Though all of the youtube versions have been pulled, we found this copy from SPIKE TV.  In case you were wondering, Chrysler still owes $1.5 billion to taxpayers:

• Chrysler - ProPublica Bailout Tracker

Greek Bailout May Have to Be $19.7 Billion Higher

Greece misses another bailout deadline - Reuters

Foreclosure deal deadline arrives, not all states are yet on board

How the government manufactures low unemployment numbers

Final Nail In NFP Tragicomedy: Record Surge In Part-Time Workers

Boo Hoo - The Wall Street Perk Diet

Gingrich's Security Team Sued for Assault and Battery Against Ron Paul Supporter

Noam Chomsky Supports Ron Paul's Foreign Policy - Video

John Bolton Says It’s NOT In The U.S. ‘Interest To Stay Out’ Of An Israel-Iran War

House bill bans welfare spending at strip clubs, liquor stores and casinos

Goldman's Blankfein endorses same-sex marriage

Contrary to Government Claims of 243,000 Jobs Created, Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs Were Actually LOST In January

Video - Sen. Rand Paul on the Senate Floor - Jan. 31, 2012

This law is approximately 40 years overdue, and it took a neophyte Senator to be the first to propose such legislation in the history of the U.S. Senate.  $20 bucks and box of Cracker Jack says it has exactly zero chance at passing our captured Congress.

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Another short clip of Paul discussing Ammendment 1490 to the STOCK Act.

Video - Nigel Farage - Feb. 1, 2012

Transcript

"Well, Congratulations everybody.

Davud Cameron had you worried for a bit. You thought he was even a eurosceptic. But it's okay, you had a quiet word with him and the real David Cameron was back.

Whatever happened to the veto?

No more vetos anymore!

Indeed Mr Cameron is now actively supporting this quite despicable pact, this plan to destroy and humiliate nation states that do not live up to a Germanic view of how economies ought to be run.

Now, I must say I thought the weekend's proposals from the German Finance Ministry that came out, suggesting that a European Commissioner and his staff occupy a big building in Athens and take over the running of the country.

- A gauleiter some may say, - I thought it must be a joke.

Possibly even this EU could sink to those depths. But of course, it was just a negotiating position and what we've now got for Greece is diplomacy at gunpoint. It's the kind of strategy that Palmerston used against Athens back in the 19th century.

Nobody can deny today that Greece is any more than a colony. And this is all a terrible, huge mistake.

Greece is not a failing subsidiary company where head office needs to come in and take control. Greece is a nation with a soul, a nation with pride, with history. Goodness me, they invented democracy in the first place.

They are suffering, they have youth unemployment of 50% caused Mr Van Rompuy because they are in the Euro.

You are causing the misery in these countries and you blather on about creating jobs and growth. None of this is actually going to happen.

And remember, these people are being driven into humiliation and desperation, and desperate people do desperate things. And I am deeply fearful for what will happen in Greece if we continue with this mad course. And of course - as Mr Barroso knows - it's going to be Portugal next."

Bailout Battle - The IMF vs. Germany

Summary of Bernanke's testimony before Congress

Bernanke: Deficit reduction must be top priority

47 Signs That China Is Absolutely Destroying America On The Global Economic Stage

Gingrich’s Time-Wasting Doodles

Bruce Krasting - CBO Report On U.S. Growth Tells The Truth

REPORT - Nobel Peace Prize Jury Under Investigation

FDA Whistleblower Lawsuit Sparks Congressional Investigation

BANKING GIANT HSBC ACCUSED OF LAUNDERING BILLIONS

MIT creates solar cell from grass clippings

Yale Discovers a Fungus That Eats Plastic

Hot off the presses.  The lawsuit was filed earlier today in New York.

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Bloomberg

Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were sued by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over the creation and use of a mortgage database.

The banks’ use of the database, known as MERS, has led to deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings in New York state and federal courts, Schneiderman said in a statement today.

“The banks created the MERS system as an end-run around the property recording system, to facilitate the rapid securitization and sale of mortgages,” the attorney general said. “Once the mortgages went sour, these same banks brought foreclosure proceedings en masse based on deceptive and fraudulent court submissions.”

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden last year sued Merscorp Inc., which operates the mortgage registry, accusing it of deceptive trade practices. Merscorp was also named as a defendant in Schneiderman’s lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Geithner is rumored to be heading to Government Sachs in November...

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Bloomberg

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) may hire Richard “Jake” Siewert Jr., a former counselor to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, to manage the bank’s communications department, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Siewert, who turns 48 today, is in talks about a role similar to the one held by Lucas van Praag, 62, who has worked at Goldman Sachs for 12 years, said the people, who asked for anonymity because the talks aren’t public and an agreement hasn’t been reached. 

Hiring Siewert may help bolster Goldman Sachs’s links with the Democratic Party in the U.S., which controls the Senate and the White House under President Barack Obama.

Goldman Sachs employees have donated at least $367,200 to Romney’s campaign in the 2012 election cycle so far, more than workers at any other company, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’s donation-tracking website, opensecrets.org. Obama, who has called for higher taxes on the wealthy and stricter regulation of the financial industry, got $50,124 from Goldman Sachs workers during the same period, the data show.

