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Matt Taibbi's Latest: " Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail?"
- AIG
- American International Group
- Bank of America
- Bank of America
- CDO
- Collateralized Debt Obligations
- Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- Comptroller of the Currency
- default
- Enron
- FBI
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- Federal Reserve
- goldman sachs
- Goldman Sachs
- Insider Trading
- Jed Rakoff
- Joe Cassano
- Lehman
- Lehman Brothers
- Lloyd Blankfein
- Matt Taibbi
- Morgan Stanley
- New York Stock Exchange
- None
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
- Reality
- Securities and Exchange Commission
- The Gorilla
- WorldCom
From Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone:
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
Over drinks at a bar on a
dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate
investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's
your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the
rest of it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece
right there."
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the
financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and
financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals
that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of
billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and
nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant
and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be
other rich and famous people.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran
the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom —
an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked,
fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their
names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news
consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan
Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were
directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid
billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about
billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put
together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's
more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions
cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who
assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months
before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that
former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to
disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.
Instead, federal regulators and prosecutors have let the banks and
finance companies that tried to burn the world economy to the ground get
off with carefully orchestrated settlements — whitewash jobs that
involve the firms paying pathetically small fines without even being
required to admit wrongdoing. To add insult to injury, the people who
actually committed the crimes almost never pay the fines themselves;
banks caught defrauding their shareholders often use shareholder money
to foot the tab of justice. "If the allegations in these settlements are
true," says Jed Rakoff, a federal judge in the Southern District of New
York, "it's management buying its way off cheap, from the pockets of
their victims."
To understand the significance of this, one has to think carefully
about the efficacy of fines as a punishment for a defendant pool that
includes the richest people on earth — people who simply get their
companies to pay their fines for them. Conversely, one has to consider
the powerful deterrent to further wrongdoing that the state is missing
by not introducing this particular class of people to the experience of
incarceration. "You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison
for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall
Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take.
Just once."
But that hasn't happened. Because the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.
Just ask the people who tried to do the right thing.
Here's how regulation of
Wall Street is supposed to work. To begin with, there's a semigigantic
list of public and quasi-public agencies ostensibly keeping their eyes
on the economy, a dense alphabet soup of banking, insurance, S&L,
securities and commodities regulators like the Federal Reserve, the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of
the Currency (OCC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC),
as well as supposedly "self-regulating organizations" like the New York
Stock Exchange. All of these outfits, by law, can at least begin the
process of catching and investigating financial criminals, though none
of them has prosecutorial power.
The major federal agency on the Wall Street beat is the Securities
and Exchange Commission. The SEC watches for violations like insider
trading, and also deals with so-called "disclosure violations" — i.e.,
making sure that all the financial information that publicly traded
companies are required to make public actually jibes with reality. But
the SEC doesn't have prosecutorial power either, so in practice, when it
looks like someone needs to go to jail, they refer the case to the
Justice Department. And since the vast majority of crimes in the
financial services industry take place in Lower Manhattan, cases
referred by the SEC often end up in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the
Southern District of New York. Thus, the two top cops on Wall Street are
generally considered to be that U.S. attorney — a job that has been
held by thunderous prosecutorial personae like Robert Morgenthau and
Rudy Giuliani — and the SEC's director of enforcement.
The relationship between the SEC and the DOJ is necessarily close,
even symbiotic. Since financial crime-fighting requires a high degree of
financial expertise — and since the typical drug-and-terrorism-obsessed
FBI agent can't balance his own checkbook, let alone tell a synthetic
CDO from a credit default swap — the Justice Department ends up leaning
heavily on the SEC's army of 1,100 number-crunching investigators to
make their cases. In theory, it's a well-oiled, tag-team affair:
Billionaire Wall Street Asshole commits fraud, the NYSE catches on and
tips off the SEC, the SEC works the case and delivers it to Justice, and
Justice perp-walks the Asshole out of Nobu, into a Crown Victoria and
off to 36 months of push-ups, license-plate making and Salisbury steak.
That's the way it's supposed to work. But a veritable mountain of
evidence indicates that when it comes to Wall Street, the justice system
not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually
evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting
financial criminals. This institutional reality has absolutely nothing
to do with politics or ideology — it takes place no matter who's in
office or which party's in power. To understand how the machinery
functions, you have to start back at least a decade ago, as case after
case of financial malfeasance was pursued too slowly or not at all,
fumbled by a government bureaucracy that too often is on a first-name
basis with its targets. Indeed, the shocking pattern of nonenforcement
with regard to Wall Street is so deeply ingrained in Washington that it
raises a profound and difficult question about the very nature of our
society: whether we have created a class of people whose misdeeds are no
longer perceived as crimes, almost no matter what those misdeeds are.
The SEC and the Justice Department have evolved into a bizarre species
of social surgeon serving this nonjailable class, expert not at
administering punishment and justice, but at finding and removing
criminal responsibility from the bodies of the accused.
