Cover of Greg Palast A MUST WATCH VIDEO REPORT
Goldman Sachs v. Occupy Wall Street: A Greg Palast Investigation
A controversy in the banking community has arisen around the Occupy Wall Street movement. Greg Palast investigates the story behind Goldman Sachs’ recent decision to pull out of a fundraiser for the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union in New York City after it learned the event was honoring the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. The investment bank withdrew its name from the fundraiser and also canceled a $5,000 pledge. Was the $5,000 a Goldman Sachs donation or actually American taxpayer bailout money Goldman set aside for community banks? [includes rush transcript]
If you earn less then $35,000 per year, live in section 8 housing or just not part of the ever diminishing middle class then you can't open an account at most of the Big Box banks. But they will send you down the street to a small credit union serving this community exclusively.
FROM DemocracyNow.org
An investigative report by BBC reporter Greg Palast direct from the streets of New York and the grounds of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
His investigation reveals the true demonic nature of Goldman Sachs using taxpayer money against the rules by which they acquired them.
This revealing video is a MUST WATCH.
We cannot embed this video so... PLEASE CLICK HERE
11 COMMENTS:
This clip is from the Occupy Oakland protests.
This is pre-austerity. Pre-budget cuts. Things will get a lot worse when food stamps (which 1/6 Americans receive today) get cut. And social security, and medicare, and pensions. Haircuts all around. And, most likely, quite a few riots.
http://www.bearishnews.com/post/4654
October 24, 2011
VIDEO: Watch Journalists Amy Goodman & Chris Hedges on Charlie Rose Show about Occupy Wall Street
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/10/24/watch_journalists_amy_goodman_chris_hedges_on_charlie_rose_show_about_occupy_wall_street_tonight?
Obama's Re-Fi Plan: The Perfection of Debt-Serfdom (October 26, 2011)
How
better to corral restive underwater debt-serfs than to herd them into
accepting a new, "better" set of lifelong servitude shackles?
President
Obama is taking credit for a new government plan to "save homeowners."
That is of course pure propaganda to mask the plan's true goal: the
perfection of debt-serfdom. The basic thrust of the plan is
straightforward: encourage "underwater" homeowners whose mortgages
exceed the value of their homes to re-finance at lower rates.
The stated incentive (i.e. the PR pitch) is to lower homeowners' monthly payments via lower interest rates.
This
is the Federal Reserve's entire game plan in a nutshell: don't write
off any debt, as that would reveal the banking sector's insolvency, but
play extend-and-pretend with crushing debtloads by lowering the cost of
servicing the debt.
The key purpose of this "plan" is to leave
the principle owed to banks on their books at full value while ensnaring
the hapless debt-serf (the "homeowner") into permanent servitude to the
banks.
All the plan does is perfect this debt-serfdom.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct11/refi-debtserfdom10-11.html
ROBERT REICH: Obama Should Call For Glass Steagall And A Breakup Of Big Banks
Economically it would be smart for Obama to go after the Street right now because the Street’s lobbying muscle has reduced the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to a pale reflection of its former self. Dodd-Frank is rife with so many loopholes and exemptions that the largest Wall Street banks – larger by far then they were before the bailout – are back to many of their old tricks.
It’s impossible to know, for example, the exposure of the Street to European banks now in danger of going under. To stay afloat, Europe’s banks will be forced to sell mountains of assets – among them, derivatives originating on the Street – and may have to reneg on or delay some repayments on loans from Wall Street banks.
It would have been far simpler simply to ban proprietary trading from the jump. Why should banks ever be permitted to use peoples’ bank deposits – insured by the federal government – to place risky bets on the banks’ own behalf? Bring back Glass-Steagall.
The banks aren’t even fulfilling their fiduciary duties to investors. Last summer, after Groupon selected Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Credit Suisse to underwrite its initial public offering, the trio valued it at a generous $30 billion. Subsequent accounting and disclosure problems showed this estimate to be absurdly high. Did the banks care? Not a wit. The higher the valuation, the fatter their fees.
http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-is-still-out-of-control-and-why-obama-should-call-for-glass-steagall-and-a-breakup-of-big-banks-2011-10
License to Lie: The “Most Transparent Administration Ever” Seeks Law
to Respond to Freedom of Information Requests with “Information Does Not
Exist”
“The government, cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively
mislead the court. … The court simply cannot perform its constitutional
function if the government does not tell the truth,” the judge wrote in a
stinging rebuke.
Pure Insanity
This proposed law is pure insanity. Wrong accused persons might go to
prison or guilty persons purposely protected based on this law.
All that is required is for some government official (possibly
protecting himself or his department) to think information is “too
sensitive”.
The U.S. should be ashamed to even consider such a law.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/10/license-to-lie-most-transparent.html
David Graeber, the Anti-Leader of Occupy Wall Street
How the anthropologist, activist, and anarchist helped transform a hapless rally into a global protest movement
This summer, Graeber was a key member of a small band of activists
who quietly planned, then noisily carried out, the occupation of Lower
Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, providing the focal point for what has grown
into an amorphous global movement known as Occupy Wall Street.
It would be wrong to call Graeber a leader of the protesters, since
their insistently nonhierarchical philosophy makes such a concept
heretical. Nor is he a spokesman, since they have refused thus far to
outline specific demands. Even in Zuccotti Park, his name isn’t widely
known. But he has been one of the group’s most articulate voices, able
to frame the movement’s welter of hopes and grievances within a deeper
critique of the historical moment. “We are watching the beginnings of
the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a
generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no
jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt,”
Graeber wrote in a Sept. 25 editorial published online by the Guardian. “Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?”
Graeber’s politics have been shaped by his experience in global
justice protests over the years, but they are also fed by the other half
of his life: his work as an anthropologist. Graeber’s latest book,
published two months before the start of Occupy Wall Street, is entitled
Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/david-graeber-the-antileader-of-occupy-wall-street-10262011.html
GENERAL STRIKE NOVEMBER 2nd
I'm getting word (via Twitter) that the Oakland branch of "Occupy Wall Street" has finally done what I recommended as the only course of peaceful action that will matter:
They have called for a GENERAL STRIKE November 2nd.
Why will a General Strike work?
Simple: It attacks the government in a lawful, peaceful manner in the one way they cannot counteract: It cuts off their funding!
You can't tax what doesn't happen, basically. This is the people's way to peacefully withdraw consent to being governed.
You buy nothing, you perform no work, you do nothing that is taxable.
The implicit threat is that you cut the legs out from under the government's ability to fund itself. This is an entirely lawful action and I said in 2008 that this was the appropriate thing to be doing.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=196636
Getting to sound more and more like the old Soviet Union (USSR).
Is this the new United States of Socialist Republic?
I think our leaders need to re read or maybe read for the first time - our Constitution.
Funny, how President Reagan said, "Tear down that wall" and we are the ones now building walls.
Then USSR Premier Kruschev said that Communism will defeat Capitalism without ever firing a shot. What did he know?
USSR...most people employed by the government
US...majority of people employed by government
USSR...Income was taxed at almost 90%
US...Pretty dam close if you consider all the times our dollar is taxed.
USSR...Housing mostly controlled by government or select companies
US...Government and select few companies controlling housing
USSR...People feared the government
US...People fear the government but are beginning to wake up (there might still be hope).
USSR...Elections were held but the outcome was what "they" wanted it to be.
US...Elections are held but the outcome is what "they" (corporations with big campaign contributions) want it to be.
Of course that is my opinion, I could be wrong.
Yes, we need it back badly. Its demise was our demise.
Thanks for this link and comment
Thanks for the link.
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