www.banksters.us

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Bank Fraud Apparently is not a Crime

from tristateradio,com

May 1 was Law Day, so this month is a great time to consider law enforcement concerning those banking gangsters –“banksters” – who violated laws and went unpunished.

In 1958, when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower established Law Day, he said, “The world no longer has a choice between force and law. If civilization is to survive it must choose the rule of law.”

But Wall Street’s banksters are choosing force – the force of influence, intimidation and economic power that has government cowering.

While people accused of nonviolent drug offenses, shoplifting, etc. face incarceration, most white-collar criminals since 2008’s financial meltdown have avoided prosecution for their destructive acts – much less prison. Investigative reporter Matt Taibbi, author of “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap,” said, “If you’re going to put people in jail for having a joint in their pocket, you cannot let people who laundered $800 million for the worst drug offenders in the world walk.”

Affluent and influential banksters provoke memories of the Woody Guthrie lyric, “Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.” Yes, people were robbed, and not just by “bad business” decisions. Crimes like fraud were committed.

Economist Dean Baker commented, “Issuing a mortgage that is known to be based on false information and then selling it in the secondary market is fraud and punishable by time in jail.”

But such fraud allegedly was committed by the powerful. The six largest banks (Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo) dominate the financial sector, with more than two-thirds of its assets, according to Fortune magazine. Journalist Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times wrote, “The financial sector still wields excessive control over the economy, the big players have grown even bigger, and the regulators have been systemically emasculated.”

Listen

4:53

Bill Knight's May 15 radio commentary

However, Attorney General Eric Holder came from New York’s Covington & Burling law firm, which has represented many of the big banks. That employment merry-go-round is probably the origin of the Justice Department’s business-oriented mindset of negotiating for settlements instead of nabbing and trying suspects in courts of law. So, in the incident Taibbi alluded to, HSBC admitted laundering $850 million for two drug cartels with links to Russian gangs and even Al Qaeda, and was fined $1.9 billion. Sure, some executives had to defer bonuses for five years (“not give them up, DEFER them,” Taibbi said), but no one faced a trial or jail.

Last May Holder suggested to a Senate committee that some banks are too big to control, saying, “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to … prosecute them. If you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy.”

But common sense may be inching into this Crazytown. Federal Judge Jed Rakoff in the New York Review of Books dismissed prosecutors’ excuses. Their rationalizations, Rakoff wrote, include that such cases are difficult, hard to prove that victims relied on the claims banksters made, and could hurt the economy

Rakoff wrote, “To a federal judge, who takes an oath to apply the law equally to rich and to poor, this excuse – sometimes labeled the ‘too big to jail’ excuse – is disturbing, frankly, in what it says about the department’s apparent disregard for equality under the law.”

Instead, he added, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that the government itself was involved.

Elsewhere, James Kidney, as he recently retired from the Securities & Exchange Commission, said regulators are afraid of Wall Street. And in Detroit, federal Judge Miriam Cedarbaum in March denied Goldman Sachs’ request for the dismissal of a civil suit accusing the bank of misleading a pension fund about mortgage-backed securities.

The government’s failure to prosecute has sent a signal that it’s taking a “hands off” approach, so why shouldn’t culprits do it again? Wall Street banks handed out $26 billion in bonuses to 165,000 execs and staff last year, the New York state comptroller reported – enough to double the pay of every American working for minimum wage. Les Leopold of the Labor Institute says, “The fees Wall Street extracts from public entities could total more than $50 billion a year — enough to provide free tuition at every public college and university in the country.” And a study from the Fix LA Coalition confirms that, showing that Los Angeles spends more on brokerage fees, pension-fund management, etc. than it does to fix its streets.

Why should banksters change if there are no consequences?

Contact Bill at Bill.Knight@hotmail.com; his twice-weekly columns are archived atbillknightcolumn.blogspot.com

The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Tri States Public Radio or Western Illinois University.

Colonel Wilkerson: Oligarchy Controls U.S. War-Making

from globalresearch.ca

Who Is Really Responsible for America’s Wars?

