22 counts, including “aiding the enemy, which carries a potential death penalty, for leaking thousands of files to Wikileaks.
It appears that the “the enemy” is the American public.
It’s a f%$#ing kangaroo court, as evidenced by the convening authority refusing to allow the most of the defense’s witnesses, because the goal, of both the military and the Obama administration is to suborn perjury from Manning, so that they can manufacture a case with which to prosecute Julian Assange.
Because the one of the Vatican’s child safety coordinator has just been sentenced to jail for downloading child pr0n:
He was arrested after uploading images of pre-pubescent boys on to the Ning social networking website.
Police officers who traced him to his home in Plymouth, Devon, found more than 4,000 child porn images, mainly of boys aged 10 to 12, on his church-supplied computer and a memory stick when they raided the house in Penrose Road.
The court heard that 4,389 images were found on the laptop and memory stick.
The majority, 3,721, were at Level One, the lowest level for abusive images.
But there were 120 at Level Four, which includes scenes of child rape, and 12 at Level Five, which can include scenes of torture and sadism.
Jarvis, who the court heard claimed he was abused as a child, was sentenced at the city’s crown court after admitted 12 counts of making, possessing and distributing indecent images at a previous magistrates’ court hearing.
You know, notwithstanding the assertions of people like ……… You know ……… the Pope that it’s all an aberrations and caused by our wicked society.
I think that a bit of self examination is order here, because lashing out at the rest of the world over this seems to be just a bit delusional.
H/t Americablog.
*The refrain from the Depeche Mode song Blasphemous Rumors is, “I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours, But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor, And when I die I expect to find Him laughing.”
You knew it was coming when this corrupt rat-bastard was appointed trustee. Now he’s trying to f%$# the account holders out of the money that JP Morgan Chase and the rest of the usual suspects stole from the:
MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF)’s creditors should have some priority to be repaid by the bankrupt estate, said Chapter 11 trustee Louis Freeh, citing intercompany loans made between the failed parent and its operating unit.
Freeh, representing the interests of creditors of the parent company, commented on the legal principles that will govern repayments in papers filed late yesterday in Manhattan bankruptcy court. Former customers of the broker-dealer unit, seeking an estimated $1.2 billion missing from their accounts, are being repaid in a related case overseen by a different trustee, James Giddens, appointed under the Securities Investor Protection Act.
The holding company has “substantial intercompany claims” against the broker-dealer unit on account of former intercompany loans, and any recoveries of that money shouldn’t be “diverted” to customers, giving them a priority at the expense of creditors of the parent company, Freeh said.
Freeh is concerned that “an inappropriate interpretation” of the law may lead Giddens to deny the rights of creditors to recover from property that was never deposited by them, lawyers for Freeh wrote.
Customer PoolThe conflict is “not whether certain estate property can be distributed to customers, but whether estate assets that would otherwise be available for distribution to MF Global Inc.’s creditors can be reallocated to the customer pool,” Freeh said.
Seriously, the assets he is referring to were stolen by those “creditors”.
First, he obstructs the investigation of the theft of client accounts, and now he’s trying to f%$# the account holders.
It must be nice to be able to be so blatantly corrupt and get paid for it.
They have slipped a provision into the payroll tax extension which would deny unemployment compensation for people who lack a high school diploma:
For legislation to extend the payroll tax cut through the end of 2012, House Republicans are expected to push for a provision on unemployment insurance (UI) that is appalling even by current Washington standards. Neither President Obama nor Congress should accept any payroll-tax legislation that includes it. Here’s why:The provision, part of a full-year payroll-tax bill that the House passed in December, would deny UI benefits to any worker who lacks a high school diploma or GED and is not enrolled in classes to get one or the other — regardless of how long the person worked or whether he or she has access to adult education, which itself has been subject to significant budget cuts in the past few years and is heavily oversubscribed.The proposal would deny UI benefits to hundreds of thousands of workers — many of them middle-aged — who have worked hard, played by the rules, and effectively paid UI taxes for years and who then were laid off due to no fault of their own.This would violate the basic compact that the UI system has embodied since its creation under President Roosevelt in 1935 — that people who have amassed a sufficient record of work, and on whose behalf UI taxes have faithfully been paid, may receive UI benefits for a temporary period if they are laid off and are searching for a new job.
