Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Is Rising Wealth Concentration Really an Inexorable Trend?
MotherJones | Kevin Drum | 04/27/14

Jared Bernstein tries to explain today why Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century has become such a cultural phenomenon. The answer, he says, is a growing sense that "something is structurally wrong with both the economy and the practice of economics":

Between financial bubbles and busts, the macro-management seems inept and even once the economy starts growing again, the benefits accrue narrowly to the top. In part, it's a sense that "the fix is in" when it comes to the distribution of growth. ... Read more

The U.S. Is Even More Unequal Than You Realized
HP | Maxwell Strachan | 05/01/14

The chart above, from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) using the World Top Incomes Database, shows how income gains between 1975 and 2007 were divvied up in 18 OECD countries for which the researchers had data. Nowhere did the rich benefit as much as in America.

America's top 1 percent of earners accounted for 47 percent of all pre-tax income growth over that time period. And that's excluding capital gains, for God's sake. Throw in the rest of the top 10 percent, and you're looking at a group that got four-fifths of all income growth between the Ford and George W. Bush administrations. The rest of us were left to scramble for the last one-fifth of extra income. If you add in capital gains, which typically accrue to the highest earners anyway, the picture is probably a lot worse. ... Read more

Criminal Charges Against Banks Risk Sparking Crisis
Bloomberg | Greg Farrell | 05/01/14

As U.S. Justice Department prosecutors angle to bring the first criminal charges against global banks since the financial crisis, they'll have to stare down warnings of uncontainable collateral damage.

The 2002 collapse of Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm indicted in the Enron scandal, "should be a lesson" for prosecutors, Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television. "Don't play with matches."

Stung by lawmakers' criticism that multibillion-dollar settlements have done too little to punish Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis, prosecutors are considering indictments in probes of Credit Suisse Group AG and BNP Paribas SA, a person familiar with the matter said. Even after talking with financial regulators about ways to mitigate damage -- such as ensuring banks keep charters -- prosecutors might not fully understand consequences for the market, according to industry lawyers and bankers who are following the case. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, May 01 [12:33]

What $1.4 Trillion In QE Buys The US Economy
ZeroHedge | author | 05/01/14

Back in December of 2012, the Fed, after two and a half failed attempts to stimulate the economy (via QE1, QE2 and Operation Twist), announced Open-Ended QE of an indefinite injection of $85 billion per month (which it currently is tapering at a pace of $10 billion per month on the realization that it has soaked up virtually all high quality collateral). Since then the Fed's balance sheet has grown from $2.9 trillion to $4.3 trillion: a direct injection of $1.4 trillion in liquidity into the stock market, if not so much the economy, which as Wall Street is suddenly busy telling us following the latest disappointing construction spending data.

There's even better news: if the next quarter shows the US economy contracting again - and with the "beneficial" impact of Obamacare fading, global trade stuck in the doldrums, and US consumers tapped out with near record low savings this is a distinct possibility - the US will officially enter a recession. ... Read more