ON AIR NOW
Click to Play
On at least three separate occasions over the last two weeks, deputies
in Arizona used intimidation tactics against people filming them;
threatening them with arrest and even seizing one man’s camera before
deleting his video.
Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, has attacked some investment banking products as socially useless and said that the controversy over bankers’ pay was both understandable and appropriate, in a speech to the Handelsblatt banking conference in Frankfurt. He did not comment on the "social" usefulness of his new townhouse with its 12 car garage. Blankfein said that multi-year bonuses should be outlawed and senior staff should receive large proportions of pay in stock, rather than cash. Top executives should be forced to hold the bulk of that stock until retirement, he said. He did no comment on the degree to which he and Henry Paulson have already cashed out of stock. He did not mention the self-serving nature of his comments on multi-year bonuses given that Goldman has spurned multi-year bonus guarantees at a time when rivals have been hiring aggressively using such promises. Blankfein also supported the call for global regulatory reform , but did n
A senior congressman's controversial pattern of steering lucrative
defense contracts to firms represented by his close friends and former
staffers is a common practice among his fellow members on a powerful
appropriations subcommittee, according to a new analysis by a watchdog group.
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said statements he made on secret FBI wiretap tapes were taken out of context by prosecutors and he might call senators and a top White House official as witnesses at his racketeering and fraud trial to back his version of events.
Did you hear about the graft in New York that shocked the Post? "AT LEAST six city building inspectors -- some with ties to a powerful crime family -- were videotaped taking bribes at construction sites, and some were seen dealing cocaine and prescription pills while on duty, The Post has learned. The corrupt Department of Buildings workers -- who lined their pockets by ignoring violations or expediting construction and building work permits -- will be arrested later this month, along with about two dozen Luchese crime-family captains, soldiers and associates, sources said."
The Ethics in Government Act of 1978, as amended, provides that the Attorney General may seek civil penalty of up to $11,000 against an individual who knowingly and willfully falsifies or fails to file or report any information required by the Act. (5 U.S.C. app. § 104). In addition, 18 U.S.C. § 1001, as amended by the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996, is applicable here, That criminal statute, as here relevant, provides for a fine and/or imprisonment for up to five years for knowingly and willfully making any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation, or falsifying, concealing or covering up a material fact, in a filing under the Ethics in Government Act. (emphasis ours) The scale of Rangel’s omissions means they could have only been willful and deliberate. As detailed in the Post editorial:
JERICHO, Ark. – It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps.
The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.
It was all a house of cards waiting to be blown down when the housing bubble burst and now it has happened.
Also has a video at site. Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt spoke with FOX Business Network’s Alexis Glick and said that “we won’t prevent the next Bernie Madoff” and that “training has not been a high priority at the SEC.” Here are some excerpts from the interview: Courtesy of Fox Business News On preventing future ponzi schemes: “If you regard a World Com, and Enron, a Madoff, a Tino De Angelis, a Salad Oil scandal as a failure, then I don’t agree with you, because there isn’t a regulatory agency or a U.S. Attorney’s office that finds these scams before they happen. They never find them before they happen or we wouldn’t have them.” “We won’t prevent the next Bernie Madoff. What we can do is learn from Bernie Madoff and take steps to see to it that that kind of scandal doesn’t occur again, but there’ll be a new scandal and a new development.” On why the SEC failed to protect investors from Madoff:
WHO: Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act (aka Card Check) WHAT: Nadler received the following dirty money: Communication Workers of America (PAC) $3,500 in 2010 election cycle; $7,000 in 2008 election cycle; $5,000 in 2006 election cycle. Boilermakers Union (PAC) $1,000 in 2010 election cycle; $1,000 in 2006 election cycle. American Federation of Government Employees (PAC) $1,000 in 2008 election cycle; $1,000 in 2006 election cycle. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (PAC) $5,000 in 2010 election cycle; $10,000 in 2008 election cycle; $7,000 in 2008 election cycle. Service Employees International Union (PAC) $10,000 in 2008 election cycle; $10,000 in 2006 election cycle. WHY IT'S DIRTY: Multiple officers and members of these unions, including division presidents, secretary-treasurers and business managers, have been convicted since 2001 of felonies ranging from embezzlement, falsifying official reports to government, mail fraud
US drugmaker Pfizer has agreed to pay $2.3bn (£1.4bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice. It follows the firm being found to have illegally promoted four drugs as treatments for conditions different to those which regulators had approved. A subsidiary of the firm pleaded guilty to misbranding drugs "with the intent to defraud or mislead". US officials said Pfizer would have to enter a corporate integrity agreement. It will be subject to additional public scrutiny by requiring it to make "detailed disclosures" on its website. Pfizer's general counsel said: "We regret certain actions taken in the past, but are proud of the action we've taken to strengthen our internal controls."
