Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Fed Loans
August 22nd, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.
By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.
“These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.”
The Network of Global Corporate Control
August 22nd, 2011In Fiat Currency Hell, people who have managed to accumulate savings have to become speculators in an attempt to preserve what will otherwise be taken away from them through inflation. They will often hand their savings over to companies that will attempt to do this for them. So, below, here’s a paper that includes a list of companies that are mostly involved with pension funds and wealth management for high net worth individuals. And to everyone’s shock—*snort*—a small number of firms exert a lot of control over the overall network.
Note that Barclays acquired Lehman’s rotting entrails and zombie Bank of America got Merrill Lynch’s. Also, Walton Enterprises LLC just deals with the Walton family’s (Walmart) fortune.
Via: PhysOrg:
For many years conventional wisdom has said that the whole world is controlled by the monied elite, or more recently by the huge multi-national corporations that seem to sometime control the very air we breathe. Now, new research by a team based in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, has shown that what we’ve suspected all along, is apparently true. The team has uploaded their results onto the preprint server arXiv.
Using data obtained (circa 2007) from the Orbis database (a global database containing financial information on public and private companies) the team, in what is being heralded as the first of its kind, analyzed data from over 43,000 corporations, looking at both upstream and downstream connections between them all and found that when graphed, the data represented a bowtie of sorts, with the knot, or core representing just 147 entities who control nearly 40 percent of all of monetary value of transnational corporations (TNCs).
In this analysis the focus was on corporations that have ownership in their own assets as well as those of other institutions and who exert influence via ownership in second, third, fourth, etc. tier entities that hold influence over others in the web, as they call it; the interconnecting network of TNCs that together make up the whole of the largest corporations in the world. In analyzing the data they found, and then in building the network maps, the authors of the report sought to uncover the structure and control mechanisms that make up the murky world of corporate finance and ownership.
Related: Who Rules America, They Rule, LittleSis, Transnationale.org
Research Credit: noncompliant
Monsanto and the Mortal Danger to Traditional Agriculture
August 21st, 2011Via: Axis of Logic:
The greatest threat to the future of food production in the world is the introduction of genetically engineered foods from the bio-tech industry. Contrary to their mendacious propagandized promises of solving the problem of world hunger through the so-called second green revolution, the bio-tech companies are instead in the process of destroying the world’s ecosystems, and thus the natural food chains and life cycles. Their goal is certainly not to solve any problem at all, but instead to fill the corporate coffers with the profits from selling their dangerous products to countries with already high mortality rates from malnutrition and starvation.
U.S. Air Force Leads Raid on Las Vegas Gun Shop
August 21st, 2011[???]
Update: Property Stolen from Nellis Air Force Base
Via: KMVT:
Officers raided the Citadel Gun & Safe Friday. Local media outlets report investigators were searching for property stolen from Nellis Air Force Base.
Police are tight-lipped about what led to the investigation.
—End Update—
Via: 8newsnow:
The U.S. Air Force led a rare raid against a Las Vegas gun shop Friday afternoon. Investigators removed pieces of evidence and took several people into custody.
The initial raid lasted less than an hour.
“These guys were in full get-up, automatic weapons,” said Bahama Mamas manager Joe Gold.
Armored SWAT tanks, officers carrying machine guns, K-9s, the FBI, ATF, and the U.S. Air Force made a grand entrance at the business park on Dean Martin Drive near Flamingo Road.
Heavy on action and light on information, investigators remained tight-lipped about the warrants served at the Citadel Gun and Safe store and an unoccupied building behind it.
…
A public information officer with the U.S. Air Force tells CNN authorities retrieved stolen property from an Air Force base at the store. No explosives or weapons were among the stolen items.
China Claims Fukushima Disaster Has Contaminated a 252,000-Square-Kilometer Area of Pacific Ocean
August 20th, 2011Via: Asahi:
Radioactive substances that leaked from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have spread over far broader areas of the sea than Japan has acknowledged, according to the State Oceanic Administration of China.
An Aug. 15 article in the electronic version of Science and Technology Daily, a Chinese newspaper, cited an ocean environment survey conducted off Fukushima Prefecture in the western Pacific Ocean as part of the Oceanic Administration’s written reply to an inquiry by the newspaper.
The article said that radioactive substances were detected in a 252,000-square-kilometer area within 800 kilometers to the east of Fukushima Prefecture. It said the level of cesium-137 was up to 300 times higher than corresponding concentrations in waters near China. Strontium-90 was detected at levels up to 10 times higher than those found in Chinese waters.
“One cannot rule out the possibility that radioactive contaminants have entered waters under China’s jurisdiction,” the Oceanic Administration was reported as saying.
Former Senior Analyst at Moody’s: Agency Rotten to Core with Conflicts, Corruption, and Greed
August 20th, 2011Via: Business Insider:
A former senior analyst at Moody’s has gone public with his story of how one of the country’s most important rating agencies is corrupted to the core.
The analyst, William J. Harrington, worked for Moody’s for 11 years, from 1999 until his resignation last year.
From 2006 to 2010, Harrington was a Senior Vice President in the derivative products group, which was responsible for producing many of the disastrous ratings Moody’s issued during the housing bubble.
Harrington has made his story public in the form of a 78-page “comment” to the SEC’s proposed rules about rating agency reform, which he submitted to the agency on August 8th. The comment is a scathing indictment of Moody’s processes, conflicts of interests, and management, and it will likely make Harrington a star witness at any future litigation or hearings on this topic.
The primary conflict of interest at Moody’s is well known: The company is paid by the same “issuers” (banks and companies) whose securities it is supposed to objectively rate. This conflict pervades every aspect of Moody’s operations, Harrington says. It incentivizes everyone at the company, including analysts, to give Moody’s clients the ratings they want, lest the clients fire Moody’s and take their business to other ratings agencies.
Moody’s analysts whose conclusions prevent Moody’s clients from getting what they want, Harrington says, are viewed as “impeding deals” and, thus, harming Moody’s business. These analysts are often transferred, disciplined, “harassed,” or fired.
In short, Harrington describes a culture of conflict that is so pervasive that it often renders Moody’s ratings useless at best and harmful at worst.
Research Credit: GP
Bank of America to Cut 10,000 or More Jobs
August 19th, 2011Via: AP:
Bank of America Corp. is cutting 3,500 employees this quarter and working on restructuring plans that will ax several thousand more jobs, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported citing people familiar with the situation.
The reports Friday said that the job cuts at the biggest U.S. bank by assets might exceed 10,000 or about 3.5 percent of its current work force.
Pre-Market: There’s Another Wreck Shaping Up for U.S. Stocks
August 19th, 2011Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell of hold any financial instrument.
Europe is red across the board again, and ESU11 is down about 2% right now. Gold continues to ramp higher, with the latest record high at $1877.88.
I’ll be monitoring…
Government Transparency on Deployment of Body Scanner Technology in Surface Transit Venues and Street-Roving Vans
August 19th, 2011Via: Electronic Privacy Information Center:
New documents released by the Department of Homeland Security to EPIC indicate the the agency continues to hide details about body scanners. In November 2010, EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency regarding the deployment of body scanners in surface transit and street-roving vans. In its latest document release the agency supplied several papers that were completely redacted. As a result of the agency’s failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, EPIC has filed suit to force disclosure of the records. For more information, see: EPIC: Body Scanner Technology and EPIC: FOIA Note #20.
Solving the Mystery of WTC 7
August 19th, 2011Via: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth:
