Pam Martens and Russ Martens — Trump Now Says Wall Street Is the Victim, Not the Villain

“Populist” candidate for President, Donald Trump, railed against the “political establishment” and Wall Street elites who were “getting away with murder.” On October 26, 2016, just days before the Presidential election, Trump spoke at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina and promised to uphold the plank in the Republican Party platform to break up the big banks by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act.…

Now, as the sitting President, the former populist candidate has become the embodiment of the political establishment he railed against. He has stacked his administration with former bankers from Goldman Sachs; he has placed deeply conflicted Wall Street cronies in key regulatory posts; and he is promising to roll back critical financial reforms. His Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, has disavowed any intention to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.

To the careful observer, it would appear that the American people have, once again, been played for fools by billionaires who no longer need to hide behind a dark political curtain but have simply seized the reins of power for themselves in broad daylight.…

Remind you of Lucy snatching the football away from Charlie Brown yet again?

Wall Street On Parade
Trump Now Says Wall Street Is the Victim, Not the Villain
Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Pam and Russ Martens — Technological Incompetence Appears to be Intentional at Wall Street’s Top Cop

When we created the website for Wall Street On Parade, it took us about 30 minutes to add a free plug-in function so that our readers could search the text of every article we have ever written. (See Search box in upper right-hand corner of our menu at the top of this website.) But at Wall Street’s top cop, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), if one wants to search corporate filings, one is limited to a four-year text search. This bizarre restriction inhibits investigative journalists from capably doing their job and connecting dots. 

This might sound like a small complaint were it not part of a larger pattern of technological failures by the SEC which have allowed Wall Street firms to run amok for decades.

The biggest technological failure, of course, is the SEC’s inability to launch a Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) over the 83 years of the SEC’s existence in order to spot manipulative or illegal trades by some of the most highly sophisticated trading houses in the world. While JPMorgan brags about having “more software developers than Google, and more technologists than Microsoft,” and Goldman Sachs is hiring the best Russian coders, Wall Street’s top cop is still driving a horse and buggy.…

In April of 2014, Kidney spoke with NPR on the demoralization of public servants at the SEC. Kidney said: “Washington has become — and I think everybody knows it — a bathtub full of cash. As long as you just go in the bathtub you’re going to come out with cash stuck on you – if you’re at least a certain, have certain jobs and have certain roles. And that’s why the revolving door is such a problem. It’s cultural, it’s the culture of Washington, it’s the culture of Wall Street and it hollows out the civil service…”...

Watching the U.S. devolve into a third-world-level of corruption and cronyism is deeply painful for those who love their country. It’s time for those collective voices to demand a formal, independent Federal investigation of the SEC. No other industry in America has done more to bankrupt the U.S. than Wall Street and no other cop on the beat has done less to stop it....

Wall Street On Parade
Technological Incompetence Appears to be Intentional at Wall Street’s Top Cop
Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Pam and Russ Martens — Wall Street Is the Most Dangerous Example of Corporate Domination

As if someone had quietly turned on a light bulb last month illuminating the corporate takeover of America, a series of articles from multiple outlets chronicled the demise of American democracy under the jackboot of the corporate state.

David Dayen at the New Republic wrote:

“Far from selfless arbiters of right and wrong, CEOs are as responsible as anyone in America for skyrocketing inequality, climate crisis, waves of consumer fraud, and the biggest financial meltdown since the Depression. Condemning the unpopular views of an unpopular president whom they see as an inferior businessman is no sacrifice, especially when they are simultaneously plotting with administration officials to win as many perks as possible. CEOs aren’t ‘finding their voice’; they’re finding a way to control government like a marionette, while hiding the strings.”

…..

Wall Street On Parade
Wall Street Is the Most Dangerous Example of Corporate Domination

Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Slow Crash — Andrew Cockburn in conversation with Michael Hudson

Two years before the 2008 Wall Street crash that toppled the global economy into deep recession, Harper’s Magazine published a dark prophecy of what was to come. In “The New Road to Serfdom,” economist Michael Hudson laid out how millions of Americans had taken on huge debts to buy houses on the presumption that they could later sell them at a profit. “Most everyone involved in the real estate bubble so far has made at least a few dollars,” he wrote. “But that is about to change. The bubble will burst, and when it does the people who thought they would be living the easy life of a landlord will soon find out that what they really signed up for is the hard servitude of debt serfdom.” As the twenty million people who lost their homes discovered, Hudson got it entirely right.
Today, unemployment is at record lows, and the stock market is at record highs. Allegedly, we have recovered from the disaster. I talked to Hudson, Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the author, most recently, of J is For Junk Economics, A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception, about his pre-crash prediction, and what he now sees in our future.

