Long-Awaited Wikileaks Secret Bank Of America Files Have Been Destroyed

With BAC stock trading under $7, the damage is already done, but we at least now know why the files were never released.
FT
Bank of America may just have dodged a bullet when it comes to the stash of its confidential information that was said last year to be in the hands of Wikileaks.  After an internal feud, a break-away member of Wikileaks has told Spiegel Online that he has destroyed information that he took from the organisation – and Wikileaks itself says that includes 5 gigabytes of information from Bank of America.
Der Spiegel
Tensions between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and ex-spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg have escalated. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, the former deputy destroyed thousands of unpublished documents entrusted to WikiLeaks. The information they contained appears to be lost forever.
Former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg claims to have destroyed more than 3,500 unpublished files obtained from unknown informants. The information they contained is now apparently lost, irrevocably. The documents in question were stored on the WikiLeaks server until late summer 2010, when Domscheit-Berg left the organization , taking the files with him upon his departure.
Now Domscheit-Berg says that these documents were "shredded over the past few days in order to ensure that the sources are not compromised." WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could not guarantee safe handling of the documents, he says.

CONGRESSIONAL VIDEO - Elizabeth Warren Testifies On JPMorgan's Illegal Military Foreclosures

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Video - Dr. Warren testifies before Congress - July 14, 2011
Just found this clip this morning.

FLASHBACK - Cramer Screams: "Buy Bank Of America!"

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With BofA trading at 7 bucks, it's a good time to look back at one of Cramer's biggest calls of 2011.  The ignorance and hype speak for themselves, and anyone who took the blowhard's advice has lost more than 50% in 8 short months.
Details and quotes below.
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10 Reasons to Buy Bank of America
Published: Thursday, 6 Jan 2011

Investors who want to bank on America’s return to greatness, Cramer said during Thursday’s “Mad Money,” should buy Bank of America.

He believes that job growth will return. He believes in stabilizing and then climbing home prices. He believes in even a rising standard of living and the inevitable return of investors to the market. Put simply, he’s bullish on America. And if you are, too, he thinks Bank of America is the way to play it.

Here are 10 reasons why you should get on board with Cramer:

Look at BAC’s chart going back to January 2007. Cramer said he’d heard more negativity about the bank and more downgrades of the stock between its move up to $14 from $12 than during its decline to $3 from $50. “This chart is screaming, ‘Buy me! Buy me! Buy me!’” Cramer said, “yet the bears are growling that Bank of America is the most dangerous bank to own in the world.”

Point two is directly related to point one in that BAC is not dangerous at all, Cramer said. The bank is well capitalized. So much so that there’s no need for it to raise more money. Certainly in what Cramer described as “a world full of dangerous banks,” Bank of America does not rank among them.

Reason three is the fact that Bank of America is about to reinstate its dividend, Cramer said. Investors seemed to love the stock until the dividend was cut, and now they hate BAC when the payout’s coming back? Cramer doesn’t get it, especially when you consider capital the bank is sitting on. He thinks that means dividend boosts are on the way.

Then there’s the huge market share that Bank of America captured during the downturn. The company now controls, thanks in part to the addition of Countrywide Financial, 20 percent of the mortgage market. That should translate into a huge windfall once the housing market improves.

Speaking of housing, Cramer said Bank of America owns the most houses in the U.S. Admittedly, that was a result of some pretty bad underwriting. Regardless, though, this so-called shadow inventory will turn into a boon in 2011 as job growth gives rise to housing demand, and BofA serves as home supplier to the nation.

Reason number six is Ben Bernanke, who wants American banks strong and healthy. By keeping the interest rate that banks pay you for your deposits low, Bernanke has allowed Bank of America and others to make more from the interest rate they charge for loans. And when you factor in this company’s huge deposit base, Cramer said, BAC makes money “simply by turning the lights on everyday.”

Merrill Lynch, meanwhile, offers what Cramer called “the most powerful network of high-net-worth advisors in the country,” which is perfect now that investors look ready to leave bonds and move back into stocks. And unlike Countrywide, Merrill’s reputation was never tarnished.