The systematic lack of regulation has left even the country's top
regulators frustrated. Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant for the
SEC, laughs darkly at the idea that the criminal justice system is
broken when it comes to Wall Street. "I think you've got a wrong
assumption — that we even have a law-enforcement agency when it comes to Wall Street," he says.
In the hierarchy of the SEC, the chief accountant plays a major role
in working to pursue misleading and phony financial disclosures. Turner
held the post a decade ago, when one of the most significant cases was
swallowed up by the SEC bureaucracy. In the late 1990s, the agency had
an open-and-shut case against the Rite Aid drugstore chain, which was
using diabolical accounting tricks to cook their books. But instead of
moving swiftly to crack down on such scams, the SEC shoved the case into
the "deal with it later" file. "The Philadelphia office literally did
nothing with the case for a year," Turner recalls. "Very much like the
New York office with Madoff." The Rite Aid case dragged on for years —
and by the time it was finished, similar accounting fiascoes at Enron
and WorldCom had exploded into a full-blown financial crisis. The same
was true for another SEC case that presaged the Enron disaster. The
agency knew that appliance-maker Sunbeam was using the same kind of
accounting scams to systematically hide losses from its investors. But
in the end, the SEC's punishment for Sunbeam's CEO, Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap
— widely regarded as one of the biggest assholes in the history of
American finance — was a fine of $500,000. Dunlap's net worth at the
time was an estimated $100 million. The SEC also barred Dunlap from ever
running a public company again — forcing him to retire with a mere
$99.5 million. Dunlap passed the time collecting royalties from his
self-congratulatory memoir. Its title: Mean Business.
And the conclusion:
So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one.
Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so
obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You
build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and
stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that
puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison
is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait —
let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just
give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially
clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine
instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't
ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit
from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in
pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for
every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?
The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial
crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor
stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than
common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people
who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage,
acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can,
then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a
captive bureaucracy. They're attacking the very definition of property —
which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends
everyone's claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes
tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of
justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from
reality.
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Jail is for poor people, just like socialized losses.
The troll is getting very very angry. It may be time for our little lobby takeover. Unfortunately it has turned out to be me, two guys, and an fbi informant. So much for any anger out there.
If government won't police since it is an accomplice, then there is only one solution.
Revolution Bitchez!
But alas, this won't happen until enough people cannot eat. And if/when it does happen, nothing will change as most people have no clue about who robbed them. I do not see a good future here.
save it metastar, you're just playing into the tct's hands.
But keep that spirit primed.
It won't happen in America until the TVs and American Idol, Jersey Shore, and the Bachelor are unviewable.
Maybe we're supposed to storm the cable companies and knock out all the towers.
"It won't happen in America until the TVs and American Idol, Jersey Shore, and the Bachelor are unviewable."
Well, for me, they already are, but I get your point.
...and I see NFLX streaming all the above.
QE is just as much welfare as food stamps. I bet JPM will have cable cards for the sheeple if they couldn't afford cable. keep watching..........nothing to see here on K street
Martha Stewart went to PMITA prison.
Ya, over about $250,000 of insider trading. Just a coincidence that she's a prominent democratic donor? That was a frame-up that stank to high heaven.
it wasn't even insider trading! if she had told the simple truth she would have walked. she apparently thought she might be guilty of insider trading (almost certainly not, she was told by her broker that the head of a firm was selling so she sold) so told an awkwardly elaborate lie to federal investigators (the crime for which she was convicted). lesson? always refuse to talk without good representation.
When they nailed old Martha I felt so much safer.
eweweweeewww.
- Ned
Who would wanna pound that shit?
To the contrary, ex-press secretary Dana Perino would be nice...
The Martha Stewart thing was basically the SEC's way of telling the sheeple there were no sharks in the pool. They knew our celebrity-gawking media would run with it.
"Maybe we're supposed to storm the cable companies and knock out all the towers."
ROTFFLMAO
Food inflation data point: Wendys
1. New "natural cut" fries with skin on, for that natural taste of dirt. Yumm. Wonder how much is saved (time, material, equipment, etc.) by eliminating the peeling process?
2. Now I get my 1/4lb single with cheese (this time w/o fries) and open things up thinking they forgot the cheese when I can't see it peeking out the corners. Nope, it's just about 2/3 on edge the size it used to be, less than half the area of the patty.
Same price, though ...
Took my wife out for the 10 year anniversary dinner. I said "whats wrong with my salad?" she could'nt tell. I said, " No tomatoes".
Caesar salad?
no, it was a tomato basil mozzarella salad....
Be glad, she would have gotten the Mexican shit fertilized kind.
I remember being in Mexico in a small town around 1990 and buying salad vegies in a local store and marveling how I could actually taste the cucumber, tomato, etc. Then Nafta happened and the US ag machine exported it's methodology. Now I go to the same store and the vegies are tasteless, just like here in the good ole USA!
Spanish Mission Accomplished. Our GMO corn is starting to infect their crops as well even though they've done work to resist it. And corn is sacred to these people. They have an amazing variety with different nutrients and enviromental specialties.
Fuck! Sorry.
