Matt Taibbi: “Banks Sold Oregano as High Grade Weed”
In this 5-minute video, journalist Matt Taibbi talks to Occupy Wall Street and explains how the mortgage-backed security scam works.
Mortgage Settlement Is Like “Giving Banks a Parking Ticket for a Felony Offense”
Here Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now interview Yves Smith of the popular Naked Capitalism blog about the Obama administration’s announced settlement with mortgage lenders.
Yves Smith has been one of the most prominent critics of this settlement (see her “The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement” and “Mortgage Settlement [...]
Why Does Obama Support Wall Street, Not Democracy in Greece?
In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Michael Hudson, distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, explains why President Obama and Tim Geithner are pressuring Europeans to impose “debt peonage” on Greece:
MICHAEL HUDSON: The reason there have been all of these demonstrations [in Greece] is the same reason [...]
Occupy the Banks: Strategies for Transformation
Reprinted from Yes! Magazine (October 28, 2011)
By Gar Alperovitz
Beyond revolution and reform: Gar Alperovitz on how we can fundamentally transform our financial system.
The “occupations” now building around the country are a necessary and justified response to the outrages of a political-economic system that substitutes posturing for decision-making, looking the other way as the top one percent [...]
Current Crisis “70 Times Larger” Than S&L Fraud of the 1980s
Here’s William K. Black, one of the regulators who helped convict nearly one thousand perps in the S&L meltdown of the 1980s and author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One,” speaking about the current crisis and how to deal with it (about 4 minutes):
Words You’ll Never Hear a Politician Speak, But Should
In the fascinating brief video below, William K. Black, lawyer, academic, former bank regulator and author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One,” speaks with blistering clarity about what needs to be done (that is currently not being done) to prevent the next financial meltdown. As a close observer of the [...]
Inside the Wall Street Protests: An Eyewitness Account of Police Crackdown on Peaceful Demonstrators
Reprinted from Alternet (September 25, 2011)
By J.A. Myerson
Protesters from the week-old “occupation” in New York’s financial district were arrested, penned up, and Maced on Saturday when the NYPD showed up to their march.
Deep in the belly of the beast, among the financial district’s skyscrapers, next to derivatives traders in business suits and Rolex watches, you [...]
Newsflash! GOP Defends the Status Quo (Attacks Elizabeth Warren)
Joe Nocero has an excellent article (“An Advocate Who Scares Republicans“) in yesterday’s New York Times, describing how House Republicans recently grilled Elizabeth Warren over her role in the new agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Republicans are terrified that she will be successful.
Who are they working for?
Nocero explains:
The piñata sat alone at the witness table, [...]
Not Exactly Pitchforks … Yet!
From the streets of Madison to the banks and Congresional offices of Washington, D.C., middle class Americans — as if waking after a long sleep — are increasingly willing to express their anger in constructive political action.
Yesterday we saw this in the occupation of a branch of the Bank of America in Washington, D.C, and [...]
What Obama Should Have Done Instead of Feeding the Fat-Cats
James Galbraith, economics professor at UT Austin, writing in new deal 2.0, gives the most succinct critique I’ve read yet of how Obama blew it. Here are a couple of choice excerpts:
“One cannot defend the actions of Team Obama on taking office. Law, policy and politics all pointed in one direction: turn the systemically [...]
