Wall Street

Threat Of Depression To Justify Bailout

September 22, 2014 Dean Baker, www.ourfuture.org Educate! Money, Wall Street

Monday marked the sixth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The investment bank’s bankruptcy accelerated the financial meltdown that began with the near collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns in March 2008 (saved by the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan) and picked up steam with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going under the week before Lehman’s demise. The day after Lehman failed, the giant insurer AIG was set to collapse, only to be rescued by the Fed.

United States Is Not A Democracy: From Wall Street To Detroit

September 2, 2014 Marina A. Sitrin, www.globalresearch.ca Create! Democracy, Detroit, Ferguson, Wall Street

Around the world another democracy has begun to manifest itself, one organized by people. The United States is not a democracy. Occupy Wall Street announced this fact to the world with the 1% and inequality. The protests in Ferguson and Detroit are bringing it to the social and political spheres. Around the world another democracy has begun to manifest itself, one organized by people, from below, in plazas, parks, schools, workplaces and on street corners – a democracy where people are no longer silent and are beginning to take back control of their lives. There are few, if any, real democracies. The United States however, is in many ways, the worst. It is a country that declares itself the most democratic in the world, and acts as the world police based on this assumption, yet there is absolutely no “rule of the people”. This truth is increasingly accepted by most people, even Princeton University published a study in April of this year attesting that not only is the United States not a democracy, but it most resembles an oligarchy. The report states, “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”[1]The Occupy Wall Street Movement in the U.S. and similar movements around the globe, from those in Greece, Brazil, Bosnia and the 15M in Spain all spoke and speak to this issue, whether using the concept of the 99% and 1% or the clear slogan No Nos Representan! (They Don’t Represent Us!).

Recent History: How The Democrats Became A Wall Street Party

July 28, 2014 Bill Curry, www.salon.com Educate! Democrats, Populism, Ralph Nader, Wall Street

In 2006 the Atlantic magazine asked a panel of “eminent historians” to name the 100 most influential people in American history. Included alongside George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain and Elvis Presley was Ralph Nader, one of only three living Americans to make the list. It was airy company for Nader, but if you think about it, an easy call. Though a private citizen, Nader shepherded more bills through Congress than all but a handful of American presidents. If that sounds like an outsize claim, try refuting it. His signature wins included landmark laws on auto, food, consumer product and workplace safety; clean air and water; freedom of information, and consumer, citizen, worker and shareholder rights. In a century only Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson passed more major legislation. Nader’s also the only American ever to start a major social or political movement all by himself. The labor, civil rights and women’s movements all had multiple mothers and fathers, as did each generation’s peace and antiwar movements. Not so the consumer movement, which started out as just one guy banging away at a typewriter. Soon he was a national icon, seen leaning into Senate microphones on TV or staring down the establishment from the covers of news magazines.

Clintonians Join Vulture Flock Over Argentina

July 28, 2014 Conn Hallinan, www.truthdig.com Educate! Argentina, Debt, Hillary Clinton, Wall Street

It is no surprise that right-wing Republican and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer should be trying to wring hundreds of millions of dollars out of Argentina for a debt that Buenos Aires doesn’t really owe him. He screwed tens of millions of dollars out of poverty-stricken Peru and the Republic of Congo using the same financial sleight of hand. What may surprise people, however, is that key leaders in the administration of former President Bill Clinton are helping him do it. Singer, who owns Elliot Management, a $17 billion hedge fund, is the leading “vulture investor”—a financial speculator who buys up the bonds of debt strapped nations for pennies on the dollar and then demands payment in full. When Argentina defaulted on its foreign debt in 2001, Singer moved in and bought up $48 million in bonds. He is now demanding that those bonds be paid at full-face value—$1.5 billion—plus interest and fees. It is a move that could derail Argentina’s long climb back into solvency, as well as undermine debt settlements worldwide. A recent decision by federal District Judge Thomas Griesa in Manhattan may not only force Argentina to pay the vultures, it could unravel a 2006 debt deal between Buenos Aires and other creditors. Under the highly controversial principle of “pari passu” (“equal ranking among creditors”), if the vultures are compensated, so must all the other creditors, even those who settled back in 2006. That bill could reach $15 billion. Given that Argentina has only about $28 billion in foreign reserves, the tab could send Buenos Aires into a recession or force the country into bankruptcy.

Why Did Obama Really Stop Talking About Inequality?

July 12, 2014 Peter Hart, www.fair.org Educate! Barack Obama, Democrats, Inequality, Wall Street

The Washington Post's Zachary Goldfarb reported on July 4 that Barack Obama has stopped talking much about inequality. But instead of explaining why this is happening, the Post frames the issue as a debate between left-leaning populists and "moderate" Democrats trying to avoid "class warfare." The piece leads off with this: After making fighting income inequality an early focus of his second term, President Obama has largely abandoned talk of the subject this election year in a move that highlights the emerging debate within the Democratic Party over economic populism and its limits. Goldfarb adds that Obama has "shifted from income inequality to the more politically palatable theme of lifting the middle class," framing the decision as a clash of ideas: The shift also underscores the ongoing dispute between the Democratic Party's liberal and moderate wings over how to address inequality issues. Whereas the left takes a more combative tone, seeking to focus on the income gap and what it views as the harmful influence of big business and Wall Street, more centrist forces in the party favor an emphasis on less-divisive issues.

The Empire Economy Does Not Work

July 9, 2014 Paul Craig Roberts, Dave Kranzler, and John Williams, www.paulcraigroberts.org Educate! Debt, Finance, Finance and the Economy, Foreign Policy, Wall Street

The third and final estimate (until the annual GDP revisions) of first quarter 2014 real GDP growth released June 25 by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis was a 2.9% contraction in GDP growth, a 5.5 percentage point difference from the January forecast of 2.6% growth. Apparently, the first quarter contraction was dismissed by those speculating in equities as weather related, as stock averages rose with the bad news. Stock market participants might be in for a second quarter surprise. The result of many years of changes made to the official inflation measures is a substantially understated inflation rate. John Williams (www.shadowstats.com) provides inflation estimates based on previous official methodology when the Consumer Price Index still represented the cost of a constant standard of living. The 1.26% inflation measure used to deflate first quarter nominal GDP is unrealistic, as Americans who make purchases are aware. A reasonable correction to the understated deflator gives a much higher first quarter contraction. The two main causes of inflation’s understatement are the substitution principle introduced during the Clinton regime and the hedonic adjustments ongoing since the 1980s that redefine price rises as quality improvements. Correcting for excessive hedonic adjustments gives a first quarter real GDP contraction of 5%. Correcting for hedonic and substitution adjustments gives a first quarter real GDP contraction of 8.5%.

A National Call to Link Arms for Democracy

June 2, 2014 Victoria Collier and Ben-Zion Ptashnik, www.truth-out.org Organize! Democracy, Mass Movement, oligarchy, Wall Street

"When I despair I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall, think of it - always!" - Mahatma Gandhi For Americans, these are dangerous and momentous times. We have only a small window of opportunity to break the grip of moneyed interests on our government, before an advancing oligarchy consolidates power and locks in tyranny. This article is an urgent call to organize a mass-based political movement in the coming months and through the 2016 elections. If we rise to the occasion and fight, we can reclaim democracy, regain control of our future, and preserve the dreams of our children, and for the coming generations. Without a sweeping grassroots movement, loudly pushing and protesting for reforms, populist candidates, or coalitions in Congress will never have the power to defeat the forces of a corrupt ruling class. Robber barons have resurfaced with a vengeance in the past four decades, openly attacking our democratic system, while buying power to extend and protect their privilege in perpetuity.

Wall Street Mega-Banks Are Buying Up The World’s Water

May 26, 2014 Jo-Shing Yang, www.globalresearch.ca Educate! Wall Street, Water

A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” — the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace. Familiar mega-banks and investing powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water. Wealthy tycoons such as T. Boone Pickens, former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan and other Filipino billionaires, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world. The second disturbing trend is that while the new water barons are buying up water all over the world, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient (as evidenced by the well-publicized Gary Harrington’s case in Oregon, in which the state criminalized the collection of rainwater in three ponds located on his private land, by convicting him on nine counts and sentencing him for 30 days in jail). Let’s put this criminalization in perspective: Billionaire T. Boone Pickens owned more water rights than any other individuals in America, with rights over enough of the Ogallala Aquifer to drain approximately 200,000 acre-feet (or 65 billion gallons of water) a year. But ordinary citizen Gary Harrington cannot collect rainwater runoff on 170 acres of his private land.

Unstoppable Right/Left Convergence On May 27th

May 22, 2014 The Nader Page, www.blog.nader.org Educate! Alternatives, Corporatism, Wall Street

Join us Tuesday (May 27, 2014) for an unprecedented one day gathering that will convene leading experts from the Left and Right (such as Jim Hightower, Judson Phillips, Medea Benjamin, Bruce Fein, Ron Unz and more) to find common ground on many of the key issues of our time. Admission is free and a complimentary light breakfast and lunch will be served! Issues to be discussed at the event are: -Civil liberties -The minimum wage -The commercialization of childhood -Corporate welfare -The imperial perpetuation of America’s wars -Trade -The unpunished crimes and misdeeds of Wall Street

Are Public Banks Unconstitutional? No. Are Private Banks? Maybe.

