More Chicago-area homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure in the first three months of the year than in any quarter in the past five years. This disturbing statistic raises doubts about the effectiveness of mortgage loan modification efforts and could put more downward pressure on property values.
Within the six-county Chicago region during the first quarter, 9,302 homes went through a court-ordered auction, the last step in the foreclosure process, and 95 percent of those properties were taken back by lenders. Within the city of Chicago, almost 3,500 homes went to auction, and 95 percent of those also became bank-owned, according to data to be released Thursday by Woodstock Institute, a Chicago-based think tank.
A portion of the increase in auctions can be attributed to various moratoriums lenders put in place during the holiday season and while they evaluated homeowners either for the federal government's Home Affordable Modification Program or their own internal programs. However, it appears clear lenders are now stepping up efforts to push properties through the foreclosure system as homeowners fail to qualify for loan modifications or default again.
More than half of all loan modifications fell 60 days or more past due by nine months after the initial modification, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said in a report last month on fourth-quarter mortgage performance.
Lenders "put a halt on the process, but did it help [borrowers] in the end?" said Geoff Smith, Woodstock Institute's senior vice president. "Are these foreclosure prevention programs working? If HAMP was working, you'd have less completed foreclosures. More people lost their homes. That's undisputed."
Some community groups that have worked to combat the growing number of foreclosures and abandoned properties expressed surprise about the rise in bank-owned properties, particularly given the attention paid to foreclosures.
In Chicago, Local Initiatives Support Corp., a community development support group, helps fund programs that support neighborhood redevelopment, but senior program officer Marva Williams acknowledged it was impossible to get ahead of the problem, and more abandoned homes mean a greater threat to a neighborhood's safety. Compared with 2009's first quarter, completed auctions within the city spiked 59 percent in the last three months.
In Schaumburg, officials require owners of vacant property to register those addresses with the village. While some 300 are registered, the village estimates there are a few hundred homes it doesn't know about. During the year's first quarter, foreclosure auctions were completed on 83 homes, an increase of 186 percent over 2009's first quarter. More than 100 foreclosed homes in Schaumburg are listed for sale.
Housing counselors, meanwhile, say the rising number of auctions in so many communities demonstrates HAMP's ineffectiveness. "What we see and what we hear from servicers is they have to file foreclosure if a person is 90-plus days delinquent," said Liz Caton, director of counseling services at the Northwest Side Housing Center. "They will keep pushing it through and they will get their judgment and they'll go all the way through to auction. They aren't slowing it down."
In Chicago's Jefferson Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side, more than 30 foreclosures are for sale and 24 homes became bank-owned during the first quarter, pushing down property values in a neighborhood that has already seen them tumble, according to Merril Miller, president of the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association.
"We're seeing a lot of for-sale signs," she said. "There's a lot of concern."
Judicial Sales Corp., one of several companies that handles foreclosure auctions for Cook County, has auctions scheduled on 110 homes Thursday. The firm, a subsidiary of Attorneys' Title Guaranty Fund, predicted that auction volume would rise for the first half of the year but slowly subside as foreclosure filings moderate, President Peter Birnbaum said.
And at least in the first quarter, filings did ease in some areas.
The bright spot in Woodstock Institute's report was a 12.4 percent year-over-year first-quarter decline in initial foreclosure filings within the city of Chicago, to just under 5,000 filings. That enabled Cook County to record an overall drop of 4.7 percent in filings. However, double-digit increases in some of the collar counties — namely 11.2 percent in DuPage; 16 percent in Lake and 11.5 percent in McHenry — meant an overall 1 percent increase in initial foreclosure filings in the six-county region.
Birnbaum predicts that more banks will move to get properties off their balance sheets by putting them up for sale rather than carrying them while they wait for an improved housing market and better prices.
"We think the market will stabilize down the road but it will be a couple years," Birnbaum said. "There's phantom inventory. There's a lot to come, and that's going to depress prices in the near term."
Friday, April 30, 2010
Southern Alberta digs out of April snow
CALGARY (CBC) - Traffic was slowly moving on reopened highways and power returning to homes in southern Alberta after an overnight snowstorm.
Late Thursday afternoon, Environment Canada downgraded the area's winter storm warning to a wind warning with gusts up to 90 km/h, diminishing overnight. More snow between 10 to 15 centimetres was forecast over the Cypress Hills and in eastern sections of the Lethbridge region.
Up to 12 centimetres of snow fell on Wednesday night into Thursday morning in Calgary and surrounding areas, causing problems on major highways.
The southbound lanes of Highway 2 reopened between Carstairs and Airdrie on late Thursday afternoon, but major delays were still expected for several hours.
Emergency and highway crews worked on removing vehicles from earlier crashes and packed snow from the driving lanes, said the RCMP. They advised motorists to use alternate routes if possible until the traffic backlog cleared.
While major roads in Calgary were primarily clear by Thursday afternoon, graders were working on large snowdrifts in residential areas in the northwest of the city.
The City of Calgary said two locations remained problematic for the evening rush hour:
Motorists also dealt with a road closure at 42nd Avenue S.E. between Ogden Road and Highfield Crescent after a freight train derailed at about 2 p.m.
No one was injured but the road was closed for several hours until the train could be cleared.
High winds and wet snow knocked out power to about 55,000 Calgary homes, with the Country Hills area in the dark for about six hours, said Doris Kaufmann, a spokeswoman with Enmax, Calgary's city-owned utility.
Rural electricity provider, Fortis Alberta, said its worst-hit areas were Bassano, Airdrie, Black Diamond and communities south of Lethbridge.
Highway 1 from Calgary to Strathmore saw improved driving conditions but the area east of Strathmore was still a mess because of poor visibility and ice, as well as a jack-knifed semi truck.
More than two dozen flights were cancelled or delayed at the Calgary International Airport.
The weather closed Catholic schools in Airdrie, Chestermere, and Cochrane, but schools in Calgary remained open.
This is the third major snowfall in the Calgary area this month.
While economy crumbled, top financial watchdogs at SEC surfed for porn on Internet: memo
At the SEC, all they thought about was SEX.
The country's top financial watchdogs turned out to be horndogs who spent hours gawking at porn Web sites as the economy teetered on the brink, according to a memo released Thursday night.
The shocking findings include Securities and Exchange Commission senior staffers using government computers to browse for booty and an accountant who tried to access the raunchy sites 16,000 times in one month.
Their titillating pastime was discovered during 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, said the memo obtained by The Associated Press.
It says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2-1/2 years since the country's financial system nearly crashed.
The report was written by SEC Inspector General David Kotz in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).
Among the startling findings:
- A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When his government computer ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs. He later agreed to resign.
- An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a single month from visiting "sex" or "pornography" sites, but still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material by using Google to bypass the SEC's internal filter. He wound up with a 2-week suspension.
- Seventeen of the randy employees were "at a senior level" earning salaries of up to $222,418.
- The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.
California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said it was "disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation's economy on the brink of collapse." An SEC spokesman declined to comment last night.
How Ehud Barak Pulled Off 9-11
"It is one hundred percent certain that 9-11 was a Mossad operation - period." - Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former director of Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, is currently in the United States for a week of meetings and speeches. He is, in my opinion, the key suspect of being the mastermind of the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11. To help understand how Barak pulled off 9-11 I am providing this brief article to explain how I think he did it. It should be noted that Barak was Israel's minister of defense during Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-2009. Based on the findings of the U.N. Factfinding Report written by Justice Richard Goldstone, Barak is responsible for a host of war crimes committed during that assault. The United States and other states are obliged to arrest Ehud Barak based on the findings of that report.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak (L) talks with Minister of Pensioner Affairs Rafi Eitan as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (C) waits to start the weekly cabinet meeting May 25, 2008 in Jerusalem. Eitan is wanted by the FBI for his role as the spymaster of Jonathan Pollard. Olmert was in New York City on 9-11. These three men know very well who was behind the terrorism of 9-11.
Ehud Barak was prime minister of Israel from July 1999 until March 7, 2001, when he was replaced by Ariel Sharon. I attended an event at the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois where both Barak, then prime minister, and Sharon were involved, shortly before the election that brought Sharon to power. The fact that Barak and Sharon had travelled to Chicago together illustrated the utter fakeness of their rivalry.
Previous positions held by Barak include Head of Defense Planning and Budgeting, Head of the Israeli Intelligence Community, Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Minister of the Interior in Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin's cabinet, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Shimon Peres cabinet, and Labor Party Chairman. If Israel is involved in 9-11, as Dr. Alan Sabrosky says and which the evidence strongly indicates, Barak certainly knows all about it.
When Sharon assumed power in March 2001, Barak came to America. He supposedly came to the United States to work as a special advisor for Electronic Data Systems and as a partner with SCP Partners, a private equity company focused on "security-related" work - but this was only his cover. His real assignment was to oversee the terror attacks of 9-11. As a partner with SCP Partners Barak was well placed to supervise the false-flag terror operation. The complex false-flag terror attacks of 9-11 required that the mastermind of the operation be in the country to oversee the critical details.
One of the key aspects of 9-11 was the production and application of an advanced form of super-thermite, an extremely powerful explosive produced using nano-technology. In 2001, SCP Partners happened to have a suitable company in their portfolio, a private company called Metallurg Holdings, Inc., which has its office in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Today, SCP has another company called Advanced Metallurgical Group, N.V. (AMG) in its portfolio. AMG and Metallurg share the same address at 435 Devon Park Drive in Wayne. AMG has several subsidiaries, one that specializes in the production of atomized aluminum (a crucial component of super-thermite) and others which manufacture specialized coatings of nano-composites. SCP Partners, which included Ehud Barak from 2001 until 2007, clearly owns companies that are well suited to making nano-composite explosives like the super-thermite used to pulverize the World Trade Center on 9-11.
Chips of super-thermite found in the dust of the World Trade Center by Dr. Steven E. Jones
Rafi Eitan, the octogenarian Mossadnik who ran a spy operation against the United States using Jonathan Pollard, fled to Israel after Pollard was caught in 1985. Eitan was then offered the position as head of state-owned Israel Chemicals Corporation, which has production facilities in the United States. In 1978, when Israeli intelligence began planning the false-flag terror operation of 9-11 (according to the comments of senior Mossadnik Isser Harel), Eitan served as Menachem Begin's advisor on terrorism. This is the real reason that Rafi Eitan remained in the Israeli security cabinet until 2009 - he is one of the architects of 9-11.
Raphael Hantman a.k.a. Rafi Eitan
At SCP Partners Barak worked closely with another Mossadnik named Eitan - Yaron I. Eitan. Although Yaron Eitan looks very much like Rafi Eitan, the relationship between the two Eitans is not known. Rafi Eitan was actually born Raphael Hantman and reportedly has three children named Yael, Sharon, and Yuval.
Yaron I. Eitan
Note on Las Vegas Radio Show & Ehud Barak's U.S. Visit
April 25, 2010
Good News - The AM radio show in Las Vegas aired on Friday, April 23, and was a great success. I was on "Keeping It Real with Mike & Jeff" on KNUU 970 AM Las Vegas, which reaches listeners in 4 states. The 50-minute show is now archived on the KNUU website at http://970knuu.com/archives.htm To listen to the show, scroll down to the section for "Keeping it Real with Mike & Jeff" and click on the 4/23 show. (Their 9-11 truth show of 3/23 with Richard Gage can also be found in this archive section.)
To use the direct link to the April 23 show, click on the following link and allow it to load:
http://970knuu.com/Local%20Shows/Keeping%20It%20Real/KeepingItReal4-23-2010.mp3
Mike Levin and Jeff Sawin, and their listeners in the Las Vegas area, are clearly well aware of the 9-11 deception having done an excellent 45-minute show on March 23, 2010, with Richard Gage, an architect from San Francisco and 9-11 truth activist member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. They fully understand that it is impossible for high-rise towers to collapse as the government and media say they did on 9-11. In this show, done one month ago, they also discussed the evidence of super-thermite in the dust. See: http://cms.ae911truth.org/
The tiny red-gray chips of super-thermite found by Dr. Steven E. Jones in the dust of the World Trade Center prove that many tons of this nano-composite high explosive had been applied to the interior surfaces of the Twin Towers, probably to the undersides of the floor pans and the elevator shafts. Cutter charges of thermite were used to cut the core columns, removing any resistance to the collapses. Thermite is mainly composed of aluminum and iron oxide particles. The smaller the particles, the bigger the bang. The particles in the super-thermite used on 9-11 were super small, i.e. nano-size - creating a incredibly powerful heat-producing incendiary - which were combined with an organic compound to create intense gas pressure. Why won't the U.S. government spend a few dollars to find out who made this stuff? What could be more important than solving 9-11? Why does the American holocaust of our time get such short shrift from the U.S. government and mainstream media?
One of the iron droplets found in the dust of the World Trade Center. This photo from the USGS survey of the dust proves that large amounts of molten iron accompanied the demolition of the World Trade Center. The molten iron was created by tons of Thermite incendiaries which had been applied to the interior surfaces and core structure of the Twin Towers. Who put the Thermite explosives in the towers? This is the key question in finding the true culprits of 9-11.
9-11 was a carefully planned holocaust in which thousands of lives were destroyed by incredibly hot incendiary explosives which had been put into the Twin Towers before the planes struck the towers. The explosion seen coming from the left side of the South Tower (the plane's entry point) shows the telltale signs of a Thermate explosion - white smoke and light orange flame. The incredible heat from these incendiary explosives forced hundreds of people to jump to their deaths.
