Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

*How Elite Economic Hucksters Drive America's Biggest Fraud Epidemics
AlterNet | William K. Black | 06/01/13

The work of Alan Greenspan and other unethical economists has cost us trillions of dollars, millions of jobs and endless suffering.

What do you get when you throw together economic fraudsters, plutocrats and opportunistic criminals? A financial crisis, that's what. If you look back over the massive frauds that have swept the country in recent decades, from the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s to the 2007-'08 financial crash, this deadly combination always appears.

A dangerous cycle begins when prominent economists pander to plutocrats and bought politicians, who reward them with top posts, where they promote the perverse economic policies that cause fraud epidemics. Crises develop, and millions of people are ripped off. Those who fight for truth are ignored or ruined. The criminals get wealthier, bolder and more politically powerful, and go on to hatch even more devastating cons. ... Read more

House Republicans broken into fighting factions
Washington Post | Paul Kane | 06/03/13/span>

On New Year's Day, in a cramped room in the Capitol basement, House Republican leaders faced an angry caucus. Democrats had negotiated them into a corner -- virtually every American would be hit with a massive tax increase unless the House agreed to block the hikes for everyone but the wealthy.   A freshman lawmaker seized a microphone and demanded to know how the leaders planned to vote. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) was a yes, but his top two lieutenants were opposed.

That vote, to avert the "fiscal cliff," marked a breaking point for House Republicans, who had disintegrated into squabbling factions, no longer able to agree on -- much less execute -- some of the most basic government functions. ... Read more

Whale of a Trade Revealed at Biggest U.S. Bank With Best Control
Bloomberg | Dawn Kopecki | 06/04/13

"We are dead I tell you," Bruno Iksil, a London-based trader at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), messaged an associate on March 23, 2012. "It is hopeless now."   Iksil, a Frenchman who would soon become known as the London Whale because of the size of his trades, had lost $44 million on corporate-credit bets three days earlier and was down more than $500 million for the year, Bloomberg Markets will report in its July issue. He and junior trader Julien Grout, under pressure from their manager, had tried to hide the extent of losses that would swell to more than $6.2 billion, the bank's biggest trading blunder ever. ... Read more

The Koch Influence
TheNation | Leslie Savan | 05/31/13

On the eve of our first Neo-Pleistocene summer, right-wing carbon barons David and Charles Koch seem to be everywhere, buying influence and trying to de-pollute their image.

The multibillionaire brothers are the potential new owners of the Tribune Company's eight newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and Hoy, the nation's second-largest Spanish-language daily. They're helping to shape what gets on PBS; as Jane Mayer tells it, David Koch barely had to lift a goldfinger to get a public television company to censor itself and drop a documentary critical of him. They're getting down with BuzzFeed; the Charles Koch Institute--sponsored a BuzzFeed Brews "immigration summit" a few weeks ago, with free beer and Ben Smith. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Tuesday, June 04 [14:06]

Environmental Outlook: Jellyfish And The Health Of The Ocean (06/04/13) [1hr]

Get Rid of Your Cable TV Package Now!
AlterNet | David Sirota | 06/03/13

For those of you sick of paying ever-higher cable bills, two huge pieces of news in the last week should encourage you to take action.   First came news that two previously cable-only channels, TBS and TNT, "are about to become the first national entertainment networks in the industry to stream on-air content live across multiple platforms," likely positioning the stations to eventually (though not yet) sell their content direct to consumers on an à la carte online basis, rather than only through traditional cable TV packages. ... Read more