I remember being in Mexico in a small town around 1990 and buying salad vegies in a local store and marveling how I could actually taste the cucumber, tomato, etc. Then Nafta happened and the US ag machine exported it's methodology. Now I go to the same store and the vegies are tasteless, just like here in the good ole USA!
I remember being in Mexico in a small town around 1990 and buying salad vegies in a local store and marveling how I could actually taste the cucumber, tomato, etc. Then Nafta happened and the US ag machine exported it's methodology. Now I go to the same store and the vegies are tasteless, just like here in the good ole USA!
I remember being in Mexico in a small town around 1990 and buying salad vegies in a local store and marveling how I could actually taste the cucumber, tomato, etc. Then Nafta happened and the US ag machine exported it's methodology. Now I go to the same store and the vegies are tasteless, just like here in the good ole USA!
I remember being in Mexico in a small town around 1990 and buying salad vegies in a local store and marveling how I could actually taste the cucumber, tomato, etc. Then Nafta happened and the US ag machine exported it's methodology. Now I go to the same store and the vegies are tasteless, just like here in the good ole USA!
No emphasis intended.
Bought a venti starbucks latte today. It went up thirty cents
Indeed...Wendy's where I am has a sign on the drive-thru saying something about the cold weather impacting tomato availability (i.e. the price went up), and if you want them you have to request them specifically.
Wendy's is a bellweather.
Tomatoes only if you ask.
Beef soon to follow.
Taco Bell already got rid of most of the beef.
Yep, all the stray dogs have disappeared weekly here.
... i haven't seen a cat in three months.
That's not new, they were doing that here about a year ago.. funny thing was, none of the other chains seemed to have any problems sourcing tomato at the time.
You have to DEMAND them, and EXTRA dressing, and Croutons...or you get shit,nada, zilch.
And they give dirty looks if you even ask.You want it right, GO INSIDE to order.
Easy to screw a drive thru.
i would worry that they might be giving you a little something in addition to "dirty looks".
I thought you were telling a joke.
In-n-Out Burgers out here in the West are definitely smaller than what they used to be. When I called corporate on it, they said "we never changed the size of our patties". Then I realized the loophole: they never changed the size pre-cooked. So they can use more fat content, which is the same size but cheaper, and of course it shrinks to a McDonald's size hamburger... At least they are still good quality. Tricky bastards.
Went in to a truck stop the other day to purchase a pint of milk...the "pint" was now 12 oz.! Still $1.49...gee, they weren't making enough profit at $11.92/gallon? MOOPEC must be cutting back production of WBI (White Bovine Intermediate)...
Those new fries suck wind, big time.
stop eating so much fast food, you fat asses
crossed my mind, perhaps more tentatively worded.
I empathize and sympathize. This may help, a Wendy's coupon: https://www.mywendysonline.com/wpc/aMgr.do?pg=createPrefs&src=wdotc
When I was a kid, William's Hamburgers in Fargo, ND sold the world's best burgers for $.18 each. Even then (early '60s for those who can't time stamp burger prices) a genuine entrepreneur in fast food couldn't escape the overreach of growing big government. When the price of my favorite burger went to $.19, it felt like my world caved in. What if they raised the price of the public pool to $.15? How could I keep up with this madness? When I stood on the sidewalk in front of William's and saw the "Closed" sign hanging, I like you, had thought the madness of government intervention had driven William's back to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of the trunk of his car. Even at the ripe old age of 4, I had a bad taste in my mouth for peanut butter and now, big government, too. The "authorities" had shut down my world's best hamburger joint. I received official news that evening. "It was closed for good" from my father as he read the newspaper article to my mother, "William's Hamburgers closed for selling horse meat as hamburger for the second time". True story.
Had a good laugh at your dire straights though, you really sound deflated about the inflated burgers. The coupon is good for $1.
Food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are "revolution" insurance for the PTB. The MIC is the global police force for the multination corporations. Congress and POTUS must pay fealty to the banks and corporations to remain in power. DHS has built a huge infrastucture to keep the unwashed masses in line. MSM pumps out the propaganda. Education system is anything but. No wonder anyone who gets close to the truth is branded as a heretic, a commie, a nut-job, or a terrorist. As Mr. Celente has rightly quipped, "We've all become Snooki-stupid." http://therookiecynic.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/the-fraud-club-goldman-sa...
nice work rookie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35p8UPLy_44&feature=
Rage Against The Machine - Testify
I think everybody's got a clue on this one. Note the polls. Why else is Jamie protesting banksters' ill repute and pleading for "fairness"?
And we have a winner!!!!!!!
"And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you'll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?"
