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stomy
27th October 2011, 17:21
Want To Defeat The Banks? Stop Participating In The System!
Thursday, 27 October 2011 01:50 Brandon Smith


http://www.alt-market.com/images/stories/cage1.jpg

In Franz Kafka’s most popular work “The Trial”, his characters relate a short parable which has fascinated and confused curious readers for generations. That parable is entitled “Before The Law”, and its message has been interpreted, reinterpreted, and agonized over by the labyrinthine contrariness of academia, producing numerous conflicting views:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqPeI7-eVgc&feature=player_embedded

Existentialists, of course, automatically jump to the conclusion that “Before The Law” is a message of the absurd nature of man’s search for reason and structure in a universe of random coincidence. That “the law”, as it were, is a superficial concept that humanity uses to make life more bearable. That we seek to create artificial social constructs in order to keep ourselves afloat in a sea of chaos. This is partly true. The law is, indeed, an abstraction conjured by men. However, the source of the most fundamental laws, being inherent conscience, is far from abstract. In fact, it is one of the few aspects of our existence that is undeniably tangible and universal. It is proof that all is NOT random, and that there is a meaning and a purpose to what we do here and now.

I see “The Trial” and “Before The Law” not as treatise on the futility of man’s search for justice, but as a warning on the foolishness of man’s dependency on systems not rooted in conscience. That is to say, we have a tendency to linger about idly while others make our decisions for us. We expect the system we live in to provide answers, to provide nurturance, to provide fairness, and to provide change where necessary. This expectation is a dangerous one.

Most social and political systems today are designed around collectivist methodologies. Their primary tool is centralization of power, and the removal of choice from the public consciousness. We are made to believe that the establishment is necessary for our survival, and that to abandon it would mean certain destruction. We are taught that the individual is subservient and inconsequential in the face of the state. This is simply not so. Like the traveler in “Before The Law”, we have been defeated by our own expectations of how the law (or justice) works. We sit and wait for permission, when we should be charging through the gates and taking what is rightfully ours.

Even amidst recent and increasingly prevalent protest actions on the part of Occupy Wall Street groups, there are still some within these movements who believe the answer to fighting back against the corruption of banking cartels and puppet politicians is to hand even MORE power over to the state, and to collectivize our culture still further. The ignorance of this mentality is no less than astonishing.

The only practical strategy for combating the tyranny of centralized systems has been and always will be decentralization. Individuals must stop relying on the rules of a rigged game to see them through to the truth. This means that while mass protests are certainly a powerful tactic for voicing concerns on an international stage, they accomplish little to nothing in the way of meaningful change in the long run unless they are backed by individual actions to break away from dependency upon a poisoned political and economic framework.

The common assumption amongst Americans is that nothing can be done without mass action resulting in “compromise” from leadership. That the healing of our cultural dynamic is a “top down” process. That one person alone has little at his disposal for bettering the world. In fact, it is always self aware and self sustaining individuals who build better societies, not angry mobs without understanding or direction. Individuals blaze the path that the rest of the world eventually follows, and they do this through one very simple and effective act; walking away.

By walking away from the corrupt system, and building our own, we make the establishment obsolete. This philosophy could be summed up as follows:

Provide for yourself and others those necessities which the corrupt system cannot or will not, and the masses (even if they are unaware) will naturally gravitate towards this new and better way. Offer freedom where there was once restriction, and you put the controlling establishment on guard. Eventually, they will either have to conform to you, attack you, or fade away completely. In each case, you win. Even in the event of attack, the system is forced to expose its tyranny and its true colors openly, making your cause stronger.

The obvious question now is; how can each one of us use this strategy in our daily lives? Here are just a few easy applications:

1) Focus On The Federal Reserve

If you as an activist or the movement you support are not fully aware of the private Federal Reserve Bank and its primary role in the destruction of our economy, our currency, and our political dynamic, then your protests are a waste of time, and your movement will end in failure. Uneducated mass actions are easily manipulated, and can even end up serving the purposes of those oligarchs they seek to dethrone. G. Edward Griffin’s full analysis on the history of the Federal Reserve “The Creature From Jekyll Island” and similar materials should be handed to every OWS protester before it is too late.

