Ex-Marine Reoccupies His Own Foreclosed Home
There seems to be a trend by the Big Banks- wherein they resist all attempts to modify mortgages and commence foreclosure proceedings without justification. Private Property- what does it truly mean in a capitalist system? Via Democracy Now :
Iceland Declares Independence From International Banks
Parliament Building in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Bill Wilson writes at NetRightDaily:
Iceland is free. And it will remain so, so long as her people wish to remain autonomous of the foreign domination of her would-be masters — in this case, international bankers.
On April 9, the fiercely independent people of island-nation defeated a referendum that would have bailed out the UK and the Netherlands who had covered the deposits of British and Dutch investors who had lost funds in Icesave bank in 2008.
At the time of the bank’s failure, Iceland refused to cover the losses. But the UK and Netherlands nonetheless have demanded that Iceland repay them for the “loan” as a condition for admission into the European Union.
In response, the Icelandic people have told Europe to go pound sand. The final vote was 103,207 to 69,462, or 58.9 percent to 39.7 percent. “Taxpayers should not be responsible for paying the debts of…
Bank Of America ATMs Altered To Become ‘Truth Machines’
San Francisco’s Rainforest Action Network altered 85 Bank of America ATMs around the city last week using sticker overlays, so that the machines would notify users of what their money is being used for. Bankrupting America has a handy map of the affected/improved ATMs.
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The Bank Bailout Was Actually $8 Trillion
Ah, free-market capitalism — the economic system that works best, provided that one infuses $8 trillion to stave off total collapse. The Atlantic Wire writes:
Remember the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program with which the federal government came to the rescue of faltering banks in 2008? Well, according to a Bloomberg report, that was just a fraction of the financial help the Federal Reserve Bank wound up doling out to troubled lenders. The real total was reportedly closer to $8 trillion, after you add up benefits outside TARP, including emergency loans given at below-market rates:
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and…
Keep Wall Street Occupied From Your Mailbox
Presenting a subversive way to strike back at the banking behemoths and credit card junk mailers clogging your physical mailbox, and to generally excise your daily stress and aggression, via a few small stuffed postal packets:
4 Reasons to OccupyWallStreet
This Occupy Wall Street themed video from DC Douglas was heartily endorsed by MoveOn.org, which emailed its members this endorsement:
Occupy Wall Street is Fox News’ worst nightmare, so they’re doing everything they can to downplay this movement and distort its message. It’s up to people like us to tell the real story. This amazingly powerful video—featuring Elizabeth Warren, no less—does exactly that. It’s a must-see for everyone in America who’s got any questions about what #OWS is really all about.
Vatican Calls for ‘Central World Bank’
Philip Pullella reports in Reuters:
The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.
“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.
It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said…
JP Morgan Chase Donates $4.6 Million To NYPD On Eve Of Protests
Wondering how much it costs to buy off the police department? JP Morgan Chase just gave the New York City Police Foundation the largest donation in its history. How the police show their gratitude will presumably determine whether they receive similar donations from companies in the future. Via Naked Capitalism:
No matter how you look at this development, it does not smell right. From JP Morgan’s website, hat tip Lisa Epstein:
JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing “profound gratitude”…
Goldman Sachs Rules The World
The trader who went on BBC News and admitted that banks rule the world, not governments, appears to have the media reeling, not sure whether or not to believe this brazen bit of truth-telling.
New York Magazine’s Daily Intel summarizes the confusion:
A trader by the name of Alessio Rastani told a shocked BBC News reporter yesterday, “The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.” He warned, “The savings of millions of people are going to vanish,” and said viewers should “get prepared” because the “economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait thinking this will go away, just like a cancer it’s going to grow and it’s going to be too late.”…
The Men Who Crashed The World
In a fantastic new series called Meltdown, Al Jazeera looks at the people and machinations around the globe that were behind the financial collapse of 2008, beginning with the assertion that for a brief period, Henry Paulson “was the de facto president of the United States.”
Zombie Bankers Feeding On Us
This zombie movie short for 97 Percent Owned promotes what looks like a great new documentary about the need to democratize the money supply. Alex Jones fans will especially like the audio – crank it up!
Federal Regulators Sue Big Banks Over Mortgages
Will the Obama administration finally approach national banks with an iron fist? The New York Times reports:
A bruising legal fight pitting the country’s most powerful banks against the full force of the United States government began Friday, as federal regulators filed suits against 17 financial institutions that sold the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nearly $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities that later soured.
The suits are the latest legal salvo fired at the banks accusing them of misdeeds during the housing boom. Investors fled financial shares Friday amid growing concern that the litigation could last for years and undermine earnings and balance sheets in the process.
The complaints were filed just as the stock market closed Friday afternoon, but with word leaking out of the impending legal action during the trading session, shares of Bank of America fell more than 8.3 percent, while JPMorgan Chase dropped 4.6 percent and Goldman fell 4.5…
States To Offer Banks Legal Immunity Concerning Improper Foreclosures
To be fair, actually suing the banks for all they’ve done wrong would be unfeasible, because there’s so much of it. Reuters reports:
State attorneys general are negotiating to give major banks wide immunity over irregularities in handling foreclosures, even as evidence has emerged that banks are continuing to file questionable documents.
A coalition of all 50 states’ attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include payment of up to $25 billion in penalties and [promises] to follow rules. In exchange, the banks would get immunity from civil lawsuits by the states, as well as similar guarantees by the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development.
State and federal officials declined to say if any form of immunity from criminal prosecution also is under discussion. The banks involved in the talks are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CitiGroup, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial.
Reuters reported Monday…
Bank ‘Activity’ Required For Wisconsin Voter ID
In the state of Wisconsin, you may be denied the ability to vote for lack of sufficient recent “bank activity”. A woman surreptitiously filmed the interactions as her 18-year-old son leaps through hurdle after hurdle in an attempt to get a constitutionally-guaranteed state ID so that he could vote. At the DMV, the pair is told that voter IDs were not issued when voters’ bank accounts did not show enough “activity.” The clerk had no answer when asked what would happen in the case of a resident who was homeless or unemployed, or too poor to maintain the minimum balance required for a checking account.
Wikileaks’ Mastercard Parody
Wikileaks is suffering under a banking blockade. In response, they decided to help make Mastercard’s advertising more accurate:
Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.
For six months, five major US financial institutions, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America have tried to economically strangle WikiLeaks as a result of political pressure from Washington. The attack has blocked over 90% of donations, costing some $15M in lost revenue. The attack is entirely outside of any due process or rule of law. In fact, in the only formal review to occur, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner found, on January 12, that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a financial blockade.
New Russian ATMs To Contain Lie-Detectors, Facial Recognition
“While Sberbank’s technology might strike Westerners as too intrusive, many Russians already assume the government can watch or listen to them when it chooses to.” Andrew E. Kramer writes in The New York Times:
MOSCOW — Russia’s biggest retail bank is testing a machine that the old K.G.B. might have loved, an A.T.M. with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud.
Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank’s end.
The machine scans a passport, records fingerprints and takes a three-dimensional scan for facial recognition. And it uses voice-analysis software to help assess whether the person is truthfully answering questions that include “Are you employed?” and “At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?”
The voice-analysis system was developed by the Speech Technology Center, a company whose other big clients…
How To Foreclose On A Bank
Patrick Rodgers, the Philly Vampire who foreclosed on a Wells Fargo Bank branch, has started a revolution against the banksters, it seems. Ann Carrns reports for the New York Times:
Now, a couple in Naples, Fla., have “foreclosed” on a Bank of America branch after the bank managed to foreclose on their home — even though they never had a mortgage on it. According to reports in The Naples News, Time and elsewhere, Warren Nyerges and his wife paid $165,000 in cash to buy the house from the bank, and never borrowed against it. But last February, in an apparent case of mistaken home identity, the bank began foreclosure proceedings against them.
The couple hired a lawyer and the bank action was eventually abandoned, but the couple then went to court and got a judgment for about $2,500 in attorney’s fees. When the bank didn’t pay, their lawyer, Todd Allen, showed up at a local bank branch last week with sheriff’s deputies and a moving truck…
Bank Of America Pays $410 Million To Settle Accusations Of Charging Illegal Overdraft Fees
Can we charge Bank of America an overdraft fee? The San Francisco Gate writes:
Bank of America has agreed to pay $410 million to settle a lawsuit in which the lender is accused of manipulating debit transactions to maximize overdraft fees. The agreement is believed to be the first financial settlement by a large bank in a case alleging deceptive overdraft practices. It may presage the outcome of related claims against 30 other lending institutions, including Wells Fargo, Citibank, Chase, Union Bank and U.S. Bank.
San Francisco’s Wells Fargo is embroiled in a separate lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco brought by California customers. That case started before the multistate legal action, but has not concluded because Wells has filed an appeal.
In August, U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued a scathing ruling ordering Wells Fargo to pay its California clients $203 million. He said the bank’s goal was to “maximize the number…
Are Banksters Too Big To Jail?
Why are we banking on banks to a promote economic recovery? HBO’s “Too Big To Fail” should have been about banksters “too big to jail.”
This week the financial crisis finally went prime time in the form of a big budget HBO docudrama called “Too Big To Fail.”
It was a well-acted docudrama focused on the BIG Men and some women in the banks and in government who tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again up on that wall to prevent a total economic collapse when panic dried up credit and financial institutions faced failure.
Based on the work of a New York Times reporter, it offered a skillfully-made but conventional narrative which, like most TV shows, showcase events but miss their deeper context and background.
We heard all the explanations, save one.
There was greed, ambition, ego and money lust. There were personal rivalries and ideological battles, parochial agendas and narrow self-interest. There…