Love, Milt
"And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you'll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?"
well said metastar. Matt misses the forest in the trees, the difference between the S&L scandal and now, the issue bigger than bankruptcy. We are constitutionally broke. our government is a criminal enterprise working with and for the ganglords. It doesn't matter what industry or subject matter you're talking about: oil, food, finance whatever nor does it matter in what branch you seek justice. Capitalism is dead, democracy is dead. Boy, that cheered me up
you're certainly right he missed it, davey! sorry matt, you struck out here, but you're STILL batting .900! but this is not a good time to BE coming to bat on this site and whiffing. let me offer you a suggestion: meet my "little friend". Put the google on "slewie the pi-rat" and see what you get. then, when you get to the part where it says "If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.", just click. this is going viral, pdq. a LOT of people have already followed my advice, perhaps, and, there may just be some people who have "clients" who can help. so, it is a done deal.
if you, like matt, aren't quite sure what i'm saying, just hit the Google, ok? everything you need to know is there, already. many of you, also, because of your relationship w/ me are "famous" too. a matter of PUBLIC RECORD. hit yer own handle and avatar, too. see how "Davey Jones" comes up, for example. my peeps are gonna cut and paste all my stuff to OTHER sites, too, so there will be NO crashing. i hope. this will be nonviolent; we'll beat them w/ their OWN "weapons of mass destruction". So, i hope you have followed the how and why and when, b/c there may be coinshops that decide it might be nice to just , well, whose shops and bullion is it, anyway?
got PM's?
got cash?
got peace?
food will not be a problem, b/c law enforcement will be all over the groceries. law enfocement will be all over you. so please, don't point yer gun at anyone are start thowing stones or lighting fires, b/c the good COPS are either gonna rehabilitate the bad cops or just...well you and i aren't in charge of that, are we? you are in charge of YOU! get used to it! any questions, just use the google, cut and paste the directions, and e it to your friends. try to relax and maybe even say a prayer or two, ok? no looting, no rioting, no demonstrations. follow directions and this will be over in 2-3 weeks.
peace.
The government should know that hungry people cause problems. That should be obvious even to the most enlightened bureaucrats.
Who is the 1 lying mom?
Yours. She said she wasn't a hoe. Ohhh buurrn!
Perhaps the mom who lied about her address to get her kid into a better school district. She actually went to jail for it.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/ohio-mom-jailed-sending-kids-school-district/story?id=12763654
wow...
A Texas woman serving/served time for falsifying income (faxed documents) in order to qualify for a mortgage. Maybe the reference is to her?
you got that right. I figure we're gonna see the Comex implode in the next couple of weeks......
and "no one could have seen this coming" is going to be the mantra....
the truckloads of evidence submitted to the CTFC?
parked on some backlots in Jersey where Gary Boy can conveniently say "no one knew anything about what was going on".....
maybe they will arrange for andrew maguire to "disappear" too before things explode. ...wouldn't put it past them.
they used to keep truckloads of evidence in WTC 7 til it fell down at free fall speed in a vaccuum one sunny fall morning not too long ago
good thing there were israeli folks there to "document the event" for posterity
and mad props to BBC who forecast that it had collapsed 22 minutes before it actually did, allowing everyone in the building to exit before it fell, but i regress....
as i keep saying, we're one reptilian in roswell with a handful of ameros away from every conspiracy known to man becoming fact
you heard they found a long orbit (planet x nibiru for the permanently nutty)planet at the edge of the solar system right?
tychee they are callin it
gas giant...
pole shift in progress
anything else crazy you can think of?
i'm using my SDR's(special drawing rights) to draw a circle graph of my procrastination.....
looks like this
O
we're one reptilian in roswell with a handful of ameros away from every conspiracy known to man becoming fact
That's a fricking great line, there.
a line born of frustration i assure you, but damn close to accurate
about the time DHS pressured jesse ventura off the air and remotely deleted the shows from dvr's, the blatentness of it all popped a circuit breaker in my monkey mind
with everything thats been proven true already, there just isnt much left go at at this point, aside from the really astronomically crazy
towit:roswell reptilians sportin bags of ameros
and is the amero thing even crazy?
read some of the conspiracy guys out there who predicted everything from 911 with osama bin being blamed to to the market crash oct 7 '08
i mean hell....they called that crash to the day a year and a half in advance
at some point its gotta make you question your take on reality
Wait a minute--remotely deleted the shows from DVR's? Got a link?
Here you go
http://www.prisonplanet.com/64336.html
Thanks. Weird stuff. It would be nice to have some numbers on the disappearing recordings. Technical sprites are always at work somewhere, including when they swing by my house.
2 or 3 people saying so is the best evidence you can come up with??
More than 2 or 3:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/1155041-jess...
http://www.jesseventura.net/2011/01/10/are-dvrs-and-tivos-remotely-erasi...
http://s7.invisionfree.com/Chat_Brat_Anonymous/index.php?showtopic=31815
You might want to try a search engine other than altavista
eh, reinhart hasn't called anything since then
True. I waited for that February 7th moment but it was just BTFD as usual.
another conspiracy theory moves to fact
video of Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi's operational successes included references to Stuxnet, a computer virus that disrupted the Natanz nuclear enrichment site last year, it was reported.
Although Israel has not officially accepted responsibility for the Stuxnet attack, evidence of its role has been mounting since the virus was first revealed in July. The virus, unprecedented in its sophistication, was designed to infiltrate the control systems at Natanz and make hidden, damaging adjustments to centrifuges.
