Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Qaeda Militants Seek Syria Base, U.S. Officials Say
NYTimes | Eric Schmitt | 03/25/14

Dozens of seasoned militant fighters, including some midlevel planners, have traveled to Syria from Pakistan in recent months in what American intelligence and counterterrorism officials fear is an effort to lay the foundation for future strikes against Europe and the United States.

"We are concerned about the use of Syrian territory by the Al Qaeda organization to recruit individuals and develop the capability to be able not just to carry out attacks inside of Syria, but also to use Syria as a launching pad," John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, told a House panel recently. ... Read more

Another Financial Crisis Is Looming--Here's Why and How It Will Play Out
Bloomberg & AlterNet | Bob Ivry | 03/26/14

So are we on the precipice of another financial crisis, and what will it look like? To be sure, danger still lurks in the mortgage market. The latest get-rich-quick scheme, with private equity firms buying up foreclosed properties and renting them out, then selling bonds backed by the rental revenue streams (which look suspiciously like the bonds backed by mortgage payments that were a proximate cause of the last crisis), has the potential to blow up. And continued shenanigans with mortgage documents could lead to major headaches. A new court case against Wells Fargo uncovered a bombshell, a step-by-step manual telling attorneys how they can fake foreclosure papers on demand; the fallout could throw into question the true ownership of millions of homes. Even subprime mortgages are in the midst of a comeback, because what could go wrong? ...

... That's not to say that Wall Street firms have been choir boys. The risk is merely harder to see, and you can't just look at the banks. In fact, banks have reduced their stake in many normal banking activities, leaving things like small business lending to the shadow banking system. This is the broad term given to hedge funds, private equity firms and the labyrinthine deals they initiate to move money around. These less-regulated entities have increased their overall portfolios 60 percent over the past five years, bingeing on subprime loans to businesses that could not otherwise access traditional credit. Nontraditional leveraged loans, issued to companies that end up with large amounts of debt, have fewer protections for lenders and carry much more risk. ... Read more

The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 02/12/14

Call it the loophole that destroyed the world. It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. While the rest of America obsesses over Monica Lewinsky, Columbine and Mark McGwire's biceps, Congress is feverishly crafting what could yet prove to be one of the most transformative laws in the history of our economy -- a law that would make possible a broader concentration of financial and industrial power than we've seen in more than a century. But the crazy thing is, nobody at the time quite knew it. Most observers on the Hill thought the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 -- also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act -- was just the latest and boldest in a long line of deregulatory handouts to Wall Street that had begun in the Reagan years. ...

... Wall Street had spent much of that era arguing that America's banks needed to become bigger and badder, in order to compete globally with the German and Japanese-style financial giants, which were supposedly about to swallow up all the world's banking business. So through legislative lackeys like red-faced Republican deregulatory enthusiast Phil Gramm, bank lobbyists were pushing a new law designed to wipe out 60-plus years of bedrock financial regulation. ...

... All of this was big enough news in itself. But it would take half a generation -- till now, basically -- to understand the most explosive part of the bill, which additionally legalized new forms of monopoly, allowing banks to merge with heavy industry. A tiny provision in the bill also permitted commercial banks to delve into any activity that is "complementary to a financial activity and does not pose a substantial risk to the safety or soundness of depository institutions or the financial system generally." ... Read more

The Bigger Dog Whistle Bogeyman: Liberal Government
Salon & Bill Moyers | Ian Haney López | 03/24/14

While attention focuses on Paul Ryan's remarks about inner city culture, another dog-whistle theme continues its slow roil: food stamp abuse. More even than Ryan's twisting narrative, the brouhaha around food stamps helps make clear that conservatives seek to conjure a much bigger bogeyman than "lazy" minorities.

Ostensibly worried that too many people prefer welfare to work, House Republicans this January stripped $8.6 billion from the food stamp program. This threatened to reduce monthly food assistance by an average of $90 per family -- from households that are barely hanging on, with average gross monthly incomes of just $744. Yet far from conceding defeat, states are joining battle by adjusting their programs in ways that evade the cuts, bringing the food stamp debate back.

Just last week, House Speaker John Boehner warned that "states have found ways to cheat, once again, on signing up people for food stamps," and he implored his colleagues "to stop this cheating and this fraud from continuing." Cheating and fraud constitute stock themes in the conservative assault on food stamps -- tropes applied indiscriminately to both recipients and government. And therein lies a clue to the real target. ... Read more