Something Stinks in Denmark: “TOO BIG TO FAIL,” Bank Corruption, LIBOR, and the Federal Reserve

No… no… no…

Banks don’t need to be regulated.

They’re doing quite fine with all the money they’ve stolen from you already.

No, they don’t need regulation.

And no, we don’t need to re-enact the Glass-Steagall Act – the federal law that kept Wall Street Brokerage Houses, Insurance Companies, and Banks separate and out of each other’s business. Right now, as things stand with them, they’re enjoying an incestuous fiscal orgy. And that’s good. We need more incest. We need more orgies. They’re all good. In fact, the more mammon… er, money you have, the more holy you are, the more the Almighty has blessed you – and not someone else (those lazy slobs who don’t deserve anything). {/sarcasm}

But there’s really no reason to worry… the banks will get what’s comin’ to ‘em – and the ‘what’ is NOT your money. They have that already.

Come a-courtin’ time (that’d be in the court room), the Banksters be ruled against in a BIG way.

Just wait.

It’s coming.

Next thing you’ll hear in the news are the BIG BANKSTERS wanting legal protection from Congress for the wrongdoing they’ve done.

Just wait.

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Losing With LIBOR: One Trader’s Story

by David Kestenbaum

Listen to the Story All Things Considered [3 min 18 sec] Download

We’ve been talking a lot lately about what’s been dubbed the “LIBOR rate fixing scandal,” where some of the biggest banks in the world have been accused of manipulating a key global interest rate.

London-based Barclays Bank agreed to pay a $453 million fine over charges it manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate — LIBOR — a key global interest rate. Oli Scarff/Getty Images

If those words — “manipulation of a key interest rate” — leave you wondering what the big deal is, and who would be harmed, meet Dan Sullivan. He says the manipulation of LIBOR cost him a million dollars, in just 24 hours.

Dan Sullivan used to work

“TOO BIG TO FAIL” is just BIG enough to rob you blind: How Goldman Sachs robbed an American entrepreneur of $580 Million, and screwed over the American economy in the process

Honestly (and some use that word lightly), is there any reason why Banks should NOT be heavily regulated?

Is there any reason why Stock Brokerage Houses should not be similarly heavily regulated?

Is there any legitimate reason why Insurance Companies should not be regulated?

Finally, is there any compelling reason why those BIG THREE financial businesses should be allowed to be in each other’s business?

Why do people NOT see these horrible things?

Where is the disconnect that they’re not able to put 1 + 1 together and come up with 2?

This is FRAUD – FRAUD – FRAUD!!!

And we’re just gonna’ let it slide by?

Please!

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July 14, 2012

Goldman Sachs and the $580 Million Black Hole

By LOREN FELDMAN

THE business deal from hell began to crumble even before the Champagne corks were popped.

The deal, the $580 million sale of a highflying technology company, Dragon Systems, had just been approved by its board and congratulations were being exchanged. But even then, at that moment of celebration, there was a sense that something was amiss.

The chief executive of Dragon had received a congratulatory bottle from the investment bankers representing the acquiring company, a Belgian competitor called Lernout & Hauspie. But he hadn’t heard from Dragon’s own bankers at Goldman Sachs.

Janet and Jim Baker at home. They are fighting Goldman Sachs over its work in 2000 on the all-stock sale of their business, Dragon Systems, to a company that later collapsed, leaving them shut out. / Photo: Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times

“I still have not received anything from Goldman,” the executive wrote in an e-mail to the other bank. “Do they know something I should know?”

More than a decade later, that question is still reverberating in a brutal legal battle between Goldman and the founders of Dragon Systems — along with a host of other questions that go to the heart of how financial giants like Goldman operate and what exactly they owe their clients.

James and Janet Baker spent nearly two decades building Dragon, a voice technology company, into a successful, multimillion-dollar enterprise. It was, they say, their “third child.” So in late 1999, when offers to buy Dragon began rolling in, the couple made what seemed a smart decision: they turned to Goldman Sachs for advice. And why not? Goldman, after all, was the leading dealmaker on Wall Street. The Bakers wanted the best.

This, of course, was before the scandals of the subprime mortgage era. It was before the bailouts, before Occupy Wall Street, before ordinary Americans began complaining about “banksters” and “muppets” and “the vampire squid.” In short, before Goldman Sachs became, for many, synonymous with Wall Street greed.