Security researchers say factors including complexity of the operation point strongly to Israel as the source. It has also been reported that a special facility was set up with American co-operation in the Israeli desert to test the weapon.
Immediately after the section on Stuxnet, the video for Lt Gen Ashkenazi included a tribute from Meir Dagan, who was head of Israel's secret intelligence service during virtually all of Lt Gen Ashkenazi's time in charge of the IDF.
The video otherwise reportedly included only publicly acknowledged operations, apart from references to a bombing raid on a Syrian nuclear site in 2007. It has since been established that too was a clandestine Israeli attack
london telegraph as source
You forgot... "shape-shifting" as the reptilian adjective. Nonetheless brilliant!
the shape shifting is assumed...lol
i'm gonna guess you've seen acouple of those vids showing it
watch for that artifact or whatever is actually happening live on the news....i've seen it live on FoxPhilly several times
dont know what to make of it
see my new craigslist add...search for it
"want to buy ameros"
see if i get a bite
Our Sun isn't nuclear fusion... It's a rock an iron ball in a massive electrical current..
Like the arc of a welders rod.
Watch this film and in an hour know more than most NASA scientists about the fundamental force that forms and sustains the universe.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4773590301316220374#
@ unwashedmass
Andrew seems to have recovered from his "suicide" no, sorry, "hit & run" and is ready to drop a bombshell again.
This is the breakdown of society/civilization - no justice.
There is no justice anymore. There is no fantasy ending argument in to Kill a Mocking Bird or Inherit the Wind. The legal system at the hands of these spoiled cashing-out baby boomers is nothing more than a bunch of crooks and fake "laws" and needless billing and hi-jinx and in the end there is very little for victims. Only memories of abuse and existing in a world of institutionalized injustice.
Will only shit in the comments out of pure respect to Matt Taibbi, the guy is one of the very few with balls to report as a reporter, not as a call boy to the TPTB, not that there's anything wrong with it, but that's a different story. The only trouble with journalism, I mean real journalism these days is not that there aren't enough people who are ready to risk to state their opinions, but the lack of people who are willing to listen and be honest with themselves. Bottom line is that, it's not about how the financial crisis has happened, it's more or less understood and spelled out, the real question is why nobody's head came separated from the body in the process except for poor looser Bernie who simply got caught between conflicting interests. That's a real surprise. The last days of Pompeii: no one gives a shit.
oh there is justice. It has simply been split into two tracks: one for the rich, one for the poor. Like every other thing in America from medical care to education. This is not the way it was originally intended, of course.
The same reason O.J. isn't?
Although I'm not sure how they snagged that Milkin fella...
NY boys gave the Philadelphians (Drexel) what for.
Don't fuck with New York and its monopoly.
It was all about location, location, location.
You just nailed it, Pee Wee, haha. Guess you answered Matt's naive question.
Pee Wee
Hey now little fella take comfort in the fact it ain't just happening here.
I just watched Tropa de Elite 2, all about BOPE in Brazil. Guess what, after the drug dealers were run out of the slums the COPS AND POLITICIANS ran the business.
Sure eventually some got busted, and some got killed, but the big players walked and will continue to walk.
Underbelly from Australia had the same theme.
I know, Berlesconi is up on charges. But they aren't corruption it's about underage hookers.
Really when was the last shake up? ABSCAM?
Carlin rightly pointed out the problem isn't with the politicians. He probably borrowd from the classic POGO strip,
Probably the most famous Pogo quotation is "We have met the enemy and he is us.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Pogo_-_Earth_Day_197...
That's right IT'S US BITCHEZ!
Read posters here. It's all about keeping their own personal piece of the crust at the expense of the other guy. It's never about changeing how they PERCEIVE, or how they ACT, or even becoming free by owning NOTHING.
It's grubby little hands clutching treasured crap unto the grave.
Here is a classic example, bitching about CNBC (or for that matter any network or pundit). Don't agree STOP WATCHING! It hurts far worse when you don't even recognize the names and advertisers know you aren't buying the product.
Same with the markets, goddamned every day there is some post about how rigged they are yet people still play the game.
Dumbasses!
Anyway little guy, change yourself. Free your head as they used to say. Not playing the game is the ONLY way to win.
Because in the end winning is really about taking back yourself from the artificial needs and desires we have been sold since birth.
I don't vote. Two reasons. First of all it's meaningless; this country was bought and sold a long time ago. The shit they shovel around every 4 years *pfff* doesn't mean a fucking thing. Secondly, I believe if you vote, you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around – they say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain', but where's the logic in that? If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.”
“The next time they give you all that civic bullshit about voting, keep in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election”"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'"
"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain,' but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote -- who did not even leave the house on Election Day -- am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created."
George Carlin
"Same with the markets, goddamned every day there is some post about how rigged they are yet people still play the game."
Its not that easy, you are "forced" to participate because what else can you invest in with your 401k or IRA, or your cash? Times used to be you could save your cash and get some interest on it but those times are over.
