America's bankers, partying like it's 2007!

They're back on top of the world! 

The same lot who who nearly destroyed the global economy, are back to their old habits and spending preferences.  The New York Times reports on the behavior of the denizens of Wall Street and the chieftains of American commerce.

Two years after the onset of the financial crisis, the stock market is recovering and Wall Street’s moneyed elite are breathing easier again. And this means in some cases they are spending again — at times cautiously, but sometimes with a familiar swagger.

The article lists that business is booming at plastic surgery salons, buyers are "pouring" into art auctions, high end restaurants are flooded with patrons, and there is a bidding war for summertime rentals in the Hamptons.  Given what their friends in Washington have done for them, the top earners believe their own economic situation is secure and are confident that their corpulent existence will not be interrupted soon.

It is precisely because of this behavior why we will continue to suffer crisis after crisis, until the whole wretched state collapses.  Unlike rational people, who assess their moral failings, personal faults, and actions that have hurt greater society, these people are sociopaths who are never held accountable for their actions.  Their only devotion is to the mighty dollar and indulging in materialistic shit.

Just consider some of their "efficient" economic activity:

Ms. Killoran, who runs a Brooklyn-based insurance company, says that over the last two years she cut her annual spending on cosmetic surgery in half, to about $3,000. She is now spending at pre-2008 levels. “I have to meet a lot of people, and this is part of investing in myself,” she said.

Or this tidbit of stupidity:

A Morgan Stanley trader recently tried to hire a dwarf for a bachelor party in Miami, asking the dwarf to meet him at the airport in a “Men in Black” style suit, according to e-mail exchanges.

At the end of the they day, the moneyed elite couldn't fucking care less about you.  As George Carlin said, "They don't fucking care about you! They don't fucking care!"

• Have basic services such as police, firefighting, and ambulance services in your city have been cut because of state and municipal fiscal problems?  This isn't a problem for those Americans living in gated communities with private security and emergency health services.  Stop wasting their time, because there's a sale at Barney's they have to attend.
• If you lived in NY city and wondered why your roads or sidewalks weren't recently cleared of snow so you can go to work, you can thank Mayor Bloomberg for cutting services and refusing to tax the these rich motherfuckers; out of fear that they may move the whole industry to New Jersey or Hoboken, PA!
• Your employer cut your wages and benefits, stopped making 401k payments or nuked your pension, or forced you to pay more for health care insurance. Not a problem for the folks vacationing in multi-million dollar homes in the Hamptons.  Get a second job you bum!
• Lost your job because these fucktards were scheming with other high-end crooks and blew up the economy in the process. Hey freeloader, talk to the hand, because they pay taxes too; although one has to go back decades to find a time when they were paying less.
• Can't afford to send your kids to university!  Serves them right for wanting to attend those bastions of fucking liberalism.  Bloody hippies and communists!

This is the antithesis of a just and fair society.

Sen. Sanders on the Greed of the Plutocrats

Charlie Rose interviews Charles Ferguson of the "Inside Job"

http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/11321

The above link is to a recent interview (29 November 2010) between Charlie Rose and Charles Ferguson who produced the well reviewed documentary on the origins of the financial collapse of 2008 and the subsequent global bailout of the financial industry by governments across the world.

He states specifically, "the film is about the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption."

In the interview Ferguson makes it clear that the corruption of America and its legislative and regulatory processes are profound.  He makes the case that much of what happened would not have occurred if the businessmen behind these monolithic investment banks were not so incompetent and blinded by greed and the US government had not abdicated its role, as an agent for fairness, in properly regulating the whole industry.  The actions taken by the government was to save the banks and the elite bankers, while allowing the rest of the population to fend for itself.  The bankers, with the exception of Lehman Brothers, were not made to make any sacrifices.

Ferguson further contends that "massive criminal fraud" was undertaken. Despite the nauseating proclamations by the financial industry and their media stooges, it is clear that both government and the largest corporations in America engaged in what may stand as the largest criminal event of the past quarter century. The reality is that none of these people, given the political climate and entrenched corruption of government, will be held accountable for their actions in destroying trillions of dollars of wealth, eliminating millions of jobs, and pushing families off the cliff.  When ordinary people lose their health care, lose their homes, lose their life savings, and end up destitute, the same people who caused this mayhem will snicker and call the rest of the population parasites!

I've said it numerous times on this blog, that only when people recognize the true nature of corporations in their society and begin to combat the force of coruption through monied politics, will things change.

Arizona's indulgence with the banality of evil

I have been for some years awed by the grotesque indecency and outright evil that presents itself as the norm in the low-tax geezer-vista that is the state of Arizona.  Many will recognize the ongoing battle between locals and illegal immigrants.  My disgust does not entail this well discussed legal tussle and the underlying racial animus prevalent across the state.  Instead, I'd like to draw attention to the mindset and legislative behavior of the state's Republicans, who with their tax-free and minimalist government ideology have created a perfect example of the banality of evil.

I came across this example in the NY Times of the lengths many of the well-heeled denizens of the state will go to, in order to protect their personal fortunes from the local taxman.  Consider the following:

“Arizona is seeing more of the traditional battle of the generations...between some retirees who want taxes — including school taxes — kept low, and most parents who want better support for the schools their kids attend.”