Hundreds of people jumped from the towers to escape the intense heat that was cooking them alive on the upper floors. Remember these lost lives and their souls and stand up for them when you see the arch-terrorist of 9-11, Ehud Barak, in the United States next week - dining and speaking with Hillary Clinton and senior U.S. officials. Protest Barak's visit and demand his arrest! Don't let Barak, the war criminal and mastermind of 9-11, enjoy American hospitality and then escape to Israel with his fellow Israeli terrorists of 9-11!
The blue smoke that rose from the rubble contained large amounts of nano-size particles, created by pools of boiling iron beneath the rubble.
Michael D. Evans embraces Menachem Begin, the terrorist leader of the Irgun who became prime minister of Israel in June 2007. Begin's Likud government talked peace while it planned terror atrocities like 9-11 and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Begin, the well known Zionist terrorist behind numerous massacres and terror bombings, became prime minister of Israel in June 1977. Moshe Dayan served as Begin's foreign minister until 1979. It was during this period that Israeli terror plans for 9-11 were first disclosed to Michael D. Evans by the former Mossad chief Isser Harel.
During the show I discussed the fact that Israeli intelligence had planned the terror attacks of 9-11 for more than 2 decades. Jeff was astonished to hear this and found it to be incredible. It is, however, a well documented fact - by Zionists themselves. This history is discussed in greater detail in "America the Target: 9-11 and Israel's History of False Flag Terrorism" (Chapter 3) of my book, Solving 9-11.
Michael D. Evans here tells his story how the most senior Israeli intelligence chief Isser Harel predicted the events of 9-11 -- in 1979:
On Sept. 23, 1979, the founder of Israeli intelligence over dinner told me that America was developing a tolerance for terror. The gentleman's name was Isser Harel, the founder of Mossad Israeli intelligence-he ran it from 1947 to 1963. He told me that America had developed an alliance between two countries, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and that the alliance with Saudi Arabia was dangerous and would develop a tolerance for terror among Americans. He said if the tolerance continued that Islamic fundamentalists would ultimately strike America. I said "Where?" He said, "In Islamic theology, the phallic symbol is very important. Your biggest phallic symbol is New York City and your tallest building will be the phallic symbol they will hit." Isser Harel prophesied that the tallest building in New York would be the first building hit by Islamic fundamentalists 21 years ago.
- Michael D. Evans, Jewish Zionist evangelist in an interview with Deborah Caldwell
Is America in Bible Prophecy? August 2004, Beliefnet
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/End-Times/Is-America-In-Bible-Prophecy.aspx
The 3/23/10 show with Richard Gage, which I recommend listening to, and other archived shows can be found at: http://970knuu.com/archives.htm
The show can be heard by hundreds of thousands of radio listeners in the Las Vegas metropolitan area - and by millions around the world - live on the Internet. This is another indication that the truth of 9-11 is finally breaking into the mainstream media. The discovery of nano-thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center (by Dr. Steven E. Jones) and the shocking confessions and revelations coming from people in high places (such as Colin Powell's chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson) indicate that the dam is breaking about the fraudulent "War on Terror" and there is no way to hold back the truth of 9-11 any longer. The official version (of lies and fabrications) about 9-11 can no longer be sustained by any honest person or the U.S. government.
“I have made a personal choice to come forward and discuss the abuses that occurred because knowledge that I served in an Administration that tortured and abused those it detained at the facilities at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere and indefinitely detained the innocent for political reasons has marked a low point in my professional career and I wish to make the record clear on what occurred.”
- Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Colin Powell in "Wilkerson Demolishes Bush, Cheney, And Rumsfeld’s Lies About Guantanamo," The Public Record, April 14, 2010
http://pubrecord.org/commentary/7416/wilkerson-demolishes-bush-cheney/
The role of government is not to create suffering for its people but to alleviate it. The Obama administration cannot ignore the testimony of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson about the innocence of the detainees of Guantanamo nor can it continue to ignore the crucial discovery of super-thermite in the dust of the pulverized Twin Towers. Who made this incredibly powerful explosive using nano-technology and who put it in the World Trade Center? The answers to these questions will identify the real culprits of the mass murder of 9-11. Why is the government avoiding this issue?
Why are innocent people still being held in Guantanamo? Why are the real criminals behind the trillion dollar bailouts of 2008-2009 being protected? Fleecing U.S. taxpayers to pay for the criminal fraud of Goldman Sachs and A.I.G. makes Uncle Sam look like Bernard Madoff, robbing the taxpayer to stuff the accounts of preferred clients. When and where will all this criminality end? Who is behind it all?
Go to the KNUU website to hear the show at:
http://970knuu.com/Local%20Shows/Keeping%20It%20Real/KeepingItReal4-23-2010.mp3
Dividend Tax to Increase From 15% to 43.4%
Wall Street Journal editorial, The Dividend Tax Bill Arrives: Democrats Would Nearly Triple the Top Rate:
As the big tax increase day of January 1, 2011 approaches, the Democrats running Congress are beginning to lay out their priorities. Get ready for bigger rate increases than previously advertised.
Last week the Senate Budget Committee passed a fiscal 2011 budget resolution that includes an increase in the top tax rate on dividends to 39.6% from the current 15%—a 164% increase. This blows past the 20% rate that President Obama proposed in his 2011 budget and which his economic advisers promised on these pages in 2008.
(See "The Obama Tax Plan," August 14, 2008, by Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee: "The tax rate on dividends would also be 20% for families making more than $250,000, rather than returning to the ordinary income rate.")
And that's only for starters. The recent health-care bill includes a 3.8% surcharge on all investment income, including dividends, beginning in 2013. This would nearly triple the top dividend rate to 43.4% in Mr. Obama's four years as President
Is the latest Noah’s Ark discovery a fake?
Kurdish workers carted wood up Mt. Ararat in order to fake the discovery of Noah’s Ark, an archeologist who worked on the dig says.
On Tuesday, a group of Asian Christian evangelicals held a press conference in Turkey to announce they were “99.9 per cent” sure they’d found the biblical boat.
The claim was greeted with immediate skepticism, which seems increasingly well founded.
The bible suggests that the ark came to rest after 40 days of flooding in the “mountains of Ararat.” The mountain, located in Turkey near the border with Armenia, is an inhospitable place for both geographic and political reasons. And even the translation is suspect.
The bible specifies that the landing spot is “Urartu.” Over time Urartu became Ararat, a name that was given to the mountain long after the bible was written. So it’s not exactly clear where the bible’s authors meant. Thus, it’s slightly suspect that the ark should show up exactly where we want it to be.
Nonetheless, Ararat has drawn a steady stream of explorers for decades. Many of them have “discovered” the ark.
“I don’t know of any expedition that ever went looking for the ark and didn't find it,” said archeologist Paul Zimansky recently told National Geographic.
Ditto Noah’s Ark Ministries International. The evangelical-archeological group claims to have found the remains of the ark in a series of caverns near the peak of Ararat in 2008. Video footage provided by the group shows incongruous wooden beams jutting through the ice in a cavern. They also claim that carbon dating puts the age of the wooden beams discovered at 4,800 years old.