By Washington's Blog

Global Research, May 13, 2014

Washington's Blog

Region: USA

Theme: 9/11 & 'War on Terrorism', Militarization and WMD,US NATO War Agenda

Americans are starting to understand that the U.S. is an oligarchy, rather than a democracy or a republic. (Even the chair of the Federal Reserve can’t really disagree.)

That’s true of war-making and foreign policy, as well.

Consummate insider Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson – former chief of staff to Colin Powell, the guy who wrote Powell’s famous speech on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and now distinguished adjunct professor of Government and Public Policy at William & Mary – notes:

Who’s behind the White House, and who’s therefore behind U.S. foreign policy, more or less? I think the answer today is the oligarchs. Which would be the same answer, – incidentally, ironically, if you will – for Putin in Russia. The people who own the wealth, the people who therefore have the power and who more or less (and I’m not being too facetious here) buy the president and thus buy American foreign policy.

Indeed, we have thoroughly documented that war is bad for the economy and makes us poor. But war is very good for a handful of defense contractors and banksters who make huge sums from backing unnecessary war.

Wilkerson explains that war profiteers feed off conflict:

INTERVIEWER: One of the things that always hits me is that – once you look at the predictions of who would win in world war 2 – mostly what I’ve seen is that by 1940 or ’41 it was pretty clear Hitler was going to lose. If you’re in the German monopoly capitalist class doing analysis, you’re thinking, “Now this is not going to lead to anything good for us. Why aren’t we bailing?” But the forces of refusing to accept the reality of it were far too strong.

COLONEL WILKERSON: That’s a good point. I would say – and I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories, normally – but I would say there were forces behind that shadow, if you will, who were doing quite well. Swiss, Germans, Americans and others who were more or less feeding off the conflict, and got very wealthy feeding off the conflict. Just as they did off of World War 1, even more predominately with respect to the United States, in particular. German reparations and so forth. We made a ton of money off of World War 1. And we really didn’t contribute a whole lot, if you remember. We were really only there substantially for a very short period of time, roughly April 1917 until Armistice Day. So, there is a group which is interested in this kind of thing – and this group alarms probably more than any other in the world, particularly in my own country – that is interested in a constant state of war, or as near a constant state as possible. Because they sit behind all the belligerents and make money.

(Indeed, bankers profits so much from war that they often back both sides. For example, American banks funded the Nazis during WWII when America was is in the middle of a war against German).

Interestingly, Wilkerson points out that war profiteers can make a financial killing simply by stirring upvolatility:

In some respects this shadow behind the power that makes money off war period – no matter who’s the belligerent – makes money off that volatility now.

Especially with computers that are able to to assist them in doing so. Like currency manipulation, for example, or just general speculation. With computers, you can do it at lightning speed. And you can do it in a nanosecond. And you can make billions in that nanosecond.And you don’t care about what you’re doing to the real economy because you’re raking in the dough.

In other words, destabilizing countries and creating chaos can make modern war profiteers rich.

And Wilkerson- who was an eyewitness to the end of the Cold War – points out that big American defense contractors are largely responsible for our current dispute with Russia:

Jim Baker and George H.W. Bush really accomplished what, I think, is one of the real diplomatic feats of the 20th century: the reunification of Germany, whether we agree with it or not. And they did it without a shot being fired….One of the reasons they could it is that they assured Gorbachev and later Yeltsin that NATO that they would be quiescent, it wouldn’t move, it wouldn’t threaten Russia.In fact, I was there when they promised the Russians that they were going to make them a member [of NATO]. An observer first, and then a member ….Well that fell apart when they perceived right quickly that we weren’t really serious. And then we start – under pressure from Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon and others – to sell weapons to Poland, and weapons to Georgia, and weapons to Romania, and everyone else we could bring into the fold. Under those pressures and others we started to expand NATO, and stuck both our fingers in the Russian eyes, so to speak, immediately. It’s clear to me why Putin has responded to Georgia and why he’s now responding to Crimea and Ukraine. That’s what great powers do when they get concerned about their so-called “near abroad”.

