Octafish
Octafish's JournalThe new law enabled S&Ls to act like commercial banks, as well...
Instead of loaning money for homes and local businesses, S&Ls were free to use taxpayer-backed money on anything they wanted. The happy crooks got all they wanted and took the money offshore. The S&L was made whole, courtesy of the taxpayer.
Here's how I know:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2922138
PS: Sorry about all the links...phone typing is nuts.
Banking Is a Criminal Industry Because Its Crimes Go Unpunished
Banking Is a Criminal Industry Because Its Crimes Go Unpunished
Charles Ferguson
Huffington Post| Jul 16, 2012 08:23 AM EDT
Consider just (July's) news in financial services.
First, Barclay's has been manipulating the Libor, the main interest rate upon which most other interest rates and financial transactions are based, since 2005. Moreover, Barclay's traders were colluding with traders in many other banks to assist them in manipulating the Libor too, so that they could all profit from their bets on it.
Second, JP Morgan Chase is having a really great month. Recent reports describe how it is resisting Federal subpoenas related to price-fixing in U.S. electricity markets. It is also accused (by former employees among others) of deliberately inflating the performance of its investment funds to obtain business. And finally, JP Morgan's failed "London whale" trade, which has now cost over $5 billion, is being investigated to determine whether the loss was initially concealed from regulators and the public.
Third, HSBC is paying a fine because it allowed hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars of money laundering by rogue states and sanctioned firms, including some related to terrorist activities and Iran's nuclear efforts. But HSBC is only one of at least 12 banks now known to have tolerated, and in some cases aggressively courted, money laundering by rogue states, terrorist organizations, corrupt dictators, and major drug cartels over the last decade. Others include Barclay's, Lloyds, Credit Suisse, and Wachovia (now part of Wells Fargo). Several of the banks created special handbooks on how to evade surveillance, created special business units to handle money laundering, and actively suppressed whistleblowers who warned of drug cartel activities.
SNIP...
Just another month in financial services. Is it unusual? No, it's not. If we go back just a little further, we have UBS, HSBC, Julius Baer, and other banks actively marketing tax evasion services to wealthy U.S. and European citizens. We have senior executives of several banks (including JP Morgan Chase and UBS) strongly suspecting that Bernard Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, but deciding to make money from him rather than turn him in. And then, of course, we have the financial crisis and everything that led to it. As I show in great detail in my book Predator Nation, we now possess overwhelming evidence of massive securities fraud, accounting fraud, perjury, and criminal Sarbanes-Oxley violations by mortgage lenders, investment banks, and credit insurers (including senior executives of Countrywide, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, AIG, and Lehman Brothers) during the housing bubble that caused the financial crisis. If we go back to the late 1990s, we have the massively fraudulent hyping of Internet stocks, and several banks (including Merrill Lynch and Citigroup) actively aiding Enron in committing its frauds.
CONTINUED...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/charles-ferguson/bank-crimes_b_1675714.html
One Big Thing Oliver Stone got right: JFK was pulling US out of Vietnam.
National Security Action Memorandum 263
"I will never send draftees over there to fight."
Is that the same Wikipedia famous for CIA revisions?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/16/us-security-wikipedia-idUSN1642896020070816Taking Wikipedia's word on Jim Garrison, who said the agency had some kind of role in the assassination of President Kennedy, then would be what's odd.
For those interested in learning more about Garrison:
http://www.joanmellen.net/
Stone does the nation a service by bringing up the things the rightwing prefers we move on from.
How anyone, particularly "progressive, liberal Democrats," can agree with the fictions foisted by Washington and the toadies in Corporate McPravda is startling. It's as if they never heard of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution or WMDs in Iraq.
Oliver Stone, on the book, "JFK and the Unspeakable":
Why does it matter? The death of JFK remains a critical turning point in our history. Those who caused his death were targeting not just a man but a vision -- a vision of peace. There is no calculating the consequences of his death for this country and for the world. Those consequences endure. To a large extent, the fate of our country and the future of the planet continue to be controlled by the shadowy forces of what Douglass calls "the Unspeakable." Only by unmasking these forces and confronting the truth about our history can we restore the promise of democracy and lay claim to Kennedy's vision of peace.