The scientific-creationist movement (yes, such a thing exists) has suggested that the entire radio-carbon dating process must be recalibrated. This is their way of explaining how objects can be shown to be tens of thousands of years old on a planet they believe was created out of the void 6,000 years ago.
So even they doubt Noah’s Ark Ministries, since in their time-compressed radio-carbon world, 4,800 years is far too young for the ark.
Now, someone within the Noah’s Ark Ministries camp is rubbishing the discovery.
Randall Price, an evangelical Christian, was apparently one of the original archeologists hired by the group. He has been circulating an email, alleging that the wooden beams were taken from a site near the Black Sea and then planted on Ararat. Price has stopped talking about the incident, and is involved in some sort of financial dispute with Noah’s Ark Ministries. But he did acknowledge the email to the Christian Science Monitor.
For now, the doubters have no way of directly confronting the evidence. The Noah’s Ark Ministries team intends to keep the ark’s purported location secret until they get it designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Frauds And Scandals Follow The Collapse Of The Financial System
The collapse of the financial system is under way, a giant debt that will never be repaid, deliberate destruction of the economy, bailouts a part of the manipulation of the markets, More creative forms of destruction for the economy, Wall street a criminal enterprise, Goldman CEO visits the White House, often, another giant Ponzi in Florida...
As the world faces an ongoing sovereign debt debacle we see an attempt to defuse an oncoming scandal involving Goldman Sachs, Paulson and perhaps others.
The collapse of the fiat money system is underway and each day picks up momentum. The only question is how long it can survive? In the interim we are faced with inflation and perhaps hyperinflation as the privately owned Federal Reserve and other central banks add stimulus and money and credit into their financial systems.
America’s system of finance and economy has been deliberately destroyed via regulation, illegal immigration and free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. We wrote about these issues and tactics as long ago as 1967. Taxes on both individuals and corporations are still onerous, the exception being the rich who pay far less than their fair share. By the way taxes will increase in the future and government may in the future attempt to take away your retirement plans and replace them with guaranteed annuities. We ask how can a bankrupt government guarantee anything? America and the rest of the world are realizing that you cannot live beyond your means indefinitely. The resultant poverty that eventually results is accompanied by the theft of wealth by inflation, subtly and secretly.
We have witnessed over the past few years a long line of frauds that usually accompany the collapse of a system. They are accompanied by government malfeasance and the arrogance of those who defraud the system with impunity. How can any nation survive if their currency and their bonds are worthless?
Someone’s loss is someone else’s gain and in this turmoil you can do two things. One is to protect your assets and the other is to capitalize on your knowledge. Do not allow the elitists to take your hard earned savings. It is our belief that 60% of sovereign debt will never be repaid.
The government is injecting a minimum of $1.5 trillion into the economy each year, as the Fed is adding at least $1 trillion. We are facing an end to stimulus and further Fed injections. If that happens it will thrust the US economy into a great dark pit a year from now. Then the insolvency of banking, Wall Street and government will become very apparent. What government has done is lie about everything, especially the amount of money they have thrust into the economy, via bailouts of the entire financial sphere and the manipulation of markets. If they had not done what they did the system would have collapsed long ago. What they have done has only delayed the inevitable. As we look back 50 years all we have seen is one crisis after another. There has never really been a meaningful recovery. The result is that Keynesian economics has had American economy on a roller coaster going nowhere. We have wasted opportunities and have destroyed our financial and economic structure to provide for the enrichment of the elitists who from behind the scenes control our economy and the world economy. G-20 debt is staggering, never mind US debt and worse yet, it is unpayable. The so-called recovery we are having is a sad joke. We have just had an interlude in an inflationary depression. The next phase is higher taxation and even more government control. Need we remind you that fascism is government by regulation and this is what we have in America today. Its evolution is a subtle, secret, strangling process. If only people would read the history of Europe during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s and 40s, you would truly understand what is in process. You must remember Hitler was created at Versailles. Illuminists in the US, UK and across Europe financed both Hitler and Mussolini. Both did not have a clue they were being set up. This is the same thing that is happening in America today and in other countries as well.
We face one round after another of creative destruction. That is why we have real unemployment of 22-1/8%, almost as bad as during the 1930s. Banks are only selectively lending, so as a result the economy cannot grow. Inflation is 8%; wages are static, so buying power has been crippled. This predicament should be called corporatist fascism or socialism for the elitists and as a result 92% of small business polled said they see no recovery for 14 to 18 months. How can those who hire 80% of workers create new jobs – they cannot and won’t. That means there can be no sustained recovery.
This leads us to the frauds on Wall Street and banking. We have pointed out for some time that Wall Street and banking had turned into a criminal enterprise. They always skated down the edge, but nothing like what we have seen over the past 20 years. Having been in the brokerage industry for 28 years and around it for 50 years we have been in a position to observe it closely. Today it’s massively rife with criminality. The exposure of Lehman’s crimes in hearings has been unprecedented. We wonder how many other firms did the same thing and their actions were covered up by the Fed and the SEC, as well as the CFTC? They are still underestimating debt levels by 40 to 50 percent, which means their focus reports are useless. The spirit of honesty and integrity still doesn’t exist. They are essentially keeping two sets of books and that makes their financial statements useless and fraudulent. That doesn’t bother the SEC, the BIS, the FASB, the Treasury or the Fed; they supervise the lawbreaking. Debt levels are massively understated by keeping two sets of books and by marking-to-model, fantasy, not to market. All of this is a result of the termination of the Glass Steagal Act. It is all fraud, even if the government sanctions it. They are all acting in concert to screw the investor and the public. These people are all criminals. The excuse is that they are too big to fail. It is all fraud no matter which way you cut it. This is a criminal syndicate that should legally be out of business – bankrupt. They are all being bailed out, but we do not see the public being bailed out. The bailout of banking, Wall Street and insurance is still in process and there is no end in sight. There are two sets of laws. One for the Illuminists/elitist and another for us. Congress won’t do anything about it because most of them have been paid off. That is what campaign contributions and lobbying are all about. We espoused these views in university almost 60 years ago, and the only reason our views were tolerated was that we had two uncles who were professors at the university.
Taxes will rise substantially this year and next year because your representatives and senators know the government is broke. Among other things the medical reform bill is a tax bill as well.
Government is the problem but they are really useful idiots. The real power lies with the Illuminist behind the scenes. The financial sector is broke and it is unfixable. They know that and they are trying to stretch out the problem as far as possible to pick the right date to pull the deflationary plug.
If all this weren’t bad enough the Dodd bill in the Senate would create a permanent bailout mechanism that would create more risky behavior that would lead to perpetual bailouts for the financial industries. This is not financial reform, it is more corporatist fascism. To show you how bought and paid for Senate Banking Committee members are, the bill was voted out in 22 minutes with no amendments and no debate allowed. That is not democracy in action. The bill will now be rushed to the floor and passed.
