Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

*There's a New Fascism on the Rise, and the NSA Leaks Show Us What It Looks Like
AlterNet | John Pilger | 06/21/13

The power of truth-tellers like Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema, the corporate academy and the corporate media.

In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, wrote: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked US government files known as The Pentagon Papers, revealing that the invasion of Vietnam was based on systematic lying. Four years later, Frank Church conducted sensational hearings in the US Senate: one of the last flickers of American democracy. These laid bare the full extent of the invisible government: the domestic spying and subversion and warmongering by intelligence and "security" agencies and the backing they received from big business and the media, both conservative and liberal. ... Read more

Financialization = Inequality
ZeroHedge | author | 06/25/13

There are a number of factors behind the widening canyon of economic inequality, but the primary driver is financialization. Financialization has given those with capital and access to financier expertise ways to skim great wealth from the system without creating any value whatsoever.

In other words, financialization isn't a consequence of having capital: it's the consequence of having access to unlimited credit, leverage and low-risk, low-tax skimming operations (for example, tax codes enable hedge funds to declare income as low-tax long-term capital gains). ... Read more

Vulture Capitalists Battle Argentina Over Decade-Old Debt Default
HP | Christina Wilkie | 06/20/13

... Investors buy up distressed debt on the secondary market at a deep discount -- often pennies on the dollar -- and then sue the issuer of the debt in an attempt to force full repayment. Referred to as "vulture capitalists" by their detractors, these investors can turn a bond purchased for 10 cents into a repayment of a full dollar, a phenomenal return on investment. ...

... Among the investment funds listed as members of ATFA is Elliott Management, a hedge fund controlled by billionaire and major Republican donor Paul Singer. According to documents filed by Argentina in a New York federal court lawsuit that Elliott Management has brought against the country, an Elliott subsidiary, NML, paid approximately $48.7 million in 2008 for the Argentine debt in question. Now, the company is demanding that Argentina repay it $1.44 billion, including interest. ... Read more

Shadow Banking - $67 Trillion

Why would banks want to keep all these mortgages on their books when they can blow them out to Freddie and Fannie, who in turn sell them to the market in the form of agency MBS (mortgage backed securities). And who are the buyers? The usual suspects of course - insurance firms, mutual funds, etc., and of course the biggest buyer of them all - the Fed. In fact the holdings of MBS on Fed's balance sheet just hit a record. Mortgages are simply making their way from banks' balance sheets onto the Fed's balance sheet in the form of MBS.

The data from Freddie and Fannie confirms this trend, with the first quarter of this year showing the largest MBS issuance volume in two years. As much as people don't like to think about it this way, Freddie and Fannie are the biggest "shadow banks" around. ...