Audio of Bill Black featured on “Le Show” with Harry Shearer
“Bill Black fraud” at DuckDuckGo
Bill Black is an expert on white-collar crime.
Audio of Yves Smith featured on “Le Show” with Harry Shearer
Louis D. Brandeis on Banks Against the People
03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, IO Sense-Making, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
In 1912, Woodrow Wilson campaigned for President using many Progressive ideas about strengthening the economy: banking reform, tariff reduction and the elimination of monopolies and trusts. The consolidation of these ideas became known as the New Freedom.
After Wilson's election, Louis Brandeis (who was responsible for many of Wilson's ideas in the first place) wrote a series of articles for Harper's Weekly which outlined why the New Freedom was necessary and how best to implement it. In 1914, the articles were collected in book form and published under the title Other People's Money–and How the Bankers Use It.
Brandeis' central thesis was that the large banking houses were colluding with businessmen to create trusts in America's major industries. Brandeis felt that not only did trusts stifle competition, but also they became so large that they became unable to operate efficiently.
Brandeis backed up his arguments with facts–copious facts gleaned from his battles against J. P. Morgan and Charles Mellen in the New Haven Railroad merger battle and from the Pujo Committee–a House committee report that investigated the abuses of the “Money Trust.”
Wilson was able to push through a number of laws regarding the regulation of business and trusts, but in many ways, due to mergers and stock manipulation, conditions in the business world today remain the same. Many of the details in Other People's Money may be dated, but its central ideas remain relevant–so much so that is still in print almost 90 years after it was first published. The chapters here are free online.
Chapter I: Our Financial Oligarchy
Chapter II: How The Combiners Combine
Chapter III: Interlocking Directorates
Chapter IV: Serve One Master Only!
Chapter V: What Publicity Can Do
Chapter VI: Where The Banker Is Superfluous
Chapter VII: Big Men And Little Business
Chapter VIII: A Curse Of Bigness
Chapter IX: The Failure Of Banker-Management
Chapter X: The Inefficiency Of The Oligarchy
Tip of the Hat to the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.
<1% of World Population Controls 39% of All Wealth
03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Peace Intelligence
Millionaires Control 39% of the World’s Wealth
By Robert Frank
Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2011
Last year was another good year for millionaires – though their pace of growth is slowing.
According to a new report by Boston Consulting Group out today, the number of millionaire households in the world grew by 12.2% in 2010, to 12.5 million. (BCG defines millionaires as those with $1 million or more in investible assets, excluding homes, luxury goods and ownership in one’s own company).
The U.S. continues to lead the world in millionaires, with 5.2 million millionaire households, followed by Japan with 1.5 million millionaire households, China with 1.1 million and the U.K. with 570,000. Singapore leads the world in “millionaire density,” or the percentage of millionaires, with 15.5% of its population now millionaire households.
The most important trend, however, is the global wealth distribution. According to the report, the world’s millionaires represent 0.9% of the world’s population but control 39% of the world’s wealth, up from 37% in 2009. Their wealth now totals $47.4 trillion in investible wealth, up from $41.8 trillion in 2009.
Phi Beta Iota: The single most consistent precondition for revolution across centuries has been the over-concentration of wealth. We're there. Now all we need is a few precipitants.
See Also:
Continue reading “<1% of World Population Controls 39% of All Wealth”
USA: Thirteen Big Lies — Needed Counter-Narrative
07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, History, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Policies, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Here are a few of the BIG lies used to support the status quo. What we need, rather urgently, is a counter-narrative
LIE 1. The earth is an open system with infinite supplies and sinks;
POSSIBLE TRUTH: Earth is a closed system, changes that used to take 10,000 years now take three, humanity is “peaking” the entire system.
LIE 2. Everything must be monetized;
POSSIBLE TRUTH: Money is an exchange unit and an information unit; in the absence of holistic analytics and “true cost” transparency, mony is actually a toxic means of concentrating wealth and depriving communities of their own resources (e.g. land).
LIE 3. The extreme unregulated free market is the only option for a modern economy;
POSSIBLE TRUTH: Information asymmetries and “rule by secrecy” have been clearly documented–the free market is neither free nor fair. A modern economy needs to be transparent, resilient, and hence rooted in the local.
Continue reading “USA: Thirteen Big Lies — Needed Counter-Narrative”
Robert Gates: A Brilliant Career — As a Courtier
07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corporations, Corruption, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
I think the best description of Robert Gates is that he is a very smart bureaucrat who exemplifies the concept of go along to get along. He demonstrated this admirably in his farewell ‘warning’ as reported in the Wall Street Journal. This was a “guns or butter” speech designed to reassure the defense industrial complex that the safety of the U.S. will depend on the continued acquisition of pointless complex and expensive weapons systems.
Rather interestingly in this speech Gates ignored two pieces of information that might have caused him to reconsider his advocacy of super weapons systems.