Republicans need to find a way to blame the victim. It’s in their DNA.
Just put on the f%$#ing glasses, and look.
Just really look, and understand that these are two sorts of people with the ‘Phants, the aliens, and the people who gleefully say, “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.”
A few days ago, I wrote about the wife of Switzerland’s central bank president engaging in insider trading.
Well what do you know, it ain’t the wife after all, it turns out that it was Philipp Hildebrand, president of the Swiss National Bank doing the insider trading:
Switzerland’s central bank was embroiled in an insider trading scandal after bank chief Philipp Hildebrand was accused of speculating on currency transactions only weeks before he instituted dramatic policy changes that shifted prices in his favour.
The accusations, which have rocked the Swiss banking industry, were made by Swiss weekly newspaper Die Weltwoche in a statement before its Thursday publication. It said that previous reports that Hildebrand’s wife was responsible for the foreign exchange transactions were misplaced and it was the bank chief who was behind the purchase and selling of currency that triggered an investigation by the Swiss National Bank (SNB).
The bank chairman also made several other dollar and euro transactions on the foreign exchange market between March and October last year, according to Die Weltwoche, which is close to the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP).
Let me explain just how f%$#ed we all are.
The guy in charge of regulations for the Swiss is engaging in insider trading.
If the Swiss are screwing with banking, it’s not just the end of banking as we know it, it’s the end of the the concept of money as we know it.
Stockpile canned goods and ammunition, because you can’t eat gold.
But it’s right to dismiss charges against all the kids that the cash for kids judges sent up:
A judge brought in to clean up after a “kids for cash” scandal has expunged every juvenile court case decided by a Pennsylvania jurist convicted of corruption.
Senior Judge Arthur Grim was selected almost three years ago to review juvenile court cases decided by former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella, who’s serving time in jail for his involvement in the corruption case.
As a result of Grim’s efforts, records have been expunged for more than 2,000 juveniles sentenced by Ciavarella.
Ciavarella and another ex-judge are serving federal prison sentences for sending juveniles to for-profit youth detention centers in return for money.
Grim called the handling of juvenile cases in Luzerne County a judicial process “run amok,” and he gave recommendations to prevent such renegade justice again.
Pennsylvania State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron Castille said Thursday that Grim has suggested many reforms that require legislative action, but the courts have already changed certain rules to treat kids more fairly.
When the checks and balances fail so badly that judges manage to get kickbacks for sending kids to private prisons, and no one says anything for years, expunging every conviction is least that we owe them as a society.
Background here.
Because he is a thoroughly dishonest ratf%$#, and the tell on this is that he refuses to use email:
As Eric Falkenstein observes:
People who meticulously avoid email should not be trusted, because it is simply too calculating, as if they know they are regularly committing crimes. A phone conversation can always be disavowed, you just say you were talking about last weekend’s bar mitzvah.
If his behavior as MF Global bankruptcy trustee, where he is refusing to turn over information to regulators about where customer account money went, (He’s making a bogus claim that the evidence of theft is covered by attorney client privilige) is an indication, he’s going to be a little boy rapist’s best friend at Penn State, where he is in charge of the coverup investigation.
Between his incompetence and his corrupt hackery, it’s a wonder that anyone hires him. It’s like hiring John Dillinger to be in charge of your bank’s security. Bernie Madoff has more credibility.
Mark Ames has just posted an epic take-down of bought and paid for pimp for mass murderers Joshua Foust, and by extension, his employer, Atlantic Magazine.
Here is a sample:
Last week, some troll named Joshua Foust attacked my article about the massacre in Kazakhstan on December 16. I really had no idea who Foust was until I started getting emails from readers telling me “some guy with a goatee is having a meltdown on Twitter.” What upset Foust so much about my article was that I dared to report a death toll number, “up to 70,” that differed from the official figure of 15 that the regime in Kazakhstan wanted the outside world to believe. Why did Foust take on the role of massacre-denier for Kazakhstan’s notoriously brutal, corrupt regime?