Gold and PM's is really the only other option. And I am sure that will be targeted by some grand financial plan next.
Ever thought of accumulating capital the old fashion way? Expenses<Income=Savings? The reason you don't like that deal is because of what Mako used to rail against: interest. If you weren't being charged interest by the banking system, there wouldn't be any inflation, and you would have no problem just sitting on extra cash because its value wouldn't erode over the years.
As an aside, I wouldn't worry too much about your 401k. When the sovereign debt problems truly bubble up to the surface (I assume that you realize that the bond market dwarfs the stock market), there will be a flight to quality that will make your 401k look like christmas ten times over. Problem is, the $ will probably be worth very little at that point... Got gold?
Your 401k will be targeted soon also. Count on it.
The Justice System from DC to your local Jurisdiction is a system of exploitation. An irrefutable indictment of those who subvert language to distort the truth. Law language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. It’s sport, and they call it a game.
The secret question Mr Justice is asking Himself is how can the “situation” be manage to most benefit the State, or the Court itself. This is a system that needs to justify its existence only to its self. There is no accountability that is meaningful, no oversight, no Justice. Under the guise of the “law” everything immoral, unjust and corrupt is made acceptable. Not only is democracy murdered, but our integrity as a people and a Nation. The Justice System is an abortion Doctor delivering stillborn justice and doing it with a strait face.
Law makers adjust their beliefs to the results of the polls and focus groups by using doublespeak. Thus politicians live in two worlds: the world of what they believe and the world they want the public to think they believe. In other words, they live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance, using doublespeak to resolve the continuing contradictions between worlds and actions, or that they didn’t do what they did, or what they did isn’t what we think they did. Because of their dependence on marking research created ideas and beliefs politicians have come to rely on spin doctors. The job is to construct a verbal reality that is designed to tell the public the politicians “reality is correct” and what the public saw or heard isn’t what it saw or heard.
Political/lawmaker doublespeak works best when it appears to say something but on close inspection means nothing, But by the time we figure out that language is empty, the discussion has move on to other topics and we are left sputtering our questions and protestations.
Another reminder that the word, or sign is not the thing. The doublespeak of war consist as Orwell wrote of all such language, “ of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness” It is fundamentally, the language of insincerity, where there is a gap between the speaker’s real and declared aims. It is language as an instrument for concealing and preventing thought, not for expressing or extending though. Such language silences dialogue and blocks communication. When language is so corrupted, what becomes of truth? Linguistic coverup designed to hide an unpleasant reality. It is a language that lies by keeping us as far as possible from the reality it pretends to represent. A psychological detachment from the horror this is was and becomes numb to the human suffering that is the inevitable result of war. With the double speak of war we are not responsible for the results of our actions. And war becomes a “viable solution for our problems.
You need a sense of humor. Using laughter to confront those who use double speak reveals just how absurd such language is. Politicians, judges and all those who use doublespeak want to be taken seriously. They want to be treated as if their words have meaning when in fact they don’t. So if we were to laugh at their doublespeak we might reveal that the emperor has no clothes, that their words have no meaning. And laughing we might teach others to laugh, and pay more attention to doublespeak and its consequences. Invoke a kind of righteous anger is what I want. Those who use doublespeak are trying to get away with something, usually at your expense, and should provoke some kind of anger.
Well said, UJ.
Yup. Great post!
Man the forward fifties George!
You don't vote -- it marginalizes all of your pleas.
-1
You mean with all the bribing, lobbying, greed, corruption, deal making, and promise breaking, etc...that is so completely pervasive now that those who don't vote are somehow "marginalized" for speaking out?
LMAO. Nice try. Carlin was talking to you...
I understand but giving up is never the way to victory.
I can make the argument that all the rotten terrible things said about the political system could very well exist because of those that gave up the good fight.
There is no victory ahead ...except for the criminal elite.
There is no "good fight" being waged ...except in people's dreams.
America is being liquidated, looted, asset-stripped, gutted. Deal with it.
Alas - the survival rate for everyone is zero around here, but as to principle - far from it.
You're out there. I'm out there. Interestingly, the Internet, still a shoe-string operation, brings people together. One can see that force notably as a democratic light-saber to the average Joe in the middle east...
America isn't liquidated. Liquidation is a process, and one thing we can most likely agree on is that people are starting to take notice where the leaks are -- both in principal and obstacles to victory, or the good fight.
Chin up, old man.
- yes hahaha.
"America" has been systematically liquidated.
In a "process" which (witch) began about 10,000 years ago.
"I understand but giving up is never the way to victory."
Really? Did it ever occur to you that you, and the millions of others who participate in this fraud, are the real problem?
Your willingness to participate in the "election" of these pre-determined "leaders" is what lends them credibility and gives the impression of legitimacy.
Each of our President's have taken an oath of office promising to uphold and defend the Constitution. I suppose you also think our President is doing that, despite all evidence to the contrary?
Again, cognitive dissonance.
Up is down. Black is white.
Junked you for your ignorance. Maybe you vote. Goodie for you. What did you get?