Number eight here is jobs. Steady employment leads to increased credit and borrowing, and that means more profits for Bank of America. Cramer said he almost hopes that Friday’s job number will be weak just so investors can get into BAC on a dip, because the employment trend in America is headed in the right direction.

And don’t forget that the Republicans now control the House of Representatives. So say hello to a hands-off approach to regulation, regardless of the reform bill that was passed this year. Of course, consumers will be paying higher fees for their checking accounts, but that’s some great no-risk income for the banks.

Finally, the company’s put-back mortgage exposure to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac  has turned out to be miniscule compared to what the bears thought. “And now that that risk is taken off the table,” Cramer said, “this is big.”

More Bad News For Bank Of America - Fraud Liability May Jump $9 Billion If New York Judge Sides With MBIA

BofA will be expected to do a capital raise, and they still have a stake in China Construction Bank, which they have been attempting to offload (reportedly for weeks) for $17 billion.  So they have a couple options before going hat in hand to Geithner for another bailout.
The initial court hearing was late last week.
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Bloomberg
Bank of America may face billions of dollars more in liability for faulty mortgages if a judge agrees with insurer MBIA that the lender must buy back loans even if the errors didn’t cause a borrower’s default.
If New York Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten and judges in similar cases across the country rule that the issue of “causation” doesn’t apply -- meaning it’s enough to show that the loan was improperly made -- it “could significantly impact” Bank of America’s potential costs, the bank said in a regulatory filing this month.
Such court defeats may add as much as $9 billion to what Bank of America owes bond insurers, according to hedge fund Branch Hill Capital, which is betting against its stock and has invested in MBIA. A victory for Armonk, New York-based MBIA may also strengthen claims by mortgage-securities investors that want the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank to pay more than the $8.5 billion it’s offered them as a settlement.
“You don’t have to wait until you’re in a severe accident before you return the car with bad brakes,” said David Grais, a partner in New York at Grais & Ellsworth LLP who represents investors objecting to the bank’s proposed settlement with Countrywide Financial Corp. mortgage-bond holders.
Hearing Today
Any ruling on the issue, which was to be the subject of a hearing today in state court in Manhattan, may come later than anticipated because the proceeding was postponed until October. The decision may intensify settlement talks between bond insurers like MBIA and other banks that issued securities based on faulty mortgages.
“If they lose that case, then our certainty of getting reimbursed becomes a lot higher,” Dominic Frederico, Assured’s chief executive officer, said in an interview. Bank of America agreed in April to a deal it valued at $1.6 billion with Hamilton, Bermuda-based Assured to settle its mortgage claims.
Since the start of 2010, Bank of America’s cushion for future losses on repurchases of mortgages that never matched their promised quality has ballooned from $4 billion to $17.8 billion even as it made payments in settlements with debt guarantors such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Bond Settlement
The bank set aside $14 billion last quarter to cover claims, including the proposed $8.5 billion for the Countrywide- bond settlement reached in June with investors including BlackRock Inc., the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Pacific Investment Management Co. The deal is being challenged by other bondholders and attorneys general in New York and Delaware.
Its reserves and guidance on how much more it may need are based on several assumptions, though, including the company’s view that losses will only have to be reimbursed if it can be proven “that the alleged representations and warranties breach was the cause of the loss,” the bank said in the Aug. 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If courts disagree, “it could significantly impact” the estimate of as much as $5 billion in additional liabilities.
“It could change the playing field,” MBIA Chief Executive Officer Jay Brown said on an Aug. 10 conference call with analysts and investors when asked about the causation issue. It could “have a very significant effect on the ability to rescind or obtain rescissionary damages,” he said. “So, it can affect the view of both parties as to the likely outcome of the trial.”
Continue reading...

The Zombie Bankers meet the Hellhounds of Abaddon

Essay on bankers.
We need hydrophobic helldogs to climb up out of the bottomless pit and run wild through the kingdoms of the dead, biting each corpse and infecting it with frothing, red eyed rabies that launches the corpses out of their graves and drives them in a murderous frenzy into the corporate boardrooms of the world.  The bite of the corpses infects the psychopaths in suits and sends them into a feeding frenzy upon their comrades.  It would be a righteous thing to see; bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers and hedge fund operatives, tearing each other to pieces and consuming one another until there is nothing left but heads with snapping teeth, circling around on the blood-soaked Turkmen carpets.
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Read the whole thing - Source:  Reflections in a Petrie Dish
Excerpt
The foreclosure scandal stands as irrefutable testimony to the contempt held by bankers for the rest of the human race and it’s now clear that the whole scenario was set up just to throw people out of their homes. They are throwing people out of their homes that have no mortgage and own their homes outright. They are seizing homes that the particular banks have no claim on to begin with. It’s an Oklahoma Land Rush of unbridled rapacity and they even work at justifying and explaining it. From the president down, they are denying that fraud took place and saying, without any hesitation, that if the banks can’t seize any homes in reach that it will be bad for the economy. Bank of America paused long enough to snort a couple of lines of Peruvian rock and went right back to the snatch and grab.
There are companies that print and sell foreclosure mill documents that are designed for robot signing, epidemic thievery that greases the wheels for something that would be a crime in every country in the world but somehow, in America, anything is okay as long as you have the money to afford the lawyers to prove it. The Supreme Court said that it was legally permissible for corporations to buy elections. There are 3 hasbara clowns now sitting in their ranks and who got beaten so bad with the ugly stick that the stick is broken in several places and may not be useable for some time. I don’t know how this is going to affect public perception in the days to come but public perception is already somewhere in the witless protection system and is blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other.
I expect any day now for Fox TV to announce a new television show called Dancing with the Demons. You’ll be able to see The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse line dancing to a Charlie Daniels song. You’ll see Brian Moynihan doing the tango with Abaddon. Would it be a surprise now? Ten years ago all of us would have laughed and said, “Sure buddy” if anyone described where we find ourselves today as the place our future held.
Outright theft of the homes of millions of people seems to be the stuff of novels. Then we find out that the banks set out intentionally to loan the money to anyone and everyone with the intent of doing just that in a premeditated murder kind of a way. They not only are responsible for the most horrendous actions but they set them up to begin with.
We need hydrophobic helldogs to climb up out of the bottomless pit and run wild through the kingdoms of the dead, biting each corpse and infecting it with frothing, red eyed rabies that launches the corpses out of their graves and drives them in a murderous frenzy into the corporate boardrooms of the world. The bite of the corpses infects the psychopaths in suits and sends them into a feeding frenzy upon their comrades. It would be a righteous thing to see; bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers and hedge fund operatives, tearing each other to pieces and consuming one another until there is nothing left but heads with snapping teeth, circling around on the blood-soaked Turkmen carpets.

• There should be a universal shoot on sight law that’s something like the Texas, ‘sumbitch needed killing law’ that applies to bankers and their affiliate’s world wide. The problem with this is the excessive amount of compassion that attends such a fate. These sorts of people would just consider that an acceptable price for doing business and get back into line on the invisible conveyor belt to the moon for another body and another turn on the wheel of fire.