Much has been written about Government Sachs but little is heard about JP Morgan the Residents favorite banker.... The Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful and secretive institutions in Washington, long considered beyond the reach of lawmakers. But now, as details emerge of how the Fed secretly doled out YOUR MONEY...(This video combined with the explanation below may help you understand the connection) Look who BO went to for "support" here... Bribes here...
House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) may have gotten a fleeting break when Edward Kennedy’s death knocked reports of his newly-disclosed wealth off the front page. But by this morning, editorial writers had caught their breath and were busy at work skewering the Chairman of the committee that writes the nation’s tax laws. And just think how much fresh meat has been left for the weekend crew. From the New York Daily News: There are two sets of rules for Rep. Charlie Rangel - the ones he writes for everyone else and the ones that are, or were, beneath his compliance, powerful personage that he is. From the Wall Street Journal: When normal people happen to "find" their own money, it might mean a twenty left in a winter coat, or discovering change beneath the sofa cushions. But if you're Charlie Rangel, it means doubling your net worth. From the New York Post: Rep. Charlie Rangel's multimillion-dollar "oops" this month raises
Never mind about those revised union financial disclosure requirements President Obama inherited from his predecessor. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis now says she won’t make union officials comply. Unions officials complained for eight years that regulations issued by Elaine Chao, President George W. Bush’s Labor Secretary, were more rigorous than required by the Labor Management and Reporting Disclosure Act (LMRDA), which calls for modestly detailed annual financial reports by unions with receipts of $250,000 or more. The Bush-Chao regulations require union officials to disclose financial information that could aid union members’ seeking information on how their union leaders are spending dues money, and to help expose “no show jobs” that put paychecks for ghost employees into union coffers. Before Bush took office, the reports were mostly ignored by the Labor Department. Now, it’s back to business-as-usual. A notice appeared this week on the department’s web site saying the Office
I’ve watched with first amusement, then disgust, and ultimately outrage as various pundits proclaimed Bernanke’s efforts “saved the financialsystem” or helped the US “weather the storm.” Bernanke did NO such thing. You could train a chimpanzee to hit the “print money” button at the Fed every-time the Fed phone rings with a Wall Street number and get the same results. To date, Bernanke has spent or put the taxpayer on the hook for some $24 TRILLION in bailouts, lending windows, and off balance sheet arrangements. AND HE’S FIXED NOTHING. Banks remain insolvent (if you marked their assets at market value, they’d all wipe out equity in a second), mortgages remain underwater, hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to lose their jobs every month, foreign investors grow increasingly distrustful of the dollar, and the financial system continues to have multiple black swans… all of which could bring about another CRASH.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former high-ranking members of his administration won't be criminally charged in a yearlong federal investigation into pay-to-play allegations involving one of the Democratic governor's large political donors, someone familiar with the case said. The decision not to pursue indictments was made by top Justice Department officials, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified because federal officials had not disclosed results of the probe. "It's over. There's nothing. It was killed in Washington," the person told The Associated Press. A federal grand jury began an investigation in 2008 into a possible pay-to-play scheme in which lucrative work on state bond deals went to a Richardson donor. The federal probe derailed Richardson's appointment as commerce secretary in President Barack Obama's administration
"We have the ability. I know that I am telling people we are allowed to," he said. "What I don't know is if people (employees) are willing to. A lot of them feel hurt, embarrassed, a lot of people have lived in fear because of what I call lynch mobs with pitchforks." Benmosche was referring to severe criticism of the bonuses paid to some AIG staff at the financial products unit at the center of its meltdown. The verbal assaults by politicians and in the media led to several demonstrations, including a bus tour of employee homes near the unit's Wilton, Connecticut headquarters, and threats to others.