2) Take Back Your Savings

Do you have a bank account with one of the so called “too big to fails”? Is the culmination of your savings currently in the hands of financial monstrosities like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, etc? Well, take your money back! This has been done by a few protestors and the response from banks has been outlandishly oppressive, including new guidelines attempting to obstruct customer access to savings, and even calling the police! This tells me that they are afraid. Afraid of Americans catching wind of the idea that the money they place in the accounts of bad banks is still theirs to do with as they will. If you don’t like how these institutions operate, don’t let them have your money. It’s as simple as that. Not only is this an act of defiance that truly hurts the banking system, it also protects your hard earned wealth (at least initially) from the inevitable collapse of these fiscally insolvent blood leaching leviathans (watch Bank of America closely, folks!).

3) Use Alternative Currencies

After you take your savings away from the banks, you still aren’t quite free of their influence. You are now holding fiat dollars, which the Federal Reserve, the foundation of all banking fraud, is currently devaluing. The idea of walking away from the dollar sounds ridiculous or even frightening to those trapped in the centralization mindset, but it is a highly effective method for combating the system itself. The dollar is a sham, and has been since its future was handed over to the Fed in 1913. Alternatives exist, and they must be utilized. Communities across the country use various scripts as a means to diminish reliance on the dollar, but ultimately, the best currencies are those that cannot be created out of thin air unhindered. This means gold and silver.

Central banking proponents have been railing against even the concept of a return to gold and silver currencies for years, and the Department Of Justice has labeled the use of such alternatives in place of dollars as a form of “domestic terrorism”. This should tell you, quite clearly, that they are deathly afraid of activists organizing to drop the dollar to pursue metals. If the system is willing to use the law as a weapon to keep us from having sound money, then we should be rubbing their nose in it daily by trading without dollars. They should be forced to react, and in the process, forced to expose their true intentions for our economic futures.

4) Build Barter Networks

If a bunch of people can band together to huddle in parks with signs for weeks in cities across the nation, then they can band together to trade goods and services outside the establishment system as well. Barter networks grow spontaneously out of economic collapse regardless of what any group decides to do, but generally, they appear AFTER the worst has happened. Wouldn’t it be wiser to organize such markets now, before a full collapse takes place? By preempting disaster with a backup or failsafe free market barter economy in each town and city, we insulate ourselves from the effects of the crisis, and, we cut loose from our dependency on the controlled mainstream economy. Localized trade makes it possible to walk away from corporate chains and maintain the circulation of wealth within a community, while countering the increasingly higher taxes caused by austerity and inflation that we are likely to see in this country very soon. It really is a no-brainer.

5) Grow A Garden

I don’t know how to say this nicely; don’t be a jackass, learn to grow your own food. Don’t expect that our economy will continue to sustain you. Actually, you should have every expectation that it won’t! If every Wall Street or Fed protester had their own garden patch and some stored goods, we would all be much safer. Food dependence is the worst kind. It has been used by governments and despots for centuries to cull the masses and dissuade dissent.

Sharecropping should be common in every community. Neighborhood gardens should be standard. Every household should have a year’s worth of food. Period.

Imagine that you lose your job and every cent you have tomorrow. Imagine that mom and dad are broke and have no money to lend you. Imagine that food stamps are a thing of the past because the national debt has become so exponential that entitlement programs have been erased. Now, how do you live from day to day? Where do you get the nutrition required for you to continue holding up that sign or shouting that slogan? Think about it...

6) Start A Micro-Industry

If the U.S. economy is ever going to get on its feet again, it will be because average Americans bring it back through local industry. This means ending our community addictions to corporately produced goods and returning to specialized trade skills. It means coalitions of local farmers, craftsmen, and micro-industries providing goods and services with a city or county based market focus. Large manufacturers and business chains relying on the model of globalization will have absolutely no ability to rebuild mainstreet commerce, even if they wanted to, because their methods depend upon constant outsourcing and downsizing for survival. Private tradesmen will be the only people capable of filling the dark void these corporations leave behind.

7) Start An Activist Group

The establishment HATES when you do this. The spontaneous organizing of groups outside government or corporate purview has generated notoriously absurd responses from authorities, including accusations of “extremism”, infiltration, and wrongful arrest. If this sounds frightening, then I suggest you get over it quickly, because this is going to be the norm for many years to come. The evils of the world are not undone by apathetic naysayers anymore than they are undone by mindless mobs. Without the coordinated actions of aware individuals with a common focus, nothing is going to change.