Patrick Flynn, the president of a homeowners group in Troon, AZ in 2007, states that he has no qualms about education, he "just does not like the idea of paying for it."  In this particular exhibition of generational greed and malice, the residents of the district created a bogus local school district with no schools, teachers, or students to prevent their property taxes from being raised.  Families with children must pay adjacent districts to have their children participate in schooling.  As a state senator explains, “The whole purpose of this was to avoid taxes on their million-dollar homes.”

In an earlier post titled "The young must die so Geezers can pay low taxes" I explained how the Governor of Arizona planned to eliminate health coverage for 47,000 low-income children.  In the name of fiscal austerity the legislators gladly abandoned their most vulnerable citizens so that these modern day Merchants of Venice wouldn't have to worry about wasting their well earned shekels on youthful vermin.  The fact that the elderly receive federally subsidized Medicare and have no worries about paying for health care costs is an irrelevance to these hypocrites.  Racial bigotry is used by the citizens of the state to claim that most of the children were the offspring of illegals, who shouldn't be receiving benefits regardless.

What has drawn my particular ire today though is another instance of greed masquerading as fiscal rectitude.  The NY Times has a horrible story of how Arizona legislators have stripped citizens belonging to the state Medicaid program from having life-saving transplants.  Persons who for whatever reason that were waiting for a liver, lung, or other tissue were told to drop dead by their own representatives.

When Alan Grayson, the former congressman for Florida, said in 2009 that the Republican plan for health care reform was, "Don't get sick. That's right, don't get sick."  The MSM and Republicans bemoaned his rhetoric and yet evidence is abundant that he was absolutely correct.  On the floor of the House of Representatives, Grayson offered this scathing critique of the Republican party's program for health care

According to this study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults” which was published two weeks ago, 44,789 Americans die every year because they have no health insurance. That’s right, 44,789 Americans die every year, according to this Harvard study called “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults.” You can see it by going to our website, grayson.house.gov. That is more than ten times the number of Americans who have died in the war in Iraq.

It’s more than ten times the number of Americans who died in 9/11. But that was just once: this is every single year. That’s right: every single year. Take a look at this. Read it and weep. And I mean that – read it and weep because of all these Americans who are dying because they don’t have health insurance.

The state of Arizona offered this pathetic rational for why the government was serving poor and sick citizens a death sentence:

State Medicaid officials said they recommended discontinuing some transplants only after assessing the success rates for previous patients. Among the discontinued procedures are lung transplants, liver transplants for hepatitis C patients and some bone marrow and pancreas transplants, which altogether would save the state about $4.5 million a year.

While many states in the union have reduced or eliminated aspects of health coverage during the Great Recession, Arizona once again goes the extra distance to condemn their citizens to the vagaries of market-based health care; i.e. pay or you fucking die!  The cruelty and lack of any resemblance of ethics of these people is mind-boggling.

The behavior of all levels of government in Arizona is one of maximizing short term financial gains for their most well off citizens, while brutally undermining the health, education, and well-being of large portions of their population.  How is it that the richest country in the world has a health care system that is on par with second-rate industrial nations?  The justifications of the proponents of this lot are always anchored to some bizarre notion of moral indignation that others are getting a free ride, while they -the greediest generation, who never sacrificed, never went to war in the name of democracy and freedom, and who had their entire lives subsidized from birth- continuously demand others do without, what they loudly proclaim is their deserved entitlement.

Quote of the Day: Chomsky on the Financial Fraudsters

The capitalist class in the ’50s was sort of part of a social contract. It was part of the tenor of the times… Changes have taken place since then… In the financial institutions, which by now dominate the economic system, the management level repeatedly acts in ways which will destroy their own institutions if it’ll increase their benefits, and benefits are not small. You know, you take a look at the revenue of, say, Goldman Sachs – a very high percentage of it just goes to payment of management and bonuses. There was a time traditionally – say, GM in the 1950s – it was trying to develop a consumer base that would be loyal and lasting and they were thinking in terms of an institution that would remain and grow and thrive in the society. By now, a lot of the investment firms – bankers, hedge funds – are perfectly happy to destroy what they’re in and come out with huge, tremendous benefits. That’s a new stage of capitalism.

- Noam Chomsky on today's Casino-capitalists. (link: h/t Felix Salmon)

Another Poisoned Prescription: Novartis Fined $422 Million for Fraud

Another year and another multi-million dollar fine and settlement from another Big Pharma corporation.  Novartis, which is headquartered in Switzerland, has agreed to pay $422.5 million, in order to settle criminal and civil investigations arising from the marketing of the antiseizure medicine Trileptal and five other drugs. 

The NY Times summarizes the billion dollar payouts that Big Pharma has agreed to in regards to criminal investigations conducted over the past decade:

Novartis joins a growing list of pharmaceutical companies that have settled government investigations into health care fraud in the last few years, including Pfizer, which paid $2.3 billion; Eli Lilly, $1.4 billion; Allergan, $600 million; AstraZeneca, $520 million; Bristol-Myers Squibb, $515 million; and Forest Laboratories, $313 million. Pfizer, Lilly, Allergan and Forest pleaded guilty to crimes in the cases.

