Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Wall Street Taught Me How to Cheat
AlterNet | Chris Arnade | 11/26/13

A new report finds 53% of financial services executives say ethical standards inhibit career progression.

My first year on Wall Street, 1993, I was paid 14 times more than I earned the prior year and three times more than my father's best year. For that money, I helped my company create financial products that were disguised to look simple, but which required complex math to properly understand. That first year I was roundly applauded by my bosses, who told me I was clever, and to my surprise they gave me $20,000 bonus beyond my salary.

The products were sold to many investors, many who didn't fully understand what they were buying, most of them what we called "clueless Japanese." The profits to my company were huge -- hundreds of millions of dollars huge. The main product that made my firm great money for close to five years was was called, in typically dense finance jargon, a YIF, or a Yield Indexed Forward. ... Read more

Want to Cut Government Waste? Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For
finance.yahoo.com | Lauren Lyster | 11/25/13

If you thought the botched rollout of Obamacare, the government shutdown, or the sequester represented Washington dysfunction at its worst, wait until you hear about the taxpayer waste at the Defense Department.

Special Enterprise Reporter Scot Paltrow unearthed the "high cost of the Pentagon's bad bookkeeping" in a Reuters investigation. It amounts to $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for. The year 1996 was the first that the Pentagon should have been audited under a law requiring audits of all government departments. Oh, and by the way, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with this law. ... Read more
*Find the $8.5 Trillion the Pentagon Can't Account For

Corporate Elites Are Witnessing a Growing Wave of Resistance to the 'Walmartization' of Our Economy
AlterNet | Kevin Zeese | 11/29/13

The struggle of working Americans took center stage as Black Friday protests covered the country. The struggle for wages that do not leave families impoverished is one that affects us all and highlights the unfair economy created by a class war waged by the wealthy for decades. The 'Walmartization' of the US economy has created a downward spiral in wages and destroyed small businesses and communities while heightening the wealth divide that is at the root of so many problems. The war on working people is a war on all but the wealthiest Americans.

... Noam Chomsky writes in his new book, Occupy: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity, that the "business class" is always engaged in class warfare. They continually act to protect their interests, wealth and power. The class war manifests itself in every aspect of our lives from the attack on our public institutions and civil liberties to climate change and the global race to the bottom and racially unfair police enforcement and mass incarceration. It defines our foreign policy including trade agreements rigged for big business and wars for resources, cheap labor and the positioning of American Empire. ... Read more

7 Reasons Why It's Easier for Humans to Believe in God Than Evolution
MotherJones | Chris Mooney | 11/26/13

... Yet even as creationists keep trying to undermine modern science, modern science is beginning to explain creationism scientifically. And it looks like evolution--the scientifically uncontested explanation for the diversity and interrelatedness of life on Earth, emphatically including human life--will be a major part of the story. Our brains are a stunning product of evolution; and yet ironically, they may naturally pre-dispose us against its acceptance.

"I don't think there's any question that a variety of our mental dispositions are ones that discourage us from taking evolutionary theory as seriously as it should be taken," explains Robert N. McCauley, director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture at Emory University and author of the book Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not. ... Read more