R.I.C.O.

NOW........

An idiot's manifesto:

KRUGMAN TO ECONOMISTS: Sign This Manifesto For Economic Sense

http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krug....

"at what point do the people simply stop putting up with this crap?" -

That is the question of the century.

You see Karl, the majority of Americans are too distracted in their daily life to care, until "something" happens to them. Or, the rest passively sit by idle "hoping" something like this doesn't happen to them, or even worse, have no idea what's going on. Whether it be by ignorance or arrogance, it doesn't matter, the results remain.

Voter apathy has wrought this upon us at every facet of government with no one overtly challenging them. Our voter turnout is ridiculously low, with no sign of it changing, never mind trying to get a Libertarian/Independent running a platform against this massive fraud.

If it were me, a victim of massive fraud, and lost my home/livelihood/family through no fault of my own, but those intending to do harm for profit, I can't print what I would do. It isn't until people, who have nothing to lose, does their perspective change. Then again, so far, those perspectives haven't changed because I haven't read anywhere massive outbreaks of resistance. Or, those that think about enacting vengeance/vigilantism, still have too much to lose and won't risk what they have now, so they/we are still on the sidelines.

Status quo remains, and until the majority show up at either the pols, or fight, it will continue.

/2 cents

Read the comments on the manifesto site it will make you want to puke

I don't expect the PTB to bite the hand that feeds them, but why would a large class action lawsuit by affected borrowers not happen?

OT. Obamacare upheld 6-3. The individual mandate "fine" is a permissible tax.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11p....

F-ing Supremes are as corrupt as any other institution. Will this be the last straw? It sure is for me. I don't know why, but the Obamacare mandate makes me more angry than just about any other issue -- even though I've followed and written about the financial corruption/bailouts for the past few years, the mandate just makes me physically angry.

What do we do about it, though?

Looks like the decision was 5-4, not 6-3, as earlier reported.

Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan in the majority.

Kennedy dissented, along with Scalia, Alito and Thomas.

The Obamacare ruling makes me sick to my stomache.

Quote:

I'm not one for vigilante justice

Me either, but at this point the scale of INjustice is so high that aside from protecting myself, my family, and my property, I would not lift one finger to stop "vigilante justice" and with just a little coaxing might well participate. If the president is authorized to identify enemies of the state and order them executed, well then, so am I.

Quote:

If the president is authorized to identify enemies of the state and order them executed, well then, so am I.

Thank you, that made my day.

Quote:

"at what point do the people simply stop putting up with this crap?" -

That is the question of the century.

You see Karl, the majority of Americans are too distracted in their daily life to care...

Nah, they (the people) have been getting a piece of the action for the past 30-40 years...Think you, me, anyone on TF is giving their accumulation over the past 30-40 years back...?... didn't think so...

Do I have this right? With the Interstate Commerce Clause basically covering anything and everything, and with the Obamacare decision declaring that the government can penalize anything just so long as they call it a tax, is there ANYTHING the government can't do (according to John Roberts)?

What a joke.

Bizarre: U.S. Home Loan Banks Overexposed in Europe

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/201....

As a business owner do you pay the penalty or take the premium increase....there are plenty of people out of work who need a job.

Here's the bottom line:

Humans by nature are risk adverse. Most of them. The vast majority. Yes, there are those that love a good brawling on a daily basis, keen to the idea of having the police billy club them mercilessly, into sky diving or the death cheating sport of shark fighting. Of course there are those in the minute percentage.

But for most this is the equation this is and will always be:

Quote:

If it were me, a victim of massive fraud, and lost my home/livelihood/family through no fault of my own, but those intending to do harm for profit, I can't print what I would do.

Until and unless such time as the RISK equation tilts negatively enough in a persons or collective 'persons' (society) circumstance, there will be risk AVOIDANCE. It is an instinctual self-preservationist conscious and subconscious calculation humans make on a continual moment by moment basis.

In effect, people WILL and ALWAYS continue to 'put up with this crap'.

Alternately, when 'lost my home/livelihood/family' becomes the greater threat or the greater current risk then that of taking some 'risky' form of action to push back, then and ONLY then will people stop putting up with crap. And, as has been so 'ineloquently' demonstrated in the last year, if you choose to peacefully indicate you are in protest of 'this crap', you will receive a forceful 'alternate' viewpoint most distinctly different than your personal choosing.

HOWEVER, if due to the outweighing risk you are incurring you discover enough of your deep hidden cornered scared animal instinct...

It really all comes down to little more or less than that.

So, as long as iphones distract, supersizes bloat, CNBS lies hypnotize, $1000 rims can rent, CONgress deceives and the cheese handouts continue... risk perception is dulled into nothingness.

Numbness is the oligarchs chief tool of trade. Risk seems intangible when so many mind manipulating distractions steer real action away from their target.

So, until there is vastly more 'lost my home/livehood/family'...

THERE WILL BE CRAP.

@Videopro

The only problem with your thesis is, it hasn't happened at all. There are more than enough out there that it has in fact happened too. Result? Nothing (maybe a suicide here and there).

Getting major airtime here in the UK on the main news, lots of talk of criminal prosecution...zzzzzzzz

More people are starting to wake up, but .GOV still slumbers on.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nobel-eco....

Obozo's "savvy businessmen"...

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/06/b....

Published on Friday, July 6, 2012 by TruthDig.com
Libor Interest Rate Scandal: Crime of the Century
by Robert Scheer

Forget Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay—they were mere amateurs in financial crime. The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.

Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financiers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.

How to explain a $450 million settlement for one bank whose defense, in a plea bargain worked out with regulators in London and Washington, is that every institution in their elite financial circle was doing it? Not just Barclays but JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and others are now being investigated on suspicion of manipulating the Libor rate, so critical to a $700 trillion derivatives market.

Caught as the proverbial deer in the headlights, Barclays Chairman Robert E. Diamond Jr. resigned this week and offered a plaintive defense to the British Parliament that he learned only recently that his bank was manipulating the index on which so large a part of international trade is based. That is plausible only if we assume he was paid $10 million a year to be deliberately ignorant. The Wall Street Journal had exposed this scandal fully four years ago but his bank continued to participate in it nonetheless.

“Study Casts Doubt on Key Rate” was the headline on the May 29, 2008, investigative report, which concluded: “Major banks are contributing to the erratic behavior of a crucial global lending benchmark, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.” Even then, according to the report, it was known that the Libor rate was being manipulated “to act as if the banking system was doing better than it was at critical junctures in the financial crisis."

Fast-forward four years to Diamond’s testimony before Parliament this week in which the CEO claimed his recent discovery of a pattern of interest manipulation by Barclays had made him “physically sick.” Who was to blame? According to the executive, subordinates acting behind his back.

The American-born banker, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, is well versed in financial chicanery, having started by putting together derivatives packages at Credit Suisse First Boston back in 1996. He was compelled under parliamentary questioning Wednesday to admit that “I can’t sit here and say no one in the industry [knew] about the problems with Libor. There was an issue out there and it should have been dealt with more broadly.”

He couldn’t deny widespread chicanery within his bank because, as in the collapse of Enron a decade ago, investigators had uncovered an email record of market manipulation so glaring that if the top executives were unaware, it was because they didn’t want to know.

As The New York Times editorialized: “The evidence, cited by the Justice Department—which Barclays agreed is ‘true and accurate’—is damning. ‘Always happy to help,’ one employee wrote in an email after being asked to submit false information. ‘If you know how to keep a secret, I’ll bring you in on it,’ wrote a Barclays trader to a trader at another bank, referring to their strategies for mutual gain. If that’s not conspiracy and price-fixing, what is?”

The U.S. Justice Department made a deal with Barclays, and although it may prosecute some individuals in the scam, it agreed not to go after the bank itself. “Such an agreement makes sense only if that cooperation will allow prosecutors to nail other banks that have been involved in setting the rates, including potential cases against Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC ... ,” the Times editorial said.

Both Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were reported by The Wall Street Journal years ago to be suspected of rigging the Libor interest rate. The leaders of those banks, despite such media exposure, clearly remained confident enough to continue on their merry way.

The sad reality is that they will probably get away with it. The world of high finance is by design as obscure and opaque as the bankers and their political surrogates can make it, and even this most recent crack in their defense of deception will soon be made to go away.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07....