World-News

Art Levine, Truthout: "The political jousting since Sen. Chris Dodd proposed new financial reforms on Monday seems at first to be just another Washington ideological rift: liberals favoring regulating an industry, and Big Business and Republicans opposing it. With the Chamber of Commerce willing to spend $3 million to defeat Dodd's bill, plus $50 million in a broad-based campaign targeting dozens of vulnerable Democrats, some liberals doubtless feel it must surely be a powerful blow against the excesses of the financial industry."

http://www.truthout.org/experts-biggest-fear-new-dodd-bill-wont-stop-another-meltdown-epidemic-wall-street-fraud57760

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Delusional

Fox Business News
by John Stossel

03/16/10

Washington’s ruling class must believe that, like 5-year-olds, if you cover your ears and repeat ‘I can’t hear you,’ all problems go away. On the one-year anniversary of the $787 billion stimulus scheme last month, Vice President Joe Biden said taxpayers had ‘gotten their money’s worth’ from the massive waste of tax dollars. Biden said the program, now a year old, was designed to be implemented in two stages, saying ‘we’ve only been halfway through the act.’ Or maybe we’ve driven off a cliff and are halfway to the bottom. Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, is also skeptical...

http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/03/16/delusional/



The short game

The American Prospect
by Tim Fernholz

03/16/10

In the prologue to The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis explains that he envisioned his first and perhaps most famous work, Liar’s Poker, as a grim obituary for an industry that rewarded inexperience and greed. However, the byzantine banking industry continued to flourish, and young readers wrote Lewis to ask how they, too, could get into the game. His disappointment is palpable. In his new book, he may have replicated the mistake of glorifying a troubled industry. The premise of the book is simple: A few investors had the foresight to see that the sub-prime-mortgage loans at the heart of a vast bubble in the bond markets were destined to default and made fortunes betting against them. The Big Short, then, is the story of those counter-investors and in turn, an illustration of what was (and is) wrong on Wall Street...

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_short_game



Carte blanche for the banksters

CounterPunch
by Mike Whitney

03/17/10

Housing is still on the rocks and prices are headed lower. Master illusionist Ben Bernanke has managed to engineer a modest 7-month uptick in sales, but the fairydust is set to wear off later this month when the Fed stops purchasing mortgage-backed securities (MBS). When the program ends, long-term interest rates will creep higher and sales will begin to flag. The objective of Bernanke’s $1.25 trillion quantitative easing program was to transfer the banks’ toxic assets onto the Fed’s balance sheet. Having achieved that goal, Bernanke will now have to find a way to unload those same assets onto the public. Freddie and Fannie, which have already been used as a government-backed off-balance-sheet dumping ground, appear to be the most likely candidates...

http://counterpunch.org/whitney03172010.html



The Golden Age for crony capitalism

Fox Business News
by John Stossel

Today’s Wall Street Journal points out that this is the ‘Golden Age’ for lobbyists: [The National Journal] looked at 514 tax forms between 2007 and 2009 and found that no fewer than 89 executives for trade groups earned more than $1 million. That’s a 30% increase from the 2008 survey. Perhaps you recall the now-distant promise of a Presidential candidate who said he would reduce the influence of lobbyists. Who was that guy? That guy made all sorts of promises. But when politicians’ policies expand the scope of government, that of course further empowers those evil lobbyists. When government dishes out money and favors, businesses and unions will lobby for a cut. That’s what I call ‘crony capitalism’...

http://tinyurl.com/yglje3d


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

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On the banksters, then and now
http://www.lewrockwell.com/quinn/quinn26.1.html

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Why Fannie and Freddie Continue to Cost Taxpayers Billions
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/23-0

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Wall Street Reform

By Danny Schechter

In Britain, the police are raiding Hedge Funds to bust insider traders. In America, the Hedge Funds are still raiding us, even as public opinion calls for a crackdown on Wall Street. One recent poll, in a nation that seems so divided on everything, showed 82% for aggressive action. 82%!

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25074.htm



To Rob a Country, Own a Bank

Real News Video Interview

William Black, author of "Best way to rob a bank is to own one" talks about deliberate fraud on Wall St.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25078.htm



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