Trash. Unbalanced budgets, bullshit and more taxes. And if the guy or gal you voted for actually won, it was just luck on your part. Elections have always had some degree of rigging, but since the fiasco of 2000 when the SCOTUS SELECTED the president after massive vote fraud in Florida, Ohio and elsewhere, we got the 2004 FLIP mid-day that turned a sure Kerry win into a landslide for GWB. It was well documented and still available for viewing if you had the brains to look.
Do yourself a favor and get educated on Sequoia Voting Systems, Diebold, the hundreds of people who received jail time for complicity in the rigging and obfuscation of voting records in Ohio in 2004. Try reading the Brad Blog or Black Box voting before you go around knocking down somebody who really knows the truth.
If you vote, you are playing their game. What would happen if they announced the elections and nobody showed up? Would that be enough to convince our dear, corrupt leaders that they have lost the confidence of the public? Voting validates their game. You validate every lousy tax and rule and regulation that takes away your rights whenever you pull the lever.
Voters are sheep, led to slaughter by promises never kept. The game goes on until people stop voting. I made a mistake after not voting for many years and voted once against GWB and once for Mr. Hopium, Obama-man. Look what I got. I am ashamed of myself because I voted for the twit.
I will not vote this year nor in 2012, unless one man is running, and that man is Ron Paul. And he better have his son, Rand, as his running mate. He is the only hope for voters in America. For non-voters, such as myself and the aforementioned poster who quoted the late, great Carlin, we hope in ourselves and our neighbors to do what's right in a civil society.
The government, from your local town all the way up the chain to the feds, is nothing but a chain upon our necks, with overpaid bureaucrats delivering questionable services at our expense. Voting only continues the charade, but I am certain that it will end, as do all oppressive forms.
I have never even registered to vote ever in my life.
http://www.youtube.com/user/BrotherJohnF?feature=mhum
I'll take all the junk you got about voting - haven't missed a sticker yet. When it comes to getting the ear of politicians (debate, functions, etc) why would they bother to listen to non-participants? Clairvoyance for change?
Reading some of these comments i'm reminded of the scene from Blazing Saddles where the new Sheriff holds himself hostage at gunpoint to disarm and diffuse the populist anger.
"Isn't anybody going to help that poor man?"
Why would you assume we aren't involved in our communities, cities, states and country just because we don't vote?
I don't (sorry for the impression).
I'm saying not voting (in the US) is a carpenter who punishes his hammer by throwing it away because it hurt his thumb, and then complaining about the guy that built the table wobbly.
Yes, but if both the hammer and the table were used to sodomize the carpenter and the other guy, would that not be a good reason to throw them away?
So, if I understand, if the two inanimate objects become animated, you're going to set my country music award on fire?
Nice avatar, kicking it John Romero old school.
The idea that you want to get a politician's "ear" tells me everything I need to know about what's wrong with this system. your fucking VOTE is supposed to count, not what's whispered at a private function to your lobbied-for and paid "representative."
If you believe voting helps your cause, imagine what a little MOOLAH does to grease the skids.
Grow a pair, grow up and stop being so naive, Pee Wee.
So, what's wrong with the political system is the influence of people? Nonsense.
I can't argue that money doesn't help the cause, but I can assert that jealousy ain't going to help.
+ 1000
Vote and forfeit your right to complain. Voting is the opium of debt slaves, the blinding smokescreen, and the invisible prison carefully maintained by the Shylockracy.
If you want to see change, you have abstain from the empty political antics, and starve the beast of legitimacy.
"Vote and forfeit your right to complain"
Maybe in Egypt.
I'd bet money you've not once set foot into the local process (city/county).
one of my favorite law professors confessed one day that he didn't vote anymore. I gave him the same scolding. Twenty years now and I can still hear him. Only now I understand. History is full of moments when the system becomes incompetent, corrupt, hypocritical, unpredictable, criminal and broken. At that point, the oppressed can only fix the political system through other means: collective, economic, poetic, and human. Whenever you're ready
The irony is that you once called a legal fraud, "professor."
I digress...
How about this. By not voting I'm letting YOU know that I don't approve of either choice.
It actually marginalizes your opinions as the "lesser of two evils" mentality prevails.
Again, more hurting yourself to make a point to others.
It doesn't hurt me, nor does it marginalze my opinions at all.
too bad he's still dead...
: (
and that my son is how I became an american insurgent, and I must overthrow this government. You see I had no choice:
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation"
so it was written and so it must be done. God speed to the american insurgents.
I declared myself an insurgent and domestic terrorist months ago - about the same time I put Zero Hedge bumper stickers on my vehicles.
Fantastic article!
It was even better when I wrote it over 2 years ago.
http://www.roubini.com/us-monitor/254664/reckless_endangerment_
All the best, Miss America
It is remarkable that the populace remains effectively paralyzed. I am convinced that the status quo remains until the US discovers how broke they are.
I get it, they have been building the FEMA camps for all of the Banksters!!
Now it makes sense. I was getting nervous there, but really our Government is just looking out for us.