Foust, it turns out, has spent much of the past decade getting paid by defense contractors to front for them as one of their paid PR monkeys. One example: Last year, Foust published a hit piece in the Columbia Journalism Review attacking an award-winning Washington Post investigative series about the vast hidden defense contractor industry, without disclosing the fact that Foust was an employee of Northrop Grumman–one of the largest defense contractors in America.
Foust’s job is the opposite of journalism—he gets paid by war-profiteers to lie to the public, to cover for them while they soak the public for government contracts. That’s what Joshua Foust does for a living; and besides carrying the water for defense contractors as a “strategic communications” flak, Foust has spent the past few years talking up Kazakhstan’s despot-for-life, Nursultan Nazarbayev—and talking down the appalling human rights records both in Kazakhstan and in Uzbekistan.
This is truly epic.
It’s harsh, but perfectly justified, and it’s really a thing of beauty.
I love savage writing.
When the Vampire Squid recommends a buy, sell as fast as you can:
It seems Jim O’Neill, the head of Goldman’s Asset Management department, is predicting that the United States stock market may go up “15 to 20 percent.” O’Neill apparently believes Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve will resort to another round of money-printing, and finally green-light the long-awaited “Qe3,” or third round of “Quantitative Easing.”
The QE programs involve the Fed printing hundreds of billions of dollars and pumping them into the marketplace, where they ostensibly stimulate the economy (although recent experience tells us that the money mostly ends up being swallowed by the financial services industry – but that’s another subject for another time). Anyway, Bernanke declined to go ahead with a third QE program in late 2011, but O’Neill apparently thinks we’ll get it in 2012. From Bloomberg:
“If QE2 doesn’t work, then we’ll get QE3,” said O’Neill, who was named chairman of the money manager in September after working as the co-head of global economics research and chief currency economist at New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. since 1995. There’s a “good chance” the S&P 500 will rise 15 percent to 20 percent in the next 12 months, he said.
O’Neill added that he thought a 20 percent bump would be “relatively straightforward” for the U.S. S&P.
They pumped also pumped up the BRICS, and then shorted them, and aggressively sold their customers European bank stocks earlier this month.
Goldman Sachs is really nothing more than a ferociously criminal enterprise. They earn commissioners by advising their customers, and then they cheat them.*
The only reason to do business with them is to capitalize on their exquisitely honed revolving-door government connections.
If a prosecutor were to aggressively to pursue a RICO investigation against them, they would be toast, because the (to my mind dangerously low) standard of a, “pattern of racketeering activity,” is not a high bar to clear.
*Note to self. I need to get libel insurance.
So there is nothing to worry about with the wife of head of the Swiss National Bank shorting the SFr just days before it’s devaluation by her husband:
My kind of story in the Swiss papers today. I love it when big shot central bankers get their dirty laundry made public.Kashya, the wife of Philipp Hildebrand (head of the Swiss National Bank) sold Swiss Francs just a few days before the Swiss National Bank initiated exchange controls and devalued the Franc. The timing of the transactions was nearly perfect. The suggestion is that “pillow talk” between husband and wife lead to the trades.
Don’t expect heads to roll over this transgression. There has been a complete review by Swiss authorities and the conclusion is that there were no insider trading violations by the wife. That’s not to say that trades did not happen.
Apparently, Kashya Hildebrand bought ~$500,000 when she shorted the CHF. This relatively small transaction netted the Hildebrand family only ~$50,000 in less than one month. Being that the amount is so small, the conclusion is that nothing nefarious has taken place. ………….
Seriously, if I stole $50,000, I’d be in jail, with a prosecutor asking for a big chunk of bail money, but because this is one of the bankster elite, it’s no harm, no foul.
I’m, really beginning to think that we don’t need to just prosecute the financiers, but we need to go after the corrupt regulators, including the central bankers, as well.