Earlier this year I outlined in a previous blog entry the business practices and criminal endeavours pursued by Big Pharma and the medical community on an annual basis against consumers.  The above settlement list validates the fact that when the world's largest corporations are found engaging in criminal activities, little more than nuisance fines are levied against these multi-national predators.  The profits elicited from pushing either unproven or detrimental pharmaceuticals, via morally compromised physicians, far outweighs any financial fine that the US government is prepared to impose.

Andy Wyss, president of Novartis Pharmaceuticals, said that Novaritis would “continue its commitment to high standards of ethical business conduct and regulatory compliance in the sale and marketing of our products.”  For industry watchers, the current press release is a familiar issuance from the fraud-mongers in the pharmaceutical industry.

Erik Gordon, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan school of business who follows the drug industry, said it was “easy to stifle a chuckle” when the company announced a guilty plea and, in the same news release, promised to continue ethical conduct.

Prosecutors said top management at Novartis had approved illegal marketing from July 2000 to June 2004. No individual, however, was named or charged.

Given the unscrupulous and illegal behavior of these companies, it is only further telling that both Republicans and Democrats fall over themselves to placate and support these corporate criminals.  Instead of allowing Americans to purchase drugs from Canadian manufacturers, the spineless Obama administration blocked Americans from cross-border shopping and individual state governments from engaging in bulk purchases to reduce costs.  If the US Department of Justice was sincerely interested in preventing these recalcitrant criminals, whether in Big Pharma or Wall St., from repeating their actions, hundreds of corporate managers and board members would be forced to defend their actions in court.  Once the cost-benefit equation is shifted, only then will these miserable crony-capitalists be effectively dealt with.

Quote of the Day: Now the Rich are Victims!

We don't hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes' list of richest Americans, compared Obama's tax hike to "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries.

- Bill Maher on "New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified "

On the whole, who should pay for the Bush tax cuts, two failed and utterly unpaid for Middle Eastern wars, Medicare Part-D, more tax cuts, increasing the already bloated military-industrial-surveillance state, and failing to invest in America's infrastructure for the past decade?  Well if you're making top-dollar and are part of the top 0.1 percentile, you apparently don't care as long as it's not you or any of your friends who you go with to golf games in the Hamptons or ski with in Vale.  The problem is that unless Americans as a whole are going to embrace cutting defense spending and hacking Medicare and Social Security to its bare bones, then someone is going to have to pay more.  If you're really pissed off that you had a ten-year tax vacation and now have to pay 3% more on your top earnings, then let's face it: you're just a greedy motherfucker.

Dean Baker: The Numbers Game

Dean Baker, economist and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has an opinion piece in the Huffington Post that is a clarion call about the economic "numbers game" that has been run by the architects of the new Gilded Age.

He asks the basic question:

If this disaster was preventable and we know how to get out of it, why didn't our leaders try to stop it before it happened? Why don't they take the steps necessary now to get the economy moving again?

The answer is obvious:

The answer to both these questions is simple; the politicians work for someone else. On Election Day, the politicians might need our votes, but they won't get to be serious contenders unless they've gotten the campaign contributions of the big money crew. And the moneyed elite has been using its control of the political process to ensure that an ever larger share of the economy's output is redistributed upward in their direction.

He goes on to explain that over the past 30-years, corporations and the wealthy, have bought politicians at the local, state, and federal levels who have crafted legislation that promotes inequality, reduces safety networks for middle class and poor citizens, and marginalizes the earning capacity of the middle class via globalization.

He explains:

For example, they wrote trade rules that were designed to put downward pressure on the wages of the bulk of the U.S. workforce by placing manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in China and other developing countries. This had nothing to do with a belief in "free trade." They did not try to subject lawyers, doctors or other highly paid workers to the same sort of international competition. They only wanted international competition to put downward pressure on the wages of workers in the middle and bottom, not those at the top.

This elite has instituted a system of corporate governance that allows top executives to pilfer companies at the expense of their shareholders and its workers. Top executives are overseen only by a board of directors who owe their hugely overpaid sinecures to the executives they supervise. And of course the Wall Street barons themselves are given a license to gamble with the implicit promise that government picks up their tab when they lose.

As this blog has written (here, here, here, and here), neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are interested in providing a sustainable framework, where the majority of Americans can get a quality education, pursue meaningful life long employment, and engage in building a dream of a more equitable and fair world.  Instead, both parties pursue a scorched-earth policy against the majority of the country's citizens, by providing greater benefits to the top 1% of the population, while pushing the remaining middle-class into perpetual debt and eventual pauperdom.

Unfortunately, the propagandists keep the masses well agitated and entertained through truly mind-warping concepts like:

• Did Bill and Hillary kill Vince Foster?
• The OJ case.
• 9-11 was a conspiracy committed by the Bush junta!
• Was Barack Obama born in the USA?
• The rise of Barack's Socialist/Fascist/African dystopia!
• Obama is a Muslim terrorist sympathizer!
• Anything said by Sarah Palin
• Anna Nicole's drugged corpse
• Kate and Jon's idiotic children and their ridiculous lives.
• Octo-Mom
• Michael Jackson's court cases, pedophile accusations, and finally his drugged corpse

Only when the masses realize how they have been completely sold out by the politicans and their own citizens, will anything meaningful begin to occur.

