Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

RBS Wins 'Dumbest Bank of the Year' Award
Bloomberg | Jonathan Weil | 12/11/13

... According to a consent order released today by the New York State Department of Financial Services, RBS provided employees at its payment-processing centers in the U.K. with written instructions, containing "a step by step guide on how to create and route U.S. dollar payment messages involving sanctioned entities through the United States to avoid detection." The instructions included:

"IMPORTANT: FOR ALL US DOLLAR PAYMENTS TO A COUNTRY SUBJECT TO US SANCTIONS, A PAYMENT MESSAGE CANNOT CONTAIN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING: 1. The sanctioned country name. 2. Any name designated on the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) restricted list, which can encompass a bank name, remitter or beneficiary."

In other words, RBS explicitly told employees how to cover the bank's tracks. The consent order said the bank conducted $523 million of transactions from 2002 to 2011 through New York correspondent banks involving Sudanese and Iranian customers. It also said that RBS, to a lesser extent, processed U.S. dollar transactions for clients in Cuba, Burma and Libya. ... Read more

This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense
HP | Linda Tirado | 11/22/13

There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of. ... Read more

Teen Avoids Prison Because He's Wealthy
HP | author | date

Ethan Couch Sentenced To Probation In Crash That Killed 4 After Defense Argued He Had 'Affluenza'

A 16-year-old avoided spending time in prison for killing four people in a car accident in June after the judge bought his lawyers' argument that he was the victim of wealth.

CBSDFW reports that Ethan Couch was sentenced to 10 years probation for the drunk driving crash that ended the lives of youth pastor, Brian Jennings; Hollie and Shelby Boyles; and Breanna Mitchell.   Prosecutors asked that Couch serve 20 years in prison. His blood alcohol level was .24, three times the legal limit for an adult.

Psychologist G. Dick Miller testified for the defense that Couch suffered from "affluenza," a condition in which "his family felt that wealth bought privilege and there was no rational link between behavior and consequences," ... Read more

Want to Cut Government Spending? 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
TYT | Shocking Government Waste at The Defense Department (11/30/13) [7:11]

Budget Deal Doesn't Cut Enough from Defense: Joseph Cirincione
finance.yahoo.com | Lauren Lyster | 12/12/13

If all goes according to the plan conceived by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), the co-chairs of the bipartisan budget conference committee, Congress will approve their budget deal and the government won't shut down again like it did for 16 days in October.

"I agree with what Chuck Hagel said before he became defense secretary, which is that there's plenty of room to cut," says Cirincione. "We've doubled the defense budget since 9/11 and a lot of that was to fight wars that we're now ending. There's plenty of room to shrink the military without cutting away any of the muscle."

"Even if we don't agree to eliminate nuclear weapons, it's hard to imagine why we need 50 of them or 500 of them. We have 5,000 in our arsenal.....Why do we need so many around still around particularly for the cost that they're incurring for the military, for the economy."

"We're spending $55 billion a year on nuclear weapons and related programs...but the really bad news is that that number is about to explode," Cirincione tells The Daily Ticker.   He explains that the U.S. will be deciding over the over the next two or three years whether to replace its existing nuclear triad of missiles, bombers and submarines, which is estimated to cost $1 trillion over the next 40 years. ... Read more
*Budget Deal Doesn't Cut Enough from Defense: Joseph Cirincione (12/12/13) [4:40]