Bill Moyers sits down with Bill Black, the former senior regulator who
cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.
This show aired April 3, 2009 on PBS
U.S. Bankers Guilty of Fraud? Excerpt from Dr. Mercola's Comments
In the video above, Bill Moyers interviews William K. Black, a professor of
economics and law, who alleges American banks and credit agencies conspired
to create a system in which risky loans could receive AAA ratings and zero
oversight – exactly the kind of gluttonous overreaching and hair-raising
kinds of risk-taking that Bourg talks about in his article.
This video, by the way, is one of the most enlightening videos on what the
banks have done that I have ever seen. It’s an extraordinary interview and
absolutely worth watching.
In it, Black calls it like it is – Fraud. Some people got very rich
over a period of time, and now the entire country is paying the price.
What’s worse is that Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama’s Secretary
of the Treasury, is currently facilitating the cover-up to keep you in the
darkabout
America’s financial insolvency. A recent
New York Times and CBS News Poll shows a surprising increase in the
belief that the economy is rosy and turning around. Obviously most of them
have not seen this Bill Moyer’s interview. Dr. Mercola
******
"The economic crash has made many unpleasant truths about the
United States apparent. One of the most alarming, according to a former
chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the financial
industry has effectively captured the U.S. government.
If the IMF’s staff could speak freely to the U.S.
government, it would say what it says to every country in such a situation:
Recovery will fail unless the financial oligarchy blocking essential
reform is broken. And if the U.S. is to avoid a true depression, time is
running out.
The U.S. financial crisis is shockingly similar to
problems more commonly associated with the third world."
Dick Durbin:
Banks "Frankly Own The Place"by
Ryan Grim
04/29/09
On
Monday night in an interview with a radio host back home, Sen.
Dick Durbin came to a stark conclusion: the banks own
the Senate.
"And
the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a
banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still
the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly
own the place," he said on
WJJG 1530 AM's
"Mornings with Ray Hanania."
Progress Illinois
picked up the quote.
Earlier Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)
told the Huffington
Post that
the most important provision of bankruptcy reform -- the
authority for a bankruptcy judge to renegotiate mortgages,
known as cramdown, which banks strongly oppose -- could get
ripped out of the bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
pushed back, saying that a bill without such a provision
wouldn't be reform at all.
While
Durbin has been negotiating with individual banks over the
last several weeks, bank lobbyists and Senate Minority Whip
Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)
have been whipping up
opposition to it.
A growing number of Democrats have announced opposition to
cramdown, including Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.)
and Jon Tester (Mont.).
"There's been a tendency on the part of some who are
advocates for the legislation to overestimate the number of
votes in favor," said Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.). "When I was
actively involved at the moment it broke down it was my
impression there were no Republicans who were willing to
support it and at least a few Democrats have stated openly
on the record that they were in opposition. How you get to
60 with those numbers is a mathematical problem."
Madoff Ponzi Scheme Dwarfed by Illuminati Rubin's
- December 13, 2008
by Henry Makow Ph.D.
The arrest offinancier Bernard Madoff Thursday for operating a "Ponzi
scheme" costing investors $50 billion made the TV network news. Curiously, a
lawsuit the same day against Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin
for defrauding Citibank shareholders of more than $122 billion, also
described as a "Ponzi scheme," got no airplay whatsoever.
As we shall see, Rubin, a Director of Citibank, profited from the shady
practices that destroyed the financial system and sent the world's economies
into a tailspin. Then, to repair the damage, he and his banker friends put
the taxpayer on the hook for trillions.
Rubin didn't get the same publicity as Madoff because of his close
connection to Barack Obama.
Robert Rubin's son Jamie was Obama's main Wall Street fundraiser and is now
one of his principal advisers. More significant, Obama's economic team
consists of
Rubin's proteges including Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary,
Lawrence Summers, Senior Economic Adviser and Peter Orszag, Budget
Director. The Times of London has already dubbed them the "Robert
Rubin Memorial All Stars."
Clearly, the media don't want people to realize that the candidate of
"Change" chose the people responsible for this calamity to be his "economic
team." While in the Clinton White House, Rubin, with Summers, helped tear
down the regulatory walls between banks, brokerages and insurance companies
and freed them to trade in unregulated and little-understood derivatives
worth trillions of dollars.
THE LAW SUIT
In an article entitled
"Ponzi Scheme at CITI," the New York Post reported: "A new
Citigroup scandal is engulfing Robert Rubin and his former disciple Chuck
Prince for their roles in an alleged Ponzi-style scheme that's now choking
world banking.