Continue reading “Robert Gates: A Brilliant Career — As a Courtier”
QUESTION Wells Fargo–John G. Stumpf Especially
03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth
Just got fired from Wells Fargo. RE: the following email
So…here's what I wrote. It's missing a handy chart where it depicts the average Wells employee's hourly salary vs. the CEO's salary, but you get the gist.
Full disclosure, I had been working here for a few months and this was to be my last week. I wouldn't recommend anyone else do this, but I gotta admit, it felt damn good and maybe someone will step up and do something about it.
Good Morning All,
Last week a friend of mine was fired for sending an inappropriate email to pretty much the whole building. Despite the fact that it was harmless, accidental, and largely ignored message, she will now join the ranks of the unemployed. If she is your average unemployed Oregonian she will remain unemployed for at least 18 months and when/if she gets rehired somewhere it will be for less money than she was making here.
Now my friend was definitely in the wrong, and I’m not writing this email to argue her situation. However, in an attempt to hold our company to a similar standard consider the following:
We work for one of the largest financial institutions in the world, we are essential to its operations, yet economic security is completely at the mercy of its senior executives. They are squeezing our salaries, reducing our benefits, and lobbying our politicians to make it harder for us to improve our financial positions despite our contributions to Wells Fargo’s successes. It means more profits for them, but less choice, less freedom and more importantly, less money for us.
In 2010, our CEO, John G. Stumpf received $18,973,722 in total compensation. By comparison, the median worker made $33,190 in 2010. John G. Stumpf made 571 times the median worker's pay.
Tip of the Hat to George Donnelly at Facebook.
See Also:
Wells Fargo Standard Poverty Salaries
Phi Beta Iota: We note with interest that this executive is only 220th on the Forbes executive pay rankings. We hold the corporations blameless in one sense: they get to do this because the US Government has lost its integrity and has not been in the business of the public for decades, Grover Cleveland may have been the last truly honest holistic President. What that says about the American public is for reflection. At the same time, we point to William Greider's book Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country in which he discusses the documentations on how the financial industry (Mr. Stumpf's industry) inflated by 17 times base value while the “real” asset-based economy inflated by five times. This means that Mr. Stumpf and his colleagues cheated the US and global customers by 12 times….and for this, the government bails them out and nobody goes to jail. See also Matt Taibbi's Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.
Sterling Seagrave: Reflections of an Old China Hand
02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Gold rising further except for profit taking bursts. China is buying all the gold it can get, and unloading all the paper dollars it can dump.. Other countries, including Russia are buying gold. I can see the Yuan or RMB playing a larger role as a global currency, but most people are too ignorant of China to accept the Yuan quickly or easily. The Swiss have a huge mass of gold well stashed, so I can see the Swiss franc playing a larger role. It's hard to make a forecast for the Euro, although it will almost certainly survive the US dollar. It's also possible that the Swiss might make a deal with the EU that would result in the Euro being backed by Swiss gold. Now that the head of the IMF has been burned at the stake, his very good brain is of no further use. The EU is scrambled eggs right now. Sarko can't survive without a miracle. India's potential will take a very long time to organize and get rolling; I went to school there and it's a seething cesspit. It's time for the US to get out of foreign wars, but unlikely that it will because of the weapons market. Obama seems impotent. The Pentagon and its corporate backers and partners seems to be deciding policy. I'm not happy about Petraeus at the agency. I think the USG and the US are totally hosed. Desperate for a new demon. Good time for Lee Kuan-yew to retire. Wise of him. The immediate future does not look good. War and more war. Civil war. Revolution. Take your pick. The cupboard is bare. It's all been looted. What a mess America has made since 1945. Moments of glory, decades of folly and stupidity…. Israel and the Palestinians are a parody of the world as a whole.
I think the last real ingots of gold in Manhattan were in the basement of the Twin Towers. The Fed and the Treasury don't dare be transparent or audited, because whatever real (solid) gold they ever had was moved to Malta and other offshore or mountain stashes long ago, replaced with Play-Dough. Christ, even the Bureau of Engraving and Printing stops now and then to change engraving plates and produce “Presidential dollars” to be used as bribes by the White House (ever since Truman); we have that from a guy who is now retired after running the shop since 1945. The satellite imagery boys, where I have sources, dream of being about to electronically penetrate the earth to a depth of 100 feet or more from satellites but when I last checked 3 or 4 years ago they were still dreaming. They fiddle with HAARP trying to achieve earth-penetration, and only end up causing huge earthquakes and tsunamis; measurements already show the poles have begun to shift partly due to melting ice masses, but also due to fiddling with HAARP. The Fukushima quake and tsunami have been attributed to fiddling with HAARP, possibly the Sumatra disaster as well. Not all scientists are smart and prescient. We're damn lucky they haven't already blown us to smithereens, while scratching their backsides. Never forget that the Fed has always existed as a fraud by intent and design. President Wilson commented years after enabling the Fed in 1913: “I have destroyed my country.”
INTERVIEW WITH STERLING AND PEGGY SEAGRAVE – OSS.Net, Inc.
Review: Gold Warriors–America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold
