47 minutes 49 seconds. Riveting. The bottom line: high-frequency computer based trading is divorced from reality, humans, and tangible value.
Josh Kilbourn: Bush-Obama End Financial Prosecutions
03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government
US Federal Prosecutions For Financial Fraud In the Obama Administration Fall to Record Lows
Jesse's Cafe Americain, 16 November 2011
The declines in US Federal prosecutions for financial fraud that began under G.W. Bush have followed that down trend that in the first three years of the Obama Administration. That might make more sense if Obama had not been elected as a reform president in response to one of the greatest financial frauds in American history.
In the first three years of the Obama Administration, federal prosecutions have been running at new highs. Over half of the prosecutions involve illegal immigration. Another 17% are drug related.
Illegal immigrants and drug dealers have the reputation for being notoriously cheap in providing campaign contributions.
Prosecutions for financial fraud however have dropped to the lowest levels in over 20 years.
Read more (including NYT article).
Phi Beta Iota: When Goldman Sachs continues to “own” the Secretary of the Treasury, has its own lobbyist in the office of the National Security Advisor to the President, and can count on a the Fed Chairman–as always, both Jewish and ensnarled in conflict of interest relationships with the major private banks, we can only conclude that Bush-Obama are one.
John Robb: Understanding Pathogenic Behavior
03 Economy, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military
Within human social and economic systems, pathogenic behavior is spreading. This is particularly true among powerful, successful, and wealthy people (finance, economics, politics, etc.) in the developed world. What specifically do I mean by pathogenic? An ever greater number of these people are adopting behaviors that are actively hostile to the human systems we rely upon. They actually think it is OK to put these systems at risk for personal benefit. This is very dangerous. Given the massive amounts of network, technological, and financial leverage that's currently available to these people, even a single bad actor can wreak global havoc like never before (as in, they could cause an economic collapse that's so severe that it could kill more people than every war we've ever had to date, combined).
So, why is this happening and how can we prevent it? This has been a tough section of the book I'm currently writing. Fortunately, I think I'm starting to unravel it. Here we go. In order to understand why some bad actors are willing to do grievous harm to the complex systems they rely upon, we need to visit the cutting edge of microbiology. Let's start that exploration with a look at an amazing article by Brett Finlay in the Scientific American called, “Stopping Infections: The Art of Bacteriological Warfare.”
Good, Neutral, and Bad Bacteria
Continue reading “John Robb: Understanding Pathogenic Behavior”
Mini-Me: TheyRule Web Site Back Online
02 China, 03 Economy, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
They were online many years ago, then gone, now back.
See Also:
Who is the ‘Goldman Sachs rules the world' trader?
Review: Gods of Money – Wall Street and the Death of the American Century
Review: Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
Journal: $750 Billion Wall Street Scam, Russian Anger, Chinese Intent, We are NOT Making This Up!
Mini-Me: Graduates versus Oligarchs–Reality Knocking
03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, GovernmentPaul Krugman recollects a point he made years ago that Chuck Spinney and Joseph Stiglitz and Martin Auerbach have been pressing home for over a decade. Absentee landlords and capital flight from the heartland. TWO sucking chest wounds.
Paul Krugman
New York Times, 1 November 2011
Dean Baker raises an important point here: it’s really awfully late in the game to be saying that the important inequality issue is college graduates versus non-graduates. It’s not clear that this was ever true, and it certainly hasn’t been true for a while.
I wrote about this years ago, using Ben Bernanke’s maiden testimony as Fed chair as an entry point. As I said then, Bernanke — like many others — had made:
a fundamental misreading of what’s happening to American society. What we’re seeing isn’t the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we’re seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.
Ralph Nader: Overcoming Corporatism
Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence
From: Ralph Nader
Date: Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 8:38 AM
Subject: Overcoming Corporatism/Selling My Book
The organizers of the spreading Occupy initiative are taking their awareness and moral indignation right to corporate territory—Wall Street, the corporate lobbies in Washington, D.C. and their likes around the nation. The denizens of corporate territory have taken notice, with varying degrees of alarm, hoping that wintry weather will thin out the encampments.
But the corporate plunderers have not changed their behavior, continuing to dominate, outsource labor, deceive, pump the war machine, pollute, demand taxpayers bailouts, and guarantee and provide open checkbooks for the election campaigns of their indentured politicians.