Quote of the Day: Roubini on Financial Regulations

Unless we make these radical [financial system] reforms, new Gordon Gekkos – and Charles Ponzis – will emerge. For each chastised and born-again Gekko – as the Gekko in the new Wall Street [movie by Oliver Stone] is – hundreds of meaner and greedier ones will be born.

- Nouriel Roubini, Gordon Gekko is Reborn, Project Syndicate

What Roubini is expounding, is that all the ethics and certification programs that have been touted for MBA students, will amount to nothing, unless the prime motivators for excessive risk and greed generation are curtailed.  He suggests four areas that must be effectively dealt with:

1. Compensation schemes for individuals must be realigned so that, "bonuses based on medium-term results of risky trades and investments must supplant bonuses based on short-term outcomes."
2. Reconstituting Glass-Steagall like regulations -which the watered down Volcker rule did not achieve in the recent financial system reform legislation- to separate the commercial banks, investment banks, and the institutions engaged in hedge fund-like casino capitalism.
3. The enormous conflict of interest that currently exists between financial firms and markets, needs to be resolved, permitting greater transparency to reign and allowing confidence in the overall market to be established.
4. Allowing all businesses, including their employees and shareholders, to understand that the government -that being the people's money- will not go towards bailing out their poor decisions; i.e. there should not exist too big too fail.

Since, the US government has not engaged in any meaningful regulatory scheme to ensure that the above occurs, and has in fact gone in the opposite direction in relation to some of these points, we can only assume that the concept of regulatory capture can now be extended to the US Congress as a whole and the office of the President of the United States.  The financial industry alone has spent $251 million this past year to manipulate the legislative process in their favor.  Collectively, they spent more than any other industry group between the months of April and June ($126 million).  Goldman Sachs and  JP Morgan Chase alone, spent in the first half of 2010 as much as they spent all last year (2009) chasing down congressmen, senators, and those involved in regulatory decision making.

The game is rigged folks.  If you think any of these rich, pretentious assholes in the corner office of these banks or in the House of Representatives care about the little people on the street or democracy, you probably still think voting for Democrats or Republicans will make a difference.  It won't.

Quote of the Day: Banking Should be Dull

If bankers want to lead the exciting hedge-fund life, earning hedge-fund-like profits and bonuses, let them go work for a hedge fund.

According to Steven Pearlstein, bankers should appreciate the role that they play in the scheme of capitalism, which entails being part of a boring institution that effectively manages risk.  If on the other hand, bankers want to engage in casino-capitalism then they should not expect "we the people" to subsidize their misadventures and underwrite their losses.  Someone should explain this to Tim Geithner and Mr. Obama, because at this point they are almost certain to be looking down the barrel of another recession by the end of this year.

Capital G Award: Big Pharma, Agents for Fraud

Fraud is one of big-Pharma’s most profitable endeavours. Just consider Pfizer Inc., which is the world’s largest pharmaceutical company with approximately $50 Billion in annual revenue. This past September (2009), BusinessWeek reported that Pfizer, “plead guilty to one felony count to settle federal criminal and civil charges that it illegally promoted its Bextra painkiller and other drugs.” The admission of guilt comes with the largest criminal fine ever imposed in US history; $2.3 Billion. Pfizer will pay a criminal fine of $1.195 Billion, $1 Billion to resolve civil claims, and will enter a corporate integrity agreement with US HHS, which will monitor the company’s future marketing activities.

The same BusinessWeek article summarizes the underlying rational for the 2009 fines:

The settlement stems from a four-year investigation instigated by six whistleblowers, who between them will receive $102 million from the federal fines. The complaint charged that Pfizer sent doctors on all-expense-paid trips to resorts, gave out free massages, and paid kickbacks to doctors, all to get them to prescribe its drugs for off-label uses. Although it is legal for physicians to write such prescriptions, and a common practice, companies are barred from actually promoting their drugs for purposes other than those that have won Food & Drug Administration approval.

Pfizer however, has proven itself to be a recalcitrant corporate criminal, with no less than four additional settlements since 2002 resulting in $513 million in fines.

This past March, Pfizer was found guilty by an eight person jury for “engaged in a racketeering conspiracy over a 10-year period” Evidence provided during the trial found that Pfizer’s own studies showed that the drug in question, Neurontin, was completely ineffective and had no more effect than a placebo; a fact which Pfizer never disclosed to either doctors or patients. The jury described the activities conducted by Pfizer as pure fraud, a violation of RICO statutes, and California’s Unfair Competition Law. Under RICO, the initial damages found by the jury -$47.36 million- were tripled; i.e. $142.1 million in total.

Lawyers for the plaintiff, Kaiser-Permanente of California, described the verdict as a “triumph for evidence-based medicine over marketing-based medicine.”

Pfizer isn’t alone it is morbid fascination with bilking the sick and pushing useless products onto desperate people. Since May 2004, Pfizer, Eli Lilly & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and four other drug companies have paid a total of $7 Billion in fines and penalties. Six of the companies admitted in court that they marketed medicines for unapproved uses.

Eli Lilly, an American based pharmaceutical company with annual revenue of $20 Billion was charged and fined by the US government $1.42 Billion, for bribing doctors to prescribe a schizophrenia drug, Zyprexa, to elderly patients suffering from dementia, despite clinical trial data, which indicating a death rate of 31 people out of 1,184 participants (double the placebo rate). Bloomberg News describes that, “Lilly already had a criminal conviction for misbranding a drug when it broke the law again in promoting schizophrenia drug Zyprexa for off-label uses starting in 1999.”

In September 2007, New York-based Bristol-Myers paid $515 million -without admitting or denying wrongdoing- to federal and state governments in a civil lawsuit brought by the Justice Department.

Impact of Fines

The deterrence factor of imposing these fines, even those in the Billon dollar range, is in question. For example, Zyprexa provided Lilly with $36 Billion in revenue from 2000 to 2008. A fine of a Billion dollars does not offset the profits to be made from off-label marketing. Bloomberg further elaborates:

The $2.3 Billion in fines and penalties Pfizer paid for marketing Bextra and three other drugs cited in the Sept. 2 plea agreement for off-label uses amount to just 14 percent of its $16.8 Billion in revenue from selling those medicines from 2001 to 2008.

The total of $2.75 Billion Pfizer has paid in off-label penalties since 2004 is a little more than 1 percent of the company’s revenue of $245 Billion from 2004 to 2008.

Lon Schneider, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, states that Big-Pharma won’t stop pursuing this strategy of fraud and deceit. He argues that, “They’re drivers that knowingly speed. If stopped, they pay the fine, and then they do it again.”

The Final Curtain for Bernard Kerik

The rise and fall of Bernard Kerik is less an American chronicle of a rag-to-riches tale with Gatsby-esque overtures, than a story of conventional political cronyism and personal excess.

Born of an alcoholic father and a mother who was a prostitute, Bernard Kerik's early years were filled with military duty and stints in police enforcement and security work in both America and Saudi Arabia.  In the 1990's he became a close ally of former New York city Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, for whom he served as personal bodyguard and driver.  Mr. Giuliani advanced Kerik into a senior position in the Corrections Department, from which he went on to become the agency’s commissioner.  Afterward, Mr. Giuliani elevated Mr. Kerik to the position of NYC's 40th police commissioner, a post that he would hold for the final sixteen months of Giuliani's second term in office. In what would become a repeating motif to his behavior, Kerik would ride with a security detail of fellow officers who had been involved in traumatic career activities and participate in typical beat-cop activities; actions that are best described as atypical behavior for the head of New York's police.

After 9/11, Kerik attracted a national spotlight and notoriety for his stoic posturing along aside Mr. Giuliani in what became one of America's most difficult and painful moments in its history.  If Kerik had quietly disappeared from the limelight his reputation and contribution to America would have probably remained untarnished.  However, the administration of George W. Bush, always looking for loyal soldiers for their cause, recruited him with a $140,000 salary to serve in the position of training the new Iraqi police force.

His tenure in Iraq was less than inspiring.  According to the Nation magazine,

• Kerik's oversight of a $50 million police-training contract for the controversial defense contractor DynCorp produced few tangible results.
• Kerik spent $1.2 billion to train 35,000 troops in Jordan even though France and Germany offered to provide training for free. He also bought $20 million worth of rifles and revolvers from Jordan when the weapons could've been obtained for far less in Iraq.
• Kerik hired Iraqi policemen without background checks who later turned out to be hardened criminals. He re-hired policeman formerly employed by Saddam Hussein and bragged of training 37,000 new officers. Currently, roughly a quarter of the force Kerik left in place--a total of 30,000 officers--have been or will soon be fired by the US government and paid $60 million in severance payments, according to the far-from-antiwar New York Post.

According to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Washington Post’s former Baghdad bureau chief:

[Kerik] held precisely two staff meetings during his tenure. His main activity was going on nighttime raids against indeterminate targets accompanied by a shadowy former U.S. colonel and a 100-man Iraqi paramilitary force, and then sleeping most of the day. After accomplishing nothing in three months, training no police forces, he departed.

Upon being vetted by the Bush Administration for the post of Secretary of Homeland Security, his life started to unravel.  As discussed by Allan Lengel of AOL News:

In November [2009], Kerik, 54, pleaded guilty to two counts of tax fraud, one count of making a false statement on a loan application and five separate counts of making false statements to the federal government. Two of the charges related to statements Kerik made to the White House while the Bush administration was considering him to lead the Department of Homeland Security. He also agreed to pay restitution of $187,931.

Kerik admitted that he failed to report the $255,000 value of a renovation done free of charge by a New Jersey contractor that was trying to land a city license. He also admitted that he lied about the renovations and his relationship with the contractor, which had suspected mob ties.

In the end, Kerik's own petty greed, want for material wealth, and personal status, lead him to disaster.  He was sentenced in February 2010 to four years incarceration.

The young must die so Geezers can pay low taxes!

It never ceases to amaze me at how greedy and un-Christian Southerners are. The latest volley of cruelty originates in the state of Arizona, where the possibility of raising taxes and forcing the wretched Geezer-polis of this desert wasteland to invest in their fellow Americans, communities, and infrastructure not linked to killing foreigners is verboten.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed an austere budget that will eliminate health coverage for 47,000 low-income children by eliminating the state's Children’s Health Insurance Program.   The only state in the union willing to do so.  The NY Times states that Arizona, not content to bulldozer over its future citizens, will "roll back Medicaid coverage for childless adults in a move that is expected to eventually drop 310,000 people from the rolls."

The Republican-controlled Legislature furthermore passed a budget that includes deep cuts to both health care and education.

The Medicaid reduction for childless adults rolls back an expansion approved by voters in 2000 and cuts enrollment about 25 percent. The expansion was to be paid for with tobacco settlement dollars, a revenue source that quickly proved inadequate.

No doubt the anti-tax armada of self-made Geezers will relish the thought that their precious money won't go to the superfluous requirement of having decent health care coverage or education for children.  After all, these people are clearly either just freeloading Mexicans or un-Godly creatures that the Lord himself is endeavouring to punish.

At what point do we stop calling America a civilized country and call it out as an intemperate international hooligan and wastrel. This recession was made, sealed, and delivered by the very people who are now lying in the Arizona sun, casually dispensing with their retirement days. These nabobs of consumerism, who to this day remain contemptuous of anyone who dares to challenge their pseudo-religious doctrine of low-taxes, unregulated capital, and maximum warfare, are to blame for this economic disaster.  The children of Saint Ronnie and his revolution of personal irresponsibility have had their gluttonous feast and are now more than happy to have someone else's children pay the bill.

The Definition of Human Selfishness

Representatives of the human race have voted and decided to liquidate another species in the name of Mammon and short-term economic gain.

Delegates from 175 countries, representing the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, voted on a series of measures to eliminate international trade on the Bluefin Tuna and a variety of other animals that are posed for extinction.  According to the Washington Post,

The adult population of eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna has declined 74 percent over the past half-century, much of it in the past decade, and the population has dropped 82 percent in 40 years in the western Atlantic.

The proposal originally initiated by Monaco and agreed upon by the USA and several EU states, failed to achieve a majority position at the Doha, Qatar conference; with 20 nations in favor, 68 against and 30 cowards abstaining. 

Japan the greatest consumer of worldwide Tuna, imports nearly 80 percent of commercially traded Atlantic bluefin.  Similar to its extensive campaign to dissuade any international body from preventing it from harvesting whales, Japan has used its considerable economic clout to prevent limitations on any trade embargo or harvesting constraints in international waters.  Few deny that the motivations behind their stance are purely commercial.  As Susan Lieberman, director of international policy at the Pew Environment Group said, "This was a case of just plain ignoring the science for short-term economic gain."

Japan is not alone in its posturing; however.  Canada, a country that has made itself into an environmental pariah by its fealty to dirty oil-sands production and the persistent refusal by its conservative government to acknowledge and address climate change, has actively sided with the Japanese on the tuna issue.  Canada's Minster of Fisheries, Gail Shea, applauding the defeat of the trade ban and touting Canada's own policies, which have permitted over the decades the devastation of Atlantic fisheries and the current collapse of Pacific Sockeye Salmon.  So when Canadians say they have a plan to manage fishery stocks, you can be certain that that species will be decimated.

To highlight the absurdity of the entire trade system, consider how Bluefin Tuna is cultured in Spanish waters; as relayed by the BBC.  The fish are initially kept alive in off-shore pens, where they are fed vast amounts of expensively caught fish (around 10-kg of feed fish serve to make the tuna put on 1-kg of body weight).  They are then harvested by hand using divers, packaged at a purpose-built factory, and flown -on the same day- to Asian markets.  All this so some silly twit can eat sushi with his/her choice of dipping sauce.

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Additional background stories and commentary on this subject can be found here, here, and here.

The Demon of 85 Broad St.: Goldman Sachs

Brian Griffiths, A Goldman Sachs International adviser, recently told a forum on investment ethics in the UK that, “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all.” You have to give it to these folks at Goldman Sachs; they are indisputably some of the most immoral creatures slithering up and down the financial food-chain.

McClatchy Newspapers has published a four-part series on Goldman Sachs investment strategies in the American housing market. The articles outline how the company grew unbelievably rich by,

making massive bets against the housing market while simultaneously selling off billions in soon-to-be worthless securities. In 2006 and 2007, the bank reportedly peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in US housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

As impressive as Goldman Sachs earnings are, their true achievement isn’t making it big through casino-capitalism. No, its greatest accomplishment is creating a world-wide network of faithful former employees that are embedded throughout the regulatory and legislative branches of government, allowing them to place themselves at the center of a global financial system that has effectively co-opted democracy. The entire securitization game has been shown to be a complex scheme that utilizes outright fraud, deception, and market manipulation to achieve exorbitant profits for the demon bankers insulated at 85 Broad St. New York.

The articles elaborate how throughout the years leading up to the crash, “Goldman Sachs used its name to buy, bundle and sell some of the worst investments in the history of trading. It jumped into the subprime game with dubious mortgage lenders. And it played it ruthlessly, selling off toxic assets that carried bogus quality ratings and the assurance of its venerable name.”

McClatchy's investigation found that Goldman Sachs:

• Bought and converted into high-yield bonds tens of thousands of mortgages from subprime lenders that became the subjects of FBI investigations into whether they'd misled borrowers or exaggerated applicants' incomes to justify making hefty loans.
  
• Used offshore tax havens to shuffle its mortgage-backed securities to institutions worldwide, including European and Asian banks, often in secret deals run through the Cayman Islands, a British territory in the Caribbean that companies use to bypass U.S. disclosure requirements.
  
• Has dispatched lawyers across the country to repossess homes from bankrupt or financially struggling individuals, many of whom lacked sufficient credit or income but got subprime mortgages anyway because Wall Street made it easy for them to qualify.
  
• Was buoyed last fall by key federal bailout decisions, at least two of which involved then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Goldman chief executive whose staff at Treasury included several other Goldman alumni.

The conclusion one must realize is that Goldman Sachs is not serving its intended commercial and societal purpose of allocating capital to create an efficient market-place nor is it enhancing the public sphere by enriching productive companies. Their racket is and has been to generate maximum earnings solely for themselves at the detriment to society, by exploiting "so-called sophisticated investors", who in actual fact are just dumb insitutional players who knew less than them, and simply steal their money; even if they have to change the laws to do so.

As Dylan Ratigan says,

Now this method of "business" is only possible if the government continues to allow these crooked insurance contracts to be written in secret, allows them to hold little or no money in reserve for payment and allows them to sell enough coverage on enough vital national assets that if there is a default -- the taxpayer has no choice but to pay.

No meaningful legislative change will occur, because the US government and the demon bankers of Broad Street, are one and the same. Just see a few of the recent parties in government (Republican and Democrat) with ties to Goldman Sachs.

Adam Storch: Appointed the SEC’s first Chief Operating Officer on Oct. 15, 2009. This branch of government regulates the securitization industry, including mortgage backed CDO’s and related derivative products. The 29 year old Storch comes directly from Goldman Sach’s business intelligence unit.

Henry Paulson: Served as Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush. Was CEO of Goldman from 1999 to 2006.

Robert Rubin: Served as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton. Previously, he was co-chairman of Goldman from 1990 to 1992.

Robert K. Steel: Served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, the principal adviser to the secretary on matters of domestic finance and led the department’s activities with respect to the domestic financial system, fiscal policy and operations, governmental assets and liabilities, and related economic and financial matters. Retired from Goldman as a vice chairman of the firm in 2004, where he worked as head of equities for Europe and head of the Equities Division in New York.

Mark Patterson: Chief of Staff to Secretary Tim Geithner. Was director of government affairs at Goldman.

Dan Jester: Key adviser to Geithner, who played a key role in shaping the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Was strategic officer at Goldman.

The list goes on. For a comprehensive listing of the numerous figures in positions of government authority that were associated with G-S visit the following link.

Nader's Criticisms of the Democrats are Validated

Unlike the kid-glove treatment received by George W. Bush by the Democratic Party in 2004, the vitriol and contempt that was leveled against Ralph Nader was unprecedented. Liberal buffoons like Michael Moore, an erstwhile supporter of Nader during the 2000 election, pleaded with Americans to vote for John Kerry and ignore Nader's "egomaniac and Quixotic" candidacy. "Outside of Jerry Falwell, I can't think of anybody I have greater contempt for than Ralph Nader," said long-time Clinton acolyte James Carville on CNN's Crossfire. Legal teams from the Democratic Party were dispatched across the country to overturn and prevent Nader from being placed on ballots. Given how closely aligned the Democrats were to the same corporate interests that the Republican party were beholden to, it is quite understandable why the Democrats fought the presidential candidacy of Ralph Nader more vigorously than any of the Republicans in the past three presidential elections cycles.

It is my opinion, if Nader had been allowed into the election debates of 2008, his contrarian arguments as observed above, would have turned the tidal waves of young and naive evangelical "Yes we can!" voters into "What are we doing!" with these corporate/democratic party transvestites.

Chris Hedges, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and former war correspondent, in his posting "Nader Was Right: Liberals are Going Nowhere with Obama" states the following:

The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

What Democratic voters should have done instead of belittling Ralph Nader's candidacy and fawning for the 'chosen-one' is listen to Nader when he described the Democratic Party and Mr. Obama as indebted to the corporations and lobbyists of K-street, and in the end, would (as usual) not deliver on their campaign promises of change and reform.

In arena after arena -- government, workplace, marketplace, media, environment, education, science, technology-- the dominant players are large corporations. What countervailing forces that our society used to depend upon for some balance are not in retreat against the aggressive expansion of corporate influence far beyond its traditional mercantile boundaries?

The enlarged power that corporations deploy to further increase their revenues and socialize their costs comes from many sources-- old and new. Roughly eighty percent of the money contributed to federal candidates come from business interests. The mobility to export capital has given transnational companies major leverage against local, state and federal officials, not to mention against organized and unorganized labor. The swell of corporate welfare handouts has reached new depths. The contrived complexity of many financial and other services serves to confuse, deplete and daunt consumers who lose significant portions of their income in a manipulative marketplace. Alliances, joint ventures and other complex collaborations between should-be competitors have made a mockery of what is left of antitrust enforcement.

- Ralph Nader, Introduction to Mokhiber and Weissman's "Corporate Predators" 1999.

