Isn't Phil Gramm connected to UBS

[malaise]

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/front/UBS_makes_record_SFr20_billion_loss_in_2008.html?siteSect=106&sid=10310413&cKey=1234298356000&ty=st
<snip>
Switzerland's embattled largest bank, UBS, made a loss of almost SFr20 billion ($17 billion) last year, the highest ever by a Swiss group.

It reported on Tuesday that this was mainly due to continuing problems at its investment bank. UBS made a loss of SFr8.1 billion in the fourth quarter alone.

The bank said it would cut another 2,000 jobs in the investment bank, mostly in New York and London. Staff reductions in the group totalled 1,782 in the fourth quarter.

UBS added it aimed at cutting investment bank staff to about 15,000 from 17,171 now.

The loss for the fourth quarter followed a SFr8.8 billion trading loss in the three months, as well as charges UBS made after selling billions of toxic assets to the Swiss National Bank (SNB) when it was rescued by the state in October.
Massive outflows

UBS continued to suffer massive outflows between October and December – SFr58.2 billion in its wealth management business and SFr27.6 billion from its asset management unit.

[Octafish]

1. Vice Chair

The guy helped deregulate so much Big Money he just HAD to get in with some bank after leaving his Senate "service." May he face justice on two continents. At least.

Know your BFEE: Goldmine Sacked or The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One

Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.

His wife is swell, too. When in government, she led the rush to deregulate the energy business and we got the ENRON shaft.

ENRON and the Gramms

[malaise]

2. That's what I thought

I know their ENRON history.

[Octafish]

3. Fascinating how it ties Big Money and the BFEE straight through to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

From the Old DU, good Friend.

Guess Who Ties ENRON to BCCI?

BCCI brings out gangsters, banksters and warmongers of global scale.

Know your BFEE: James R Bath – Bush – bin Laden Link

The connections seem pretty clear. I'm very encouraged by what we've seen in Washington. Just saying.

[malaise]

4. Error on the first link

What do you know about this one.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5024154

[pnorman]

18. Looks like some very good sites. Thanks!

I'll check them out carefully later on.

pnorman

[blm]

20. Gramm left senate hurriedly to oversee the transfer of Enron documents to UBS where they would

stay hidden - that is why Ashcroft delayed the investigation into Enron, too. He didn't subpoena documents until the 'investment' arm of Enron and all its documents were safely overseas.

[seemslikeadream]

5. UBS Is Enron

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3677438


3677438, UBS Is Enron
Posted by McCamy Taylor on Fri Jul-25-08 05:57 PM

Learn the name UBS . This company does not just act like Enron. It really is Enron. For one thing, as I will show, UBS Warburg bought the main money making operation of Enron, the Energy Trading Unit that Ken Lay used to price gouge California. And it bought Enron's senator, Phil "Nation of Whiners" Gramm the on again off again on again John McCain financial adviser----though he was an ex-senator by the time UBS acquired him. About the only difference is this round of scandals involves the banking/mortgage industry rather than energy price fixing. All the other ingredients are here. Investors have been defrauded. Insiders have dumped their own securities as prices have fallen. And Republican lawmakers in the administration are engaged in a cover up.

Today, UBS is back in the headlines, because NY state has filed a $37 billion lawsuit on behalf of defrauded investors. This, despite the Bush administration’s vendetta against Eliot Spitzer which was probably designed to discourage states from seeking to punish bank fraud where the feds refused to do so.

I. With So Many Enrons Just Waiting to Happen, Former Senator Phil Gramm Would Not Be Out of Work Long

In 2002, just months after leaving the U.S. Senate in disgrace over the roles which he and his wife played in helping Enron construct its house of cards ( for details and links see my recent journal McCain Economic Adviser Phil "Nation of Whiners" Gramm and Wife Wendy Brought Us Enron

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/258 )

Phil Gramm was hired by USB Warburg.

http://www.ubs.com/1/e/media_overview/media_americas/search1/search10?newsId=58925


October 7, 2002
Senator Phil Gramm to join UBS Warburg
UBS Warburg today announced that Texas Senator Phil Gramm will join the firm as vice chairman. In this role, he will advise clients on corporate finance issues and strategy. Senator Gramm plans to join the firm at the end of his term. In his new role, he will work closely with Vice Chairmen Lord Brittan and Ken Costa, who are based in London.

Senator Gramm is retiring after serving 24 years in Congress, including the last 18 years as Senator from Texas.

„Senator Gramm’s experience gained from more than 35 years in academia and government make him uniquely suited to assist our clients to meet the challenges presented by today’s business environment,” said John P. Costas, chairman and chief executive officer of UBS Warburg.

„I am delighted to enter the next phase of my career as an investment banker at UBS Warburg,” said Senator Gramm. „Having spent my professional life working on finance related issues, I look forward to bringing that experience and knowledge to bear on behalf of UBS Warburg clients worldwide.”


