Posts Tagged ‘crony capitalism’

Is there a single doubt left in your mind?

Are you still a believer in Rufus T. Firefly Jamie Dimon as the world’s smartest banker?

Is there a scintilla of wonder left in your mind that the giant banks are legitimate?

Have you come around to understanding — finally — what some of us have long understood about banks?

Are you willing to accept the truth about these corporate behemoths — that they are a horrific combination of economically dangerous, criminally inept, led by pathologically lying CEOs?

Do you harbor any doubts that the giant banks are anything less than ruthlessly efficient criminal enterprises?

Can you — finally — admit that our bank-created financial crisis of 2008-09 has led us to where we are today?

Read more by Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

How Jack ‘Bailout Bonus’ Lew Got To Treasury

As I and many others have pointed out for years, unless you are a crony Wall Street welfare queen you can pretty much forget about any high level position in the Obama Administration.  Barack made that clear from day one when he decided to surround himself with two of the people at the core of the 2008 financial crisis, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.  The trend is simply continuing with the current nominee for Treasury Secretary: Jack “Bailout Bonus” Lew.  The revolving door is institutionalized and at this point as reliable as a Swiss watch.

Read more at ZeroHedge.com

On television, in interviews and in meetings with investors, executives of the biggest U.S. banks — notably JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon — make the case that size is a competitive advantage. It helps them lower costs and vie for customers on an international scale. Limiting it, they warn, would impair profitability and weaken the country’s position in global finance.

So what if we told you that, by our calculations, the largest U.S. banks aren’t really profitable at all? What if the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from U.S. taxpayers?

Granted, it’s a hard concept to swallow. It’s also crucial to understanding why the big banks present such a threat to the global economy.

Read more at Bloomberg.com

Every nation-state has a body of laws woven into the fabric of society. As Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has commented on extensively, the stronger the rule of law, the stronger the economy.

And by “stronger” laws, I mean laws that are impervious to tampering for personal or political gains. The connection between a sound judiciary and economic health is readily comprehensible, except maybe to a politician… businesses and individuals are far more likely to invest capital in a country with understandable laws that are impartially and universally enforced than if the opposite condition exists.

That’s because the lack of a consistent body of law breeds uncertainty and adds a huge element of risk for entrepreneurs. That is the case here in Argentina, where hardly a week goes by without La Presidenta and her meddlesome comrades cooking up some new hurdle for businesses to overcome.

Which brings me back to the matter at hand – American justice on a slippery slope.

Read more by David Galland at CaseyResearch.com

It is a dark day for the rule of law. Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system. They also have not charged any top HSBC banker in the case, though it boggles the mind that a bank could launder money as HSBC did without anyone in a position of authority making culpable decisions.

Clearly, the government has bought into the notion that too big to fail is too big to jail. When prosecutors choose not to prosecute to the full extent of the law in a case as egregious as this, the law itself is diminished. The deterrence that comes from the threat of criminal prosecution is weakened, if not lost.

Read more in NY Times Editorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxKAzpGmVA

Monday night’s meeting of the Milwaukee South branch with Dr. Yuri Maltsev was impressively entertaining to say the least. Dr. Maltsev gave a wonderful talk and left many thankful for having attended. For those of you who were not able to make the meeting, here is Dr. Maltsev at the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s conference in Naples, Florida where he presented the same talk. Enjoy!

In Liberty,

Michael S. Murphy
Chair, RPMC-South Branch

The Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute Goldman Sachs in a financial-fraud probe is another sign of the cronyism that has kept Attorney General Eric Holder from taking action against other big Wall Street firms, says Peter Schweizer.

On Thursday the Department of Justice announced it will not prosecute Goldman Sachs or any of its employees in a financial-fraud probe.

The news is likely to raise the ire of the political left and right, both of which have highlighted one of the most inconvenient facts of Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department: despite the Obama administration’s promises to clean up Wall Street in the wake of America’s worst financial crisis, there has not been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions.

Why is that? In a word: cronyism.

Read more by Peter Schweizer at The Daily Beast

For obvious reasons, Wall Street is always right on top of any legislation in Congress that has anything to do with the world of finance.

And, as you know, it’s not like Lloyd Blankfein is glued to C-SPAN. The Street has Washington watch-dogs that keep a careful eye on what’s happening on The Hill, but even they couldn’t do it without help.

At least, that’s what former lobbyist, Biden aide, and Senate staffer Jeff Connaughton writes in his new book, “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins.” The way he tells it, information has a bit of a journey before it gets from Washington to Wall Street, but it can happen in the blink of an eye.

