LIBORGATE REVEALS GLOBAL FINANCIAL GAME IS RIGGED

Pete Bagley / Salt Lake Tribune

To the global banking elite it’s always heads they win and tails you lose but the recent LIBOR scandal moves that rigged financial game to a global scale which could and should result in multibillion dollar fines ~ unless Obama continues to protect Wall Street abuse: Allen L Roland

Anyone who has worked on Wall Street, as I have, knows that the game has always been rigged but never to the extent that it is now with high frequency trading and trillions of dollars being traded in virtually unregulated derivatives.  

Before Glass–Steagall was dismantled by the Clinton administration, the Wall Street Casino was fairly benign but that soon changed when the Banksters took advantage of the lack of regulations and it was only a matter of time before everything from sub-prime mortgages to commodities to the current LIBOR interest rate conspiracy offered direct evidence of the rigged global financial game.

Here’s your choice ~ you can see and hear Dennis Kucinich explain the LIBOR  scandal / 3 minute video

http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/?task=viewvideo&video_id=74103

Or here’s the irreverent quick and dirty explanation of the LIBOR  banking scandal ~ and a look into the nest of the global banking crime syndicate / 4 minute video

http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/?task=viewvideo&video_id=74106

Robert Reich calls the LIBOR scandal the Wall Street Scandal of all Wall Street scandals ~ “ We trust that the banking system is setting today’s rate based on its best guess about the future worth of the money. And we assume that guess is based, in turn, on the cumulative market predictions of countless lenders and borrowers all over the world about the future supply and demand for the dough.
But suppose our assumption is wrong. Suppose the bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money you lend or repay them – bets that will pay off big for them because they have inside information on what the market is really predicting, which they’re not sharing with you.
That would be a mammoth violation of public trust. And it would amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportion – trillions of dollars that you and I and other average people would otherwise have received or saved on our lending and borrowing that have been going instead to the bankers. It would make the other abuses of trust we’ve witnessed look like child’s play by comparison.”  See full story http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/09-5

As of now, twelve global banks publicly linked to the Libor scandal face up to $22 Billion in combined regulatory penalties and damages to investors and counterparties, according to admittedly "crude" Morgan Stanley estimates. The calculation excludes the potential fallout from U.S. and EU cartel investigations, which could result in multibillion-dollar fines. But is the Department of Justice just going through the motions during an election year?

In that regard, Glen Ford writes in ICH that “The Obama Justice Department is in theater mode, again, pretending to threaten the bankster class with criminal penalties – prison time! – for their manipulation of the global economy’s benchmark interest rates. The Justice Department claims to be building criminal and civil cases in the LIBOR scandal, which in sheer scope is the biggest fraud by international capital in history. But that’s all a front, a farce. Barack Obama has spent his entire presidency protecting Wall Street, starting with his rescue of George Bush’s bank bailout bill after it’s initial defeat in Congress, in the last days of Obama’s candidacy. He packed his administration with banksters, passed his own bailout and, in collaboration with the Federal Reserve, channeled at least $16 trillion dollars into the accounts of U.S. and even European banks – by far the greatest transfer of capital in the history of the world. Obama has reminded the banksters that it was he who saved them from the “pitchforks” of an outraged public. He pushed through Congress so-called financial reform legislation that left derivatives – the deadly instruments of mass financial destruction that were at the heart of the meltdown – untouched”   See full story ~ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31919.htm

As Naomi Wolf explains in the Guardian last week ~ The media's 'bad apple' thesis no longer works. “We're seeing systemic corruption in banking - and systemic collusion.”

Wolf also adds a plausible explanation for Timothy Geithner’s limited actions when he apparently learned in 2008 of "problems" with how interest rates were fixed in London  but did very little about it ~ “ The top headline of the day's news sums up why it is not that simple: "Geithner Tried to Curb Bank's Rate Rigging in 2008". The story reports that when Timothy Geithner, at the time he ran the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, learned of "problems" with how interest rates were fixed in London, the financial center at the heart of the Libor Barclays scandal. He let "top British authorities" know of the issues and wrote an email to his counterparts suggesting reforms. Were his actions ethical, or prudent? A possible interpretation of Geithner's action is that he was "covering his ass", without serious expectation of effecting reform of what he knew to be systemic abuse.”  See article ~ http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/12426-focus-this-global-financial-fraud-and-its-gatekeepers