To quote Sigourney Weaver, “I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
H/t Atrios.
But two doctors have been charged with fetal homicide for late term abortions:
Two doctors who Maryland authorities say botched an abortion last year in Elkton have been indicted on murder charges — in what appears to be the first use of the state’s fetal homicide law involving a medical professional performing surgery.“We’re in uncharted territory,” Cecil County State’s Attorney Edward D.E. Rollins said Friday. He declined to comment further because the indictment remains sealed until the suspects are arraigned in Maryland. They were arrested Wednesday in New Jersey and in Utah.Dr. Steven Chase Brigham, 55, of Voorhees, N.J., faces five counts of first-degree murder, five counts of second-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. Dr. Nicola Irene Riley, 46, of Salt Lake City faces one count each of first- and second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.Authorities would not describe the indictment in detail. A statement from Elkton police says some of the charges relate to an abortion that went awry 16 months ago. Detectives investigating that case — in which a teenager had to be rushed to a hospital and survived — said they found nearly three dozen late-term aborted fetuses in a freezer in Brigham’s Elkton clinic.Maryland is one of 38 states with a fetal homicide law. But unlike many, Maryland does not define when it is too late to perform an abortion. Under the law, enacted in 2005, it is illegal to abort a fetus deemed viable, or showing signs of healthy development.
In case you are wondering, Edward D.E. Rollins is a Republican, and this is fairly clearly a case where they are trying to use this as another wedge against Roe v. Wade to the Supreme Court.
What is interesting here is that they aren’t charging the mothers in the conspiracy charges, when, if there is a conspiracy, they are clearly co-conspirators.
Prosecutors love conspiracy charges. They are easier to prosecute, and they are a remarkably effective tool for turn witnesses, but we aren’t seeing its use here, because this is all about an anti-choice political agenda.
I expect to see this before the Supreme Court in the next 2-3 years.
Bloomberg has released the bailout secured from Federal reserve as a result of their successful FOIA litigation:
Bloomberg News today released spreadsheets showing daily borrowing totals for 407 banks and companies that tapped Federal Reserve emergency programs during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. It’s the first time such data have been publicly available in this form.
To download a zip file of the spreadsheets, go to http://bit.ly/Bloomberg-Fed-Data. For an explanation of the files, see the one labeled “1a Fed Data Roadmap.”
The day-by-day, bank-by-bank numbers, culled from about 50,000 transactions the U.S. central bank made through seven facilities, formed the basis of a series of Bloomberg News articles this year about the largest financial bailout in history.
What is revealed here, in the short form, is that the lending window was at below market rates, as opposed to the, “penalty over normal market rates,” claimed by the Fed.
Additionally, on a quick look at the article, the lending, and the backstopping, where what amounted to loan guarantees were provided as a sort of a back door subsidy to allow banks to borrow at lower rates, it appears that this totaled more than ten trillion ($10,000,000,000,000.00) dollars, or something in excess of ½ the GDP of the United States of America.
It should also be noted that this is only the stuff that Bloomberg managed to pry from the Fed’s fingers, and I’m certain that we will see this number grow as more rocks are turned over.
Because, this is America, where the rich and powerful are above the law.
However, it appears that the CFTC is saying that they know where all the customer money went.
I should note that Corzine is claiming that he has no idea where all the client funds went, which, if true, means that he is in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley, which should still qualify for the bracelets … Or it would, if we were a nation of laws, instead of a nation of men …
First, in an exercise of profound wankitude, Scott Walker is attempting to charge people a lot of money to protest against him:
Gov. Scott Walker’s administration could hold demonstrators at the Capitol liable for the cost of extra police or cleanup and repairs after protests, under a new policy unveiled Thursday.
The rules, which several legal experts said raised serious free speech concerns, seemed likely to add to the controversy that has simmered all year over demonstrations in the state’s seat of government.
The policy, which also requires permits for events at the statehouse and other state buildings, took effect Thursday and will be phased in by Dec. 16. Walker administration officials contend the policy simply clarifies existing rules.
