tagged w/ Wall Street
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Wanna know who made hundreds of millions destroying our country?
The "Inside Job" an excellent movie that exposes a good portion of what was happening and who was responsible for our current economic state.
http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/
I'll say this in President Obama's defense, we elected him to go swim in a fishbowl full of sharks with more money and more power than him. The more we support him, the more he can do for us, plain and simple.Wanna know who made hundreds of millions destroying our country?
The "Inside... more
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A few months ago, I came across an announcement that Citigroup, the parent company of Citibank, was to be honored, along with its chief executive, Vikram Pandit, for “Advancing the Field of Asset Building in America.”A few months ago, I came across an announcement that Citigroup, the parent company of... more
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U.S. stocks sank Monday as financials dropped after new details of a widespread insider-trading case emerged and worries over the stability of the euro zone following Ireland’s agreement to a bailout weighed on the marketU.S. stocks sank Monday as financials dropped after new details of a widespread... more
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I would hate to be retailer right about now. Forget the fact that the economy is still in the doldrums. Only the luxury brands are cleaning up now because Wall Streeters and their wives are shopping like they have just been told that the end of the world is really nigh. Meanwhile the rest of the world who misses shopping and spending, has been reduced to “just looking” and trying on…the poor man’s retail therapy. Brace yourself, the retail environment is about to go through yet another shift…if not slump. Google announced their foray into the schamtta business joining the ranks of Madonna, Kim Kardashian and Sarah Jessica Parker. So why not Google? I knew that Google was getting ready to launch “something major” from an acquaintance who works with their advertising agency. But as much as I tried using all my powers of persuasion, there was no way in hell she was divulging the secret. And now that the cat is out of the bag, well, I feel sorry for retailers who have to pay Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue and Lower Broadway rents. Oh, and while we are at it Rodeo Drive, Miracle Mile, Worth Avenue…heck…Main Street, too. Boutiques.com brings to life just how easy and personalized shopping at home or work can be. Credit card companies must be dancing on the ceiling. Though if you take a closer look, it is sad how they have established a celebrity popularity contest already. I sure would hate to be Kim Raver right about now.
The Google Shopping Syndrome, a phrase psychologists will coin soon enough, will impact shopaholics the same way men obsess on downloading porn. Like Glee and American Idol, families with gather around the desktop to shop for Christmas presents to avoid being trampled to death on Black Friday. I tried shopping online but find the process frustrating and not fulfilling. I once bought a pair of Toms Shoes, you know, that guy who plays on your heart strings, like a Sally Struthers infomercial. Once they arrived, I was horrified how they made my feet looked like The Mummy meets ballet flats. Back they went. I did not care that some needy child would be deprived of a year’s worth of food, or whatever that Tom guy promises he does with each purchase of horrendous slip-ons. Whenever I see someone wearing Toms Shoes, it makes me giggle because I know that they are wearing them purely out of guilt NOT because they want to look like King Tut.I would hate to be retailer right about now. Forget the fact that the economy is still... more
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Peter Schiff believes Americans should return to a basic economy that grows based on savings, not consumer credit.Peter Schiff believes Americans should return to a basic economy that grows based on... more
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The annual bonuses paid to Wall Street's top bankers keep rising, even with the economy in the tank.
But it's not magic, for magic is an illusion, and this gravity-defying phenomenon of perpetual levitation happens to be real. What is this "it" that keeps floating up, up, up? The annual bonuses paid to Wall Street's top bankers.
By the laws of economics, if not physics, those bonuses should fall to earth this year, because the bankers have performed poorly. Trading is down, profits are flat (despite being given trillions of dollars in almost-interest-free money through the back door of the Federal Reserve), firms are handing out pink slips to lower-level employees, and the blatant greed of bank honchos have ruined the public reputations of their financial outfits.
Who cares, shriek the big-shots, we make our own laws -- it's bonus time, baby, so grab all you can! Sure enough, the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and others have set aside billions of dollars to flood their executive suites with bonus cash at the end of this year -- money that rightfully should go to shareholders.
Their claim is: "We deserve it, for we took low pay during the crash of 2008-2009." For example, Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs' boss, was paid a mere $9 million last year, so now he wants that "sacrifice" made up to him.
