Three former top managers of the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing were convicted of fraud by a court in Reykjavik Thursday and sentenced to between three and five and a half years in prison.
Keiser Report: Wet Wipes for Incontinent Banksters
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the Fatberg of Fraud clogging up the global financial system and JPMorgan's role in depositing the wet wipes of financial products into that system. In the second half, Max talks to Rob Kirby of KirbyAnalytics.com about Mark Carney and his merry band of bankers as the Lone Ranger box office disaster, they've all made their fees while the shareholders and stakeholders eat the losses. Kirby also predicts lower rates due to central bank intervention via Interest Rate Swaps and Forward Rate Agreements.
The 9/11 Fed Cash Flows Mystery
Markets are being manipulated! You already knew that. But when it makes the top fold of the Old Grey Lady, it must really be egregious. An investigation by the the New York Times reveals that Goldman Sachs has been manipulating the aluminum market for years. Coca Cola and other end users have complained that waiting times for shipments have gone from weeks to months. In the meantime, our Goldman friends charge needless storage fees. And the same shenanigans exist in copper and crude oil thanks to Jamie Dimon's JP Morgan. We'll be covering this story in depth this week. Today, we expose another mysterious event with a former Federal Reserve economist. He was fired from the Fed for exposing billions in suspicious cash transfers just prior to 9/11. And Perianne digs into the fine print of gold to educate our beloved Chairman about that which he admitted before Congress he knows nothing. Never mind his New York Fed holds gold bars on behalf of other countries -- so Germany thinks. And, the saga in Detroit continues. Mayor Bing basically pleaded for a Federal bailout, citing the beneficial moral hazard this would engender for other struggling cities. Just, and we quote: "not yet." Let them eat bonds! We're no Marie Antoinette, but it when it comes to haircuts or guillotines, we choose the former. Bob duels Detroit native and Breaking the Set Producer, Ameera David on this very issue. Finally, according to the government's latest calculations on who's buying and holding its own debt, foreign holders have slowed down purchases to the lowest rate since 2006. They now own less than 50% of Treasury's. As long as the Fed keeps buying -- no problem. Except all this talk of tapering means the Fed wants to exit the market. Oh, and speaking of those $85 billion per month purchases by the Fed, guess where that printed money is going? Hint: mostly to foreign banks. You won't want to miss Justine Underhill's expose of this.
"It's Gonna End One Day... Through War Or Financial Collapse"
Marc Faber on shadow banking, market psychology, & the global impact of American monetary policy.
Marc Faber is an economic authority on global macroeconomics, capital markets, and investment and the Editor & Publisher of "The Gloom Boom & Doom Report". He spoke with The Prospect Group about easy monetary policy and credit growth, asset price volatility, and the Fed. Copyright 2013 - The Prospect Group
Source: zerohedge.com
If the American people truly understood how the Federal Reserve system works and what it has done to us, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately. It is a system that was designed by international bankers for the benefit of international bankers, and it is systematically impoverishing the American people.
Source: theeconomiccollapseblog.com
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 5/6/13
Federal Reserve Blows More Bubbles by Ron Paul Last week at its regular policy-setting meeting, the Federal Reserve announced it would double down on the policies that have failed to produce anything but a stagnant economy. It was a disappointing, but not surprising, move. The Fed affirmed that it is prepared to increase its monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities if things don't start looking up. But actually the Fed has already been buying more than the announced $85 billion per month. Between February and March, the Fed's securities holdings increased $95 billion. From March to April, they increased $100 billion. In all, the Fed has pumped more than a half trillion dollars into the economy since announcing its latest round of "quantitative easing" (QE3) in September 2012. Although many were up in arms when the Fed said it would buy $600 billion in government debt outright for the previous round, QE2, all seems quiet about the magnitude of QE3 because it doesn't come with huge up-front total price tag. But by year's end the Fed's balance sheet could hit $4 trillion. With no recovery in sight, where's all this money going? It is creating bubbles. Bubbles in the housing sector, the stock market, and government debt. The national debt is fast approaching $17 trillion, with the Fed monetizing most of the newly issued debt. The stock market has been hitting record highs for the past two months as investors seek to capitalize on the Fed's easy money. After all, as long as the Fed keeps the spigot open, nominal profits are there for the taking. But this is a house of cards. Eventually, just like in 2008-2009, the market will discipline the bad actions of the Fed and seek to find the real normal. In the meantime, real families are suffering. While Wall Street and the government take advantage of access to the Fed's new "free" money, the Fed claims there is no inflation. But who hasn't paid higher prices at the grocery store, the gas pump, for tuition, for insurance? It's bad enough that household incomes have stagnated, but real purchasing power has declined so much that one in seven Americans, 47.3 million people, are on food stamps. Five million are collecting unemployment insurance with 21.5 million afflicted by unemployment according to the government's own figures. That's 13.9 percent -- close to double the 7.5 percent unemployment number reported last week. We are certainly not in a recovery. We don't see the long unemployment and soup kitchen lines like in the Great Depression, but that's just because the lines are electronic now. It is not surprising the Fed has decided to hand the American people more of the same failed policies. But it is disappointing. We know what the real solution is: allow the marketplace to work. Allow entrepreneurs the chance to create instead of stifling innovation with arbitrary regulations. Allow interest rates to rise to equal the risks in the economy. Allow bad debts to be liquidated so we can build on a firm foundation. Stop printing money to benefit the government and big banks. Restore sound money to the economy and the American people. Sound money is the bedrock for prosperity and the best check on big government and crony capitalism.