II. UBS Is Enron

This employment opportunity did not come out of nowhere. USB Warburg had already bought Enron's Energy Trading Unit in early 2002, making USB the new Enron---literally---since energy trading was Enron's main source of income.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E2D61F39F931A25752C0A9649C8B63


The Enron Corporation announced yesterday that UBS Warburg had won the bidding for its energy-trading business, which was the crown jewel of Enron and was responsible for about 90 percent of its revenue.

snip

''UBS Warburg is excited by the prospect of re-establishing this technology-based trading business,'' John P. Costas, chief executive of UBS Warburg, said in a statement. ''It will be a valuable extension of our worldwide trading activities.''


The New York Times makes it sound like happy days are here again, but read this blog entry from a different source.

http://www.johnmugarian.com/2006/05/ubs_enron_and_former_senator_p.html


While former US Senator Phil Gramm's wife, Wendy Gramm was a member of Enron's audit committee, and also serving on the company's of the Board of Directors, UBS was a consultant for the State of California in 2002 to help fix the State's energy crisis.

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) wanted Governor Gray Davis to fire UBS, saying the company had a conflict of interest since they represented both the State of California and Enron.- Read Article

Senator Gramm defended Enron, and basically told California that the state's energy problems were of their own making.

Shortly after, Enron went bankrupt, and Gramm resigned taking a job with UBS Warburg as a Vice President.

After Enron went bankrupt, UBS Warburg bought Enron's energy trading operations. UBS PaineWebber which is a subsidiary of UBS Warburg, was in charge of Enron's employee stock option program.

In Houston, a former UBS PaineWebber broker, Chung Wu was fired after he advised his clients to sell their Enron stock when it was trading around $36.- Read Article


And here is the link about the broker that UBS fired in August 2001 at the urging of Enron, because he advised employees of Enron who owned stock in their company to sell when shares were at $36. You read that correctly. UBS helped Enron to trick Enron employees into holding onto worthless shares in the company, in order to inflate the company's value, even as Enron executives and friends within the Bush administration were dumping their stock.


Enron (news/quote) executives pressed UBS PaineWebber to take action against a broker who advised some Enron employees to sell their shares in August and was fired by the brokerage firm within hours of the complaint, according to e-mail messages released today by Congressional investigators.

The broker, Chung Wu, of PaineWebber's Houston office, sent a message to clients early on Aug. 21 warning that Enron's "financial situation is deteriorating" and that they should "take some money off the table."

That afternoon, an Enron executive in charge of its stock option program sent a stern message to PaineWebber executives, including the Houston branch office manager. "Please handle this situation," the newly released message stated. "This is extremely disturbing to me."

PaineWebber fired Mr. Wu less than three hours later.


http://bodurtha.georgetown.edu/enron/The%20Man%20Who%20Paid%20the%20Price%20for%20Sizing%20Up%20Enron.htm

And here is an excellent document that has much, much more on the many ties between UBS-PaineWebber and Enron, including the many Enron assets and executives which EBS obtained, the investigations of UBS related to the Enron scandal and its eventual settlement with the government.

http://www.lawyershop.com/practice-areas/criminal-law/white-collar-crimes/securities-fraud/lawsuits/ubs-warbug /


UBS Warburg purchased Enron’s energy trading unit in January of 2002, after the company filed for bankruptcy. The operations were renamed UBS Warburg Energy. In addition to obtaining the business, UBS Warburg acquired two Enron skyscrapers and took aboard 650 former Enron employees, including executives John Lavorato and Louise Kitchen, who had taken the company’s largest bonuses after the bankruptcy ($5 million and $2 million), and Greg Whalley, Enron’s former president.

snip

UBS Warburg faced two additional allegations between the time it fired Wu and settled with federal regulating agencies. In August of 2002, a class action lawsuit was filed against UBS Warburg for its failure to drop its “strong buy” rating of Enron until four days before it filed for bankruptcy. The complaint alleged that UBS Warburg violated Sections 10(b)(5), 11, and 12 the Securities Exchange Act.


For all practical purposes, UBS was and is Enron.

Here is the settlement.


On December 20, 2002 the SEC released information on the $1.4 billion settlement that had been reached between numerous regulating agencies (Securities Exchange Comission , New York Attorney General, National Association of Securities Dealers , North American Securities Administrators Association , and New York Stock Exchange ), and ten prominent investment banking firms that had been under investigation. The settlement was finalized on April 28, 2003.The terms of the settlement focused on each firm’s need to:

* Keep the research and ratings of analysts separate from the influence of investment banking
* Cease the practice of “spinning” IPOs
* Contract research from at least three independent firms
* Make its ratings and recommendations publicly available
* Pay a monetary settlement

As part of the settlement, UBS Warburg agreed to pay $25 million as a penalty, $25 in “disgorgement,” $25 million to fund independent research, and $5 million for future investor education.

UBS Warburg continues to face allegations regarding its analyst advice and actions in connection with Enron.


Somehow, I do not think that this hand slap taught UBS anything except that corporate fraud can be very, very profitable.

III. UBS Warburg Clients Should Have Paid Attention to What Happened to Enron Investors

Today, New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced a massive lawsuit against the Swiss giant on behalf of 50,000 investors whom he claims have been swindled out of $20 billion.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/24/AR2008072403740.html?hpid=sec-business


The suit alleges that UBS defrauded more than 50,000 customers out of more than $20 billion by knowingly misrepresenting the investments, which are known as auction-rate securities, while several senior bank executives were selling off more than $21 million of their personal holdings in these bonds.

"Not only is UBS guilty of committing a flagrant breach of trust between the bank and its customers, its top executives jumped ship as soon as the securities market started to collapse, leaving thousands of customers holding the bag," Cuomo said in a statement.


Apparently the executives at UBS left an email trail a mile wide, when they began to dump their ARSs, while failing to notify their investors that their own ARSs were going down the toilet. Now, where did that happen before? Ah, that's right! At Enron!

For people like me whose academic specialty is not business, here is a wiki link about Auction Rate Securities. Basically, these were an investment option for the rich and for corporations (minimum buy in $25,000) that promised greater return on investment) which were sold to investors as being risk free because the bank promised that it would step in to guarantee a certain minimum price at auction if no one else wanted to bid on these pieces of paper. Well, surprise, surprise, in February of this year, USB, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch decided that they would not hold up their part of the bargain, no one bid on the ARSs, 80% of them had no bidders, the market failed, values of the ARSs fell----and USB still will not buy up its ARS at the new lower prices, leaving its very rich and powerful investors steaming mad. No wonder so many state attorney generals are taking action where the federal government refuses to do anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction_rate_security

As if this is not bad enough, the executives of the company have been caught in an insider trading scandal. No, not a Martha Stewart pretend insider trading scandal. This is the real thing. From the WaPo link above.


In one instance, the suit says, UBS's chief risk officer sent an e-mail to the firm's chief executive, who copied another executive, outlining "potential trouble" with the securities, dangers posed by the company's growing inventory of them and the potential damage to the firm's reputation if it didn't fulfill its obligations to investors.

According to the complaint, that second executive, dubbed "Executive A," then forwarded the e-mail to two other senior managers and, just 10 minutes later, wrote another e-mail to his personal financial adviser, stating, "I want to get out of arcs. Let's talk on Monday."

Another UBS executive acted similarly, unloading more than $6 million of his securities after learning of their problems, as did other company officials, according to the complaint. In all, the suit alleges that UBS officials sold more than $21 million in auction-rate securities from November 2007 to Feb. 12.


The suit does not name the executives. We all want to know if Phil Gramm's name is in that lawsuit. And also, did his wife have any of those ARSs and did she sell any of them? And what about the McCains?

IV. How Much of the Blame Rests on Gramm’s Shoulders and How Much Will Stick to Him and McCain?

Even before this lawsuit, people were putting two and two together and coming up with Enron Redux. Here are some of the reviews of UBS’s spectacular fall from grace.

This article from June claims that Phil Gramm’s job was to lobby Congress to keep UBS afloat----which was what Ken Lay paid him to do for Enron when he was a Senator. And it is a PR nightmare for Gramm and McCain because it ties the UBS scandal to Enron and to the GOP presidential candidate and his financial adviser.

http://www.americablog.com/2008/06/phil-gramms-ubs-has-new-problems.html


After showing initially profitable results, the banking world has since reminded some of why we had particular banking laws in place since the Great Depression. Gramm ignored history and thought he knew better. As the credit crisis grew Gramm, a Washington insider, was tasked with lobbying Congress to ease the pain of the problem he helped create.

The latest scandal to involve the McCain campaign co-chair lobbyist are investigations into UBS by the SEC as well as regulators from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Is there a "20 strikes and you're out" policy in the McCain team? If you thought ties to Halliburton and Big Oil were bad with Bush, that's nothing compared to Wall Street problems and McCain.

UBS Financial Services Inc. knew as early as December that a segment of the municipal bond business was in trouble, but the Wall Street firm kept selling the investments to some clients without warning them of the risk, according to documents reviewed by the Globe.