The Drowning Pool: underwater mortgages

Deutsche Bank is predicting that nearly half of all mortgages across US will be "underwater" by 2011; meaning that in half of the current cases, the outstanding mortgage will be larger than the market value of the house. Analysts estimate that 41% of prime conforming loans will be underwater by the Q1 of 2011, up from 16% at the end of the Q1 2009. Even worst, 90% or more of loans in the city of Las Vegas and across parts of Florida and California are predicted to be underwater by 2011.

The drop in home prices is fueling a vicious cycle of foreclosures as it eliminates homeowner equity and gives borrowers an incentive to walk away from their mortgages. The more severe the negative equity, the more likely are defaults, since many borrowers believe prices will not recover enough.

Homeowners with the riskiest mortgages taken out during the housing boom have seen the greatest erosion in equity, in part because they were "affordability products" originated at the housing peak, Deutsche said. They include subprime loans, of which 69 percent will be underwater in 2011, up from 50 percent in March, Deutsche said.

The following table summarizes the overall situation.

Welcome to 'nightmare on main street' America.

When the history books are written, it won't be the Soviet Union, Fascist German industrialists, the Chinese, or immigrant Latinos who brought America to its knees. It will be recognized that the true enemy of the state were the high-rollers of casino-capitalism and their moneyed whores in Congress who sold 300 million Americans down the toilet for personal greed.

Eliot Spitzer: the FED is a fraud machine!

Tuna: you can almost taste the extinction in each bite!

Tuna fish, (not to be confused with actual “chicken” or ‘chicken of the sea’ as in Jessica Simpson’s case) is one of the great marvels of the oceans. It is considered one of the most evolved fish in the world. Bluefin tuna, for example, can reach speeds of up to 88 km per hour. Along with Mako sharks and Great Whites, the bluefin tuna are homoeotherms; animals that are capable of internally regulating their body temperatures. They are capable of elevating their body temperatures by as much as 25 degrees above the water they swim in, thus making them particularly effective as predators. Bluefin Tuna can migrate across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, then turn around and do it again.

The bluefin tuna, and to a lesser extent, the yellowfin, are among the most sought-after of big-game fishes. Tuna is the most popular food fish in the world. It is eaten raw, cooked, in sandwiches, in salads, and in cat food. The total worldwide tuna harvest is four million tons. Commercial over fishing, almost exclusively to feed the insatiable Japanese sashimi market, has endangered all populations of bluefin tuna.

The WWF (not the wrestlers you idiot) are predicting that Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna will be extinct by 2012. They have stated that, "The population of tunas that are capable of reproducing – fish aged 4 years or over and weighing more than 35kg – is being wiped out." Ransom Myers, a marine biologist from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has pointed out the fact that industrial fishing took no more than 10-15 years to virtually liquidate and imperil any new fish community it encountered to a tenth of its previous size. "From giant blue marlin to mighty bluefin tuna, and from tropical groupers to Antarctic cod, industrial fishing has scoured the global ocean”. In fact, scientists predict that the collapse of all ocean fish stocks by 2048.

In a 2003, Dr. Myers published an article in the journal Nature and stated,

Most people also don't know how bad it is for us to be eating so much fish, not only because of the destruction of an ecosystem vital to survival but also because the big predatory fish are full of the toxins and other pollutants that we cast into the oceans. It's not as healthy to eat fish as most people believe.

Due to the ferocious demand for bluefin tuna from Japan where bluefin tuna are considered a delicacy and are used in sushi and sashimi, overfishing is posed to drive the species into extinction. The Economist magazine has an article stating that Monaco, with support from European allies France and Britain, along with the USA are pushing forward in 2010 to have an international ban on the sale of bluefin tuna.

As Prince Albert, Monaco’s ruler, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month, “The forces of selfishness and stupidity that wiped out the great whales and the northern cod in the last century are steaming ahead at full speed... The bluefin tuna is as endangered as the giant panda and the white rhino.”

Once the oceans have been systematically deprived of life and ecosystem after ecosystem begins to fail, terrestrial environs will also collapse and human civilization too will cease due to our own greed.

Banks and bonuses: Going overboard | The Economist

Banks and bonuses: Going overboard The Economist

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Goldman Sachs' (see my associated commentary on the company in the post below) "shareholders received $4.4 billion of profits during the first half of this year while staff were allocated $11.4 billion in pay and bonuses, equivalent to about half of the firm’s net revenues."

The article asks, who is really in charge of these so-called investment banks? Is it the shareholders or the employees? Goldman counters that they have to pay top dollar for their talent. As discussed in the previous two posts, where there is a compensation misalignment, profit will be made through deception, fraud, and criminal enterprise. The dominant philosophy of unbridled greed that has become the mantra of Wall Street bankers over the past two decades has not stopped and it continues to be as pervasive as ever.

The article questions:

Banks pay low dividends, and when they get into trouble the capital that shareholders have retained in the firm typically gets wiped out. Employees have taken money out of their firms each year. It may be time for the owners of banks to mutiny over the bounty.

In other words, the public always gets soaked and institutional investors get shafted, but the big-boys at Goldman Sachs smirk as they dream of yet another weekend at the Hamptons paid through casino-capitalism.