Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Antarctic Ice Shelf Is A Few Years From Disintegration: NASA
HP & Reuters | Alex Dobuzinskis | 05/15/15

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The last intact section of one of Antarctica's mammoth ice shelves is weakening fast and will likely disintegrate completely in the next few years, contributing further to rising sea levels, according to a NASA study released on Thursday.

The research focused on a remnant of the so-called Larsen B Ice Shelf, which has existed for at least 10,000 years but partially collapsed in 2002. What is left covers about 625 square miles (1,600 square km), about half the size of Rhode Island. ... Read more

Washington's Shadowy Energy Partnership With Azerbaijan Exposed
ZeroHedge | author | 05/18/15

Ten Members of the U.S. Congress -- along with 32 of their staff members -- received secret payments from Azerbaijan's state-owned oil company to travel to Baku in 2013, to cover the cost of travel, including souvenirs of "silk scarves, crystal tea sets and Azerbaijani rugs." ... Read more

GregPalastOffice | BP Blow-out Cover-Up (04/20/12) [6:29]

Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores by Greg Palast

This is the story of the corporate vultures that feed on the weak and ruin our planet in the process-a story that spans the globe and decades.

For Vultures' Picnic, investigative journalist Greg Palast has spent his career uncovering the connection between the world of energy (read: oil) and finance. He's built a team that reads like a casting call for a Hollywood thriller-a Swiss multilingual investigator, a punk journalist, and a gonzo cameraman-to reveal how environmental disasters like the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, and lesser-known tragedies such as Tatitlek and Torrey Canyon are caused by corporate corruption, failed legislation, and, most interestingly, veiled connections between the billionaires of financial industry and energy titans. Palast shows how the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and Central Banks act as puppets and bandits for Big Oil.

With Palast at the center of an investigation that takes us from the Arctic to Africa to the Amazon, Vultures' Picnic shows how the big powers in the money and oil game slip the bonds of regulation over and over again, and simply destroy the rules that they themselves can't write-and take advantage of nations and everyday people in the process.

12 Years of Bush Presidencies = 747,000 Net New Private Sector Jobs
HP | Paul Abrams | 05/17/15

As former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) flails about trying to use his family name to attract financial and elite support while also desperately trying to distance himself from his brother's disastrous record, there is another problem he cannot run away from: The 12 Bush years were the worst on record for net new private sector job creation. Not just the worst, but no one has even come close to being the second worst.

Not just the worst, but no one has even come close to being the second worst.

That's it. Less than 1 million new private sector jobs in 12 years of Bush presidencies. President Obama creates as many new private sector jobs in 3-4 months as the Bushes did in 12 years.

To understand this more fully, the Bushes averaged 5,190 new jobs per month for 12 years. No, not 51,000 that would be considered terrible, awful and devastating. But one-tenth of that, 5,190. There are no words to describe how abysmal that is. ... Read more

David Stockman: "We Are Entering The Terminal Phase Of The Global Financial System"
ZeroHedge | author | 05/18/15

"What happened in each of those episodes was a short-run break in the system, collapse of confidence and flight to gold. What I think we are facing now is a terminal phase of a monetary system that isn't viable, stable or sustainable. Therefore gold has but one characteristic - massive upside in the years ahead." ... Read more

This Is What A $240/Share AAPL Would Look Like In Context
ZeroHedge | author | 05/18/15

If Carl Icahn, whose $6.8 billion in AAPL holdings makes him nearly a 6x bigger holder of the stock than the Swiss National Bank, is correct and AAPL is truly worth $240/share today, or about $1.4 trillion, roughly equivalent to 9% of US GDP, then this is how AAPL would rank if it were a sovereign nation (and yes, we know comparing market cap to GDP is idiotic, but so is everything else these days).

For the purists, at $240/share, AAPL would be 2.2x larger than the entire market cap of the Italian or Swedish stock market, 1.9x larger than all Spanish public companies combined, it would be almost the same size as the market cap of all Swiss companies, and is just about 70% of the market cap of Germany or France.