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Financial Media Articles

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on financial corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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11 EU nations to plan tax on financial transactions
2013-01-22, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-11-eu-tax-financial-trans...

Pressing ahead where others have balked, 11 European countries received the green light ... to plan a financial transaction tax that could generate billions of dollars in revenue for cash-strapped governments. Led by Germany and France, the European Unions two heavyweights, the nations will now work out how to introduce a levy on the buying and selling of stocks and bonds and on the use of complex financial instruments known as derivatives. Advocates say such a tax is not only necessary to help discourage risky transactions like those that precipitated the 2008 global financial meltdown but also a fair way to make financial institutions pay to help clean up the leftover mess. The U.S., at the urging of Wall Street, has opposed a financial transaction tax; so has Britain, which is home to Europes largest financial trading hub. Hesitation in London as well as some other European capitals stalled a proposal, made in September 2011, to charge a unified financial transaction tax across the 27-nation EU. The 11 countries, all of which share the euro as their currency, decided to forge ahead on their own, deepening integration among a subset of EU members that together account for more than half of the regions economic output. EU-wide, officials had estimated that a levy of just 0.1% on trades of stocks and bonds and 0.01% on derivatives could bring in $75 billion a year.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the profiteering of an unregulated financial industry, click here.


Peer-to-Peer Lending: No Longer Just a Curiosity
2013-01-20, Bloomberg Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-20/peer-to-peer-lending-no-longe...

Peer-to-peer lending most immediately brings to mind the largely feel-good act of extending small-time money to small businesses and individuals with quirky projectsa curiosity at best and no threat to the lending hegemony of big banks. Whats less appreciated is how successful peer-to-peer lending platforms such as Prosper and Lending Club have been in connecting wholesale numbers of individual lenders and borrowers. Renaud Laplanche is the founder and chief executive officer of Lending Club, which has been at least doubling its loan originations every year since it started in June 2007 at the onset of the financial crisis. He says he came up with the idea when he realized he was paying 18 percent on his credit-card debt while the issuing bank was paying out 2 percent to depositors. Lending Club mitigates riskits default rate has remained in the low single digits throughout the financial crisisby serving prime and superprime borrowers and turning down 90 percent of loan applications. Prosper, perhaps Lending Clubs main rival, has similarly posted nice risk-adjusted returns across its loan portfolio. Its management and board are studded with venture capitalists and Wall Street names. The value proposition to borrowers, obviously, is access not just to capital that the banks arent willing to lend them, but capital at a lower cost should they make the grade.


The four business gangs that run the US
2012-12-31, Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-four-business-gangs-that-run-the-us-201212...

If you've ever suspected politics is increasingly being run in the interests of big business, ... Jeffrey Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University, agrees with you - at least in respect of the United States. In his book, The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity, he says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop. ''Corporate wealth translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between government and industry. Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,'' he says. Sachs says four key sectors of US business exemplify this feedback loop and the takeover of political power in America by the ''corporatocracy''. First is the well-known military-industrial complex. Second is the Wall Street-Washington complex, which has steered the financial system towards control by a few politically powerful Wall Street firms, notably Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and a handful of other financial firms. Third is the Big Oil-transport-military complex, which has put the US on the trajectory of heavy oil-imports dependence and a deepening military trap in the Middle East, he says. Fourth is the healthcare industry, America's largest industry, absorbing no less than 17 per cent of US gross domestic product.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.


Iceland president: Letting banks fail helped recovery
2012-12-13, CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/13/business/iceland-recovery

Four years after the country let its debt-ridden banks fail, and as the country's growth looks set to far outpace the eurozone, [Iceland's president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson] said the decision not to save the banks was "the most difficult I ever had to make," but maintained it was the right one. "Allowing the banks to fail is one of the fundamental reasons Iceland is now in a strong recovery with respect to other European countries," he said. Now, according to Grimsson, "Iceland is better placed to benefit by maintaining our present position, rather than to let the EU speak on our behalf." The 69-year-old president pointed to Norway and Greenland -- two other Arctic economies and non-European Union members -- as role models. However, Grimsson said he was not sure whether Iceland's strategy with its banks could have been replicated by other countries with similar problems, such as Ireland. "Being part of the eurozone, they couldn't devalue their currency. But they could have adopted our policy with respect to the banks," he said. The Icelandic krona fell sharply as a result of the financial collapse, helping the country recover by increasing demand for exports. "There are still scars," Grimsson said, "but on the whole, the will of the Icelandic people has enabled us to recover and move confidently towards the future."