Thanks Big Sis, you're the best.
Soon the Gangs of New York will be back on the Street looking for the people that destroyed their city and there will be no cops to protect the rich!
What goes around comes around!
Even the Matt Tiabi's of the world cannot con-front the elephant in the room.
The elephant can be dancing on his toes, or even Tyler's toes, but no one can call th eBIG FLAMING LIE that is the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, out for what it is.
If the truth is known, every treaty signed, every war declared, every compact with citizen (HAH!) or nation would be null and void.
So the truth about the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is under a carpet somewhere.
If it came out, tata FED, CONgress, IRS, DC Diabolism......everything.
Read about it, spread the word.
The Elephant is dancing on your toes too.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/truth-about-america-truth-about-us/
Under just one corner of the rug we find...
1910-ongoing:
Andrew Carnegie makes an investment of ten million dollars and creates the imaginatively-named Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
With Carnegie leading the way, America will soon be littered with the tax-free foundations of the ultra-wealthy, with those who profit from war leading the pack. Inside these little legal fictions,
millions, hundreds of millions and billions of dollars multiply completely tax free with the proceeds being used to lobby and propagandize for the interests of the kind hearted philanthropists who created them.
One of the first jobs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will be, with no hint of irony, to propagandize for the U.S. to enter the First World War.
When Woodrow “Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy” Wilson decides that the war really isn’t really such a bad thing after all and takes the U.S. into it, the Carnegie Endowment telegraphs the president and encourages him to "see that the war does not end too quickly."
Andrew Carnegie’s profits from the sale of armor plate and other goodies skyrocket.
Like the other major “philanthropies” of the ruling class, the Carnegie Endowment will create cozy little relationships with American presidents and officials throughout the federal government and the mass media.
Fittingly, the first president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is none other than Elihu Root, one of the twentieth century's first major war criminals.
Shyster for some of the world’s most ruthless robber barons, as U.S. Secretary of War from 1899 to 1904 Root was responsible for numerous massacres, wholesale torture and an almost unending litany of war crimes against the people of the Philippines. Carnegie could scarcely have found a more fitting first president for his "peace" foundation.
Awesome DavidP. Thanks.
The million points of light that Bush Senior spoke of in his famous NWO speech in the UN.
The NGOs.
What was that about the road to being paved with something or the other?
ORI
The legal system as it applies to big business is to act as a barrier to trade.
No words needed...
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/what-is-wrong-with-the-u-s-e...
HOLDER SAYS 'LOTS OF UNPROSECUTED CRIME' IN U.S. FINANCIAL SYSTEM
He should call the USAG and let him know about it. </sarc>
Good idea. Wonder where he left his phone. Probably in the toilet at Goldman Sachs where he was polishing the brass.
ugh.
double ugh.
No thanks to him.
Jails and prisons are for the peasants. Everyone knows that. There's no story there.
But for ze nobles, we have ze guillotine.
as much as I agree, as much as this entire charade sickens me.. BTFD prevails.
Totally agree, as long as this stuff happens and the Bernanke Put lives in perpetuity, you have to buy every dip (and pretty much every asset known to man) no matter what.
The reason is that people don't seem to ever suffer in this economy for making a mistake unless they are the actual victim of the mistake. The perps of the mistake get off scot-free.
And somehow the "retail" buyer is going to return to a US financial system?
how can you go to jail if you own congress, run the treasury and sit next to potus?
and, don't ever forget "count chads", not votes, but chads. Good, bad, or indifferent...this whole country stood by (including the politicians) and allowed an election to be called by 7 people. No one said a word about Phil Grahamm on Christmas eve 1999, no one said a word about Long Term Capital Management, so why not a green light on the highest seat in the land. These things add up. None of this is a one off, it is all pre-planned years in advance.
Just ask OJ
Why not? Because Wall Street owns the regulators and the politicians. Duh!
Don't forget "squeal like a pig for me" dimon.
eeeewwwww!
Taibbi obviously doesn't realize that the banking cartel, led by the FED actally runs the country with its latest puppet-on-a-string in the WH. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Been that way since JFK; notice that all who followed haven't been assassinated, so the system never gets bucked; the lesson has been learned.
Somebody call Chuck Norris.
This one stinks so bad we need them all.Norris, Rambo,Terminator,Seagal,Rick Santelli as "the Boss" and Vandamme as "towel boy"
No one is in jail because the Fed, the Treasury, SEC, and White House are complicit. They would have to arrest themselves.
We can't have that now can we?
Start with the disgusting, crooked Clintons. I'd like to see if they would rat out Poppy on the Mena business rather than do time in solitary. My guess is that Bill might hold out but Hill would flip like a Flying Wallenda.
If Amtrak workers are subject to random drug and alchohol screening, then so should all of wall street for derailing the economy.
I would like to see our politicians get tested regularly.
So the penalty for massive financial fraud is to forfeit half of one percent what you stole, and you get to keep the rest? Sounds about right.
Whatever, fuck that! I say: Off with their heads!
No, no, no, no. The company pays the fine. You still get your bonus.