The thing that amazes me the most is that we have yet to see an epidemic of assassinations of the various types who are tormenting humanity. I would have expected this to have become routine by now. I would have expected half a dozen guys with MP5’s, Ak-47’s or something automatic, with duct taped, reversed and doubled banana clips, to have stormed Goldman Sachs and made a statement. My thinking is that anyone who does will be released from jail, as they were in the storming of the Bastille, in the not too distant future. I do expect this to start soon and to hit not only the boardrooms but the sheltered homes and hideaways that every local in every locale knows about from living there.
The dreadful and searing pain of witnessing the terrible absurdities of the moment must be driving people mad but… they just go on with the program.
I am not like most people- or maybe I don’t know what most people are like, but for me this is all under control, part of the performance and one more repeat of a lesson that is orchestrated to teach humanity some of the things it needs to know in order to lay a secure groundwork for the new age. That new age, like all ages, will eventually be compromised but it will take awhile. Try to see what is happening as a real time play in the hands of a masterful director who provided the works of Shakespeare (I happen to have some soliloquies from lost plays of The Bard) for our edification on the cosmic and perpetually repeating phenomenon that has been going on since long before the pyramids were constructed. All kinds of things are going to be revealed with ever greater frequency, due to the speeding up of time, as we approach the aperture leading to the dimensional shift. I expect to see a trail of perambulating bodies accompanying me on the holographic highways to the exit doors.
It’s gotten this insane because anything less wouldn’t have any effect on the slumbering masses. Even where we are now isn’t impacting most of them. It’s really going to take a two by four to bring them out of their coma. It gives proof to the presumption that they could burn to death in their beds and not wake up. They will wake up this time though because it is required, if only to witness the final scene.
I want to tell you that there’s going to be quite an after party and everyone who can get there is invited. Getting there is your invitation. Don’t despair at the seeming power of these cartoon clowns. They’re like a Hollywood set where the building’s fronts are propped up by two by fours behind them. These may be the same two by fours that are going to be used for wakey wakey. The fabricated scenery will fall in simultaneously choreography with the scales dropping from people’s eyes.
You’re going to see actual tears appear in the fabric of the illusion that has passed for reality. Things are going to appear and disappear in ways that startle in awesome fashion. I think it can be truly said that, ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet’ and that applies to both the inner and the outer worlds. This has been a long time coming and all you have to do is go to the deepest part of the truest state of your being and feed it with your industry and desire. Belief in the bullshit is for those who have been producing it. This doesn’t apply to you. Belief in anything ties you to it. Learn to say, “I don’t know”. You know what I mean (grin).
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Analysis: Why Did Lloyd Blankfein Hire Outside Counsel?

If charges are filed, they will likely be related to perjury, specifically lying to Congress.  An alternative charge of institutional corruption would be much more complex and could easily be buried in years of legal paperwork.  NY Times Dealbook confirms tonight that Goldman executives will soon be interviewed by the Justice Department, but that no subpoenas have been issued.

A spokesman for Goldman said executives at the firm were expected to be interviewed by the Justice Department. The agency is conducting an inquiry that stems from a 650-page report produced earlier this year by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. That report said that Goldman had misled clients about its practices related to mortgage-linked securities.

“As is common in such situations, Mr. Blankfein and other individuals who were expected to be interviewed in connection with the Justice Department’s inquiry into certain matters raised in the P.S.I. report hired counsel at the outset,” Goldman Sachs said in a statement.

While investors apparently feared the worst on Monday, a person close to the matter said that Mr. Blankfein had not been subpoenaed and that no Goldman executive had received an individual subpoena. Goldman is cooperating with the Justice Department investigation.

John Carney hints that the charge, if any will likely be perjury.

"If Blankfein hired him in a personal capacity, it means that his interests and Goldman's have diverged. That's bad news for one of them," a well-known criminal defense attorney in Washington who is not involved with the case told me.

Earlier this year, Goldman was accused of possibly misleading a Senate panel that looked into the financial crisis. Executives from Goldman, including Blankfein, testified that their short positions on the U.S. housing market were hedges against long positions. The company was not "net short" the housing market, the executives said. Other evidence indicated that Goldman was net short.  The chairman of the Senate investigations panel referred the case to the Justice Department for possible perjury charges against the Goldman executives.

As I pointed out in April, there seems to have been a dispute within Goldman about the character of the firm's short positions. Blankfein and other top executives are convinced that they were hedging other exposure. But the traders putting on the positions saw themselves as making a heroic market call.

The attorney I spoke with said that it could mean that Blankfein has reason to believe he could personally be a defendant in a civil or criminal case.

Matt Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone about a month after the Levin report came out:

They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye.  But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.

