World Financial Crisis Part 4

well, ok, using emails after the fact is better than no catching of fraudulent bankers at all.

(nb. it seems there are two World Financial Crisis Four threads at babble.  maybe some consolidation needed.[http://www.rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/world-financ... )

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A lot has happened in the last while. 

a) a fraudulent financier does Greece's accounting under the previous president and leaves the nation in a shambles.

b) prominent EU officials first reject then accept a rescue package for Greece that includes Washington-based IMF 'help'. If implemented, the IMF would dose Greece with its usual prescription of being compeletly hijacked by foreign bankers.

c) Greece, given some EU backing, tries to go with posting its own bonds at somewhat-too-high-rates, the lesser of two evils than all-out IMF intrusion.

d) meanwhile the Polish debacle unfolds.

e) US Securities Exchange Commission charges Goldman Sachs with fraud for deliberately spinning known bundled debt junk to investors.

e) and another draft Canada-EU 'free trade' aka junk-speculators-rights text is leaked [http://www.rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/canada-eu-deal]

So it seems that the desperate private bankers of the EU and the US are trying many means to expand into public territory- through their usual channels of IMF/WTO/bilateral deals as well as direct fraud.

Nothing will be solved by allowing these derivatives players to 'self-regulate' in exchanges as the EU text notes and US Senator Dodd's financial 'reform' program proscribes.

Following a rampage, it is no solution to give all the foxes in the region keys to the henhouse.

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Up to 300,000 teachers are for the chop in the US as states try to balance their budgets

Derivatives also include, from link above:

"Forwards and Futures:

Backwardation · Commodity futures · Contango · Currency future · Financial future · Forward market · Forward price · Forward rate · Interest rate future · Margin · Pricing of Forwards · Pricing of Futures · Single-stock futures

Other Derivatives:

CFD · CLN · CPPI · Credit derivative · ELN · Equity derivative · Foreign exchange derivative · Fund derivative · Inflation derivatives · Interest rate derivative · PRDC · Real estate derivatives · Real options

Market Issues:

Tax policy · Consumer debt · Corporate debt · Government debt · Climate change · Resource depletion · Late 2000s recession

..."

Derivatives traders are playing around with every element of the economy and ecology.

Transactions even with Dodd's self-regulated so-called 'open exhanges' are only open to other gamers, not the public.

Even the SEC cannot access transactions, only look at memos and only 'as necessary', as determined by gamers' laywers.

The whole set-up is an outrage.

the price tag of some derivatives, like swaps, in the tens of millions of dollars, is too high for most, and some are restricted to commercial and institutional investors.

but that is beside the main point.

Here is a link from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, year 2000, which includes some history and definitions relating to the exemption of trade in derivatives from Commission-regulated exchanges:

http://www.cftc.gov/foia/fedreg00/foi001213e.htm

With the full support, apparently, of Congress, Treasury, the Federal Reserve of Chicago, financiers including Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, etc. and corporations like Cargill, the Commission went ahead and allowed derivatives including swaps, reverse swaps, offsets, at the time valued over 90 trillion dollars, to be legally traded in unregulated 'safe harbours'.

These 'products' represent institutional financiers gaming with what are considered 'traditional' activities, eg. actual farmer's hedging to keep themselves from financial ruin. 

Instead players like Cargill and bankers game at higher levels, buy up and bet for and against consolidated products, including energy,  ruining farmers and others.

In Orwellian fashion, this was deemed by all as a way to 'reduce systemic risk'.

Apparently until that point there was a question as to whether these trades could be challenged as being illegal.

(in the section listed as 'page 78032'- about one quarter of the way down the text.)

"Moreover, the contract nonrepudiation provision that the Commission
is adopting today further removes any potential legal uncertainty. As
one commenter, McDermott, Will & Emery, on behalf of Virginia Electric
& Power Company, noted, this provision ``would prevent economically
disappointed counterparties from bringing a private cause of action
seeking to void the contract on the theory that it is illegal.'' CL 24-
25 at 2. This provision, as ISDA commented, will reduce legal
uncertainty because ``[it] deal[s] directly with the main source of
legal risk under the CEA.'' CL 24-8 at 5.

"The expansion of the exemption to cover all bilateral ``contracts,
agreements and transactions'' was endorsed by most other commenters. As
one commenter, Reuters Group PLC, noted, this amendment should permit a
``substantially broader range of transactions to enjoy a new level of
legal certainty.'' CL 24-30 at 2. "

I can understand lawmakers currently thinking that by eliminating all the erroneous exemptions, once again market players will be able to sue eachother and our problem will be solved.

But market players will only sue eachother if they 'are disappointed',as in the first quote here.

What if players collaborate, as they do in many cases, eg. the 'coalition' of financiers noted in linked text.

What if players in coalition come up with some new innovative loopholes?

What if they miss challenging trades which illegally trample human and ecological and social rights?

And, most important, if some trades are in fact illegal, have been illegal, why does the public have no say in determinations?

Why do we give that power to players on the exchange?

Where is the public opportunity to intervene initially before destructive forms of 'innovations' are devised and implemented?

What if there is already consensus that certain forms of financial gaming are in fact destructive to economy and ecology?

We need a process in place to exercise public rights.

Handing public rights to private players does not advance this goal.

gotta cultivate my garden now

celebrate the earth.

in the face of all the kings and governors,

good dark soil.

‘‘(49) PRIMARY FINANCIAL REGULATORY AGEN18
CY.—The term ‘primary financial regulatory agency’
19 has the same meaning as in section 2 of the Restor20
ing American Financial Stability Act of 2010.’’.

- from Dodd's current bill.

The 'primary financial regulatory agency' is the private Federal Reserve, as noted in comments at babble;

http://www.rabble.ca/babble/introductions/us-proposals-re-regulate-finance

Section 2 of Dodd's current bill defines 'primary financial regulatory agency' as in A) Section Three (q) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act.

Section Three (q) therein states,

"

(q)  APPROPRIATE FEDERAL BANKING AGENCY.--The term "appropriate Federal banking agency" means--

(1)  the Comptroller of the Currency, in the case of any national banking association, or any Federal branch or agency of a foreign bank;

(2)  the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, in the case of--

(A)  any State member insured bank,

(B)  any branch or agency of a foreign bank with respect to any provision of the Federal Reserve Act which is made applicable under the International Banking Act of 1978,

(C)  any foreign bank which does not operate an insured branch,

(D)  any agency or commercial lending company other than a Federal agency,

(E)  supervisory or regulatory proceedings arising from the authority given to the Board of Governors under section 7(c)(1) of the International Banking Act of 1978, including such proceedings under the Financial Institutions Supervisory Act of 1966, and

(F)  any bank holding company and any subsidiary of a bank holding company (other than a bank);

(3)  the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the case of a State nonmember insured bank, or a foreign bank having an insured branch; and

(4)  the Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision in the case of any savings association or any savings and loan holding company.

Under the rule set forth in this subsection, more than one agency may be an appropriate Federal banking agency with respect to any given institution."

http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/1000-400.html#fdic1000sec.3q

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Included are private Federal Reserve bankers as 'primary regulators.'

Scads of foxes in the henhouse.

This thread is relevant too:

http://www.rabble.ca/babble/introductions/paying-public-services .

The more i think about 'too big to fail' as simply being too big,

and about derivatives players gaming with everything on the planet,

the more i think that a good strategy to take our power back from Big Money is to take our money back:

All nations could refrain from issuing public bonds for private purchase to fund governments.  Private financiers not only skim the interest and control our debts, they further create derivatives, inflation, and systemic chaos under which they grab more self-regulatory powers and profits.

Instead, here we can use the money creation powers of the Bank of Canada under the Bank of Canada Act to directly fund public services.

Or parliaments can simply use taxes directly to spend on basic public services.

Either option is far less expensive, less inflationary being based on the real economy, and leaves our money directly under public control.

This seemed to have been the sticking point for Poland and Greece: 

Control and ownership of national finance seems to be a priority goal of private financiers. 

Therefore, public discussion of fully public financing, without the IMF or G20 forcing private partnerships and financing, is a priority.

However, public options need to be clearly discussed as replacing government private borrowing, or the public will think the options are additional cost. 

IMF calls for "fair and substantial" taxation of financial sector

What's going on over there? They must have switched brands of coffee.

Central Banks Seek to Avert Global Meltdown

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/bank-d01.shtml

"Yesterday's move by six major central banks to boost liquidity for European banks makes clear there is a growing fear in leading financial circles that the eurozone crisis threatens to set off a meltdown of the entire global financial system..."

How reliable is that information? Is it publicly available? If the Federal Reserve loan is true, it's a big story.

