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Exclusive: Prosecutors, Regulators Close To Making Libor Arrests
And it's not just Cornel (who has joined the leadership group for this blog which includes Dr. King, Nelson Mandela, Shirley Chisholm, et al.) who is stepping out now. Sonia Sanchez can dance beautifully too (and sing "A-women!").
Don't not watch this video, please. Gently lifted from Skeptical Eye:
Is a Great Grey Exodus from America Starting?
Although there is no shortage of victims of the financial crisis, one group that has generally been missed is the middle aged and elderly. Yes, there are reports of people in their 40s and 50s moving in with their children or other relatives, but for the most part, this cohort does not get much attention.
Yet it isn’t hard to see how grim their prospects are. Many thought they’d be employed at decent jobs through age 65 and are un- or underemployed. And those still working full time are often victims of downward mobility, and have lost a well paying job and are now working at a lower pay level. If you don’t have a decent level of earnings, you can’t save much or at all. These pressures come against a backdrop of loss of wealth due to plunges in home prices and to a lesser degree, financial investments. And that’s before we get to pension fund whackage and plans to “reform” SocialSecurity and Medicare.
Some mainstream media outlets took note of an AARP study that found that the group that had the highest rate of foreclosures was the 75 and older cohort. And remember, these are people who retired after a period when unemployment was relatively low and the stockmarket delivered attractive returns.
While people who are under financial stress don’t (have) much in the way of options, I see more and more people of modest and better means planning on becoming expats to make their retirement incomes go further. San Miguel, Mexico, was long a destination for older Californians who wanted to stretch their retirement dollar.
A once well-off jewelry dealer (the “trade” has been in desperate shape for over a decade) planned to move to Buenos Aires, but his situation decayed too quickly for him to exit. Costa Rica is apparently popular with economic emigrants. And I’ve now heard two mentions of Thailand in the last three weeks. One came a reader who told me how his Abyssinian/Manx cat Precious had been trained to stay on a porch, except when he unwisely tried chasing roadrunners and foxes. His e-mail had this sad postscript:
Without going into a rant … we live in rural Clark County, NV outside Las Vegas, and are in that group of former middle class folks that have lost it all … having invested our life savings in this property (peak month Jul, 2006) we have not been able to sell. To view the place Precious and I were behind the fox, go to the home’s website and see the view from the “Perch” seating area. We gave up selling. We have it for rent with option to buy. We hang on but face BK or foreclosure like so many others. When we leave we are moving out of the country.Those who are approaching retirement age and have the time, energy, and financial headroom would do much better to get out of Dodge.
At 65, unemployed since 2007 in a small town, and with a disabled wife, there is no starting over here. We will be able to save more than half my small government pension/her social security in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I am not bitter, but I no longer believe in capitalism or democracy as I once did; not the way they are being practiced now.
America ranks badly on pretty much every social indicator, which means that moving to what is nominally a third world county isn’t just a step up in terms of spending power but often in overall quality of life.
Thus we are likely to see another sort of hollowing out take place:
the lower income and wealthy elderly will remain here, while more in between who have the resources and energy will depart. We already have the economic-oriented literature depicting retirees as a burden.
Imagine what a middle class exodus in this age group will do for the political and economic position of the aged.
Read more here.
Looters Gear Up!
The Looters Have Gotten Back to Pre-Crash Looting
As I noted earlier, the Tax Justice Network just released a study showing that there is somewhere between $21 and 32$ Trillion that tax cheats have hidden in tax havens. Really obscenely rich people like Mitt Romney make up for $9.8 trillion of that – or about 18% of the total liquid net worth in the world, hidden away in tax havens.
But there are two other tables from the study that bear notice. The study suggests that the money stashed in tax havens has been growing steadily at a rate of 16% a year.
