It's a Recovery. No Really, the eCONomy is Expanding

Pot Meet Kettle

"Despite years of urging and oversight by American advisers, President Hamid Karzai’s government has yet to prosecute a high-level corruption case."
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"The players include people tied to President Hamid Karzai’s inner circle, many of whom have profited from the crony capitalism that has come to define Afghanistan’s economic order, and nearly brought down Kabul Bank."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/world/asia/corruption-remains-intractable-in-afghanistan-under-karzai-government.html?hp

Missing Iraqi money may have been stolen:
Reporting from Washington — After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.
Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/13/world/la-fg-missing-billions-20110613

Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton Each Prosecuted Financial Crime More Aggressively than Obama

Top economists and financial experts agree that our economy will never recover unless Wall Street fraud is prosecuted. See this and this.
But the government has more or less made it official policy not to prosecute fraud, and instead to do everything necessary to cover up for Wall Street
.http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/obama-prosecuting-fewer-financial-crimes-than-under-either-bush-presidency.html

Ryssdal: What about the argument, though, that the financial system is so fragile still, and these cases so complicated, that we can’t really tear things apart with substantive investigations and prosecutions because it will all fall apart again?

Black: Yeah, that’s an excellent point. We should leave felons in charge of our largest financial institutions as a means of achieving financial stability

When more junior officials took actions discouraging criminal investigations against Charles Keating that were considerably less harmful than Geithner’s actions the Congress, the administration, and the media treated those actions as infamous and the head of the Office of Thrift Supervision, Danny Wall, had to resign. Why aren’t Geithner’s and Holder’s far more harmful and unprincipled actions, and failures to act, with regard to the elite criminals that caused the Great Recession a national scandal? Why isn’t Attorney General Mukasey, who was even more derelict than Holder, considered a national embarrassment? Have we lost our capacity as a nation for outrage? Are these elite ethical failures too powerful to hold accountable?
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/04/reflections-on-geithners-hatred-for-prosecuting-criminal-contributors.html

“This is not some evil conspiracy of two guys sitting in a room saying we should let people create crony capitalism and steal with impunity,” said William K. Black, a professor of law at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and the federal government’s director of litigation during the savings and loan crisis. “But their policies have created an exceptional criminogenic environment. There were no criminal referrals from the regulators. No fraud working groups. No national task force. There has been no effective punishment of the elites here.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/business/14prosecute.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1331219877-EgbUWAfRX7xJGIpPXntv8A

To stop the theft from continuing, it requires that the most basic rules of capitalism be applied to our banks and that our future national wealth be safeguarded by the U.S. Government. The current custodian of America's wealth, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is not doing a good job of either. The time for corrective action is now.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33586124/ns/msnbc_tv-the_dylan_ratigan_show/t/why-keep-geithner/

[A]bout how money dominates politics, distorting free markets and endangering democracy. “As a result,” Stockman says, “we have neither capitalism nor democracy. We have crony capitalism."
http://billmoyers.com/episode/crony-capitalism/

Heads Still Rolling in Mexico

Don't know what will stop this evil.
Three Heads are Better Than One

Sacre bleu! Sarko Runs But he can't Hide

Sarkozy would get 23 percent of votes and Hollande 30.5 percent in a first round of the election on April 22. The gap between the two candidates widened to 7.5 percentage points in the survey conducted on March 2-3 from six points on Feb. 19, the poll published today by LH2 poll for Yahoo! showed.
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Sarkozy is also increasingly trailing Hollande in the May 6 second round of the election with support at 42 percent, against 58 percent for his Socialist rival. That 16-point gap is more than the 10-point difference measured on Feb. 19.
Sarko is Dog Meat

Guido's Still Pissed

November, 2010:
 Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega has been saying out loud what his colleagues have been whispering: the time of the US dollar as reserve currency is over.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/LK13Aa01.html

Although nations now have the tools to defuse a standoff, the possibility of a currency war "absolutely" remains, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said at the conclusion of the two-day summit.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/13/world/la-fg-obama-g20-20101113

July 2011:
Brazil's Finance Minister Guido Mantega recently told the Financial Times that the global currency war "was absolutely not over," and cited two countries that, according to him, have not ceased the hostilities: China and the United States.
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/9498/brazil-caught-between-titans-in-global-currency-war

February 2012:
Brazil has declared a fresh “currency war” on the US and Europe, extending a tax on foreign borrowings and threatening further capital controls in an effort to protect the country’s struggling manufacturers.

Guido Mantega, the finance minister who was the first to use the controversial term in 2010, said the government would not “sit by passively” as developed nations continue to pursue expansionary monetary policies at the expense of Brazil.

“When the real appreciates, it reduces our competitiveness. Exports are more expensive, imports are cheaper and it creates unfair competition for businesses in Brazil,” he said on Thursday after announcing changes to the so-called IOF tax
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding

"I'm a libertarian. If someone wants to do leveraged buyouts, more power to them. If they want to have a brothel, let them run a brothel. But it doesn't mean that public policy ought to be biased dramatically to encourage one kind of business arrangement over another. And right now public policy and taxes and free money from the Fed are encouraging way too much debt, way too much speculation and not enough productive real investment and growth."
Bernanke is a Coward Thief

“Do they want Chinese banks to turn into liars and parasites?” said Du.

Yes Du, they do.

“State-owned industry should not be privatized,” Du shouted as Zoellick was talking, adding, “this report from the World Bank is poison.”
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/229186.html

How Does One Unintentionally Burn Books?

A senior U.S. military official said Tuesday that the Korans were removed from the prison library because they had radical or inflammatory messages scrawled in them.
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 "[I] assure you . . . I promise you . . . this was NOT intentional in any way.” Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said.
NATO Burns Korans


If the Koran's were removed due to radical or inflammatory scrawlings, how can this General claim the burnings weren't intentional? They were accidently dropped into a fire after being removed from the library?

Criminogenic-Producing or Intended to Produce Crime and Criminality

"At a time of continuing unrest in Yemen and the threat of escalating violence, we see it as helpful for President Saleh to be out of the country in the run up to interim presidential elections in February," the British spokesman said.
http://www.france24.com/en/20120129-yemen-president-saleh-arrives-usa-medical-treatment-power-transfer-protests

That, in a nutshell, is how many Yemenis see the US role in their country. The United States “should have never made counterterrorism a source of profit for the regime, because that increased terrorism,” asserts Iryani. “Their agenda was to keep terrorism alive, because it was their cash cow.” The US bombings, he said, were “a bad mistake. Military action often backfires by killing civilians, by the violation of sovereignty. That offends a lot of Yemenis.” For the United States, the most serious question that lingers over Yemen after Ali Abdullah Saleh is: Did US counterterrorism policy strengthen the very threat it sought to eliminate? “It was a major fiasco,” Iryani says of the past decade of US counterterrorism policy in Yemen. “I think if we had been left alone, we would have less terrorists in Yemen than we do now.”
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/15-8

Criminogenic-Producing or Intended to Produce Crime and Criminality

“There is no more low- hanging fruit out there - all the low-hanging fruit is gone. Difficult structural reforms are what lie ahead.” said IMF Greece mission head Poul Thomsen

In a letter obtained by Reuters Friday, the Federation of Greek Police accused the officials of "...blackmail, covertly abolishing or eroding democracy and national sovereignty" and said one target of its warrants would be the IMF's top official for Greece, Poul Thomsen.
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"Since you are continuing this destructive policy, we warn you that you cannot make us fight against our brothers. We refuse to stand against our parents, our brothers, our children or any citizen who protests and demands a change of policy," said the union, which represents more than two-thirds of Greek policemen.
"We warn you that as legal representatives of Greek policemen, we will issue arrest warrants for a series of legal violations ... such as blackmail, covertly abolishing or eroding democracy and national sovereignty."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/10/us-greece-police-idUSTRE8190UC20120210

16.09 The Greek police federation Poasy is now offering a bounty of €1 for each of the mission chiefs from the troika, dubbing them, quite poetically, as the "undertakers of our people's dreams". Obviously they think that the Greek people don't need much of a financial incentive to assist in bringing them in...
For two years, the national federation of police officers has warned you that the policies you dictate and demand to be implemented at gunpoint will explode social cohesion and kill off any hope to restore the Greek economy. We will ask for the immediate issue of arrest warrants
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9073437/Debt-crisis-live.html

Ignorant Elitist Media and State Dept. Pricks Abound

BAGHDAD — Less than two months after American troops left, the State Department is preparing to slash by as much as half the enormous diplomatic presence it had planned for Iraq
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[t]he Americans have been frustrated by Iraqi obstructionism and are now largely confined to the embassy because of security concerns, unable to interact enough with ordinary Iraqis to justify the $6 billion annual price tag.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/world/middleeast/united-states-planning-to-slash-iraq-embassy-staff-by-half.html

How Did the BLS Arrive at the Figure of 243,000K New Jobs Created in January?

Total non-farm employment in the U.S., before seasonal adjustments, fell by 2,689,000 jobs in January. However, because it's typical for the economy to lose a large number of jobs after the holidays, largely in retail trade, construction, and manufacturing, the BLS estimated that the "normal" seasonal decline in employment should have been 2,932,000 jobs in January. The difference between the two numbers, of course, was 243,000 jobs, which was reported as an increase in employment. The fact that the size of the seasonal adjustment was more than 12 times the number of reported jobs, and more than 30 times the "beat" in economists' expectations, should provoke at least some hesitation in taking the number at face value.

Notably, the January 2011 and 2012 seasonal adjustment factors ( seasonally adjusted payrolls divided by unadjusted payrolls) have been the two largest factors used by the BLS since the 1960's, at 1.0166 and 1.0165, respectively. This compares with a January seasonal factor of 1.0155 a decade ago, and a factor of 1.0152 as recently as 2009. Now, a range of 0.0014 in the seasonal factors for January may not seem like much, until you consider that non-seasonally adjusted payrolls are presently about 130 million jobs, so variation in the seasonal adjustment factor alone amounts to a difference of 182,000 reported jobs. I'm not suggesting there's anything nefarious going on here, it's just that part of what we're seeing here is most likely a statistical artifact of the adjustment process.
http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc120206.htm

Promoting Democracy?

View from the propoganda based US MSM:
CAIRO — The Egyptian authorities have referred 19 Americans and two dozen others to face criminal trials, the state media reported Sunday. The move is part of a politically charged investigation into the foreign financing of nonprofit groups that has shaken the 30-year alliance between the United States and Egypt.
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The International Republican Institute and its sister organization, the National Democratic Institute, are independent nonprofit groups, with close ties to the Congressional leadership, that promote democracy in countries around the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/middleeast/egypt-will-try-19-americans-on-criminal-charges.html?hp

Now, the rest of the story...

Criminogenic-Producing or Intended to Produce Crime and Criminality

The NY Times has discovered that the Banks that were rescued by the public have turned into serial fraud offenders. JP Morgan is near the top of their ranks, with Goldman Sachs and Bank of America not far behind.   Only Citigroup seems to have fallen out of favor.
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Obama talks a good game, and presents a moral face through the media, but an examination of his actions and his record shows that his administration serves the monied interests to the detriment of the public interest. In many cases they are merely following the same practices begun in the Clinton Administration and carried on by Bush.  It is a bad situation indeed when the 'reformer' elected by the people has failed to reform. 

He may not be as brazen and open as his Republican opponents in promoting the interests of the Wall Street, perhaps, and certainly is not as favorable to Big Oil, but the corruption of justice for all in American politics seems to have become pervasive over the last fifteen years.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/02/sec-allows-americas-biiggest-wall-st.html

WASHINGTON — Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street in the last decade, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments specifically meant to apply to fraud cases.

By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.

An analysis by The New York Times of S.E.C. investigations over the last decade found nearly 350 instances where the agency has given big Wall Street institutions and other financial companies a pass on those or other sanctions. Those instances also include waivers permitting firms to underwrite certain stock and bond sales and manage mutual fund portfolios.

Criminogenic-Producing or Intended to Produce Crime and Criminality

A U.S. Justice Department source has told The Daily Caller that at least two DOJ prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted under court seal within the past 13 months, but never arrested or prosecuted.
The sitting governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, his attorney general and an unspecified number of Virgin Islands legislators also accepted bribes, the source said, adding that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is aware prosecutors and elected officials were bribed and otherwise compromised, but has not held anyone accountable.
The bribed officials, an attorney with knowledge of the investigation told TheDC, remain on the taxpayers’ payroll at the Justice Department without any accountability. The DOJ source said Holder does not want to admit public officials accepted bribes while under his leadership.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/01/bribery-compromised-officials-leave-indicted-financial-crime-suspects-free-from-prosecution-under-holders-doj/8/

How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’

by George Lakey

[S]weden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different. Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation.

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They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change. In both countries, the troops were called out to defend the 1 percent; people died.

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In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it.

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The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million.

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Many people then found that their mortgages were in jeopardy. (Sound familiar?) The Depression continued, and farmers were unable to keep up payment on their debts.

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The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society.

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When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?)

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Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid.

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/26-3

Criminogenic-Producing or Intended to Produce Crime and Criminality



"I don't know where the $1.2 billion of client money invested with a primary dealer of my Federal Reserve went to. Three ring tosses for $1, only takes one to win a prize."



the findings so far suggest that a "significant amount" of the money could have "vaporized" as a result of chaotic trading at MF Global during the week before the company's Oct. 31 bankruptcy filing, said a person close to the investigation."
The Worlds Largest Central Bank Staffed by Carnies

The Second Tier Simulacrum that is the U.S. Economic Recovery

Plato speaks of two kinds of image-making. The first is a faithful reproduction, attempted to copy precisely the original. The second tier is distorted intentionally in order to make the copy appear correct to viewers.

"The Obama administration has been touting the “recovery” of the American economy and yet this recent data seems to demonstrate that the average household is still waiting for some of the benefits seen in the stock market."

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"If we are in recovery, why have American’s incomes dropped more during the recovery than they did in the recession? The facts are clear:
Personal incomes fell during the recession by 3.2%.
During the recovery (since July 2009), personal incomes have fallen an additional 6.7%
Personal Incomes Fall Faster and Further During the "Recovery" than During the Recession

Criminogenic-Producing or Intended to Produce Crime and Criminality

"Information on CPCE and the other measures of inflation is available monthly. There’s no reason (that I can think of) why the Fed chose to deliberately omit two years of data that would conflict with the “desired’ conclusion. To me, it looks like the authors manipulated the report."
All bankers are liars. All central bankers are liars and money printers

Criminogenic-Producing or Intended to Produce Crime and Criminality



Shoplift a $4 T-Shirt from Wal-Mart and you'll be maced, beaten and incarcerated. Steal billions of dollars from US taxpayers and the head of the US Justice Department will run interference for you.

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(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

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Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.
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Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.
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Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn't brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.
The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks' offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.
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AG Holder Protects His Own