Defenders of Goldman have been quick to insist that while the bank may have had a few ethical slips here and there, its only real offense was being too good at making money. We now know, unequivocally, that this is bullshit. Goldman isn't a pudgy housewife who broke her diet with a few Nilla Wafers between meals — it's an advanced-stage, 1,100-pound medical emergency who hasn't left his apartment in six years, and is found by paramedics buried up to his eyes in cupcake wrappers and pizza boxes. If the evidence in the Levin report is ignored, then Goldman will have achieved a kind of corrupt-enterprise nirvana. Caught, but still free: above the law.

This isn't just a matter of a few seedy guys stealing a few bucks. This is America: Corporate stealing is practically the national pastime, and Goldman Sachs is far from the only company to get away with doing it. But the prominence of this bank and the high-profile nature of its confrontation with a powerful Senate committee makes this a political story as well. If the Justice Department fails to give the American people a chance to judge this case — if Goldman skates without so much as a trial — it will confirm once and for all the embarrassing truth: that the law in America is subjective, and crime is defined not by what you did, but by who you are.

Continue reading Taibbi's The People Vs. Goldman Sachs...

Austerity Measures Are Killing The American Dream

This article was originally written for an interview with New Dissident Radio's Lakota Phillips on Breaking Taboo.

Image - Despair by Lakota Philips

S. Paul Forrest

Activist Post

I remember when I was a child, I would stare into the sky at the clouds and dream of the wonders that life had in store for me.  Once, while I was watching an airplane pass over the top of our modest cabin in the woods, my father sat down next to me and asked what  I was doing.  I told him about the plane and how I wanted to be a pilot so I could soar free above the Earth.  He told me that I could be anything I wanted if I only tried hard enough.  I did work to that end, for in my lifetime anything was indeed possible. 

Today though, economic and social restrictions are hampering the American Dream.  No longer is it enough to work toward our dreams, for restrictions are aplenty and entitlement is seemingly meant for only the few.  Or, at least that is the perception of so many around the world who, despite their efforts find only despair and economic agony within their dreams -- or, rather, their nightmares.

 

In England recently, some children who had come to realize just how limited their futures are, took to the streets to physically express and impose upon those around them, the frustrations of just how devastating the fairy tale of reward for valor really is.  To these street urchins; these angry young of a society that has all but cast their class into the shadows of insignificance, violence seemed to be the only way to bring attention to their loss of hope and to bring to the discussion boards of mass media, just how screwed up our global society has become.

It is important to recognize why the riots in England occurred and how it could so very easily happen here in America. As Will Hutton has so poignantly stated: 

We are arriving at a major turning point in our national life. It is not enough to talk of being tough on crime and the causes of crime. We need an entire root-and-branch reshaping of our economy and society – where both rewards and punishments are judicious, proportional and deserved, and all within a revived and larger understanding of fairness.

We, as Americans, must all work to promote fairness and to reshape our own system to not just contain social unrest through a heightened police state, but to holistically prevent it from happening culturally.

The governmental puppets of media in England and America have called these protestors thugs and vandals in order to dismiss and denounce any legitimacy to their complaints, but those of us who are not asleep; our heads not buried in the sands of propagandistic deception, know better.  We recognize that there are real problems to address and societal issues to fix if we are ever to preserve our collective freedoms.  The press seems to only concern themselves with maintaining a system of austerity in this world, but the people against whom they set these measures of mass deception are speaking their minds with fists and fury.  How long or how much will it take before they who would silence us all, listen to our growing dismay and disgust of a system that has abandoned us?  How long before those who have nothing left to lose riot in the streets of this nation?

The issue that has come to the forefront in the unrest of England and other countries is a symptom of the ongoing struggles of downtrodden people across America today.  Austerity; that policy of deficit-cutting by higher taxes, lower spending, and a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided, is a measure which is inundating our fiscal policy and domestic provisions, leaving many Americans and global citizens who have worked their whole lives to provide for their families, literally out in the cold and without hope.

In light of the riots in England, Prime Minister David Cameron debased the rioters for “a complete lack of responsibility, a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals”.  Has dissidence become a measure of morals, then?  Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to blame the system and the deprivation of these people and question its morals and its ethics? According to Cameron’s description, total acceptance of the emerging caste system and continued loss of our civil rights, or even the right to survive in a world held captive by a Global Fascist State, would be unethical behavior and a sign of “improper upbringing”.  Forgive me if I disagree with that particular, political delusion: one shared by many who profit from misery.