Lest you worry that poor Lloyd's family had to resort to food stamps to make ends meet with that tough $9 million year, note that he had a bit of a cushion, having pocketed a record Wall Street payday of $68 million in 2007 -- even as his the financial condition of his bank was crumbling.
One banker-pay analyst says he had assumed that bonuses would go down this year. But, he said, "I underestimated the industry's resiliency." By "resiliency," I assume he was referring to the industry's incurable greed.
While Wall Street bonuses to top bankers keep going up, up, up, guess what keeps going down, down, down? Hint: A recent New York Times headline used the word "soft" to describe it. Give up? It's our economy. Of course, the wordsmith that used the term "soft" to describe today's economy clearly doesn't live on our planet. Soft implies cushions and comfort, while the economic reality that most Americans are experiencing is one of unrelenting hard times.
Indeed, the content of the Times' article defied its own headline, revealing that national economic growth this summer was pathetically weak. Tens of millions of people remain unemployed or underemployed, with millions of them having been mired in joblessness for nearly two years. Even those with jobs have seen their hours cut or wages slashed, so the nation's income growth was an abysmal 0.5 percent during July, August and September -- and practically all of that went to the richest Americans, who enjoyed a nice uptick in their stock portfolios.
The way out of this, say the contented flock of economic gurus roosting on their lofty theoretical perches, is for consumers to spend more. Yoo-hoo, wise ones: spend what? The Times conceded that, with incomes of the masses plummeting, consumer demand remains "flaccid" (yet another word for soft). As noted by James K. Galbraith, a down-to-earth economist grounded in reality, "The problematic factor is that consumers remain fundamentally insolvent."
Still, reaching for a silver lining in a dark and stormy cloud, the Times noted that American families are at least shedding some of their consumer debt. Good! Except that much of this is the result of millions of hard-hit families having to default on their credit card bills, student loans, mortgages and other debts they can no longer pay.
I've seen some truly amazing feats of magic, but here's one that beats them all. Right before your eyes, this thing rises into the air on its own, with no wires or mechanical devices giving it lift. And it hovers there effortlessly.
The only thing "soft" in today's economy are the heads of economists who keep blaming consumers, rather than fingering the big bankers and corporate CEOs who continue to knock down America's wages, the middle class ... and America itself.The annual bonuses paid to Wall Street's top bankers keep rising, even with the... more
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"The mission of Move Your Money is to encourage individuals and institutions to take their money out of Too Big To Fail banks and invest in community banks and credit unions.
What began as a conversation among friends over a dinner before Christmas has rapidly turned into a national grassroots movement. So far it’s generated hundreds of stories, millions of website visits, and thousands of individual actions.
Small banks and credit unions have experienced a surge in activity as a result."
One more excerpt:
"Not only do Wall Street banks neglect communities by shipping money to overseas corporations and foreclosing on needy families, but they are also major financiers of payday lending services, which charge usurious rates and abuse struggling communities. A new report by National People’s Action and the Public Accountability Initiative shows how the big banks are enabling payday lenders and profiting from poverty. The Washington Independent reports:
'While small businesses and individuals have struggled to get affordable loans in the wake of the taxpayer bailouts, payday lenders have received new and amended credit agreements from Wall Street,” [the report] says. “Instead of wading further into the business of predatory payday lending, big banks need to stop financing these lenders and instead lend to businesses and individuals that create wealth, rather than destroy it.'
The report shows that big banks are providing billions of dollars in loans to fringe financial outfits; in turn, those fringe financial outfits are offering billions of dollars in loans to customers, often at usurious rates. Some payday lenders, for instance, offer short-term, roll-over cash advances with APRs of over 480 percent.
The report argues the voluminous Wall Street financing means the payday business will keep expanding through the recession, as cash-strapped customers seek unconventional and sometimes dangerous banking products."
More info on how to move your money and finding a community bank at: http://moveyourmoney.info/
Photo by jeffisageek: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teknokool/3729453412/
What are you waiting for? Are we still going to let them deceive us, rip us off, be on top of our economy controlling our society and our lives?
Moving your money into a community bank is one of the single, most powerful actions you can take to weaken these giants and bring back wealth into your family, neighborhood and community!
Put an end to EXPLOITATION NOW!