This group could be something a simple as a local barter network or a political discussion forum, or, a complex national organization geared towards tangible political action. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s based on the promotion of Constitutional freedoms, and its leadership is decentralized. Just make it happen…

At bottom, if we want to fight back against a system we cannot take back through traditional means, then we must learn to walk away. If the system feeds us, clothes us, and shelters us at will, then ordinary protest is pointless. Our tender parts are in a rusty vice on the autocratic workbench and until we pull them out, no amount of screaming and pounding will improve our situation. Independence is won through the constant striving for self responsibility. Freedom is won through a position of personal strength, not weakness and self-enslavement.

Numbers alone do not make a movement, and the elites we currently work to supplant are not going to flinch at a few random protests. In all likelihood they will welcome these actions as a useful distraction. Tyrants don’t fear the torches and pitchforks anymore. What they do fear is balanced insight, self reliance, and exceptional force of will. A handful of men with these attributes are far more dangerous to a corrupt system than thousands of citizens driven only by insatiable anger. To overcome oppression, we must first overcome ourselves. The ability to step outside the paradigm, the ability to act without permission, and charge the gates without apprehension, is the key to toppling totalitarian systems and exposing the great lie of our age; that we cannot exist without the cage we were born into.



You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

Want to protect your savings from the hidden tax of inflation? BUY GOLD!

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Source: http://www.alt-market.com/articles/301-want-to-defeat-the-banks-stop-participating-in-the-system


If you agree, copy and paste this article on the Internet for a new world :)

Unified Serenity
27th October 2011, 18:20
Nice post with some great ideas. I like the concept of bartering and we tried it here years ago, but we ran into some problems over what people valued their service as vs. what you could get with your points. Obviously some things are worth more than others, but how a business can survive doing barter if they are not properly compensated or things they need are not availabe in barter was a large problem. I'd love to see a system that works really well and see how it can be duplicated. There's also the issue of needing "real" money for things that are not available here or things a business has to get to do their job. Any tips are welcome.

stomy
27th October 2011, 18:57
Nice post with some great ideas. I like the concept of bartering and we tried it here years ago, but we ran into some problems over what people valued their service as vs. what you could get with your points. Obviously some things are worth more than others, but how a business can survive doing barter if they are not properly compensated or things they need are not availabe in barter was a large problem. I'd love to see a system that works really well and see how it can be duplicated. There's also the issue of needing "real" money for things that are not available here or things a business has to get to do their job. Any tips are welcome.

To change the world and start a system of barter, we must start from the basics right, are you okay?
You can also ask for good advice to the creator of this text Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

Advice:

People who have accounts can transfer money and close their accounts with their banks (Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, etc ...).

Instead of showing the street and having trouble with the police, take this action:)



http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlc9qy_rastani-le-trader-qui-priait-pour-la-recession-et-le-krach_news#from=embed

-mJJIxurAIQ

Seikou-Kishi
27th October 2011, 19:08
Excellent thread, Stomy! I've badgered so many people into watching that BBC live clip it's unreal :D

Franny
27th October 2011, 20:30
Good thread stomy, thank you for posting.

People may want to consider putting money in local credit unions when they remove it from the big banks as one small thing they can do.

Take a look at places like Ithaca, New York that have had a barter type system in place for years with Ithaca Dollars. The last time I looked they had written a manual to teach others how to do it in their area.

There is also one in Northern California - donʻt recall the name of the small town. They are also creating their own currency and encouraging and teaching people to grow their own gardens and participate in community efforts to create support systems for all the people in the town.

Many good things are happening.

stomy
28th October 2011, 14:52
If Soros was innocent, Why Reuters has deleted this article.


Soros: not a funder of Wall Street protests
(2011-10-13)
(Reuters) -

By Mark Egan and Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - George Soros isn't a financial backer of the Wall Street protests, despite speculation by critics including radio host Rush Limbaugh that the billionaire investor has helped fuel the anti-capitalist movement.

Limbaugh summed up the chatter when he told his listeners last week, "George Soros money is behind this."