Browsings —Then Harper's Blog
Slow Crash
Andrew Cockburn in conversation with Michael Hudson
Crossposted at Micheal Hudson

Also

Cancel Odious Greek Debts (video)

Zach Carter — Donald Trump Signs Huge Wall Street Giveaway

Looks more like filling the swamp.

One of the Donald Trump administration’s first orders of business on the economy will scuttle a rule protecting retirees from being scammed out of $17 billion a year by their own financial advisers.

The Obama administration approved the regulation last year. The rule established a “fiduciary duty” for money managers, requiring them to operate retirement accounts in the best interests of their clients. The Trump team’s repeal will allow financial professionals to steer retirees into expensive or poor-performing products that carry economic benefits and perks for the advisers and their firms, without disclosing such conflicts of interest....

The Huffington Post
Donald Trump Signs Huge Wall Street Giveaway

Zach Carter | Senior Political Economy Reporter

William K. Black — The New Democrats’ Addiction to Austerity Will Not Die

I know the Republicans are complete hypocrites about federal deficits and debt. I know their dishonesty and faux deficit and debt hysteria, when a Democrat is president, harms the Nation and the world through the infliction of self-destructive austerity. Austerity’s primary victims are the working class and government social programs for the poor and working class. That means that the Democrats should never mimic the Republicans’ dishonesty, hysteria, and willingness to inflict austerity on the people of America and the world.…

Unfortunately, the New Democrats embraced the economic malpractice of austerity with the passion of a convert. Michael Meeropol, an economist whose work I respect greatly, has rightly chastised me for failing to explain that fiscal austerity produces enormous winners, not just losers, and that this fact helps explain why the economic malpractice of austerity is so common. Austerity is a policy that aids the wealthy and harms the non-wealthy. One of the greatest triumphs of the wealthy is to get vast numbers of the non-wealthy to fail to understand this point. The New Democrats’ passionate support for austerity reflects the interests of its primary donors – Wall Street elites....

New Economic Perspectives
The New Democrats’ Addiction to Austerity Will Not Die
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Mike Lofgren — Wall Street’s Win-Win with Trump

… the commanding heights of capital are no longer sitting on their hands.

As a glance at the membership of the President-elect’s Strategic and Policy Forumshows, they are flocking to his side, with representatives of financial buccaneering like Steven Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, old smokestack firms like GM’s Mary Barra, and towering retail giant Walmart’s Doug McMillon. There is even an ex-governor of the Federal Reserve Board, Bush appointee Kevin Warsh. It appears that Corporate America has abruptly swung to Trump’s side. 

Why the change? First, beyond whatever innate skill at making money that they may possess, the typical American corporate executive smells power in the way a pig locks on to a Périgord truffle. It was only a couple of months ago that virtually none of the corporate moguls supported Trump, while they fell all over themselves to back Hillary Clinton. Now, I doubt many of them would take her phone call. Sucking up is so ingrained in American corporate culture that we should hardly be surprised at the about-face. 

Second, regardless of their pious rhetoric about fiscal responsibility, business leaders dearly love the deficits created by rate cuts on income, capital gains, and dividends. The tax cuts put money directly into their coffers, and the resulting deficit provides the fiscal stimulus driving consumer spending and corporate profits. Occasionally, a few of them, like Pete Peterson (ironically a co-founder of Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group), will launch a rhetorical jihad against the federal deficit, but this effort is mainly a rationale to cut the federal pensions and benefits that they assume the Ninety-Nine Percent are lazily wallowing in rather than working. 

That is not the end of Trump’s fiscal stimulus. In addition to his $6.2 trillion in planned tax cuts, he is promising a large infrastructure program as well as hefty increases in Pentagon spending (the one Keynesian measure Republicans have traditionally adored)....

Translated from the Bloombergese, it suggests the plutocrats are licking their chops in the expectation of a looting spree that will make the plutocracy of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos look like strict Swiss governmental administration.

Pigs inevitably gather at the trough.

Consortium News
Wall Street’s Win-Win with Trump

Mike Lofgren, former career congressional staff member who served on the House and Senate budget committees

Pam and Russ Martens — U.S. Quietly Drops Bombshell: Wall Street Banks Have $2 Trillion European Exposure

Wall Street On Parade
U.S. Quietly Drops Bombshell: Wall Street Banks Have $2 Trillion European Exposure

Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Yves Smith — Blackstone’s Tony James Touting What Looks Like Hillary’s Scheme to Gut Social Security

Hillary's mandatory retirement savings accounts are a twofer: a way to replace Social Security over time and enrich private equity and hedgies.

Now that it is clear that HRC say one thing publicly and another behind closed doors.

Readers may recall that Bill Clinton planned to privatize Social Security in the second term of his Presidency. The Monica Lewinsky scandal derailed his plan.

As the Clintons knew, only a Democrat can dismantle Social Security. Hillary looks to be picking up where Bill left off.

One can only imagine what is in this financially for Bill and Hillary Clinton. They have already pulled in 111 million, 80 reported by Bill and 31 by Hillary. There's no quid pro quo though. Hey, they gave speeches.

Naked Capitalism
Blackstone’s Tony James Touting What Looks Like Hillary’s Scheme to Gut Social Security
Yves Smith

Pam and Russ Martens — Here’s Why Americans Are Mad as Hell at Wall Street and Washington

Tens of millions of Americans clearly understand that an entrenched system of corruption such as this, perpetuated through a revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, while enshrined by a political campaign finance system that recycles a portion of the plunder to ensure greater plunders, will inevitably leave the nation’s economy in tatters — again. That’s because systemic corruption and legalized bribery within the financial arteries of the nation can only create grossly perverse economic outcomes.

The actual role of Wall Street is to fairly and efficiently allocate capital to maximize positive economic outcomes for the nation. Under the current model, Wall Street is focused solely on maximizing profits in any manner possible, including fraud and collusion, to maximize personal enrichment. When Senator Bernie Sanders said during his campaign stops and a presidential debate that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud,” there was a long, substantive archive of facts to back up that assertion….

Given these facts on the ground, another President who takes a hands off approach to Wall Street while installing Wall Street cronies in the cabinet, will leave this nation terminally financially crippled.

That would be a good thing. It would end finance capitalism. It would take down the US as an economic power, too, but that cloud might have a silver lining by way of ending US attempts to maintain global hegemony and instead play nice.

Wall Street On Parade
Here’s Why Americans Are Mad as Hell at Wall Street and Washington

Pam Martens and Russ Martens
ht Don Quijones at Raging Bull-Shit

Bill Mitchell — The Wall Street-US Treasury Complex

Today’s part of the story, is to trace the growing US influence on the IMF and the way it manipulated that institution to further its ‘free market’ agenda on a global scale. We will consider what Jagdish Bhagwati called the “Wall Street-Treasury complex”, which referred to the way in which financial market interests in the US combined with (pressured) the US Treasury Department to advance the myth that liberalisation of global capital flows would deliver massive benefits in the post-1971 period after the convertible currency, fixed exchange rate system collapsed.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The Wall Street-US Treasury Complex
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Free Markets Mean Zero Economic Profit – or a 99% Profit Markup

Bill Black explains economic rent, rent-seeking behavior, and rent extraction, which neoclassical economics assumes away.


New Economic Perspectives
Free Markets Mean Zero Economic Profit – or a 99% Profit Markup
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

William K. Black — Obama’s Great Lie: What’s Good for Wall Street Felons is Good for America

To no one’s surprise, President Obama lobs periodic attacks on Bernie Sanders’ plans to restore the rule of law to Wall Street elites. Obama launched his latest attack, fittingly, through Wall Street’s sycophant-in-chief, Andrew Ross Sorkin. Sorkin’s column expresses his shock at how Obama repeatedly extended their interview for hours beyond its scheduled length. No one else is shocked that Obama, trying to make the case that bailing out the Wall Street felons was an act of supreme genius, would find Sorkin’s relentless sycophancy towards those felons and their political cronies so endearing. This is the first segment of my response. It focuses on the Obama administration’s great lie – the only policy “tools that work” in response to a financial crisis are getting “in bed with the banks” and making even wealthier through federal bailouts the bankers who grew wealthy by leading the fraud epidemics that caused the crisis.

The context of Sorkin’s column was Obama making the pitch for his “economic legacy.” Obama is distressed that we do not understand how great he was because he was too busy saving us to have the time to “explain” to us how great he was.

New Economic Perspectives
Obama’s Great Lie: What’s Good for Wall Street Felons is Good for America

William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

I posted this comment over at NEP:

Great smackdown, Bill. 

I hope you will point out that in "saving the banks,"actually the US financial system, the president was acting as global "emperor" in that the US controls the world through finance more than military. Military power is just the backup. It's through the lock on global finance that the Anglo-American empire retains global hegemony. The American empire is the historical extension of the British empire as a sea power. The East India Company has morphed into transnational corporatism, and global finance is run out of Wall Street and London. Thus, the "special relationship."

Why Krugman's Latest Attack on Sanders' Economic Plans Are Wrong — Jaisal Noor interviews Michael Hudson and Bill Black

Fifteen minute video, no transcript (yet). Smackdown.

Real News Network
Why Krugman's Latest Attack on Sanders' Economic Plans Are Wrong

Jaisal Noor interviews Michael Hudson and Bill Black

ht Footsoldier in the comments

William K. Black — The Myth that Obama’s Taking Huge Contributions from Wall Street Was Fine

I am now officially an economic advisor to Senator Sanders, and this column reflects some of that advice. Part of my advice is not to take money from Wall Street felons. (I am not taking credit for Bernie’s decision — at most I supported a decision he had already made over a year ago.) One of the reasons I reinforced Bernie’s decision was witnessing the problems President Obama experienced given his taking very large contributions from Wall Street. I channeled the prescient warning that Professor Thomas Ferguson (U. Mass, Boston) gave a group of us in 2008. He predicted, accurately, that Obama would not lead an effective crackdown on the endemic fraud by Wall Street elites that caused the financial crisis. Tom (he is a personal friend) is the expert on campaign finance. He authored the classic book on campaign finance entitled Golden Rule (as in the observation that he that has the gold makes the rules.).

Tom pointed out that (then) Senator Obama was accomplishing something unprecedented. He was not only raising more money from Wall Street than the Republicans were, he was doing so in the context of a nomination battle with (then) Senator Hillary Clinton. The Clintons were both preeminent leaders of the “New Democrats.” They crafted the coalition of conservative (on economics and national security issues) Democrats. The New Democrat’s apparatus was funded overwhelmingly by Wall Street and President Bill Clinton was famous for championing the three “de’s” – financial deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization. Even if Wall Street was willing to reverse decades of contributing primarily to Republicans, why would they choose Senator Obama over their great ally, Senator Hillary Clinton? Tom predicted that Obama would win the nomination and the election – and would reject emulating President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and its transformation of finance. All three predictions proved accurate.…

New Economic Perspectives
The Myth that Obama’s Taking Huge Contributions from Wall Street Was Fine
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

teleSUR — Obama Showed His “True Neoliberal Face” in Argentina

Not very surprisingly then to see financial outlet Bloomberg recently headlining an article, “Wall Street is in Charge in Argentina (Again),” [Dr. Alan B. Cibils, economist from Buenos Aires] concluded.

teleSUR
Obama Showed His “True Neoliberal Face” in Argentina

Double-speak

5 of the Most Messed Up Compliments Obama Gave Macro

Protesters to Obama: Go Home!

Lula: 'We Will Not Permit a Coup Against Dilma!'

President Rousseff Says Impeachment Bid Simply a Coup Attempt

Globo TV in Brazil Fomenting Conditions for Coup Says Expert

Globo TV in Brazil Fomenting Conditions for Coup Says Expert

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Globo-TV-in-Brazil-Fomenting-Conditions-for-Coup-Says-Expert-20160321-0039.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

President Rousseff Says Impeachment Bid Simply a Coup Attempt

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
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Protesters Tell Obama, Macri: We Will Not Forget Dictatorship

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Protesters-to-Obama-Go-Home-20160322-0048.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

Protesters Tell Obama, Macri: We Will Not Forget Dictatorship

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Protesters-to-Obama-Go-Home-20160322-0048.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

William K. Black — Wall Street’s Message to Young Adults: “You are Clueless”

It is, after all, all about “capital,” not people. The Wall Street CEOs think the young should cheer Wall Street’s “effective[ness]” in destroying the middle and working classes in America.