State law already says public officials may issue permits for the use of state facilities, and applicants “shall be liable to the state . . . for any expense arising out of any such use and for such sum as the managing authority may charge for such use.”
But Edward Fallone, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School, said the possibility of charging demonstrators for police costs might be problematic because some groups might not be able to afford to pay.
“I’m a little skeptical about charging people to express their First Amendment opinion,” he said. “You can’t really put a price tag on the First Amendment.”
Well, it seems like Scott Walker does think that you can put a price tag on the First Amendment.
In somewhat less depressing news, there has been the first arrest made in the so called “John Doe” investigation, a realtor who refused to testify, because his grant of immunity would not be secret, even though the court proceedings were.
So it appears that he was more concerned about someone getting to him, and his family, than he was of the prosecutor.
The weird thing is that this is supposed to be an investigation of some of Scott’s staffers … wait for it … making politically motivated blog comments while on the state clock.
I don’t know what is going on here, but I do know that you don’t haul witnesses before a grand jury with a gag order, and you don’t arrest them for lack of cooperation, over a case of some staffers politicking on the job.
Here’s hoping that we start seeing indictments in the middle of the recall campaign.
Also, in the “there are a few good guys out there, but here is one, department,” the ACLU is suing Scotty over his voter suppression efforts:
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the State of Wisconsin on Tuesday over a new law requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification, charging that the measure violates the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit says that the state is infringing on some citizens’ right to vote and to be treated equally under the law and amounts to a kind of poll tax on voters who lack the documents needed to get an approved ID.
Republican lawmakers and Gov. Scott Walker, who is named in the lawsuit along with a long list of other state officials, have said they believe the measure will withstand a court challenge.
The action came Tuesday ahead of a scheduled speech by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in which he vowed to enforce civil rights protections amid a flurry of voter ID laws recently passed around the country. The Wisconsin lawsuit was filed in federal court in Milwaukee by the national ACLU and its Wisconsin affiliate and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty on behalf of a group of senior citizens, minorities and homeless residents.
“This lawsuit is the opening act in what will be a long struggle to undo the damage done to the right to vote by strict photo ID laws and other voter suppression measures,” said Jon Sherman, an attorney with the ACLU Voting Rights Project.
With a 5-4 advantage of conservatives in the Supreme court, and the fact that all 5 are political hacks, I don’t think that the Supreme court will end up doing the non-corrupt thing, but at least we should see an injunction for the next election cycle or two.
This referring to the conviction of “Bad Hair Bob” Erhlich’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign manager of attempted vote fraud:
Paul E. Schurick, the 2010 campaign manager for former Maryland governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., was convicted Tuesday by a Baltimore jury of four counts stemming from a robocall that prosecutors said was intended to suppress the black vote.
The call, which Schurick acknowledged authorizing, was placed on Election Day to 112,000 voters in Baltimore and Prince George’s County, the state’s two largest majority-African American jurisdictions. Recipients were told by an unidentified woman that they could “relax” because Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) had been successful.
The guilty verdict not only sullied the three-decade career of one of Maryland’s best-known political operatives, it also served as a major embarrassment for Ehrlich, the state’s only Republican governor in a generation.
Although prosecutors have never suggested that Ehrlich approved the calls, he is pushing a new book that draws anecdotes from his four years in Annapolis and contends his failed comeback bid last year was “swamped” by the black vote.
The jury convicted Schurick — who got his start in politics working for Democrats — of trying to influence votes through fraud, failing to identify the source of the call as required by law and two counts of conspiracy to commit those crimes.
Schurick’s defense argued during the week-long trial that he relied on the judgment of a campaign consultant hired to reach out to black voters, who said the calls would make use of “reverse psychology” and motivate potential Ehrlich supporters to go to the polls.
This is where it gets interesting, because now that prosecutors have gotten a conviction, people are going to start thinking about rolling over.
While I think that prosecutors are probably right when they say that, “prosecutors have never suggested that Ehrlich approved the calls,” after all, when you break the law, you make sure that the candidate has no direct knowledge of it.
That being said, I think that he had to know that the central pillar of his campaign was suppressing the black vote, and he had to know that, and I’m hoping that this come out at trial.
Here are two bullet points for the presentation
On the morning of July 21, before the Eton Park meeting, Paulson had spoken to New York Times reporters and editors, according to his Treasury Department schedule. A Times article the next day said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were inspecting Fannie and Freddie’s books and cited Paulson as saying he expected their examination would give a signal of confidence to the markets.
A Different Message
At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended. Over sandwiches and pasta salad, he delivered that information to a group of men capable of profiting from any disclosure.
Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives — at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.
After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson said he had erred by not punishing Bear Stearns shareholders more severely. The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” — a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.
Stock Wipeout
Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said.
The fund manager says he was shocked that Paulson would furnish such specific information — to his mind, leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.
I think that the next two paragraphs, while appearing to exonerate those involved, actually reveal the criminality:
There’s no evidence that they did so after the meeting; tracking firm-specific short stock sales isn’t possible using public documents.
And law professors say that Paulson himself broke no law by disclosing what amounted to inside information.
I understand where the reporter is coming from: He knows what could be done with information, and what probably was done with the information, but his legal department said that he could not connect the dots.
This is Wall Street and the “Vampire Squid” we are talking about. Of course they would use this information to profit. It’s what they do.
As to the morality of Hank Paulson, I will refer you to the fact that he does not use email, and “People who meticulously avoid email should not be trusted, because it is simply too calculating, as if they know they are regularly committing crimes.”
And this guy was the f%$#ing Secretary of the F%$#ing Treasury of the United States of America
The first ever GAO(Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke(pictured to the left), Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious — the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.
To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.
Seriously, if we don’t start prosecuting these folks, this is never going to end, and by these folks, I mean Hank Paulson, and any member of the Federal Reserve who did anything beyond jaywalking.
We need to start throwing asses in jail, serious time in serious prisons, because if we don’t, they are just going to keep looting.
But I doubt it.
In any case, representatives of OWS have “Mic Checked”* Barack Obama:
President Obama was heckled on Tuesday during an appearance at a New Hampshire high school.
Obama had traveled north to the Granite State, which holds the nation’s first presidential primary, to discuss the economy and his proposal to extend a current payroll tax cut.
Just as the president started his speech, protesters, apparently from the Occupy Wall Street protest movement, used the “human mic” technique to amplify their voices. It was unclear what the protesters were saying, or what point they were attempting to make.
The president smiled through the disruption, saying: “No, it’s OK,” as other parts of the crowd sought to hush the protesters by chanting his name and old campaign slogan, “Yes We Can.”
In Chicago, another group mic checked Rahm Emmanuel too.
I don’t expect either of them to sympathize with OWS’ goals, ever.
They are both products of the wing of the Democratic party that is beholden to big money, and the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector’s money in particular, so to the degree that we see any movement towards accountability and meaningful regulations for the banksters, it will be because they are dragged kicking and screaming toward doing the right thing.
The Arizona Supreme court has overturned the removal of the head of the Arizona independent redistricting panel:
The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday rebuffed Gov. Jan Brewer’s efforts to remake the state panel that draws political maps by reinstating the chairwoman Brewer recently ousted.
The court ruled that Brewer’s letter removing Colleen Mathis from the panel fell short in showing “substantial neglect of duty” or “gross misconduct,” as state law requires, the Arizona Republic reported. A Brewer spokesman told the paper that the Republican governor “strongly disagrees” with the decision and was considering her next step.
The once-a-decade map-making, though somewhat technical and arcane, can help cement a political party’s grasp on power for several election cycles. While redistricting often results in political battles, the one unfolding in Arizona has been particularly brutal.
In 2000, Arizona voters approved a ballot measure that made redistricting the responsibility of a panel composed of two Democrats, two Republicans and an independent chair, which was supposed to tamp down partisan warfare. (This year, California’s political lines were drawn for the first time by a similar independent panel.)
What the court basically said was that the governor had to actually show neglect of duty or misconduct, and not just because “I said so.”
The head of the panel, as per the law, has to be an independent, and it appears that the ‘Phants objections consist of the fact that she is married to a Democrat, and that the proposals for a map are too “fair and balanced.”
I have not doubt that the Republicans will take a 2nd bite at this apple, and probably a 3rd bite as the apple, as they attempt to trump up charges that can pass a court’s smell test.
I think that we are going to see court drawn districts in Arizona.
Because financial fraud prosecutions have fallen even further under Obama than under Bush:
During the first 11 months of the 2011 fiscal year, the federal government filed 1,251 new prosecutions for financial institution fraud. If that pace continues, TRAC projects a total of 1,365 prosecutions for the fiscal year. That’s less than half the total a decade ago.
The decline in these new cases stands in contrast to the government’s broader approach to federal criminal prosecutions. Federal prosecutions for other crimes have grown tremendously, with the number of total new prosecutions filed for all federal crimes nearly doubling over the last decade:
(emphasis original)
As you can see, federal prosecutions have skyrocketed:
But prosecutions for financial fraud have fallen.
If you were wondering whether or not Obama was a willing captive of Wall Street, this should disabuse you of this.
The only hope here is to play on his weakness and cowardice to force him to do the right thing, because it’s clear that his better angels lie with the Vampire Squid.*
*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.
*Which is why I’m not going with the MJ popcorn GIFTalk about mangling a metaphor, huh?*
But that’s the way I see the reports that the CFTC will be auditing all futures firms, in the hopes of preventing the theft co-mingling of funds that MF Global did under John Corzine:
Federal regulators have ordered an audit of every American futures trading firm to verify that customer money is protected, a move that comes after roughly $600 million in client funds were discovered to be missing from MF Global, the bankrupt brokerage firm once run by Jon S. Corzine.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator searching for the missing money at MF Global, will audit many of the nation’s largest futures commission merchants, according to a person briefed on the decision. Exchanges like the CME Group will examine smaller firms to ensure they are keeping customer money separate from company money, a fundamental rule on Wall Street.
The futures commission also announced on Thursday that it had formally opened an investigation into MF Global, a largely symbolic move that indicated the seriousness of the case. The agency has already issued subpoenas to MF Global and its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, but the commission had to vote before announcing a full-scale investigation.
“The commission has determined it is in the public interest to confirm the existence of this particular investigation,” the agency said in a statement.
The thing here is that what MF Global did may be considered legal by regulators, as Jesse notes (BTW, he’s been on this like white on rice):
This is most likely a distortion of the principle known as ‘rehypothecation‘ in which a broker can use customer positions and holdings as collateral pledged for a margin loan for the purpose of securing funding from a third party to service that loan.
The principle at play here may be closer to a type of droit du seigneur, in which any assets you have posted at a futures brokerage may be used at will by the broker for their own purposes without regard to any customer obligations. It depends on the extent to which MF took customer assets and leveraged them.
In a way it is just making the unbalanced relationship between Wall Street and its customers official.
It means that customers are bearing hidden counterparty risks on assets to which they thought they had a clear title, such as Treasuries, and foreign currencies, and warehouse receipts for precious metals.
It means that brokers can go beyond the mere provision of funding for loss, and use customer accounts to fund their own leveraged speculation under exemptions duly granted by their ‘regulators.’
(emphasis mine)
Basically, what it means is that MF Global was allowed to use customer funds as collateral, without telling the customers, and without sharing any of the profits derived from this leverage.
What is going to happen here is that no one (except perhaps Corzine, since he’s clearly a Democrat) will see any serious jail time, and there will be no change in the rules, because, after all the system must be preserved, which is pretty much a mantra of both the professional staff at the various regulatory agencies and the White House.
As to preserving the existing system, it is merely a system of rent-taking, and if we were to take it down completely, and replace it trained elephants doling out loans, we’d probably do better, because elephants, at least, work for peanuts.
