UK Determined to Win the Race to the Bottom and Remain the Global Financial Cesspool

Posted on December 17, 2014 by | 3 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: December 16, 2014

On June 20, 2012 the UK Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Sassoon of Ashley Park gave a speech to the British Bankers Association – the group the U.S. government (i.e., the FDIC) found to have helped organize the world’s largest price rigging cartel and fraud in the form of rigging Libor. The financial crisis occurred under the “new” neo-liberal Labour when its championing of the three “de’s” – financial deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization – combined with modern executive and professional compensation and the effective elimination of “joint and several liability” to make the City of London the most criminogenic environment in the world for financial “control frauds.” Naturally, the Tories have decided that the answer to this disaster is to double-down on Labour’s embrace of the three “de’s.” Indeed, the first words in Lord Sassoon’s prepared speech were “Thank you Philip [Hampton].”

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The Lawless Society

Posted on December 12, 2014 by | 15 comments

By Joe Firestone

The release of the Senate’s torture report reminds us of the central fact of American society, today. Any semblance of equal justice under the law is now gone from what our leaders claim is the world’s leading democracy.

Instead, of a constitutional democracy living under the law. We have a gangster government that fails to enforce the law, but instead prosecutes whistle blowers who make public, violations of it. Here is an off the top of the head list of our continuing and systematic failures to create justice.

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Can Anyone Transplant a Spine into Obama to Kill Citi’s Bailout Bill?

Posted on December 11, 2014 by | 16 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: December 12, 2014

President Obama is a terrible negotiator and if Senator Warren and Representative Pelosi are unable to save him from himself he will effectively end his presidency as even an episodic force for good.  Yes, the Republican legislators will have more power in Congress next month.  Obama’s justification for supporting the odious omnibus budget bill is avoiding that danger.  No, the fact that the Republican will take control of both houses in January does not mean that Obama would be forced into approving an even worse budget bill next year.

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The Second Circuit Makes Sophisticated Insider Trading the Perfect Crime

Posted on December 11, 2014 by | 3 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: December 10, 2014

We know that insider trading is an activity in which cheaters prosper. We know that Wall Street and the City of London are dominated by a fraudulent culture and we know that firm culture is set by the officers that control the firm. We know that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has allowed that to occur by refusing to prosecute any of the thousands of senior bank officers who became wealthy by leading the three most destructive financial fraud epidemics (appraisals, “liar’s” loans, and fraudulent sales of these fraudulently originated mortgages to the secondary market) in history. No one is surprised that Wall Street’s elites have also engaged in widespread efforts to rig the stock markets so that they can shoot fish in the barrel through insider trading. Unlike the three fraud epidemics, one DOJ office, the Southern District of New York, has brought a series of criminal prosecutions against these officers.

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A Credibility Problem?

Posted on December 7, 2014 by | 3 comments

President Obama’s remarks to the Business Roundtable on Trade raise alarm bells for us all, and suggest that he is still pushing his pro- 1% agenda for all it is worth. Perhaps it would be better if Congress just treated him as a lame duck from here on in. Here are a number of statements from his talk and answers to questions, and my comments on them.

Trade: In Asia, there is a great hunger for engagement with the United States of America, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership is moving forward. Michael Froman, who is here, has been working non-stop. I’ve promised his family that he will be home sometime soon. We are optimistic about being able to get a deal done, and we are reinvigorating the negotiations with the Europeans on a transatlantic trade deal.

If we can get that done, that’s good for American businesses, it’s good for American jobs, and it’s actually good for labor and environmental interests around the world. Because what we’re trying to do is raise standards so that everybody is on a higher, but level playing field. And I think that your help on that process can make an enormous difference.

So, he’s telling us that he’s still pushing for the notorious TPP, and well as the TTIP (also called TAFTA), and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), even though all three elevate the right of corporations to sue Governments for loss of potential profits if Congress or the legislatures of other nations pass laws to protect the environment, attempt to moderate climate change, exclude certain energy sources from use, or do anything else that harm the potential future profits of companies that are signators to this treaty. Such provisions clearly breach the sovereignty of the United States and assert these potential profits above the potential will of the people which in seeking public purpose goals may harm or extinguish these potential profits.

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A TWELVE STEP PROGRAM TO RESTORE PROSPERITY: THE BERNIE SANDERS PLAN

Posted on December 7, 2014 by | 18 comments

By L. Randall Wray

Here’s a summary of the plan Bernie Sanders has set out, along with my comments (in italics).

