Category Archives: Finance

Finance

Big Banks, History of Money

The Battle of Cyprus – Banksters vs Workers

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Could This Happen Here?  The E.U. Wants To Take Money Out of Depositor’s Accounts Without Their Permission! These Are Thieving Banksters Who Should Be Escorted To The Nearest Prison.

Here’s a snip from Ellen Brown’s latest article chronicling the criminal activities of the European Union:

Ellen BrownIf these worries become really serious, . . . [s]mall savers will take their money out of banks and resort to household safes and a shotgun.

– Martin Hutchinson on the attempted EU raid on deposits in Cyprus banks

The deposit confiscation scheme has long been in the making. US depositors could be next . . . .

Retirement. (Photo: Loz Pycock / Flickr)On Tuesday, March 19, the national legislature of Cyprus overwhelmingly rejected a proposed levy on bank deposits as a condition for a European bailout. Reuters called it “a stunning setback for the 17-nation currency bloc,” but it was a stunning victory for democracy. As Reuters quoted one 65-year-old pensioner, “The voice of the people was heard.”

The EU had warned that it would withhold €10 billion in bailout loans, and the European Central Bank (ECB) had threatened to end emergency lending assistance for distressed Cypriot banks, unless depositors – including small savers – shared the cost of the rescue. In the deal rejected by the legislature, a one-time levy on depositors would be required in return for a bailout of the banking system. Deposits below €100,000 would be subject to a 6.75% levy or “haircut”, while those over €100,000 would have been subject to a 9.99% “fine.”

Read the entire article:  Click Here

Click here for Ellen Brown’s web site.

Click here for Public Banking Institute

Big Banks, History of Money

Bye Bye Breuer!

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Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General and Head of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice is leaving in March, 2013.  Last month we joined others calling for him to resign in disgrace. Great News for the American People Who Were Victims of the Greatest Bank Fraud in History, but unfortunately too late:

Lanny

*** Not ONE big bankster prosecuted by Breuer, including the rulers of HSBC, Running the Money Laundering of Trillions of Drug Money!  Remember the Savings and Loan scandal?  Over 1,000 crooked banksters sent to jail.  Breuer’s record is zero!.

*** Stonewalled the so-called “Fast and Furious” gun mess with the ATF! Even Congress could not get to the bottom of this scandal.

***Let British Petroleum off the hook – the Corporation fined, but NO individual responsibility, NO corporate official goes to jail.   Thousands still sick and the Gulf still leaking in this massive government-corporate cover-up.  We will probably never know how many people died from the Gulf poisons.  BP continues to make billions in profits, and now with the other oil companies, are having the American Public pay their fines through higher oil prices.  Thanks a lot Lanny!  What a peach of a guy you turned out to be!  We will be watching to see which big corporation will be hiring you in the next couple of years.  We bet you get a job as lead consul to a big bank or oil company?

Suggestion:  Mr. Breuer, redeem yourself by giving away all your money and devoting yourself as an advocate for those millions of folks who suffered foreclosure by this bankster swindle.  The ones you let off the hook completely.

Now the question is:  Who is the next cover-up boy who will fill Breuer’s shoes?

Who will Obama appoint next?  The Pillsbury Dough Boy?

Big Banks, History of Money

HSBC Too Big To Fail?

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Glenn Greenwald Exposes Two-Tiered U.S. Justice System

Banksters Are “Too Big To Indict” and are Protected By The Obama Administration While the Poor and Middle Class Suffer Enormous Repression.

Here’s The Number One Protector of U.S. Banksters:  Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Exposed by Frontline’s Story on “The Untouchables”, Now Protects HSBC Criminals From Jail.  Breuer Should Resign In Disgrace.

Lanny Breuer, HSBC

The US is the world’s largest prison state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any nation on earth, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. It imprisons people for longer periods of time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west. This sprawling penal state has been constructed over decades, by both political parties, and it punishes the poor and racial minorities at overwhelmingly disproportionate rates.

But not everyone is subjected to that system of penal harshness. It all changes radically when the nation’s most powerful actors are caught breaking the law. With few exceptions, they are gifted not merely with leniency, but full-scale immunity from criminal punishment. Thus have the most egregious crimes of the last decade been fully shielded from prosecution when committed by those with the greatest political and economic power: the construction of a worldwide torture regime, spying on Americans’ communications without the warrants required by criminal law by government agencies and the telecom industry, an aggressive war launched on false pretenses, and massive, systemic financial fraud in the banking and credit industry that triggered the 2008 financial crisis.

