But Warren, with a grass-roots army of enthusiastic supporters and a yen to deliver on her early promise, makes headlines crossing the street. And the foreclosure review debacle represented an excellent test case to expose the corrupt dealing between banks and the regulators who are supposed to curb their excesses, and also to pit Wall Street denizens getting rich off these crimes against ordinary victims who lost their homes. You couldn’t tee up a better issue for Warren, or a better entryway for traditional media to report it.
Last Thursday’s hearing on the reviews, the first congressional hearing on foreclosure fraud in over a year, provided the perfect set piece. Warren, along with Jack Reed, Sherrod Brown and other Senate Democrats, pounded the regulators for protecting the banks and ignoring homeowners suffering from illegal foreclosures. Warren highlighted that nobody will ever learn the precise extent of harm suffered at the hands of banks, and that without a true accounting, adequately compensating homeowners would be impossible. Brown focused on the role of the third-party consultants who operate as shadow regulators, performing work when the agencies lack capacity, but without any independence from the banks.
The Blood on Lanny Breuer's Hands
Lanny Breuer, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, is stepping down, leaving countless ruined lives in his wake.
It’s hard to know where to begin the list of colossal, and sometimes fatal, mistakes by Breuer—from the botched Fast & Furious gun-walking operation, to not prosecuting a single top Wall Street executive, to his brutal war on whistleblowers using the bludgeon of the Espionage Act.
Over the last decade, the UC Board of Regents has engaged in risky deals with Wall Street banks called interest rate swaps. Banks sold swaps to the university and other public institutions as insurance against rising interest rates on variable rate bonds. Under a swap agreement, borrowers such as the university paid a fixed rate to the bank in exchange for the bank paying the university a variable rate based on the markets’ interest rates for borrowing.
Now these swaps have turned out to be losing bets. UC is taking huge losses because interest rates plummeted following the financial crisis of 2008 - allegedly in part because of illegal manipulation by the same banks that sold the swaps - and have stayed at record lows. Swap deals already have cost UC nearly $57 million, with $200 million more in losses anticipated. Of the $250 million UC expects to receive from Prop. 30, some $10 million a year will go to swaps payments unless the deals are ended.
In other words, the UC Regents forgot the first rule of casino gambling: The house always wins. Now the rest of us are paying the price.
Prop. 30 funds for UC will go to Wall Street - SFGate
I saw it on a sign at a protest in the mid 80s and it still stands up today: Ruck The Feegents
You can see this work in Las Vegas from the I-15, which likely gets a lot less traffic from out-of-town…which probably has a lot to do with the recession created by the subprime mortgage crisis.
Has anyone told you that the Democratic party represents the common people’s interests lately?
The Zuckerberg GIF you deserve on a Friday.
Why not put up a monster banner ad offering users to buy in at $25 a pop instead of going through all of this trouble? Really, why not?
BofA employees flood bank's rivals with resumes
Now it is time to for the Occupation to go after Chase banks.
Medicare Advantage patients for sale on Wall Street
Bet you didn’t realize that by signing up with a taxpayer-financed, private Medicare Advantage plan you can command a price of $6000 for the sale of yourself when your plan is acquired by another plan. Well, actually you don’t get the $6000. Neither does it revert to Medicare and the taxpayers. No, it goes to the top 1 percent, while leaving the 99 percent of us once again dumbfounded.
What price does a person in the traditional Medicare program command? What a ridiculous question. Medicare doesn’t buy and sell patients. That happens only when Medicare patients are privatized. Selling patients is a function limited to private plans, not public social insurance programs.
This is what class warfare really looks like.
UC San Diego Faculty Association » American Association of University Professors Supports the Occupy Wall Street Movement
Over the last several years, we have watched as those at the very top have prospered while the fortunes of those below the very top have stagnated or declined. The gap between rich and poor is greater than ever before in our lifetimes, and we need to stand up for those who are trying to improve their circumstances and provide for their families.
The dedicated students whom we teach at institutions of higher education are being forced to pay more for tuition and go deeper into debt because of cuts in state funding, only to find themselves unemployed when they graduate.
The majority of college and university faculty positions are now insecure, part-time jobs. In addition, attacks on collective bargaining have been rampant throughout the nation, as our job security, wages, health benefits, and pensions have been either reduced or slated for elimination.
Therefore, it is time to stand up for what is right. We applaud the action the Occupy Wall Street movement has taken to highlight the inequity and unfairness of the society in which we live.