Soros spokesman Michael Vachon said that Soros has not "funded the protests directly or indirectly." He added: "Assertions to the contrary are an attempt by those who oppose the protesters to cast doubt on the authenticity of the movement."

Soros has donated at least $3.5 million to an organization called the Tides Center in recent years, earmarking the funds for specific purposes. Tides has given grants to Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada whose inventive marketing campaign sparked the first demonstrations last month.

Vachon said Open Society specified what its donations could be used for. He said they were not general purpose funds to be used at the discretion of Tides -- for example for grants to Adbusters. "Our grants to Tides were for other purposes."

Tides declined to comment.

According to IRS disclosure documents from 2007-2009, the latest data available, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to Tides, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.

IRS disclosure documents and reports from Tides also show that Tides gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.

The Vancouver-based Adbusters publishes a magazine with a circulation of 120,000 and is known for its spoofs of popular advertisements. It says it wants to "change the way corporations wield power" and its goal is "to topple existing power structures."

Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn said the group is 95 percent funded by subscribers paying for the magazine.

"George Soros's ideas are quite good, many of them. I wish he would give Adbusters some money, we sorely need it," he said. "He's never given us a penny."

Adbusters may have sparked Occupy Wall Street but it is by no means in control of the disparate movement, with the protests now in their fourth week and spreading to cities across America. President Barack Obama, BlackRock Chief Executive Laurence Fink and Soros himself are among those who have expressed sympathy for the protesters' frustration with high unemployment.

SHARED FRUSTRATION

"I can understand their sentiment," Soros told reporters last week at the United Nations about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, which are expected to spur solidarity marches globally on Saturday. He declined to comment further.

Soros, 81, is No. 7 on the Forbes 400 list with a fortune of $22 billion, which has ballooned in recent years as he deftly responded to financial market turmoil. He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies.

Like the protesters, Soros is no fan of the 2008 bank bailouts and subsequent government purchase of the toxic sub-prime mortgage assets they amassed in the property bubble.

The protesters say the Wall Street bank bailouts in 2008 left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from Washington. They contend that the richest 1 percent of Americans have amassed vast fortunes while being taxed at a lower rate than most people.

Soros in 2009 wrote in an editorial that the purchase of toxic bank assets would, "provide artificial life support for the banks at considerable expense to the taxpayer."

He urged the Obama administration to take bolder action, either by recapitalizing or nationalizing the banks and forcing them to lend at attractive rates. His advice went unheeded.

The Hungarian-American was an early supporter of the 2008 election campaign of Barack Obama, who will seek a second term as president in the November, 2012, election. He has long backed liberal causes - the Open Society Institute, the foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch.

SLOW START

Adbusters, which publishes a magazine and runs such campaigns as "Digital Detox Week" and "Buy Nothing Day," came up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, said Lasn, the 69-year-old co-founder of the group.

"It came out of these brainstorming sessions we have at Adbusters," Lasn told Reuters, adding they began promoting it online on July 13. "We were inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and we had this feeling that America was ripe for a Tahrir moment."

"We felt there was a real rage building up in America, and we thought that we would like to create a spark which would give expression for this rage."

Other support for Occupy Wall Street has come from online funding website Kickstarter, where more than $75,000 has been pledged, deliveries of food and from cash dropped in a bucket at the park. Liberal film maker Michael Moore has also pledged to donate money.

The protests began in earnest on September 17, triggered by an Adbusters campaign featuring a provocative poster showing a ballerina dancing atop the famous bronze bull in New York's financial district as a crowd of protesters wearing gas masks approach behind her.

Dressed in anarchist black, the battle-ready mob is shrouded in a fog suggestive of tear gas or fires burning. Some are wearing gas masks, others wielding sticks. The poster's message seems to be a heady combination of sexuality, violence, excitement and adventure.

Former carpenter Robert Daros, 23, saw that poster in a cafe in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Having lost his work as a carpenter after Florida's speculative construction boom collapsed in a heap of sub-prime mortgage foreclosures, he quit his job as a bartender and traveled to New York City with just a sleeping bag and the hope of joining the protest movement.

Daros was one of the first people to arrive on Wall Street for the so-called occupation on September 17, when protesters marched and tried to camp on Wall Street only to be driven off by police to Zuccotti Park - two acres of concrete without a blade of grass near the rising One World Trade Center.

"When I was a carpenter, I lost my job because the financier of my project was arrested for corporate fraud," said Daros, who was wearing a red arm band to show he was helping out in the medic section of the Occupy Wall Street camp.

Since its obscure beginnings, the campaign has drawn global media attention in places as far-flung as Iran and China. The Times of London, however, was not alone when it called the protests "Passionate but Pointless."

Adbusters' co-founder Lasn dismisses that, reeling off specific demands: a tax on the richest 1 percent, a tax on currency trades and a tax on all financial transactions.

"Down the road, there will be crystal clear demands coming out of this movement," he said. "But this first phase of the movement is messy and leaderless and demandless."

"I think it was perfect the way it happened."

Source: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kera/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1863498/US/Soros.not.a.funder.of.Wall.Street.protests

Source: http://revivall.over-blog.com/article-financement-indirect-de-georges-soros-au-profit-de-occuper-wallstreet-indirect-funding-from-george-s-86849377.html

stomy
28th October 2011, 20:24
Ten Reasons Not To Bank On (Or With) Bank Of America

Charging customers for a debit card is just one reason not to bank at BoA. Recent Occupy Santa Cruz Bank of America incident illustrates how sensitive B of A is to protest. This "too big to fail" bank may collapse like a house made of junk bonds and become a taxpayer burden. Here are a few other reasons why you shouldn't bank with them.

There is no shortage of hatred for the biggest banks. Indeed, the Occupy Wall Street movement is leading a national revolution against these byzantine, powerful Goliaths for the economic devastation they have caused. This makes it difficult to choose the worst of the bunch. That said, a strong case can be made that Bank of America deserves the title of the nation's most despised bank.

Here are ten reasons to take your money out of Bank of America - and park it at a credit union or community bank near you. (And yes, that may be near impossible if you have a mortgage with them, as refinancing away from any big bank nowadays is a nightmare.)

1. B of A rejects the right of customers to protest. When two Occupy Santa Cruz protesters in California marched into a local Bank of America to close their accounts, the response was, "You cannot be a protester and a customer at the same time," followed by a threat to call the police if the women didn't leave. (The attending officer later reiterated the bank manager's message.) Meanwhile, the fact that Bank of America charges a fee for closing an account prompted Rep. Brad Miller (D-North Carolina), who resides in Bank of America's headquarters state, to introduce a bill to protect customers from such fees.

2. To recoup ongoing losses from its stupendously dumb acquisitions of Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, B of A pillages its customers. Thus, despite massive public outrage, the $5 debit usage fee for customers with less than a $5,000 balance and no mortgage with the bank will begin in 2012. B of A was the first large bank to confirm it would charge this fee, which is the highest in current discourse among the banks.

On October 18, Consumers Union wrote a letter to B of A chief Brian Moynihan asking him to reconsider this fee, which impacts poorer clients disproportionately. The letter summed it up nicely: "Consumers should not be required to pay a costly fee that appears to be arbitrary and designed to generate income to make up for Bank of America's bad business decisions rather than covering the costs of providing debit card services." Banks collect 24 cents from retailers for each customer swipe, much more than the median 8 cents it costs a bank to process the purchase. Senator Dick Durbin's (D-Illinois) response was to urge customers: "Vote with your feet. Get the heck out of that bank."

3. B of A's other fees are just as bad. According to its last annual report, the bank has 29.3 million active online subscribers who paid over $300 billion worth of bills in 2010. In May, B of A raised its checking account fees, which included e-banking, to $12, in line with JP Morgan Chase's decision to do the same, up from $8.95 per month. In June, it started a $35 overdraft fee, even on overdrafts of one cent. Next year, it will incorporate basic checking with a new "essentials'' account structure that makes monthly fees unavoidable, that will not include free bill pay, and that has a mandatory $6 minimum fee.

Last Monday, Bank of America was charged (along with JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo) with colluding with the two major credit card companies, Visa and MasterCard, to keep ATM fees high; in other words, they were charged with "price-fixing," in direct opposition to antitrust laws. This is the third of three such suits filed recently, each seeking class action status.

4. Bank of America takes gross advantage of the military.

It is the official bank of the US military and has branches by or on many bases, which provides the firm with another locus of extortion. B of A can entice military personnel to take out loans at usurious rates. Personal loans made to soldiers for a few thousand dollars can actually keep them indebted for the rest of their lives.

Last May, Bank of America paid $22 million to settle charges of improperly foreclosing on active-duty troops. The firm spun these foreclosures as being Countrywide's fault for having started them before becoming part of B of A.

5. Bank of America is officially rated the biggest, scariest bank. Its stock price also fared the worst of the group of banks (which also included Citigroup and Wells Fargo) when Moody's Investors Service downgraded it on September 21.

B of A's long-term holding company (parent bank) rating was chopped two notches to Baa1 from A2, and its retail bank rating was cut two notches from A2 to Aa3, placing B of A four notches below rival JP Morgan Chase and one below Citigroup, the third-largest US bank. Its bank holding company has the lowest rating among the top five banks with the largest derivatives positions.

This caused great fear for investors involved in derivatives trades with the Merrill Lynch division, prompting them to request trades be moved to the part of the bank with the better rating - the retail part with the insured (peoples') deposits. That way, B of A doesn't have to pony up as much collateral to back the trades, as it would in a subsidiary with a lower rating. The Fed was recklessly happy to approve, despite the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's (FDIC) misgiving about having to insure more risk, even if it can borrow from the US Treasury to do so. Meanwhile, Bank of America's stock price got so crushed that Warren Buffett scooped up a $5 billion preferred stock deal, effectively betting that the government won't let this big bank go bust.

6. B of A's derivatives position keeps rising. The total amount of derivatives in the FDIC-insured portion of B of A as of mid-year was $53.7 trillion, up 10 percent from $48.9 trillion the prior year, and up nearly 35 percent from its pre-fall crisis level of $40 trillion (the Merrill Lynch securities division holds $22 trillion in addition.) The bank has $5 trillion of credit derivatives, nearly double its $2.7 trillion pre-Merrill amount. In addition, because of its inherent zombie status and rating downgrades, the cost of insuring B of A against a possible default continues to rise in the credit derivatives market - a pattern that American International group (AIG) once followed.

7. Bank of America got the most AIG money of the big depositor banks. By virtue of having acquired Merrill Lynch's AIG-related portfolio, B of A got to keep approximately $12 billion worth of federal AIG backing, too. It also received more government subsidies than any other mega-bank except Citigroup. Its stimulus package included an initial Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) helping of $15 billion for the bank and $10 billion for Merrill, plus a second helping of $20 billion in January 2009 after it became clear that Merrill's losses had spiked to $15 billion - in order to ensure the takeover from hell went through and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and then-Merrill Lynch executive John Thain could pat themselves on the back for saving the world. The government guaranteed $118 billion in assets, mostly Merrill's, in the new merged firm. With the benefit of the Fed's nearly 0 percent money policy, and a depositor base to plunder, B of A repaid that aid.

In terms of overall federal subsidies (including TARP), Bank of America was second only to Citigroup ($230 billion compared to $415 billion). None of that got in the way of former B of A CEO Ken Lewis' personal take, a $63 million retirement plan, in addition to the $63 million he scored during the three years before his departure.

8. Bank of America leads the big bank fraud lawsuit settlement tally. So far, it has racked up the largest settlement, $8.5 billion in June, to settle claims related to $100 billion worth of Countrywide-spun mortgage securities backed by faulty loans, with bigwig investors like Pimco, BlackRock, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

B of A is also being sued by state and federal regulators for questionable foreclosure practices and a union benefits plan for hiding foreclosure problems that impacted its share price. It is one of 17 major US financial institutions being sued by the Federal Housing Finance Agency for billions of dollars of mortgage-securities-related losses that may require B of A to potentially repurchase $50 billion worth of allegedly fraudulent securities. Earlier this year, B of A settled for $3 billion regarding bad loans that they had repackaged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as agreed to a $624 million settlement in a securities fraud class-action suit filed by New York Sate and City pension fund regarding Countrywide stock losses. Then there's AIG's August lawsuit, in which AIG wants $10 billion in damages for mortgage-related securities it bought and against which it claims B of A committed securities fraud.

That's a lot of pain for a Federal Reserve-approved $4.1 billion acquisition. Meanwhile, since the settlement didn't lead to a financial restatement, under the supremely elastic (read: useless) Dodd-Frank Act, executives get to keep their related bonuses.

9. Even after lawsuits, B of A would still rather please investors than customers. Investors that won money in the $8.5 billion settlement were upset that B of A was continuing to service loans, instead of foreclosing on them more quickly. Now, B of A had a nasty incentive to kick people out of homes faster, rather than work with them to refinance or restructure mortgages. Two months later, their foreclosure process has, in fact, sped up.
Bank of America foreclosure notices are surging again following a slight robo-signing- related slowdown, meaning they are now sending out a greater increase in default notices (90-day overdue loans) than other banks. The bank has $30 billion in residential mortgage loans in default, which will become foreclosures for thousands of families.

10. Bank of America, despite having been buoyed up by the government, did not pay taxes, and, given its glorious ineptness, will be laying off 30,000 workers. Not only did the bank pay no federal taxes for 2010 (or 2009) by making use of its posted pre-tax loss of $5.4 billion, it actually cited a tax benefit of $1 billion. Meanwhile, it has announced plans to cut up to 30,000 jobs over the next few years as part of its plan to save $5 billion, ostensibly due to the settlements it's paying for engaging in upper-management-approved fraud.

Finally, consider the two reasons that any of this list is possible. One is the Glass-Steagall Act repeal, which enables banks to comingle straight costumer business with reckless securities creation and trading. The second reason is coddling by a Fed that finances and approves every bad move. B of A is the poster child for a Glass-Steagall repeal gone wrong. Lewis pulled in a slew of other banks under the B of A umbrella, making it - at one time - the country's largest bank, including the infamous Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch. Now it has $2.26 trillion in total assets and $1.8 trillion assets in insured subsidiaries, $1.2 trillion of customer deposits ($1.066 trillion in the United States) and about $804 billion in FDIC-insured deposits - all part of the giant, risk-laden mess that is B of A.

Without being broken up via a new, strong Glass-Steagall Act, when banks need to find ways to make money, they resort to extorting it from their sitting ducks, er - customers. Meanwhile, that's where credit unions, which are not-for-profits owned by their members and not by outside shareholders, come in. They generally don't engage in crazy derivatives trades, or charge unnecessary fees for holding your money or for letting you pay bills with it, or for online banking. In terms of personal attention, among other economic reasons, the credit and smaller community banks are a much better bet.

Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-ten-reasons-not-bank-or-bank-america

stomy
29th October 2011, 11:37
Interactive Map: Bank Failures 2008-2011

10876

Click for Interactive Source: thestreet.com (http://www.thestreet.com/stock-market-news/10607062/bank-failure-map.html)

Table of bank closures from 2008 to 2011: thestreet.com (http://www.thestreet.com/stock-market-news/10613342/2008-2010-bank-failures.html)

A good Source for your money: findacreditunion.com (http://www.findacreditunion.com/)

Source: http://revivall.over-blog.com/article-usa-carte-interactive-fermetures-des-banques-de-2008-a-2011-interactive-map-bank-failures-2008-20-87498887.html

EileenCookies
30th October 2011, 03:47
So did you use the library card today? did you drive on their roads, use their stores, etc? Yes. So you didn't stop. Why asking anyone else?

Stop the mind (is my motto).

Lord Sidious
30th October 2011, 03:49
So did you use the library card today? did you drive on their roads, use their stores, etc? Yes. So you didn't stop. Why asking anyone else?

Stop the mind (is my motto).

Their roads?
Not theirs at all.
The roads are ours, we paid for them.

stomy
31st October 2011, 19:11
MF Global: Official Bankruptcy


A woman leaves the office complex where MF Global Holdings Ltd have an office on 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan October 29, 2011. REUTERS-Andrew Kelly

NEW YORK | Mon Oct 31, 2011 1:50pm EDT


(Reuters) - MF Global Holdings Ltd filed for bankruptcy protection after a tentative deal with a buyer fell apart, marking a stunning failure for CEO Jon Corzine who tried to turn the more than 200-year-old futures brokerage into a mini-Goldman Sachs.


The meltdown made MF Global the biggest U.S. casualty of the European debt crisis, as the brokerage paid the price for the former Goldman CEO's big, risky bets on sovereign debt.


The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing came after talks to sell a variety of assets to Interactive Brokers Group Inc broke down earlier on Monday, a person familiar with the matter said.


MF Global's collapse has raised questions about whether the 64-year-old Corzine's affinity for risk-taking finally caught up to him after a career that took him to the top echelons of Wall Street and then into politics as a U.S. senator and to the New Jersey state governor's mansion.

The bankruptcy, the seventh-largest by assets in U.S. history, is reminiscent of 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed at the height of the financial crisis. But market participants said the impact from this collapse, far smaller, would likely be contained.

MF Global traders and counterparties were left scrambling and confused on Monday, as MF Global halted its shares, but did not file for bankruptcy until well after the U.S. markets had opened.

"Ultimately it will have lost all confidence of its investor base," said Michael Epstein, a restructuring adviser with CRG Partners. "I'm not sure what restructuring it actually does. In some respects, it's a baby Lehman, in effect."

Three traders wearing MF Global jackets were seen leaving the Chicago Board of Trade prior to the opening of pit trading and floor sources told Reuters they had been turned away after their security access cards were denied.

The New York Federal Reserve suspended MF Global from conducting new business with the central bank. CME Group Inc, IntercontinentalExchange Inc and Singapore Exchange Ltd and Singapore's central bank all halted the broker's operations in some form except for liquidations.

There was little evidence of any severe ruptures in commodity markets, although volumes were down sharply as investors said they preferred to wait for more clarity before placing new trades.

JPMorgan Chase & Co's exposure for a $1.2 billion syndicated loan to MF Global is less than $100 million, a source at the bank said.

Jeff carter, an independent futures trader in Chicago, said the impact on the markets should be smaller and nothing like when Lehman failed and hedge funds had money locked up with the firm for months.

Corzine's decision to chase yield by going after European sovereign debt was clearly ill-advised and always seemed much too risky, Carter said.

On Monday, MF Global's HR department was busy making calls withdrawing job offers it made over the past few weeks, according to a person familiar with the situation.

BANKRUPTCY FILING

MF Global scrambled through the weekend and into Monday to find buyers for all or parts of the company, while at the same time hiring restructuring and bankruptcy advisers in case nothing could be done.

The company's shares and bonds plunged in recent days. In the past week, MF Global posted a quarterly loss, its shares fell by two-thirds and its credit ratings were cut to junk.

Corzine was trying to transform MF Global from a brokerage that mainly places customers' trades on exchanges into an investment bank that bets with its own capital.

But the company was also suffering because of low interest rates, which hurt profits from core brokerage operations.

It may be easier for MF Global to work out a sale in bankruptcy than outside of it, said Bill Brandt, chief executive of Chicago-based turnaround firm Development Specialists Inc.

By filing for bankruptcy, MF Global freezes the value of its free-falling notes and gives potential suitors a clearer picture of the losses they would be taking on, Brandt said.

"If I were trying to do a deal fast, rather than sell the company itself, I'd see if I could peg the notes at a discounted price and find someone else to buy the distressed notes," Brandt said.

If a sale is in the offing, the buyer may be a European bank or sovereign government, as such entities would be particularly keen on stopping the slide and maximizing the value of the notes, Brandt said.

MF Global Finance USA Inc also filed for Chapter 11 protection, court records show. Both MF Global entities filed for protection from creditors with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan.

"The real question is how many assets will be left to transfer," said Niamh Alexander, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

"Customers might move very quickly and it may be that every hour that passes shrinks the portfolio of assets that could be transferred" to a buyer, KBW's Alexander said.

MF Global's deeply distressed 6.25 percent notes maturing in 2016 fell 10.5 cents on the dollar to 39.5 cents, pushing their yield up to 31.6 percent, according to the Trace, which reports bond trades. The price had earlier fallen as low as 15 cents.

Its shares remained halted in New York.

The company hired boutique investment bank Evercore Partners Inc to help find a buyer, separate sources said this past week.



Source: reuters.com
Source: http://revivall.over-blog.com/article-mf-global-faillite-officielle-mf-global-official-bankruptcy-87684331.html