The bill would also create a $50 billion bailout slush fund controlled by the FDIC and a new FDIC tax would be implemented on banks, which, of course, would be passed onto the public in higher banking costs.
The bill would also bail out creditors of companies. The slush fund would cover that as well. They call this riskless investment for corporate America and any bills would be picked up by the banks and passed on to Americans. We will then have hundreds or thousands of AIGs and GM’s. You ask yourself where does this all end? Read the history of the late1920s and into the 1930s of Italy and Germany and you will find out.
As the Senate and the House do the work of the bankers the bond market is in the process of sinking as yields rise. Higher rates, which we predicted last November, will become reality by the end of the year. A move by the US 10-year note from 3.20% to 4.5% or 5% will be the kiss of death for the mortgage industry. The 10-year yields 3.79% and the 30-year fixed rate mortgage is 5.07%. If 10’s go to 4.5%, mortgages will rise to 5.80% and a 5% ten-year note would work out to a 6.3% 30-year.
An increase in rates from 5.07% to 6.07% would add 19% to the total cost of a home, which means that any long-term recovery in housing is out of the question and that residential values would have to fall further as fewer and fewer people could qualify for loans. In fact, all loans would become more expensive, such as for business, credit cards, auto loans, etc. That 1% will increase debt service for the government by about $150 billion a year. This frankly presents the best of all worlds. If foreigners, such as the Chinese, Japanese or Russians became aggressive US bond sellers rates would climb considerably higher, inflicting even more damage to the economy and to US debt.
Most of you do not remember but mortgage rates hit about 18% in 1981, as official inflation hit 14-1/2%. Gold peaked out at $850, some six months earlier. On today’s mortgages that would triple payments on new mortgages and resets. As happened in 1981 the real estate market came to a standstill. Such an event would come when existing household debt is considerably higher. Debt today is already near 90% of GDP. Government debt is colossal, growing every minute and it is unpayable.
The bond market is going down and yields are going up and that is not good. The rise in interest rates has historically brought about higher gold and silver prices, because higher rates bring higher inflation. As we have said over and over again the only safe and profitable place to be is in gold and silver related assets. The storm is now just getting underway.
The MBA Mortgage Purchase Applications Index is 10.1%. The refi index was up to 15.8% versus 9.0% the prior week. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 5.04% and the 15’s were 4.34%.
The Treasury will sell $128 billion in notes next week, which is unprecedented. Talk about crowding out.
Governments worldwide will probably issue $4.5 trillion in debt this year, which is triple the 5-year average for industrial nations. Forty-five percent of that debt will be issued by the US.
We are told Russia and China are selling Treasuries and buying gold.
The US commercial paper market rose $1.5 billion to about $1.076 trillion this week.
Our sources within the banking industry tell us that 3-5 bank, First Source, Horizon and several others are in trouble. These are banks that refused TARP money. They have been told to expect an audit and that no further support can ever be expected from the Fed again. Auditors have already hit some of these banks and threatened them. One bank was told they were under capitalized and they were not. They arranged an additional line of credit with another bank and the Fed backed off. This criminal extortion is part of the move to eventual bank nationalization. The industry is hanging by a thread, as huge interest rate increases loom. The system lives on virtual money and that can only end up in real trouble. Again, do not hold CDs, annuities or cash value life policies, especially large balances. Not only banks will go under, but also so will insurance companies.
McClatchy: While Goldman Sachs' lawyers negotiated with the Securities and Exchange Commission over potentially explosive civil fraud charges, Goldman's chief executive visited the White House at least four times.
White House logs show that Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein traveled to Washington for at least two events with President Barack Obama, whose 2008 presidential campaign received $994,795 in donations from Goldman's political action committee, its employees and their relatives. He also met twice with Obama's top economic adviser, Larry Summers.
Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist, said that "almost everything that the White House has done has been haunted by the personnel and the money of Goldman. as well as the suspicion that the White House, particularly early on, was pulling its punches out of deference to Goldman and its war chest.
"There's now kind of a magnifying glass on the administration for any sign of interference or conversations with the regulators and the judiciary," Jacobs said.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/21/92637/goldmans-connections-to-white.html
Goldman Sachs was both an underwriter and an investor in Lloyds Banking Group’s vast refinancing deal late last year, the FT has learned, highlighting the potential conflicts of interest at the heart of the investment bank’s business model.
According to four people involved in the capital raising, Goldman – a dealer manager on the debt portion of the £23.5bn transaction – demanded last-minute changes to the structure of a deal it was underwriting. This had the effect of benefiting its position as a bond investor.
A Goldman director tipped off Galleon's Raj Rajaratnam about a $5 billion investment in Goldman by Berkshire Hathaway before a public announcement.
The revelation marks a significant turn in the government's case against Rajaratnam, the hedge-fund titan at the center of the largest insider-trading case in a generation.
After the SEC tagged Goldman, we opined that Bubblevision, or for that many virtually all pundits and media types, did not mention Buffett’s association with Goldman or how Buffett demanded and got heads after the Salomon-Treasury Auction rigging scandal. Maybe now someone will ask Warren about Goldie.
Buffett spokesman, Thomas Murphy surfaced last night, to say Buffett has ‘great confidence’ in Goldie.
U.S. mortgage applications bounced from three-month lows last week as potential buyers locked in lower borrowing costs before the federal tax credit expires, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday.
Thirty-year mortgage rates dropped to hover around 5 percent, stoking home loan demand after applications slid for two straight weeks.
Refinancing picked up by 15.8 percent to represent 60 percent of all applications last week. Demand for loans to buy a home increased 10.1 percent to send the industry group's total applications index up 13.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis.
"Purchase applications continued to increase coming out of the Easter holiday, as we approach the end of the homebuyer tax credit, and are up modestly over last month," said Michael Fratantoni, MBA's vice president of research and economics.
Falling Treasury yields, used as a peg for mortgage rates, helped reduce the average 30-year loan rate by 0.13 percentage point to 5.04 percent.
The rate was up to 5.31 percent two weeks earlier, the highest since August 2009, and remains above the record low of 4.61 percent set in March of last year.
Harsh winter weather sapped housing demand in the first months of the year. The initial wave of the homebuyer tax credit, extended and broadened late last year, were seen having robbed some of this year's demand.
But some signs have emerged that buyers are surfacing to lock in the credit while they can. If they qualify for the incentives of up to $8,000, they need to have home contracts signed by the end of April and close loans by June 30.
Permits to build houses, for example, in April shot up to the highest level since October 2008. To read more, see [ID:nN16220782].
At best, though, housing is widely seen hovering around current weak levels at least through the year. The market still needs to work through a record stockpile of foreclosed properties, which RealtyTrac forecasts could drag into 2013. Read more at [ID:nNYS007912].
Jack Pritchard, Charlotte, North Carolina-based co-founder of Refinance.com, sees rising mortgage rates later this year and the expiration of the tax credits cutting into home sales and refinancing.