Read More of This Blistering Story at Op-Ed News.

Big Banks

Frontline Series Calls Banksters “Untouchables”

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The Big Banks Got Away With Hundreds of Billions

“Justice” Dept. Never Prosecuted Even ONE Big Bankster Executive

Despite Overwhelming Evidence of Massive Fraud

Frontline’s recent hour long documentary called “The Untouchables” traces the banking fraud from start to finish.  The big banks made hundreds of billions (if not TRILLIONS) of dollars packaging up mostly bad loans to sell to “investors”, many overseas but also to American pension funds.  These packages, called “Derivatives” were packed with bad mortgage loans, complete fraud.  The big bankster executives got a free pass from President Obama’s Justice Department, who went after a few low level criminals but let the all the big boys off the hook.  Please watch this compelling and completely documented report:  CLICK HERE.

Big Banks, Credit Union FAQ

Banking: thousands of customers switch their accounts out of the big five

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Building societies, credit unions and co-operatives benefit as anger over scandals turns to action

FULL STORY HERE

The Co-operative bank has seen the number of people switching to its current accounts jump by 43% over the past year. Photograph: Ian Dagnall/Alamy

Consumers are deserting major high-street banks in unprecedented numbers after a slew of revelations about unethical behaviour, according to data from the Move Your Money campaign.

Building societies, credit unions and co-operatives have all reported a sharp rise in new business over the past 12 months as the reputation of the major banks has taken a hammering.

Laura Willoughby, Move Your Money’s chief executive, said: “Anger with the banks is turning into action. This year British banks have been exposed for exploiting their customers, starving the economy of credit and flouting the law.”

Credit unions – small, usually locally based savings groups – have attracted almost 20,000 new accounts in the past six months, according to Move Your Money, while ethical banks Triodos, Ecology and the Charity Bank have all reported a jump in customers.

Building societies saw 78,000 customers sign up for savings accounts in the third quarter alone after Barclays was implicated in the Libor-fixing scandal, which has spread to engulf several other banks.

“Customers are clearly far more interested now in the way financial services companies are run,” said a spokeswoman for the Building Societies Association. “Putting that into the mix alongside interest rates and service has been positive for mutuals like building societies.”

The Co-operative bank, which will treble the size of its network next year when it takes over 632 Lloyds branches, has seen the number of people switching to its current accounts jump by 43% over the past year.

Move Your Money urges savers to shift their accounts from the so-called big five – Barclays, HSBC, Santander, Lloyds Banking Group and RBS – to ethical or mutually owned alternatives.

The government has sought to boost competition in the banking market as a way of improving the performance of the big players. Business secretary Vince Cable said: “One of the biggest things is competition: getting new banks in to challenge the others.”

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP chairing the parliamentary commission on banking standards, said last week: “The latest revelations of collusion, corruption and market-rigging beggar belief”.

…snip

Big Banks

Iceland’s Hörður Torfason – How to Beat the Banksters

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LINK HERE TO – Iceland’s Hörður Torfason – How to Beat the Banksters

Alex Pietrowski, Staff Writer
Waking Times

The tiny Nordic European island country of iceland is presently experiencing one of the greatest economic comebacks of all time. After the privatization of the banking sector completed in 200o, the economy was thrown into a tailspin when over a five year period, private bankers borrowed 120 billion dollars (10 times the size of Iceland’s economy). A huge economic bubble was created, causing house prices to double, and making a small percentage of Iceland’s population rich enough to buy up overseas investments, mansions, yachts, and private jets, while leaving an absolutely un-payable debt for all Icelanders. Iceland was facing national bankruptcy.

In response to the failed banking system, in October 2008, Iceland’s revolution against this financial tyranny began, rather casually in the street, in front of the Icelandic general assembly.

In the duration of five months, the main bank of Iceland was nationalized, government officials were forced to resign, the old government was liquidated, and a new government was put in its place. By March 2010, Iceland’s people voted to deny payment of the 3,500 million Euro debt created by the bankers, and about 200 high-level executives and bankers responsible for the economic crisis in the country were either arrested or were facing criminal charges.

In February 2011, a new constitutional assembly settled in to rewrite the tiny nation’s constitution, which aimed to avoid entrapment by debt-based currency foreign loans. In 2012, Iceland’s economy is expected to outgrow the Euro and the average for the developed world, as estimated by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

…snip

Big Banks, History of Money

HSBC 60 TRILLION Money Laundering in 2010!!!

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This just in from Richard Becker at Liberation News…

HSBC: Too big to indict

Money-laundering to the tune of $60 trillion in 2010

By Richard Becker

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Get a copy of “The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks” by Richard Becker

For a real jaw dropper, the lead paragraph of a Dec. 10 New York Times article would be hard to beat:

“State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a money-laundering case over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the world’s largest banks and ultimately destabilize the global financial system.”

So, there it is: The big banks, no matter how blatant their crimes, must be protected. They and their executives are free to steal, defraud and loot without fear of facing prison time.

Despite massive evidence that HSBC had been operating as a criminal enterprise, the Department of “Justice” opted for another slap-on-the-wrist fine.

Not that this is anything really new. Since their wild and often fraudulent schemes led to the bank crash and public bailout in 2008—and helped trigger the “Great Recession”—not one Wall Street bank executive has faced criminal prosecution for their crimes.

In lieu of any of their present or former executives being prosecuted, HSBC has admitted its guilt and agreed to pay $1.9 billion. That might sound like a lot of money but consider that the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found that HSBC had $60 trillion in potentially illegal transactions in 2010.

To read more click here:  Liberation News

Big Banks, History of Money

Bank of America CEO Moynihan Can’t Remember Anything

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Selective Memory for Bank of America’s CEO.  If his memory is that bad how did he get his job in the first place?  Read this post by Matt Taibbi

Thank God for Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. If you’re a court junkie, or have the misfortune (as some of us poor reporters do) of being forced professionally to spend a lot of time reading legal documents, the just-released Moynihan deposition in MBIA v. Bank of America, Countrywide, and a Buttload of Other Shameless Mortgage Fraudsters will go down as one of the great Nixonian-stonewalling efforts ever, and one of the more entertaining reads of the year.

In this long-awaited interrogation – Bank of America has been fighting to keep Moynihan from being deposed in this case for some time – Moynihan does a full Star Trek special, boldly going where no deponent has ever gone before, breaking out the “I don’t recall” line more often and perhaps more ridiculously than was previously thought possible. Moynihan seems to remember his own name, and perhaps his current job title, but beyond that, he’ll have to get back to you.

read more: click here

 

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-evidence-he-was-stoned-but-bank-of-america-ceo-brian-moynihan-apparently-doesn-t-remember-much-of-the-last-four-years-20121127#ixzz2DkwPC5ud

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Big Banks, History of Money

It’s The Interest Stupid!

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It’s the Interest, Stupid! Why Bankers Rule the World

Thursday, 08 November 2012 10:10 By Ellen Brown, Truthout | News Analysis

Shredded money and percentage Interest charges are a strongly regressive tax that the poor pay to the rich. A public banking system could realize savings up to 40 percent – allowing taxes to be cut, services increased and market stability created – with banks feeding the economy rather than feeding off it.

In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35 percent to 40 percent of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35 percent to 40 percent cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense of the poor, not just because of “Wall Street greed,” but because of the inexorable mathematics of our private banking system.

This hidden tribute to the banks will come as a surprise to most people, who think that if they pay their credit card bills on time and don’t take out loans, they aren’t paying interest. This, says Dr. Kennedy, is not true.

To read the rest of this interesting article, go to:

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=158501

Our comment:  In ancient times, about 3,500 BC, our system of economics began as a debt system.  The ancient Sumerians, the founders of modern western civilization, invented it.  Interest was a common thing, used by tradesmen and business people.  Exact records were kept on baked clay tablets of these transactions.  But there was one difference: the Sumerians knew that simple mathematics showed that interest payments, creating money or credit out of thin air, would eventually take its toll on their society, and all the wealth would eventually end up in the hands of a few.  But they had a solution.  Every six decades or so they reset the counter, and all interest payment and debt was forgiven.  Everyone started over again.  This tradition carried down to the middle ages when the Catholic Church declared “Jubilees”, which were debt forgiveness and time to celebrate economic freedom.  The absolute greed of our 20th century rulers and bankers, who have decided to go for the whole pot of wealth come what may, and our ignorant “leaders” both in politics and religion, have ensured that we have arrived at the tipping point today.  Most of the real wealth in America is owned by a very few at the top.  How long will the serfs allow this to continue?