Read more by Linette Lopez at Business Insider

A new report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) finds that President Barack Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s failure to criminally charge any top Wall Street bankers is likely a result of cronyism inside the Department of Justice and political donations made to Obama’s campaign.

Despite Obama’s and Holder’s “heated rhetoric” against Wall Street (in 2009, Obama blamed the 2008 financial collapse on “reckless speculation of bankers” while Holder charged that “unscrupulous executives, Ponzi scheme operators and common criminals alike have targeted the pocketbooks and retirement accounts of middle class Americans”), they haven’t “filed a single criminal charge against any top executive of an elite financial institution,” GAI wrote in its report, exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller.

Read more by Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller

This is the house that Obama built

These are the firms
That paid for the house that Obama built

This is the media that didn’t inform
That everyone’s broke except for those firms
That paid for the house that Obama built

These are the crony big business concerns
That gave to the unions what they didn’t earn
That the media saw but didn’t inform
That everyone’s broke except for those firms
That paid for the house that Obama built

This is the stimulus ready to burn
That the crony big businesses didn’t return
That gave to the unions what they didn’t earn
That the media saw but didn’t inform
That everyone’s broke except for those firms
That paid for the house that Obama built . . .

Read more at thepeoplescube.com

GDP Growth More Strongly Correlated with Rule of Law than Anything Else …

Economist Woody Brock says that a nation’s GDP growth is based mainly on whether or not it follows the rule of law.

–SNIP– Economists have thoroughly documented that failure to enforce the rule of law leads to a loss of trust … which destroys economies.

This is true whether it is in the West, in Nigeria or any other country.

Read more at WashingtonsBlog

Economists, Military Strategists and Others Warned Us … Long Ago

We’ve known for 4,000 years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see this.

We’ve known for 2,500 years that prolonged war bankrupts an economy.

We’ve known for 1,900 years that rampant inequality destroys societies.

We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse.

We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies, as it destroys all trust in the financial system.

We’ve known for hundreds of years that monopolies and the political influence which accompanies too much power in too few hands is dangerous for free markets.

Read more at WashingtonsBlog.com

Banking Titans Call for Break Up of “Too Big to Fail”

The following bankers are calling for the big banks to be broken up:

* Former Citi CEO Sandy Weill

* Former Citi CEO John Reed

* Former Citi chairman Richard Parsons

* Former Merrill Lynch chairman and CEO David Komansky

* Former Morgan Stanley CEO Philip Purcell

And Many more at Washington’s Blog

Those wondering why the Department of Justice has refused to go after Jon Corzine for the vaporization of $1.6 billion in MF Global client funds need look no further than the documents uncovered by the Government Accountability Institute that reveal that the now-defunct MF Global was a client of Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s former law firm, Covington & Burling.

There’s more.

Records also reveal that MF Global’s trustee for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy retained as its general bankruptcy counsel Morrison & Foerester–the very law firm from which Associate Attorney General Tony West came to DOJ.

And more.

–SNIP–
As Richard Eskow of the Huffington Post recently wrote:

More and more Washington insiders are asking a question that was considered off-limits in the nation’s capital just a few months ago: Who, exactly, is Attorney General Eric Holder representing? As scandal after scandal erupts on Wall Street, involving everything from global lending manipulation to cocaine and prostitution, more and more people are worrying about Holder’s seeming inaction — or worse — in the face of mounting evidence.

This isn’t going away.

Read more by Wynton Hall at Breitbart.com

How a Pfizer CEO and Big Pharma colluded with the White House at the public’s expense.

On Friday (6/08) House Republicans released more documents that expose the collusion between the health-care industry and the White House that produced ObamaCare, and what a story of crony capitalism it is. If the trove of emails proves anything, it’s that the Tea Party isn’t angry enough.

Over the last year, the Energy and Commerce Committee has taken Nancy Pelosi’s advice to see what’s in the Affordable Care Act and how it passed. The White House refused to cooperate beyond printing out old press releases, but a dozen trade groups turned over thousands of emails and other files. A particular focus is the drug lobby, President Obama’s most loyal corporate ally in 2009 and 2010.

The business refrain in those days was that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. But it turns out Big Pharma was also serving as head chef, maître d’hotel and dishwasher. Though some parts of the story have been reported before, the emails make clear that ObamaCare might never have passed without the drug companies. Thank you, Pfizer.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal