Archive for the ‘Looting’ Category
How Wall Street Fabricated A Buy And Hold Fairytale
Middle class retirement now largely a postcard fantasy – How Wall Street fabricated a buy and hold fairytale and jumped ship with taxpayer golden parachutes. Did baby boomers think about who they would be selling those 401k and pension stocks to?
The days of dreaming about long days playing golf on a green course and taking luxurious cruises around the world are appearing more and more like a foggy memory for those in the middle class planning for retirement. As Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers rob the public blind, the mission statement sold to baby boomers is starting to become a large bait and switch catchy enough to make it on a Hallmark card. For decades Wall Street begged and lured the public in either directly or through pension funds into their web of easy money. Save $100 a month and you’ll retire a millionaire! As it turns out, the golden parachute was only available to a tiny fraction of the population while the oligarchy in the financial sector offloads their toxic bets onto the taxpayers struggling balance sheet. The end game? No retirement. At least no retirement like those plastered on glossy mutual fund brochures. What the Wall Street banking charlatans failed to tell you is that you eventually need to sell those stocks to use the money for real world spending. What they also failed to mention is that the baby boomer generation is now going to sell into unrelenting headwinds of demographics bringing on a younger and poorer generation to purchase their stocks. Of course Social Security is in the crosshairs of the financial elite since they already secured their financial piece of the pie. You know things are bad when the Federal Reserve is stating that stocks are not exactly a winners bet in the years going forward.
Retirement becoming more of a postcard fantasy
The middle class has been pillaged and ransacked by financial thievery for decades. The debt bubble and mass delusion is now imploding. The graft and con games taking place in the financial sector would be comical if they weren’t so real and economically tragic. The Federal Reserve has given covert loans to big banks while big banks publicly stating all was well. The Federal Reserve has grown their balance sheet to a stunning $2.8+ trillion of questionable assets and other junk with little redeemable market value. It would have a hard time selling these items on eBay let alone the natural marketplace. There is no easier way to make a profit than stealing from the taxpayer. Of course the problems in the system are coming at the expense of the working and middle class. For those who bought into the Wall Street mantra of buy and hold, making a profit has gotten much harder:
This is fascinating data to look at. This decade has been horrible for stocks. The S&P 500 stands today where it did in 1998. The massive stock volatility is simply a reflection of the problems deep in our financial system. The above chart examines P/E ratios over time. Really fascinating information but the Fed study finds that P/E ratios are likely to go lower because of demographic shifts and also the reality that we have a lower wage employment force dominating our economy. The latest decade is a reflection of the bubble era machinery that has hoisted up the financial sector into an untouchable corner yet middle class Americans have taken it squarely in their stock portfolios. Why? Because Wall Street has been preaching buy and hold as if it were some patriotic mission but many of these hedge funds and banking managers have placed bets that openly aim against American middle class success. In fact, some have made bets on flat out American failure and have made billions of dollars with lower tax rates that are given to hedge funds.
The stock market casino
The stock market has been on a wild ride for well over a decade:
Source: Mish Global Economic Analysis Blog
Read the rest at My Budget 360
Madoff Whistleblower: Big Banks Are Ripping Off Pension Funds
Amid all the market volatility and weakness in the financial sector of late, you may have missed this WSJ front page story: “States Go After Big Bank on Forex”.
The story is about growing scandal in the banking industry centered around banks allegedly overcharging pension funds for currency transactions.
“Attorneys general in Virginia and Florida filed civil suits against BNY Mellon alleging that the bank cheated pension funds in those states by choosing improper prices for currency trades the bank processed for the funds,” The WSJ reports. “The Virginia lawsuit, filed in a Fairfax, Va., state court, cites internal bank emails allegedly showing that senior bank officials knew about, and endorsed, a currency-trading method that hurt state pensioners.”
In addition to Virginia and Florida, California and Tennessee are also suing BNY Mellon and State Street Corp. over the alleged fraud.
The man who uncovered the alleged scam, Harry Markopolos, expects all 50 states to eventually join the suit. If the name sounds familiar that’s because Markopolos was a whistleblower on the Madoff Ponzi scheme, only to have his claims ignored by the SEC for the better par of a decade. (See: Harry Markopolos Says Big Banks Worse Than Madoff)
In this case, Markopolos says BNY Mellon and State Street we’re taking about “three tenths of a percent from every forex transaction for pension funds” by back-timing the trade to benefit banks at the detriment of their pension fund clients. “It’s almost the exact same scheme as the market timing scandals of 2003,” he claims.
When and if these cases go to trial is unknown, but Markopolos sure hopes to avoid a settlement. “I want to see them admit guilt,” he tells Aaron Task in the accompanying interview. “If [banks] settle it feel like justice denied because they also will settle without admitting or denying guilt. That’s just too easy. ”
Seven Startling Things Most People Still Don’t Know About The National Debt, Banking And The Money Supply
Fact #1 – There is no FDIC insurance fund.
The money at your bank is insured against loss by the FDIC’s insurance fund, right? Nope. That’s total fiction. There is no actual money in the fund. The FDIC insurance money has already been looted by the U.S. Treasury which has simply replaced the money with a bunch of IOUs.
Why does this matter? Because it means that if the U.S. government goes into default, so will the FDIC! And that means all your bank funds have zero insurance. That’s gonna be a big shock for tens of millions of people when they finally figure this out one day…
Fact #2 – There are no social security funds, either.
When you pay social security taxes, all that money goes into a trust fund that’s held for safekeeping until the day it pays you back, right?
Ha! That’s the “sucker’s view” of social security that only ignorant people believe. In reality, there is no money in the social security trust fund because it too has all been looted by the U.S. Treasury and spent. In truth, social security is already broke. Can’t wait for people to wake up and figure this one out, either…
Fact #3 – The U.S. Treasury is stealing money from you every day, even if you pay no taxes!
Here’s a mind-boggling truth that most people just can’t seem to get their heads around: The U.S. Treasury is stealing money from you every single day by the simple fact that they keep creating new money and handing it out to wealthy banksters. Well, technically this is being done by the Federal Reserve, which isn’t even part of the federal government. But it’s all done in cahoots with the Treasury, which is eroding the value of your money through these money creation and distribution actions.
That’s why prices keep going up all around you, folks: Food isn’t suddenly worth more money; the truth is that your money is worth less! That’s how the Treasury and the Federal Reserve steal from you without even breaking into your home.
Probably 99.9% of the population has no understanding of this phenomenon — the erosion of currency valuation through the centralized government printing of more currency. And yet it is a government scam that has been carried out against citizens of the world time and time again, spanning millennia! As history has clearly shown, every nation that goes down the path of printing more currency to pay its bills eventually ends up in a runaway hyperinflation scenario followed by
economic collapse. The USA will be no different.
Fact #4 – The “balanced solution” isn’t balanced.
Don’t you love the quirky White House Press Secretary who keeps spewing out the phrase “balanced solution” even while the debt deal leaves the U.S. budget entirely unbalanced?
When you’re spending more money than you’re earning, that’s not financial balance. When the White House says “balanced” what it really means is “compromised” — as in, half way between the Republican position (spend us into purgatory) and the Democratic position (spend us into oblivion). Neither party has any real solution to the cancerous growth of Big Government. That’s because they are creatures of Big Government!
Politicians can no more solve the problems of Big Government than arsonists can solve the problem
of office fires. Because they are, themselves, creatures of runaway debt spending (how else do you get elected these days?), they simply do not possess the cognitive framework from which real financial solutions must stem.
Fact #5 – The government is going to steal everything from you before it collapses
Oh my, this is a tough one for people to get their heads around… especially those who naively trust governments to act in the interests of the People. The simple truth of the matter — and I’ve publicly made this prediction before — is that the government is going to STEAL almost everything you own as it heads toward a total financial implosion.
• The government theft of private retirement accounts. The feds will claim they’re taking them over “for your protection.” Yeah, right. And then one day they will simply all vanish. Kiss your IRA
goodbye…
• The government theft of precious metals. Within the next 3 years, watch for a national emergency to be declared, followed by government confiscation of gold and silver. The feds will take your gold and hand you paper money in exchange. The paper money, of course, will be all but worthless shortly thereafter. Only the suckers, of course, will actually turn in their metals…
• Government takeover of your bank accounts. As banks begin to fail in the big collapse, the government will step in and take ownership of the failed institutions, just as it did with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which used to be publicly-owned companies but are now largely just government finance operations). This will put your bank accounts under the direct control of the White House, which can use executive orders to do things like banning all wire transfers out of the country or limiting daily withdrawals and transfers. Sure, you’ll still “own” your money in the bank, you just won’t be able to freely access it!
Fact #6 – Most people have no idea about fractional reserve banking, derivatives, the
money supply or the Federal Reserve
Congress have no idea how all this works. With few exceptions (like Ron Paul), they’re just clueless!
Get this: Even most bankers don’t even know how fractional reserve banking really works. They don’t understand derivatives, either, which is why they screwed them up so badly in the housing boom that crashed in 2007. And because bankers, investors and bureaucrats have no idea how it all works, they unwittingly turn it all into a runaway catastrophe.
Allowing ignorant adults to play with debt and derivatives is like letting infants play with nuclear weapons. It can only lead to something messy.
Fact #7 – Most people are betting their lives on the dollar
People buy insurance for their cars, their homes and even their health. But when it comes to money, 99 out of 100 people in America are betting their entire financial existence on the U.S. dollar! They get their paychecks in dollars, their savings accounts are in dollars, and all their assets are denominated in dollars. As a result, they have no diversity to protect them against dollar devaluation.
That’s kinda crazy, considering just how quickly the dollar could collapse in the near future and become totally worthless. That’s why smart people are diversifying their assets and converting
dollars into land, gold, silver or even storable food. Here in central Texas, even ammunition has a long-term barter value that far exceeds dollars.
Looking around at the financial behaviors of others, I’m just stunned at how many people are betting everything on the dollar because they never realized they had any other option (that’s the way the government likes to keep it, of course!).
Coming soon: A huge national finance education of the masses
Bunch of cowards and crooks running this country. They don’t understanding banking and finance, and they’re determined to make sure you don’t either. Because the less you know about what’s really going on, the longer they can continue to loot the U.S. economy while people stand around and do nothing.
How bad is the situation, really? Just yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden called Congressional Tea Party members “terrorists” for their insistence that the U.S. budget be balanced. So now, the mere idea of calling for a balanced budget turns you into a “terrorist” to be prosecuted under the Patriot Act.
And why not? Demanding financial sanity MUST be labeled an act of terrorism for our criminal government to continue its own criminal looting operation. Next we’ll probably see the President ordering the arrest and prosecution of any members of Congress — i.e. “terrorists” — who do not go along with unlimited increased in the debt ceiling.
Now you see what the terrorism laws are really all about: They are legislative weapons to be used against political enemies, not actual terrorists. Meanwhile, Big Government is technically engaged in the use of financial weapons of mass destruction against the People, yet no one notices.
A bizarre world we live in, folks. It is dominated by the mindless masses and run by criminal sociopaths. Those who demand real solutions are labeled terrorists, and those who try to explain all this to everybody else are labeled “alarmists.”
Just wait until this house of cards collapses, though. There will be a day of reckoning in which a whole bunch of apologies will be owed to all those people who tried to warn the nation what was
really happening (and where it would lead us).
Mike Adams for Natural News
Tavakoli: Calling All The Fraudsters Out
It really doesn’t get more damning than this…..
“Fraud As a Business Model”, the slides from her presentation delivered today to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Supervision Summit.
Unfortunately I don’t have audio… but the Powerpoint slides speak for themselves…
From one of the slides:
• Investment banks – securities fraud
• Mortgage lenders – widespread fraud
• Rating agencies – junk science
• CDO “managers” – crash test dummies & accomplices
• Certain hedge funds – shorted CDOs they “managed”
• Bond insurers – money for nothing
• Regulators – poseurs and enablers
You gotta love it… and you darn well should read it.
The presentation is brutal, it is spot-on, it encompasses it all.
And now, with it out there under the white-hot light of the public and presented to the government’s forum on housing finance supervision from one of the preeminent experts in the world of Structured Finance, there no longer is any excuse for the lack of action on these scams – from top to bottom.
Again, where are….