More than two dozen firms that have surfaced in a broad corruption investigation of public pension funds gave at least $1.97 million in campaign contributions to officials with potential influence over the funds' investments, a USA TODAY analysis shows. The givers included private-equity giants such as the Blackstone Group, the Carlyle Group and the Quadrangle Group, the firm founded by Steven Rattner, who in July resigned as the White House point man for the auto industry rescue. The contributions are legal, and the firms haven't been accused of wrongdoing related to the giving. Conflicts of interest Even in cases with no charges of illegality, watchdogs argue that the campaign contributions — known as pay-to-play — create conflicts of interest.
While Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has a day job printing money by writing checks out of thin air that he shovels to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, which then dilutes the value of the money in everyonelse's pocket, Bernanke reportedly doesn't like anyone diluting his personal checking account funds. His wife, Anna, had her pocketbook stolen in a Starbucks by a tool, Lee Reid, of a "master criminal". Sounds just like Bernanke so far, doesn't it, "master criminal" and all? Since he alerted his bank, Bernanke didn't lose any money. So how is he handling the situation? "It's fair to say he was not pleased," Newsweek quotes one close associate of Bernanke. Hey, just like the people who are not pleased with Bernanke's act and want to end the Fed.
"The fundamental problem is that conflicted ratings have and are causing massive harm to investors and now, unfortunately, to the American taxpayer as well. The current credit crisis might cost taxpayers $23.7 trillion according to the TARP reviewer Neil Barofsky and inflated ratings are universally cited as one of the primary culprits in this collapse of the credit markets." - Sean Egan "Dear SEC - continue abusing the public's increasingly declining patience with your lack of integrity and inability to prosecute those at fault for the current crisis at your own peril." - Tyler Durden Remember when in the days after the Lehman bankruptcy the financial system almost collapsed and the Fed was forced to pump several trillion of dollars into various swap arrangement almost overnight to prevent a so-called cataclysm? A primary culprit for this was the Reserve Fund "breaking the buck" due to its extensive investments in Lehman Brothers, which finall
Hassan Nemazee, chairman of Nemazee Capital Corp. and a fundraiser for President Obama and Hillary Clinton, was arrested on charges that he tricked Citigroup Inc. into lending him as much as $74 million using phony documents. Nemazee got the loan by telling Citibank that he held accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars that could serve as collateral, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said today in a statement. He used fake addresses and phone numbers controlled by him to mislead the bank, prosecutors said. The accounts “either never existed or had been closed years before Nemazee submitted the documents referencing those accounts,” Bharara said in the statement. Nemazee, 59, repaid the loan to Citibank yesterday, a day after he was interviewed by FBI agents, prosecutors said. The interview took place at Newark Liberty International Airport as Nemazee was checking in for a flight to Rome.