"The spring housing season, even with the tax credit, would be considered stable -- but stable at the bottom," he said.
"You've got a consumer trying to time the ultimate bottom in real estate prices and you still have extremely tight credit standards for consumers to qualify," Pritchard added.
FOX Business Network has expanded its quest for documents from the Federal Reserve in order to shed light on which financial firms borrowed funds during the financial crisis.
The network filed its new suit this afternoon in New York requesting documents from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors that will name each financial institution that borrowed from the various emergency lending facilities from November 1, 2008 through March 1, 2010. FOX Business originally sued the Fed for those documents but for a time period that ended on November 1, 2008.
The network scored a major victory in the original suit when the second circuit court of appeals ruled that the Fed had to turn over the requested documents. The Federal Reserve is expected to ask the court to reconsider the case and has said it is willing to take the case to the Supreme Court if necessary to protect the identity of the firms which received billions in taxpayer-backed guarantees.
The new suit expands the date through 2010 to learn which firms continued to seek emergency lending after the initial crisis had passed. FOX Business is also attempting to learn how much each individual institution received.
The U.S. Federal Reserve said on Wednesday it transferred a record $47.4 billion to the U.S. Treasury in 2009 as a result of its programs to help the economy and financial firms during the financial crisis.
The increase in income was primarily due to interest earnings on mortgage-backed securities issued by government supported mortgage finance agencies, the Fed said.
Some of the data in the Fed's 2009 annual financial statement revises estimates released in January.
The 12 Fed regional banks are required to transfer their profits to the Treasury after paying dividends to member banks and retaining some of their surplus.
Fed officials said the U.S. central bank's payment to the Treasury in 2009 was a $15.7 billion, or 50 percent, increase over 2008. The previous record was $34.6 billion in 2007, and the pre-crisis level was around $20 billion, Fed officials told reporters.
The Fed took unprecedented actions to prop up the economy during the storm but has been under fire from lawmakers on Capitol Hill over financial firm bailouts and regulatory lapses.
The credit risk on the Fed's balance sheet is down sharply as its loans have decreased and Treasury and government-sponsored mortgage finance agency securities make up a larger share of the central bank's assets, a Fed official said.
Financial reforms are a top priority for President Barack Obama, and news that the U.S. central bank has been profitable for taxpayers may strengthen the Fed's hand as lawmakers decide whether to enhance its powers over banks.
A Senate committee on Wednesday approved a bill aimed at reforming the derivatives market, moving the Senate one step closer to passing sweeping regulation over the $450 trillion derivatives market.
The Senate Agriculture Committee approved the legislation by a vote of 13 to 8, with one Republican, Charles Grassley, breaking ranks to vote with Democrats.
The measure, part of the Democrats push to crack down on Wall Street, is expected to be merged into a broader bill from the Senate Banking Committee. A full Senate debate is expected by next week.
Its passage through the committee was a first test of how strongly Democrats are willing to push reform and how easily Republicans may be prepared to play ball.
Regulators charged a Miami Beach, Florida, philanthropist with fraud for allegedly running a $900 million Ponzi scheme, the Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday.
Nevin K. Shapiro, a major donor to the University of Miami's sports program, sold investors securities that he claimed would fund his Capitol Investments firm's grocery business and touted returns as high as 26 percent annually, the SEC said.
Instead, Shapiro repurposed funds, making extravagant donations to charities and running a Ponzi scheme where he used funds from new investors to pay the principal and interest to earlier investors, the SEC said.
The 41-year-old Shapiro surrendered to authorities Wednesday morning in New Jersey, his lawyer said.
According to the SEC, Shapiro used at least $38 million of investor funds to finance other business activities and a lavish lifestyle, including a $5 million home in Miami Beach, expensive clothes and season tickets to sporting events.
To raise funds, Shapiro attracted investors through word of mouth from friends and business associates, and reassured investors by boasting of his wealth, the SEC said.
When investors questioned Shapiro, he showed them fabricated invoices and purchase orders for nonexistent sales, the SEC said.
Existing home sales increased by 6.8%, good for a total of 5.35 million units, in March, thereby reversing three months of declining sales. This growth beats market forecasts of a more modest 5.6% increase. In related data, the US housing price index fell 0.2% in February. This marks the third consecutive month of falling home prices.
The Producer Price Index for the US grew 0.7% in March, beating forecasts of a 0.5% rise over February's 0.6% decline. Year-over-year, the PPI increased 6.0% in March compared to February's annual 4.4% boost. This growth is in line with expectations. The PPI excluding food and energy prices rose an expected 0.1% in March, thereby matching February's rate. Year-over-year, the PPI excluding food and energy increased as forecast by 0.9% in March, slightly down from February's 1.0% growth.
February Housing Price Index declines 0.2% MoM in March vs a 0.6% decline in February
The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits fell last week as the rebounding economy prompted companies to make fewer job cuts.
Initial jobless applications dropped by 24,000 to 456,000 in the week ended April 17, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The number of people receiving unemployment insurance and those getting extended benefits also fell.
Employers enjoying improved sales and profits may be gaining confidence in the economy and retaining staff. A transition from less firing to consistent job growth will ensure the recovery from the deepest recession since the 1930s is sustained.
“The state of the job market is firming,” said John Herrmann, a senior fixed-income strategist at State Street Global Markets LLC in Boston, who forecast claims would fall to 458,000. Companies are “actually retaining headcount and growing.”
Economists anticipated claims would fall to 450,000 from a previously reported 484,000 the prior week, according to the median of 47 projections in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 430,000 to 480,000.
Sales of U.S. previously owned homes rose in March for the first time in four months as buyers took advantage of a government tax credit and the weather improved. Purchases climbed 6.8 percent to a 5.35 million annual rate, exceeding the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, data from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. New applications for jobless benefits declined and producer prices rose, Labor Department reports showed.
A homebuyer incentive worth as much as $8,000 for contracts closed by the end of June may provide a short-term boost to the industry that helped trigger the worst recession since the 1930s. Housing’s outlook for the second half of the year will be linked to a rebound in hiring, indicating a recovery will probably take years to develop as foreclosures climb.
U.S. taxpayers to send billions more towards Greek bailout
Where does it end? 100 billion? 1 trillion? 1 quadrillion?
And yes America, this is your money, going to bail out Greece... Then Portugal... Then Ukraine....Then Dubai....Then Italy....Then Spain....Then Hungary....Then the Baltics...Then the UK....Then Japan... and by the time we have to bail ourselves out, there will be nothing left, except...
Read full article...
And yes America, this is your money, going to bail out Greece... Then Portugal... Then Ukraine....Then Dubai....Then Italy....Then Spain....Then Hungary....Then the Baltics...Then the UK....Then Japan... and by the time we have to bail ourselves out, there will be nothing left, except...
Read full article...