Note: Watch a great video interview of Iceland's president discussing this matter. Iceland has gone through tremendous transformation that has greatly supported both the people and the economy of this nation. Why is this getting so little press coverage?


The Peoples Bailout Was Just the Beginning: Whats Next for Strike Debt?
2012-12-13, Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/peoples-bailout-just-the-beginning-wha...

Syracuse University art professor Thomas Gokey earned his Master of Fine Arts degree five years ago, but remains chained to his alma mater by $49,983 of debt. Soon after he graduated, the grim prospect of indefinite payments inspired its own art piece. Gokey put his debt up for sale in reconstituted squares of shredded money from the Federal Reserve. This year, together with the activist group Strike Debt, he helped organize a bold "People's Bailout" called the Rolling Jubilee, which has raised over $465,000. Bringing that money to the marketplace where collections companies buy and sell debt for pennies on the dollar, Strike Debt intends to purchase about $9 million of Americans' medical and educational debtand then cancel it. Strike Debt, which grew out of Occupy Wall Street, wants to foment conversation about the debt we rack up in pursuit of basic needs, and the industries that profit from that debt. Gokey is currently on a year-long unpaid leave from teaching to help organize the Rolling Jubilee and upcoming Strike Debt projects. Thomas Gokey: Since I'm an educator, I'm thinking about the ways in which my students and I seem to be getting taken advantage of. We look at how much it's costing each one of my students to take one of my classes, and how much I'm getting paid to teach the class. And we look at each other and think, why don't we just go hold our classes at the public library? Somebody's obviously making money off both of us, so can't we cut out that middleman and focus on education?

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on income inequality, click here.


The Economics of Being a U.S. Ambassador
2012-12-13, Bloomberg Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-13/the-economics-of-being-a-u-do...

To land a high-profile ambassadorship, it helps to have raised a ton of money for a successful presidential candidate and know how to throw a good party. Thats one reason why President Obama is considering Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour as the next U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. Jamess in the U.K. Wintour raised more than $500,000 for Obama and inspired the Runway to Win fashion line that brought in upwards of $40 million for his campaign. But thats just the price of admission. The funds embassies receive from the U.S. Department of State dont begin to cover the high costs of the frequent parties and dinners ambassadors are expected to host. Some wind up paying more than $1 million a year out of their own pockets, according to one of the presidents top donors who requested anonymity. This is why the high-profile postings to places like France and Italy typically go to wealthy donors, rather than career diplomats. The current ambassador to the U.K., Louis Susman, a former Chicago investment banker, holds three to four social events a week, says an embassy spokeswoman, who declined to give a cost estimate for these soirees. In exchange, appointees get perksbeginning with the sought-after title of ambassador. In some Western European countries, they live in sprawling estates such as Londons Winfield House. Its 12-and-a-half acres of private gardens are exceeded only by those of Buckingham Palace. The ambassador to Italy can avail himself of a three-story, 5,000-bottle wine cellar at the Villa Taverna in Rome.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.


HSBC, too big to jail, is the new poster child for US two-tiered justice system
2012-12-12, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/12/hsbc-prosecution-fine-mon...

The US is the world's largest prison state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any nation on earth, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. It imprisons people for longer periods of time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west. This sprawling penal state has been constructed over decades, by both political parties, and it punishes the poor and racial minorities at overwhelmingly disproportionate rates. But not everyone is subjected to that system of penal harshness. It all changes radically when the nation's most powerful actors are caught breaking the law. With few exceptions, they are gifted not merely with leniency, but full-scale immunity from criminal punishment. Thus have the most egregious crimes of the last decade been fully shielded from prosecution when committed by those with the greatest political and economic power: the construction of a worldwide torture regime, spying on Americans' communications without the warrants required by criminal law by government agencies and the telecom industry, an aggressive war launched on false pretenses, and massive, systemic financial fraud in the banking and credit industry that triggered the 2008 financial crisis. This two-tiered justice system was the subject of [the] book, With Liberty and Justice for Some. On Tuesday, not only did the US Justice Department announce that HSBC would not be criminally prosecuted, but outright claimed that the reason is that they are too important, too instrumental to subject them to such disruptions.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.


Too Big to Indict
2012-12-12, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/hsbc-too-big-to-indict.html

It is a dark day for the rule of law. Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system. They also have not charged any top HSBC banker in the case, though it boggles the mind that a bank could launder money as HSBC did without anyone in a position of authority making culpable decisions. Clearly, the government has bought into the notion that too big to fail is too big to jail. When prosecutors choose not to prosecute to the full extent of the law in a case as egregious as this, the law itself is diminished. The deterrence that comes from the threat of criminal prosecution is weakened, if not lost. In the HSBC case, prosecutors may want the public to focus on the $1.92 billion settlement. But even large financial settlements are small compared with the size of international major banks. More important, once criminal sanctions are considered off limits, penalties and forfeitures become just another cost of doing business, a risk factor to consider on the road to profits. If banks operating at the center of the global economy cannot be held fully accountable, the solution is to reduce their size by breaking them up and restricting their activities not shield them and their leaders from prosecution for illegal activities.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government collusion with financial corruption, click here.


HSBC to Pay $1.92 Billion to Settle Charges of Money Laundering
2012-12-10, New York Times
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/hsbc-said-to-near-1-9-billion-settleme...

State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a money-laundering case over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the worlds largest banks and ultimately destabilize the global financial system. Instead, HSBC announced ... that it had agreed to a record $1.92 billion settlement with authorities. The bank, which is based in Britain, faces accusations that it transferred billions of dollars for nations like Iran and enabled Mexican drug cartels to move money illegally through its American subsidiaries. The case, officials say, will claim violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and Trading with the Enemy Act. While the settlement with HSBC is a major victory for the government, the case raises questions about whether certain financial institutions, having grown so large and interconnected, are too big to indict. Four years after the failure of Lehman Brothers nearly toppled the financial system, regulators are still wary that a single institution could undermine the recovery of the industry and the economy. But the threat of criminal prosecution acts as a powerful deterrent. If authorities signal such actions are remote for big banks, the threat could lose its sting.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government collusion with financial corruption, click here.


German man locked up over HVB bank allegations may have been telling truth
2012-11-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/28/gustl-mollath-hsv-claims-fraud

A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence has emerged proving the validity of his claims. Gustl Mollath, 56, was submitted to the secure unit of a psychiatric hospital seven years ago after court experts diagnosed him with paranoid personality disorder following his claims that staff at the Hypo Vereinsbank (HVB) including his wife, then an assets consultant at HVB had been illegally smuggling large sums of money into Switzerland. Mollath was tried in 2006 after his ex-wife accused him of causing her physical harm. He denied the charges, claiming she was trying to sully his name in the light of the evidence he allegedly had against her. He was admitted to the clinic, where he has remained against his will ever since. But recent evidence brought to the attention of state prosecutors shows that money-laundering activities were indeed practiced over several years by members of staff at the Munich-based bank, the sixth-largest private financial institute in Germany. A number of employees, including Mollath's wife, were subsequently sacked following the bank's investigation. The "Mollath affair", as it has been dubbed by the German media, has taken on such political dimensions that it now threatens to bring down the government of Bavaria.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.


Report: Probe into Afghan bank scandal plagued by political interference
2012-11-28, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/report-afghan-probe-into-ban...

A scathing new report released [on November 28] details how high-level political interference and institutional failures thwarted efforts to probe the 2010 collapse of Afghanistans largest bank, recover hundreds of millions of dollars from fraudulent loans and prosecute the influential Afghans who profited from a massive scheme to use depositors money as a private piggy bank. Without naming names, an independent anti-corruption committee of Afghan and international experts painted a damning portrait of foot-dragging, incompetence and blatant political manipulation involving virtually every agency that was supposed to either investigate why the Kabul Bank failed or take legal action against those responsible for looting it of more than $900 million. Kabul Bank was nothing but a fraud perpetrated against depositors, and ultimately all Afghans, the report says. Both the flagrant crimes and the repeated failures to pursue them, it said, reflect an array of larger, worrisome problems that permeate Afghan society and institutions, including incapacity, nepotism, entitlement and political interference. Over and over, the report says, supposedly independent bodies such as the attorney generals office deferred to higher political wishes. Earlier this year, about 20 bank associates were indicted on charges including money laundering and using false documents or fictitious account names. The report quotes sources as saying that a high-level committee, meaning a group of powerful officials, decided which former bank associates would be charged with a crime and that prosecutors were told to construct indictments to conform to the decisions.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.


