WATCH: Elizabeth Warren Vs. Ben Bernanke
Most of you have seen this already but we've never posted the video. From a Senate Banking Committee Hearing on Feb. 26.
Now we have the tools to shut down the banks.
Who does he think he's kidding. The entire FDIC would seize up and die attempting to resolve JPM's derivative desk alone.
That's the most entertaining line from Bernanke, as he discusses possible future bailouts for too big to fail banks. Entertaining because it's an absolute fabrication. We annihilated this claim back in the day with video evidence. If JPMorgan blew up its derivatives desk, and was facing capital calls, Jaime Dimon would call Robert Rubin who would call Tim Geithner who would call Obama (to inform him of the decision, NOT to ask his permission) then call Jack Lew and tell him to show up at the press conference at 2 pm with Bernanke to announce the bailout. Or some such shit. There would probably be balloons, a marching band from Wall Street and smiling children everywhere. And a big, fat, f*cking photo of Jamie Dimon's face on every wall in the room.
The bailouts are a never-ending psychedelic clown show, but without Bozo and laughter.
And I'm the ringside reporter, once promising and strong, now strung out in the corner muttering under my breath, "Someone arrest Hank Paulson."
Big banks are getting an $83 billion too big to fail subsidy amounting to a free insurance policy from the American people.
Here's the Bloomberg story that Bernanke mentions:
Taxpayers Are GIVING Big Banks $83 Billion A Year!
Debating Too Big To Fail Bank Subsidy
Shahien Nasiripour and Reuters Counterparties chat about Fed Governor Jeremy Stein's remarks regarding the too big to fail implicit subsidy for banks.
All links you will see within this story are clickable.
Bernanke: "We Have No Idea How Much Money We're Giving The Banks"
Apr 26, 2013 at 6:05 PM
Reader Comments (28)
http://www.jrdeputyaccountant.com/
And here are the bumper stickers she was selling to keep her blog going.
http://www.jrdeputyaccountant.com/2010/12/stop-zimbabwe-ben.html
Awesome
This applies to just about everything these days. I'm not even blogging about this stuff anymore, but I feel your pain. I don't know how people like you and Yves Smith handle the daily, never-ending outrage.
http://dailybail.com/home/busted-obama-lied-about-no-more-wall-st-bailouts.html
Remember this one, Pitch?
-----
LOL Yep, I figured that, based on the comments.
Remember this one, Pitch?
-------
Yep. It took all of about ten minutes to debunk the Droner's nonsense about Frankendodd. And two years later, NOTHING has changed (cf. never-ending psychedelic clown show).
Cover your delicate ears.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Sdn3O6aaMNc#!
Even if true, these tools will remain in the shed. Take a look at the FSB's (Financial Stability Board) mandates on bank resolution should we face another 2008-style meltdown (which we will, the original problem--massive fraud--having been papered over with QE, etc.). The FSB provides a list of 9 items that are priorities in the event a "bank resolution" becomes necessary. Read priority #1 and let it sink in...
“ensure continuity of systemically important financial services, and payment, clearing and settlement functions”
http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/publications/r_111104cc.pdf (page 3)
The juxtaposition of "continuity" and "systemically important" is code for TBTF banks won't be broken up. However, the FSB lays out in painstaking detail a "resolution regime" that involves a shell game of bank holding companies, resolution authorities, etc. that would shame Rube Goldberg--and provide a plausible fiction for MSM to pretend that things have changed when in fact the same people who stole the public's money in 2008 are doing the same thing again...
"Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425
What you will notice about the names of the players involved in the crime wave du jour--"Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland"--is that every one of them is on the list of Global Systemically Important Banks provided as a courtesy by the FSB to let us plebes know which banks are above the law:
http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/publications/r_121031ac.pdf
Unfortunately, Taibbi makes note of the Justice Department's refusal to prosecute "systemically important" banks without drawing any connection to the FSB. Had he done so, his many readers (he has upwards of 150K twitter followers) would have been made aware that it is the FSB, not the U.S. government, that's calling the shots on criminal prosecutions in the U.S. This is a surefire indication that the U.S. is no longer sovereign, which DB readers will recall is the case:
http://dailybail.com/home/how-obama-surrendered-sovereignty-to-the-criminal-banking-ca.html
"As plaintiffs rightly acknowledged at oral argument, the process of setting LIBOR was never intended to be competitive. Tr. 12, 18. Rather, it was a cooperative endeavor wherein otherwise competing banks agreed to submit estimates of their borrowing costs to the BBA each day to facilitate the BBA’s calculation of an interest rate index. Thus, even if we were to credit plaintiffs’ allegations that defendants subverted this cooperative process by conspiring to submit artificial estimates instead of estimates made in good faith, it would not follow that plaintiffs have suffered antitrust injury. Plaintiffs’ injury would have resulted from defendants’ misrepresentation, not from harm to competition."
OK, whatever about anti-trust, what about the "misrepresentation" part -- was this argument never made by the plaintiffs or was this dismissed as well? (I still don't get the ruling, here, even on the anti-trust issue -- it's not as if the defendants misrepresented their rates individually. It was a big, happy party of fraud and misrepresentation.)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Group of 20 economies plan to task the Financial Stability Board with overseeing the reform of financial benchmarks such as Libor, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters on Thursday.
http://news.yahoo.com/g20-draft-sees-fsb-role-202026355.html
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system. It was established after the 2009 G-20 London summit in April 2009 as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum. The Board includes all G-20 major economies, FSF members, and the European Commission. It is based in Basel, Switzerland.[1]
The FSB represents the G-20 leaders' first major international institutional innovation. Secretary of the US Treasury Tim Geithner has described it as "in effect, a fourth pillar" of the architecture of global economic governance. The FSB has been assigned a number of important tasks, working alongside the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. Chairman of the board is the Canadian Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Stability_Board
---
Come to think of it, outside of Iceland there hasn't been much in the way of criminal prosecution of bankers in Europe either.
Great clip thanks. I'm going to post it this weekend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Sdn3O6aaMNc#!
I saw the Taibbi piece about 5 am this morning, and while reading started watching this clip of Taibbi with ESPN's Dan Patrick talking about the NFL draft. The first few minutes are pretty hilarious as Taibbi gives his draft theories.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/taibbi-talks-nfl-draft-politics-with-bill-simmons-and-dan-patrick-20130425
If antitrust laws had any teeth, the banks wouldn't have gotten as big as they are to begin with. The blizzard mergers that began in the late '90s would have been deemed illegal attempts to monopolize markets and barred them under section 2 of the Sherman Act.
But there are numerous exceptions to the antitrust laws. Everyone knows about the exemption enjoyed by professional baseball teams. That's only the first of a shockingly extensive list:
"Antitrust laws do not apply to, or are modified in, several specific categories of enterprise (including sports, media, utilities, health care, insurance, banks, and financial markets) and for several kinds of actor (such as employees or consumers taking collective action)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
(I cite Wiki b/c there are many links and footnotes worthy of exploring in that article.)
As for fraud, my guess is that the defendants successfully argued that the state law fraud charge was precluded by the federal law antitrust charge under the doctrine of federal preemption. I haven't read the court's opinion. But the lunacy of the outcome is fuly consistent with the cases that steadily eroded until they utterly gutted the antitrust laws.
DB--
You are correct about Iceland, which put a stop to the fraud by jailing bankers, during which time its unemployment rate plummeted. This is why you don't hear any stories about Iceland in the media. The country's experience underscores in practice the high importance of the rule of law in principle. The media's job has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with propagating cartoons to scare people. The "systemic" meltdown cartoon (to justify bailouts and non-prosecution) is but one of many.
---
Agreed. We see lots of Iceland stories about the prosecution of bankers, but that's because we read alternative news sites who all emphasize the Iceland example. What I think is interesting about Iceland is Icesave.
I'm sure you are aware of this strange dichotomy of public opinion. We all applauded Iceland when it said fuck you to foreign depositors in Icesave, we will not pay. Your losses are your fault. Then when Cyprus happened, everyone freaked out and said how dare those bastards take money from our bank accounts. I have simplified it greatly for brevity, yes, but they are more or less the same.
That is the definition of schizophrenia, I think.
We applaud Icleand. We excoriate Cyprus.
For doing basically the same thing.
