Wednesday
May152013
Holder On AP Scandal: "I Was Not The Person Involved"
HOLDER PASSES THE BUCK
Attorney General Eric Holder testifies before Congress earlier today.
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AP STORY
Govt obtains unprecedented AP phone records in probe
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.
Watch the video:
HOLDER: NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR SUBPOENA
May 15, 2013 at 5:29 PM
Reader Comments (81)
Luckily, as it turns out, our financial system is a planet-sized rock of meth that has a perfectly crystalline Ponzi structure at its very core, and thus addicts like me can get MASSIVE hits off of the rottenest shit just by continuing our unhealthy reading habits. The delicious high of complete disbelief is around the corner if we just keep chipping away towards the center.
But honestly? Most of the highs now depend on fresh depradations by the captains of the U.S.S. Wall Street. Heirloom intoxication--outrage over shit that went down in the TARP era--is as rare as the surprise discovery of a decades-lost porn stash that still actually serves its original purpose.
Imagine my glassy-eyed stupor this week, then, when I rapturously shot up not one but THREE separate stories about stuff from 2008 that left me, even today, shaking my head thinking, "Holy SHIT! I had no idea things were THAT fucked up!" With no further adieu, fellow addicts, I hereby bequeath thee...
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/04/aig-before-cds-there-was-reinsurance/ (AIG was WAY worse than you thought, by Whalen)
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/05/securities-lending-and-why-wall-street.html (Fed's $1 trillion balance sheet expansion covers up Wall Street Ponzi scheme)
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php/3863-Bear-Stearns-Buy-Out-100-Fraud (Fed and Treasury helped Jamie Dimon murder Bear Stearns to bail out insolvent JP Morgan)
Is it possible there is an ongoing criminal conspiracy between certain government officials and certain people in the financial industry that has almost destroyed the american middle class and crashed the international economy? If so, why aren't those who committed and are still committing these crimes not in prison? Could it be we have evolved to the point that all that matters is the ones with the most money always win. As long as you are part of the conspiracy you are immune to rule of law and it doesn't matter who you rob or how you steal the money, the government will always guarantee your success. Al Capone and his peers were amateurs compared to these folks.
Those 3 articles suggest that the powers that be will do whatever it takes to keep the Ponzi scheme financial system going; this includes passing the Commodities Futures Modernization Act (which allowed AIG to write $3 trillion in fraudulent insurance contracts in the guise of CDS, per Whalen), allowing dealer banks to issue $1.5 trillion in phantom treasuries to unsuspecting customers, per Decarbonnel), and secretly bailing out that great enabler of deficit spending, JPM, by pretending that it came to the rescue of a competitor like BSC (whom it really murdered, with help, per Olagues).
I strongly suspect that no one at MF Global was prosecuted because all but about $200 million of the missing customer money (out of $1.6 billion) was transferred legally (in collateral calls, repo transactions, etc.). Edith O'Brien could have been offered an immunity deal after she pleaded the 5th, even without prosecuting Corzine, but wasn't. It's not prosecution per se that authorities fear, it's the disclosure of information that comes with prosecution. The same holds true for HSBC, which admitted to laundering shit tons of money without disclosing anything but the most superficial (though titillating) details about how that was even possible.
Once Joe Sixpack understands that "Ponzi scheme" isn't just a glib label that he angrily tosses around, but rather a very accurate description of the financial system, it is game over for everyone,.
So it's not big money itself that's the decisive factor, nor political connections (though those things help). Instead, the people who end up in jail are the ones who can be prosecuted for things that don't implicate the Ponzi scheme: Madoff (mail fraud, sterilized theft), Wassendorf (false filings, straight embezzlement), Raj (insider trading). By contrast are the Corzines (rehypothecation transactions) and the HSBC's (money laundering). The latter group are immune because they are doing things that the authorities don't want under the bright light of prosecution.
Will we use pitchforks or long range?
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2013/05/coming-collateral-crisis.html
Jesse summary: "The next financial crisis will most likely expose an even greater Ponzi scheme of leveraged ownership of mispriced collateral in general, that as been 'rehypothecated' many times over to the point of worthlessness."
From the featured article du jour at Cafe Americain:
"The problem now, that is being exposed, is that no one knows anymore if collateral is real or even 'who’s' [sic] collateral it is anymore since it has been lent out so many times. Now, to add even more fuel to the fire, it turns out that some of the so called 'collateral' is not and was not even real to begin with! Funds in the trillions of dollars have been lent and now it seems as if the collateral backing many loans may not be real. …And Europe is now considering pulling the plug on shadow banking? How many 'assets' will banks and brokers have to sell to keep their capital ratios adequate? Do they even have enough real assets to sell to cover the collateral that turns out to be fake or has been lent out 10 times over (not to mention 100 times over). I might also ask the question, 'What happens to the markets?' What will happen to the stock markets, bond markets, and real estate markets, ALL MARKETS if banks are forced into liquidation to cover for fraudulent or many times pledged collateral..."
http://rt.com/usa/attorney-general-holder-congressional-probe-913/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/04/us-usa-obama-holder-idUSBRE95213L20130604
This is an extract from a theory that
says the Lost Tribes provided multi-
pronged experimental value in a
conveyed proving that math, morality
and history are one and the same, that
experiment running from GIlgamesh
to quantum mechanics (each says
information lives from waves of awareness--
prayer, getting known for doing good
deeds, etc.,) the idea Blaise Pascal's
additions to Yang Hui's Triangle were
based on his understanding of a unity
in math, morality and history revealed by
Nostradamus' code, and that the East is
morally demonstrably identical after a date
but for the West's admonition to not judge
but having done so anyway for
control and enslavement, particularly
deceptively through monopoly and
privatization.
Was very excited to see a Daily Bail in my inbox.
Miss you all!
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/04/a-fed-up-eric-holder-goes-after-congress-unprecedented-unwarranted-ugly-and-divisive/
Nice to hear from you. I see 2 years later we are still discussing that wrascally wrabbit Holder. He should be wearing stripes rather than retiring into the sunset or yet another cushy job!
Guess DB has disappeared.
I have spent the last 6 months working in Arkansas where we replaced a D Governor with an R, took out a family Senator for a good guy with Military experience, (Tom Cotton) and switched out State D's with R's. Right down to the local Sheriff.
Feels good to have been on a winning team for a change.
Progressives believe that their goals and policies are well intentioned and occupy the moral high-ground. Thus, anyone with alternative goals must be pursuing personal or evil goals with the intent of doing bad to their fellow citizens out of "hate".
This is how Dems console themselves when the policies they advocate turn out to have REALLY bad unanticipated consequences. 'Course the conservatives did anticipate the negative consequences, but the Dems ignored the warnings and so call them "unanticipated". We can see that with the ACA especially.
Take the "war on poverty". A seemingly (to progressives and liberals) well-meaning effort to counteract the negative effects of the denial of civil rights to minorities by helping them overcome poverty. The result was the destruction of the minority families, increased unwed births, abandonment of minority men from rearing children, increased drug use, and a failure of the minority education. The Dems still defend it as "well-intentioned" but fraught with some "unanticipated" consequences (that were predicted by conservatives).
Thinking of Killery, will she run?
It is literally impossible for Hillary to disassociate herself from Barack the man and his policies. Hillary was too deeply embedded in Obama's administration to Shake It Off like Taylor Swift. Hillary was and still is Barack's "yes girl".
Hillary can spin her involvement with Obama to Pluto and back, and when her feet are back on terra firma people will glance at her and think, "She is Obama's yes girl". There are no words, no explanation, no spin which can break this chain between Hillary and Barack. All of Obama's successes and failures are tattooed on Hillary's backside; she is branded with a scarlet letter "O".
Anxious to see how the Holder replacement squares up. She has a record of going after crooks and politicians, but I digress.
level politician in New York and had a couple of stopovers in some white shoe law firms along the way. One was a global player that I'm pretty damned certain she would not entertain the thought of sending those folks to jail. Just sayin. Good luck with your new mandate there in Arkansas. Looks like the R's took the place all to themselves.
OBAMA'S ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE LORETTA LYNCH REPRESENTED CLINTONS DURING WHITEWATER
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/08/Obama-s-New-Attny-Gen-Nominee-Loretta-Lynch-Represented-Clintons-during-Whitewater
New York federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch, the new nominee for attorney general, has a career filled with high profile cases -- and she was a member of Bill Clinton's defense team during the 1992 Whitewater corruption probe.
As he made his announcement Saturday afternoon, Obama called the two-time U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York a "tough, fair and independent" lawyer.
"It's pretty hard to be more qualified for this job than Loretta Lynch," Obama said.
Indeed, the prosecutor has a long career built of some high profile cases but there is one case Lynch was involved in that few are talking about. Lynch was a part of Bill Clinton's Whitewater probe defense team in 1992.
In 1992, the Clintons came under fire for investing in a perennially failing Arkansas real estate company known as Whitewater Development, a venture heavily subsidized by Clinton friend Jim McDougal in an effort to soften the losses the Clintons were experiencing as investors. The probe was widened to look into the failure of the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan to which it was connected. Eventually the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission won several convictions handing jail time to the McDougals as well as Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker.
The Clintons escaped any convictions in the probe..
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expect more whitewashes….
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/nyregion/white-house-seeks-resignations-of-3-prosecutors-in-new-york.html
Three of the four top federal prosecutors in New York State, all Democratic appointees, have been asked to step down by the Bush administration, the Justice Department said yesterday.
The only United States attorney in New York who has been asked to stay on is Mary Jo White, who is prosecuting the ongoing terrorism case involving attacks on two American Embassies in East Africa in 1998. Ms. White is the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, which covers Manhattan, the Bronx and much of downstate New York…
...Ms. Tucker said that only about a dozen of the 93 United States attorneys had been asked to stay on, generally because of the cases they were working on. The rest of the prosecutors, including Ms. Lynch, Ms. O'Donnell and Mr. French, will be asked to leave sometime before June on a timetable that is still being worked out, Ms. Tucker said.
On Wednesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Ms. White would remain on the job indefinitely, primarily because of her involvement in the embassy bombings case.
Ms. White has also been put in charge of all accusations of criminal wrongdoing related to pardons granted by President Clinton, but Ms. Tucker said last night that the decision to retain her had been made before the pardons were placed in her purview.
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Note Mary Jo White in the above post. Then read this article DB did awhile back:
http://dailybail.com/home/matt-taibbi-mary-white-as-head-of-sec-puts-fox-in-charge-of.html