And yet, even today what happened next to the Bakers seems remarkable. With Goldman Sachs on the job, the corporate takeover of Dragon Systems in an all-stock deal went terribly wrong. Goldman collected millions of dollars in fees — and the Bakers lost everything when

Here’s a bank where Mitt Romney has no money. Ironically, it’s American.

Smack-dab in the heart of rural, working class, coal-mining America.

Oh… the irony!

Weather Extremes Not Just in United States

Here is Wisdom.

(Either that, or pragmatism.)

If there is nothing humans can to to lessen the severity or frequency of these, and other extreme weather events, then the very least that should be done is to significantly improve infrastructure to more effectively manage them, and to mitigate potential for damage.

And that is spelled I – N – F – R – A – S – T – R – U – C – T – U – R – E.

What’s “infrastructure”?

A definition of infrastructure from the New Oxford American Dictionary: “the basic physical and

WikiLeaks: Insurance Company Internal Documents Show Problems

Dear Employees:

It has been brought to management’s attention that some individuals throughout the company have been

A Greece Fire; Thoughtful Commentary on Unthoughtful Commentary

A Greece Fire; Thoughtful Commentary on Unthoughtful Commentary

Having read Mr. Alex Tokarev’s commentary “My big fat Greek bonus” published online May 11, 12:49 PM at http://online.worldmag.com/2010/05/11/my-big-fat-greek-bonus/, I must admit that some of his concerns are, in part, well taken… however poorly expressed. Though he does not adequately support the case for fiscal prudence, the complaints he makes in general terms about fiscal prudence are well-deserved.

Though his straw man argument is inadequately defended, placing exclusive responsibility and blame upon Greek national officials for that nation’s crisis is insufficient, and certainly short sighted. However, his rambling, miasmatic complaints have not fallen upon deaf ears – although they may have fallen upon spirited ones. Excitement, however, must be directed toward a long-term objective, and it is the more broad scope which I think he ignores. While having the ability to direct the nation toward a long-term goal is laudable, he neither cites any governmental mandate. On the whole, after having read his opinion, one might wonder if he were doing little more than expressing infantile frustration, for he certainly offers no potential solution.

The Grecian debt crisis is not due exclusively to what he calls “the bursting of the statist bubble,” “welfare pyramids” or other descriptive pejoratives to describe Grecian governmental services and activities.

Though he decries “irresponsible lenders and borrowers” whom perpetuate “bankrupt political practices,” he attempts to correlate and demean both, describing what he calls a “strong culture of entitlement” as “a beast,” though he never specifically mentions any program, plan, office, group or person.

As colorful and passionate as he may feel about Greece’s problems, he failed to

Credit Default Swaps: Why should they be outlawed?

“Credit-default swaps – where you insure your neighbor’s house just to destroy it and make money from it – that’s exactly what we have to curb.”

How dangerous is it for money traders to take bets on, and therefore exploit, a nation’s budget deficit or any other fiscal crisis?

Regarding the quote, if you guessed that Harry Reid, President Obama, Janet Reno, George W. Bush,

Two Numbers – ONE BIG, one small

$9,100,000,000,000

Nine TRILLION, one hundred BILLION…

Remember another number.

Two.

During the reign of King George W. Bush, just TWO of his failed policies have cost Americans $9,100,000,000,000.

What two failed policies are those?

The Bu$h tax cuts, and the creation of a Rx (prescription drug “benefit” written wholly by Big Pharmaceutical industry cronies.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s most current estimation of the population of the United States places 308,171,505 people in the United States as of December 17, 2009.

Put another way, that’s a cost of $29, 529 per person.

As a result of deregulation of the financial industries – banks, insurance and stock brokerages – thus creating one giant incestuous financial orgy, Americans have directly suffered under the thumbs of bankers and insurance companies, while their Wall Street cohorts, in conjunction with imaginative thieves, have twiddled and fiddled to create “investment derivatives” – essentially a Ponzi schemed fiscal fraud – out of thin air. That house of cards having collapsed, has revealed what was suspected all along. Outside the transparent dressing room of his glass house, the king had no clothes.

Driven by greed and an insatiable lust for more,

The Banking Industry + Internet Social Networking

 

"Um, no... the other cabal of social retards."

 

“Um, no… the other cabal of social retards.”