Director Rubin and ousted CEO Prince - and their lieutenants over the past
five years - are named in a federal lawsuit for an alleged complex cover-up
of toxic securities that spread across the globe, wiping out trillions of
dollars in their destructive paths.
Investor-plaintiffs in the suit accuse Citi management of overseeing the
repackaging of unmarketable collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that no
one wanted - and then reselling them to Citi and hiding the poisonous
exposure off the books in shell entities.
The lawsuit said that when the bottom fell out of the shaky assets in the
past year, Citi's stock collapsed, wiping out more than $122 billion of
shareholder value.
However, Rubin and other top insiders were able to keep Citi shares afloat
until they could cash out more than $150 million for themselves in
"suspicious" stock sales" calculated to maximize the personal benefits from
undisclosed inside information," the lawsuit said.
The latest troubles for Rubin, Prince and others emerged in a 500-page
investigation by Citigroup investors represented by law firm Kirby McInerney.
The probe was used to amend and add new details to a blanket investor
lawsuit filed against Citigroup a year ago. The amended suit called the
actions of Citi leaders "a quasi-Ponzi scheme" to hide troubles - and keep Citi stock afloat while insiders unloaded about 3 million shares between
Jan. 1, 2004 and Feb. 22, 2008 for huge profits.
In addition to Citigroup, Rubin and Prince, the complaint names Vice
Chairman Lewis Kaden, ex-CFO Sallie Krawcheck and her successor CFO Gary
Crittenden.
Rubin cleared $30.6 million on his stock sales, while Prince got $26.5
million, former COO Robert Druskin got nearly $32 million and former Global
Wealth Management unit chief Todd Thomson got $25.7 million, the suit said."
THE PONZI SCHEME
In an article, "The
Great American Ponzi Scheme," Robert Butche writes, "Little did people
know that banking and finance had contracted a nasty disease -- one known in
the grifter trade as a Ponzi Scheme -- in which sub-prime mortgages were
securitized and traded based on an unsustainable promise to pay high returns
to investors from monies obtained from subsequent investors."
In the commentary to the NY Post article above, a Ph.D. in Physics
explained that his fellow graduates all went to work for big banks,
brokerages and Fannie May. They were "hired to do complicated calculations
(loop level) borrowed from quantum field theory and statistical mechanics.
They can take any number(s) as an input and produce any output as desired.
Hence the banks hired at a much higher pay these people than they could earn
in Universities or research institutes...Their bosses told them to inflate
the value of anything to any number and these people did that."
"No ordinary derivatives trader can ever understand any formula(e) to
calculate the value of anything. These are too complicated but
intentionally. But there are some conservation laws for energy, momentum etc
in physics. Where every (loop level) calculation has to abide by them. In
finance and banking there is no such conserved quantity as credit can be
created from thin air and destroyed also to that. Hence the fiasco."
BERNARD MADOFF, RAHM EMMANUEL
Madoff was
a pillar of Wall Street, one of the founders of the NASDAQ Exchange and
a former Chairman. His private Investment business became known for
delivering steady returns year after year and attracted billions. Little did
anyone imagine he was using new investments to provide returns on old ones.
The house of cards came crashing down last week when he confessed to his
sons, who promptly reported him. He had lost their money too. He had cheated
family and friends.
"Madoff's investors included captains of industry, corporations -- some of
which are publicly traded -- that used Madoff almost as a high-yielding cash
management account, endowments, universities, foundations and, importantly,
many high-profile funds of funds," said Douglas Kass, who heads hedge fund
Seabreeze Partners Management. "It appears that at least $15 billion of
wealth, much of which was concentrated in southern Florida and New York
City, has gone to 'money heaven,'"
he said.
Madoff's $50 billion scam is described as the largest in history. But it
pales in comparison with what Robert Rubin and his ilk have done to the
world. With the possible exception of Ponzi himself, most of the scamsters
mentioned here are Jewish. A consolation to anti-Semites, the biggest
victims probably also are Jews. One Jewish Foundation, which gave away $1.5
million to Jewish causes,
closed its doors and laid off its employees. All its money was invested
with Madoff.
"This guy [has] killed more Jews then Hitler," one wag
said in a
forum. "Wait till you read the formal complaint from the SEC and FBI."
Then he added facetiously, "Now that the Jew has been thrown down the well,
is our country free?"
Thankfully Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is not Jewish, but Obama's
Jewish Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel is
implicated in the Governor's plan to sell Obama's Senate Seat. Obama was
put in power by Illuminati Jews and Masons and there is going to be plenty
of corruption.