The Resident: New mortgage scandal can affect 2.5 million homes
In February of 2012, President Obama unveiled the National MortgageInsider Fraud ScamSettlement, which was designed tokeep bankers out of prison"speed relief to the hardest-hit homeowners,ignoreend some of the most abusive practices of the mortgage industry, and begin toinitiate Agenda 21turn the page on an era of recklessness that has left so much damage in its wake." However, many provisions of the settlementintentionallyintrinsically allow fraud to continue to be perpetrated. Manycontrolled opposition studiesinvestigations have already proven that fraud continues in the housing market. The Resident (aka Lori Harfenist) discusses how that is possible.
Ohhhh, you only broke the law and defrauded homeowners 10% of the time? Why, no problem!
You're doing the best you can ole' boy, what do these commoners expect Continue on dear Sir
Why The Truth About Iceland Is So Dangerous To The U.S. - MOC #206
When it came to financial collapse, Iceland did the opposite of us. The results are not allowed on our mainstream media. .... To learn more watch this clip - http://bit.ly/X0irnh and to read about the return of debtor's prisons, go here: http://bit.ly/12DOXiQ
Did you know that the greatest period of economic growth in American history was during a time when there was absolutely no federal income tax?
Bail-ins, BOJ Follies, Gold Referendum - Geneva Business Insider
David L. Smith of GenevaBusinessInsider.blogspot.com joins us for our monthly discussion on economics, finance and politics. This month we cover the Cyprus bail-ins, the latest developments in the Bank of Japan's quantitative easing plans, and the latest on the Swiss citizen initiative to account for the country's gold.
Rick Santelli Bashes Central Bankers
The Philosophy of Anarchism, Keystone Pipeline: Game Over?
EPISODE BREAKDOWN: On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks about Bradley Manning's 1000th day in detention. She then airs a report by BTS Ameera David covering the unprecedented keystone pipeline and climate change rally this past weekend. She then talks Ameera David about the rally, its significance, and features interviews with former Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. BTS wraps up the show with an interview with Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, about the economy, the apparatus of the state and the philosophy of anarchism.
15:00 Stefan Molyneux
Olafur Ragnar Grimsson Iceland president 'Let banks go bankrupt'
"Why do we consider banks to be like holy churches?" is the rhetorical question that Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimson asks (and answers) in this truly epic three minutes of truthiness from the farce that is the World Economic Forum in Davos. Amid a week of back-slapping and self-congratulatory party-outdoing, as John Aziz notes, the Icelandic President explains why his nation is growing strongly, why unemployment is negligible, and how they moved from the world's poster-child for banking crisis 5 years ago to a thriving nation once again. Simply put, he says, "we didn't follow the prevailing orthodoxies of the last 30 years in the Western world." There are lessons here for everyone - as Grimson explains the process of creative destruction that remains much needed in Western economies - though we suspect his holographic pass for next year's Swiss fun will be reneged...
tuckfheman reblogged
paleolibertarian-deactivated201
(Reuters) - Two former executives at an Icelandic bank which collapsed in the 2008 financial meltdown were sentenced to jail on Friday for fraud which led to a 53 million euro loss, in the first major trial of Icelandic bankers linked to the crisis.
"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
Thomas Jefferson, May 28, 1816 in a letter to Senator John Taylor.
HSBC, too big to jail, is the new poster child for US two-tiered justice system
The US is the world's largest prison state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any nation on earth, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. It imprisons people for longer periods of time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west. This sprawling penal state has been constructed over decades, by both political parties, and it punishes the poor and racial minorities at overwhelmingly disproportionate rates.
But not everyone is subjected to that system of penal harshness. It all changes radically when the nation's most powerful actors are caught breaking the law.
Source: Guardian