In July, the story was still gaining momentum. When investors have lost billions, they tend to make their voices heard.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/145011/page/2


Critics have charged that Gramm's action as a senator helped lay the groundwork for some of the problems in the housing and oil markets. But it's hard to pin any of the UBS debacles on the former Texas senator. At UBS, Gramm held the post of vice chairman, a position Michelle Leder dubbed in Slate "the greatest job in business" for its combination of high status and low work rate. Gramm was a lobbyist and adviser, not an operating executive. And he had nothing to do with the forces that impelled banks and banking executives into foolish behavior in recent years; cheap money, greed and a bubble mentality are far bigger than Gramm. But UBS's continuing travails should lead us to wonder how effective Gramm is as an elder statesman. As an adviser, an economist, an expert in the ways of Washington and in the American financial system, part of Gramm's job surely was to advise the bank how to stay out of investment and regulatory trouble. Oops!


And then there is this piece which basically lays out the charges for a criminal indictment of UBS---and its agent Phil Gramm

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/07/10/ubs-exec-and-mccain-advisor-phil-gramm-u-s-is-nation-of-whine /


Gramm's UBS is a leader on three important fronts in the effort to destroy the U.S. economy: the $1.3 trillion subprime mortgage catastrophe, the $330 billion Auction Rate Securities (ARS) freeze, and a tax evasion scheme of unknown magnitude.
snip
• Subprime. Politico.com reports that Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006 and received a portion of $750,000 in lobbying fees for his efforts that set the stage for the subprime mortgage catastrophe which cost UBS $32 billion in subprime losses alone.
• ARS.Slate.com reports that Massachusetts accused UBS of selling retail brokerage customers ARSs -- about which I posted -- that made money for UBS's investment banking unit but caused the retail customers to suffer significant losses.
• Tax evasion. Slate.com also reports that UBS's asset management business is the subject of an ongoing federal investigation, in which Bradley Birkenfeld, an American UBS private banker who was arrested on tax evasion charges, has plead guilty and is cooperating with the government. Birkenfeld helped a client bring diamonds into the U.S. by shoving them in a tube of toothpaste.


V. I Meant It When I Wrote That UBS Is Enron (Minus Ken Lay)

UBS enabled Enron to pass itself off as a solvent company to investors for several months after it was clear that it was on the verge of bankruptcy. This cost many their life's savings. UBS paid nothing for its crimes. UBS them absorbed Enron---and its senator, Phil Gramm---and began to exploit the Enron loophole that had allowed Enron to make so much paper profit. This produced the exact same results---eventual financial loss for the company and customers, executives who avoided loss through insider trading and misrepresentation to their clients. All of this was made possible by Phil Gramm, who successfully lobbied to get even more privileges for business to allow them to steal even more from investors---even though everyone knew his history and the history of his company when it came to investor fraud.

UBS is Enron. Phil Gramm is a serial enabler of corporate fraud on a massive scale who can not be allowed to direct economic policy in this country. Because if he could get Congress to do what it did for UBS when he was a private lobbyist, imagine what he could accomplish if he had a job in someone's cabinet, making administrative decisions.

[malaise]

8. Bookmarking for later reading

Two things: Did you note the layoffs coming in the US?

Is this the real reason for today's stock market problems? I haven't heard a word of this anywhere but BBC International.

[seemslikeadream]

6. Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.

Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4055207



TPM: Taxpayers to bail out Phil Gramm's foreign bank

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4057014


Gramm is both vice chairman of UBS's US division and a lobbyist for UBS.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4054859

[mmonk]

7. yep

[seemslikeadream]

9. Phil Gramm and Fascism F*A*S*C*I*S*M

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3700844

Phil Gramm and Fascism


I. Why Hasn't Typhoid Phil Worn Out His Welcome With The Republican Party After Engineering the Two Biggest Business Meltdowns of the Century?

Those who have followed the many Phil Gramm scandals closely have probably asked themselves Why the hell would the U.S. business community want this man anywhere near a seat of power in this country? . Despite his PhD and his academic history, every business endeavor which he touches turns to liquid shit----on a colossal scale. Enron’s bankruptcy rocked the business world. UBS, his current company, just wrote off mortgage losses as big as all of last year’s profits and is being sued for $20 billion to boot.

One explanation is that a corporation’s bankruptcy can be an executive’s money making opportunity----if he dumps his stock in time (and avoids being caught by the SEC).

However, when you are rich as sin like the David Rockefellers and Mellon-Scaifes who run this country, generating revenue is no longer your primary focus. The Russian Revolution and the Great War in Europe and the changing borders after WWII taught the uber-rich that the largest fortunes are vulnerable to political change. If you want to hang onto your money, you can’t just own a lot of it. You have to acquire power , too. You need to control the masses, or eventually they will decide that no one person deserves to have so much money sitting in a vault gathering cobwebs while so many others are starving.

The people with the real power are those who buy politicians—presidents---and media empires for their propaganda potential and those who start political movements that can benefit their business interests. Fascism, especially Mussolini style corporate-state fascism appeals to this kind of schemer.