In America as well, “popular” media describes dissidents as socially indignant, reprehensible and in some cases, unpatriotic.  Whenever a person stands up and questions our government’s lack of representation, its secrecy, hypocrisy, their hand in the slow decay of our social structure, and the imperialism spread by our nation, they are described as loud mouths or disruptors of the peace.  

As is to be expected in a system dominated by faux-patriotism and the desire to destroy our Constitutional right to peaceably assemble and our freedom of speech, the powers-that-be are doing everything possible to quell any movement against their march toward propelling American ignorance in order to denounce our collective voices of protest and true patriotism. The current governmental regime and their media mouthpieces will have us all believe that actions toward preserving our Constitutional and human rights are signs of some social illness, rather than a conscious movement to preserve global liberty. 

As an example of how this phenomenon of media-driven social psychosis has infected our American state of mind as it pertains to our right of freedom of speech, Ray McGovern was assaulted by security when he stood up and turned his back on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while she was speaking, ironically enough, about free speech being suppressed in Muslim nations.  Similarly, activism across this nation has been met with condemnation or labels of domestic terrorism and anti-patriotic dissent.  People who speak out are attacked and condemned while we stand silent en masse, doing nothing.

Phil Rockstroh has made the following statement on this subject of austerity:

We exist in a culture that, day after day, inundates its have-nots with consumerist propaganda, and then, when the social order breaks down, its wealthy and bourgeoisie alike express outrage when the poor steal consumer goods -- as opposed to going out and looting an education and a good job.

Under Disaster Capitalism, the underclass have had economic violence inflicted upon them since birth, yet the corporate state mass media doesn't seem to notice the situation, until young men burn down the night. Then media elitists wax indignant, carrying on as if these desperate acts are devoid of cultural context.

In America, austerity is attacking the very core of our national character.  In these times, when jobs are being exported, and corporations are receiving governmental personhood and less taxation while reaping record profits, the people are paying the price.  We have become chattel to provide the elite riches and privilege while we live on the brink of insignificance. Our futures lay on the edge of oblivion with the elimination of domestic manufacturing, loss of jobs, and the destruction of social safety nets in the name of budget balancing.  Of course, the corporate welfare system remains in tact, as does the war effort to control the Middle Eastern capitalist interests.

Mario Savio, an activist best known for his speech on the steps of Sproul Hall, as part of the Free Speech Movement had boldly said the following of the corporatist machine in the shadow of the oppressive nature of the 60s, a heated time when the people of this nation had begun awakening to the same austerity we struggle against now:

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop! You've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!

In the wake of this machine, this measure of austerity is raping our American Dream.  Our Global Realm is one of corporatism and self-servitude exhibited by those who are supposed to be representing us, but have long since set off on a journey to only represent their masters or industry.  This has spawned movements like Anonymous, which is taking the Internet by storm.  Their recent declaration of war on the system, speaks the thoughts and represents the angst permeating through our social structure.

I suppose the saddest part of the1960s Era of freedom movements and related protests against the in-place system of oppression was that it ended.  Today, though, we again are awakening -- albeit forcefully -- to the destructive nature of the same mechanisms designed to put the few before the many.  Hard work is rewarded in the New American Way; with dreams trampled to dust, while fear of a growing police state keeps silent those who would otherwise feel free to speak out against a government which no longer represents us. 

All I hope for in this life, at this stage in my own, is to someday be able to sit next to my own son or daughter and tell them what my father once told me about hard work and perseverance. The new American Dream is one where we dream or reminisce of a time when we could speak out.  Or has it become the American Nightmare where we face the impending destruction of our collective freedom and have only hard times to look forward to? Given today’s situation of quickly degrading social structures and ever-increasing caste systemics, I can’t help but feel that if I said the same words to my children that my father once said to me of hard work rewarding them with success, I would be lying.