Summing up the Fraud

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I had been thinking of doing a bit of a sum up of the current situation myself, but some-one else has done it already.  

So, where are we up to…?  And why do I think we need to cut a few cancers out of our society…?   Read on my friend, and decide for yourself.

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The Many Ways Banks Commit Criminal Fraud

~ George Washington on 07/03/2012.  [from Zero Hedge]

The Libor scandal seems to be waking people up to manipulation and fraud by the big banks.

There are many other types of fraud they’ve engaged in as well …

Here is a partial list:

• Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them(and see this)

• Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this, this, this, this and this

• Cheating homeowners - especially veterans - from laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure

• Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this

• Cooking their books

• Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

• Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this and this.

• Engaging in unlawful “frontrunning” to manipulate markets. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

• Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this, this and this.

• Otherwise manipulating markets.   And see this.

• Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

• Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See this, this and this.

• Laundering money for drug cartels. See this, this and this (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis)

• Owning and largely running the Federal Reserve … which is itself arguably a Ponzi scheme

But at least the big banks do good things for society, like loaning money to Main Street, right?

Actually:

• The big banks no longer do very much traditional banking. Most of their business is from financial speculation. For example, less than 10% of Bank of America’s assets come from traditional banking deposits. Instead, they are mainly engaged in financial speculation and derivatives. (and see this)

• The big banks have slashed lending since they were bailed out by taxpayers … while smaller banks have increased lending. See this, this and this.

• A huge portion of the banks’ profits comes from taxpayer bailouts. For example, 77% of JP Morgan’s net income comes from taxpayer subsidies

• The big banks are literally killing the economy… and waging war on the people of the world, our democracy and form of government as well.

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Not to mention what the politicians get up to.  It’s hard to know which are the bigger crooks, or which comes first – the chicken or the egg.   Did the Banksters corrupt politics, or did the Politicians just show the way and open the door?

The whole Eurozone fiasco was doomed from the start.  The rules were always far too slack for it to ever work sustainably.  The British were awake to that from the start, they never wanted a bar of it.  What rules there were regarding deficits etc were rorted blatantly from the first year and just got more egregious over time.  Until we got to the situation with Greece where the politicians were conspiring with the Banksters (Goldman Sachs) to actively manipulate and conceal the true state of the books.  

Not that anyone in power wasn’t completely aware of the real situation.  But as long as there was some fig-leaf, some sort of plausible deniability (and the money kept flowing) everyone was totally prepared to look the other way.

At a minimum that is intellectual dishonesty.  Realistically it is also criminally dishonesty.  But hey, it’s good to be King right…?  (what I say goes, because I say so…)

To varying degrees it is the same everywhere.  Ponzi scheme piled on Ponzi scheme.

Here (in a country rated one of the least corrupt in the world) the government has stated there is nothing wrong with the current implementation of our Pension/Superannuation scheme.  According to the Prime Minister, the situation is entirely affordable and wont need any sort of review before 2020.

When we are already borrowing $100 million a week to finance the deficit spending, then NO, it is not currently affordable.  Lies – again.   Ponzi – again.

The problem isn’t where to look to find the lies, fraud and corruption – the problem is where to stop.  It is systemic, endemic, universal.

At some point, if you find your self in a hole, you have to stop digging.  This shit will kill us.

STOP the FRAUD.

       START the PROSECUTING.

                 START the RESECTING. 

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