The Money Party

We Are Nothing To Them

Archive for category Wall St

Goldman, Other Welfare Queens Tell Us Forget Social Security-Medicare Until 70

Jan 22

Posted by Michael Collins in Austerity, Big Money, Corruption, Populism, Wall St | 4 Comments

Michael Collins

(Washington, DC 1/21)  A long standing  Money Party front, the Business Roundtable, wants you to wait until you’re 70 years old before you get Social Security and Medicare benefits.  This is just a reprise of the November 2012 dictate from the king of corporate cronyism, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.  (Image: DonkeyHotey)  (Greenspan statement)

The boss announced, “So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.”  Lloyd Blankfein, CBS News, November 2012

That’s easy for Lloyd to say.  He makes tens of millions of dollars a year without so much as lifting a finger.  You can be sure that Blankfein has a deluxe health insurance and retirement plan. Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

About time! New York Charges JPMorgan with Mortgage Fraud

Oct 2

Posted by Michael Collins in Big Money, Financial Crisis, Wall St | 4 Comments

Michael Collins

(New York Times, Oct 1)  “The federal mortgage task force that was formed in January by the Justice Department filed its first complaint against a big bank on Monday, citing a broad pattern of misconduct in the packaging and sale of mortgage securities during the housing boom. The civil suit against Bear Stearns & Company, now a unit of JPMorgan Chase, was brought in New York State court by Eric T. Schneiderman, the state attorney general.”

Schneiderman charged Bear Sterns and JPMorgan, which acquired Bear, with fraud under the state’s Martin Act.  Unique to New York, the act allows prosecutors the ability to vigorously pursue financial fraud with both civil and criminal charges. The investigative powers provided are broader than those found in any state or among regulators (e.g., the Securities and Exchange Commission). Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Share

Tags: , , , ,

Entrapment in Action – Occupy Wall Street, Austin

Sep 7

Posted by Michael Collins in Wall St | Comments off

From Not A Sheep Anymore via Em Sedano
Police admit to infiltrating Occupy Austin, may have acted as provocateurs  By Muriel Kane  Raw Story 08-31-2012

When the local offshoot of Occupy Wall Street began a five-month encampment in Austin, Texas last fall, the Austin police assigned at least three undercover officers to infiltrate the group and gather information on potentially illegal actions.

According to the Austin Statesman, court documents and interviews show that the infiltrators “camped with other participants in the movement, marched in rallies and attended strategy meetings.”

They may also have gone further, acting as provocateurs to encourage the use of lockboxes or “sleeping dragons” — lengths of PVC pipe into which protestors insert their arms to make it harder for police to remove them during a demonstration.

Seven protestors who used the devices while blocking a port entrance in Houston last December 12 have been charged with a felony and face jail terms of from two to ten years under what the Statesman calls “an obscure statute that prohibits using a device that is manufactured or adapted for the purpose of participating in a crime.”

The question of the lockboxes came up during a district court hearing in Harris County this week at which one of those seven, Ronnie Garza, sought to have the charge against him dropped.

It was disclosed at the hearing that Austin Police Detective Shannon Dowell — known to Occupiers as “Butch” — had purchased the necessary pipe and other materials using funds supplied by Occupy Austin, constructed the devices himself, and provided them to demonstrators. Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Share

Tags: , , , ,

Totalitarianism in the US: An Accident Waiting to Happen

Sep 1

Posted by Michael Collins in Big Money, Censorship, Constitution, Corruption, Criminal Justice, Election 2012, Election Fraud, Financial Crisis, Romney, Wall St | Comments off

By Numerian
First appeared in The Agonist

Listening to Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention, I couldn’t place where I had come across something quite like this before. Then it struck me – Pravda! I used to subscribe to Pravda in high school and college, first to learn Russian, and second, to pursue a college program in Soviet studies. Pravda was a newspaper that specialized in the Big Lie – the Five Year Plan was always ahead of schedule, Soviet industrial capabilities exceeded that of any other country, people were starving on streets all across America. The newspaper was a non-stop stream of lies, just as Paul Ryan’s speech was studded with Big Lies – lies that were easily disprovable, such as Barack Obama did nothing about the Simpson-Bowles recommendations to reduce the budget deficit (Paul Ryan didn’t mention he voted against these recommendations when the House killed any chance of enacting them); or that Obama made it easier for people to live off welfare (the President altered the enrollment rules of welfare at the request of Republican governors); or the Romney favorite – Obama cut over $700 billion of Medicare benefits for individuals (the cuts were imposed on hospitals and insurance companies, not beneficiaries, and Romney has the same cuts in his economic plan).  (Image:  Wikipedia) Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hansen – Public Perception of Climate Change, July 2012

Aug 4

Posted by Michael Collins in Big Money, Environment, Wall St | Comments off

The summary below is an abridged version of a National Academy of Science paper due August 6.  The lead author, Dr. James  E. Hansen, has been researching and writing about climate change for decades.  His body of work qualifies him as our greatest or one of greatest living scientists.  We will continue our walk off of a very high cliff until the threats of climate change are fully recognized and the subject of a massive effort to limit the damage.   Hansen is a professor at Columbia University and directs NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.   He has been a fearless advocate concerning the extreme dangers of climate change at a very real personal cost. Harassment and personal attacks are common for those who can’t handle the truth.  We owe Hansen a profound debt of gratitude for his brilliance and personal courage.   Michael Collins

The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change

By James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy — July 2012

The greatest barrier to public recognition of human-made climate change is probably the natural variability of local climate. How can a person discern long-term climate change, given the notorious variability of local weather and climate from day to day and year to year? Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Share

Tags: , , , ,

The Real Bain Capital Story

Jul 18

Posted by Michael Collins in Big Money, Corruption, Financial Crisis, Wall St | Comments off

By Numerian posted by Michael Collins
Originally published in The Agonist

Is the Bloomberg news service turning into The Agonist? Or at least The Agonist, circa 2005, when what was written here was so out of the mainstream that most writers had to hide behind pseudonyms if they wanted to keep their day job? I ask this because I was surprised to see the type of article that is now passing for ordinary on Bloomberg. Here are the Top 5 most popular articles on the news service today, according to their website: “Hardheaded Socialism Makes Canada Richer than U.S.”, “The Secret Behind Romney’s Magical IRA”, “China’s GDP Hit Tells Story of Hubris Run Amok”, “Romney’s Bain Yielded Privatized Gains and Socialized Losses”, and “Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals?” (Image)

The title of that last article is pretty much rhetorical, which says a lot about how times have changed if major business publications are giving credence to claims that business schools churn out criminals. It is the two Mitt Romney articles that really interest me, given how unfavorable they are to the champion of capitalism that the Republicans have put forward as their presidential nominee. Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Share

Tags: , , , , ,

The Libor Conspiracy – Barclays and others in on it

Jul 3

Posted by Michael Collins in Corruption, Wall St | Comments off

The Libor Conspiracy: from The Independent

 

Were the Bank of England and Whitehall in on it?

The Bank of England was dragged into the interest-rate rigging scandal last night after an email was released suggesting it may have encouraged banks to doctor their borrowing costs during the financial crisis.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Share

Tags: , , , ,