Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Fed (Federal Reserve) Delays Volcker Rule, Giving Wall Street Another Holiday Gift
HP | Zach Carter | 12/18/14

Christmas came early for Wall Street this year. The Federal Reserve on Thursday granted banks an extra year to comply with a key provision of the Volcker Rule, a move that gives financial lobbyists more time to kill the new regulation before it goes into effect.

The Volcker Rule is a key element of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that bans banks from engaging in proprietary trading -- speculative deals that are designed only to benefit the bank itself, rather than its clients. Thursday's move by the Fed gives banks an additional year to unwind investments in private equity firms, hedge funds and specialty securities projects. The central bank also said it plans to extend the deadline by another 12 months next year, which would give Wall Street a two-year reprieve through the 2016 presidential election. ... Read more

Americans Are Sick to Death of Both Parties -- Why Our Politics Is in Worse Shape Than We Thought
AlterNet | Walter Dean Burnham | 12/17/14

The way many pundits tell it, the Democratic debacle in the 2014 midterm elections sounds like a perfect storm of bad breaks. The President was aloof. The party's message was weak and muddled, in some races focused almost entirely on gender issues. Meanwhile record or near-record breaking waves of political money (for off year elections) cascaded through the political system while voter turnout plunged to levels last seen in 1942.

The real story is much uglier: 2014 was fundamentally a democratic debacle. It likely heralds a new stage in the disintegration of the American political order. Though Republicans jubilate now, the trend is probably as threatening to them as it is to the Democrats. The reason is stark: Increasing numbers of average Americans can no longer stomach voting for parties that only pretend to represent their interests. ... Read more

4 Signs the Arctic Is Getting Baked by Climate Change
MotherJones | Tim McDonnell | 12/17/14

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the Earth.

If you're looking for the ground zero of climate change, head to the Arctic. Nowhere else on Earth is changing as quickly or as dramatically; air temperatures there are rising twice as fast as at lower latitudes. In the summer of 2012, Arctic sea ice reached the lowest level ever recorded, shrinking to less than half the area it occupied a few decades ago. Ice has rebounded somewhat in the two years since, but it is still on a downward trajectory of about 13 percent per decade and could disappear altogether in summer months by 2030. ... Read more

Paul Krugman Shows How Putin's Burst Economic Bubble Is the Essence of Crony Capitalism
AlterNet | Janet Allon | 12/19/14

Alas, "swaggering strongman" Putin is hitting a bit of a snag, writes Paul Krugman in his column today. "Mr. Putin never had the resources to back his swagger," Krugman says. "Russia has an economy roughly the same size as Brazil's. And, as we're now seeing, it's highly vulnerable to financial crisis -- a vulnerability that has a lot to do with the nature of the Putin regime."

The ruble started sliding in August when Putin sent troops to Ukraine and has started downright plunging in recent weeks, Krugman points out. "And all indications are that the Russian economy is heading for a nasty recession."

The global plunge in oil prices has not helped, but it does not explain the bottom dropping out of the ruble. So what's going on? ... Read more

*RingOfFire | Wall Street Thinks Elizabeth Warren Is The Devil (12/18/14) [1:49]

*ThomHartmann | Politics, Energy and the Fragile World Economy... (12/18/14) [32:19]