New Economic Perspectives
Wall Street’s Message to Young Adults: “You are Clueless”
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Bill Mitchell — It is fuelled by stupidity … That’s not stupidity that’s fraud

Yesterday, we saw the movie – The Big Short – which is entertaining to say the least but depressing in its message that widespread corruption in the corporate and public sectors not only goes unpunished, but is handsomely rewarded. I have also been watching the documentary series Making a Murderer – which follows the stunning and mystery-laded treatment of an American man caught up in a corrupt criminal justice system in the US state of Michigan. In that series, it appears that the criminals are those on the wrong side of the bars. 

I thought The Big Short was the macro version of Making a Murderer, which is a microscopic account of a small town and its nefarious police and legal fraternity. But apart from the corrupt and plainly unethical conduct exhibited by Wall Street, the rating agencies and the bank that fed on all the ridiculous products that were created to make complex what, in fact, was a simple strategy – make money of real estate, there was also plain dumbness at the centre of the collapse and the crisis. Dumbness created by a dangerous Groupthink where patterned behaviour was inculcated into the financial system and, ultimately, came back to bite most of us.

While the representations of cocky, sharp, bright financial market traders with PhDs in physics or mathematics in a sequence of movies about the GFC and its aftermath lead to the conclusion that these conspirators knew what they were doing and were happy to profit for themselves at the expense of those they considered to be dumber, a recent academic research study has revealed that the traders themselves were oblivious to what they were doing and became entranced themselves by their own image. 

That is what Groupthink does – it builds an impervious layer for those trapped inside the group – they are insulated from reality, consistent logic, criticism and behave in self-reinforcing ways that may involve enlarged deviations from anything reasonable, smart or evidence based. Groupthink makes people dumb and compliant. The GFC was in no small measure the product of that sort of dumb compliance, which is not to reduce the enormity of the corruption involved. It, however, does reinforce my view that we should ban all these speculative products that provide no beneficial input to the real economy, if only because the sociopaths that are attracted to creating and selling them are too dumb to know what they are doing.… [paragraphing introduced for readability] 

Kind of sums it up.

However, I think that perhaps Bill overemphasizes the role of groupthink in the financial crisis overall. The FBI warned in December 2004 of massive fraud taking place in the mortgage market, and Bill Black and others have documented the prevalence of control fraud.

Sorting out stupid and complicit is not a simple matter, and the probably go hand in hand.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
It is fuelled by stupidity … That’s not stupidity that’s fraud
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Black — Wall Street Declares War on Bernie Sanders

The sheriff is back in town.

New Economic Perspectives
Wall Street Declares War on Bernie Sanders
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Bill Mitchell — Bernie Sanders on the right track but need to address the main game

On December 23, 2015, the Democrat Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders published an Op Ed – Bernie Sanders: To Rein In Wall Street, Fix the Fed – which, correctly, in my view, concluded that Wall Street (taken to be the collective of banksters wherever they might be located) “is still out of control” and policy reform has done little to alter the “too big to fail” problem that was identified in the early days of the GFC as one bank after another lined up for government assistance. Larry Summers replied to the Op Ed in his blog – The Fed and Financial Reform – Reflections on Sen. Sanders op-Ed – challenging several of the proposals advanced by Sanders. The problem is that the progressive voice of Bernie Sanders labours under some basic misconceptions about how the monetary system operates and therefore plays into the hands of those who have created the mess. Conversely, Summers clearly understands basic elements of the monetary system but continues to advocate policies which avoid addressing the main issue – the power of the financial markets.…

The conception that Bernie Sanders creates is that the banks are being diverted by the US central bank from lending those reserves.

On Monday (December 28, 2015), my blog – Central bank propaganda from Minneapolis – explained how banks do not loan out reserves and are not reserve-constrained in their lending activities.

Bernie Sanders is just plain wrong here and is surprising that he has been allowed to maintain this misconception. If his persistence in maintaining incorrect ideas about how the banking system operates is his own doing (that is, ignoring sound advice from his team), then he is unfit to be President. Simple as that….

I like the way that Bernie Sanders is attempting to redefine the public policy debate and have sympathy for many of his positions and values.

But I don’t think it helps when progressive voices make simple mistakes that, ultimately, ply into the hands of those who have created the mess the world economy is now in.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

Bernie Sanders on the right track but need to address the main game
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equversity of Newcastleity (CofFEE), at Uni, NSW, Australia