HuffPost: Madoff's Relationship With JPMorgan Chase Should Shock No One
February 6, 2011
"So now we learn that senior executives with decision-making authority inside JPMorgan Chase -- the Wall Street behemoth that is supposedly run by the most mature of adults -- apparently suspected that Bernie Madoff was running an enormous Ponzi scheme even as they kept doing business with his firm. They supposedly kept funneling money his way and let him run cash through Chase accounts even as they were sending emails to one another reporting the creepy sense that the whole enterprise didn't look real. This, according to internal documents that came out in a lawsuit on Thursday.
We are presumably supposed to be shocked and horrified by this disclosure. Here is alleged evidence of a blurring of the lines between the legitimate, button-down world of high finance and the nefarious realm of a sprawling con game -- a scam run by a guy whose very name, Madoff, now goes down as a synonym for ripping people off on a grand scale.
But far from shocking, this is really just an appropriate plotline in a story that is finally becoming clear beyond argument: Those lines between criminal fraud and legitimate banking have been blurry for a long time.
The longer the reckoning goes on, the more we learn about the complex derivative deals stitched together by geniuses inside enormous financial institutions, turning simple home loans into trillions of dollars worth of synthetic financial products backed by almost nothing, the clearer this reality becomes. The financial crisis was no natural disaster, as some apologists still claim. It was not the result of risk-management models getting swamped by complexity, or a dreamy belief that home prices could go up forever (though both of those factors certainly played a role). It was, in simplest terms, a hostile takeover of the vital organs of finance by people willing to destroy things of intrinsic value -- people's homes, real businesses, retirement savings -- so they could extract a cut."
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4.5.11
Mark Madoff R.I.P.
Of several events not mentioned in the timeline post, perhaps one of the saddest is the death of Mark Madoff. Having a son myself, I have to believe that Bernie has lost something so precious that no amount of ill gotten monetary gain could ever be worth experiencing.
Then again, there are a lot of people in finance even now who really don't give a rat's ass about the pain they are continuing to cause so many as they take their millions and billions in bonuses I suppose.....just business as usual.
Historic timeline since September 2009
2009 - Pop icon Michael Jackson dies, creating the largest public mourning for an entertainer since the death of Elvis Presley.
2010 - The controversial Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is passed by razor-thin margins in Congress
2010 - The Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, sending millions of gallons of oil into the sea. The spill becomes the worst oil spill in American history.
2010 - Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act
2010 - Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives and reduce the Democratic majority in the Senate.
2010 - A series of measures pass through an historic lame-duck session of Congress including an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, the ratification of the New START II treaty with Russia, signing of an agreement to repeal the don't ask don't tell policy concerning gays and lesbians openly serving in the US military, and passage of a 9/11 first responders health-care bill.
2011 - U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords is targeted in an assassination attempt, when a gunman went on a shooting spree, critically injuring Giffords, killing federal judge John Roll and five other people, and wounding at least 13 others, at a "Congress on Your Corner" event Giffords was hosting in suburban Tucson, Arizona.
2011 - The US launches Operation Odyssey Dawn as part of UN military intervention in the Libyan civil war.
2011 - A series of tornadoes devastate the South, Alabama being the hardest hit. 339 people are killed in the deadliest natural disaster in the US since Hurricane Katrina.
2011 - Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda and mastermind of the September 11 attacks, is confirmed dead in Abbottabad, Pakistan by President Barack Obama.
Columbus Gas Prices again
This was my post in 2008:
As I was driving to the storage space, I filled up with gas; $3.52/ga. As I was driving back I looked at the sign and; $3.79/ga. Even before any damage is really done, they have raised the price. So, with that in mind...
....well??
As I was driving to the storage space, I filled up with gas; $3.52/ga. As I was driving back I looked at the sign and; $3.79/ga. Even before any damage is really done, they have raised the price. So, with that in mind...
....well??
27.4.11
Hello again people
Just a quick note to say I am back....or at least, I have finally managed to log on to this blog and read some of what I was writing a while ago. The latest craze is Facebook.
I was on Facebook, but the advertising slowed it down so badly that I quit. Even after changing the settings, I continued to experience the problem, too.
There has been a lot more news of a historic nature to comment on since the last time I posted anything and I am a little sorry I didn't continue to record my observations. I actually find several of my posts interesting to look back on now.
6.9.09
1881 President James A. Garfield
"Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."
-this he said two weeks before he died
Ring of Power part 20
Here's something interesting to view, too. This part goes nicely with the next post.
If you are paying attention to all the news lately that the economy is turning around...perhaps you are being lulled into a false sense of security. By cutting employees' hours, instead of just hitting them with a bigger jolt of unemployment, we might just be getting let down a little more softly before we know just what is hitting us.
Plus, there is no change that I am aware of to the Patriot Act or the Codex Alimentarious or the Enron Loop hole etc.
