Video of the Day – Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

Of course our world is in shambles. The best salaries are paid to the people whose professions add the least value to society.

I know, I know. Lots of people are capable of being garbagemen, but not everyone has the skills to be a parasitic financial criminal.

I agree.

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Read the One Paragraph That Explains Why No Bankers Have Gone to Jail

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Earlier this morning, as I was just minding my own business reading what appeared to be an uneventful Wall Street Journal article titled, Justice Department Gets Tougher on Corporate Crime, I came across a stunning revelation.

Before getting into it, I should provide a little background. Back in September, I highlighted a document known as the “Yates memo,” referring to a document written by deputy attorney general Sally Yates which promises to target individuals in cases of corporate wrongdoing. This of course made everyone wonder why the Justice Department wasn’t doing so in the first place. Which brings me to the shocking revelation in yesterday’s WSJ article…

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Cartoon of the Day – Wall Street Banks Attempt to Securitize Corporate Greed

No comment necessary. Well done.

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When it Really Mattered, Ben Bernanke Coddled, Protected & Bailed Out Financial Criminals

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Most of you will have seen Ben Bernanke’s recent crocodile tears regarding how he wished more individuals were held responsible, for you know, destroying the American middle class and handing over the nation to a handful of criminal oligarchs.

As David Dayen notes, he is completely full of shit. As usual.

From the Intercept:

Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke joined practically everyone in America by saying in his new memoir, The Courage to Act, that more Wall Street executives should have gone to jail for criminal misconduct that led to the financial crisis.

“It would have been my preference to have more investigation of individual action, since obviously everything what went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm,” he wrote.

Unlike practically everyone else in America, however, Bernanke was in a pretty good position to actually facilitate criminal misconduct proceedings, if he wanted to see them so badly — as  head of the nation’s most powerful bank supervisory agency from 2006 to 2014.

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New Gallup Poll – 75% of Americans See Widespread Government Corruption

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The chart below from Gallup, is the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a Banana Republic. Which makes perfect sense, because America is a Banana Republic.

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Here are some additional observations from Gallup:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Three in four Americans (75%) last year perceived corruption as widespread in the country’s government. This figure is up from two in three in 2007 (67%) and 2009 (66%).

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Video of the Day – Ralph Nader Blasts Harvard Law School for Serving “Corporate Crooks on Wall Street”

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Would you be proud of representing the corporate crooks in Wall Street? What is the purpose of the Harvard Law School? Well, you know who knows what the purpose is? The corporate giants. They know exactly what the purpose of the Harvard Law School is. It’s to provide endless relays of lawyers who service their interests.

Harvard Law is not an institution that provokes any kind of consternation or fear among the power structure, just the opposite. It’s an institution, and I’ll get around to the exceptions. On the whole, it’s an institution that rationalizes corporate power brilliantly, services corporate power brilliantly with its graduates and some of its departments here.

– Ralph Nader during a recent speech at Harvard Law School

Ralph Nader is a Harvard Law School graduate. Here’s what he had to say about the institution’s shameless decay into the worship of greed and cronyism.

Two words: Banana Republic.

For related articles, see:

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Video of the Day – Bernie Sanders Speaks at Liberty University

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I came here today, because I believe from the bottom of my heart that it is vitally important for those of us who hold different views to be able to engage in a civil discourse. It is easy to go out and talk to people who agree with you…that’s not hard to do. That’s what politicians by and large do. We go out and talk to people who agree with us. But it is harder, but not less important, for us to try and communicate with those who do not agree with us on every issue.

– Bernie Sanders at Liberty University

As much as I disagree with Bernie Sanders on many important issues (mostly economic), I have a lot of respect for the man. I cannot really say the same about any other presidential candidate in the race at the moment.

The fact that Sanders chose to take time off from his campaign to speak to students of a private, Christian university founded by Jerry Falwell tells you a lot about the type of man he is. While Trump is busying hurling insults, and doing his best to appeal to the darker, more hateful aspects of the human condition, Sanders is out there trying to build bridges.

Take the time to watch the video and decide for yourself:

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Bankers Will Be Jailed in the Next Financial Crisis

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Jesus College, Cambridge hosted, once more, the world’s leading Symposium on Economic Crime, and over 500 distinguished speakers and panelists drawn from the widest possible international fora, gathered to make presentations to the many hundreds of delegates and attendees.

What became very quickly clear this year was the general sense of deep disgust and repugnance that was demonstrated towards the global banking industry.

I can say with some degree of certainty now that a very large number of academics, law enforcement agencies, and financial compliance consultants are now joined, as one, in their total condemnation of significant elements of the global banking sector for their organised criminal activities.

Many banks are widely identified now as nothing more than enterprise criminal organisations, who engage in widespread criminal practice and dishonest conduct as a matter of course and deliberate commercial policy. 

– From the excellent article: The Banking Criminals Exposed

My prediction is that bankers will be jailed in the next economic/financial crisis. Lots and lots of bankers.

It may seem to many that those working within this profession will remain above the law indefinitely in light of the lack of any accountability whatsoever since the collapse of 2008. It may seem that way, but extrapolating this trend into the future is to ignore a monumentally changed political environment around the world. From the ascendancy of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders here in the U.S., to Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader in the UK, big changes are certainly afoot.

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Video of the Day – Three Former U.S. Treasury Secretaries and a Facebook Executive Laugh About Income Inequality

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If there was ever a “let them eat cake” moment in modern American history, this is it.

Earlier this year, at 2015’s Milken Institute Global Conference, Facebook Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was moderating a panel with three former U.S. Treasury Secretaries. The topic of income inequality was raised, and they all burst out laughing. The biggest uproar came from the man who orchestrated the 2008 banker bailouts, former Goldman Sachs CEO, Hank Paulson, as Sandberg enthusiastically claps her hands like a privileged, primped out Panem aristocrat. To the right of Hank is Clinton puppeteer Robert Rubin, and all the way to the left, Timmy Geithner.

You have to see it, to believe it:

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The Oligarch Recovery – Low Income Americans Can’t Afford to Live in Any Metro Area

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We were told we needed to bail out Wall Street in order to save Main Street. Well the results are in…

Wall Street has never done better, and Main Street has never done worse.

From the Huffington Post:

Low-income workers and their families do not earn enough to live in even the least expensive metropolitan American communities, according to a new analysis of families’ living costs published Wednesday.

The analysis, released by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, is an annual update of the think tank’s Family Budget Calculator that reflects new 2014 data. The Family Budget Calculator is a formula designed to determine the income “required for families to attain a secure yet modest standard of living” in 618 different communities across the country that the U.S. Census Bureau defines as metropolitan areas. The formula uses data collected by the government and some nonprofit groups to measure costs of housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, “other necessities” like clothing, and taxes for families of 10 different compositions in these specific locales.

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