Finance

Financial Industry Split On Speculation Tax

July 10, 2017 Sarah Anderson, www.inequality.org Create! Finance, New Economy, Taxes

By Sarah Anderson for Inequality.org - Wall Street lobbyists have the luxury, at least for now, of largely ignoring calls for a U.S. tax on financial speculation. While Senator Bernie Sanders made such a tax a centerpiece of his presidential bid, the Republicans who now control Washington are focused on delivering tax cuts — not increases — to their banker friends. But in Europe, it’s another story. Ten EU governments have committed to imposing a small tax on stock and derivatives trading as a way to raise massive revenue for urgent needs while also encouraging longer-term sustainable investment. And while the European negotiations over tax design have dragged on for several years, they are now close enough to cutting a deal to make industry opponents genuinely worried. The financial lobby is putting particularly intense pressure on the new French president, Emmanuel Macron. A former banker, Macron is viewed as a potential weak link in the coalition that has been working to develop the tax. To help counter this pressure, 52 senior financial professionals have broken rank with their industry peers and released a joint statement in support of financial transaction taxes (FTT). The signers include Lord Adair Turner, the UK’s former top financial regulator, Rob Johnson, president of the New York-based Institute for New Economic Thinking and the former managing director at Soros Fund Management...

The Financial Aristocracy

September 22, 2016 Staff, www.roarmag.org Educate! Capitalism, Finance

By Staff of ROAR - The history of capitalism is characterized by a fundamental paradox, in which the most abstract and most impersonal expression of value — money — mediates the most concrete and most personal form of power. From Medici popes in renaissance Rome and Rothschild peers in Victorian England to Goldman Sachs’ private army of mercenary technocrats, moneyed elites have long exerted extraordinary influence over politics.

David Graeber: The Power Of Finance, History Of Inequality & Legacy Of OWS

September 18, 2016 David Graeber, www.roarmag.org Educate! Banking, Debt, Finance, Occupy

By David Graeber for ROAR Magazine. So hundreds of thousands suddenly showed up. I mean, we had what — like 800 occupations at peak? Then of course came the evictions and they realize, “oh, I guess we couldn’t after all.” And after that the repression became extremely brutal and the media coverage also shifted to be just completely one-sided. But all that was really just back to normal. So the question is, why was there any sympathetic media coverage at all in those first few months? Why was there this little bubble of democracy? I think in retrospect it’s easy to see: there was a fraction of the establishment, basically the left of the Democratic Party, that thought that we were going to become their version of the Tea Party. That is, a grassroots movement that would make a lot of anti-establishment noises but ultimately play the game of raising money, running candidates again. They tried to infiltrate the media teams, set up tacit leadership structures… But eventually they figured out we were really serious. If our main complaint was that the US political system had turned into a system of legalized bribery, no, we weren’t going to join the system and try to see if we could raise enough bribes ourselves to run candidates and change that from within. Suddenly the curtain went down.

Here’s Why Americans Are Mad As Hell At Wall Street And Washington

September 2, 2016 Pam Martens and Russ Martens, www.wallstreetonparade.com Educate! Finance, Wall Street

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens for Walls Street On Parade - Yesterday we published our 1,007th article here at Wall Street On Parade on the insidiously corrupt financial system in the United States known as Wall Street. It’s a system that now operates as an institutionalized wealth transfer mechanism that is hollowing out the middle class, leaving one of every five children in our nation living in poverty, while funneling the plunder to the top one-tenth of one percent. Tens of millions of Americans clearly understand that an entrenched system of corruption such as this, perpetuated through a revolving door between Wall Street and Washington

Overcharged: The High Cost Of High Finance

September 2, 2016 Gerald Epstein and Juan Antonio Montecino, www.rooseveltinstitute.org Educate! Finance

By Gerald Epstein and Juan Antonio Montecino for Roosevelt Institute - A healthy financial system is one that channels finance to productive investment, helps families save for and finance big expenses such as higher education and retirement, provides products such as insurance to help reduce risk, creates sufficient amounts of useful liquidity, runs an efficient payments mechanism, and generates financial innovations to do all these useful things more cheaply and effectively. All of these functions are crucial to a stable and productive market economy.

Financial Transaction Tax: Make Wall Street Work For Main St.

August 2, 2016 Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair, www.epi.org Create! Finance, Taxes, Wall Street

By Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair for EPI - What this report finds: A well-designed financial transaction tax (FTT)—a small levy placed on the sale of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other investments—would be an efficient and progressive way to generate tax revenues. Gross revenues from a well-designed FTT would likely range from $110 billion to $403 billion. And net revenues (including offsets from reduced income, payroll and capital gains taxes, and increased borrowing costs) would likely be substantially higher than some other recent estimates indicate.

Founder Of Largest Black-Owned Bank: Racism Rampant

August 2, 2016 Rob Wile, www.fusion.net Educate! Banks, Finance, Racism

By Rob Wile for Fusion - The day before he was assassinated in Memphis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech urging black Americans to change where they kept their money. “I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank,” King said, referring to a black-owned bank in Memphis. Urging a “bank-in” movement, King continued: “These are some practical things that we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts.”

After Murder Of Berta Cáceres European Financiers Stop Funding Dam Project

May 10, 2016 Brian Salamanca, www.foe.org Resist! Finance, Latin America, Murder

By Brian Salamanca for Friends Of The Earth - WASHINGTON D.C.- In an announcement today, FMO stated that it took the decision after a court in Honduras decided on May 8th to press charges against four individuals in connection with the murder of Berta Cáceres. One of the suspects is the acting Manager for social and environmental matters of the Honduran company DESA, the developer of the Agua Zarca project. FMO and FinnFund will organise a mission to Honduras, to take place as soon as possible, comprised of independent experts, to develop a strategy for exiting the project.

Corporations Killed Medicine. Here’s How To Take It Back.

February 17, 2016 Fran Quigley, www.fpif.org Create! Drugs, Finance, health, Labor, Trade

By Fran Quigley for Foreign Policy In Focus and The Nation - Along the path toward the creation of a global capitalist system, some of the most significant steps were taken by the English enclosure movement. Between the 15th to 19th centuries, the rich and the powerful fenced off commonly held land and transformed it into private property. Land switched from a source of subsistence to a source of profit, and small farmers were relegated to wage laborers. In Das Kapital, Marx described the process by coining the term land-grabbing.

17 Of The Worst Corporate Crimes In 2015

December 27, 2015 Phil Mattera, www.DirtDiggersDigest.org Educate! Big Banks, Big Pharma, Bribery, Climate Change, Corporate crime, Finance, Food and Agriculture, Oceans, Oil and Gas, pollution, Wage Theft, Workplace hazards

By Phil Mattera for Dirt Diggers Digest. The ongoing corporate crime wave showed no signs of abating in 2015. BP paid a record $20 billion to settle the remaining civil charges relating to the Deepwater Horizon disaster (on top of the $4 billion in previous criminal penalties), and Volkswagen is facing perhaps even greater liability in connection with its scheme to evade emission standards. Other automakers and suppliers were hit with large penalties for safety violations, including a $900 million fine (and deferred criminal prosecution) for General Motors, a record civil penalty of $200 million for Japanese airbag maker Takata, penalties of $105 million and $70 million for Fiat Chrysler, and $70 million for Honda. Major banks continued to pay large penalties to resolve a variety of legal entanglements. Five banks (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS) had to pay a total of $2.5 billion to the Justice Department and $1.8 billion to the Federal Reserve in connection with charges that they conspired to manipulate foreign exchange markets.

Bank-Free, DIY Lending System Helps People Finance Themselves

November 4, 2015 Liz Pleasant, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Economic Justice, Finance, Money

By Liz Pleasant for YES! Magazine - A few years ago, Maral Kharadjian decided to join the women in her family—including her mother, sister, sister-in-law, aunts, and cousins—at their monthly get-togethers at her aunt's Los Angeles home. She was looking for a way to stay connected with the women in her extended family, despite her busy schedule. Each month the 10 women get together, cook food, and exchange stories. And one ends up with $1,000. Each woman puts $100 into a pot every month, and at the end of the night the host keeps the money. Most recently they met at Kharadjian's house, so she got to keep the $1,000. She plans to use that money to pay a credit card bill. Next month someone else will host the party and keep the cash.

The $9 Billion Witness: JPMorgan Chase’s Worst Nightmare

November 9, 2014 Matt Taibbi, www.rollingstone.com Educate! Corruption, Finance, Finance and the Economy, JP Morgan, Whistleblowers

In today's America, someone like Fleischmann – an honest person caught for a little while in the wrong place at the wrong time – has to be willing to live through an epic ordeal just to get to the point of being able to open her mouth and tell a truth or two. And when she finally gets there, she still has to risk everything to take that last step. "The assumption they make is that I won't blow up my life to do it," Fleischmann says. "But they're wrong about that." Good for her, and great for her that it's finally out. But the big-picture ending still stings. She hopes otherwise, but the likely final verdict is a Pyrrhic victory. Because after all this activity, all these court actions, all these penalties (both real and abortive), even after a fair amount of noise in the press, the target companies remain more ascendant than ever. The people who stole all those billions are still in place. And the bank is more untouchable than ever.

The American Bankers Association’s Quiet War On Students

September 13, 2014 Devon Douglas-Bowers, www.hamptoninstitution.org Educate! Education, Finance, Student Loans

In the present-day, the ABA is waging a quiet war on students by actively combating virtually any legislation that would ease their debt burden. With regards to being able to get rid of student loans in bankruptcy, the ABA stated in 2012 that, if allowed to go into effect, it "would tempt students to rack up big debt that they won't repay [and that] 'The bankruptcy system would be opened to abuse." This is rather ironic, accusing that students will engage in irresponsible lending and borrowing habits, when considering the banks themselves engaged in massive amounts of the exact same activity by giving mortgage loans to people they knew couldn't repay the amount.

California Trial Places Mortgage Blame On Bankers

September 10, 2014 Alexander Reed Kelly, www.truthdig.com Educate! California, Finance, Law, Real Estate

In an “unprecedented” trial that challenges the Obama administration’s official position on who was responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, a Sacramento jury in late August thwarted a federal prosecutor’s effort to charge borrowers with mortgage fraud after the defense successfully argued that executives who signed off on the loans didn’t care whether answers given on mortgage applications were accurate. The Sacramento Bee reported last month: [F]our people charged with mortgage fraud were acquitted Friday [Aug. 22] by a jury in Sacramento federal court after defense attorneys argued the real culprits are the so-called “victim lenders.” According to experts, it is the first time in such a trial that a court has allowed the defense to present evidence that lenders ignored gaping holes and blatant lies in loan applications during the years leading up to the economic meltdown. In his column at Salon.com on Sunday, political economy writer and cultural satirist Thomas Frank explained that President Obama’s Justice Department has shown “virtually no interest in holding leading bankers accountable for what went on in the last decade,” letting their response to the fallout of the crisis be guided by the logic that banking executives “could not have committed fraud” because “you would expect fraud to result in riches” when “so many banks went out of business instead.” This is what the federal prosecutor argued in the Sacramento trial.

These 9 Charts Show America’s Coming Student Loan Apocalypse

August 21, 2014 Shahien Nasiripour, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Finance, Finance and the Economy, Student Debt

Borrowers with federal student loans, long promoted as the safest way to borrow for college, appear to be buckling under the weight of their debt, new data show. More than half of Direct Loans, the most common type of federal student loan, aren't being repaid on time or as expected, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Education. Nearly half of the loans in repayment are in plans scheduled to take longer than 10 years. The number of loans in distress is rising. The increase in troubled loans comes as the average amount of student debt has significantly outpaced wage growth. After adjusting for inflation, the average recipient of federal student loan funds owed 28 percent more in 2013 than in 2007, according to Education Department data. But the typical holder of a bachelor's degree working full time experienced a 0.08 percent decrease in weekly earnings during that same period. For those with advanced degrees, median wages increased just 0.02 percent, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Obama administration, mindful of borrowers' difficulty in repaying their federal student loans, has been promoting repayment plans that cap monthly payments relative to income. An unemployed borrower with no income, for example, could pay nothing every month, yet still be considered current on the debt.

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