Join the Organic Movement:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/"The mission of Move Your Money is to encourage individuals and institutions to... more
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- After months of painful losses, the economy added jobs last month, spurring hopes that the labor market may finally be turning around.
The economy added 151,000 jobs in October, the Labor Department reported Friday, an improvement over September, when the economy lost 41,000 jobs. That was much better than the 68,000 gain that economists surveyed by CNNMoney.com were expecting, and the best overall number since May.
"It's maybe an indication that we're starting to turn the corner," said Stephen Bronars, senior economist with Welch Consulting. "It's a small step, but at least we're going in the right direction. Things are definitely not going to get worse."
Businesses continued to hire for the tenth month in a row, following nearly two straight years of private sector losses. Companies added 159,000 jobs to their payrolls in October, much stronger than the 92,000 jobs economists had predicted for the sector.
But the government continued to slash jobs, shedding 8,000 workers in the month.
Only a handful of census workers were cut from government payrolls in October -- nearly the last of the temporary census jobs that have dragged down public sector job growth for the last four months.
And upward revisions for August and September showed there were 110,000 additional job gains in those months than previously reported.
The unemployment rate, which is calculated in a separate survey, remained unchanged at 9.6%, the government said Friday.
President Obama praised the strong numbers in an address following the announcement, but emphasized that more improvement is needed.
"That's not good enough," he said. "The unemployment rate is still high, and we've got a lot of work to do."
Americans still struggling
While the report was a generally positive sign, the job market is still very fragile. The labor market needs about 150,000 jobs per month just to keep pace with population growth, and at least 300,000 per month to make a dent in unemployment, Bronars said.
Unemployment is likely to remain high for some time. The rate doesn't include 1.2 million discouraged workers who've stopped looking for a job.
"There are still a lot of people who have stopped looking for work because there weren't as many hires, and as they come back in, it's going to keep that unemployment rate high for a while," Bronars said.
The number of Americans who are involuntarily working part-time, fell to 9.2 million in October but still remains just shy of record highs. This category includes workers who are stuck in part-time jobs because either their hours have been cut or they can't find full-time work.
The so-called underemployment rate, which counts both discouraged workers and involuntarily part-time workers, slipped to 17% from 17.1% in September. That means more than one in six adults are still without the job they want or need. To top of pageNEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- After months of painful losses, the economy added jobs last... more
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How many times have you heard politicians and the elite say "there's no such thing as class warfare in this country"?...when in reality the elite have been waging warfare against the majority of americans for decades!...the american peeps need to seriously wake up & smell the coffee...it seems to me that after yesterdays elections results, a certain group of the electorate are not going to be happy until their working for the "Company Store"!
The enemy is not our government, but those who buy it...those corrupting few from Wall St. who dominate our politicians with their filthy money & the stench is repugnant!
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.How many times have you heard politicians and the elite say "there's no such... more
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They told us when they took our jobs overseas, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when they destroyed our 401ks through gambling with our money, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
They told us when we fell behind on our mortgage and foreclosed on our house, kicking us to the street, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
As more and more people were forced on welfare, the government's budget started to look grim. When they cut welfare spending entirely so that they could enjoy bigger tax cuts to "stimulate the economy," they told us, "No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
Then the poor had nothing left to eat, and no place to go.
So they had to kill and eat the rich.
They descended on Wall Street by the millions, stopping all traffic.
Their numbers were so large, the police couldn't do anything to stop the massive crowd of the disenfranchised. They flooded the buildings of Wall Street, the halls of DC, of the McMansions of Texas, and like a horde of zombies, they tore into the flesh of the horrified wealthy, who screamed and shat themselves, knowing that they were powerless to stop the oncoming mass of gnashing teeth and hungry mouths.
And as the poor picked the bones clean over the burning piles of money, the poor said to the bones:
"No hard feelings. It's just business, you know?"
http://www.etsy.com/listing/59971127/tshirt-kill-and-eat-the-richThey told us when they took our jobs overseas, "No hard feelings. It's just... more
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asherp
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added this
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1 year ago
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Much thanks to Davis Fleetwood for making this video about my "Kill & Eat the Rich" campaign.
Now, I want to explain, I don't actually advocate killing and eating the rich. It's just that, like Obama and Hillary talking about nuking Iran-- I just think we should "keep all options on the table."
Speaking of which, I recently saw an old advert for Scott Paper Towels, asking "is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?"