Four years ago, employees of New York-based Goldman Sachs gave $1.01 million to Obama’s presidential campaign, according to the website.

Goldman Sachs set aside enough money to pay each of its 33,300 employees an average of $367,057 in salary, bonuses and benefits for 2011, according to the company’s 2011 financial statement published on Jan. 18. A decline in trading revenue helped drive down the average payout per worker from $430,700 in 2010.

Continue reading...

Reuters Video - George Soros - Jan. 25, 2012

George Soros explains why his hedge fund bought $2 billion of MF Global Italian bonds - and why he would buy even more, were he still running the fund.  The reason: Deflation.

CNN Video - Ron Paul interview - Feb. 1, 2012

Pretty decent mash-up clip exposing the truth about Rick Santorum.

Former-Senator Rick Santorum has the only consistently anti-libertarian platform in the race. He explicitly rejects Constitutionally limited government, an individual right to freedom, equal rights, the right to the pursuit of happiness, due process protections, a right to be free from "cruel and unusual" punishment, and is in general an open-big spending, big government conservative.

This is nothing new to Bail readers as we layed out exactly what happened in this story:

• How Paulson Appointees & Former GS Employees Dan Jester & Ed Liddy Colluded To Destroy AIG And Secure A Secret Bailout For Goldman Sachs

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NYT

Reprinted with permission.

WASHINGTON — The findings of a federal investigation released Monday raised new questions about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s handling of the 2008 bailout of American International Group.

The report, by the Government Accountability Office, says that New York Fed officials have offered inconsistent explanations for their decision to pay other financial companies the full amounts they were owed by A.I.G., and that some of the explanations were contradicted by other evidence.

The report also asserts that the decision to pay the full amounts, rather than seeking concessions as the government later did in other cases, disregarded the expectations of senior Fed officials in Washington and the expressed willingness of some of the companies to accept smaller payments.

In one case, when a company offered to accept a smaller amount of money, officials at the New York Fed responded that they had decided to pay the full amount of the debt, the report said.

The agency’s report revisits a controversial chapter in the history of the financial crisis: the government’s decision to sink tens of billions of dollars into A.I.G., the world’s largest insurance company, which was running out of money to cover its vast and losing bets on the health of the housing market. Much of that money was then paid to other companies to honor their outstanding contracts with A.I.G.

The basic conclusion echoes the findings of previous federal investigations. The rescue mission succeeded, but efforts to minimize the costs and risks borne by taxpayers were insufficient. But the new report also raises concerns about the explanations subsequently offered by New York Fed officials.

For example, the G.A.O. says that officials at first told its investigators that they had initiated discussions about possible concessions with most of the 16 companies that stood on the other side of insurance-like contracts, called credit-default swaps, with A.I.G.

Then, according to the report, the officials said they had contacted eight companies before abandoning the effort. Even then, the report said, only four of those companies confirmed that they had been contacted by the Fed.

The New York Fed declined to comment on the specific account of the negotiations. Officials of the bank, including Timothy F. Geithner, then the president of the New York Fed and now the Treasury secretary, have testified that they needed to act quickly to prevent greater damage to the financial system, and that they chose the approach that was most likely to succeed and easiest to enact.

The bank said in a statement Monday that it had “put together an effective lending program that minimized disruption to the economy from A.I.G. while safeguarding the taxpayer interest.”

Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said the report highlighted the importance of the financial legislation passed last year.

“This report reinforces the need to implement provisions in Dodd-Frank that will prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars to artificially prop up or benefit one firm,” said Mr. Cummings, who with Representative Spencer Bachus, Republican of Alabama and the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, requested the report as a final word on the controversy.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors voted in September 2008 to let the New York Fed lend up to $85 billion to A.I.G. as part of a deal that placed the company under federal control. The bailout was expanded several times, ultimately expanding to more than $180 billion. And roughly a quarter of that money was used to pay 16 companies that had bought credit-default swaps from A.I.G. — a roll call of the most prominent names on Wall Street, including Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

Federal Reserve officials in Washington expected that the New York Fed would negotiate discounts with those companies since, without the government’s intervention, they might have received far less.

An analysis commissioned by the New York Fed recommended concessions around $1.1 billion to $6.4 billion. But according to the New York Fed, when it asked companies if they were willing to accept voluntary discounts, only one company said yes, conditional on everyone else doing it, too.

New York Fed officials told the G.A.O. that they had little leverage to secure concessions from the companies. Moreover, they concluded that A.I.G.’s inability to secure concessions in earlier negotiations suggested that the banks were unwilling to compromise. And they were constrained by a decision to apply the same repayment terms to all of the counterparties.

The G.A.O. report questions the basis of the Fed’s insistence on equal treatment, noting that there were significant differences in the quality of the assets covered under the insurance agreements, and therefore the potential losses for each company were quite different. An analysis found that under extreme conditions, the losses would vary from 75 percent of the original value down to 1 percent.

The differences, the study concluded, “might have offered an opportunity to lower the amount” that the government sank into the rescue. Fed officials told the G.A.O. that negotiating with each company individually was impossible given the pressure to act.

The report also questions the Fed’s assertion that it could not wrest concessions from French banks — who held some of the largest contracts — because French law banned them from accepting discounts unless A.I.G. had filed for bankruptcy. A French official told the G.A.O. that there was no such prohibition, although such a decision might have raised legal concerns.

The Fed’s actions contrast with the agreement that European governments, led by Chancellor Angela Markel of Germany, secured from some of the same institutions in October to accept discounts of up to 50 percent on their holdings of Greek debt.

Video - Bernanke, Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan, and Silver

This is almost as good as the Ben Ber-Nank.  I'm cautious about posting animated crap, but this deserves a spot on the front page.

• "The Ben Ber-Nank uses the JP Morgue as its proxy to short the silver."

Recent related stories...

• CFTC’s Chilton sees 'numerous' silver manipulation efforts

• This is not a recommendation to buy silver; This is a recommendation to kill JPMorgan Chase

• Video: Bizarre Gold Accounting By U.S. Government - Gold & Silver Price Manipulation

• Kill JPMorgan With A Silver Bullet - Max Keiser Starts A Revolution Against The Silver Manipulator

Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs - part of the Corleone family.

This clip was posted on Youtube by Omid Malekan, the creator of the viral hits:

• Quantitative Easing Explained

• Bank Bailouts - The Screwing Of The American People

Awesome quote from Cayne on Geithner.

Though he recklessly ran his firm into the ground (with leverage in excess of 40:1 on junk RMBS), forcing taxpayers to guarantee $29 billion of his shit paper in order to smooth the JPMorgan takeover, I will forever admire Jimmy Cayne for having said the following about Tim Geithner:

“The audacity of that punk in front of the American people announcing he was deciding whether or not a firm of this stature and this whatever was good enough to get a loan.  Like he was the determining factor, and it’s like a flea on his back, floating down underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, getting a hard-on, saying, ‘Raise the bridge.’  This guy thinks he’s got a big dick. 

He’s got nothing, except maybe a boyfriend.  I’m not a good enemy.  I’m a very bad enemy.  But certain things really—that bothered me plenty.  It’s just that for some clerk to make a decision based on what, your own personal feeling about whether or not they’re a good credit?  Who the fuck asked you?  You’re not an elected officer.  You’re a clerk.  Believe me, you’re a clerk.  I want to open up on this fucker, that’s all I can tell you.”

Source: WSJ

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Some reaction to his testimony:

Jimmy Cayne Is Apparently Still Stoned (Henry Blodget)

And from Bess Levin at Dealbreaker

Jimmy Cayne:

“My office door was always open to any employee who had concerns about violations of our risk or compliance policies, or any other inappropriate conduct.”

Except when I was hot-boxing it. You know how that goes, Mr. Chairman. You really need the area completely sealed off. I find using a towel helps. Anywhoooo….so, other than those times– always open! For example, one time a guy came in and wanted to know why my office smelled like pot, which I explained to him had nothing to do with me getting high at work, but rather the fact that I’d just gotten a new leather couch, and as everyone knows, new leather couches often reek of weed.

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Testimony of James E. Cayne

Before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

Chairman Angelides, Vice-Chairman Thomas, and Members of the Commission, my name is James E. Cayne. I was the CEO of Bear Stearns from 1993 until January 8, 2008, and I remained non-executive Chairman until the firm was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in June 2008. I appreciate the invitation to appear before you today. Bear Stearns was a remarkable company and I am proud to have spent my career there. I joined the firm in 1969, when it was a partnership with about thirty partners, and I worked there for almost forty years. Even after it became a public company, a large part of the firm— about one-third—was owned by its employees. To align the long-term interests of employees and shareholders, a significant part of its senior employees’ compensation (typically around one-half or more for the most senior members of management) consisted of restricted stock units and stock options. Like many employees I rarely sold a share of the firm’s stock except as needed to pay my taxes.

Bear Stearns had a strong culture of risk management. The head of the firm’s risk management reported to the firm’s Executive Committee. My office door was always open to any employee who had concerns about violations of our risk or compliance policies, or any other inappropriate conduct.

Beginning in early 2007, the market for subprime mortgages and securities backed by those mortgages began to experience severe dislocations. Although Bear Stearns had limited involvement in the subprime sector, the subprime crisis resulted in losses in two hedge funds managed by Bear Stearns Asset Management, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bear Stearns. Although we attempted to preserve the stronger of the two funds by extending $1.6 billion in secured financing to that fund, both funds ultimately failed.

I do not believe that the collapse of these funds was a significant cause of the later collapse of Bear Stearns itself. While Bear Stearns took some of the funds’ assets onto its balance sheet in connection with the funds’ bankruptcies, those assets represented less than one-half of one percent of the firm’s total assets.

Over the course of 2007, the market for subprime and, increasingly, other mortgages continued to decline. In view of Bear Stearns’ leading role in the mortgage industry, these developments gave rise to market uncertainty about the firm.

We believed that this concern was unjustified and that the firm had ample capital and liquidity. Nevertheless, we worked aggressively to address the market’s concerns. During the fall of 2007, the firm raised an additional $2.5 billion in long term debt. We also entered into an agreement in principle for a joint venture with a major Chinese securities firm that would have increased Bear Stearns’ marketing strength in Asia.

As I mentioned, I stepped down as CEO in early January 2008, and was not involved in the day-to-day management of the firm following my departure. Nevertheless, I would like to offer my opinions about the reasons for Bear Stearns’ collapse.

Despite the efforts we made prior to 2007 to reduce our exposure to the subprime sector, the scale of our activities in other sectors of the mortgage market caused widespread concerns about Bear Stearns’ solvency. These concerns were unfounded. Our capital ratios and liquidity pool remained high by historical standards. Nevertheless, as a result of these rumors, during the week of March 10, 2008, brokerage customers withdrew assets and counterparties refused to roll over repo facilities. These events resulted in a dramatic loss of liquidity. The market’s loss of confidence, even though it was unjustified and irrational, became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Subsequent events show that Bear Stearns’ collapse was not the result of any actions or decisions unique to Bear Stearns. Instead, it was due to overwhelming market forces that Bear Stearns, as the smallest of the independent investment banks, could not resist. Only a few months after Bear Stearns collapsed, the same market forces caused the collapse and near collapse of much larger institutions, such as Lehman Brothers.

The efforts we made to strengthen the firm were reasonable and prudent, although in hindsight they proved inadequate. Considering the severity and unprecedented nature of the turmoil in the market, I do not believe there were any reasonable steps we could have taken, short of selling the firm, to prevent the collapse that ultimately occurred.

I look forward to answering your questions.

I've posted this story a few times, but it never gets old.  The correct answer is Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack.

Upstairs, Mack was on the phone with Mitsubishi’s chief executive, Nobuo Kuroyanagi, and a translator trying to nail down the letter of intent. His assistant interrupted him, whispering, “Tim Geithner is on the phone—he has to talk to you.”

Cupping the receiver, Mack said, “Tell him I can’t speak now. I’ll call him back.”

Five minutes later, Paulson called. “I can’t. I’m on with the Japanese. I’ll call him when I’m off,” he told his assistant.

Two minutes later, Geithner was back on the line. “He says he has to talk to you and it’s important,” Mack’s assistant reported helplessly.

Mack was minutes away from reaching an agreement. He looked at Ji-Yeun Lee, who was standing in his office helping with the deal, and told her, “Cover your ears.”

“Tell him to get fucked,” Mack said of Geithner. “I’m trying to save my firm.”

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CNBC Video:  John Mack tells the Geithner FU story...

EU passes treaty demanding balanced budgets

Atlanta Fed president is quite the stock trader

China buying Gold like cheap cabbage - COMEX Gold speculator positions surge

Fed bank presidents detail their assets - Fisher Owns Gold

Hedge funds brace for 'nightmare euro zone break-up'

IMF presses Greece to slash minimum wage, make more cuts

Federal Reserve Governors reflect America’s wealth gap

Romney: 'I'm not concerned about the very poor'

Details - Obama sketches out massive re-fi plan

Stephen Colbert's Super PAC Has Raised $1 Million: Will He Use It Wisely?

Illegal pythons wiping out Everglades mammals - populations down more than 90%

Good Cop, Bad Cop - Must See

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Henry Blodget conducted an interview with Morgan Stanley Asia Chairman and Yale Professor Steve Roach last Friday that's definitely worth the read.

BLODGET: Thanks for doing this, Steve. Great to see you. So where are we in the world economy these days?

ROACH: Japanese-like outcomes in the developed world, from Japan in its third lost decade to stagnation in the U.S. to recession in Europe. And I say Japanese-like because these are not temporary slowdowns. They are going to be lasting because of the damage done during these massive credit, property — and in the case of Europe — currency and interest rate bubbles for Southern European economies.

Continue reading...

Video - Ratigan with David Stockman - Jan. 23, 2012

• Stockman:  "So when you look at the record, $100 million in and — $2 billion out. One was an Italian Job, one was an inside job, and five were a screw job.  And that’s how you make a billion dollars."

Former Ronald Reagan OMB director David Stockman explains how both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are incredible offenders and beneficiaries of corporate communism or, as he likes to call it, “crony capitalism.”  He specifically laid out the atrocious track record that is displayed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital’s ability to make hundreds of millions of dollars on leveraged buyouts (just to name one illustrative example: buying and selling the Yellow Pages from the Italian government.)

The most important thing about the Stockman indictment of Romney and Gingrich is that it also speaks to the Obama administration’s similar characteristics, through the lens of Geithner and Summers.  He points specifically to the failure to reform our banking system, and the massive expansion in too big to fail financial institutions since the financial crisis as the single greatest risk to the Western economy, as well as the greatest cause of distorted incomes, poverty, and unemployment.

Stockman proves that it’s not about the identity of the politicians, it’s about understanding the distinction between aligned interests between investors, entrepreneurs and inventors working together to solve problems — this in contrast with the misaligned interests, crony capitalists and corporate communists who use use access to power to extract money for themselves at the expense of our nation and the world as a whole.

Full transcript is below.

--

Transcript

Dylan: Well, just about four hours now until tonight’s debate and the economy may well actually make it to center stage here. It’s certainly a favorite talking point for both of the big GOP hopefuls right now, not to mention the President himself. New data out today shows that 83% of Americans now say they are dissatisfied with the current economy—looked to poverty, looked at wealth and equality, looked to unemployment.

We figure if the 1% has all the money, the other 16% must just be confused in that number. How could anyone be satisfied when, according to Gallup, more than 26% of us are unemployed or underemployed? Just the latest example of the split in the country between those that have and those that do not have and, more importantly, those that are working together in alignment to help each other and those that are screwing each other over, you know what I’m saying?

I want to bring in former OMB Director under President Reagan, David Stockman, a man who is one of the most aggressive advocates of capitalism and one of the aggressive opponents of crony capitalism. I just want to continue the conversation we were having, David…

David: Sure.

Dylan: …about the education Newt and Mitt are giving us as they try to attack each other—your assessment of their indictments of one another.

David: Well, you know, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were a cesspool of crony capitalism; we could go on about that. So Newt was hypocritical in taking money from Freddie Mac and pretending they needed a historian. Why does a cesspool of crony capitalism need a historian? Okay?

Dylan: Yes.

David: But when you look over on the other side, I think, unfortunately, Romney was disingenuous when he said that he got a graduate education in company creation, job creation, and growing economy as an LBO artist. Let me tell you why.

Dylan: Because people that invest money, we were just out in Silicon Valley, lots of folks there invest money all the time, they start businesses, what’s the difference between what Mitt Romney was doing and what –

David: Because leverage buyouts are just financial speculation. I was in the business for the same period he was and I would not pretend that I learned anything during that time that tells me how to improve the U.S. economy or how to even build companies or create jobs. What I learned was how to strip-mine the cash out of a country, a company to pay the debt. What I learned was how to powder up the pig in order to sell it in the quickest IPO or the best buyer you could do.

Dylan: Did you make good money?

David: Made some very large gains in some cases and had some bankruptcies in others. So the point, though, is leverage buyouts are not about growing an economy. And when you look at the record of Bain Capital, that’s what it shows. Now, everybody’s aware of the five companies that went bankrupt, they put in $100 million, they took out $500 million within a year or two, these five companies including Georgetown Steel went bankrupt. Okay, that happens. And frankly, if you’re in that business and you want to be a speculator, fine. If you want to own a casino, fine. If you want to own a brothel, fine. I believe in a free economy. But you shouldn’t pretend that somehow this gives you superior qualifications to figure out how to run the economy. Now, let’s look at the other two companies on the other side to give some idea what leverage buyouts really do. They have…

Dylan: Well, slow it down, though, because this is an important lesson. Walk us through it, if you don’t mind.

David: Well, they had – Bain Capital had two other companies where they invested $100 million and they also…

Dylan: $100 million of their own money.

David: Of the fund, of the fund –

Dylan: So they’re managing other people’s money.

David: Right, right. And they put in $100 million and they took out $500 million. And in these two companies, they were spectacular successes. One was called Experian; they bought it for $1 billion in September 1996. Two months later, they sold it for $1.7 billion. They bought it cheap from TRW, a big conglomerate. I don’t think there was an auction. Two months later before they even moved into the house or painted the kitchen or even crossed the front door, they sold it to a British company that was run by Margaret Thatcher’s former Staff Director. So I would…

Dylan: How’s that for crony. I mean, come on.

David: So look, they made $200 million in two months, so good for them. That’s great speculation. I’d call that an inside job. Now, the other one was that they bought the Yellow Pages in 1997 from the utility in Italy. They put…
Dylan: Which means if you’re going to do that, you have a relationship with the government if you’re buying something from the government for cheap, yes?
David: I would guess there was a relationship because they put in $17 million and three years later they took out $350 million, they made 22 times their money on the Yellow Pages at the time we had the dotcom bubble and technology was all the rage.

Dylan: And the Yellow Pages was a 22-bagger.

David: Yeah, how can you make a 22-bagger in the Yellow Pages unless you bought it really cheap, you were part of a crony capitalist crowd that took it over on the cheap, which was the case. They were involved with Berlusconi and all the rest of them. Let’s call that the “Italian Job.”

Dylan: Okay.

David: So when you look at the record, $100 in and — $200 billion out. One was an Italian Job, one was an inside job, and five were a screw job. And that’s how you make a billion dollars.

Dylan: And that’s a way to make money but that is a fraudulent way to represent the narrative of American just capitalism.

Tim: So the question is, is there anything – can Romney, can any of these candidates draw a distinction between sort of crony capitalism and capitalism because I think the left is all about blurring those two together. Because Obama will do the crony capitalism while attacking capitalism at the same time. It seems like Gingrich certainly can’t make that distinction given his record, but is there – can Romney do it to…

Dylan: Or do we, the Press, have to do it? I mean, that’s really what we’re trying to…

David: I think the Press can do it and I think Ron Paul’s doing it. Now, whether you like what he has to say or not, he’s been consistent over the years and over the years.  Let the free market work. Now, if we would only get back to letting the free market work—and, frankly, Obama’s been just as bad—they didn’t do anything about a banking system that’s more out of control today than it was when they came in. They put into the key economic jobs Summers and Geithner and all of the rest of them, Bernanke, who had caused the problem in the first place.

Dylan: So how do we solve this? One at a time, one at a time.

Sam: How did these people cause the problem in the first place? It was buy regulation. I mean, so this is…

Dylan: Let him answer, let him answer.

David: It was not deregulation. It was mainly free money from the Fed, almost zero interest rates, massive encouragement for people to leverage, speculate, and then…

Dylan: And the swaps market.

David: …well, but the reason those worked is you had the Greenspan put and the Bernanke put which told speculators borrow 99 cents, buy 100 cents worth of speculative assets, and don’t worry that anything bad is going to happen because the Fed has your back. That’s what caused this.

Imogen: What you’re saying is he’s done absolutely nothing since 2008.

David: We have done nothing.

Imogen: Is it – okay, so is it going to take worldwide financial meltdown thanks to the Euro zone, say…

David: Absolutely.

Imogen: …for a reset meeting because it sounds to me that – surely, we’re going to hit rock bottom somewhere.

David: No, we’re doing the same thing over and over. The top six banks in 2008 had $6 trillion of assets in the United States; they now have $9 trillion. The top three banks in France have $6 trillion of assets and the GDP is only $2.5 trillion. We have got banks everywhere in the world that are out of control, stuffed with bad asses being propped up by the central banks, the ECB and the Feb, and they’re playing this game of kick the can and pretend that everything’s rosy.

Dylan: So put yourself in the American people’s position. So now – because you and I are obviously in full agreement on the – it’s the basic theme of Greedy Bastards as a book, it’s the theme of this TV show, which is that there’s this system with both political parties facilitating a totally distorted capital market with banking, trade, and taxes. If you look here in reality at a President who has facilitated a complete cover up of all that with his apparatus and two potential aspirants, one who’s on the take in the classic crony capitalism sense of Fannie and Freddie (I’m your historian), and another one who really is doing the closest masquerade of a capitalist by buying businesses and hiring people and firing people, but the unwritten component is that his motivation is not to create value or the business’s motivation is not to create value, it’s to extract money using other people’s money. As we are all learning this, it becomes remarkably frustrating for the American voter, let alone the people sitting around here and anywhere else, to reconcile it. So I’m interested on your thoughts of how we can apply pressure to all three of these people—the President, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich to talk about the elephant in the room.

David: Well, the elephant in the room is really the Federal Reserve. The problem behind all this is the tri-fecta of almost free money. When debt has an interest rate on it of zero overnight or for the short term or 2% for ten years, you’re encouraging people to build up leverage and speculate. It doesn’t help Main Street, it only showers gains [cross-talking 09:04]. It makes the finance sector bigger and that doesn’t help the economy. It’s just churning.

Sam: You saying that capital constraints – you’re saying that any type of regulations about speculation, those would be irrelevant.

David: No.

Sam: The only issue here is cheap money. Is that what you’re saying?

David: One issue is cheap money and the second thing is the banks. The banks are not free enterprise institutions. They’re wards of the state, they need to be strictly regulated, we need to bring back Glass-Steagall, and we need to get banks out of trading. Banks should be in the business of taking deposits and lending.

Dylan: Right.

David: If you want to be Goldman Sachs, give up your bank charter…

Dylan: Right, and be a man. Be a man.

David: And be – if you want to speculate, be a hedge fund, which is what they are, then do that, but don’t have the Fed window, don’t have deposit insurance, which their bank has…

Dylan: And then walk around like you’re a tough guy, Mr. Capitalist, while you’re taking out of the back. 

NYT - A comparison of 2010 taxes for Obama, Romney and Gingrich.

• See the complete infographic HERE

Credit Suisse’s chief housing propagandist

Obama Mentions An Energy Company In SOTU Speech And It Goes Bankrupt Instantly

House Republicans extend Solyndra probe to Defense Department

Richmond Fed’s Lacker explains FOMC dissent

Bonus Watch ’12: Credit Suisse - 'People Are Furious'

Portuguese 10-year bond yield jumps to record 15%

Chicago PMI drops to 60.2 in January

Consumer confidence falls in January

Obama's top aides don't like to pay taxes

16 Kilos of Cocaine Mailed to U.N. Headquarters

10th U.S. President’s Has Grandsons Still Living

Video - European Central Bank Press Conference in Ireland - Jan. 19, 2012

This is outstanding.  If you're rushed for time, just watch the final 90 seconds.  Irish Journalist Vincent Browne shows the ECB how they roll in Eirinn.  The ECB's Klaus Masuch gets a well-deserved earful.

Memo to Erin Burnett - This is how one demonstrates journalistic integrity.

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Related story:

• Rothschild Bank AND Goldman Sachs Are Both On The LIST Of Bondholders Getting U.S. Taxpayer Billions In Ireland

Complete list of bondholders inside, and BBC footage of Sir Eveylyn de Rothschild.  The deceased Guy de Rothschild, pictured, no longer exploits the masses for banking profit, but his progeny carry on his legacy effectively.

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Scroll down for VIDEO of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild...

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U.S. taxpayers finance approximately 20% of the IMF's budget.

Guess what, Ireland.  Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen just sold you down the IMF river.  Why?  To bail out bank bondholders and giant European banks.  Of course!  That's what governments are for these days, apparently.  And they'll tell you that the bailout policy is all for you own good.   And for little old ladies and pensioners and orphans.  Just don't tell that to the cancer patients. 

Yep, another nation made IMF debt slaves on behalf of the international banking cartels.  And Goldman Sachs and Rothschild & Compagnie are on the list. 

Check it out below -- Guido Fawkes' blog has acquired the list of Anglo-Irish Bank's bondholders.

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From Guido Fawke...

