pkarnig’s posthaven

"We should remove the senior leadership of the banks and replace them with experienced bankers with a reputation for integrity and competence, i.e., the honest officers that quit or were fired because they refused to engage in fraud," Black and Wray wrote in an essay on HuffingtonPost.com on Oct. 22. The posting
has been circulated widely on the Internet and has prompted strong reaction from fans and critics of their radical proposal.

The professors said Bank of America should be the first to be taken into receivership. Here's how their plan would work:

A receiver is appointed on Friday. The bank opens for business as normal (from the bank's customers' perspective) on Monday. The checks clear, the ATMs work, and the branches all open. The receiver's managers direct the business operations, find the true facts about the bank's operations, senior managers, and financial condition, recognize the real losses, and make the appropriate referrals to the FBI and the SEC so that the frauds can be investigated and prosecuted.

"If the government does not hold the fraudulent CEOs responsible, who is supposed to stop the epidemic of elite financial fraud? The Obama administration's answer is the fraudulent CEOs themselves, at a time of their choosing. You can't make this stuff up," Black and Wray said.

The Administration is not taking this seriously! They need to prosecute the perpetrators of fraud in our banking system. Pass this along now!

Johnston writes that while the number of Americans earning more than $50 million fell from 131 in 2008 to 74 in 2009, those that remained at the top increased their income from an average of $91.2 million in 2008 to almost $519 million.

The wealth is astounding, says Johnston. "That's nearly $10 million in weekly pay!... These 74 people made as much as the 19 million lowest-paid people in America, who constitute one in every eight workers."

Johston sees the depressing figures as a result of government tax policies maintained by politicians with an eye on re-election, not good government:

This is shocking! The income earned by 74 people in the US is equal to everything earned by 19 million people! These are the new serfs of our new Feudal Society.

There is one other consideration that biases the case in favor of borrowers. Many homeowners were sold on the idea that "real estate values only go up" -- and quite a few planned to refinance on better terms, or even to flip the house at a price that would allow them to pay-off a mortgage they could not otherwise afford. We realize that it is not easy to shed tears for speculators foiled by the market, and that is not our point.

What is important to understand, however, is that the financial sector is largely culpable for the generation of speculative frenzy, the creation of the "financial weapons of mass destruction", and the transformation toward financial fragility that finally collapsed in 2007. In the aftermath we lost 10 million jobs and millions of homeowners lost their homes. The "collateral damage" inflicted by the SDIs is now endangering tens of millions of American families -- most of whom played no role in the speculative euphoria. Almost half of American homeowners are already underwater or on the verge of going under. In short, it was Wall Street that turned our homes over to a financial casino -- and so far virtually all the losses have been suffered on Main Street.

This culpability is at the aggregate scale and of course no individual bank can be held liable in court for the collapse of the financial system. Rather, each bank's guilt must be assessed according to its own fraud. However, a national moratorium on foreclosures must be evaluated at the macro level, and justified on the basis of the aggregate costs, benefits, and moral implications. And certainly at the aggregate level that must be considered by President Obama, the benefits to the majority of Americans clearly outweigh the costs imposed on the relatively few. And the morality is also on the side of homeowners and clearly against the banks.

William Black nails it again with a clear explanation for what is happening in the growing Foreclosure Gate Scandal. The Banks Must be held accountable for the fraud that they perpetrated upon home buyers. Everyone should read this article and pass it along to their friends.

Look at the ears on this guy! He's a modern day Alfred E. Newman! 

 

"There's no absolute right to serve. Men under the height of 5 feet, 2 inches can't serve -- I don't see anybody protesting. Where are the people standing in front of the White House, the short guys standing in front of the White House? You don't see it," Bielat told the Boston Herald. "We understand that there's no absolute right to serve in all these other areas," he continued.

Bielat is not the only Republican candidate to make an odd analogy when discussing gays in recent weeks. Last Sunday, Colorado Senate hopeful Ken Buck compared being gay to alcoholism. "I think that birth has an influence over [being gay], like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically, you have a choice," the GOP nominee said.

My question is: "How do these idiots get support to run for office?" Perhaps the answer is: "The backers with money want idiots to run because they will never understand the negative impact that they are having on our once great country."