PHOTO: The Tallest Fed Chairman In History
WEEKEND OPEN THREAD
Tall Paul Volcker...
USA Full Time Employed
— Lawrence McDonald (@Convertbond) June 5, 2015
2015: 122m
2007: 123m
- persons who left the labor force since 2008? 17m
Bloomberg data
Student loan debt rose in Q4 to $1.32 trillion https://t.co/X8yPiv4CHq pic.twitter.com/62mWCdesJk
— St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) April 7, 2016
Cramer: Donald Trump is right, there's a stock bubble
U.S. needs long-term growth plan, not more stimulus: Fed's Bullard
Millions of students may never repay their student loans
Trump will end up 55 delegates short of 1,237: Forecaster
Big banks need $9 billion 'worst case': Moody's
Fed's Dudley: Gradual path to rate hikes appropriate (CNBC interview)
Bill Black: The Myth that Obama’s Taking Huge Contributions from Wall Street Was Fine
Fed's Kashkari: Risks still lurk in banking system (CNBC interview)
Jamie Dimon Tells Us We Need to Leave Too Big to Fail Banks Alone
Feds keep pushing Apple to unlock phones in Brooklyn, Boston cases
El-Erian: We're at the top end of this range bound market (CNBC interview)
Trump economic/debt plans impossible: Bowles-Simpson
First-quarter economy looks bleaker by the day...
This is ONE HELL of a bad chart...
Founder of Mossack Fonseca denies the company has done anything wrong.
Apr 9, 2016 at 12:59 AM
Reader Comments (14)
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CUUR0000SA0R
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/04/the-myth-that-obamas-taking-huge-contributions-from-wall-street-was-fine.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3522538/I-shocked-astounded-Panama-tax-scam-lawyer-son-Nazi-SS-officer-dreaded-Death-s-Head-division-fled-South-America-SPIED-Cuba-CIA-brother-reveals.html#ixzz45IvcQohd
http://www.wsj.com/articles/housing-bust-lingers-for-generation-x-1460142759?mod=e2tw
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2016/04/senator-elizabeth-warren-asks-jack-lew-who-owned-an-offshore-account-at-citigroup-to-investigate-panama-papers/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3526776/Government-spend-10MILLION-taxpayers-money-delivering-pro-EU-propaganda-leaflet-home-country.html
http://nypost.com/2016/04/07/rudy-giuliani-is-voting-for-donald-trump/
“I support Trump. I’m gonna vote for Trump,” Giuliani told The Post Thursday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-crime-hastert-idUSKCN0X603R
The People’s Campaign: The Real Hastert Case- All in One Place
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2015/10/19/the-peoples-campaign-the-real-hastert-case-all-in-one-place/
We have been singlehandedly covering The Real Hastert Case here at Boiling Frogs Post. As we all know the complicit US media has been doing exactly the opposite: blacking out and censoring the real case together with all directly relevant facts and historical context. I believe we have a choice to make: Do we let them win again by shrugging in disgust and going away? Or do we give it our best and use every means and every channel to counter and challenge the institutionalized criminality and cover-up? Sure. They have all the mega print and TV outlets. But we have the power of numbers, resolve and persistence. And we have this website, the internet and all the social networks and forums that go with it.
WHITE-COLLAR CRIME
http://abovethelaw.com/2016/04/the-supreme-court-says-you-can-pay-your-lawyer/?__hstc=85194246.6ce96e16084ec7eaca02f0f0ea02415c.1460200982620.1460200982620.1460200982620.1&__hssc=85194246.1.1460200982621&__hsfp=1036276736
For those of you not familiar with the issues in the Supreme Court’s decision last week in Luis v. United States, here’s the basic background. The Sixth Amendment says you get a lawyer to defend you if you’re being prosecuted. Generally, that right can be made real in one of two ways; you can have a lawyer appointed for you and paid for by the government — though you don’t get to choose who that lawyer will be — or you can hire a lawyer of your choice who you then have to pay.
This right is threatened by the government’s forfeiture powers. The government has the right to take money that you’ve gained from an illegal enterprise before you’re found guilty of a crime. They can even take money that they think you’ve gotten from a criminal offense before you’re even charged with a crime. And, to make matters worse, they can seize what are called “substitute assets” — which generally means money that is the same amount as what they think you made from a crime, even if it isn’t the actual money you made from the crime.
In the meantime, my next piece is ready pending DB's review.
Have a great weekend!
Wells Fargo "Admits Deceiving" U.S. Government, Pays Record $1.2 Billion Settlement
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-wellsfargo-settlement-idUSKCN0X52HK
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-09/obama-administration-doesn’t-care-anymore-releases-fast-and-furious-documents
After four long years of ensuring the detail behind the US Government’s role in running guns to Mexico (aka "Fast and Furious") never saw the light of day, the "most transparent administration in history" has finally released the requested documents to the House Oversight Committee. It is not lost on anyone that this is taking place well after it could do any significant damage to the Obama administration.
The release of the documents was ordered by a US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson on January 19th, ending a long saga that actually saw the House vote then Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of congress for withholding requested information. Of course the DOJ decided not to prosecute itself on that matter.
As Politico reports, Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush confirmed that the administration does not plan to appeal. He argued that Jackson's ruling validated Obama's initial claim of privilege. As a reminder, Obama's privilege claim was broad-ranging, seeking to cover not only internal deliberations about how to respond to congressional inquiries but also discussions about media strategy related to the congressional probes.
"The Department of Justice is pleased that the district court ... continued to recognize that the deliberative process component of the executive privilege exists and was a valid basis for the Department to withhold certain documents when requested by the House in 2011. Although the Department disagrees with the district court's conclusion that the privilege was overcome in this particular case by disclosures and statements made in other contexts, the Department has decided not to appeal the court’s judgment and has provided a production of documents to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform," Rodenbush said in a statement.
Speaking of not prosecuting, while nothing will come of this as relates to criminal charges, it remains to be seen what other information the people will allow the government to completely sweep under the rug as if it never happened.
http://dailybail.com/home/feds-sue-wells-fargo-for-massive-mortgage-fraud.html
Some of those bailouts we shouldn't have complained about, of course, were directed at one of Munger's favorite companies – banking giant Wells Fargo, in which Munger and Buffett are heavily invested. Wells Fargo got as much as $36 billion in federal aid after the crash and got a massive push from the government to help it buy up the dying crash-era megabank Wachovia for $12.7 billion, a shotgun wedding that created the second-biggest bank in America. Wells Fargo not only got $25 billion in TARP funds just before it bought Wachovia, it got a special tax break from then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, which some reports say was worth as much as $25 billion to WF at that time.
This is all just background for the latest news: Wells Fargo is being sued by the State for vast fraud in the mortgage markets. The U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara (watch his CNBC interview with Jim Cramer), yesterday brought a case against Wells Fargo seeking "hundreds of millions of dollars" in damages for what it says is a decade of fraudulent behavior, in which Wells Fargo fraudulently certified more than 100,000 mortgages as being eligible for federal mortgage insurance.
Basically, Wells Fargo screwed the FHA and HUD by mass-approving loans without regard for whether they were defective or not.