Perhaps the only one who knew the full implications of the corpocracy and the true agenda of the global financial banksters was the late George Carlin ~ who called it the American Dream and said that you had to be asleep to believe it. George Carlin -~ 3 minute video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

Obviously, President Obama is talking through both sides of his mouth regarding his condemnation of Wall Street financial abuse  since his primary role upon being elected in 2008 was maintaining the status quo on Wall Street as well as setting the stage for the New World Order. Obama, as such, personifies Michael Parenti’s vision of the modern day big brother of Orwell’s 1984 ~

"If Big Brother (of Orwell's 1984) comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omnipresent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed." - Michael Parenti -  Source: "Inventing Reality" (1986)

God help us when reality sets in.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/liborgate-reveals-global-financial-game.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com ) 

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on  www.conscioustalk.net

OBAMA PLAYS LEAD FOR JAMIE DIMON AND THE FAT CATS ~ WHO OWN AND CONTROL AMERICA

Jamie Dimon’s gold embossed presidential seal cuff links, a gift from the president, are a blatant reminder that Obama plays lead to Jamie Dimon and the  fat cats ~ who obviously control America: Allen L Roland

Forbes rates JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as the 41^st most powerful person in the world with annual earnings of almost 21 million.

JPMorgan Chase is one of the Big Four banks of the United States with Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. According to Bloomberg, as of October 2011 JPMorgan Chase surpassed Bank Of America as the largest U.S. bank by assets.

So when Jamie Dimon waltzed into the Congressional hearings last week sporting his gift Presidential seal gold embossed cuff links from President Obama ~ it was a not so subtle in-your-face statement to congress and the American people of who not only owns but is in charge of America.

Jamie Dimon posing for Press with his presidential cuff links at recent congressional hearing

Jamie Dimon’s gift cuff links on full display

So let’s see what’s underneath this blatant act of arrogance.

Ellen Brown cuts to the quick with her recent brilliant analysis ~ The US Senate won’t touch Jamie Dimon because JPM derivatives prop up US Debt;

“ What is going on with this panel of senators?” asked Jon Stewart.  “They’re sucking up to Jamie Dimon like they’re on JPMorgan’s payroll.”  The explanation in a news clip that followed was that JPMorgan Chase is the biggest campaign donor to many of the members of the Banking Committee.
That is one obvious answer, but financial analysts Jim Willie and Rob Kirby think it may be something far larger, deeper, and more ominous…. The national debt is growing at $1.5 trillion per year.  Ultra-low interest rates MUST be maintained to prevent the debt from overwhelming the government budget.  Near-zero rates also need to be maintained because even a moderate rise would cause multi-trillion dollar derivative losses for the banks, and would remove the banks’ chief income stream, the arbitrage afforded by borrowing at 0% and investing at higher rates.
The low rates are maintained by interest rate swaps, called by Willie a “derivative tool which controls the bond market in a devious artificial manner.” 
Kirby contends that the only organization large enough to act as counterparty to some of these trades is the U.S. Treasury itself.  He suspects the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund, a covert entity without oversight and accountable to no one. Kirby also notes that if publicly-traded companies (including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) are deemed to be integral to U.S. national security (meaning protecting the integrity of the dollar), they can legally be excused from reporting their true financial condition.  They are allowed to keep two sets of books.
Interest rate swaps are now over 80 percent of the massive derivatives market, and JPMorgan holds about $57.5 trillion of them.  Without the protective JPMorgan swaps, interest rates on U.S. debt could follow those of Greece and climb to 30%.  CEO Dimon could, then, indeed be “the guy in charge”: he could be controlling the lever propping up the whole U.S. financial system.”.

