Category Archives: Banana republic

Patrick Durusau: Social Security Numbers – Close Enough for a Drone Strike?

Yves here. It’s important to understand the scope and caliber of the police state apparatus that’s in place. The fact that it’s “dirty” meaning error-ridden and incomplete, is likely the big reason you have analysts like Edward Snowden with wide-ranging access. You still need humans to make connections and interpretations (and that introduces another layer for errors and plants to occur). And that also no doubt is used to justify even wider-ranging and more intrusive searches, such as NSA analysts listening to personal phone conversations of soldiers stationed in Iraq. That sort of casualness leads to abuses like NSA snoops inviting their colleagues to listen in on phone sex.

Edward Snowden Makes Himself an Even Bigger Problem to the Officialdom

Former CIA employee, most recently Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden was already the intel community’s biggest nightmare, and now this:

Mary Jo White Institutionalizes Deutsche Bank Protection Racket at the SEC

The Financial Times has caught a significant revolving door that its business press peers have largely overlooked.

Obama Defends “Big Brother” Powers

The NC commentariat has already done a deep dive into the IT and practical issues surrounding the NSA surveillance program leaks from Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian. This Real News Network interview with Paul Jay looks at the Administration’s initial response to those revelations. It’s a useful piece to circulate to friends and colleagues who might be unduly receptive to the “this is all done for your safety” claims. I suppose it’s useful to have Obama make it explicit he thinks that his interpretation of security needs comes before upholding the Constitution.

Bill Black: How Elite Economic Hucksters Drive America’s Biggest Fraud Epidemics

Bill Black describes the spurious efforts to justify America’s recent fraudfests.

Bill Black: Great Moments in Nobel Prize History – 2007 Winner Pumps for Plutocracy, Billionaire CEOs

The first article in a series by Black on the remarkable, in the bad sense of the work, work by Nobel prize winners on regulation.

The Stealth Problem of Predatory Mortgage Modifications

Warning: mortgage modifications can be yet another exercise in bank predation.

Bill Black: How Dare DOJ Insult HSBC’s Crooks as Less “Professional” than Liberty Reserve’s Crooks?

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Standard Chartered and HSBC’s leaders must be doubly humiliated by the description by Mythili Raman, the acting head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Criminal Division, of Liberty Reserve’s money laundering operation. UK laws are, of course, very congenial to those suing for libel and I am sure that these banking titans are meeting with their solicitors to demand a retraction and apology from Raman.

OCC Probe of JP Morgan Debt Collection Abuses Will Show if Agency Can Be Reformed

As readers probably know all too well, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has long been the most cronyistic of all bank regulators. So the default assumption when it cranks up an investigation is to assume that it’s just a window-dressing exercise or worse, a stealth bailout of some sort.

Yet the Washington Post tells us that the OCC is widening an investigation into debt collection, where alleged robosigner JP Morgan is the sinner-in-chief. What gives?

Time to Put the Heat on the Fed and FDIC to Fix Lousy Governance at TBTF Banks

Adam Levitin makes a sensible recommendation in a new post:

…what’s at stake in the corporate governance of a too-big-to-fail bank like JPMorgan Chase is not just the share price, but also the public fisc. There is a strong federal regulatory interest in having good governance at too-big-to-fail banks because of our explicit (FDIC) and implicit (bailout) insurance of too-big-to-fail banks.

Good progressives like MoveOn, New Bottom Line, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, AFR, Elizabeth Warren, and Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO have all fallen in line with Obama’s nomination of Mel Watt, Representative from ~~Bank of America~~ North Carolina.

It might help if they looked harder at Watt. If they were honest about it, there’s not much to like.

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Category Archives: Banana republic

Patrick Durusau: Social Security Numbers – Close Enough for a Drone Strike?

Edward Snowden Makes Himself an Even Bigger Problem to the Officialdom

Mary Jo White Institutionalizes Deutsche Bank Protection Racket at the SEC

Obama Defends “Big Brother” Powers

Bill Black: How Elite Economic Hucksters Drive America’s Biggest Fraud Epidemics

Bill Black: Great Moments in Nobel Prize History – 2007 Winner Pumps for Plutocracy, Billionaire CEOs

The Stealth Problem of Predatory Mortgage Modifications

Bill Black: How Dare DOJ Insult HSBC’s Crooks as Less “Professional” than Liberty Reserve’s Crooks?

OCC Probe of JP Morgan Debt Collection Abuses Will Show if Agency Can Be Reformed

Time to Put the Heat on the Fed and FDIC to Fix Lousy Governance at TBTF Banks

Gretchen Morgenson on Bill Moyers: Why Too Big to Fail Still Lives

Is Jamie Dimon Really Out of the Woods With Shareholder Thumbs Down on Splitting CEO/Chairman Roles? (Updated)

Mel Watt, Nominee to Head FHFA, Opposes Administration by Voting to Deregulate Derivatives

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