Mica Rosenberg — Top U.S. officials rejected push to prosecute HSBC: lawmakers' report

Senior U.S. Department of Justice officials overruled internal recommendations to prosecute global bank HSBC Holdings Plc for money-laundering violations because of concerns about the stability of the financial system, according to a congressional report released on Monday.…

Business Insider
Top U.S. officials rejected push to prosecute HSBC: lawmakers' report
Mica Rosenberg | Reuters

Matt Taibbi — Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold

Smackdown.

Who appointed this guy anyway?

Rolling Stone
Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold
Matt Taibbi

Eric Holder will be paid big bucks now as a "thank you" for keeping his Wall Street pals out of prison.

Holder will be making at least $2 million per year if not more at his old firm of Covington & Burling.

You want to know why?

Read this:

According to SourceWatch, Covington & Burling’s clients “routinely signed foreclosure related documents outside the presence of a notary public and without knowing whether the facts they contained were correct.” Each practice is illegal. No one connected with the crimes was ever arrested or put in jail as part of the scandal. Holder was Wall Street’s guardian angel.

Go try to do some of those things yourself or, better yet, commit wire and mail fraud, market manipulation, insider trading, tax evasion...actually, why not all of the above, and see where it gets YOU.

Cronyism, corruption, use whatever noun along those lines you want. That's our government and the brazen actions of our officials, past and present!

Eric Holder Returns As Hero To Law Firm That Lobbies For  Big Banks

Well, if you still had any doubts as to why Eric Holder, as Attorney General, did not prosecute one single bank executive for the inumerable acts of fraud, insider trading, market manipulation, tax evasion, lwire and mail fraud or, lying under oath, here's why...he was preparing for his very lucrative career outside of government.

That career would be working for a law firm that LOBBIES FOR BIG BANKS.

And our leaders lecture other countries about corruption. What a fucking joke. We are all fools.

DSWright — White House Approved CIA Hacking Of Senate Computers

According to a report by the CIA Inspector General, the White House was informed of the CIA’s plan to hack US Senate computers to discover what was going to be in the Senate Torture Report. CIA Director John Brennan met with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough then ordered CIA employees to “use whatever means necessary” to find out what Senate investigators knew. 

Given the White House’s role in the illegal hacking of Senate computers it becomes obvious why the Justice Department headed by President Obama-appointed Attorney General Eric Holder is not likely to bring charges against the CIA – charges against the CIA could lead back to the White House. 

The specific content of the conversation between Brennan and McDonough is not disclosed but after the conversation Brennan instructed his subordinates at the CIA to trash the Constitution and engage in espionage activity against the US Senate.

Firedoglake
White House Approved CIA Hacking Of Senate Computers
DSWright

Matt Taibbi — The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

Maybe Matt's best yet. The smoking gun.

Rolling Stone
The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare
Matt Taibbi

Att. Gen. Holder Talks As Though All Criminals Are Equally Bad ... Some Are Just More Equal In Impunity Than Others

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Is this who we are? WWGW think?



Dear Att. Gen. Eric Holder,

How about leaving some WHITE COLLAR CRIME backdoors open for regulators?

For Pete's sake! Get a clue.

This guy can't see context for the mirror?

In what follows, the semantics have been blatantly translated to more relevant analogies, in an attempt to redirect the topic to protecting the innocent.

What about all the forms of BS which are locking law enforcement regulators out of understanding increasingly popular Control Fraud methods?

Surely it is fully possible to permit private enterprise to provide personal incentives while still adequately protecting aggregate options?

When a Middle Class is in danger, law enforcement and Public Policy needs to be able to take every legally available step to quickly find and protect Main Street and to stop those that abuse both the Middle Class and democracy. It is worrisome to see both Control Frauds AND public officials thwarting our ability to do so.

In his recent comments, Holder became just the latest government official to willingly be a hypocrite ... for financial gain, no matter how indirect.

Though Holder didn’t mention Goldman-Sachs or any other TBTJ banks by name, his remarks systematically avoided mentioning the documentation repeatedly offered by Bill Black since the resolution of the S&L Crisis 20+ years ago.

National, state and local citizen and law enforcement officials have complained loudly that the TBTJ banks are undermining efforts to fight White Collar Crime, including money-laundering and financial terrorism. The TBTJ's newest lobbying system, BS-8, has Congress so thoroughly bought that the lobbyists brazenly say that White Collar Crime is itself no longer illegal. Citibank's & JP Morgan's lobbying and "revolving door" system automatically began using direct and indirect incentives and re-election pressures decades ago, on all regulators and Congresspeople, unless they specifically opt into the bankster protection racket, described in unwritten agreements never intended to be released to honest citizens. (It will take months or years for reality to filter out and reach most people currently attempting to honestly participate in democracy.)