My personal advice is that we do our best to sift through information and not just stand here uninformed and believing we are powerless.
If you are paying attention to all the news lately that the economy is turning around...perhaps you are being lulled into a false sense of security. By cutting employees' hours, instead of just hitting them with a bigger jolt of unemployment, we might just be getting let down a little more softly before we know just what is hitting us.
Plus, there is no change that I am aware of to the Patriot Act or the Codex Alimentarious or the Enron Loop hole etc.
My personal advice is that we do our best to sift through information and not just stand here uninformed and believing we are powerless.
AN ASTOUNDING EXPOSURE
On May 23, 1933, Congressman, Louis T. McFadden, brought formal charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank system, The Comptroller of the Currency and the Secretary of United States Treasury for numerous criminal acts, including but not limited to, CONSPIRACY, FRAUD, UNLAWFUL CONVERSION, AND TREASON.
The petition for Articles of Impeachment was thereafter referred to the Judiciary Committee.
So, this ELECTRONIC BOOKLET should be reprinted, reposted,
set up on web pages and circulated far and wide.
Congressman McFadden
on the Federal Reserve Corporation Remarks in Congress, 1934
"Mr. Chairman, we have in this Country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the Fed. The Fed has cheated the Government of these United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the Nation's debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the National debt several times over.
"This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of these United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Fed and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.
Some people who think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislatures; there are those who maintain International propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us into granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.
These twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this Country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions. Those bankers took money out of this Country to finance Japan in a war against Russia. They created a reign of terror in Russia with our money in order to help that war along. They instigated the separate peace between Germany and Russia, and thus drove a wedge between the allies in World War. They financed Trotsky's passage from New York to Russia so that he might assist in the destruction of the Russian Empire. They fomented and instigated the Russian Revolution, and placed a large fund of American dollars at Trotsky's disposal in one of their branch banks in Sweden so that through him Russian homes might be thoroughly broken up and Russian children flung far and wide from their natural protectors. They have since begun breaking up of American homes and the dispersal of American children. ...."
Commenting on Former Congressman Louis T. McFaddens's "heart-failure sudden-death" on Oct. 3, 1936, after a "dose" of "intestinal flu," "Pelley's Weekly" of Oct. 14 said:
Now that this sterling American patriot has made the Passing, it can be revealed that not long after his public utterance against the encroaching powers of Judah, it became known among his intimates that he had suffered two attacks against his life. The first attack came in the form of two revolver shots fired at him from ambush as he was alighting from a cab in front of one of the Capital hotels. Fortunately both shots missed him, the bullets burying themselves in the structure of the cab.
"He became violently ill after partaking of food at a political banquet at Washington. His life was only saved from what was subsequently announced as a poisoning by the presence of a physician friend at the banquet, who at once procured a stomach pump and subjected the Congressman to emergency treatment."
/s/ Robert Edward Edmondson (Publicist-Economist)
President Andrew Jackson stated in reference to the bankers at the state of his administration:
"You are a den of vipers and thieves.
I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out."
Click on the title to read all of this...it seems strangely familiar
The petition for Articles of Impeachment was thereafter referred to the Judiciary Committee.
So, this ELECTRONIC BOOKLET should be reprinted, reposted,
set up on web pages and circulated far and wide.
Congressman McFadden
on the Federal Reserve Corporation Remarks in Congress, 1934
"Mr. Chairman, we have in this Country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the Fed. The Fed has cheated the Government of these United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the Nation's debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the National debt several times over.
"This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of these United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Fed and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.
Some people who think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislatures; there are those who maintain International propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us into granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.
These twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this Country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions. Those bankers took money out of this Country to finance Japan in a war against Russia. They created a reign of terror in Russia with our money in order to help that war along. They instigated the separate peace between Germany and Russia, and thus drove a wedge between the allies in World War. They financed Trotsky's passage from New York to Russia so that he might assist in the destruction of the Russian Empire. They fomented and instigated the Russian Revolution, and placed a large fund of American dollars at Trotsky's disposal in one of their branch banks in Sweden so that through him Russian homes might be thoroughly broken up and Russian children flung far and wide from their natural protectors. They have since begun breaking up of American homes and the dispersal of American children. ...."
Commenting on Former Congressman Louis T. McFaddens's "heart-failure sudden-death" on Oct. 3, 1936, after a "dose" of "intestinal flu," "Pelley's Weekly" of Oct. 14 said:
Now that this sterling American patriot has made the Passing, it can be revealed that not long after his public utterance against the encroaching powers of Judah, it became known among his intimates that he had suffered two attacks against his life. The first attack came in the form of two revolver shots fired at him from ambush as he was alighting from a cab in front of one of the Capital hotels. Fortunately both shots missed him, the bullets burying themselves in the structure of the cab.