We can’t afford to put everything on hold, they move forward with everyday that passes. The politics behind the plan for vaccines is convoluted, and has been in the works for so many years it would take a book to expose all the people, companies, and governments involved
The bankruptcy of Colonial Bank (CNB) was the largest bank-bankruptcy in the U.S. since several large, U.S. financial institutions collapsed last year – with the most recent being Washington Mutual, last fall. However, there is one huge difference between the mega-bankruptcies of last year and the collapse of Colonial Bank a week ago. During the large bank-failures of 2008, the acquiring institutions wrote-down the “assets” on the books of these banks by an average of 18% - according to a Bloomberg article. However, when BB&T Corp purchased Colonial, it immediately wrote-down Colonial's assets by 37%, double the amount of discounting done last year. What has changed between now and then? The legitimizing of fraudulent accounting, when the supposed “watch-dog” of U.S. accounting, the Financial Accountability Standards Board brought in new “mark-to-fantasy” accounting rules in the U.S. this spring ( see “FASB strong-armed into mark-to-fantasy accounting”). As the Bloomberg a
Well it's not a ACORN, but pretty damn close, the Obama influence is clear with this choice. A top labor union leader, Denis Hughes, has become the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Board of Directors. The New York Fed’s board comprises nine members, and is set up to reflect banking and community interests. Hughes has been on the board since 2003, but a union leader as New York Fed Chairman? Hughes is president of the 2.5 million member New York State AFL-CIO. According to the New York state AFL-CIO site: As President of the New York State AFL-CIO, Mr. Hughes has made creating a more mobile, active and aggressive statewide labor movement a top priority. He has set a tone for organizing new members into the movement and has led the way in developing proactive legislative and political statewide strategy. Hughes clearly doesn't understand basic supply and demand economics, since he "has been successful in helping to pass historic legislation that
Oh no, we don't cheat: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. research analyst Marc Irizarry's published rating on mutual-fund manager Janus Capital Group Inc. was a lackluster "neutral" in early April 2008. But at an internal meeting that month, the analyst told dozens of Goldman's traders the stock was likely to head higher, company documents show. Nothing like selling bonds out the front door and shorting them on your prop desk, right? Oh wait, Goldman did that too! Securities laws require firms like Goldman to engage in "fair dealing with customers," and prohibit analysts from issuing opinions that are at odds with their true beliefs about a stock. Steven Strongin, Goldman's stock research chief, says no one gains an unfair advantage from its trading huddles, and that the short-term-trading ideas are not contrary to the longer-term stock forecasts in its written research. Riiiight. And I'm the Easter Bunny. The tips usually go to top clien
Here we go again the Banking Casino is Open for business this video may be a "Spoof" or a case of Art Imitating Life Actors include JP Morgan and Government Sachs! JP Morgan the Residents Favorite Banker and Government Sachs have re-opened the Casino responsible for helping crash the Worlds Economy. No this is not a "Jewish Cabal" ruining the World Jamie Dimon the residents favorite banker is Greek the head bagman tax cheat Geithner is German United Church Church of Christ and Government Sachs Ringleader Paulson is a Christian Scientist. You can have the "Elitisim" mindset explained to you here. These two firms are the top two largest dealers in Credit Default Swaps CDS. Credit Default Swaps are what brought down AIG because they could not cover the bets. Yes, cover the bets as trading CDS is a legalized form of gambling. While this corrupt congress complains about it nothing is really being done. Bloomberg.com JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs Lead CDS
One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's favorite boasts is that she "cleaned out the swamp of Washington," a none too subtle swipe at what she calls the G.O.P.'s "culture of corruption" as evidenced by imprisoned former Rep. Duke Cunningham, disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff or the coterie of members he tainted, including Rep. Bob Ney who is also in prison and former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is still fighting charges that he violated Texas campaign finance laws. Unfortunately for Pelosi, the Democrats' record is far from clean, and her bold words could well come back to haunt her and her party in next year's midterm elections. According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a congressional watchdog group, 15 lawmakers are currently under investigation for allegedly violating ethical standards. Of those four are Republicans and 11 are Democrats. That doesn't even include former Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson, wh
Barney Frank is no stranger to scandal. As you may recall, Judicial Watch uncovered documents proving that Frank was well aware of massive problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even while he blocked attempts by Congress to rein them in. Frank, of course, has been the beneficiary of tens of thousands of dollars from the two mortgage giants over the last decade in campaign contributions, which might help explain why he allowed the Fannie and Freddie to run wild. (As you may recall, just weeks ago, Frank called on Fannie and Freddie to relax mortgage standards yet again, even though such risky lending practices facilitated the collapse of the economy.) Now there is a fresh influence peddling scandal brewing, this time involving the allocation of funds from TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program).
The mainstream media is claiming that the health care rally's are all about angry white racists angry about a black man being President. To back up their claims, some outlets are showing a man known as Chris B. as proof.
What is the truth? Is Chris B. really a racist mad about a black man becoming President?
Ginnie Mae what about Fannie & Freddie the DemocRATS traps. In the article below poor ben is having some difficulty deciding how to UNLOAD $1.25 TRILLION and as we know we are the US in the U.S. Government - US something people seem to forget there is NO FREE LUNCH oh scratch that I guess there is for the Socialist leeches but it is at others expense the people who actually pay Taxes. From CNBC..
