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How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs." Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who...

Forget the one per cent. These guys are the WHINE per cent. Several Wall Street bankers and execs have come forward to voice their discontent about just how daunting it is to survive on their six-figure salaries in interviews with Bloomberg.com. Andrew Schiff, the communications and marketing director at Euro Pacific Capital, hates traffic just like most New Yorkers, but unlike most in the Big Apple, he’s feeling the crunch from a $350,000 salary. Mr Schiff told Bloomberg: 'The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach'.

Mitt Romney sought on Friday to dispel any notion he is undesirably close to Wall Street, but said his business experience prepares him better than his rivals to be president. "I'm independent of Wall Street," the former Massachusetts governor told Bloomberg Television's Peter Cook in an interview. "By the way, I haven't ever worked on Wall Street. They were service providers to the business I was in, I was not in a Wall Street firm, although I was in financial services broadly."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is not taking advantage of an enforcement tool that could potentially hold top Wall Street figures accountable for their role in the recent financial crisis, despite its prior success. Broker-dealers, investment advisers, and others regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission are required to supervise their representatives. If a trader engages in misconduct, the SEC can sue the management with "failure to supervise." But in some of the biggest cases the SEC has brought in recent months -- against units of JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup -- the agency has sued only low-level bankers....

The ugly language used by Occupy Wall Street activists and by liberals such as radio talk show host Thom Hartmann to describe bankers is disgraceful and dangerous. When one replaces the word “banker” with the word “Jew” in the Occupy Wall Street rhetoric, one glimpses at the true nature and intent of the assault. Simply put, the Nazis and the German Communists portrayed Jews in virtually the same light as Occupy Wall Street activists are now portraying bankers. In reality this is the same assault on private ownership as was the one engaged in by the 20th Centuries two great...

Remember when the Tea Party threatened America with its latent violence, proven when a couple of union thugs beat up a rally attendee? Good times, good times. Via RCP, we now hear the counterpoint from the Hollywood Left, as Roseanne Barr appeared on Russia Today to lay out her vision of American politics. It’s not enough to occupy Wall Street — Barr wants to bring back the guillotine and start using it to redistribute the wealth:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO “Part of my platform is, of course, the guilty must be punished and that we no longer let our...

The last three years of global recession have dealt a major blow to American capitalist ideas trumpeted throughout the world on the value of “free markets.” Wall St has been revealed as a form of casino economy, with the bankster insiders gambling with other people’s, and eventually, the government’s money in the form of bailouts. As the Republicans in Congress, scenting victory in the 2012 presidential elections, hold a gun to the Obama administration’s head and rating agencies consider downgrading U.S. government bonds in light of Washington’s possible defaulting, many ideas around the world that previously seemed implausible because of...

<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Authorities say The Olympian and one of the newspaper’s photographers were targets of vandalism that included anarchist graffiti and an acidic substance.</p> <p>Police said Friday graffiti was painted at the Tumwater, Wash., home of photographer Tony Overman. The words “Overman snitch” were painted on a newspaper delivery truck and an apparently acidic substance was thrown on the exterior of The Olympian’s building.</p>

Preface: Some defendants are no longer allowed to see the "secret evidence" which the government is using against them. See this and this. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that judges can throw out cases because they don't like or believe the plaintiff ... even before anyone has had the chance to conduct discovery to prove their case. In other words, judges' secret biases can be the basis for denying people their day in court, without even having to examine the facts. Claims of national security are being used to keep the shenanigans of the biggest banks an corporations secret,...

Yesterday, when we posted the full original letter submitted by True Finns leader Timo Soini titled "Why I Won't Support More Bailouts" as presented by the Wall Street Journal in verbatim, we were surprised that the WSJ, traditionally the bastion of various Fed interests (a topic previously dissected in "On The New York Fed's Editorial Influence Over The WSJ"), would allow such a truthy letter to appear on its pages. Today, courtesy of Karl Denninger who pointed out something glaringly disgusting, we were forced to look again at the letter as it now appears on the website of the WSJ....