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Council Told to Consider Bankruptcy
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which has missed $6 million in debt payments since Jan. 1, should consider seeking Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, City Controller Dan Miller told a three-hour special committee hearing.
Miller, the first of four people to testify last night in an “informational session” on insolvency convened by Gloria Martin-Roberts, council president, said bankruptcy may offer Harrisburg relief from $68 million in debt-service payments this year tied to a waste-to-energy incinerator project. Martin- Roberts opposes a bankruptcy filing.
Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, the sixth-most populous U.S. state, has guaranteed payments on $282 million in bonds on the incinerator, run by the Harrisburg Authority. The payments on the bonds and on a working-capital loan this year add up to four times the amount the city collects in property taxes each year, budget documents show.
“It’s not good,” Miller said at the start of the hearing before a silent audience of about 20 that included city officials and union members. “Nobody wants to do it, but it’s there for a reason,” he said. “Maybe for the purpose of helping cities that are in the situation we are in now.”
The city this month skipped a $637,500 payment due on a loan to Fairfield, New Jersey-based Covanta Holding Corp., operator of the incinerator.
Missed Payment
On April 23, the Harrisburg Authority told the city that it won’t make a $425,282 payment due May 1 on a $17 million bond issue the city has guaranteed, said Robert Kroboth, interim finance manager. Kroboth said it isn’t likely that the city will honor its guarantee, meaning the payment will fall to the bond’s insurer, Hamilton, Bermuda-based Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp.
“When the trustee informs us we need to make the payment, we do,” Betsy Castenir, a spokeswoman for Assured, said yesterday. She said the firm hasn’t gotten a notice from the trustee regarding the May 1 payment.
The city has been negotiating with other groups involved in the incinerator project, seeking a 90-day relief period from debt payments. The other groups include Dauphin County, which has guaranteed a portion of the debt, Assured Guaranty, and the Harrisburg Authority. A formal “forbearance agreement” may be presented to the council within two weeks, Martin-Roberts, the council president, said after the hearing.
Alternatives to Consider
Council members should consider asset sales and tax increases before heading to bankruptcy court, said Fred Reddig, the executive director of the state’s office of Local Government Services. He suggested following steps recommended in a recovery plan prepared by Management Partners Inc. of Cincinnati, a consulting firm hired to study the city’s finances as part of a state municipal support program.
Only one community in the state, Westfall Township in northeastern Pennsylvania’s Pike County, has filed for Chapter 9 protection, and the option might not be available to Harrisburg, said Gregg Miller, a partner with the Philadelphia-based Pepper Hamilton law firm. Miller represented Westfall, which entered bankruptcy last year after it was assessed with a $20 million legal judgment. The amount is about 20 times its annual budget.
“It’s difficult to get into Chapter 9,” Miller said. He said Harrisburg would have to present a proposed debt relief plan to its creditors and get an endorsement from the state before it could seek bankruptcy.
“You have to meet with the state Department of Economic and Community Development and convince them you are deserving of Chapter 9 protection,” Miller said.
Opposes Bankruptcy
Martin-Roberts said she is opposed to bankruptcy for the city of 47,000, and convened the hearing to make sure council members have a common base of information to consider.
“There are those of us who feel bankruptcy shouldn’t be considered an option,” Martin-Roberts said in an interview last week. Patty Kim, another member of the seven-member council, also said at the hearing that she opposes bankruptcy.
Susan Brown-Wilson, the head of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee, said she supports a bankruptcy filing because the state oversight process is too time-consuming, and would require a tax increase that Harrisburg can’t afford.
“Bankruptcy might be the best option,” she said. “This city is so indebted there’s really no way out.”
Council member Eugenia Smith said she was relieved to hear several of the witnesses say that the city has time to consider its options. “I don’t want to rush into anything.”
Moody’s Investors Service in February downgraded Harrisburg’s general-obligation bond rating three levels to B2, five steps below investment grade, from Ba2.
--Editors: Ted Bunker, Mark Tannenbaum
FINANCIAL REFORM: THE FINAL CON GAME
There are those who have been talking about a single global regulator for years and as a result of the 2008 Credit Crisis, there have been calls to protect you and me from future banking crises through new financial reform. However, we had better consider its real impact. It is not about protecting you and me it is about changing the national regulatory laws of America to conform to a world governmental system and globalizing the last barrier separating individual nation-states. It is about a major power grab of America’s financial assets. As a result of the high stakes, we should ask if Republicans are being told they had better vote for financial reform so we don’t have another September/October, 2008? All of a sudden Senators McConnell and Shelby have had a sea change and are willing to work together on changing our banking system. It is a ruse, a con game when they say they are making the system safer. Let us review some necessary points.
As we consider the events of the past 18 months, we are confronted with a great deal of action, uncertainty, negativity, and pillaging of wealth. In order to understand where we are today and where we are going, we need to review the chicanery of the past eleven years.
One of the keynote events was the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 which we were told was necessary for banking modernization. In June 1999 then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said, “Reforming international financial institutions, strengthening the international financial architecture and maintaining open markets are not simply questions of economics but politics.” That same year, after a great deal of media and stock market hype and hysteria, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act-GLB which tore down all the protections that the Glass-Steagall Act had put in place, including the separation of commercial banking from investment banking to protect the investor. It also allowed for U.S. banks to become “financial conglomerates” meaning they could expand their services to sell insurance, stocks and bonds and perform the once outlawed investment banking services, which opened the doors for derivatives, now at the heart of the problem. It also allowed for American banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms to buy foreign banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms while allowing them to come in and buy ours. Were there any regulatory changes? No. In fact it was known that the SEC was not beefing up their forces to police and monitor the newly expanded financial architecture.
On the international level, that same year, at the Bank for International Settlements-BIS in Basle, Switzerland, set up a new global entity called the Financial Stability Forum-FSF. It was comprised of regulators from the Group of Seven countries with a mandate to police the global level for problems. In an interview with Svein Andressen, its managing director, he told me in response to a question I raised in 2000 that “there was no guarantee” that they would be successful. Today, as a result of the G20 meetings in 2009, it has been reinvented into a larger body comprised of regulators from the G20 countries. It truly is more of a global regulator than it once was with only seven countries.
At the BIS and other think tanks there was a myriad of white papers calling for a consolidation of regulators and to change the national regulatory laws, now that the U.S. had passed GLB. Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Donald L. Kohn gave a speech in Sea Island, Georgia in May, 2007 in which he discussed the rise of credit derivatives and their marriage with securitization technologies called collateralized debt obligations-CDOs. While stating that “these developments have made the financial system more resilient to shocks,” he also said,
We need to accept that accidents will happen—that asset prices will fluctuate, often over wide ranges and those fluctuations will be driven in part by trading strategies, by the cycles of greed and fear that have always been with us and by the ebb and flow of competition for market share. The fluctuations will result in redistributions of wealth, and on occasion, will confront us with financial crises.