Update on Cyprus Prosecuting Banksters
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/world/europe/iceland-prosecutor-of-bankers-sees-meager-returns.html?pagewanted=all
Iceland, Fervent Prosecutor of Bankers, Sees Meager Returns
One can only yell so much before she loses her voice, ya dig? It's a sham. We all know it. How many times do I have to say it before I can't say it anymore?
Maybe one day I'll come back. Until then, keep fighting the good fight. Someone has to.
How awesome is this shit.
I was hoping you might get a few hits to your blog and perhaps notice the link and show up. I checked out "goingconcern.com" for a second but didn't notice you there so I assumed you were just chilling underground, fomenting plots and shit.
For what it's worth, I bet we could sell 100,000 Stop Zimbabwe Ben bumper stickers. Besides my 8,000 regular readers, I get approximately 7,000 NEW visitors to the site every day. Just the nature of how my stories are spread around Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. So that's 200,000 new eyeballs per month.
Let's sell 'em 2 for $10 and I'll put a sweet photo AD up on the site.
Or not.
Either way, thanks for stopping by. And if you ever wanted posting credentials and log-in for this site, it is already motherfucking done. You are a ridiculously unique talent. I wish you the absolute best in everything you do, including just chilling and fomenting shit.
Steve
Instead of raging against an enemy I can't defeat, I turned to cat rescue which is somewhat fulfilling but something is still missing. It's nice to know I've saved lives (I saved 3 cats off death row in New York City plus 2 Hurricane Sandy victims and a few kittens in Virginia since I gave up raging on Bernanke, so that's awesome) but I don't think I'm entirely done raging yet, just done for now.
My Going Concern columns are all here but most people turn away the minute they see "accounting" (go figure): http://goingconcern.com/user/11
Anyway, you have my email. Would love to talk. I'll try to use extra swear words in my response.
Man, I loved her stuff. There are two reasons I never tried to put humor in my stuff on the financial crisis:
1. I have ZERO talent for it.
2. Jr. Deputy Accountant.
Now, I'm gonna go check out the bumper stickers.
What do these look like? The reason I ask is that every day I walk by a car that's stickered with an image of man wearing a crown of thorns. Beneath him is a caption: "Still Saving"
For weeks I assumed the man was Jesus. But recently I noticed that all the other bumper stickers on the car have a disctinctly secular flair. On closer inspection, Mr. Crown-of-thorns looks WAY more like Bernanke than any image of Jesus I've ever seen (which is a lot, having grown up on the cusp of the bible belt). I'm nearly certain it's him.
The sticker is round, 5"-6" in diameter. Unfortunately google images has turned up nothing similar under either Jesus or Bernanke. I'd really like to track down that sticker. It makes me laugh every time I see it now.
http://www.jrdeputyaccountant.com/2010/12/stop-zimbabwe-ben.html
Click the top photo and it goes full size.
I took a gander at JDA's site and wonder how I didn't come across it before. Her take on that preposterous NY Fed bombing story is on the MF money, and I don't mean Corzine. I'm also happy to see someone else openly mock the Death of Bin Laden 2.0, which was so bad that TPTB resorted to outright image staging--not of the event itself, but of top brass reacting to a video of the event (not shown, of course, though Hillary's reaction shot is the worst bit of acting I've ever seen--even faker than the underlying narrative).
But this ("I've all but given up at this point, why yell if no one is listening?") from above, while I understand, is disheartening.
I bring this up because it's a sharp reminder of the real talent that gets crushed by massively fraudulent cultural edifice propping up the U.S.S. Ponzi. Not long ago, for example, I came across a writer who's been at it--sharp dissent from mainstream opinions and conceptions--for almost a decade, only to learn that his health is in very bad shape. He writes like no one else alive, and with jarring insight. Arthur Silber (http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/) if you're interested...
So to learn about JDA after she exited stage left is a double bummer, first because she's no longer at it and second because the sea of bullshit is so huge that real voices often get drowned out.
Serious Question
Here's the part that has never made sense to me in that conspiracy. If we knew he was dead in 2001, why wouldn't Bush have used that in his re-election campaign against Kerry in 2004. Seems to me Bush would have have been claiming credit from the day we first learned he died. The entire conspiracy that Bin Laden died in 2001 is all based on a single news report. This is the link. Seems highly suspect to me. Check out who is the source for the story - A Taliban leader.
The entire conspiracy is based on this.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html
Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.