Throughout history, governments have fought against the use of sound money. ... Governments can only wring so much money from their citizens through taxation without inciting civil disobedience, so they make friends with bankers, who have a way of making money appear from nowhere. The money they create isn't sound, but almost no one cares. For politicians, it's sound enough; it provides them with claim tickets to market wealth, which is all they want. Sound money would not cooperate in this manner. It does not emerge from central-bank policy decisions. Governments and bankers hate gold because its supply cannot be...

If you want to cut right to the chase, start paying attention at the 4:00 minute mark. This 80% cash settlement for not taking physical delivery of silver contracts has been rumored for a while now. This is the first time I've seen someone with a name and some credibility seemingly confirm it.

Oops... it's not here.... Iceland’s special prosecutor into the banking crisis has confirmed that raids have taken place today and that arrests have been made. The Central Bank of Iceland is among the institutions under investigation. Hoh hoh hoh...... Now we're talking. Investigations into the banking crisis, and they're actually going to lock up some banksters? Now that's progress. Speaking of progress, has anyone paid attention to the labor force participation rate in Iceland lately, or the change in unemployment, or the change in imports and exports? I wouldn't say their economy is "booming", but it sure looks pretty good...

A group of about 200 union protesters overwhelmed security at a Washington, D.C. hotel and barged into a mortgage banking meeting on Wednesday, according to the Huffington Post. HuffPo says protesters dressed in hardhats and overalls yelled “Where are the jobs?“ and ”Where is the money?“ as they pushed through security in a ”scrum” and burst into a conference room of stunned bankers. The protest was reportedly aimed at the Pulte Group — which protesters say has received $900 million in tax breaks but has not created a sufficient number of jobs. “Those tax breaks were supposed to create jobs,”...

I recently found a full time job after almost two years of not being able to find one but our home is scheduled to be auctioned in February. I have heard different things and am not sure what to do. My parents, who live out of state, want to buy the house with cash, free and clear, not for them, but for me and the kids so we have a place to live. Is this possible? I have heard realtors say it is forbidden, while others say it could be done. I have not notified the agency who has our...

One may be forgiven to believe that via its FX liquidity swap lines the Fed only bailed out foreign Central Banks, which in turn took the money and funded their own banks. It turns out that is only half the story: we now know the Fed also acted in a secondary bail out capacity, providing over $350 billion in short term funding exclusively to 35 foreign banks, of which the biggest beneficiaries were UBS, Dexia and BNP. Since the funding provided was in the form of ultra-short maturity commercial paper it was essentially equivalent to cash funding. In other words,...

If you haven't been humming tunes from "Les Misérables," you haven't seen "Inside Job," the new documentary about how our economic crisis evolved. The most forgiving American will want to seize a pitchfork and march on Wall Street. Or Harvard Square. Or in front of the White House. There are so many despicable parties, it's hard to pick a favorite. Is it time to reconsider the Axis of Evil? The film, written and directed by Charles Ferguson (and narrated by Matt Damon), will be opening in select cities this week. Although much of the story is familiar, Ferguson manages to...

Banks and bankers are now potential targets for the Real IRA, leaders of the dissident republican terror group have warned in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. Despite having only 100 activists they also said that targets in England remained a high priority.

Bankers urge gov't to pull plug on Fannie, FreddieBy Corbett B. Daly Published September 08, 2010 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The federal government should take mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac off life support sooner rather than later, the Mortgage Bankers Association urged Wednesday. The bankers said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should move beyond the "conservatorship" that started two years ago and be placed "receivership." "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have already moved well beyond the points where any other financial institution would have been put into receivership," MBA Chief Executive John Coursonand MBA Chairman-elect Michael Berman wrote...

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California is notorious for her high-decibel rants against corporate executives and career exploitation of identity politics. Class warfare and racial division are her two-decade-long stock and trade. She would normally be first in line (and in front of the cameras) to lambaste the very kind of Porsche-driving, luxury beach house-partying bank officials who begged her for a government handout. If they were white, that is. But the minority fat cats who lobbied her during the fall 2008 financial meltdown represented the black-owned OneUnited Bank. They were her longtime friends, donors and fundraisers. Her husband was...