Our analysis finds that at the end of 2010 the Top 50 private banks alone collectively managed more than $12.1 trillion in cross-border invested assets for private clients, including their trusts and foundations. This is up from $5.4 trillion in 2005, representing an average annual growth rate of more than 16%.
But that’s sort of misleading. As the table above makes clear, the amount in tax havens grew by 67% between 2002 and 2004, then grew by 40% in the following two years, then by another 23% in the last year of the bubble. Then it crashed, basically losing that 23% and plateauing for a year. And then it started growing again, 18% between 2009 and 2010. And who knows how much in the last year?
The banksters paid a price for 2 years, but the looting has begun again.
What I find particularly interesting – though I’m not sure what to make of it – is the changing share of looter service the big banks are doing. While UBS’ tax shelter dollars continued to grow, they lost market share among tax cheats. Meanwhile Goldman Sachs’ tax shelter dollars almost quadrupled in that time. Bank of America and Wells Fargo made big gains too (though Morgan Stanley’s tax cheat business shrank) and JP Morgan’s was somewhat flat.
Like I said, I don’t know what to make of it. But it sure seems like since the crash at least some of the banks have decided to recover by catering to tax cheats.
Lovely. Some of the same banks that are still in business because tax payers bailed them out are increasingly some of the biggest players in facilitating the looting our our own – and every other – country.
The looting will not go away out of embarrassment that it's been revealed. There is no shame about looting peons in this group. Only in suffering their own looting, which is their term for taxes - meaning any taxes at all.
Countrywide Whistleblower Reveals Rampant Mortgage Fraud Part of ‘Everyday Business’
Countrywide Financial was one of the subprime lenders at the heart of the financial crisis; its predatory lending practices resulted in disgustingly large payouts for executives while sticking low-income borrowers with explosive mortgages they hadn’t a hope of paying back. The New York Times' Gretchen Morgenson called Countrywide, “Exhibit A for the lax and, until recently, highly lucrative lending that has turned a once-hot business ice cold and has touched off a housing crisis of historic proportions.”
Eileen Foster was an investigator in charge of Fraud Risk Management at Countrywide when the ticking time bomb of its bad loans detonated. The practices she discovered shocked her and have also shocked those who’ve heard her story — including the producers of “60 Minutes,” who asked her on the program last December to discuss the lack of prosecutions of any of the bankers responsible for the crisis. But instead of cleaning house and admitting guilt, Bank of America — which purchased Countrywide as the financial crisis grew, in what the Wall Street Journal calls “one of the worst deals ever struck in corporate America” – drove Foster out and tried to discredit her findings.
In 2011, the Department of Labor ruled that Foster had been illegally fired. It said that her firing was retaliation for her whistle-blowing and ordered that she be reinstated and paid compensation. There have still been no prosecutions, and no officials have asked to hear Foster’s story — so she’s taking it public. Earlier this year, she was honored with a Ridenhour prize for truth-telling from the Nation Institute and the Fertel Foundation, and this week she spoke with AlterNet in an exclusive interview discussing what she saw at Countrywide — and what happened to her as a result.
Bad Attitudes continues the truth telling with Trickles Down? No, Streams Offshore!
Titanic Banks Hit LIBOR Iceberg: Will Lawsuits Sink the Ship?
Ellen Brown, Op-Ed: State and local officials across the country are now meeting to determine their damages from interest rate swaps, which are held by about three-fourths of America’s major cities. Damages from LIBOR rate-rigging are being investigated by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, officers at CalPERS (California’s public pension fund, the nation’s largest), and hundreds of hospitals.
The Consequences of Offshore Oil Drilling in Arctic Waters
Stephen Lacey, News Report: “There is basically an untapped fishery resource in the Arctic and the world has to decide how they are going to manage that. Are they going to manage it like all other international fisheries or, because it is this untapped resource is there the ability to do something different up there in that regard. Cruise Lines are starting to look at the Arctic as potential destinations. So really there is a big of a gold rush going on in the Arctic right now.”
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