No accountability.

So with the Fed keeping us in the dark, Corzine stealing our funds, and the revolving door of people between the Fed and the major financial institutions using their non-public info for gain, remind me again why I should put money in the stock market?

The Second American Revolution can't come soon enough.

Nothing will change until some blood gets spilled. The ballot box stopped working along time ago.

"It's a big club, and you ain't in it."

- George Carlin


This seems fitting here, if overused:

""The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." (and bankster overlords)

- Thomas Jefferson

It's a big club, and you ain't in it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtO....

Listen to the topics he touches on, very interesting.


Flap

While Ratigan is on the correct track, I'm not sure how much I would trust Beau Biden.

1) The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree.

2) Delaware's Biden Takes Away Sheriff Arrest Powers!Sheriffs Bushwhacked

http://........./general95/delaware.html

Jack_crabb

Biden is a democrat and the Sheriff's are not union and you cannot have a non union person with arrest powers taking the job away from a unionized employee.

Quote:

"remind me again why I should put money in the stock market?"

You have to get in the market or you will be left behind!!
It's going up forever!
There is no chance it will go down!
Sub-prime is contained!

Even more annoying than this information is the fact that this story, a story which affects each and every American, will get less air time than the SS sex scandal. I have become convinced that until the majority of Americans lose those things that make life bearable, from food to video games, the only stories of interest to Americans will be those they find entertaining. Now, if Dylan could only obtain a grainy video of Bernanke actually screwing someone, preferably Timmy, it would go viral and the public might be able to make the connection.

The AG is wrong. There needs to be a decade long firewall -- that explicitly includes HARD TIME in prison -- between employment with a regulator and employment with the regulated. The public sector does not need "talent" from the private sector that it regulates. That has been THE BIG LIE for decades that has been enabling this ****. There will be plenty of talented people willing to spend a career at GS wage scales once the scam-artistry is **** canned. Outlawed, that is.

http://www.opm.gov/oca/11tables/html/dcb....

Fedwire, I like it. A computer algorithm doesn't owe favors, doesn't wink, doesn't nod, isn't morally corruptible. It's either judged fair and it lives or it get's deleted. These grey areas, (and we can see plenty of those in the redacted documents) simply don't exist. Once you know the mathematical formula for success, you don't need to change it. There's no extra thought, no creativity beyond the correct answer in math. In math it's either right or wrong. Anything that purports to be something different, is simply wrong.

capture of regulators by regulatees ?
the idea is making its way to the think-tank circuit.


http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/researc....

Quote:

CORNELL JOURNAL OF LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 21:175
ESSAY
“CAPTURE” IN FINANCIAL REGULATION:
CAN WE CHANNEL IT TOWARD THE
COMMON GOOD?
Lawrence G. Baxter*

Given the “situational” context of financial regulation and the deep
structures that shape and influence regulatory outcomes, it seems that the
financial regulatory system is suffering from deep capture. The power of
the financial industry—particularly that of the big banking conglomerates—
looms large in the shaping of general public policy and specific
regulatory action. This is evident from the phone logs of current and former Treasury Secretaries, the very visible revolving doors between
the SEC and other financial regulators and industry, the origin and
composition of the Federal Reserve Banks, statements by the new Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, the opposition
by the Treasury Department and other senior members of the Obama
Administration to the imposition of concentration limits on an unstable
and publicly subsidized industry, and the inexplicable disregard of
powerful, contrarian economic studies by the Treasury Department that
favors allowing continued growth by gargantuan, high-risk financial conglomerates.
Political spending by the nation’s largest banks alone
dwarfs the lobbying efforts of most other sectors. However, the spending
influence does not end there: deep capture seems to be nourished by
collateral institutional interests. For example, the “deregulatory” position
of the financial industry has been heavily supported with allied lobbying
by groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Above the Law.............And they know it.........

These guys know that they can do anything they want, anytime they want and to whom ever they want without any problems. Their arrogance is much bolder and out in the open then ever before. They don't care who knows because they own the politicians, law enforcement and the military.

It all comes back to this quote:

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

"We have become, I think, a very -- a very transparent central bank."

Ben Bernanke

This after releasing a 515 page document where a good 400 pages are blanked out

Talk about brass chutzpah!


Silver lining is you dont have to read their blather, its all been redacted

Exactly Eaglewwit, that truth is what the German masses forgot when the Nazis took power. The Weimar hyperinflaton was caused by POWER, the race or religion of some of the people involved was an irrelevant coincidence.. Humans want to believe there's something "wrong" with a large group of people that does something immoral.. It is not easy to accept that the entire system is faulty, that it rewards vice and punishes virtue, that in similar circumstances we ourselves might abuse such power as that held by financial oligarchs. People will believe many things to convince themselves that they are somehow "above" a given sin, then the stone-throwing begins.

Concentrated power is the problem, and has always been the problem. Those who try to scapegoat some other cause for humanity's ills are either fools or seeking power themselves. Until we realize this (realize it again I mean, the founding fathers figured it out but then we forgot), the cycle will just go around and around and around.