<p>When President Barack Obama signs the financial overhaul bill into law on Wednesday, many of the most recognizable faces in the banking world won’t be among the hundreds of people in attendance.</p> <p>J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive James Dimon and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein weren’t invited to the ceremony and won’t be attending, people familiar with the matter said.</p>

Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Kiyohiko Nishimura discusses "informational advantage" this week at the Lujiazui Forum on economics and finance in Shanghai: "In my understanding, the Volcker Rule [proposed legislation restricting banks from making certain speculative investments] is designed to deter banks from taking excessive risk in capital markets, where volatility is inherently high and in which bankers do not necessarily have informational advantage in predicting market developments. Rather, the Volcker Rule urges banks to return to their traditional stronghold of commercial banking business, in which they can utilize their informational advantage based on long-term relationships with their customers." Informational...

With each passing year America sinks deeper into the tyranny of bureaucratic corporatism via today's incestuous relationship between Washington and Wall Street...Our schools, our churches, our publishers, and our entertainment industries are being infested with the serpents of Cultural Marxism. Political correctness dominates the herd mentalities and philistines who overwhelm the perceptive and productive at the polls every other November. The ignominious despotism that Tocqueville warned would come from "unbridled democracy" is stealing over our lives like the debilitating paralysis that invades the bodies of the arthritic. Yet our pundits revel in hosannas to their phony "engineered economic recovery" and...

Debate on the Senate version of the Obama administration’s bank regulatory overhaul is expected to begin shortly. The House of Representatives passed its banking bill last December. Neither bill does anything to curb the power of the banks or limit their parasitic and socially destructive activities. What the media is calling the “most sweeping overhaul” of the banking system since the Great Depression in reality sanctions the ever greater monopolization of the financial system by a handful of Wall Street giants, imposes no limits on executive pay, and allows the banks and hedge funds to continue gambling on exotic and...

The trouble with Wall Street isn't that too many bankers get rich in the booms. The trouble, rather, is that too few get poor -- really, suitably poor -- in the busts. To the titans of finance go the upside. To we, the people, nowadays, goes the downside. How much better it would be if the bankers took the losses just as they do the profits. Happily, there's a ready-made and time-tested solution. Let the senior financiers keep their salaries and bonuses, and let them do with their banks what they will. If, however, their bank fails, let the bankers...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Charles Prince and Robert Rubin, who led Citigroup (Symbol : C Loading... ) in the run-up to the 2008 banking crisis, voiced regrets on Thursday but accepted no responsibility for mega-bank's massive losses. The two came under heavy fire before a congressional panel hearing for being blind to financial risks that Citi took on, which ultimately led to its near collapse, prevented only by a $45-billion taxpayer bailout. His hands visibly shaking as he answered questions, Rubin told congressional investigators he was not a decision-maker at the bank during the worst of its troubles. The former U.S....

Politics: Another bank failure is nothing new these days — except if the bank is run by the family of a U.S. Senate candidate who profited handsomely and lent millions to a convicted felon. But then, that's the Chicago way. 'I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street," President Obama said in a recent interview with "60 Minutes." Speaking to those bankers, he said: "You guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in — in decades,...

MUMBAI — In New York and London, women remain scarce among top bankers despite decades of struggle to climb the corporate ladder. But in India’s relatively young financial industry, women not only are some of the top deal makers, they are often running the show. HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Fidelity International in India are run by women. So is the country’s second-biggest bank, Icici Bank, and its third-largest, Axis Bank. Women head investment banking operations at Kotak Mahindra and JPMorgan Chase and the equities division of Icici. Half of the deputy governors at the Reserve...

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said: "We face a deficit of trust -- deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap, we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue -- to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give the people the government they deserve." The day after the president uttered those words, a senior Democrat offered private policy briefings to lobbyists on the administration's plans. "In the upcoming elections, voters will face a choice between...

This number sounds suspiciously similar to the number used by the Inspector General over TARP about 10 months ago during congressional hearings.