May 21, 2014 Ellen Brown, www.ellenbrown.com Educate! Finance and Economy, Public Banking, Wall Street

The movement to break away from Wall Street and form publicly-owned banks continues to gain momentum. But enthusiasts are deterred by claims that a state-owned bank would violate constitutional prohibitions against “lending the credit of the state.” California’s constitution is typical. It states in Section 17: “The State shall not in any manner loan its credit, nor shall it subscribe to, or be interested in the stock of any company, association, or corporation . . . .” The language sounds prohibitive, but what does it mean? Hundreds of state and local government entities extend the credit of the state. State agencies make student loans, small business loans, and farm loans. State infrastructure banks explicitly leverage the credit of the state. Legally, state and local governments are extending their credit to private banks every time they deposit their revenues in those banks. When money is deposited, it becomes the property of the bank by law. The depositor becomes a creditor with an IOU or promise to be repaid. The state or local government has thus lent its money to the bank. How can these blatant extensions of the state’s credit be reconciled with the constitutional prohibitions against the practice?

Robbing Main Street To Prop Up Wall Street

May 8, 2014 Ellen Brown, www.ellenbrown.com Educate! Bankers, California, Wall Street

There is no need to sequester funds urgently needed by Main Street to pay for Wall Street’s malfeasance. Californians can have their cake and eat it too – with a state-owned bank. Governor Jerry Brown is aggressively pushing a California state constitutional amendment requiring budget surpluses to be used to pay down municipal debt and create an emergency “rainy day” fund, in anticipation of the next economic crisis. On the face of it, it is a sensible idea. As long as Wall Street controls America’s finances and our economy, another catastrophic bust is a good bet. But a rainy day fund takes money off the table, setting aside funds we need now to reverse the damage done by Wall Street’s last collapse. The brutal cuts of 2008 and 2009 shrank the middle class and gave California the highest poverty rate in the country. The costs of Wall Street gambling are being thrust on its primary victims. We are given the choice of restoring much-needed services or maintaining austerity conditions in order to pay Wall Street the next time it brings down the economy.

Plant Brigade To Bring Wall Street Down To Earth

April 20, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Food and Agriculture, Wall Street

“What would Wall Street look like as a garden?” reads the flyer from the Plant Brigade. “Bring a plant to cleanse the New York Stock Exchange for a historical photo. This is a participatory action. The more participants the bigger the garden.” This kick off to the Global Climate Convergence will reclaim Earth Day. The mass rally and march will be the largest NYC action in the Global Climate Convergence for People, Planet, and Peace over profit. The Convergence is a world-wide network linking events and actions from Earth Day, April 22, to May Day, May 1, uniting labor, environmental, and community groups in solidarity. The “System Change Not Climate Change; the Ecosocialist Coalition” FaceBook page describes how we are connecting the dots: “The capitalist system is in fundamental conflict with the climate system.

Big Banks, Their Washington Lackeys & The Next Financial Crisis

March 24, 2014 Andrew Cockburn www.harpers.org Educate! Wall Street

“The banks have gotten absolutely everything they wanted, post-crash,” my lobbyist friend explained. The 2010 SAFE bill, through which Senators Sherrod Brown and Ted Kaufman attempted to break up the too-big-to-fails? Crushed like a bug in the Senate, 60–31. The Volcker Rule restricting banks from trading on their own account? Riddled with more loopholes than a yard of chicken wire. The Lincoln Amendment barring institutions from gambling with taxpayer-insured money? On its way out the door. “There really are no outstanding issues left for them to fight over,” my friend said, “so now even the semblance of defiance from any quarter is taken as a personal affront, and they move to crush it.” In a vague sort of way, most people are aware that Wall Street crashed the economy and rode out of town scot-free, collecting unimaginably huge bonuses along the way. But vagueness breeds passivity. Fortunately, we now have Bob Ivry’s Seven Sins of Wall Street (Public Affairs) as an indispensable guide for tracking down live villains and unburied bodies.

Let’s Make Capitalism a Dirty Word

March 7, 2014 Carl Gibson, www.HuffingtonPost.com Educate! Capitalism, Corporatism, Occupy, Wall Street

In return for all their hard work, Americans who aren't executives or shareholders are paid just enough to meet basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. Under the capitalist system, the majority of life for today's average American before retirement is spent pursuing profits that will never be shared with them. And because capitalists like Pete Peterson and the Koch Brothers are so determined to weaken Social Security in the pursuit of ever-increasing profits, even retirement is unstable. As a system predicated on the need to grow endlessly and never stagnate, capitalism is doomed to fail. I've written previously about how capitalism is currently in its endgame, similar to the endgame of Monopoly, where one player has accumulated nearly all of the property and money, and all the other players are afraid to make any moves at all, lest they land on the wrong square and are destroyed by debt.

Video: Landlords on Wall Street – The New Housing Scheme

March 4, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Housing, Housing bubble, Laura Gottesdiener, Tennant advocate, Video, Wall Street

Is the housing crisis over? If not, what is going on in the housing market? In this exclusive report, Laura Gottesdiener the author of A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home, pulls back the curtain on a massive land grab that has once again turned our homes into dangerous financial products and reports on the growing movement of tenants and housing advocates are fighting back driven by a conviction that housing is not a market commodity, but a human right.

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