Which went on to say how harsh paper towels and unsanitary bathroom conditions pissed workers off, and made them more likely to unionize and join the communist party, which one can only assume means that they're going to crash the gates and kill you and all the other board members.
Yes! Once upon a time, people were so scared of the poor that they were willing to do the most basic things to keep them happy.
Like keep the bathroom clean, and buy soft toilet paper.
Just think what the corporate elite would be willing to do for the betterment of humanity if they thought they had to prevent us from killing and eating them?
You can buy the t-shirt here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/59971127/tshirt-kill-and-eat-the-rich
Wear it proud!Much thanks to Davis Fleetwood for making this video about my "Kill & Eat the... more
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asherp
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added this
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1 year ago
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Flickr/scottjloweTwo Tea Party leaders, Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, have been jet-setting all over the country ginning up support for conservative politicians. Literally.
They’ve been flying around in a private jet like Wall Street CEOs, except they’re heading to “grassroots” rallies instead of merger talks. Meckler and Martin don’t say how outraged, ordinary citizens can find the money to support such extravagance, and they don’t have to. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in this year’s Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, they can now accept unlimited funding without disclosing the identities of their donors.
No one would even know about the jets themselves, but Meckler and Martin never counted on Mother Jones, or a reporter named Stephanie Mencimer. Using public flight-tracking information, the Tea Party Patriots’ flight schedule, and some serious attention to details in the group’s own videos, Mencimer was able to figure out which jet the not-so-populist duo were using. She then traced the plane to Raymond F. Thomson, founder and CEO of a semiconductor company called Semitool, which he sold last year for a cool $364 million.
It’s both sad and hilarious to see the secret financial arrangements of the super-rich masquerading as grassroots activism. But it also shows the lengths to which reporters must go to actually report on political spending in the wake of Citizens United. There is no documentation to follow, just the contrails of private jets.
Social groups target state races
And while secret political spending has been dominated by big corporations this cycle, the legal maneuvering that liberated corporate coffers was actually performed by fringe right-wing groups targeting social issues. As Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent:
Groups advocating against abortion and gay marriage have waged a low-grade war on laws restricting their ability to spend money freely in elections since the early 1980s, and their victory in the recent Citizens United ruling has hardly caused them to rest on their laurels.
Our democracy is now more beholden to corporate greed than ever, but at least gays won’t be allowed to visit each other in the hospital.
This is just the beginning of corporate rights
But the implications of Citizens United extend far beyond the (critically important) realm of campaign finance itself, as Jeff Clements and John Bonifaz of the organization Free Speech for People emphasize in an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now! As Bonifaz notes:
Citizens United was not just a campaign finance case, it was a corporate rights case. In fact, it was an extreme extension of a corporate rights doctrine that has eroded the First Amendment for thirty years.
At its core, Citizens United grants First Amendment rights to corporations on the grounds that corporations are people, just like ordinary citizens. Sound crazy? It is.
The bill of rights for corporations?
As AlterNet’s Joshua Holland emphasizes in an interview with historian Thom Hartmann, the implications of the view that corporations are people are simply absurd. Now corporations have been granted First Amendment rights, but what happens when they start arguing for Second Amendment rights? And what would it even mean for a corporation to have Second Amendment rights?
A visual map of Campaign Cash
What are the most common themes and issues surrounding the untold amounts of cash flowing into this election cycle? To create that visual, the Media Consortium piped 10 articles by our members through Wordle. While all the articles were generally focused on this topic, they were picked at random and published between October 25-29.
For clarity’s sake, we made “Tea Party” “TeaParty,” “Supreme Court” became “SupremeCourt,” and we also merged the first and last names of key players such as Karl Rove and Jim DeMint. Finally, we removed any extraneous words such as “the,” “and,” and “even.” We did not combine the words corporate/corporation/corporations or Republican/Republicans (but examine the frequency as much as the size). To get the latest reporting on the funds feeding into the mid-term elections, go to www.themediaconsortium.org or follow the search term #campaigncash on Twitter. Wordle research by Amanda Anderson.
But wait, there’s more!
* Sarah van Gelder argues in Yes! Magazine why families can’t afford to stay home on Election Day.
* And no matter who wins on Tuesday, it seems one thing is clear: Democracy will pay the price, says Henry A. Giroux at Truthout.