Thank you, MadHound, for an outstanding post.
PS: Here's my 2-cents on the subject:
Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn t win WWII, so they backed Bushes.
I can't stand conservatives - especially conservative Democrats
Hypocrites and Hypocrites squared.
A Dallas tee vee station recorded JFK leaving Love Field on Nov. 22, 1963...
...it was never shown on national broadcast, for some reason. In the tape, Secret Service Agent Donald Lawton holds up his arms thrice in the classic "What the heck?" gesture. The video indicates SS agent Emory P. Roberts stood up in his car to order Lawton* off the presidential limousine's back bumper, leaving the president unprotected from behind. President Kennedy was murdered a few minutes later.
Video: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/171830/secret_service_jfk /
From Vince Palamara:
An important discovery was made by this correspondent during review of video of the Dallas trip shot by the ABC television affiliate in that city. During the start of the fatal motorcade at Love Field, Secret Service agent Don Lawton begins to jog alongside the presidential limousine. He is immediately called back by his shift leader and commander of the follow-up car detail, Emory P. Roberts.
Lawton's dismay and confusion is made manifest by his unambiguous body language: He throws up his arms several times before, during and after the follow-up car passes him. He was not being allowed to do his job -- and it was not JFK who was ordering the stand-down.
Despite the discovery by this correspondent of three reports to the contrary (two by Roberts) written on November 22, 1963, this newly discovered photographic evidence confirms that frustrated and vocal-in-his-objections Rybka did not enter the follow-up car and was left behind at the airport.
Afterward, in William Manchester's book, Death of a President, we see the "official story" of what happened:
"Kennedy grew weary of seeing bodyguards roosting behind him every time he turned around, and in Tampa on November 18 (1963), just four days before his death, he dryly asked Agent Floyd Boring to 'keep those Ivy League charlatans off the back of the car.' Boring wasn't offended. There had been no animosity in the remark." (1988 Harper & Row/Perennial Library edition, pp. 37-38)
The thing is PRESIDENT KENNEDY NEVER SAID THAT.
SOURCE:
Agents Go On Record
* Previously, the agent in the photo was incorrectly identified as Henry J. Rybka. According to records, he also was ordered to stay off the car and remain at Love Field. Much "chatter" arose over the misidentification.
You gotta problem wit' dat?
A chosen BFEE few will survive.
Know what I mean, see?
Is survival only for the rich?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9084342&mesg_id=9084342
Justice for JFK
What Can We Do About JFK's Murder?
It's time to demand accountability from the officials who failed to protect the president -- and then spent decades covering up their mistakes.
by Jefferson Morley
The Atlantic, Nov. 21, 2012
As November 22 comes around again, the memory of John F. Kennedy's assassination seems to be fading in America's collective consciousness, save among aging Baby Boomers like myself. Few people younger than me (I'm 54) have any memory of the day it actually happened. 9/11 has replaced 11/22 as the date stamp of catastrophic angst.
Yet that doesn't mean people have stopped looking for answers. The buzz surrounding the release of Jackie Kennedy's private conversations and Tom Hanks' upcoming Dallas movie shows that the public is still seeking new theories and clues. Two years ago on this site, I tried to answer the question "What Do We Really Know About JFK?" With the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination approaching next year, the time for conspiracy theories has passed and the time for accountability is coming. Now is the time to ask, "What can we do about JFK's assassination?"
For one thing, we can use the Internet. The World Wide Web has birthed many conspiracy theories (most of them easily debunked), but it has also made the historical record of JFK's murder available to millions of people outside of Washington and the federal government for the first time. I have to believe this diffusion of historical knowledge will slowly clarify the JFK story for everybody.
CONTINUED w links...
http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/what-can-we-do-about-jfks-murder/265520/
Outstanding post, bvar22, in every way.
Thank you for putting it down in words. The side-show artistes, who most loudly and automatically proclaim "nothin' to it conspiracy nonsense" whenever the subject of electronic vote fraud comes up, succeed merely by derailing discussion from what truly matters: verified voting with a citizen-counted paper trail. Those who have lost their lives working on the process and related matters include Athan Gibbs and Michael Connell.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleMember since: 2003 before July 6th
Number of posts: 55,745