TBTJ financial industry executives have consistently said that less regulation better protects the privacy of Control Frauds by reducing the security of the Middle Class against a wide range of intrusions, by co-opted governments, White Collar criminals and Innocent Frauds on the bankster's payroll. American financial companies have been particularly eager to demonstrate their commitment to reduced citizen rights in the aftermath of the revelations by former litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Bill Black, detailing the extensive overreach of TBTJ financial lobbies.

Holder never bothers speaking honestly to the Global Alliance Against Financial Abuse of the Middle Class and Democracy in General, regardless of where their diverse chapters try to meet. In fact, to my knowledge he's never raised the issue of preserving civic protections from large-scale Financial Control Fraud.

Sure, recent gutting of diverse Federal regulatory agencies has already greatly emboldened White criminals, as TARP and the aftermath showed, including providing implicit guarantees for abusers to avoid detection. In a snowballing number of cases, perpetrators are using clouded policy to cheaply and easily bypass tens of thousands of lines of former legal protections that had existed for 70 years or more - and to leverage that ability to operate from anywhere in the world. It shouldn't be a surprise that many Control Frauds rush to take advantage of "regulatory encryption" and anonymizing White Collar Crime practices to conceal contraband practices and disguise perpetrator positions.

In response to all this, Holder has essentially called on all citizens to work with him to look the other way while Wall Street guts Main Street, and ensures that law enforcement ignores the ability, with court-authorization, to at least attempt to obtain enough information to even initiate White Collar Crime investigations, such as catching mega Control Frauds.

Even with the new forms of Control Fraud, government officials maintain access to many sources of data related to the execution of Elite Financial Fraud, including the records of calls, texts and other communications kept by lobbyists, Congressional staff and Public Regulators alike. Even worse are the extensive, passive collusion agreements that most regulatory agencies now take for granted, by claiming that they "can't afford to prosecute rampant White Collar Crime," resulting in paltry fines for massive frauds against Jane and Joe Sixpack. Police and District Attorneys rarely even get search warrants on which to use third-party tools to try to unravel the levels of corruption involved in on decisions to not prosecute massive mortgage frauds and other financial schemes. Courts can and often have ordered the entire Middle Class to furnish up the keys that would otherwise preserve the future of entire generations against domination by a few Super Crooks.

Capiche?

Washington's Blog — We’ve Known for Some Time that the NSA Is Spying On Congress

When one branch of government spies on another, “America has no functioning democracy”.

Washington's Blog
We’ve Known for Some Time that the NSA Is Spying On Congress

Jed S. Rakoff — The Financial Crisis: Why Have No High-Level Executives Been Prosecuted?

Five years have passed since the onset of what is sometimes called the Great Recession. While the economy has slowly improved, there are still millions of Americans leading lives of quiet desperation: without jobs, without resources, without hope.

Who was to blame? Was it simply a result of negligence, of the kind of inordinate risk-taking commonly called a “bubble,” of an imprudent but innocent failure to maintain adequate reserves for a rainy day? Or was it the result, at least in part, of fraudulent practices, of dubious mortgages portrayed as sound risks and packaged into ever more esoteric financial instruments, the fundamental weaknesses of which were intentionally obscured?

The New York Review of Books (Jan 9, 2014)
The Financial Crisis: Why Have No High-Level Executives Been Prosecuted?
Jed S. Rakoff | U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York
(h/t Ryan Harris in the comments)

Judge Rakoff is not going to let this die.

Bill Black — The New York Times Authors the Most Ironic Sentence of the Crisis [Smackdown Watch]

The author of the most brilliantly comedic statement ever written about the crisis is Landon Thomas, Jr. He does not bury the lead. Everything worth reading is in the first sentence, and it should trigger belly laughs nationwide.

“Bank of America, one of the nation’s largest banks, was found liable on Wednesday of having sold defective mortgages, a jury decision that will be seen as a victory for the government in its aggressive effort to hold banks accountable for their role in the housing crisis.”

“The government,” as a statement of fact so indisputable that it requires neither citation nor reasoning, has been engaged in an “aggressive effort to hold banks accountable for their role in the housing crisis.” Yes, we have not seen such an aggressive effort since Captain Renault told Rick in the movieCasablanca that he was “shocked” to discover that there was gambling going on (just before being handed his gambling “winnings” which were really a bribe).

There are four clues in the sentence I quoted that indicate that the author knows he’s putting us on, but they are subtle....

New Economic Perspectives
The New York Times Authors the Most Ironic Sentence of the Crisis
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the Department of Economics and the School of Law

Flying Pigs Invade Wall St AND Capture DoJ & POTUS

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Not to mention the National Committees of both our political gangster organizations - otherwise known as the GOP & DEM "families".

