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How I Remember September 11, 2001

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I wrote the following piece in 2013. It remains as relevant today as it was three years ago.

I remember 9/11 like it was yesterday. I was one year into my Wall Street career. I got up that morning just like every other morning and headed toward Union Square station to get on the subway down to 3 World Financial Center, the headquarters of Lehman Brothers. I had just purchased breakfast in the cafeteria when I saw one of the human resources folks from my floor yelling to evacuate. I was confused but I got my ass downstairs fast. When I got down there I joined the hundreds of others staring in awe skyward at the gaping hole in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. People speculated that a helicopter had hit the building, but I said no way. It looked like a bomb went off to me.

Shortly afterward, the ground started shaking and I heard an enormous explosion and saw fire and debris shooting out from behind the North Tower. The herd starting running and I was trampled on. We all retreated to safer ground, at which point I ran into some co-workers. I mentioned that I was a bit worried these things could fall, but I was ensured by a higher-up at the firm that this was impossible. It was at that point that some co-workers and I decided to take the long walk home to my apartment on east 12th street. As we walked, we saw people jumping from the buildings, and ultimately we saw the first one collapse in front of our eyes as we traversed through Soho.

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The War Economy – CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Warns About Job Loss if the U.S. Stops Arming Saudi Arabia

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Ladies and gentlemen, it appears the long anticipated moment of peak mainstream media stupidity may have finally arrived.

This is what passes for journalism in America today.

The Intercept reports:

Sen. Rand Paul’s expression of opposition to a $1.1 billion U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia — which has been brutally bombing civilian targets in Yemen using U.S.-made weapons for more than a year now — alarmed CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday afternoon.

Blitzer’s concern: That stopping the sale could result in fewer jobs for arms manufacturers.

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Video of the Day – Ralph Nader on the Clinton Foundation and ‘Pay to Play’

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Accusations that Ralph Nader is an alt-right supporting, Putin stooge in 3,2,1… Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com Ralph is always great. For prior articles featuring the intrepid iconoclast, see: Ralph Nader Destroys the Federal Reserve in Open Letter – Calls it “Out of Control, Private Government” Video of the Day – Ralph Nader Blasts … Read more

A Political Hurricane is About to Sweep Across Europe

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If you’ve been paying attention, you could see this coming a mile away. Although I’ve forecast huge political shifts in the West for years now, I made my strongest prediction on European changes late last year following the Paris terror attacks.

In the post, A Message to Europe – Prepare for Nationalism I wrote:

Actions have consequences, and people can only be pushed so far before they snap. I believe the Paris terror attacks will be a major catalyst that will ultimately usher in nationalist type governments in many parts of Europe, culminating in an end of the EU as we know it and a return to true nation-states. Although I think a return to regional government and democracy is what Europeans need and deserve, the way in which it will come about, and the types of governments we could see emerge, are unlikely to be particularly enlightened or democratic after the dust has settled.

A few months later, Brexit shocked the world when the British public voted to leave the European Union. While this event represents a moment of huge historical significance, Brexit is just the start of a much, much bigger trend.

As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week in a very important article:

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Wall Street’s Latest Retail Fleecing Product Exposed – Structured CDs

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Ms. Bailey, the Citizens Bank customer in Massachusetts, had sold a condo in Maine in 2013, a year after the death of her husband, who she says had handled their finances. She went to a Citizens branch in Arlington, a suburb of Boston, to deposit the money. She says bank employees pressured her not to just park the money in a savings account.

She says she was directed to Citizens broker Andrew Jurkunas, who steered her to a CD called the GS Momentum Builder Multi-Asset 5 ER Index-Linked Certificate of Deposit Due 2021. It is one of a series of CDs based on a Goldman Sachs-designed index that tracks the performance of up to 14 exchange-traded funds and a cash-like holding. The index aggregates the performance of different combinations of some or all of the underlying funds, relying on a complex formula designed to smooth volatility.

When Ms. Bailey received her first statement showing that the value of her CD had dropped by more than $4,000, she complained to Massachusetts state securities regulators. This January, the office filed civil charges against the bank alleging that Mr. Jurkunas, who wasn’t named or accused of wrongdoing, didn’t adequately disclose the risks of the market-linked CD.

– From yesterday’s excellent Wall Street Journal article: Wall Street Re-Engineers the CD—and Returns Suffer

Wall Street is an industry that should have been allowed to go down in flames back in 2008. Bailing out these career criminals and sociopaths was one of the gravest errors in American history. An error that we as a nation continue to suffer from to this day.

As an example, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported on the industry’s latest scheme to pocket the hard earned savings of those dwindling Americans who still have a few pennies left — structured CDs.