On a positive note, we always avoid extinction somehow. Evolution may have left us all dumb-asses but we're quite good at keeping at least someone alive so future generations can go on to fall for the same crap their great-grandparents fell for.. Evolution might not make us any more moral or intelligent as a species but maybe it can at least fine-tune us to better weather the repeated and catastrophic consequences of our ongoing greed/madness problem.

Quote:

"We have become, I think, a very -- a very transparent central bank."

Ben Bernanke

Well, give the guy a break.. He's the middleman between a bunch of crooks and a bunch of liars, if he doesn't say this ridiculous **** someone is still gonna have to say it.. Paul Krugman is the one with no excuse. He's in a position where he could easily resign from economics on principle, much more easily than Colin Powell likely did after the Iraq invasion. Besides, between Bernanke and Krugman, which one is pulling off the beard? (hint: not Krugman)

(edit)It was also impossible for me to get very angry at this guy, for much the same reason:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s27Oq5ot0....

"in similar circumstances we ourselves might abuse such power as that held by financial oligarchs. People will believe many things to convince themselves that they are somehow "above" a given sin, then the stone-throwing begins.


We might but we aren't and we didn't and they are and they did and did mightily so at that.....so **** them!


"Aboves" got nothing to do with it...we may as well forgive everyone of anything under your loosely defined definition of mights, could haves and maybes.


: )

I'm not talking about forgiveness, I'm talking about the problem. Centralized power has always been corrupt, and always will be. If only we had some crazy revolutionary idea like the 10th Amendment..

Morla: "I'm not talking about forgiveness, I'm talking about the problem. Centralized power has always been corrupt, and always will be. If only we had some crazy revolutionary idea like the 10th Amendment.."

The problem was very old, and it took a long time to reach the solution (and that solution is different to the 10th Amendment, though the 10th Amendment is contributory, as I see it anyway).

There are only three fundamental forms of Government possible (anything that pretends to be something else, is just a greater or lesser corruption of one or more of those three). They are Democracy, Aristocracy, and Monarchy/Dictatorship/Term limited Dictatorships called Presidents.

Each form of Government has essential, indispensable strengths, and fatal, inevitably self destructive weaknesses.

Each inevitably fails, sooner rather than later.

This was why the ancient philosophers (Cicero, etc), strove so hard to find a solution, to the perpetually recurring bloodshed, associated with unrestrained forms of Government.

They all agreed that the perfect Republic, should embody all three forms of Government, to take advantage of the strengths of each, while avoiding the fatal weaknesses, however, they couldn't see how the perfect, balanced Republic, could resist and survive the inevitable cat fights and power grab.

This was why they considered the best of a bad job, was going to be having the luck to live under a benign Dictatorship (which unfortunately, isn't that common an occurrence in the real World, and when you do get them, they tend not to survive for long, but I must add also, 'malignant' Dictators don't tend to survive long either).

The along came John Locke, who utterly destroyed the appearance of validity of the insane lie and abomination that is 'Divine Right of Kings' (absolute power), inventing the scientific method - Empiricism - to do it, and he proved the validity of "If the Law makes the King, then the King is subject to the Law' in the process.

This meant that the unachievable power sharing issue was removed, along with all its associated problems, because now not one of the three possible forms of Government, had any power to make a grab for. Each member of the Government holds Office instead, with the consent of the People (which can be withdrawn at any time, not just at elections). Instead, the power resides in the Law (the Common Law), and Government is not a Law making body - it is a LEGISLATIVE body.

To be 'lawful', all 'legislation', has to comply with the Law, and if it doesn't, it is unlawful, and 'Not Law'. The Rule of Law is not just an expression, it is the real Ruler, it has the real Power, it is absolutely literal.

My don't these politicians today love to pretend that they are 'Law' makers, eh?

Now despite the reality that no Politician or President (or in our case, Monarch) has any power, this still left the issue of preventing the inevitable cat fights.

So each form of Government was separated into different 'Houses', so they have very little actual cat fight creating contact with each other.

What is being done to us, is the return of 'Divine Right of Kings' via the back door, and via 'Divine Right of Politicians and Bureaucrats' before the inevitable Tyrant appears, and puts all those Politicians and Bureaucrats against a wall, and blows their brains out (that may sound dramatic, but that is what any Tyrant does to those that think he/she might owe them a place of influence in the Tyrants Regime - just about all of them, if they lived, would be very disappointed, and extremely bitter at how their treasonous acts have been shafted onto themselves).

It will be as successful as all prior attempts.

Which means it won't be successful, at all.

Such is the way that Civilisations end, and 'payback', really is a bitch (and the dumbasses are going to live to learn that the hard way).

Aye, when the ship of fools becomes hopelessly lost the old pecking order backs down, the guy who seized the helm through sophistry and charm is thrown overboard by the strongest, meanest guy on the boat. Unfortunately the strongman doesn't know how to navigate a ship either. As for the 10th amendment, such a system is something I would like to see before I die. To defend the rights of the people from their respective states is the only sound role for a federal government.. To quote Thomas Jefferson: "It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all."