Goldman Sachs' Global Coup D'etat
2012-11-27, Truthout
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12996-goldman-sachs-global-coup-de-tat.html

When the people of Greece saw their democratically elected Prime Minister George Papandreou forced out of office in November of 2011 and replaced by an unelected Conservative technocrat, Lucas Papademos, most were unaware of the bigger picture of what was happening. Most of us in the United States were [equally] ignorant when, in 2008, [Congress] voted yes at the behest of Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen and jammed through the biggest bailout of Wall Street in our nations history. But now, as the Bank of England ... announces that former investment banker Mark Carney will be its new chief, we cant afford to ignore whats happening around the world. Steadily and stealthily Goldman Sachs is carrying out a global coup detat. Theres one tie that binds Lucas Papademos in Greece, Henry Paulsen [and Timothy Geithner] in the United States, and Mark Carney in the U.K., and thats Goldman Sachs. All were former bankers and executives at the Wall Street giant, all assumed prominent positions of power, and all played a hand after the global financial meltdown of 2007-08, thus making sure Goldman Sachs weathered the storm and made significant profits in the process. As Europe descends [into] economic crisis, Goldman Sachs's people are managing the demise of the continent. As the British newspaper The Independent reported earlier this year, the Conservative technocrats currently steering or who have steered post-crash fiscal policy in Greece, Germany, Italy, Belgium, France, and now the UK, all hail from Goldman Sachs. In fact, the head of the European Central Bank itself, Mario Draghi, was the former managing director of Goldman Sachs International.

Note: Once again truth-out.org carries this important article and vital information which no major media has covered. Strangely, the entire website went down for a while not long after the article was published. If the article cannot be found at the link above, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.


SEC Rocked By Lurid Sex-and-Corruption Lawsuit
2012-11-19, Rolling Stone blog
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/sec-rocked-by-lurid-sex-a...

Move over, adulterous generals. It might be time to make way for a new sexual rats' nest at America's top financial police agency, the SEC. In a salacious 77-page complaint ... David Weber, the former chief investigator for the SEC Inspector General's office, accuses the SEC of retaliating against Weber for coming forward as a whistleblower. According to this lawsuit, Weber was made a target of [retaliation] after he came forward with concerns that his bosses may have been spending more time copulating than they were investigating the SEC. Weber claims that in recent years, while the SEC Inspector General's office has been attempting to investigate the agency's seemingly-negligent responses in such matters as the Bernie Madoff case and the less-well-known (but nearly as disturbing) Stanford Financial Ponzi scandal, two of the IG office's senior officials former Inspector General David Kotz and his successor, Noelle Maloney were sleeping together. Weber also claims that Kotz was also having an affair with a lawyer representing a key group of Stanford victims, a Dr. Gaytri Kachroo. Weber claims that Maloney last year refused to meet with Kachroo as part of the Stanford investigation. By then, Kotz had stepped down as SEC IG and Maloney had replaced him as Acting IG. Weber was fired on October 31st. Apparently he has decided not to take the firing quietly. "When David Weber began to uncover the depth of dysfunction at the SEC, they fired him," his attorney Cary Hansel said. "He has no intention of being silenced by threats and false allegations."

Note: We don't normally use Rolling Stone as a source, but this important story has not been covered elsewhere in the major media.


'Shadow Banking' Still Thrives, System Hits $67 Trillion
2012-11-18, CNBC/Reuters
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49877573

The system of so-called "shadow banking" ... grew to a new high of $67 trillion globally last year, a top regulatory group said, calling for tighter control of the sector. A report by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) [states] that shadow banking is set to thrive, beyond the reach of a regulatory net tightening around traditional banks and banking activities. The FSB, a task force from the world's top 20 economies, also called for greater regulatory control of shadow banking. The study by the FSB said shadow banking around the world more than doubled to $62 trillion in the five years to 2007 before the crisis struck. But the size of the total system had grown to $67 trillion in 2011 more than the total economic output of all the countries in the study. The multitrillion-dollar activities of hedge funds and private equity companies are often cited as examples of shadow banking. But the term also covers investment funds, money market funds and even cash-rich firms that lend government bonds to banks, which in turn use them as security when taking credit from the European Central Bank. The United States had the largest shadow banking system, said the FSB, with assets of $23 trillion in 2011, followed by the euro area with $22 trillion and the United Kingdom at $9 trillion.