What follows are some key excerpts from this must read article, Wall Street Re-Engineers the CD—and Returns Suffer:

Mary Bailey, a 79-year-old widow in Arlington, Mass., made a big deposit for her grandchildren at her Citizens Bank branch when a financial adviser there sold her on a newfangled $100,000 certificate of deposit. It would, he said, double her savings in six years, according to a later state enforcement action.

So she was irate when her first statement showed the CD’s value had fallen to $95,712, thanks to upfront fees. “This was not a CD as I know a CD,” Ms. Bailey says.

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U.S. Congressman Asks FBI to Release Notes from Financial Crisis Banker Investigations

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These agreements were created 100 years ago to give juvenile defendants and first-time offenders a chance to for rehabilitate themselves. Only in the last 20 years have DPAs migrated to the field of corporate criminals, treating them like kids who’ve just gone down a bad path in life.

The Justice Department is leaning on these toothless agreements more and more. Of the DoJ’s 283 deferred prosecution agreements since 2000, half have come since 2010, Reilly found in a working paper for BYU Law Review.

Why has the DoJ been so keen on deferred prosecution since 2010? It coincides exactly with investigations into the 2008 financial crisis.

– From the 2014 post: The U.S. Department of Justice Handles Banker Criminals Like Juvenile Offenders…Literally

This is a really good move by Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey. Indeed, the American public certainly has a right to know the details of why the U.S. government allowed Wall Street executives to walk away free, with zero accountability and wealthier than ever before.

Bloomberg reports:

FBI files on the firms that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis should be released to help the public understand why no senior executives were charged, a U.S. congressman from New Jersey said.

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IEX Group Plans Launch of Revolutionary New Gold Exchange

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This is very interesting.

Reuters reports:

IEX Group, which rose to prominence with its bid to shake up stock trading in the United States, now aims to do the same in the more than $5 trillion-a-year gold market with a new exchange being created by its spinoff TradeWind Markets, a board member of the new venture said on Tuesday. 

The protagonists of Michael Lewis’s book, “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,” are planning a gold exchange that would use elements of blockchain technology to improve transparency and the clearing and settling of trades, said Matt Harris, a managing director at Bain Capital Ventures. Bain has an investment in IEX. 

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“Storm of the Century” – How the Internet of Things Could Destroy Privacy

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As the Guardian reported, Clapper made clear that the internet of things – the many devices like thermostats, cameras and other appliances that are increasingly connected to the internet – are providing ample opportunity for intelligence agencies to spy on targets, and possibly the masses. And it’s a danger that many consumers who buy these products may be wholly unaware of.

“In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper told a Senate panel as part of his annual “assessment of threats” against the US. 

– From February’s post: Top U.S. Official Admits – Government Will Use “Internet of Things” to Spy on the Public

Serving as an important followup to the post above, Cory Doctorow has just penned an extremely important warning at Locust titled, The Privacy Wars Are About to Get A Whole Lot Worse. Below are the relevant passages. Please read and share with everyone you know.

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Bill Clinton Compares Himself to Robin Hood

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The newly released financial files on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s growing fortune omit a company with no apparent employees or assets that the former president has legally used to provide consulting and other services, but which demonstrates the complexity of the family’s finances.

Because the company, WJC, LLC, has no financial assets, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was not obligated to report its existence in her recent financial disclosure report, officials with Bill Clinton’s private office and the Clinton campaign said. They were responding to questions by The Associated Press, which reviewed corporate documents.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide private details of the former president’s finances on the record, said the entity was a “pass-through” company designed to channel payments to the former president.

Under federal disclosure rules for spouses’ earned income, Hillary Clinton was only obligated to identify the source of her spouse’s income and confirm that he received more than $1,000. As a result, the precise amounts of Bill Clinton’s earned income from consulting have not been disclosed, and it’s not known how much was routed through WJC, LLC.

– From last year’s post: Introducing “WJC, LLC” – Bill Clinton’s Little Known Pass-Through Entity Used to Channel Consulting Fees

The man’s shamelessness knows no limits.

The Hill reports:

Bill Clinton said Monday that Republican attacks on his family’s foundation were “funny” and likened his actions as head of the organization to Robin Hood’s.

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Why is Hillary Clinton Always Hiding Something?

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One of the more disturbing revelations from this year’s U.S. presidential election, has been Hillary Clinton’s compulsive propensity to hide all sorts of things from the American public. While I appreciate one’s right to privacy as much as the next person, if you want to run for President of these United States, transparency and engagement with the public should be a top priority and requirement.

In this post, I want to highlight three troubling ways in which Hillary Clinton has been shamelessly and inexplicably hiding things from the public throughout her presidential run. The first instance is one that came up frequently during the Democratic primary. That is, transcripts of the extraordinarily high priced speeches she gave to numerous corporations, including multiple Wall Street banks that were at the center of the 2008/09 financial crisis.

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