By Patrick Jenkins in Davos and Tom Braithwaite in Washington Published: January 30 2010 00:02 | Last updated: January 30 2010 00:02 Some of the world’s most prominent bankers have come out in favour of a global bank wind-down fund, a concession from the industry after weeks of fighting proposals for new taxes in the US and Europe. Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, told the Financial Times on Friday : “To help solve the too-big-to-fail problem I’m advocating a European rescue and resolution fund for banks. Of course, the capital for this fund would have to come from...

Some of the world’s most prominent bankers have come out in favour of a global bank wind-down fund, a concession from the industry after weeks of fighting proposals for new taxes in the US and Europe. Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, told the Financial Times on Friday : “To help solve the too-big-to-fail problem I’m advocating a European rescue and resolution fund for banks. Of course, the capital for this fund would have to come from banks to a large degree.” Bob Diamond, president of Barclays , also supported the idea of a global levy, which could see...

Surprise! Banks with government guarantees take the biggest risks, make the most money, and pay the highest bonuses. President Obama said last month on "60 Minutes" that he "did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street." This assertion may mollify his constituents, but it is not consistent with his administration's own policies. We are on the cusp of what is going to be the most highly visible and contentious bank bonus season in history. Bonuses are predicted to run into the billions of dollars, and many of the banks that...

WASHINGTON – Challenged by a skeptical special commission, top Wall Street bankers apologized Wednesday for risky behavior that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But they still declared it seemed appropriate at the time. The bankers — whose companies collectively received more than $100 billion in taxpayer assistance to weather the crisis — offered no regrets for executive pay that is now likely to increase as a result of their survival. They did say they are correcting some compensation practices that could lead to excessive risk-taking. The tension at the first hearing of the Financial Crisis...

... [T]his is neither a housing crisis nor a Wall Street banking crisis. This is a monetary crisis, rooted in the lending of money created out of thin air. This is what leads to economic booms and busts. The current crisis goes back to the Asian Contagion of 1997 and the meltdown of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund in 1998. In response to each of these situations, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates and rapidly expanded the money supply. This excess liquidity helped push stocks, especially tech issues, to unsustainably high levels. The excess money created by the...

President Barack Obama will meet with chief executive officers and presidents from a dozen community banks today to discuss his proposals to boost small-business lending and his plans for regulatory overhaul.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Credit Suisse Group helped clients in Iran and elsewhere conduct financial transactions in secret, saying Wednesday the Swiss bank "established a business model to allow these rogue players access to U.S. dollars." Mr. Holder and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau detailed a decade-long effort by the bank to carry out transactions from Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba. The men announced a $536 million settlement by Credit Suisse, one of several banks accused in a long-running case that has netted roughly $1 billion in fines. The bank, which paid the biggest of the fines,...

In public, President Obama is on a tear against Wall Street. In private, not so much Over the weekend, Obama attacked fat-cat investment bankers, telling "60 Minutes" he didn't become president to aid and abet Wall Street -- which, only a year after the financial meltdown and taxpayer bailout, is now scheduled to hand out tens of billions of dollars in bonuses to its bankers and traders. But the president's meeting yesterday with the CEOs of the largest banks was nearly a lovefest, I'm told by attendees. Yes, White House spinmeisters advertised the gathering as a chance for Obama to...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- President Barack Obama on Monday pressed the chief executives of the nation's largest banks to lend more to small businesses, increase their assistance to troubled homeowners and end their opposition to bank regulatory reform legislation moving on Capitol Hill. "I urged these institutions here today to go back and take a third and fourth look about how they are operating when it comes to small business and medium-sized business lending," Obama said after meeting at the White House with the bankers. "Banks could be doing more to lend to small businesses." See full text of Obama's remarks....

President Obama is calling on the financial industry to help dig the economy out of the pit the White House says it helped create, as the president and bank executives headed into a potentially tense meeting Monday morning. President Obama is calling on the financial industry to help dig the economy out of the pit the White House says it helped create, as the president and bank executives headed into a potentially tense meeting Monday morning. The president set the tone for the meeting in an interview broadcast the night before in which he called Wall Street bankers "fat cats"...

In a London preview of Wall Street's bonus nightmare, more than 1,000 investment bankers have quit Royal Bank of Scotland to work at rivals due to curbs on their paychecks, according to people familiar with the situation. Wall Street banks fear top talent would flee en masse for greener pastures if Uncle Sam's pay czar, Ken Feinberg, and Congress try to put more ceilings on bonuses and pay at financial firms. In the UK, the rules are modeled after US actions to curb pay at firms bailed out by the government.RBS will soon be about 84-percent owned by the British...

If you haven't read Matt Taibbi's recent Rolling Stone piece on Goldman Sachs, make sure to get your hands on it ASAP. It's a must read on how Goldman Sachs and the U.S. government work hand in glove to produce giant investment bubbles... bubbles that allow Goldman to work over investors for hundreds of billions of dollars. We don't think you can lay all the blame for the housing bubble and the tech bubble at Goldman's feet... but we do find it suspicious that a ton of high level government posts are staffed by Goldman employees. It's close to a...

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression -- and they're about to do it again -~&~- The FIRST THING YOU NEED TO KNOW about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's...

(snip) I am concerned, however, that a number of the legislative proposals being circulated would significantly reduce the capacity of the Federal Reserve to perform its core functions. Notably, some leading proposals in the Senate would strip the Fed of all its bank regulatory powers. And a House committee recently voted to repeal a 1978 provision that was intended to protect monetary policy from short-term political influence. These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the...

National People's Action Network has put out an email reporting that 10,000 people have signed up to protest this weekend at the American Bankers Association conference in Chicago. This is really one mixed bag of protesters. NAPN, as I have previously reported (See here), is an ACORN want-to-be. I'm sure most of the anti-bank protesters don't have a clue about this. [snip] Bottom line the radical left is attempting to co-opt the anti-big banker movement and fold it into an anti-capitalist message.

If you pressed a rifle into the hand of the man in the street and asked him to choose between two targets – an MP or a banker – who do you think would get the bullet? Tricky, eh? It is hard to know which of these two formerly respectable professions has fallen further in public esteem. Some people might hesitate, like Buridan's ass, the rifle barrel weaving indecisively between two such luscious hate-objects. Most people would simply call for two bullets. But then let me ask you a slightly different question. Which of the two species has managed to...

….the finance sector is worse than parasitic. In the title of his recent book, The Predator State, James Galbraith aptly names the problem. The financial sector functions as the sharp canines that the predator state uses to rend the nation. In addition to siphoning off capital for its own benefit, the finance sector misallocates the remaining capital in ways that harm the real economy…:

How about that for a headline? Christians warn bankers and world leaders that continue to violate God’s word. Are groceries going up in price or is the dollar losing more of its purchasing power? I believe the dollar is in serious trouble in River City. It looks like those pesky old bankers are going to allow the dollar to lose more and more of its value. I was reading Chuck Butler's email this morning. He works for www.everbank.com and says the International Monetary Fund (Global Bankers and Masters of the Matrix) Chief Economist, Olivier Blanchflower, speaking at a conference in...

Through history, said my former editor Girilal Jain, whenever things go wrong, Indian rulers blamed the bania. The US is no different. After the Top 20 Global Banks hit the global meltdown, US politicians are baying for the blood of financiers. They have just legislated a 90% tax on bonuses of staff at AIG, the insurance giant rescued by the US government. Legislators were angry that financiers responsible for AIG’s collapse could be rewarded with bonuses, and sought to expropriate these. Many Indians will cheer. Yet, banias alone are rarely responsible for disasters: many others are usually responsible too. The...

provided by NYT If mark-to-market accounting is to blame for the current financial crisis, then the National Weather Service is to blame for Hurricane Katrina; if it hadn't told us the hurricane hit New Orleans, the city would never have flooded. This is the logic the bankers are using, and they are getting sympathetic ears in Congress. The bankers have gotten two members of Congress to introduce a bill to establish a new body that could suspend accounting rules for financial institutions. Edward L. Yingling, the president of the American Bankers Association, says the proposal addresses "systemic risks that accounting...