The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and usefu instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. (pp. 135-136)

Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: 'Ardita' Publishers.


We already have something similar to this under the Bush administration. The oil industry objects to other nations having nationalized oil which U.S. firms are not allowed to exploit? Private enterprise is “insufficient” to persuade these countries to give their oil away the way it used to give it away to Standard Oil? No problem. Bush will invade Iraq for its oil, try to invade Iran for its oil, and attempt a military coup in Venezuela for its oil. Oh, and it will interfere in the presidential election in Mexico for its oil.

II. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24) Means Exactly What Its Says

The people who crave power in order to protect their fortunes do not view the world the way that you or I do. For example, when they read the newspaper, stories like the one below do not seem tragic. When they read about a Church shooting, they think to themselves Hmmm. We are making progress.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jOAQKzY-aOBqDspFkEAV_ZO65vZAD92740DO4


An out-of-work truck driver accused of opening fire at a Unitarian church, killing two people, left behind a note suggesting that he targeted the congregation out of hatred for its liberal policies, including its acceptance of gays, authorities said Monday.

Snip

Adkisson, a 58-year-old truck driver on the verge of losing his food stamps, had 76 rounds with him when he entered the church and pulled a shotgun from a guitar case during a children's performance of the musical "Annie."

Snip

"It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement," Police Chief Sterling Owen said.

Adkisson was a loner who hates "blacks, gays and anyone different from him," longtime acquaintance Carol Smallwood of Alice, Texas, told the newspaper.


After the general public outrage has died down, the right wing will embrace this story. The shooter will become a hero of American fascists. Here was a White man, they will say, who could not get a fair shake in this country, because all the jobs were going to minorities. They will blame Latino immigrants. They will blame women who do not support their husbands. They will call for a return to American values.

They will blame everyone except the political and business leaders who have lead us into recession and now have us poised on the verge of a Second Great Depression. People like Phil Gramm. Because to guys like Adkisson, Phil Gramm and John McCain are supposed to be the ones who will get us out of the mess. People who have been suckered by the right wing in blaming other working class Americans for their poverty, desperately want someone they can count upon to lead them back to the safety of the middle class.

III. The Great Depression Was a Great Opportunity If You Were a Fascist Dictator

Those who have read Studs Turkel’s Hard Times know that the uber-rich did not suffer during the first Great Depression. Not the way that the rest of us did. They hardly seemed to notice the desperation of the men and women struggling to survive. For them, FDR was an annoyance and his policies were a nuisance. The reaction of countries across the Atlantic was more to their liking. They admired Mussolini and Hitler. They craved their own fascist coup.

However, America was and is the home to the independent minded of the world, the ones who long for personal liberty more than the comforts of home. People who are not willing to bow and scrape for their daily bread have been coming to this shore for centuries. Noam Chomsky describes it eloquently here:

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Chomsky/chomsky-con2.html


There was a tradition of what was called Republicanism in the United States. We're free people, you know, the first free people in the world. This was destroying and undermining that freedom. This was the core of the labor movement all over, and included in it was the assumption, just taken for granted, that "those who work in the mills should own them." In fact, one of the their main slogans, I'll just quote it, was they condemned what they called the "new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self." That new spirit, that you should only be interested in gaining wealth and forgetting about your relations to other people, they regarded it as a violation of fundamental human nature, and a degrading idea.

That was a strong, rich American culture, which was crushed by violence. The United States has a very violent labor history, much more so than Europe. It was wiped out over a long period, with extreme violence. By the time it picked up again in the 1930s, that's when I personally came into the tail end of it. After the Second World War it was crushed. By now, it's forgotten. But it's very real. I don't really think it's forgotten, I think it's just below the surface in people's consciousness.

Snip

Things like this, they're forgotten in the intellectual culture, but my feeling is they're probably alive in the popular culture, in people's sentiments and attitudes and understanding and so on. I know when I talk to, say, working-class audiences today, and I talk about these ideas, they seem very natural to them. I mean, it's true, nobody talks about them, but when you bring it up, the idea that you have to rent yourself to somebody and follow their orders, and that they own and you work there, and you built it but you don't own it, that's a highly unnatural notion. You don't have to study any complicated theories to see that this is an attack on human dignity.

The core of the anarchist tradition, as I understand it, is that power is always illegitimate, unless it proves itself to be legitimate. So the burden of proof is always on those who claim that some authoritarian hierarchic relation is legitimate. If they can't prove it, then it should be dismantled.


Bush and Cheney used 9/11 as an excuse to give themselves legitimacy for a few years, by claiming that we were under attack and that we had to surrender our Constitutional rights in order to be safe from physical harm. However, that was a short lived crisis. The problem with 9/11 was the external nature of the threat. It could be contained, excluded and neutralized relatively easily. It did not affect the day to day lives of most Americans. When something worse happened----Katrina---9/11 ceased to matter. Bush failed to respond to Katrina (a disaster that could happen to any American community), and so he proved himself to be illegitimate. His ratings have been in the toilet ever since.

Phil Gramm and the right wingers who are backing him and John McCain---including people like Grover Norquist, who is on record as wanting to “bankrupt” America---want to attack the nation again. They need another 9/11, only this time it has to be bigger, splashier, more lasting. It has to hit every single American and make them deathly afraid, not just for themselves but for their children and grandchildren.

They are trying to do that by attacking the economy of the nation. They know that if we are driven into an economic corner, in which people fear for their livelihood, the president in power at that moment can act like Mussolini. He can use the crisis to forge a new kind of legitimacy ----one based upon American values , which is code for a very un-American fascism.


IV. What is Fascism? (Besides a Word that Annoys the Hell Out of Fascists)

In his book Anatomy of Fascism Robert O. Paxton gives this definition:


Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.


Also, from Paxton, the defining characteristics of fascism:


1.“At bottom is a passionate nationalism”
2.“a sense ofoverwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions”
3.“the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external”
4.dread of the group's under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences”
5.“the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary”

As you can see, there are two main ingredients necessary for a successful fascist coup, a crisis and an enemy . Now, what crisis in the 20th century lead to the heyday of European and American fascism? The Great Depression. When people are homeless, starving, out of work, it is easy to mobilize them to join a political movement that claims it has the answers.

V. If You Believe that a Second Great Depression is Just the Crisis You Need to Convince Americans to Surrender Their Liberties to a Corporate Sponsored State, How Would You Engineer One?

http://losangeles.injuryboard.com/miscellaneous/the-subprime-mess-and-phil-gramm-an-experiment-in-deregulation.aspx?googleid=242468


In 1933, a few years following the stock market crash, Congress passes the Glass-Steagall Act, in hopes that regulating banks will help prevent market instability, particularly amongst Wall Street banks. The purpose of the act is to separate commercial banks that focus on consumers from investment banks, which deal with speculative trading and mergers.
The Glass-Steagall Act provided the proper oversight and entity separation that would prohibit banks and other financial companies from merging into giant trusts (conflict of interests) -- giant trusts or corporations being more powerful, naturally, and having the seemingly limitless capital to lobby their corporate interests, however, with a very myopic scope (particularly when it comes to factoring in potential losses -- most banks, as seen in contemporary times, chose not to anticipate losses in the mortgage market; they presumed home prices would continue to appreciate).
In 1999, former Senator Phil Gramm (who is, incidentally, Senator John McCain's economic adviser and cochairs his presidential campaign) set out to completely gut the Glass-Steagall Act, and did so successfully, replacing most of its components with the new Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act: allowing commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers to merge (which would have violated antitrust laws under Glass-Steagall). Sen. Gramm was the driving force behind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, as he had received over $4.6 million from the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate donations) over the previous decade, and once the Act passed, an influx of "megamergers" took place among banks and insurance and securities companies, as if they had been eagerly awaiting the passage of Gramm's Act. Everything in between Glass-Steagall and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (i.e. Savings and Loan crisis/bust) was, in large part, the incubation period for what would take place over the nine years that would follow the passage of Gramm's Act: an experiment in deregulation.


Gramm’s deregulation of the banking industry was a formula was disaster, as anyone with a PhD in economics and experience teaching the subject at a college like Texas A&M would know. Funny, that describes Gramm’s resume. He should have known better. Maybe he did know better. Maybe he knew exactly what he was doing. From an article by Patricia Kilday Hart:

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2767


“The work of this Congress will be seen as a watershed where we turned away from an outmoded Depression-era approach to financial regulation and adopted a framework that will position our financial services industry to be world leaders into the new century,” Gramm said.

Watershed indeed. With the U.S. economy now battered by a tsunami of mortgage foreclosures, the $30-billion Bear Stearns Companies bailout and spiking food and energy prices, many congressional leaders and Wall Street analysts are questioning the wisdom of the radical deregulation launched by Gramm’s legislative package. Financial wizard Warren Buffett has labeled the risky new investment instruments Gramm unleashed “financial weapons of mass destruction.” They have fed the subprime mortgage crisis like an accelerant. While his distracted peers probably finalized their Christmas gift lists, Gramm created what Wall Street analysts now refer to as the “shadow banking system,” an industry that operates outside any government oversight, but, as witnessed by the Bear Stearns debacle, requiring rescue by taxpayers to avert a national economic catastrophe.


Just how bad is the banking crisis? According to the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/business/14bank.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


As home prices continue to decline and loan defaults mount, federal regulators are bracing for dozens of American banks to fail over the next year.

Snip

But the troubles are growing so rapidly at some small and midsize banks that as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months, analysts say. Other lenders are likely to shut branches or seek mergers.