While we're busy bombing the extended families (& neighbors, & their little dogs too) of disgruntled people in a growing list of 3rd world countries ... to PROTECT us from our own MICC, another agent has broken through all our vaunted defenses and taken us apart from the inside out.

Yes Maude, it's true. There are flying pigs. They've made a beachhead on Wall St and from there successfully taken over the US government.

Want evidence?

Jamie Dimon & Eric Holder are officially "stalwarts who have demonstrated their toughness & JPM is a model corporate citizen" ? (& pigs fly!)

What else is there to add? Other than to admit that flying pigs readily eat rotting fish heads.

Must listen: Stephanie Kelton's interview with Bill Black and Randy Wray on the JP Morgan settlement

Black's comments are devastating. You must listen to this. JP Morgan is really a criminal organization run by Jamie Dimon and our Attorney General, Eric Holder, takes marching orders from him.

Listen here.

Banksters Love Eric Holder

Commentary by Roger Erickson

You just couldn't make this stuff up.

FBI's 2010 Mortgage Fraud Report Reveals Why the Banksters Love Holder

How badly does an administration have to fail, before citizens take a serious interest in reforming it?

Yves Smith — So Why is the Administration Trying to Look a Smidge More Aggressive About Going After Banks?

In the last few days, the Department of Justice (as well as the SEC) filed a case against Bank of America over a 2008 prime mortgage securitization that takes breaks some new ground in fraud allegations and is also saber-rattling in the form of launching a criminal investigation into JP Morgan’s sale of mortgage backed securities.

So what’s with the new-found religion? The Snowden effect? Perhaps, but given that cases take a while to gin up, this may be Holder trying to rebuild what little he has left in the way of a reputation after confirming remarks made by others in his office that some animals, um, banks, were more equal than others. [allusion to George Orwell's Animal Farm]....

It’s inconceivable that the DoJ would indict JP Morgan at a corporate level. Not only would Holder not risk destabilizing the bank, there’s simply no way the Treasury would let him go there. If any actual criminal charges are contemplated (remember, this is just an investigation), expect a rerun of the UBS Libor strategy, where UBS paid a large fine for Libor rigging and admitted to criminal conduct…in its Japanese unit. I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, but there’s no reason to expect anything other than new and better optics from the Obama Administration at this late date.

Naked Capitalism
So Why is the Administration Trying to Look a Smidge More Aggressive About Going After Banks?
Yves Smith

Randy Wray — Eric Holder Makes it Official: Crime Is The Economic Model

It’s official. The nation’s top cop, Attorney General Eric Holder, has clearly articulated the administration’s policy on crime at the biggest banks: it will not be prosecuted. Indeed, as we’ve long expected, the criminals in top management will not be investigated, they will not be indicted, they will not be prosecuted, and they will not be punished.

Period.

Economonitor— Great Leap Forward
Eric Holder Makes it Official: Crime Is The Economic Model
L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, UMKC

This is an indictment rather than a take-down.

Oh, and what was that about the purpose of business is profit-maximization?

Remember General Electric—Thomas Edison’s industrial giant? Jack Welch took it over and ran it like a financial firm—reporting profits of 20% quarter after quarter through, shall we say, “creative accounting”. He drove up the stock price by 4000% over his tenure, then cashed out, making a reputed half a billion dollars for himself. He was a key figure in promoting the notion that generous compensation for top management—much in the form of stock options—properly aligns incentives.

As Bill Black notes, what this does is to provide spectacular rewards to control frauds and to ensure massive losses for average shareholders and employees of the firms when stock prices collapse. Shortly after Welch took the money and ran, GE’s stock price fell by two-thirds and the firm had to take big write-offs for the phony profits it had been reporting. While GE stocks slowly recovered in the mid-2000s boom, they collapsed to 5 in the GFC and in the current, historic, stock bubble GE is only in the low twenties. Welch is still treated as a corporate hero. And teaches his business philosophy to MIT students.

Washington's Blog — The Government Has It Bass-Ackwards: Failing To Prosecute Criminal Fraud by the Big Banks Is Killing – NOT Saving – the Economy

Failure to Prosecute Fraud Causes Economic Downturns

Washington's Blog
The Government Has It Bass-Ackwards: Failing To Prosecute Criminal Fraud by the Big Banks Is Killing – NOT Saving – the Economy
WashingtonsBlog

Glenn Greenwald — Obama's Failure to Punish Banks Should Be Causing Serious Social Unrest

A new PBS Frontline report examines outrageous steps Obama's administration took to protect Wall St. Wall Street from prosecutions.

AlterNet
Obama's Failure to Punish Banks Should Be Causing Serious Social Unrest
Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian

Someone remind Glenn Greenwald that there already was an uprising across America called Occupy, and it was put down in many places by riot police wielding clubs and poison gas, coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security, pretty much like happens other fascist states.