Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud

Broadcasting on the road from Kansas City, Missouri, we’re joined by William Black, a white-collar criminologist, former financial regulator, and author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One." Black teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and recently took part in Occupy Kansas City. "If you look [at the Occupy protests], not just nationwide, but worldwide, you will see some pretty consistent themes developing," Black says. "Those themes include: we have to deal with the systemically dangerous institutions, the 20 biggest banks that the administration is saying are ticking time bombs, that as soon as one of them fails, we go back into a global crisis. We should fix that. There’s no reason to have institutions that large. That’s a theme. That accountability is a theme, that we should put these felons in prison... That we should get jobs now, and that we should deal with the foreclosure crisis. So those are four very common themes that you can see in virtually any of these protest sites... I think, over time, you won’t necessarily have some grand written agenda, but you’ll have, as I say, increasing consensus. And it’s a very broad consensus."

Video
Source: Democracy Now! 

The Commons: Democracy and testicles

The Scene. Time, once again, to yell about the Canadian Wheat Board.

The first sign that this afternoon would not pass without shouting was the Prime Minister’s right fist, bobbing up and down in front of him as he asserted that “Western Canadian farmers have long been looking for the freedom to market their grain, just like farmers in Quebec and other parts of eastern Canada have, and we are going to give them that freedom.”

This was but the end of his first answer and already he was gesturing forcefully. Usually, at this point, he is all shrugs and up-turned palms. But there would be no conciliatory hand movements this day.

Nycole Turmel stood here and insisted on reading what is written on some piece of paper somewhere.

“Mr. Speaker,” she said, “here is what the law says: ‘The Minister shall not cause to be introduced in Parliament a bill that would exclude any kind, type, class or grade of wheat or barley unless (a) the Minister has consulted with the board; and (b) the producers of the grain have voted in favour of the exclusion or extension.’ That is the law of the land. Why will the Prime Minister not respect the law, respect the producers and keep the Canadian Wheat Board in place?”

Occupy Wall Street Hits K Street

If you want to understand how the top 1 percent have accumulated such power in American politics, look no further than Washington’s K Street lobbying corridor. Wall Street has long been the dominant player in the capital. “The banks,” Senator Dick Durbin said in 2009, “are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

The financial sector has spent more money on campaign contributions and lobbying than any other sector of the economy—$4.6 billion on lobbying since 1998, according to Open Secrets. This year, commercial banks and securities and investment firms have spent over $82 million on lobbying, employing over 1,000 lobbyists.

Given these facts, it makes sense that the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread to K Street. Since October 1, demonstrators have gathered in MacPherson Square, their numbers and visibility growing in recent days. Yesterday Harvard professor Larry Lessig, one of the pre-eminent advocates of true campaign finance reform, spoke to Occupy K Street. Nation intern Cal Colgan attended the talk and passed on some notes.

“Forget the 99 percent,” Lessig said yesterday. “We are the 99.95 percent of people who have never maxed out in a Congressional election campaign by giving the maximum amount. It is .05 percent of America who have given $2500 in the last election to a Congressional candidate, .05 percent, and Congress listens to them.” These are the same people who pay lobbyists to convince lawmakers to gut crucial regulations and oppose new ones.

The Silence of the Elites

Nero’s fiddling while Rome burned may be nothing compared to the folly of Washington and Wall Street’s inaction while the world economy teeters on the verge of global depression. No wonder the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have spread across the world. By raising a din, they might wake folks up.

Last week, yet another filibuster by Republican senators blocked even a debate on President Obama’s jobs bill, which is already modest in the extreme. More than half of the bill would simply avoid making things worse—extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, and trying to limit layoffs of teachers and police officers next year. Without the extensions, the cuts in government spending and hikes in taxes would reduce an estimated 2 percent of GDP from growth next year—at a time when the economy is already near a standstill.d

A good portion of the bill would provide tax breaks for businesses. And a far-too-small part would provide money for building schools, roads, sewers and other infrastructure projects that will put some people to work.

Feeling some heat, Republican senators released their version of a jobs act, which offers up sacrifices to the business gods. It would repeal financial and healthcare reform, suspend regulations across the board and advance a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. And Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) promises, with some Kentucky magic, that it would produce 5 million jobs.

Worse, the bipartisan gang of twelve legislators in Congress’s “supercommittee” continues to meet in closed sessions to decide how to cut another $1.2 trillion from deficits over ten years. If the members fail to agree, deep cuts in defense and domestic spending begin in fiscal year 2013.

Newt Gingrich got this right for once: “It’s like saying we’re going to shoot you in the head or cut off your leg, which do you prefer?” And with the committee tasked to report before Thanksgiving, we are virtually guaranteed to spend the winter arguing about how to mutilate the economy, not about how to get it going.

Origin
Source: the Nation 

Everyone wins in shipbuilding contract but Quebec and the taxpayers

The denouement of the great multi-billion-dollar shipbuilding bonanza has left almost everyone popping Champagne corks —except perhaps Quebec, and the poor, bloody taxpayer who will end up footing the bill for the inevitable cost overruns and delays that will result from the government’s made-in-Canada national strategy.

Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax won the lion’s share of the work, with the $25-billion contract to build around 22 combat vessels, while Seaspan in Vancouver will be happy with its $8-billion non-combat vessel consolation prize. There will be bleating from Quebec that its Davie yard won bupkis, but even Premier Jean Charest, always evenly balanced with a chip on either shoulder, didn’t argue that the process was skewed against his province.

The Harper government bent over backwards to persuade anyone who would listen that this was a “transparent, arm’s length process.” Rona Ambrose, the Public Works Minister, said Cabinet was not involved in evaluating the bids.

In Defense of the Back-Room Deal

THE Congressional “super committee” charged with finding $1.5 trillion in debt savings through 2021 is under growing attack from both the left and the right for carrying out most of its work in secret. As Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, said recently, “We don’t get a better result for the people of this country when things are done behind closed doors.”

But greater openness by the panel, officially known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, would actually be harmful to the public interest. Private meetings are essential to give the committee’s six Republicans and six Democrats the freedom to step away from party orthodoxies, conduct serious negotiations and search for common ground, rather than engage in political posturing.

For the committee’s recommendations to be voted on in the full House and Senate, 7 of the 12 committee members must agree on them. If all of the meetings were held in public — as a number of lawmakers and open-government advocates propose — the prospects for such agreement would drop from slim to none.

Citigroup to Pay Millions to Close Fraud Complaint

WASHINGTON — As the housing market began its collapse, Wall Street firms and sophisticated investors searched for ways to profit. Some of them found an easy method: Stuff a portfolio with risky mortgage-related investments, sell it to unsuspecting customers and bet against it.

Citigroup on Wednesday agreed to pay $285 million to settle a civil complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had defrauded investors who bought just such a deal. The transaction involved a $1 billion portfolio of mortgage-related investments, many of which were handpicked for the portfolio by Citigroup without telling investors of its role or that it had made bets that the investments would fall in value.

In the four years since the housing market began its steady descent, securities regulators have settled only two cases related to the financial crisis for a larger sum of money. This is also the third case brought by the S.E.C. accusing a major Wall Street institution of misleading customers about who was putting together a security and about their motive. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Company both settled similar cases last year.

Confounding Fathers - The Tea Party’s Cold War roots

A few months ago, the cable-television and radio host Glenn Beck began his Fox News show with one of his favorite props: a pipe clenched between his teeth. “I’ve got my pipe,” he told his audience, his speech slightly muddled by the stem, “because we’re going to speak about schoolish kind of things.” The theme of the day was “Restoring History,” and Beck, looking professorial in a neat dark blazer and a pink button-down shirt, began the lesson by peering at a stack of history textbooks and pronouncing them full of falsehoods, produced by “malicious progressive intent.” Progressives, he explained—liberals, socialists, Communists, the entire spectrum of the left—“knew they had to separate us from our history to be able to separate us from our Constitution and God.” For the next hour, Beck earnestly explained some of the history that “is being stolen from us”: the depression of 1920, for example, or how conservative economics saved the nation from the “near-depression” of 1946—crises that progressives don’t want you to know about. “You’ve been taught one lie, I think, your whole life,” he said.

Preoccupied

Visiting the site of Occupy Wall Street last week—a month after the protest began, and shortly before Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s threatened and aborted cleanup—was a bit like visiting a civilization at its peak: Paris in the twenties, Rome in the second century, or, at the very least, Timbuktu in the fifteen hundreds. Zuccotti Park, once a humble office plaza, had developed its own language—the “human microphone” that the protesters use to amplify their voices without megaphones had popularized terms like “block” and “mic check” and “temperature check” (wiggling fingers); it had a financial bureau (the group claims to have raised more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars); and was equipped with a newspaper, a library, and a space for worship (a “sacred tree,” ringed by candles, near the drum circle). Its influence and culture had spread across the land, and it had inspired fear among its enemies. Deutsche Bank employees were having black cars pick them up blocks away from the office; New York Stock Exchange workers were taking roundabout routes to the trading floor; and the Brooks Brothers at the corner of Trinity Place and Liberty Street had given up hope of selling ties on the weekends. “Something good will come out of it, don’t get me wrong,” a Brooks Brothers manager said of the movement. “But it’s not good for business.”

Canadian Shipbuilding Contracts: Halifax And Vancouver Big Winners, Quebec Loses Out

HALIFAX - Workers in hard hats waving Nova Scotia flags celebrated with a giant roar Wednesday when the Irving Shipyard won the $25-billion contract to build the navy's next fleet of warships, a moment that meant secure jobs in a province where work can be hard to find.

"I'll have a job till I retire now," said Adam Watson, a 31-year-old painter and sandlbaster at the shipyard.

Watson said he has been employed by the shipyard for 10 years and has seen some hard times with multiple rounds of layoffs.

"Now (that) I've got steady work it means great things for my life," said Watson, one of hundreds of workers who huddled inside an outdoor tent at the shipyard in anticipation of the announcement.