Central Banks Open the US Dollar Taps

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/11/30/central-banks-credit.html

"The Bank of Canada and five other central banks around the world are making a coordinated effort to improve the flow of money through the global economy. Although investors cheered the move in the short term, experts say the fundamental problem of massive sovereign debt loads remain..."

Our central bank recently colluded with other central banks in yet another colossal shakedown bearing all indications of an inside job, the murky details of which having been reported to us as a series of gun to the head maneuvers designed to shore up fellow international loan sharking operations, whose profit margins appear to be anything but of such a condition as to require further liquidity extortion. Has anyone heard tell if any of those ever so diligent opposition folks, our ears to the ground so to speak, had managed to acquire descriptions or even partial plate numbers from the getaway trucks? Come to think of it, has the opposition checked in with us at all since the entire crisis began unfolding a few years back, with any news whatsoever as to the status of all the goings on, and more specifically the whereabouts of the annual tens of billions and counting in protection racket payments so casually referred to as deficit spending?

So if the trend continues to 2015, we'll be staring at seven years of NDP omerta since the financial collapse of 2008.

What about when they had a permanent leader in place, say from 2008 onwards, and then the interim leader arrangement? Or is it the case that we're expected to remain enchanted by a ventriloquist act where neither hand nor mouth moves at all? Shouldn't we be hearing something...anything, from one of them at least?  Even little Jimmy sitting there on Harper's knee informed us that the European situation is dire for Canada.

Piper-Paying Germany Wants to Call the Tune (and vid)

http://rt.com/news/eurozone-debt-idea-eu-123/

"The euro's time is almost up..."

The NDP will continue to play  good-cop to the Harper bad cop. The canucklhead electorate will continue to be neo-conned and abused with impunity because the cynical no difference party strategy for taking power is more pain they gain. Has there ever been a time when a real opposition was more urgently required? Has there ever been a time when such was so spectacularly absent?

'don't have a clue' so as to appear ill informed but well intentioned instead of well informed and ill intentioned?

Global Financial Collapse: What Makes it Tick?

http://rt.com/news/global-financial-crisis-salbuchi-175/

"Firstly, it is not a 'crisis' at all: what the world is confronted with today is a full fledged, irreversible and unsustainable Global Financial Collapse.."

:)

Bankers Are the Dictators of the West  - by Robert Fisk

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion/2/277-75/8863-bankers-are-the-dic...

"...The banks believed-and still believe- they are the owners of their countries. The elections, which give them power, have - through the gutlessness and collusion of governments - become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop, decade after decade to anoint their national property owners.

Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and UK, each gobbling up the people's wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine...

The [western] protest movements are indeed against Big Business - a perfectly justified cause - and against 'governments'. What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties - which then hand their democratic mandate and the people's power to the bankers and the derivative traders and the rating agencies...backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of 'experts' from America's top universities and 'think-tanks', who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.."

We in the West - our governments have created our dictators. But unlike the Arabs, we can't touch them..."

So there is at least one happy consequence of the economic crisis. The cost of prisons is forcing state governments to have a look at whether handing out long prison sentences for everything is really appropriate.

According to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2010 America’s prison population declined year-on-year for the first time in nearly four decades. There were 1,605,127 prisoners behind bars in state and federal correction facilities in 2010, 9,228 fewer than in 2009.

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the bankers?!

Dimon, 55, whose 2010 compensation was $23 million, joined billionaires including hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Home Depot Inc. (HD) co-founder Bernard Marcus in using speeches, open letters and television appearances to defend themselves and the richest 1 percent of the population targeted by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.

A tiny violin to play wouldn't be tiny enough. I choose the micronium.

Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012  -  by Prof James Petras

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28349

"The economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative..."

GEAB No.60 Global Systemic Crisis - USA 2012-2016: An Insolvent and Ungovernable Country

http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-60-is-available-Global-systemic-crisis-USA...

"...the 2012 election year, which opens against the backdrop of economic and social depression, complete paralysis of the federal system, strong rejection of the traditional two-party system and a growing questioning of the relevance of the Constitution, inaugurating a crucial period in the history of the United States.

Over the next four years, the country will be subjected to political, economic, financial and social upheaval such as it has not known since the end of the Civil War, which, by an accident of history, started exactly 150 years ago in 1861.

During this period, the US will be simultaneously insolvent and ungovernable, turning that which was the 'flagship' of the world in recent decades into a 'drunken boat'..."

http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us