Octafish
Octafish's JournalThe Lies of Neoliberal Economics (or How America Became a Nation of Sharecroppers)
by MICHAEL HUDSON – CHRIS HEDGES
CounterPunch, April 1, 2016
EXCERPT...
HUDSON: Citibank, along with Countrywide Financial, was making junk mortgages. These were mortgages called NINJA. They were called liars’ loans, to people with no income, no jobs and no assets. You had this movie, The Big Short, as if some genius on Wall Street discovered that the mortgages were all going to go down. And you have the stories of Queen Elizabeth going to the economist …
HEDGES: “How come none of you knew?”
HUDSON: Right. The fact is, if everybody on Wall Street called these mortgages liars’ loans, if they knew that they’re made for NINJAs, for people who can’t pay, all of Wall Street knew that it was fraud.
The key is that if you’re a really smart criminal, you have to plan to get caught. The plan is how to beat the rap. On Wall Street, if you buy garbage assets, how do you make the government bail you out? That was what the president of the United States is for, whether it was Obama or whether it would have been John McCain …
HEDGES: Or Bush.
HUDSON: Or whether it would be Hillary today, or Trump. Their job is to bail out Wall Street and make the people pay, not Wall Street. Because Wall Street is “the people” who select the politicians – who know where their money is coming from. If you have a campaign contributor, no matter whether it’s Wall Street, or locally if it’s a real estate developer, you all know who your backers are.
The talent you need to have as a politician is to make the voters think that you’re going to be supporting their interests …
HEDGES: And what’s that great Groucho Marx quote?
HUDSON: The secret of success is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/01/the-lies-of-neoliberal-economics-or-how-america-became-a-nation-of-sharecroppers/
It's like an Empire of Evil.
Attacking innocent countries and stealing their stuff for Just Us.
Iran
Guatemala
Indonesia
Congo
Vietnam
Cuba
Brazil
Chile
Argentina
El Salvador
Nicaragua
Panama
Iraq
Somalia
Afghanistan
Honduras
Libya
Syria
Yemen
Bunch more for power and welfare for the wealthy and austerity and the boot for mankind...
What was it that Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC, (Ret.), said?
[font size="6"][font color="green"]"War is a Racket."[/font color][/font size]
Libya has oil.
Lots of oil.
"Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects."
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/component/acymailing/archive/view/listid-3-alerts-precis/mailid-74-three-little-words-wikileaks-libya-oil.html
Mohammad Gaddafi shared the oil wealth with the Libyan people, not just the one-percent Wall Street types.
For over four decades, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.
-- http://www.globalresearch.ca/libya-from-africas-wealthiest-democracy-under-gaddafi-to-us-nato-sponsored-terrorist-haven/5482974
While little reported in the USA, Libya's former leader also used the wealth to better life throughout the poorest nations of Africa.
In 2010 Gaddafi offered to invest $97 billion in Africa to free it from Western influence, on condition that African states rid themselves of corruption and nepotism. Gaddafi always dreamed of a Developed, United Africa and was about to make that dream come true - and nothing is more terrifying to the West than a Developed, United Africa.
-- http://www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/7869956-war-on-libya-is-war-on-entire-africa-
Wall Street-on-the-Potomac prefers to do business with those it can relate to: greedy types.
Gee! That's a different interbank bid rigging scandal from LIBOR interbank bid rigging scandal.
LIBOR
Their Profit is Our Loss
The Dark Heart of the Libor Scandal
by MARK VORPAHL
CounterPunch, August 07, 2012
Though, for most, the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate (Libor) interest rate fixing scandal appears to be distant and far too complex to understand, its potential consequences may be as economically devastating as a world war.
The Libor is used to set payments on $800 trillion worth of financial instruments. It sets the prices that people and corporations pay for loans and receive for savings. Given that the fraud impacted $10 trillion in consumer loans, the Libor scandal will likely leave a long list of previous financial scandals that contributed to the Great Recession look like child’s play.
It also pulls back the curtain on the mechanisms behind the world economy, its anti-social priorities, its willingness to gamble away the future of billions of people, and the government’s collusion in these operations. The Libor scandal reveals that the “invisible hand” Adam Smith spoke of in explaining how a capitalist economy regulates itself has been transformed into the trained hand of a swindler.
SNIP...
Barclays Bank is just the tip of the iceberg. In several countries, 20 big banks are under investigation, including such behemoths as Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, RBS and UBS.
Current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Chairman Ben Bernanke have had to defend the Fed’s response when it first became aware of the fraud in 2008. While Geithner said he was “aggressive” in expressing his concerns, this on-going scandal did not come to light until four years later.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/07/the-dark-heart-of-the-libor-scandal/
Here in Detroit, since 2008, many of my friends have lost their homes. Almost always, their jobs went first. Then the town's businesses left and then the town's economy left. Then Democracy itself left. Ask the Emergency Manager in Flint.
Feudalism. You Gotta Luv It. Like Fascism. CREEPed RIGHT in with the money trumps peace crowd after Dallas.
CIA left explosive material on school bus after training exercise
One unimagined reason why the CIA was chartered to operate only overseas.
By Clarence Williams and Moriah Balingit
The Washington Post March 31 at 7:25 PM
The CIA left “explosive training material” under the hood of a Loudoun County school bus after a training exercise last week, a bus that was used to ferry elementary and high school students to and from school on Monday and Tuesday with the material still sitting in the engine compartment, according to the CIA and Loudoun County officials.
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office and the CIA said in statements Thursday that the explosive material was left behind after a training exercise at Briar Woods High School during spring break. The CIA said it was a training scenario for explosives-detecting dogs.
CIA officials said in a statement that the material “did not pose a danger to passengers on the bus,” which was used on March 28 and 29. Authorities held a joint training program at Briar Woods from March 21 to 24.
Loudoun schools spokesman Wayde Byard said the CIA indicated the nature of the material but asked the school system not to disclose it. Byard described it as a “putty-type” material designed for use on the battlefield and which requires a special detonator; such putty, or plastic, explosives — including the well-known C-4 — are used in demolition and are considered stable.
SNIP...
CIA officials acknowledged the error in a statement and confirmed that an agency canine unit ran a training exercise with local agencies last week in the county. Agency officials said they were notified by Loudoun officials Wednesday and coordinated with them to recover the material.
CONTINUED...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/cia-left-explosive-material-on-loudoun-school-bus-after-training-exercise/2016/03/31/428f9824-f78d-11e5-a3ce-f06b5ba21f33_story.html
PS: This is an example of why President Truman said the CIA was created to gather intelligence. Period.
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