Anglo-Irish Bank did not represent a systemic risk to the Irish economy, it wasn’t a high street bank like AIB or the Bank of Ireland. If it had been allowed to go the way of Lehmans the only losers would have been shareholders and bondholders. The Irish state stepped in and nationalised a bank that was basically run by crooks lending to property speculators.  

• The Irish people are taking losses that should rightly have been shouldered by bondholders.

Every child in Ireland is being bequeathed a huge debt at birth to protect the interests of foreign, mainly German, bondholders – why?  Guido was once a bond trader, it was always understood that sometimes the bond issuer defaults.

• That is the risk investors take.

So why is Dublin’s political establishment so keen to protect foreign investors at the expense of future generations?  Guido has obtained the list of foreign Anglo-Irish bondholders as at the close of business tonight.  These are the people whom Dublin’s politicians really seem to care about:

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Great analysis of the list from the Golem XIV...

Of the 80 listed companies only 7 listed pensions and being a cooperative savings institution. Of those only 4 listed churches and unions as their clients, the others could well have been big pension funds. The churches and unions in question were in Germany not Ireland.  Those seven companies are amongst the smallest of Anglo Irish's bond holders.  I only have figures for four of the seven.  The largest, Union Investments of Germany, has a mere €165 billion in assets under management. 

The total assets under management which I was able to compile from publicly available figures is €20,871,150,000,000.   That is an underestimate because the bond holders who turn out to be Private and Swiss banks don't publish any figures.  So Anglo Irish's 'bond holders' hold and invest MORE than 20.8 trillion euros.  Guido lists those bond holders as holding between them 4 Billion euros in Anglo Irish bonds.

Now, in my opinion both figures are likely to be wrong.  Certainly my figure is a large underestimate.  But taking them at face value Anglo Irish would account for one 5000th of the total assets being managed by all the bond holders.  So would even a total default by Anglo Irish cause that much, let alone systemic, pain and risk? Why are the 'Bond holders' and the Irish government so concerned that the Irish people be forced to take the loss and pay the debts for them?

Now lets look at the other side of the equation, at Ireland itself.  Well Ireland's GDP before the crash, in 2008, was ... drum roll please... €207 billion.  Or 0.207 trillion.

SO....  on one side we have Ireland whose bond holders, its people, have between them a total GDP wealth of 0.207 trillion euros.  Who are being FORCED, against their will, to pay Anglo Irish bank's debts to its bond holders, who between them hold 20.8 Trillion euros.  The people of Ireland are paying to, and protecting the wealth and power of, people who have 100 times more wealth!  

So where do these wealthy bond holders live and work?

Germany has the most with 15 of the bond holders. Who between them hold 5.3 trillion euros.
France is next with 10 bond holders.  Who have about 4 trillion to keep them warm.
Britain is third with 9 who have around 3 trillion.
The Swiss have 6 but who have about 8.5 trillion.
America has only three and hold only a trillion.

Other nations include, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Holland Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, South Africa and Italy.

All these figures are very rough.  The figure for Switzerland is certainly under because Private Swiss banks just don't publish figures.  What we can say for sure, figures or no figures, is these are not banks investing widow's pensions or orphan's pennies.

So who are they? Well many of the bond holders are privately held banks, which list their activities as asset management for off-shore, non-resident and high value individuals.  To give you an example, one of the private banks is EFG Bank of Luxembourg.  EFG stands for European Financial Group which is the third largest private bank group in Switzerland.  It manages over €7.5 trillion in assets.  It is 'mostly', 40%, owned  by Mr Spiro Latsis, son of a Greek shipping magnate.  He also owns 30% of Hellenic Petroleum.  His personal fortune is estimated to be about $9 Billion.

Continue reading...

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DB here.  Blasphemous rape of a nation in order to reward billionaire bondholders who were reckless investors and malignant in oversight.

Video - Text from Youtube page - Sir EVELYN DE ROTHSCHILD talks about the global financial crisis to the BBC in October 2008...

In 2003, following the retirement of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild as head of N M Rothschild & Sons of London, the English and French firms merged to become one umbrella entity called "Group Rothschild."  Ownership was shared equally between the French and English branches of the family under the leadership of David de Rothschild.  In 2007, the English branch sold their share to the French branch.  The French branch now fully own N M Rothschild & Sons.

Related stories:

• Irish Protestors Occupy Ministry Of Finance In Massive Anti-Bank Bailout Show Of Force (VIDEO)

• Ireland To Spend More Than 50% Of GDP To Bailout Banks (But Bank Bondholders Will Not Lose A Dime!)

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• Ireland Agrees To IMF, EU, U.S. Taxpayer Bailout - Bank Bondholders Don't Lose A Dime

• Jim Rogers: "Punish The Irish Banks & Their Reckless Bondholders, Let Ireland Go Bankrupt!"

• The IRA Threatens to Kill Bankers

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• Greek Protesters Throw Fire Bombs, Attack Minister

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Spoiler ALERT -- Do not miss #7

• 7 really big holes...

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Goldman Sachs is one of the offenders.

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Tax Time?  Not for Giant Corporations

BURLINGTON, Vt., March 27 - While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding U.S. taxes altogether.

With Congress returning to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit.

Sanders renewed his call for shared sacrifice after it was reported that General Electric and other major corporations paid no U.S. taxes after posting huge profits. Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes.

Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.

1)      Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009.  Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

2)      Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion. 

3)      Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

4)      Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

5)      Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year. 

6)      Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

7)      Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

8)      Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

9)      ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

10)  Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He also introduced legislation to impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion a year. The senator has said that spending cuts must be paired with new revenue so the federal budget is not balanced solely on the backs of working families.

"We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed," Sanders said, "but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country.  The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We've got to talk about shared sacrifice."

Source - Senator Bernie Sanders

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Background...

• G.E. Made $14 Billion In 2010 And Paid NO U.S. Tax

• 60 Minutes: New Corporate Tax Havens

This is an outstanding short clip.  John Perkins is author of Hood Winked and Confessions Of An Economic Hitman.

Wikipedia page - Perkins is a former Chief Economist of the war machine... 

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• TSA Slideshow - Airport Security Cartoons

• Time Magazine Federal Reserve Slideshow - Teenage Bernanke

Video - May 11, 1995

For more check out Citizens for Tax Justice at http://www.ctj.org/

Citizen for Tax Justice's Bob McIntyre discussing General Accounting Office (GAO) report on tax compliance by multinational corporations.

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Bob McIntire speaks before Congress in 2011:

Video - Mar. 21, 2011

It's only gotten worse.  The solution is simple.  End the subsidies and loopholes. Stop the bailout that's built into the tax code.

Make The Corporate Tax Rate 20% With ZERO Deductions.

Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, testified on March 9 before the Senate Budget Committee on tax subsidies for businesses. He explained that these tax breaks for business (1) are hugely expensive, (2) are often economically harmful, and (3) conflict with fundamental tax fairness.

Video - Phil Donahue on CNN - Jan. 5, 2012

Just stumbled across this clip last night.  It's worth the time.

• "How many bombs are you going to drop!  It looks like we've become a warrior nation.  We are dropping bombs on crowded cities at night where old people and children are sleeping, and we are watching it on CNN.  And the only voice that's spoken up in this campaign about this is Ron Paul."

Any questions?  What?  You want the Department of Justice to prosecute financial fraud? Does anyone really expect the Attorney General to turn on his former clients.

Meanwhile, did you happen to notice how uncomfortable Holder and Geithner looked last night when the cameras focused on them, as Obama announced a new financial crimes task force during the SOTU speech?  Suffice it to say that we don't expect much from this initiative.

Here are the details of the Reuters investigation revealed late last week.

Reuters

(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling (see Holder link), is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn't brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks' offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.

In recent weeks the Justice Department has come under renewed pressure from members of Congress, state and local officials and homeowners' lawyers to open a wide-ranging criminal investigation of mortgage servicers, the biggest of which have been Covington clients. So far Justice officials haven't responded publicly to any of the requests.

While Holder and Breuer were partners at Covington, the firm's clients included the four largest U.S. banks - Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co - as well as at least one other bank that is among the 10 largest mortgage servicers.

Continue reading...

All things considered, this doesn't look like too bad of a deal, as banks are not being released from criminal liability.

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Huff Po

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration, state attorneys general, and, perhaps, the nation's largest banks are close to a final settlement on the years-long struggle over allegations of massive foreclosure fraud, according to several sources familiar with the talks. And the final details of the arrangement, according to the source who revealed them, will apparently not preclude prosecutors and regulators from taking legal action against many of the common abuses during the house bubble. It remains to be seen whether all parties will ultimately sign off on the language.

The settlement is worth $25 billion, a sum which will be distributed to homeowners who were wrongfully foreclosed on as well as those who remain underwater. In addition, banks could still face future legal action over 12 specific violations.

According to someone intimate with the negotiations, there will be no legal release of the banks with respect to:

1. Criminal liability.
2. Tax liability
3. Fair lending, fair housing, or any other civil rights claim.
4. Federal Housing Finance Agency or the GSEs [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]
5. CFPB claims for the period after they came into existence in July 2011
6. SEC claims
7. National Credit Union Association Claims
8. FDIC claims
9. Federal Reserve Board claims
10. MERS claims

In addition, the source said, there will be preservation of the vast majority of securitization claims including all claims regarding state pension funds as well as the vast majority of the origination fraud claims from HUD, the VA and the USDA.

According to Mike Lux, who originally reported the settlement for The Huffington Post, the release will be "almost entirely confined to robosigning cases" -- meaning that banks will likely not see further punishment from the states for foreclosure fraud. Robosigning fraud is perhaps the easiest type of misconduct for prosecutors to target.

That said, their legal liabilities on the federal level remain vast, even after handing over $25 billion for homeowner relief.

The announcement is, in some regards, a victory for the few state attorneys general who, over the course of several months, refused to sign off on a quick and limited settlement with the big banks.

"I think it is fair to give [New York Attorney General] Eric Schneiderman and the other progressive attorneys general a lot of credit for holding the line," said a source intimate with the negotiations. "This is a big victory for them."

Continue reading...

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Related story:

• New Obama Foreclosure Plan Shifts Fraud Liability From Wall Street To Taxpayers

Young Ron Paul fans drown out Erin Burnett and John King before last night's GOP debate.

Here's the security footage from the Rand Paul/TSA episode earlier this week.