"He became violently ill after partaking of food at a political banquet at Washington. His life was only saved from what was subsequently announced as a poisoning by the presence of a physician friend at the banquet, who at once procured a stomach pump and subjected the Congressman to emergency treatment."
/s/ Robert Edward Edmondson (Publicist-Economist)
President Andrew Jackson stated in reference to the bankers at the state of his administration:
"You are a den of vipers and thieves.
I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out."
Click on the title to read all of this...it seems strangely familiar
17.8.09
Tsunami
A series of water waves that is caused when a large volume of a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced.
Seems pretty simple. Today it's a wave of debt and greed. The folks with the money want to keep thier life style and the best way to do that is squeeze all the little guys. Whether it's the bottom line of a company or the preservation or enhancement of the larger incomes in an organization, the tsunami is hitting all the little guys really hard now.
Most people are really confused about who is to blame over the crisis. They take a stand that it's the people who got loans they couldn't afford if they are in the haves catagory. They take the stand that they were mislead if they are in the have nots catagory. Some people aren't in either catagory, but are feeling the consequenses because they lose their job or their bank and/or credit card company decides to charge them some fee or increase their payments threefold or cancel and change the terms of their agreement. Of course, all those financial things say, "we can change our terms any time we want for any reason we want". Employers have taken to the same mantra; we can terminate you for any reason or no reason at all any time we want.
This freedom is something to think about. For some strange reason, those who continue to pay for things believe they have to. Maybe they need to write a contract that says; we will pay if we feel like it after you decide to be fair in your terms or commit to something we agree to.
Seems pretty simple. Today it's a wave of debt and greed. The folks with the money want to keep thier life style and the best way to do that is squeeze all the little guys. Whether it's the bottom line of a company or the preservation or enhancement of the larger incomes in an organization, the tsunami is hitting all the little guys really hard now.
Most people are really confused about who is to blame over the crisis. They take a stand that it's the people who got loans they couldn't afford if they are in the haves catagory. They take the stand that they were mislead if they are in the have nots catagory. Some people aren't in either catagory, but are feeling the consequenses because they lose their job or their bank and/or credit card company decides to charge them some fee or increase their payments threefold or cancel and change the terms of their agreement. Of course, all those financial things say, "we can change our terms any time we want for any reason we want". Employers have taken to the same mantra; we can terminate you for any reason or no reason at all any time we want.
This freedom is something to think about. For some strange reason, those who continue to pay for things believe they have to. Maybe they need to write a contract that says; we will pay if we feel like it after you decide to be fair in your terms or commit to something we agree to.
23.6.09
Ohio Libraries
Yesterday I was informed that the Governor decided it would be smart to cut out much of the funding of libraries in the State of Ohio. What comes to my mind is how elected officials are supposed to be public servants and I was thinking how this is going to serve the people of the state. Is this supposed to stimulate the economy by causing people to buy their books, dvds, and cds? Will he save enough money in the budget to keep paying some salaries of other public officials? Will they buy the employees from the library who are out of work food, clothes, and shelter? That's some real economic stimulus there.
I attended a college that always directed us to visit the Columbus Metropolitan Library for materials and to do research. This saved underprivileged college students a lot of money and allowed all students regardless of resources access to information to do their work. It seems that the only people our government is interested in serving now are those who somehow managed to escape the financial homicide we have been experiencing.
Ok, sorry Mr. Strickland, but I just don't understand completely. I never have made enough money to afford a home, so I didn't buy one. I attended college at the urging of many people and all I got was a pile of debt that will take me the rest of my life to pay off. Now, after our public servants have decided lining their pockets was more important than standing strong for the people in this country, you decide there isn't enough money left for one of the crown jewels of our state; the library. It is a place where people, ALL PEOPLE, can go to indulge themselves in knowledge, information, and entertainment. It stands as a haven for one of the things America stands for; freedom of speech and thought. We can all use it. There is nothing at the door that says you can't come here because you are too poor, too wealthy, or too anything. The message I am getting is that there are going to be a lot more people who are poor in this nation because our government allowed others to take our money and now you want to take away our library, too. We don't deserve this.
13.5.09
9.3.09
Just Say AWWWWWWW
There are a couple of books I am just crazy about floating around lately. What is funny about the "All Dogs Have ADHD" is that when a copy came to the Gahanna branch of the library, one of our dog lovers thought it was about dogs. I was after the book because I raised an ADHD child and the book is such a warm and fuzzy perspective on the affliction that I wanted to share it with him. It's an enjoyable read regardless of whether you think of it as a pet book or a person book.
The other one you have to see is "All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome". These are books that give you that "AWWWWW" feeling, but more importantly, they make you realize that everyone has thier quirks and some of those characteristics are really gifts that we can appreciate.
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