Note: That's $10,000 for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Do you think the bankers are somehow manipulating the system? For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.


HSBC Investigation: clients of Britain's biggest bank exposed
2012-11-15, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9665741/HSBC-...

Britains biggest bank is at the centre of a major ... investigation after it opened offshore accounts in Jersey for serious criminals living in this country. Tax authorities have obtained details of every British client of HSBC in Jersey after a whistleblower secretly provided a detailed list of names, addresses and account balances earlier this week. Among those identified on the list are Daniel Bayes, a drug dealer who is now in Venezuela; Michael Lee, who was convicted of possessing more than 300 weapons at his house in Devon; three bankers facing major fraud allegations and a man once dubbed Londons number two computer crook. The disclosures raise serious questions about HSBCs procedures in Jersey, with the bank already preparing to pay fines of around $1.5 billion in America for breaking money laundering rules. The bank is legally obliged to report to the authorities any suspicions about the source of money deposited in its accounts. The list identifies 4,388 people holding 699 million in offshore current accounts and they are also likely to have billions of pounds more in investment schemes. Several celebrities and other well-known figures are understood to be identified in the client data. The HSBC Jersey client list is understood to be heavily dominated by senior figures in the City. Dozens of bankers are understood to have deposited six-figure sums offshore with some institutions said to have clusters of employees taking advantage of the accounts. Doctors, mining and oil executives and oil workers are also heavily represented in the list.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption and criminality, click here.


Top Bank of England director admits Occupy movement had a point
2012-10-29, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/top-bank-of-england-director-ad...

The Occupy movement received vindication from an unlikely source tonight, as a senior executive at the Bank of England credited it with stirring a reformation of finance. Andrew Haldane, executive director of financial stability, said Occupy protesters had been both loud and persuasive, and had attracted public support because they are right. Some have suggested that Occupys voice has been loud but vague, long on problems, short on solutions. Others have argued that the fault-lines in the global financial system, which chasmed during the crisis, are essentially unaltered, that reform has failed, Mr Haldane said. I wish to argue that both are wrong that Occupys voice has been both loud and persuasive and that policymakers have listened and are acting in ways which will close those fault-lines. In fact, I want to argue that we are in the early stages of a reformation of finance, a reformation which Occupy has helped stir. Speaking at an Occupy Economics event in central London, Mr Haldane said that Occupy had been successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason: they are right. He added that protesters ... touched a moral nerve in pointing to growing inequities in the allocation of wealth. Mr Haldane ended with a direct appeal to activists to continue putting pressure on governments and regulators. He said: You have put the arguments. You have helped win the debate. And policymakers, like me, will need your continuing support in delivering that radical change.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.


Racketeering and Money Laundering Lawsuit Seeking Return of $43 Trillion to the United States Treasury
2012-10-25, MarketWatch/Wall Street Journal
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/major-banks-governmental-officials-and-their...

Spire Law Group's national home owners' lawsuit [is] the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States history, identifying $43 trillion of laundered money. [In] the federal lawsuit now [pending] in the United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York ... plaintiffs now establish the location of the $43 trillion of laundered money in a racketeering enterprise. [The] mass tort action [seeks] to halt all foreclosures nationwide pending the return of the $43 trillion, an audit of the Fed and audits of all the "bailout programs." The epicenter of this laundering and racketeering enterprise has been and continues to be Wall Street and continues to involve the very "Banksters" located there who have repeatedly asked in the past to be "bailed out" and to be "bailed out" in the future. The Havens for the money laundering schemes ... are located in such venues as Switzerland, the Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Cypress and [other entities] identified in both the United Nations and the U.S. Senate's recent reports on international money laundering. The case further alleges that through these obscure foreign companies, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo Bank, Citibank, Citigroup, One West Bank, and numerous other federally chartered banks stole trillions of dollars of home owners' and taxpayers' money during the last decade and then laundered it through offshore companies.

Note: CNBC also reported this astonishing news. Yet within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior vice president Kevin Krim received news that his children were killed under very suspicious circumstances. Could this have been a strong warning? For more in this, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on financial corruption, click here.


Trans-Pacific Partnership: The biggest trade deal youve never heard of
2012-10-23, Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/everything_you_wanted_to_know_about_the_trans...

A huge but little-known trade agreement could transform America's foreign relations. The Trans-Pacific Partnership [could] be the most significant foreign and domestic policy initiative of the Obama administration. More than any other policy, the trends the TPP represents could restructure American foreign relations, and potentially the economy itself. On the core question of these trade agreements, the parties basically agree. The Trans-Pacific Partnership ... would be the largest one since the 1995 World Trade Organization. It would link Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico and Canada into a free trade zone similar to that of NAFTA. The subject matter being negotiated extends far beyond traditional trade matters. TPPs 29 chapters would set binding rules on everything from service-sector regulation, investment, patents and copyrights, government procurement, financial regulation, and labor and environmental standards, as well as trade in industrial goods and agriculture. As with other such agreements, Congress must vote to approve it, most likely under a Fast Track provision that prohibits any amendments and limits debate. The public has no access to the text [of the agreement]. Congress has extremely limited access. Trade, though constitutionally a congressional prerogative, is now firmly in the hands of the executive branch. And trade negotiations have become a venue for rewriting wide swaths of domestic non-trade policy traditionally determined by Congress and state legislatures.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government corruption, click here.


IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers
2012-10-21, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9623863/IMFs-epic-plan-to-conjure-...

One could slash private debt by 100pc of GDP, boost growth, stabilize prices, and dethrone bankers all at the same time. It could be done cleanly and painlessly, by legislative command, far more quickly than anybody imagined. The conjuring trick is to replace our system of private bank-created money -- roughly 97pc of the money supply -- with state-created money. Specifically, it means an assault on "fractional reserve banking". If lenders are forced to put up 100pc reserve backing for deposits, they lose the exorbitant privilege of creating money out of thin air. The nation regains sovereign control over the money supply. There are no more bank runs, and fewer boom-bust credit cycles. That at least is the argument [in] the IMF study, by Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof, which came out in August and has begun to acquire a cult following around the world. Entitled "The Chicago Plan Revisited", it revives the scheme first put forward by professors Henry Simons and Irving Fisher in 1936 during the ferment of creative thinking in the late Depression. Benes and Kumhof argue that credit-cycle trauma - caused by private money creation - dates deep into history. The original authors of the Chicago Plan were responding to the Great Depression. They believed it was possible to prevent the social havoc caused by wild swings from boom to bust, and to do so without crimping economic dynamism. The benign side-effect of their proposals would be a switch from national debt to national surplus.

Note: This article is an incredible breakthrough in real reporting on the banking sector. It is most highly recommended to read the entire article and then explore our powerful Banking Corruption Information Center.


An Excerpt: 'Plutocrats'
2012-10-15, NPR
http://www.npr.org/books/titles/162800856/plutocrats-the-rise-of-the-new-glob...

Branko Milanovic is an economist at the World Bank. He first became interested in income inequality studying for his PhD in the 1980s in his native Yugoslavia, where he discovered it was officially viewed as a "sensitive" subject which meant one the ruling regime didn't want its scholars to look at too closely. But when Milanovic moved to Washington, he discovered a curious thing. Americans were happy to celebrate their super-rich and, at least sometimes, worry about their poor. But putting those two conversations together and talking about economic inequality was pretty much taboo. "I was once told by the head of a prestigious think tank in Washington, D.C., that the think tank's board was very unlikely to fund any work that had income or wealth inequality in its title," Milanovic ... explained in a recent book. "Yes, they would finance anything to do with poverty alleviation, but inequality was an altogether different matter." "Why?" he asked. "Because 'my' concern with the poverty of some people actually projects me in a very nice, warm glow: I am ready to use my money to help them. Charity is a good thing; a lot of egos are boosted by it and many ethical points earned even when only tiny amounts are given to the poor. But inequality is different: Every mention of it raises in fact the issue of the appropriateness or legitimacy of my income." When the discussion shifts from celebratory to analytical, the super-elite get nervous.

Note: Excerpted from Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland. For revealing major media articles showing the stark gap between the uber-rich and the rest of us, click here.


Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.