Big Banks // Current TV

WHY ARE THESE PETITIONS EVEN NECCESSARY?

I received this petition and call to action today from MoveOn.Org. I'd like to know why this petition is even neccessary?
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[Today could be the day when President Obama decides if he'll stand with homeowners or with the big Wall Street banks behind the housing crisis. We need to keep the pressure on the president to launch a full federal investigation now, and not to give into the banks' demand for a sweetheart settlement deal. Can you make a phone call to the president right now demanding an investigation?White House comment line: 202-456-1111
Then, please report your call by clicking here:
http://pol.moveon.org/call?cp_id=1707&tg=704&id=35007-20389118-fsWnFDx&t=3]
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Why are we having to CONVINCE our president to do the right thing? I made the call, but I told it like it is, please feel free to follow my script if you choose to. I believe that we have done enough pussyfooting around with those who are supposed to represent us in the White House.

... There are hundreds of thousands of families who are still living in the homes that have been foreclosed on, hoping and praying that some justice will be done , that right action will take place on their behalf. If you, Mr. President, give a settlement to the banks which have created this poverty economy, the banks will have a field day with an unprecedented LAND GRAB...Make no mistake, for the Millions who have already been ousted, duped into thinking there was nothing they could do to save their homes, to those who have yet to be put out in the streets if you betray them/us even further, you will see such a swell of Occupiers on the White House lawn as will be inconceivable.

Will such a cowardly and treasonous act cause a civil war? Probably... Is this what you want? Is this your goal for your country, to have your foot upon the necks of Americans? Are you too, OWNED by the banks? I would not have thought so, but if you condone the fraudulent and criminal actions of the banks and investment firms that have brought this suffering upon the American People, you will have shown yourself to be without moral conscience, without patriotic affiliation to the people you have sworn to serve and that you are without the backbone to stand up to the corruption that is the downfall of our civilization in this moment, at this time. If you betray your people, I do not know how you will possibly be able to look your wife and children in the eye. Shame is upon you for even considering this settlement.

Mr. President, Do the right thing, REFUSE any kind of settlement until a complete investigation can be carried out and criminal charges brought to bear on those whose greed and corruption have injured not only our own countries economy, but have crossed oceans and touched the lives of many other countries in the world. Become the leader you were meant to be, that you promised you would be. Stand up and act with purpose and solidarity with your people, not with big money, big banks or big corporations.

Most Sincerely, your fellow Americans.I received this petition and call to action today from MoveOn.Org. I'd like to... more

Penni
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4 months ago
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4 comments

General Electric's (G.E.) 57,000 Page Tax Return

The 57,000 Page Tax Return
by Alex Tabarrok

The NYTimes reported earlier this year that through an extraordinary use of tax breaks and clever accounting:

[General Electric] reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

The Times highlighted the skill of GE’s dream team:

G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

More recently from The Weekly Standard we find what kind of effort it takes to pay no taxes on $14 billion in profits:

General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn’t pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked.

(FYI, the length of GE’s tax return has doubled since 2006 when it (first?) filed electronically at an equivalent of 24,000 pages.)

GE’s tax bill illustrates both why our corporate tax rate is too high and too low. The nominal rate is too high which encourages a real rate which is too low.

Consider the resources that GE spends to lowers its tax bill, not just the many millions spent on clever accounting and accountants and the many millions spent on lobbying but also the many inefficient ways that GE structures its businesses just to avoid paying taxes and the many millions it invests in socially wasteful projects just in order to produce privately valuable tax credits. Now add to that the allocational inefficiencies of taxing some firms at different rates than others and you have a corporate tax system which wastes a lot of resources and raises relatively little revenue. Indeed, a corporate tax system with a tax rate of zero could well be preferable as it would waste fewer resources and raise not much less revenue.

Hat tip: TaxProf blog.The 57,000 Page Tax Return by Alex Tabarrok The NYTimes reported earlier this... more

dryeraser
added this
6 months ago
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0 comments

Obama 2012 Campaign Receives More Wall Street Donations Than All GOP Candidates Combined

Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data.

Obama’s key advantage over the GOP field is the ability to collect bigger checks because he raises money for both his own campaign committee and for the Democratic National Committee, which will aid in his reelection effort.

As a result, Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data. The numbers show that Obama retains a persistent reservoir of support among Democratic financiers who have backed him since he was an underdog presidential candidate four years ago.

Obama’s fundraising advantage is clear in the case of Bain Capital, the Boston-based private-equity firm that was co-founded by Romney, and where the Republican made his fortune. Not surprisingly, Romney has strong support at the firm, raking in $34,000 from 18 Bain employees, according to the analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

But Obama has outdone Romney on his own turf, collecting $76,600 from Bain Capital employees through September — and he needed only three donors to do it.

The battle for Wall Street cash has become a crucial subtext in the 2012 campaign, which is shaping up to focus heavily on federal banking and markets policies and the struggling economy.

Top Republicans have courted major U.S. bank executives and financiers, arguing that Obama’s policies have hurt them, while Democrats are seeking to turn the erosion of support on Wall Street to their populist advantage.

Channeling ‘Occupy’ anger

Obama’s ties to Wall Street donors could complicate Democratic plans to paint Republicans as puppets of the financial industry, particularly in light of the Occupy Wall Street protests that have gone global over the past week.

In response to the protests, the Obama campaign and other Democrats have stepped up their attacks on Romney and other Republicans for their opposition to Wall Street regulations. http://patdollard.com/2011/10/obama-receives-more-financial-sector-donations-than-all-gop-candidates-combined/Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still... more

congoboy
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6 months ago
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9 comments

Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts

$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and... more

dryeraser
added this
7 months ago
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3 comments

Obama: Sleeping with the enemy

Americans are paying a heavy price for Wall Street greed. Millions are out of work,... more

congoboy
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7 months ago
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3 comments

Time of Solidarity: 'Move Your Money!' Day is Upon Us (VIDEO)

If you are a member of the 99%, then your mission is simple: On Nov. 5th it's... more

StewSteve
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7 months ago
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0 comments

President Obama is on the brink of cutting a backroom deal that would give bankers broad immunity for illegally throwing tens of thousands of Americans out of their homes. : politics

To help expose the looming cash-for-immunity deal between the Obama administration and... more

dryeraser
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7 months ago
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1 comment

Operation 'Fox Hunt': Anonymous to Attack Fox, Facebook and More (VIDEO)

In a new video statement just released, the worldwide online collective announced will... more

StewSteve
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7 months ago
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0 comments

Rewritten Headlines: Charlie Sheen to Dinosaurs

Today's headlines rewritten for you consumption!

TonyDiGerolamo
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7 months ago
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Romney Says No to Foreclosed Families: Let them 'hit the bottom' (VIDEO)

That's right, the slick CEO who has accepted millions in donations from the... more

StewSteve
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8 months ago
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0 comments

It's a Revolution ? Occupy Chicago 9/30/11

Uploaded by ChiTownView on Sep 30, 2011 Under the watchful eyes of Ceres the... more

MindsiMedia
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8 months ago
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0 comments

Occupy Chicago News Update. The Chicago Police Stops Attempted Eviction Of Protesters

In a video update from YouTube Partner DogStar7 http://www.youtube.com/user/dogstar7... more

MindsiMedia
added this
8 months ago
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0 comments

Financial Communities In New York & Chicago Hit By Citizen Occupations & Going National

Are we seeing the seeds of an American spring being sown here at the start of the... more

MindsiMedia
added this
8 months ago
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0 comments

Big "Bankster" Backlash: From Coast to Coast People are Moving their Money

by Mary Bottari As the economy continues to stutter and new unemployment claims... more

figgdimension
added this
1 year ago
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24 comments

Move Your Money Out of Chase, Bank of America and Too Big to Fail Banks!

"The mission of Move Your Money is to encourage individuals and institutions to... more

lookatmypix
added this
1 year ago
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29 comments

Is This the End of Free Checking?

Is this truly the end of Free Checking as we know it? Where2Bank has done some... more

shapdawg
added this
1 year ago
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1 comment

Valentine's Day Campaign Helps You Break Up With Your Bank

"This Valentine's Day, it's time to break up with the big banks."... more

atomiclegion
added this
2 years ago
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0 comments

Move Your Money And Make Too-Big-To-Fail Banks Smaller

People all over the country are choosing to move their money out of bigger banks and... more

shirebay
added this
2 years ago
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1 comment

Take Your Money Out of the Hands of the Banking Oligarchs

How? For starters, you could move your money to a small bank.

Monkey_Films
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2 years ago
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1 comment

MOVE YOUR MONEY: Transfer Your Money From Big Banks To Community Banks

Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.

The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.

Meanwhile, America's Main Street community banks -- the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of -- are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.

We talked about the outrage of big, bailed-out banks turning around and spending millions of dollars on lobbying to gut or kill financial reform -- including "too big to fail" legislation and regulation of the derivatives that played such a huge part in the meltdown. And as we contrasted that with the efforts of local banks to show that you can both be profitable and have a positive impact on the community, an idea took hold: why don't we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? And what, we asked ourselves, would happen if lots of people around America decided to do the same thing? Our money has been used to make the system worse -- what if we used it to make the system better?

Everyone around the table quickly got excited (granted we are an excitable group), and began tossing out suggestions for how to get this idea circulating.

Eugene, the filmmaker among us, remarked that the contrast between the big banks and the community banks we were talking about was very much like the story in the classic Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, where community banker George Bailey helps the people of Bedford Falls escape the grip of the rapacious and predatory banker Mr. Potter.

It was a lightbulb moment. And, unlike the vast majority of dinner conversations, the excitement over this idea didn't end with dessert. It actually led to something -- thanks in great part to Eugene and his remarkable team, who got to work and, in record time, created a brilliant, powerful, and inspiring video playing off the It's a Wonderful Life concept. Watch it below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/move-your-money-a-new-yea_b_406022.htmlLast week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist... more

atomiclegion
added this
2 years ago
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6 comments

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