He then went on to explain some of the changes that needed to be made and commented,
In all of this work, coordination and cooperation among regulators, domestically and internationally are critical because the same firms are the core firms in each of the principal global financial centers.
Lastly, he stated, “In sum, there are good reasons to think that financial innovation over the past few decades, including the emergence and growth of the credit derivatives markets, has made the financial system and the economy more resilient.”
That year saw a number of headlines and articles calling for a “global regulator.” One written by Kenneth Rogoff read, “No grand plans, but the financial system needs fixing.” Another headline read, “Wanted: a guardian of the world’s financial system.”
In 2007, there was what was considered at first a minor problem in the subprime mortgage market—nothing to worry about. The market dropped from a high in July, 2007 of 14,022 to 12,518 that August before recovering that same year in October to the 14,198 level, an all time high. The Dow had risen 94% or 6,878 points since the low point of October 9, 2002. By August, 2008 the market had dropped to 11,483.
Hank Paulson, our second treasury secretary from Wall Street, had issued his “Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory System” in March, 2008. It called for a total revamping of all of America’s assets that were not under control of the Federal Reserve: the entire mortgage industry, banks that were not regulated by the Fed, credit unions, state chartered thrifts, and the insurance industry. The Fed was at the center of all the newly proposed commissions. In other words, a total take over of financial assets not under their control was at stake.
Is anyone putting two plus two together? The Federal Reserve is a private corporation so they do not issue an annual report and no one knows who their shareholders are. This company controls the entire monetary system of the United States which means they create the ups and the downs in the stock market and business cycle. They control credit. If they want to destroy the small businessman, they just stop issuing credit—like they are doing now. The Paulson Blueprint was blatant about them seizing control over all the other major financial assets they don’t control.
September 2008 found Congress in a heap of distress. When you consider the bombardment that we all went through, we have never seen or experienced anything like this since the British bombed the Baltimore Harbor in 1814 which is where the term “shock and awe” first came from. In September, we saw: the U.S. government seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers collapsed and Merrill Lynch was purchased by Bank of America, AIG was bailed out with government money, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs converted to bank holding companies, the government seized Washington Mutual which became the largest banking failure in the U.S., and Wachovia was taken over by Wells Fargo.
In the midst of shock and awe, the front page of the September 18, 2008 Washington Post read “Stocks Plummet as Lending Freezes Up.” It said that “Lawmakers left on the sidelines as Fed, Treasury take Swift action.” The text read,
The frenetic pace of the financial crisis has forced the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to make rapid-fire decisions in recent days, leaving Capitol Hill lawmakers effectively impotent—and frustrated. Lawmakers on both sides have expressed concern yesterday that have had had no control over when and how federal money has been used to curb the panic on Wall Street. Congressional leaders learned of the rescue late Tuesday during a hastily called meeting. Paulson and Bernanke have taken the lead, not only from lawmakers but from President Bush.
In order to get Congress to pass the TARP monies and the additional powers for the Treasury Secretary, the stock market began to drop. On September 29 when the House rejected the bailout plan, it dropped more than 700 points. By October 10, the Dow had dropped to 7773.71. The week of October 11, 2008 saw the Dow drop by 22% or $8.4T from 2007 market highs. This was its worst week ever in its 112 year history. Who was boss? Those who control the monetary system including the stock market of the United States. Could this happen again? I have maintained that it could given the fact that the biggest change would be to pass the Paulson Blueprint which has been reinvented as the Obama “New Foundation.” I am amazed that nineteen/twenty months after September/October, 2008, the stock market is at a high: 11,125 which may mean if Congress does not pass financial regulation, it could drop back to the March 9, 2009 low. So how did we get in this position again?
On early October, Hank Paulson told and gave his word to senators that he would only use his additional powers in an extreme emergency. Eleven days later on October 14, he nationalized America’s banking system by giving $250B to Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, State Street Bank and Wells Fargo. The Dow had dropped a total of 41% from the year earlier. Talk about warfare. No guns, no bullets but trillions of dollars transferred out of investors pockets, causing major destruction to America’s middle class. Throughout all of the various congressional sessions, both the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called for regulatory reform. This has been the mantra for a long time.
President Obama came into office in January, 2009. The stock market reached a severe low of 6,547 on March 9. From this point, the market started to rise. To date it is around 11,000, a rise of 4,453 points. Obama rolled out his version of Paulson’s Blueprint on June 17. It did not call for the Federal Reserve to chair all of the proposed committees like Paulson’s, but it did call for the Treasury Secretary to chair key committees and, in Section V, it called for very strong international regulatory standards and improved international cooperation. It stated that the,
United States is playing a very strong leadership role in efforts to coordinate International financial policy through the G20, the Financial Stability Board, and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.
The Obama Financial Regulatory Reform called for the Financial Stability Board to be restructured and institutionalized on the international level and for national authorities to implement the G20 commitments made in London in 2009 which included “supervisory colleges” that would be able to assess danger.
For the first part of 2010, financial reform took a back seat to health reform and on March 15, Senator Dodd rolled out his version of regulatory reform, leaving behind any kind of bi-partisanship that junior Senator Bob Corker had given earlier. A day after the passage of the healthcare bill on March 21, Senator Dodd pushed through the Senate Banking Committee a vote for the bill he authored six days earlier. This basically was a coup d’état over the Republican Party.
Sadly, most Americans are not aware of the marketing savvy that has gone into changing their minds and covering up the fraud perpetrated on them. Regulatory reform has gone from a “Bailout of Wall Street” to a “Bailout of Main Street.” There is now a movement by Republicans after the Security and Exchange Commissions first indictment in ten years of the biggest bank on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, to move Congress into bi-partisanship. It has worked.
Sadly in light of the fact that Goldman Sachs has given untold millions to our currently seated politicians in Congress and $1M to Obama for his election campaign, the Republicans have decided to play “nice” at the wrong time. Or is it the wrong time? Are they being vigilant and protecting us against another 40% drop in the stock market or are they part of the con game?
Recently, in commenting on how Wall Street makes its money, Jim Santelli from CNBC said, “Where does Wall Street make its money? In murky deals. The more murkier, the more money they make.” In the April 23, 2010 Financial Times, their editorial commented on Obama’s legislation,
Prospects are good that the eventual reform will be a big step forward. But one should not expect too much even of a significantly improved system. As the economy recovers and financial markets’ appetite for risk revives, the chief danger may lie in placing too much confidence in the new arrangements. Financial regulation is, and always will be, a work in progress.
The truth is the stakes were very high for regulatory reform or else we would not have had all the activities of September/October 2008. The bottom line is the consolidation of power by the central banks all over the world. Through the enlarged structure of the Bank for International Settlements and the newly restructured and empowered global regulatory agency, the Financial Stability Board, all of the world’s assets are being shifted to a place where they are fair game for central bankers. All you have to do is study the arrangements on the national and global level. This is the con game of all the centuries--it is a colossal robbery of our nation and people.
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