Just as there was collateral damage when Illuminati bankers put Hitler into
power, (the loss of 60 million people) Jews today have got to break rank
with the bankersand their political puppets. We're not responsible for
their machinations and Jews suffer as much as anyone.
Moreover, Jews are going to be blamed unless we join in exposing and
opposing the Illuminati, (i.e. the highest rank of Freemasonry consisting of
Jews and non-Jews.) Organized Jewry and many individual Jews are witting
and unwitting instruments of the Illuminati bankers' plan for totalitarian
world government.
At the same time, we need to ask ourselves whether there is some flaw in
Jewish culture that makes so many Jews sacrifice personal integrity for
financial success and power.
A Ponzi scheme is a
fraudulent
investment operation that involves paying abnormally high returns ("profits")
to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than
from net revenues generated by any real
business.
It is named after
Charles Ponzi.[1]
A Ponzi scheme has similarities with a
pyramid scheme though the two types of fraud are different.
It usually offers abnormally high short-term returns in order to entice
new investors. The perpetuation of the high returns that a Ponzi scheme
advertises (and pays) requires an ever-increasing flow of money from
investors in order to keep the scheme going.
The system is destined to collapse because there are little or no
underlying earnings from the money received by the promoter. However, the
scheme is often interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses,
because a Ponzi scheme is suspected and/or because the promoter is selling
unregistered securities. As more investors become involved, the likelihood
of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities increases.
The scheme is named after Charles Ponzi, who became notorious for using
the technique after emigrating from
Italy to the
United States in 1903. Ponzi was not the first to invent such a scheme,
but his operation took in so much money that it was the first to become
known throughout the United States.
His original scheme was in theory based on arbitraging international
reply coupons for postage stamps, but soon diverted later investors' money
to support payments to earlier investors and Ponzi's personal wealth.
Today's schemes are often considerably more sophisticated than Ponzi's,
although the underlying formula is quite similar and the principle behind
every Ponzi scheme is to exploit investor naïveté.
----
Comment on above article - Jerry said (December 13,
2008):
I was just reading some of your theories regarding "The Jewish Elite"
and their control of the world. I am Jewish, and disabled, living off of SSDI checks, and my wife is a social worker (so you can imagine the kind
of money we make, or don't). I was frightened to read about the
supposedly Jewish led control over capital and the inner-workings of
"The Illuminati". My wife and I are fairly poor working-class Jewish
Americans and proud. If there is a conspiracy led by the teachings of
Torah and Talmud, why aren't I aware of it? We are simple people who pay
our taxes, don't make much money, happily attend our Synagogue for
prayer and community, and consider ourselves "average Americans". I
don't like the idea of a rather small minority having so much control
over millions, if not billions, of people's lives.
Do you believe we are inherently evil because of our religion/ethnicity,
or are we of the 2/3 of the Jews to be exterminated? I feel like we are
good people just trying to get by like every other blue collar American.
I don't want my government to be lead by radical zionists. I want my
government for the people by the people like I was promised.
I don't find it hard to believe that a wealthy, powerful minority could
execute that which you claim, but I think it should be noted that not
all Jews are conspiring to execute this evil.
Point being: we are Jews, Americans, and just as normal as The Jonses'
(maybe the Jonesteins in our case ;).
Jerry,
Just like Freemasonry, Judaism is organized as a secret
society. Only the "initiates" know the true agenda. The rank and file
are given idealistic platitudes. They are manipulated and end up taking
the fall for the secret agenda. - henry
The nation is currently in the
beginning of a financial dilemma. Ever since the founding of the
nation over 200 years ago we have had similar hard times. There
were recessions in the 1800s. There were boom and bust periods in
the 1900s. However there is one unique factor that makes this
current malady seem more severe to the masses.
From 1800 to 1900 the federal government was busy building a
nation and fighting a civil war over individual rights. If an
individual wanted something, they worked for it. Individuals
without any goals simply went through their life without any
rewards. In this respect, nothing has changed.
From 1900 to 2000 the nation fought two world wars, and two
undeclared wars. The economy experienced a financial depression in
the 1930s and subsequent recessions every few years after. Economic
boom and bust are natural cycles like global climate changes. After
the financial depression of the 1930s it was not political spending
schemes, but a world war that got the nation's economy back on its
feet. Massive spending on arms brought the nation back to
productivity. After the war the United States was the only
industrial base that had not been destroyed by the war so the
rebuilding dollars continued to flow.
In the great depression of the 1930s the American population
learned to take care of themselves. Times were extremely hard and
millions of families were hungry, but they survived without food
stamps and welfare payments.
In the 1960s America's government lead by President Johnson, the
Democrat Party and willing Republicans passed liberal compassion
legislation. Never again would anyone go to bed hungry as long as
there was potential tax dollars in some other person's wallet.
Americans have been indoctrinated for the last sixty years to look
to their government to provide for all their wants. However the
American government produces absolutely nothing and only has the
ability to redistribute assets from one individual to another.
In the following decades until the end of the century, the
American government continued to increase the governmental
assistance programs to the general population simply to curry
political favor with the masses. Now with the complete national
education system in the hands of future socialist the population is
taught that it is the responsibility of the United States government
to take care of everything from cradle to grave.
Gainfully employed or not, individuals are encouraged to get food
stamps. If you want to live in a nice house, individuals are
encouraged to get a mortgage guaranteed by the federal government.
Families with children are encouraged to send them to a government
school where day care services are provided and they will be fed
while there.
In prior years when economic times were hard, individuals found
ways to survive by using their God given brains to figure out a
solution. They cut back on their acquisitions, they found ways to
save, they found second jobs, and they became more selective in
their purchases. They bought a pair of twenty dollar tennis shoes
instead of a hundred dollar designer pair. If they wanted to be
entertained, they went to the public library and checked out a good
book instead of spending $10 on a movie rental.
When the bread winner got laid off from his job, he found another
job, even if he had to relocate to another part of the country to
work. Ever wonder if an experienced Michigan auto worker could find
a job at a South Carolina assembly plant? If a worker got laid off
from a $40 per hour job, he did not hesitate to take a part time job
for minimum wage to feed his family and pay his rent. This is
called personal integrity and acceptance of responsibility.
If help was available, it was appreciated, but it was not assumed
to be there. As it has always been in the history of the world, the
only safety net was the individual themselves. Individuals with a
goal somehow always managed to achieve their goal while individuals
waiting for someone else to take care of them continued to flounder
in the unpleasantness.
During this great media and liberal policy depression of 2008
plus, three groups will emerge.
The political elite that are protected by the party politics
as in the old Soviet empire of the last century. This group
never suffers as long as the party stays in political power.
You can see them on television every night telling the masses
how they are going to make it better for them.
A group of self sufficient individuals that will actually
get ahead because they will not accept the equality BS of the
party politics. This group will do whatever it takes to survive
and will actually get ahead because of their ability to think
for themselves and not depend on anyone else for their personal
responsibilities.
The masses of aimless, poorly educated, individuals that
will stand around holding their hands, and wait for their
government to fairly and equally provide for their needs. This
group assumes that it is their government's responsibility to
take care of them. Really hard times are coming for this group,
but their hard times will be shared equally.
Which group will you be in?
Jewish
lobby and Israel blamed for economic crisis
ADL (anti-defamation league) of B'nai B'rith censors YouTube video
by Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de Aztlan
Los
Angeles, Alta Califronia - October 7, 2008 - (ACN) The New York Times
published a statement by the director of the ADL of B'nai B'rith, Abraham
Foxman, reporting that many Americans are blaming the Jewish lobby and
Israel for the current catastrophic financial crisis affecting the USA and
the world.
Abraham Foxman's report mentions the now bankrupt Jewish firm Lehman
Brothers. CEO Richard Fuld, who is a Jew, was recently punched in the face
by an angry American who lost all of his retirement savings when Fuld
declared the firm bankrupt. Richard Fuld, however, took home an estimated
$450 million dollars in compensation.
Foxman also mentions two other Jews that have been criticized by
Americans for having had a major part in the crisis. They are the present
and former Chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board Ben Bernanke and Allan
Greenspan.
The Federal Reserve is a private cartel of banks controlled by
international Jewish families say the Americans who are blaming the Jewish
lobby and Israel for the financial crisis. The Federal Reserve was given the
exclusive right to create and print money by the Federal Reserve Act of
1913. These Americans say that the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the
creation of New York "banksters" and approved by crooked congressmen in the
pockets of the Jews.
Abraham Foxman quotes one American as saying "While pumping hundreds of
billions of dollars into a rescue package, US President George W. Bush has
remained silent about the Jewish lobby that put the US banking and financial
sector into place. The Jewish lobby controls the US elections and defines
the foreign policy of any new administration in a manner that allows it to
retain control of the American government and economy."
Many Americans also criticize the Jewish lobby, whose principal tool is
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), for each year ordering
the US Congress to approve multi-billion dollar aid packages for Israel.
Much of this aid is in the form of military weapons but some is to fund the
Orthodox school system, including yeshivas and kollels. Kollels are yeshivas
for married rabbis who do not work. American taxpayer monies are used as
welfare benefits for these rabbis and their families. Many of these rabbis
can be seen every day weaving their heads back and forth in front of the
Western Wall in Jerusalem.
One prominent American who is very critical of the Jewish run Federal
Reserve Board is Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. He says the Federal Reserve
Board is a big scam and should be abolished. He is continously making
efforts to educate the American public on the US monetary system -- who
controls it and how. He often talks about how the Federal Reserve Board
creates
money out of thin air, on the concept of charging interest on money loaned
and on the effects of inflation on savings. Of these, inflation is the most
sinister. The $700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street and banks is going
to have a devastating effect on all savings deposits. The Federal Reserve is
going to print $700 billion dollars and add that amount to the total money
supply in circulation. This means that if you have $10,000 dollars in a
savings account today, in a few months it may only be worth $7,000 in terms
of the goods you can buy. The $3,000 that disappeared is the essence of the
scam.
Abraham Foxman of the ADL of B'nai B'rith was also instrumental in having
YouTube and other Internet services remove a certain video critical of the
Jewish lobby from their servers. This attests to the power and influence
this organization has in the USA and throughout the world. This is pure
censorship of information and ideas. If video recorders were available in
the time of Jesus Christ and someone recorded Jesus kicking out the "money
lenders" from the Temple, would the ADL censor the video if it was being
shown on YouTube?
Bernard Madoff, 70, a
powerful NY financial advisor and a former chairman of NASDAQ, whose
handful of clients routinely expected -- and received -- double
digit returns, up market or down, may have instead been running a
decades long Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of $50 billion
dollars, according to a one-count criminal complaint unsealed in
federal court in New York.
- ABC
From the Daily Oracle -
December 16, 2008
More evidence of a banana republic, a total shocker with broad
implications. One of the cornerstones of Wall Street, a man,who for decades
worked the nuts and bolts of the system, has just been charged with fraud.
$50 billion worth:
Bernard Madoff, president of market- maker Bernard Madoff Investment
Securities and a former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market, was charged
by U.S. prosecutors in a $50 billion securities fraud at his investment
advisory business.
Madoff, 70, was arrested today at 8:30 a.m. by the FBI and appeared
this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas Eaton in Manhattan
federal court. Charged with a single count of securities fraud, he is to
be released tonight on $10 million bond guaranteed by his wife and two
others, Eaton said. Madoff’s wife was present in the courtroom.
“He’s one of the pioneers of modern Wall Street,” said James Angel,
an associate business professor at Georgetown University in Washington.
Madoff’s firm was among the first to automate market-making, in which a
dealer continually buys and sells stock. The company was among the
largest to offer “payment for order flow,” or paying to handle customer
orders. “The exchanges didn’t like the practice and questioned whether
customers got the best price,” Angel said.
Madoff’s New York-based firm serves hedge funds, banks and wealthy
individuals. It was the 23rd largest market maker on Nasdaq in October,
handling a daily average of about 50 million shares a day, exchange data
show. The firm specialized in handling orders from online brokers in
some of the largest U.S. companies, including General Electric Co. and
Citigroup Inc.
Confidence continues to be eroded. The details will likely not be pretty.
Update: The repercussions will be dramatic. Many hedge funds were
invested here and will show total losses on these positions. This will
result in further forced liquidations on other positions. Furthermore, this
may result in further redemptions as people’s confidence will be further
eroded. This was one of the largest hedge funds. If it happened here, could
it happen elsewhere.
Just ugly.
(above): Mid-Island Y
Jewish Community Center in
Plainview was exposed to a
billion dollar investment scandal
orchestrated by Madoff,
according to investigators.
(Newsday Photo /
Michael E. Ach / December 16, 2008)
Jewish
lobby and Israel blamed for economic crisis
Los
Angeles, Alta Califronia - October 7, 2008 - (ACN) The New York Times
published a statement by the director of the ADL of B'nai B'rith, Abraham
Foxman, reporting that many Americans are blaming the Jewish lobby and
Israel for the current catastrophic financial crisis affecting the USA and
the world. 
money out of thin air, on the concept of charging interest on money loaned
and on the effects of inflation on savings. Of these, inflation is the most
sinister. The $700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street and banks is going
to have a devastating effect on all savings deposits. The Federal Reserve is
going to print $700 billion dollars and add that amount to the total money
supply in circulation. This means that if you have $10,000 dollars in a
savings account today, in a few months it may only be worth $7,000 in terms
of the goods you can buy. The $3,000 that disappeared is the essence of the
scam. 
04/29/09