1.) We need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. $1 trillion investment to create 13 million decent paying jobs and make this country more efficient and productive.

Agreed, but let’s not settle for a mere 13 million jobs. We need twice that. And, of course, the “price tag” is irrelevant—so long as we create useful jobs that pay living wages, we can “always afford” to pay for them. By creating jobs we are not just investing in infrastructure, but we are also investing in our people, enhancing their participation in our society and providing them with the means to support their families. We can always afford that.

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The Economic Agenda for America: A Commentary

Posted on December 6, 2014 by | 7 comments

Senator Bernie Sanders just released his “Economic Agenda for America.” While that agenda is certainly more progressive than the talk we hear from Democrats, and certainly is progressive in its expression of generalities. It is not nearly sufficiently progressive in its specifics.

Here’s a commentary on it.

1. We need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools. . . . A $1 trillion investment in infrastructure could create 13 million decent paying jobs and make this country more efficient and productive. . .

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New York City: Aggressive “Broken Windows” Policing but Carte Blanche for Banksters

Posted on December 6, 2014 by | 5 comments

By William K. Black
Kansas City, MO: December 6, 2014

New York City exemplifies two perverse criminal justice policies that drive many criminologists to distraction. It is the home of the most destructive epidemics of elite financial frauds in history. Those fraud epidemics hyper-inflated the housing bubble and drove the financial crisis and the Great Recession. The best estimate is that the U.S. GDP loss will be $21 trillion and that 10 million Americans lost their jobs. Both numbers are far larger in Europe. The elite “C Suite” leaders of these fraud epidemics were made wealthy by those frauds through bonuses that measured in the billions of dollars annually.

The most extraordinary facts about the catastrophic fraud epidemics, however, is New York City’s reaction to the fraud epidemics. Not a single Wall Street bankster who led the fraud epidemics has been prosecuted or had their fraud proceeds “clawed back.” Not a single Wall Street bankster who led the fraud epidemics is treated as a pariah by his peers or New York City elites. New York City’s elected leaders have made occasional criticisms of the banksters, but Mayor Bloomberg was famous for his sycophancy for the Wall Street banksters that made him wealthy. In 2011, Mayor Bloomberg attacked the “Occupy Wall Street” movement for daring to protest the banksters.

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The ECB and the NYT’s Obsession with Talking about Deflation

Posted on December 5, 2014 by | Comments Off on The ECB and the NYT’s Obsession with Talking about Deflation

By William K. Black
Kansas City, MO: December 4, 2014

In the last two days, the New York Times’ website has published a blizzard of six article about deflation, several of them focusing on the European Central Bank (ECB). Collectively, these article mention the word “deflation” seven times and the word “inflation” 75 times. Collectively, the same articles contain the word “unemployment” 10 times and the word “unemployed” zero times. “Unemployment” is the word one uses to provide a statistic. “Unemployed” is the word one uses to discuss who is harmed and how they are harmed because they lose their ability to find a job.

The word “demand” is used only twice and both usages are in the context of oil prices rather than the eurozone’s grossly inadequate demand that already inflicted a second, gratuitous Great Recession and threatens to cause a third. The word “austerity” – the form of economic malpractice akin to bleeding a patient to make him healthy – is mentioned only twice and solely in the article on the Bank of England.

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Jeffrey Sachs Channeled His Inner Bill Black – and Obama and Holder Ignored Him Too

Posted on December 4, 2014 by | 5 comments

By William K. Black
Kansas City, MO: December 4, 2014

“Yves Smith,” the nom de guerre (and plume) of the finance expert who created and runs the invaluable blog Naked Capitalism, wrote an introduction to a piece roughly 18 months ago that mentions me. The points she made in that introduction, including the reason she invoked my name, are important but the lapse of time since she wrote it teaches us another important lesson. Here is the introduction.

“One of the things that Matt Stoller has stressed that the possibility of reform is remote until breaks within the elites take place.

Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, is a controversial figure for his neoliberal stance on macroeconomics and his role in promoting the use of ‘shock therapy’ in emerging economies. But it is also important to recognize that criticism from a connected, respected insider has more significance than that of someone like Bill Black, who has made a career of taking on bank fraud but has never reached a top policy-making level.”

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