* Lobbyists are already buttering up the incoming committee chairs, reports Siddhartha Mahanta in Mother Jones. Time to get to know Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), who could be the incoming chair of the House Ways & Means Committee.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Flickr/scottjloweTwo Tea Party leaders,... more
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For many local governments, the headache of trying to collect on thousands of property tax liens is just too much, so they are glad to “outsource” the work of collection.For many local governments, the headache of trying to collect on thousands of property... more
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It turns out that the big Wall Street banks have found a dirty new way to make loads of cash from U.S. homeowners, and they really, really don't want to talk about it. So what is this dirty new business? America's biggest financial institutions have become property tax collectors, and it is extremely lucrative. From coast to coast, the big Wall Street banks are buying up thousands upon thousands of tax liens and are making a killing by socking distressed homeowners with predatory interest, outrageous penalties and almost unbelievable legal fees. In some areas, the big banks are able to foreclose on these homes in as little as six months. The elderly and the poor are the most common targets of these practices. An absolutely brilliant expose in the Huffington Post has brought these issues to light, and it is creating quite a controversy in the financial world. The big banks are doing nothing illegal here. Local governments are offering to sell thousands of tax liens and somebody is going to end up buying them. But something seems extremely unsavory about the big Wall Street banks capitalizing on the economic downturn that they were so instrumental in causing in such a predatory manner.It turns out that the big Wall Street banks have found a dirty new way to make loads... more
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The mortgage-bond market shows investors shrugging off speculation that the U.S. is in the throes of a foreclosure-document crisis.
Typical prices for bonds tied to home loans on which borrowers often failed to document their incomes or didn’t plan to live in their properties ended last week up 1 cent from a month earlier at 64 cents on the dollar, according to Barclays Capital. The most-senior securities backed by so-called Alt-A mortgages with a few years of fixed rates, which were unchanged last week, have climbed 31 cents from a record low last March.
Federal officials including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner say delays in foreclosures, as attorneys general in 50 states investigate allegations of falsified documents, won’t lead to a moratorium on property seizures. Lenders eventually will be able to take back houses in almost all cases because homeowners have missed payments and the records aren’t that seriously flawed, according to TCW Group Inc.’s Bryan Whalen.The mortgage-bond market shows investors shrugging off speculation that the U.S. is in... more
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mik661
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added this
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1 year ago
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Republican Richard Burr, after collecting 22.6 million dollars from lobbyists and special interest groups since 1989, then went on to vote for the Wall Street bailouts. This is his defense from this week's US Senate Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLW8XtpRa0MRepublican Richard Burr, after collecting 22.6 million dollars from lobbyists and... more
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Financial institutions on Wall Street are preparing to pay a record 144 billion dollars in compensation and benefits, according to a study published in the Wall Street Journal. The payout, covering bonuses, premiums and stock options for the firm's executives and employees, is a four-percent raise over the previous record 139 billion dollars that was handed over in 2009.Financial institutions on Wall Street are preparing to pay a record 144 billion... more
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We eat Wall Street in the first official episode of the new season. Aside from the introduction of a new team member, things seem to be back to normal...whatever "normal" might be. But how long will it last? The crew discusses its goals for the year and where to take the show next...but will they even get that chance? Find out on WE EAT FILMS.We eat Wall Street in the first official episode of the new season. Aside from the... more
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WSJ is reporting that bonuses on Wall Street this year are expected to be around $144 billion. How big is that relative to the overall economy?
ZeroHedge cranked out the numbers and it is 8% of the total money supply (as measured by M1). Got that? Investment bankers will control 8% of the entire money supply once bonuses are paid.
Now, there is nothing wrong with bankers earning good change as a result of dealmaking, but a good portion of the bonuses are the result of money being shoveled to bankers by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Where's Bernanke getting the money to shovel to Wall Street? Why he is just printing it, that's what he does.
Over the last three months, M1 money supply has increased by 9.1% on an annualized basis. Got that? Investment bankers will get bonuses of 8% of the money supply, Bernanke is increasing the money supply at just over that amount. There is no better evidence that it is the crony part of Wall Street that is benefiting from Federal Reserve activities, and no one else.WSJ is reporting that bonuses on Wall Street this year are expected to be around $144... more
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