Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Let Them Hear the Rumble! Invest in People, Not War
HP | Ralph Nader | 12/18/13

Earlier this month, a delegation of activists took to Capitol Hill to demand a decrease in the massive, out-of-control military budget. As millions of Americans struggle with inadequate health care, low wages, deteriorating public services and uncertainty about their futures as the wage gap between the wealthy elite and the working poor widens, billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars are pouring into the coffers of the Department of Defense every year. The Pentagon budget currently makes up half of the U.S. government's entire operating budget. Estimated to be around $716 billion in 2013, the U.S. defense budget is greater than the defense budgets of the next ten highest spending nations combined. ... Read more

*How Secret Currency Traders' Club Devised Biggest Market's Rates
Bloomberg | Liam Vaughan | 12/18/13

It's 20 minutes before 4 p.m. in London and currency traders' screens are blinking red and green. Some dealers have as many as 50 chat rooms crowded onto four monitors arrayed in front of them like shields. Messages from salespeople and clients appear, get pushed up by new ones and vanish from view. Orders are barked through squawk boxes.

This is the closing "fix," the thin slice of the day when foreign-exchange traders buy and sell billions of dollars of currency in the largely unregulated $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market, the biggest in the world by volume, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Their trades help set the benchmark WM/Reuters rates used to value more than $3.6 trillion of index funds held by pension holders, savers and money managers around the world.

Now regulators from Bern to Washington are examining evidence first reported by Bloomberg News in June that a small group of senior traders at big banks had something else on their screens: details of each other's client orders. Sharing that information may have helped dealers at firms, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Citigroup Inc. (C), UBS AG (UBSN) and Barclays Plc (BARC), manipulate prices to maximize their own profits, according to five people with knowledge of the probes. ... Read more

CFTC Announces It Is Undercounting Size Of Swaps Market By As Much As $55 Trillion
ZeroHedge | author | 12/19/13

What is $55 trillion between friends? Very little according to the CFTC. In perhaps the biggest under the radar news of the day - to be expected with every watercooler occupied by taper experts - the WSJ reports that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Wednesday that technical errors at two so-called swaps data repositories, which collect and supply regulators with transaction data, have led the CFTC to misreport the overall size of the swaps market by undercounting its size. Isn't it curious how all these "glitches" always work out in the favor of preserving market calm and confidence and away from spooking investors and speculators? Either way, a better question is how big was the so called undercounting? The answer: as large as $55 trillion! ... Read more

10 PHOTOS: 2013's Most Terrifying Weather Disasters
MotherJones | Chris Mooney | 12/19/13

The year 2013 has seen no less than 39 weather-related disasters costing $1 billion or more in damage. That's far more than last year, when there were only 27, according to an analysis of disaster statistics by the Weather Underground's Jeff Masters--and very near the all time high of 40, in 2010.

After starting in late August, the enormous Yosemite Rim fire eventually grew to encompass more than 250,000 acres, gaining it a ranking of the third largest in California history. To put that in perspective, the Rim Fire grew almost as large as all the other 2013 California fires combined (thus far). ... Read more

Lurid Subprime Scams Unveiled in Long-Running Fraud Trial
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 12/12/13

... The evidence uncovered in the Household suit should put to lie once and for all the oft-repeated myth -- spread by many of America's most notable dumb people, from Rush Limbaugh to New York City Mayor-unelect Mike Bloomberg -- that the financial crisis was caused by the government "forcing" banks to lend to poor people.

In reality, of course, the subprime bubble exploded because financial companies and banks were in a mad rush to get as many iffy borrowers into loans as quickly as possible -- and not because they were forced to, but because they made assloads of money doing so. ... Read more