“Everybody is drawing up lists, trying to figure out who the next bank is, No. 1, and No. 2, how many of them are there,” said Richard X. Bove, the banking analyst with Ladenburg Thalmann, who released a list of troubled banks over the weekend. “And No. 3, from the standpoint of Washington, how badly is it going to affect the economy?”


http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/jul/09/mccain-adviser-addresses-mental-recession /

Gramm’s response to the banking industry’s misconduct and greed would make a totalitarian leader proud. He blames the victims, calling America a “nation of whiners”, denouncing the press for reporting on negative business news which puts the American economy in a bad light. In the world according to Phil Gramm, an attack upon American business is an attack upon America---welcome to the corporate fascist state. By denouncing individual complaints as “whining”, he expresses disdain for individual liberties and rights in the same way that a more typical political fascist might tell a dissident “Too bad that your mail is being opened by the secret police. That is the price you have to pay so that we can fight terrorism.” Except, in Gramm’s corporate fascist state loss of your home is the price you have to pay so that your bank can remain solvent, and your bank’s solvency is supposed to be tied to national pride and security---even if the bank in question is United Bank of Switzerland and is based in another country.

Gramm’s reaction is just a symptom of a much larger problem, one that we saw when the the U.S. Congress passed its truly draconian credit card debt legislation that was like something out of Charles Dickens. Better to have millions of Americans working the rest of their lives to pay off hospital bills than to force a huge bank to write off a loss. In the 21st century, the life expectancy and education and average income of individuals no longer matter as indicators of the health of this country. Only the strength of our Fortune 500 companies matters when judging our success.

That is what it means to be a corporate fascist state.

VI. Pin the Tail On the Scapegoat

I mentioned that it takes two things to create a fascist coup, a crisis and a scapegoat. If the crisis to be an economic one, then the scapegoat will be our economically and politically most vulnerable workers, a group whom the right wing has been working to vilify for at least six years, Latino immigrants.

http://washingtonindependent.com/view/race-and-the-housing


Even when their credit scores were similar, blacks and Latinos were far more likely to get subprime loans than white borrowers during the housing boom, report after report has shown. In majority black and Latino communities, nearly half of all mortgages made in 2006 were high-cost subprime loans, according to research by the Local Initiatives Support Corp.


For people who know how fascism works, it will come as no surprise that Michelle Malkin is the point man in the right wing effort to blame Latino immigrants for the mortgage banking crisis.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/22/open-borders-wachovia-bank-posts-89-billion-loss /
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/06/13/wachovia-banking-on-open-borders /


Well now. It looks like banking on illegal immigration isn’t paying off for Wachovia. The bank’s massive losses and job cuts are the big news rocking the financial sector today


And then there is this:
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/05/12/open-borders-and-the-mortgage-mess /

It’s the elephant in the room: How much has illegal immigration contributed to the current mortgage mess?
No one in Washington wants to talk about it–even as lawmakers pushed to include a now-dead $25 million earmark for the open-borders activists of La Raza/The Race and are preparing to hand over $100 million to the group and other left-wing organizations as part of the mortgage counseling racket.

Snip

Congress needs to act. We need a full congressional investigation into determining just how rampant the illegal immigration problem is in regards to these mortgage defaults. Much like the savings-and-loan scandals of the 80’s we need to know which banks are catering to illegal immigrants in violation of U.S. law and making these extremely high risk loans putting the economic prosperity of this country in great peril.


If you want something with more substance, this article gives maps

http://undocumentedblogger.blogspot.com/2007/08/illegal-immigrants-face-of-subprime.html


"Foreclosure filings rose 9 percent from June to July and surged 93 percent over the same period last year." <4> "Consumer comfort plummeted this week amid turbulence in the stock market and a seemingly infectious crisis in the home mortgage market." <5>

Despite the rising economic crisis, the mainstream media has still not begun to investigate the apparent link between illegal immigration and the mortgage crisis. Instead they hold out hopes that the Federal Reserve will bail us out by cutting interest rates.


Give them a chance. Once the members of the mainstream media see that their corporate masters want them to blame Latino immigrants for our banking woes---and our recession---I am sure that the press will oblige.

In a previous journal called When Does It Become Fascism?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2371537

I make the case that Latino immigrants are being set up to become the scapegoats for the American right wing’s fascist coup, much in the same way that the Jews were made scapegoats by the Nazis.