Ellen Brown asks the key question ~ Is there no alternative but to succumb to the Mafia-like Wall Street protection racket of a covert derivatives trade in interest rate swaps?
“ As Willie and Kirby observe, that scheme itself must ultimately fail, and may have failed already.  They point to evidence that the JPM losses are not just $3 billion but $30 billion or more, and that JPM is actually bankrupt ;
The derivatives casino itself is just a last-ditch attempt to prop up a private pyramid scheme in fractional-reserve money creation, one that has progressed over several centuries through a series of “reserves” ~ from gold, to Fed-created “base money,” to mortgage-backed securities, to sovereign debt ostensibly protected with derivatives.  We’ve seen that the only real guarantor in all this is the government itself, first with FDIC insurance and then with government bailouts of too-big-to-fail banks.  If we the people are funding the banks, we should own them; and our national currency should be issued, not through banks at interest, but through our own sovereign government.”
See full article: http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/why-the-senate-wont-touch-jamie-dimon-jpm-derivatives-prop-up-u-s-debt/#more-3936

Commodity Futures Trading Commission head and former Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler puts the credit swap problem in easy to understand terms;

“The swap market lacks necessary street lamps,” he said. “I think the American public still isn’t safe on these roads until we get the rules of the road in place. I think the America public was bystanders to taking on excessive risk in 2008, and we still have been.”

Now get this !  JPMorgan receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by the International Monetary Fund. That $14 billion dollars represents 77 percent of JP Morgan’s net income for the past four quarters. In other words, U.S. taxpayers helped foot the bill for the multibillion-dollar trading loss that was the focus of last weeks hearings. See full report: http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/12054-jpmorgan-gets-14-billion-a-year-from-the-us-government

And there’s more ~ Here’s How JP Morgan makes hundreds of millions of dollars on food assistance programs / Republic Report.

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/how-big-corporations-cash-in-on-food-assistance-programs/

We are all being played for suckers but If you think things are dangerous here ~ take a look at the Euro zone through the eyes of UKIP Nigel Farage ~ who rightfully calls the whole thing a giant Ponzi scheme. Here’s U.K. Independence Party Leader Nigel Farage discussing the causes of the financial crisis in Europe as well as the inadequacy of its present leadership . 6 minute video http://youtu.be/zTN7hL5fgWo

So there you have it, the global economic and monetary system is coming apart at the seams, the Banksters, both here and abroad, can no longer hide from the truth that Jamie Dimon and the fat cats own America as well as President Obama and congress ~ and that bailing out the banks always ends with tax payers paying the bill.

And speaking of taxpayers ~ where does half of the money that the IRS siphons off from the paychecks of its citizens in taxes every year go?

It's the war machine and a subject that the financial news media is strangely silent about.

4 minute Video:

http://www.realecontv.com/page/11082.html

If you’re not angry, you’re on life support or another planet.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/obama-plays-lead-for-jamie-dimon-and.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com ) 

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on  www.conscioustalk.net

FACEBOOK TANKS / WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Now that the over priced Facebook IPO has come and rightfully tanked, let’s take a revealing look beneath the over-hyped illusion of the social-networking website itself ~ but more importantly what its IPO fiasco tells us about a blatantly rigged stock market, where short term greed still overrides fairness, and how we all got Zuckered : Allen L Roland

I’ve never been a big fan or advocate of Facebook although as a columnist I use it as a publishing platform among many other publishing platforms. I was asked by the producers of my monthly radio show ( Truth Talk ) to join in order to broaden their radio exposure ~ but I spend virtually no daily time on Facebook, probably know less than 10% of my so-called “friends” and have never clicked on a Facebook Ad. I’ve also spent 11 years as an Investment banker, some of it on Wall Street, and know how the Wall Street casino really works.

So anyone who is valuing Facebook by its user base is obviously counting "eye balls" that flat out do not exist.  More important...here's some extremely insightful humor, courtesy of the Onion, that sums up the short and long term prospects of Facebook in 60 seconds...

Video:

http://www.realecontv.com/page/10646.html

Photo of Mark Zuckerberg and his overjoyed Facebook insider friends who made Billions on an inflated bubble that rightfully tanked but at least lived up to their slogans of “Move fast and break things” and “Done is better than perfect”.

It's pretty clear now that the Facebook IPO was a fiasco. At an outrageous opening price of $38 dollars a share ~ it was 100 times earnings “among friends.”

Today it closed at approximately $26.00 dollars a share ~ a loss of millions to those who bought it at the opening price and thought it was another google. Before today, the stock has lost almost 30 percent since it started trading at $38 on May 18.

But yesterday it was also revealed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg knew company shares were overpriced before the May 18 initial public offering and allegedly quietly dumped around $1 billion in shares ~ according to TMZ;

“A new lawsuit claims Mark Zuckerberg pulled a billion dollar fast one on Facebook investors," TMZ reports; "The class action lawsuit ~ filed by disgruntled Facebook shareholders ~ claims the 28-year-old CEO had inside info that the stock was grossly overvalued, and he protected his own financial hide by quickly unloading a ton of Facebook stock."
"This is the second time in two weeks a group of FB shareholders have joined together to accuse the mogul of withholding information."
TMZ did not cite any sources or specific financial details.
"The lawsuit claims Zuckerberg and his cronies hid the fact that there was a foundational flaw in the Facebook business model ~ that there was not nearly enough advertising revenue to support a stock valued at $38 a share," TMZ adds.
"The lawsuit claims Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs ~ all sounded the alarm before the IPO that Facebook was seriously overvalued, but that information was 'selectively disclosed' to only the largest investors."
Read more: http://www.moneynews.com/FinanceNews/Zuckerberg-Facebook-Shares-ipo/2012/06/05/id/441194

Here's one guy ( David Weidner ) who wrote 10 Reasons Not To Buy Facebook Before You Buy It Anyway ~  that got it right before hand and he’s also a user ~ but not a believer ~ who admits he probably would not pay to use it.

Here’s number 7 ~ which now looks prophetic as well as the equally relevant number 10;

7) No parents. “ Facebook, it has been said, is a two-headed company. One head is Mr. Zuckerberg, who builds the products for the users. Cheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, is the one responsible for making the money. She's also considered the company's unofficial grown-up, given that she is older than 40 and has worked somewhere other than the college bookstore, even if it was Google. Together, they've built a nontraditional way of doing business. No meetings. Small teams. They have unconventional mottos: "Move fast, break things" is one, and "Done is better than perfect" is another. This could be a business revolution ~ or the start of a food fight in the corporate cafeteria. “
(10) The ceiling. We may already have hit it with Facebook's valuation.
“Consider that Facebook's 88% growth rate last year was something the company acknowledged was "unsustainable." Or that 10% to 15% of revenue comes from Zynga ZNGA and other game companies that use the Facebook platform. Or everything in this list: skeptical advertisers, a young management team about to become amazingly rich, a history of social-network flameouts, deep-pocketed competition and the privacy issue…. It should give an investor pause, right?

5 minute Weidner Video interview:

http://www.realecontv.com/page/10675.html

Right, David ~ but it’s all in a day's work for Wall Street's chummy club of Investment underwriters and crooked auditors who are well versed in making stock market fantasies a reality at everyone else’s expense.

Here’s the glue that holds it all together ~ "Compliant" auditors (i.e. crooks)

Here’s how it works...Francine McKenna ( author of the Auditors ) explains on Capital Account with Lauren Lyster that Facebook’s earnings or future earnings are rightfully suspect with obvious conflicts of interest;

McKenna explains how auditors (in this case, Ernst & Young) literally cook the books and that there is more than enough reason to suspect their accounting methods. She also explains how nobody had really looked under the hood of Facebook and that CEO’s often make up there own matrix to explain away losses. This would certainly apply to a non-gap matrix where management decides and manipulates reported earnings in order to make their fantasy a reality ~ which appears to most certainly be the case with Farcebook (Facebook).

Video: ( watch first 13 minutes )

http://www.realecontv.com/page/10685.html

Lynn Parramore correctly writes on AlterNet what the Facebook fiasco tells us about our rigged Stock market ~ and remember I was part of that scene for over 11 years; “Why does this happen? Well, mostly because the public is playing a rigged insider game known as the stock market. Generally it goes like this: An IPO, especially one that has been hyped more than the Second Coming, makes a load of cash for a select group of inside investors, both those giving up their shares – people like the founders and the venture capitalists -- and the privileged group of banks that are underwriting the stock issue. When the ordinary investor gets to bid for shares on the stock market, the banks hope to get a big boost in the price, and sail away to their yachts with huge gains…. Facebook is scrambling to place the blame for the fumbled IPO on technical glitches at NASDAQ, but it seems that the public is not buying what they’re selling on that one. No, it looks like Zuckerberg and the underwriters were just greedy, trying to hustle as much money as possible, the public be damned.”    See article:  http://www.alternet.org/economy/155587

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, definitively nails it when he writes “ I was on the phone last night with a former hedge fund CEO who was talking about this ~ "Facebook," he said, "is a colossal example of a complete clusterfuck where everybody wins except the ordinary investor." His point was that virtually every week now we see stories like this that hint at a kind of two-tiered market system in which most of the real action takes place inside an unregulated black-box network of connected insiders who don’t disclose their relationships or their interests, while everyone else, i.e. the regular suckers, live in the more tightly-policed world of prospectuses and quarterly reporting and so on.”

See The Facebook IPO Clusterf**k
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/11583-the-facebook-ipo-clusterfk

So there you have it, Facebook tanked and what really happened is the public got Zuckered ~ and get this ~ many of those laughing faces at Farcebook obviously knew it.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/facebook-tanks-what-really-happened.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com ) 

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on  www.conscioustalk.net

THE VAMPIRES OF WALL STREET / UNREGULATED DERIVATIVE TRADING

It’s time for a stake in the heart of unregulated derivative trading which represents over 150 trillion dollars in the United States alone with most of that risk backed up by the FDIC and ultimately American taxpayers. These unregulated financial vampires are sucking the blood out of Wall Street and leaving America vulnerable to another immense financial collapse: Allen L Roland

There are two ways to be fooled: One is to believe what isn't so; the other is to refuse to believe what is so: Kierkegaard

America is on the edge of an immense moral and financial collapse which is more than evident on Main Street America but still actively hidden and disguised on Wall Street. But behind the smoke and mirrors of a corrupt financial system are the vampires of Wall Street ~ the unregulated Derivative Traders whose feeding frenzy continues unabated and all backed up by the federal Reserve.

Here are some economic figures from 2011 to confirm the ongoing Main Street collapse;

1. A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty.

2. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

3. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

4. One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

5. According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

6. As I have written about previously, 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.

7. One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

8. Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

9. The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

10.The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

See full report:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30013.htm#.Tuw7gzAdmGQ.email

Obviously, Main Street is severely ill and deeply in debt. But Wall Street, on the other hand, is severely infected with the cancer of greed and the primary symptom is unregulated derivative trading.

Watch just the first 15 minutes of the enclosed Capital Account video of an interview with Janet Tavakoli, author of The New Robber Barons, who reveals more about derivative trading in a few minutes than most of the talking heads on the financial newscasts and asks the still pertinent question of why isn’t Jon Corzine in Jail?

Here are some of her other nuggets: The recently passed Jobs Bill is a total sell out to unregulated fraud on Wall Street and that the 600 trillion dollar derivative market is controlled fraud.

‘Video ( First 15 minutes )

http://www.realecontv.com/page/9971.html

Do you ever wonder why it’s possible for the top hedge fund manager in 2011 to make $1,442,308 an hour, while it takes the average American family over 29 years to earn that much? The obvious answer is that they have access to illegal insider information that is inaccessible to the rest of us. See How Hedge Fund Vampires Use Insider Info to Extract Their Dishonest Fortunes. http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/154719

And who is at the center of this eminent financial Armageddon? The privately owned and secretive Federal Reserve Bank ( the mother of all vampires ) who continues to print money out of thin air and back stops ( via the FDIC ) well over 150 trillion dollars of unregulated derivative bets on bets for the United States ~ which only has a gross domestic product of 15 trillion dollars.

We are obviously in "game over" territory here. According to one new survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point while the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to control interest rates. The Fed purchased approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2011~ and this is the only thing that is keeping interest rates in the United States from soaring dramatically

The only question that remains now is when the collapse will take place and how bad it will be.

Watch this 3 minute video of a visibly shocked Progressive Radio Host Thom Hartman try to come to grips with the ticking $150 plus trillion derivative time bombs that are now backed up by the Fed and ultimately you and me as taxpayers.

http://www.realecontv.com/page/5513.html

The needed stake in the heart of the unregulated derivative vampires would be the resurrection of The Glass-Steagall Act, officially known as the Banking Act of 1933, which was a Depression-era reform that separated commercial banking from investment banking (repealed during Clinton administration) whereas an institution could either take deposits or trade securities, but it couldn't do both ~ and most certainly was never considered too big to fail nor could it be bailed out by secret Federal Reserve loans.

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can: Mark Twain.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/vampires-of-wall-street-unregulated.html

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is also available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )