By Blu in Bogota - a Citi credit card used to chop skulls into lines of cocaine. Do you think Blu’s suggesting major banks have supported the narcotics industry by laundering money? I wonder!
(via ohsodeluxe)
Damning account of how Bush & Obama handled bailouts, by the man whose job was to police the $700 billion TARP program
He is Neil Barofsky. Remember him — the man whose job it was to police the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program? And his new account, a book titled “Bailout” (Free Press), to be published on Tuesday, is a must-read.
His story is illuminating, if deeply depressing. We tag along with Mr. Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor, as he walks into a political buzz saw as the special inspector general for TARP. Government officials, he says, eagerly served Wall Street interests at the public’s expense, and regulators were captured by the very industry they were supposed to be regulating. He says he was warned about being too aggressive in his work, lest he jeopardize his future career.
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks Undisclosed $13B
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.
Resolved: The amount of swag a bank gives out to 18-month-olds in exchange for you opening an account is inversely proportional to the quality of the service at said bank. As MoJo’s Josh Harkinson writes, “When I challenge a Wells Fargo banker to give me one good reason not to move my money over to a credit union, he really can’t.”
Did we mention today is National Bank Transfer Day?
Libyan Central Bank ready to accept IMF 'aid' to rebuild what NATO destroyed
Huey Freeman: ‘So after Gaddafi set up an african development bank to prevent other african countries from having to beg the IMF or World Bank for “aid money“ (which comes along with high interest rates, structural adjustment programs, privatizations etc) the self appointed new libyan government is now ready to accept a so called IMF roadmap. There were unconfirmed reports about the western powers wanting Libya to pay the bills for the destruction of their country. If true or not, this is now another clear indication that this war on Libya has been planned a long time ago, way before the so called “arab spring“ started. The following article says that “the groundwork had already been laid by IMF and World Bank over the previous 2-3 years“.’
(via classe)
