: in its first bond issuance since its transformation to the European Bank/Soveriegn Bailout Swiss Army Knife, the EFSF not only failed to raise a minimum token amount, but also had to... buy its own bonds. We can assume that the money the EFSF needed to fund said purchase came from the money growing tree, as at last check the ECB was still not funding the EFSF with crisp, new zEURq.PK equivalent binary 1s and 0s. But at least we all know what happens when the global ponzi goes full retard. [...]"  

MSM: "Gadhafi’s Gold-Money Plan Would Have Devastated Dollar" [11/13/11] "It remains unclear exactly why or how the Gadhafi regime went from “a model” and an “important ally” to the next target for regime change in a period of just a few years. But after claims of “genocide” as the justification for NATO intervention were disputed by experts, several other theories have been floated. Oil, of course, has been mentioned frequently — Libya is Africa‘s largest oil producer. But one possible reason in particular for Gadhafi’s fall from grace has gained significant traction among analysts and segments of the non-Western media: central banking and the global monetary system. According to more than a few  observers, Gadhafi’s plan to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. dollars — demanding payment instead in gold-backed “dinars” (a single African currency made from gold) — was the real cause. The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit. And it literally had the potential to bring down the dollar and the world monetary system by extension, according to analysts. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. The “Insiders” were apparently panicking over Gadhafi’s plan. "Any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks,” noted financial analyst Anthony Wile, editor of the free market-oriented Daily Bell, in an interview with RT. “So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward [for] removing him from power." According to Wile, Gadhafi’s plan would have strengthened the whole continent of Africa in the eyes of economists backing sound money — not to mention investors. But it would have been especially devastating for the U.S. economy, the American dollar, and particularly the elite in charge of the system. [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Cameron & Osborne on the Run (E209)" [11/13/11] [25:55] "We talk about George Osborne’s admission that he has no power over bankers and that the population will always have to pay for their crimes. We also discuss the ‘slow motion train robbery’ of low interest rates and the use of trending topics on Twitter as price propaganda. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews Senator Mike Gravel about his direct democracy initiative and how it could empower the Occupy Wall Street movement.."

MSM: "Congress Members Took Part in Insider Trading: Abramoff" [11/13/11] "As many as a dozen members of Congress and their aides took part in insider trading based on foreknowledge of market moving information on Capitol Hill, disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff told CNBC in an interview. Abramoff, who was once one of the wealthiest and most powerful lobbyists in Washington before a corruption scandal sent him to federal prison for more than three years, said that many of those members of Congress bragged to him about their stock trading prowess while dining at the exclusive restaurant he owned on Pennsylvania Avenue. But Abramoff, whose black trench coat and fedora became one of the most notorious images in recent Washington history after his fall from grace, said he didn't play the stock market himself — he considered it an inherently unfair "casino" in which the house had far more information than the players. Abramoff made most of his fortune representing — and, as it turned out, duping — Native American tribes rich with cash from casino operations. The former lobbyist said the amounts members of Congress earned trading off their inside knowledge ranged from as little as $2,000 to, as much as "several hundred thousand dollars," that was claimed by one member of Congress. Abramoff declined to name the members of Congress. [...]"  Related: "Congress Insiders: Above The Law?" Video clip "Martha Stewart went to jail for it. Hedge fund honcho Raj Rajaratnam was fined $92 million and will go to jail for years for it. But members of Congress can do the same thing -use non-public information to make stock trades -- and there's no law against it. Steve Kroft reports on how America's lawmakers can legally make tidy profits on information only they know, simply because they won't pass a law against themselves. The report will be broadcast on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Former Rep. Brian Baird says he spent half of his 12 years in Congress trying to get co-sponsors for a bill that would ban insider trading in Congress and also set some rules up to govern conflicts of interest. In 2004, he and Rep. Louise Slaughter introduced the "Stock Act" to stop the insider trading. How far did they get? "We didn't get anywhere. Just flat died," he tells Kroft. He managed to get just six co-sponsors from a membership of over 400 representatives. "It doesn't sound like a lot," says Kroft. "It's not Steve. You could have Cherry Pie Week and get 100 co-sponsors," says Baird.[...]" 

MSM: "U.S. Bancorp Sued by Pension Fund Over Investor Losses on Fraudulent CDOs" [11/12/11]   "U.S. Bancorp knew mortgage loans underlying the bonds weren’t properly transferred to trusts and caused investors to suffer millions of dollars in losses, Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System said in a complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan. [...]"  

MSM: "For Bank Of America, Debit Fees Extend To Unemployment Benefits" [11/11/11] "Bank of America recently aborted plans to charge ordinary banking customers $5 a month to use their debit cards in the face of national outrage. But the bank has quietly continued to mine another source of fees: jobless people who depend upon the bank's prepaid debit cards to tap their benefits. Bank of America and other financial firms -- including U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase -- have secured contracts to provide access to public benefits in 41 states. These contracts typically allow banks to collect unlimited fees from merchants and consumers. In short, the same banks whose speculation delivered a financial crisis that has destroyed millions of jobs have figured out how to turn widespread unemployment into a profit center: The larger the number of people who are out of work and dependent upon the state for sustenance, the greater the potential gains through administering their benefits. "It's absolutely ridiculous," said Sue Berkowitz, director of the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, a Columbia nonprofit that represents low-income people facing foreclosure, food insecurity and other problems. "It should not cost you any more to use a debit card than if they had issued you a check." [...]"  

MSM: "UK Treasury Prepares For 'Economic Armageddon' If Euro Falls Apart" [11/11/11] "Bank of England helps draw up British contingency plans after European commission slashes growth forecasts. The Treasury and Bank of England are making contingency plans for an "economic Armageddon" if the euro falls apart, business secretary Vince Cable said on Thursday as the European commission slashed its growth forecasts and predicted that the continent could be plunged back into recession next year.  [...]"  Note: It's only a matter of when, not if.

MSM: "Greece And The Dictatorship Of Finance" [11/11/11] "Ancient Athens is considered to be the cradle of European democracy. Modern Athens is threatening to become its grave. The events that have rocked Greece in recent days are a lesson and a warning for all of Europe. Three weeks ago a two-day general strike brought the country to a halt. Since then there has been one crisis summit after another—in Athens, Brussels, Cannes. The result is a new government in Greece without any democratic legitimacy intent on imposing the dictates of the financial markets upon the working population. [...]"  Related: "No National Government In Greece As Talks Break Up" "After three days of negotiations, Greece still has no functioning government. [...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Gold Wars (E208)" [11/10/11] [25:54] "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss European gold wars and the brokers at the Chicago Board of Trade telling others to get a job while they can't even do the one job they have. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews James G. Rickards about his new book - Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis."

MSM: "French And Germans Explore Idea Of Smaller Euro Zone" [11/10/11] "German and French officials have discussed plans for a radical overhaul of the European Union that would involve setting up a more integrated and potentially smaller euro zone, EU sources say. “France and Germany have had intense consultations on this issue over the last months, at all levels,” a senior EU official in Brussels told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions. “We need to move very cautiously, but the truth is that we need to establish exactly the list of those who don’t want to be part of the club and those who simply cannot be part,” the official said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave some flavor of his thinking during an address to students in the eastern French city of Strasbourg on Tuesday, when he said a two-speed Europe — the euro zone moving ahead more rapidly than all 27 countries in the EU — was the only model for the future. The discussions among senior policymakers in Paris, Berlin and Brussels raised the possibility of one or more countries leaving the euro zone while the remaining core pushes on toward deeper economic integration, including on tax and fiscal policy. [...]" Related: "Euro  Debt Crisis Spiraling Out Of Control"  

MSM: "Man Charged $39.23 Interest On $0 Balance Bank Of America Credit Card" [11/10/11] "Roger Greenwood was sure Bank of America had made a mistake. The Jacksonville, Illinois man received a credit card statement that showed he had a zero dollar balance, but the bank was still charging him $39.23 in interest anyway. [...]" 

Commentary:  "James Turk - Expect Cataclysmic Events in the Coming Weeks" [11/10/11] "We had a major development here in Europe today. Yields on the ten year Italian bond soared to over 7%. The 7% hurdle is considered critical because once Greece and Ireland went over 7%, they turned to the EU for a bail out. So the thinking now is that Italy needs a bail out too, but here’s the problem. Italy has two trillion euros of debt. That’s greater than the total amount of debt owned by Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain combined.” It’s the fourth largest amount of debt in the world. It’s estimated that over half of this is owned by banks around the world. Four hundred billion euros of it is owned by the French banks alone. As I mentioned in a previous interview here, they can no longer kick the can down the road because it’s become a two ton boulder. Clearly the two percent plus drop today by the euro against the US dollar is a warning sign that a major crisis is brewing. I mentioned before that the Dexia and MF Global collapses are not the Lehman event I’ve been expecting before year end. But the markets are telling us that a major crisis is now brewing. So be prepared for another Lehman type of collapse which will bring the financial structure to its knees.  The media has been portraying these problems as a crisis of capitalism, but they have it completely wrong. What we’re witnessing is a crisis of socialism. Governments have been making far too many promises which have been based on borrowed money coming mainly from the banks.... [...]"  Related: Commentary: "Europe Is Approaching The End Game: Gold Buying in Focus" "Europe is approaching the end game. Credit markets and other governments know what the continent's leaders won't admit: The euro is failing. Gold, more than the dollar, is set to rocket in value as the crisis unfolds. In addition to looser monetary policy (generous European Central Bank purchases of member country bonds) and austerity (higher taxes and less spending) across most of the EU states, Eurozone governments have a three-pronged policy for containing the debt crisis: * The European Financial Stability Fund to purchase and insure bonds of troubled governments. * International Monetary Fund supervision of finances for those governments. * Direct loans to several -- and, in Greece's case, a 50 percent haircut on private debt. None of those three policies is working out. [...]"  

MSM: "Max Keiser: China To Beat IMF To Italy’s Gold" [11/09/11]   [2:01] "Watch the full Keiser Report E208 on Thursday. This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss European gold wars and the brokers at the Chicago Board of Trade telling others to get a job while they can't even do the one job they have. [...]" 

Webster Tarpley: "The Greek Debt Is All About Goldman Sachs Control" [11/09/11] [18:47] "Investigative Journalist Webster Tarpley talks about the Greek debt and the bogus referendum , he urges the Greek people to vote against the austerity and to oust Papandreu who is the bankers puppet , Sarkozy and Merkel are bluffing this is not about saving Greece they could not care less about Greece , this is all about saving the Banks and nothing but the banks ...these austerity measures are Genocidal for the Greek people ....  [...]"  

MSM: "Ex-Fed, Ex-ECB Bankster Set For New Greek PM" [11/08/11] "Educated in the US, where he earned his first degree in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Papademos is typical of Greek scholars who thrive abroad. After gaining a second degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in economics, he went on to hold academic posts at Columbia University, Harvard University and the University of Athens. A specialist in macroeconomic theory and policy, he still teaches as a visiting professor in the US. Returning to Athens in the mid-80s, after serving on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, he became chief economist at the Bank of Greece. In 1994, he was elevated to the post of governor, overseeing Greece's transition from the drachma, the world's oldest currency, to the euro a decade ago. In 2002, he joined the European Central Bank where he worked under the recently departed president Jean-Claude Trichet before crisis called, and once again, he returned to Athens to serve as an informal adviser to Papandreou. [...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: The Fed, The Treasury & The Holy Troika (E207)" [11/08/11] [26:01] "This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss the Fed, the Treasury and the Holy Troika and whether or not the Pope should beatify Jon Corzine, the CEO of MF Global who “lost” hundreds of millions in client funds. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews economist and professor Constantin Gurdgiev about Anglo Irish unsecured bondholders and the global debt crisis."

RT Interview: "Euro-Kaput: Euro Could Be Dead By End-November" [11/07/11]   [4:39] "Greek PM George Papandreou is aiming to form a coalition government and push through an international bailout package. However, Patrick Young, executive director of investment advisory firm 'DV Advisors' views the situation as a political disaster. [...]"  

MSM: "Wikileaks Exposes German Preparations For "A Eurozone Chapter 11" [11/07/11] " Chancellor Angela Merkel's government welcomed the decision taken at the EU's February 11 informal summit in Brussels not to provide financial assistance, for the moment, to cash-strapped Greece. German officials "believe a bailout is not needed at this time", and that "extending a lifeline to Greece would have carried too many risks". One major fear in Germany is that "saving" Greece would lead to other needy Eurozone members expecting the same treatment. Another concern is that extending an explicit guarantee for Greece could weigh on Germany's own good standing in the markets, ultimately raising its borrowing costs. While German government officials do not totally rule out an IMF program for Greece if push came to shove, most consider this eventuality highly unlikely, especially in light of the European Central Bank's strong opposition. In fact, the German government, the ECB and private German economists are downplaying the seriousness of Greece's predicament and its potential impact on stability of the Euro. They agree, however, that the crisis could have longer-term consequences for EU institutions and how they interact with member states that stray off course. [...]" Related: "Morgan Stanley Says Europe's Pandora's Box Has Been Opened" "Have a sinking suspicion that the way the Eurozone has handled the past week's Greek threat has set the stage for the collapse of the Eurozone (here's looking at you Italy, over and over) now that Merkozy has made the possibility of a country leaving the Eurozone all too real? You are not alone: Morgan Stanley's Joachim Fels has just sent a note to clients in which he not only commingles three of the catchiest and most abused apocalyptic phrases of our time ("Emperor has no clothes", "Water Pistol not Bazooka" and "Pandora's Box") he also warns, in no uncertain terms, that "by raising the possibility that a country might (be forced to) leave the euro, core European governments may have set in motion a sequence of events which could potentially lead to runs on sovereigns and banks in peripheral countries that make everything we have seen so far in this crisis look benign." And when a major investment bank, itself susceptible to bank runs warns of, well, bank runs, you listen. [...] And what is even more disturbing is that Germany itself is now demanding a referendum. According to Welt, 71% of Germans want a referendum, and want to to vote directly on important decisions for Europe and the Euro. Only 27% oppose the motion. And the same poll has found that 63% of Germans think Greece should be kicked out of the Euro, with just 32% believing the country can still be saved." | "Bank Exodus From Euro Zone Sovereign Debt Quickens" [11/04/11] "Banks including BNP Paribas and ING are ditching billions of euros of euro zone government bonds, cutting their exposure to the region's trouble spots. More lenders are expected to retreat as the euro zone crisis deepens and leaders raise the possibility of the exit of Greece from the bloc, further damaging prices. "The market value of the debt of the countries most under scrutiny is likely to decline further as banks unload sovereign bonds," Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance, warned on Wednesday. [...]" 

MSM: "For Markets in Europe, the Focus of Fear Moves to Italy" [11/07/11] "Among fresh warning signs, Italy’s cost of borrowing has jumped to the highest rate since the country adopted the euro. Others signs include pressures building in the plumbing of Europe’s banking system. While those pressures are not yet at the levels experienced during the 2008 financial crisis, when some markets in the United States froze altogether, they are high enough to cause worry, analysts say.  [...]"  Related: "Defiant Silvio Berlusconi Refuses IMF Bailout And Insists He Will Not Resign Despite Mounting Italian Debt Crisis" "Defiant Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi today refused an offer of financial support from the IMF - and insisted he would not resign. .... In a sign of the dwindling confidence in Rome’s ability to re-pay its borrowings, BNP Paribas reduced its holdings of Italian bonds by £7.4bn to £10.5bn. The eurozone crisis has rocked confidence across Europe, with many consumers putting their investment plans on hold. Sales of life insurance policies are falling as the debt crisis and austerity cuts knock confidence of savers, two of Europe’s biggest insurers warned yesterday.[...]" | "Goldman Sachs On The One PIIG That Really Matters: Italy" "As you know by now, the general thinking is: Greece will default eventually. Hopefully it can be contained. What can't be let to happen is the crisis seriously spreading to Italy. In its latest European strategy note, Goldman's Huw Pill, Francesco Garzarelli, and Peter Oppenheimer take on Italy, where spreads are blowing out to records. [...]"  

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Financial Rape, Financial Pornography (E206)" [11/06/11] [25:56] "Every week Max Keiser looks at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines. This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss error accounts and accounting 'errors,' like misplacing $700 million or finding $78 billion. Only GIABOzilla can save the day! In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews James Howard Kunstler about political awakening that an absence of justice could turn into a new Jacobin style uprising."

MSM: " Derivatives Traders Face Margin Calls Monday" [11/06/11] The 8th largest bankruptcy in history, MF Global (a derivatives trader), has now apparently forced the largest derivatives exchange group in America into an apparent liquidity crisis. Derivatives, which are bets using futures and options, can also be purchased on margin. Margin is borrowed money from the broker/bank. There is a liquidity crunch in the options & futures markets for commodities worldwide. CME, the exchange for such transactions in the US, had made the initial margin and maintenance margin equal for every commodity with options and futures. This implies that options and futures holders will be forced to deposit addition capital to the CME in the form of maintenance margin, simply to hold their positions. This will put markets under pressure on Monday. The lack of liquidity and additional margin requirement comes in the aftermath of the bankruptcy of MF Global." [...] Zero Hedge broke the story yesterday: Unless we are completely reading it incorrectly, it is nothing short of a margin call for tens if not hundreds of billions worth of product. Because as of close of business on November 4, today, the CME just made the maintenance margin, traditionally about 26% lower than the initial margin for specs, equal. For everything. Which means that by close of business Monday, millions of options and futures holders will be forced to deposit billions in additional capital to the CME just so they are not found to be margin deficient, and thus receive a margin call. Naturally, since it is very unlikely that this incremental amount of liquidity can be easily procured in one business day, we anticipate the issuance of hundreds of thousands of margin calls Monday, followed by forced liquidations of margin accounts across America... and the world." Margin calls are one of the reasons cited for the 1929 crash. Since banks and institutional investors are already in a liquidity crisis, this move could have a massive impact on the 1500 trillion dollar global derivatives market. Companies like Bank of America (with 75 trillion dollars in derivatives exposure), and JP Morgan (another 75 trillion dollars of exposure) could be wiped out by this event since they are both investing in, and providing loans (margin) to the derivatives markets. This would explain the massive Put Option purchases against the S&P 500. It would also explain why Bank of America and JP Morgan have transferred their 150 trillion dollar exposure to the US taxpayer via FDIC. [...]"  

MSM: "Eurozone Bailout To Be Paid As Papandreou Survives Dramatic No-Confidence Vote" [11/05/11] "...The much-needed euro130 billion tranche of bailout cash will now be paid to Greek treasury, while European banks will write off half the money owed by Greece, amounting to around euro100 billion. The vote was secured after a day of turmoil in Athens in which the viability of the ruling socialist party looked increasingly uncertain. There were several reports that Papandreou would resign even if he won the vote. Before the vote, the beleaguered PM delivered a defiant if rambling speech asking for a vote of confidence so that his country "has a government to take necessary steps of security over the next few months". [...]"  

MSM: "G20 Talks Fail To Reach Consensus As Global Debt-Time Bomb Ticks" [11/05/11] "The refusal of major economies to stump up money now reflected irritation with Europe’s failure to resolve its crisis alone and foiled investor hopes that the summit would mark a turning point. The turmoil is instead flaring again as Greece’s government lurches toward collapse and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he refused an offer of IMF aid. The chaos in Europe led countries from China to Russia and Brazil to say they would hold off pledging money to Europe’s cause even as they signaled a potential willingness to eventually do so through the IMF. The Washington-based lender can attach strings to its aid. [...]"  

Commentary: "Bank Of America Derivatives Time Bomb Shows System Is Corrupt To The Core" [11/04/11] "The Federal Reserve recently allowed Bank of America to move its massive derivative positions from the bank holding company to its banking subsidiary which is an FDIC insured depository institution. By allowing this transfer, the Federal Reserve has allowed Bank of America to shift the risk of loss on speculative derivative contracts from the non-bank affiliate. A failure of Bank of America could result in huge losses for the FDIC which would ultimately be passed on to the taxpayers. [...]" 

MSM: "Dealerships Package Billions Of Dollars Worth Of Subprime Auto Loans Into Securities" [11/04/11] "Auto loan financiers are beginning to adopt a practice from the housing industry that many say played a significant role in the meltdown of the housing market. Buy Here Pay Here dealerships -- which issue loans to borrowers that often can't qualify for a traditional car loan and in many cases require the borrower to return to their lot to pay them off -- are packaging the loans and selling them to investors, the Los Angeles Times reports. The practice of packaging shoddy auto loans into securities and selling them to investors -- $15 billion worth in the last two years -- is reminiscent of a craze popular among mortgage lenders in the lead up to the housing and financial crisis.  [...]" 

RT Interview: "Gerald Celente: Let’s Stop This Façade Of Democracy" [11/04/11]   [8:58] "The Greece drama continues. The Greek bailout proposed by the Eurozone has the possibility to bring the world economy to its knees. It has been proposed by to have Greece removed from the Eurozone. This many say is a frantic attempt to help save the drowning currency. Many believe Greece is the scapegoat for a much larger problem. Gerald Celente, publisher at The Trends Journal, gives us his take on the messy situation.  [...]"

RT Interview:  "Lew Rockwell on Euro Debt Crisis: Decentralization is the Solution" [11/04/11] [5:53] "The Greek bailout has the potential to put the global economy into a recession. Some critics say that Greece isn't getting bailed out but the actual banks that own the Greek debt are. Many say the banking establishment needs to go and shouldn't be bailed out as a risky deal goes bad. Lew Rockwell, chairman at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, gives us his thoughts on the Eurozone debt crisis. [...]"  

Interview: "Protests Demand Financial Tax Imposition: Webster Tarpley, Ph.D" Press TV [11/04/11] [22:24] "Many 'Occupy' protesters are demanding tax be imposed on governmental and financial regulators, a political analyst says. Press TV has conducted an interview with author Webster Griffith Tarpley to further discuss the issue. The following is a transcription of the interview.  Tarpley: "Enact 1% Wall Street Sales Tax to Support Social Safety Net Via National Treasuries; Europe Needs 40 Million Productive Jobs, Not Genocidal Austerity and More Derivatives; Vote No on Greek Referendum" [...]" 

MSM: "China Refuses To Commit To EFSF Amid Greek Concerns" [11/03/11] "European leaders hoped that China would buy EFSF bonds, injecting capital in the region's financial markets.The EFSF was one part of a three pronged rescue plan put together to solve eurozone's debt crisis. ... The decision by the Greek government has also resulted in the eurozone leaders withholding the next 8bn euros of rescue loans for Greece until after the referendum. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel have called on Greece to decide whether it wants to continue to be a part of the eurozone. The two are expected to meet with other eurozone leaders on the sidelines of the G20 summit to discuss the deepening crisis. Greece's referendum call has already resulted in the EFSF being forced to cancel bond sales targeted at raising 3bn euros. [...]" 

Commentary: "Will Greece Pull an Iceland … And Tell the Banks to Pound Sand?" [11/02/11] "Iceland told the banks to pound sand. And Iceland’s economy is doing much better than virtually all of the country’s who have let the banks push them around. [...]" 

MSM: "Greek Government Teeters On Brink Of Collapse In Wake Of Referendum Plan" [11/02/11] "The French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel will hold emergency talks on Wednesday in a desperate attempt to hold the eurozone together and formulate a response to the Greek prime minister's plan for a referendum on the austerity measures imposed by his European partners. George Papandreou's socialist government is on the brink of collapse after his referendum plan sparked an angry reaction within his own party and plunged Europe back into turmoil, just days after a complex rescue deal had been agreed – requiring Greece to embark on tough cost-cutting measures. The Greek finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, who was rushed to hospital before the referendum announcement, said Papandreou had kept him in the dark over his plan to announce a vote. As global markets tumbled, Papandreou assembled his cabinet, allowing his ministers to air their views on his surprise decision to call the vote. He told them the referendum remained the only way of overcoming public opposition to the spending cuts agreed as part of the eurozone rescue package. "Everything now rests on the vote of confidence."[...]" Related: "Greek Military Chiefs Replaced"   "In a surprise development, Panos Beglitis, Defence Minister, a close confidante of Mr Papandreou, summoned the chiefs of the army, navy and air-force and announced that they were being replaced by other senior officers. Neither the minister nor any government spokesman offered an explanation for the sudden, sweeping changes, which were scheduled to be considered on November 7 as part of a regular annual review of military leadership retirements and promotions. Usually the annual changes do not affect the entire leadership. [...]"

MSM: "Here's Who's Freaking Out Now That Greece Will Hard Default" [11/02/11] "A disorderly default in Greece just became a much bigger possibility, after PM George Papandreou announced a referendum on austerity yesterday. If the Greeks vote no, this could be the end of Greece's participation in the euro, and spark contagion that could spread across Europe. The Bank for International Settlements keeps a running tally of who has the biggest sovereign exposure to Greece. Although Japan, France, and Germany have all cut their debt exposure to Greece since earlier this year, they still stand to lose big if Greece decides austerity isn't worth it. See who else has massive public debt exposure to Greece. [...]" Related: MSM: "Greek Vote Brings Uncertainty Back To Wall Street" "Stocks tumbled on Tuesday after investors were blindsided by a surprise call for a Greek referendum on an EU bailout plan, casting doubt on the sustainability of the recent market rally. [...]"  

MSM: "Feds File Massive Fraud Case Against Allied Home Mortgage" [11/02/11] "Federal prosecutors sued Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp. and two top executives Tuesday, accusing them of running a massive fraud scheme that cost the government at least $834 million in insurance claims on defaulted home loans. Houston-based Allied and its founder and chief executive, Jim Hodge, were the subject of July 2010 stories by ProPublica, which detailed a trail of alleged misconduct, lawsuits and government sanctions spanning at least 18 states and seven years. Borrowers recounted how they had been lied to by Allied employees, who in some cases had siphoned the loan proceeds for personal gain. Some borrowers lost their homes. Despite years of warnings, the federal government had not — until this week — impaired the company's ability to issue new mortgages. The suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, seeks triple damages and civil penalties, which could total $2.5 billion. Simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended the company and Hodge from issuing loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration. The company was also barred from issuing mortgage-backed securities through the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae). Allied has billed itself as the nation's largest, privately held mortgage broker, with some 200 branches. (At one point, the company operated more than 600.) The sprawling network made Hodge a rich man with properties in three states and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and two airplanes to get to them. [...]" 

Max Keiser: "Keiser Report: Speculators Win Again (E204)" [11/02/11] [26:40] "This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, look at bank stocks ablaze and a Grecian vortex. They also discuss speculators responding to falling prices by smashing showrooms in Shanghai and holding Congress hostage in America. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews Leah McGrath Goodman about Occupy Wall Street, the Koch Brothers and oil derivatives and the new market in water derivatives."

MSM: "FBI, Federal Prosecutors To Investigate MF Global's Theft Of Client Funds" [11/02/11] "Federal prosecutors and the FBI are set to join the inquiry into what happened to hundreds of millions of dollars invested with a securities firm headed by former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, officials familiar with the case told NBC New York. The Justice Department involvement comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Future Trading Commission have said their own inquiry is underway into the collapse of the brokerage firm, MF Global Holdings Ltd. The head of the Chicago Mercantile exchange said Tuesday that the firm broke rules requiring it to keep clients' money and company funds in separate accounts. [...]"  Related: "MF Global Accounts Shock Leaves Clients Scrambling"  "MF Global Holdings Ltd failed to protect customer accounts by keeping them separate from its own funds, said a top U.S. exchange regulator, another shock for commodity markets scrambling to contain fallout from the brokerage's bankruptcy. [...]" "JPMorgan Seeks Lien On ALL MF Global Assets"  

Commentary:  "Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?" [11/01/11] "CITIGROUP is lucky that Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed when he was. The Libyan leader’s 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 $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 dollars that they would go bust.  It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. As the Securities and Exchange Commission civil complaint noted, in 2007, Citigroup exercised “significant influence” over choosing $500 million of the $1 billion worth of assets in the deal, and the global bank deliberately chose collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, built from mortgage loans almost sure to fail. According to The Wall Street Journal, the S.E.C. complaint quoted one unnamed C.D.O. 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 dollars, while Citigroup made $160 million in fees and trading profits.” [...]"  

 

 

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