The Nazis were able to justify their atrocities by claiming that Jewish people were not human. When the right wing claims that it is ok to beat, steal from, shoot or kill a Latino immigrant because they are not citizens, that is just a variation of the German argument. The right wing uses the same language to describe Latinos that the Nazis used to describe Jewish people--they are rapists, they carry disease, they are thieves, they have subhuman intelligence. And now, they are blaming them not just for the loss of jobs but for the failure of banks---as if the mere presence of immigrants somehow forced the lenders to compromise their ethics. This goes back to Paxton's point about an "alien" threat to the "pure" community which is prized above all. In the fairy tale according to Michelle Malkin and the other purveyors of fascism, America will be alright again once it embraces those cleansing American Values ---that you can buy at Wal-Mart (though they were probably manufactured in China).

[seemslikeadream]

10. Phil Gramm's UBS Bank BUSTED in $18B Major International Tax Scandal

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3648922


Phil Gramm's UBS Bank BUSTED in $18B Major International Tax Scandal --- Where's our MSM???
Posted by elehhhhna on Sun Jul-20-08 11:59 AM

$18B in Hiding

By Alexis Glick
Hold onto your hats this is going to be UGLY. Did you hear about the federal investigation into the private banking practices at UBS? Apparently, the Senate subcommittee on investigations released a report yesterday saying that UBS’s offshore accounting practices helped American citizens hide $18 billion from the IRS. As many as 19,000 accounts according to the IRS. Roni Deutch, a tax attorney and frequent guest on Money for Breakfast told me this morning that it could be A LOT more.

It sounds like a spy novel but it’s true according to the IRS and others investigating the practice of illegally hiding funds in offshore accounts. This involves all kinds of misdeeds and heads will role not only at UBS but at other institutions who did the same thing. As Roni rightly points out, the individual taxpayers, American citizens, who hid their money with this bank will also be in hot water and will likely face jail time or fines. It’s an unbelievable story...

http://glickreport.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/07/18/18b-in-hiding /

More details on Leichtenstein tax haven scandal
Posted: July 20, 2008, 8:59 AM by DrewHasselback
Banks
There's been a few interesting developments in the on-going Liechtenstein bank scandal.

A man identified only as "Elmar S" has become the first German citizen to be convicted of using secret bank accounts in Liechtenstein to evade taxes. Elmar S was given a two-year suspended sentence and order to give 7.5-million euros to charities and the state. The man admitted to evading 8-million euros in taxes, and was given a relatively light sentence because he cooperated with authorities.

Another big development came when U.S. Senate investigators released a 114-page document that among other things shows how Liechtenstein is used as a tax haven. The document was released prior to a hearing on Thursday at which UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, announced it would no longer help U.S. investors hide funds in secret accounts offshore.


The Liechtenstein tax scandal erupted earlier this year. Heinrich Kieber, a former employee with LGT Group, a bank owned by Liechtenstein's royal family, snuck off with computer records showing how individuals from all over the world — including some from Canada — use the sleepy alpine enclave as a place to hide money from tax agencies.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/legalpost/archive/2008/07/20/more-details-on-leichtenstein-tax-haven-scandal.aspx

[seemslikeadream]

11. Phil Gramm = UBS = Heinrich Kieber = Super Rich Tax Cheats Outed by Bank Clerk

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3625780




3625780, Phil Gramm = UBS = Heinrich Kieber = Super Rich Tax Cheats Outed by Bank Clerk
Posted by seemslikeadream on Tue Jul-15-08 09:48 PM

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5378080&page=1

Day of Reckoning? Super Rich Tax Cheats Outed by Bank Clerk
Technician in Liechtenstein Turns Over Names of Americans With Secret Bank Accounts
By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ
July 15, 2008


Hundreds of super-rich American tax cheats have, in effect, turned themselves in to the IRS after a bank computer technician in the tiny European country of Liechtenstein came forward with the names of US citizens who had set up secret accounts there, according to Washington lawyers investigating the scheme.


Heinrich Kieber, a bank computer technician in Liechtenstein came forward with the names of US citizens who had set up secret accounts there, according to Washington lawyers investigating the scheme. He has been branded a thief by the government of Liechtenstein for violating the country's bank secrecy laws.
(hand out)
The bank clerk, Heinrich Kieber, has been branded a thief by the government of Liechtenstein for violating the country's bank secrecy laws.


He is now in hiding but scheduled to testify to the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Thursday via a video statement from a secret location, according to Congressional investigators.


Aides for committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) are scheduled to provide reporters with a background briefing later this morning in Washington on the committee's investigation of tax haven banks in Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

[Mnemosyne]

19. slad, thank you for these. My mom refuses to believe UBS,

where ALL of her money is handled, is crooked. These articles together may convince her, finally, that she needs to yank it out.

Thank you. :hi:

[seemslikeadream]

12. ENRON and the Gramms

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3613212

[malaise]

13. Thanks for reposting these

:hi:

[seemslikeadream]

14. How many vampires do you see in that photo?

[malaise]

15. Too many

:rofl:

[seemslikeadream]

17. i and i will set them on fire

[tammywammy]

16. Here's a good article

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2767