Additional background. And see this.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

European Central Bank Says Stimulus Is Likely, but Not Before June

from nytimes

By JACK EWING and JAMES KANTERMAY 8, 2014

FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank on Thursday held interest rates steady, but signaled that it was likely to take action next month to stimulate the euro zone economy, amid growing concern about economic fallout from the crisis in Ukraine.

Mario Draghi, the president of the central bank, said Europe would suffer from effects like a decline in the Russian economy, stiffer economic sanctions or higher gas prices.

“It’s a very complex geopolitical picture, which could evolve,” Mr. Draghi said at a news conference in Brussels. “If it does evolve, the euro zone and European Union are going to be impacted more than other parts of the world.”

Although the central bank left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 0.25 percent, Mr. Draghi said there was agreement among members of the governing council, which sets monetary policy, that something should be done to counteract very low inflation, which some economists see as a grave threat to the euro zone economy.

“There is consensus about being dissatisfied with the projected path of inflation,” Mr. Draghi said. “There is a consensus about not being resigned and accepting this as a fact of nature.”

There was also concern about the euro exchange rate, he said. On Thursday, the euro neared $1.40 as investors sought refuge from turmoil elsewhere in the world. A strong euro makes products from the euro zone more expensive in foreign markets, and tends to push inflation down even further because imported goods become cheaper.

“The strengthening of the euro in the context of low inflation and still low levels of economic activity is a cause for serious concern in the view of the governing council,” Mr. Draghi said.

Mr. Draghi did not say, however, what action the European Central Bank might take to stimulate the economy. And he left an escape hatch, saying that the governing council wanted to wait for the next round of economic projections by the bank’s experts, due before the next monetary policy meeting on June 5. Mr. Draghi’s statement suggested that the central bank might not act after all if the forecasts point to higher inflation.

“The governing council is comfortable with acting next time,” Mr. Draghi said, but he added, “we want to see the staff projections.”

Having raised expectations, though, Mr. Draghi might strain his credibility if the central bank does nothing next month.

“Draghi has pushed the E.C.B. into a corner from which it will be very hard to escape,” Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Bank, said in a note to clients.

Also on Thursday, the Bank of England kept interest rates at a record low. The bank’s Monetary Policy Committee left its benchmark interest rate at 0.5 percent, where it has been since the depths of the financial crisis more than five years ago.

While many economists have called for more decisive action from the European Central Bank to stimulate the euro zone economy, members of the bank’s governing council have appeared reluctant to deploy the more radical measures that would be required to do so.

Mr. Draghi said Thursday that the bank was committed “to using also unconventional instruments within its mandate,” a reference to so-called quantitative easing — large purchases of bonds or other financial instruments to pump money into the economy. Most analysts, though, expect the central bank to cut its main interest rate closer to zero before taking more radical steps.

Annual inflation in the euro zone was 0.7 percent in April, according to an official estimate, which is well below the central bank’s target of close to 2 percent. Such low inflation is risky, some economists say, because it leaves the euro zone vulnerable to a ruinous downward price spiral known as deflation that might be set in motion by some sort of shock, like a worsening of the crisis in Ukraine.

Modest inflation is considered healthy, in part because it eases the burden on debtors in a region where many countries, companies and individuals are having problems repaying their loans.

The problem facing the central bank is that, while it is standard practice to keep a lid on excess inflation by raising rates, inducing an increase in inflation is much more difficult. It might require the bank to use measures that have never been tested in the euro zone, like huge purchases of government bonds or other assets.

Mr. Draghi said in April that the bank was prepared to make asset purchases, a strategy similar to the quantitative easing, or Q.E., used in the United States by the Federal Reserve. But most analysts did not expect the central bank to take action yet.

Spain, Portugal and Ireland show clear signs that they are emerging from the crisis. But unemployment remains high and credit remains tight for businesses in those and other countries, like Greece and Italy.

Some analysts say that the central bank faces too many constraints to be able to deploy quantitative easing. There is no Pan-European debt instrument similar to the Treasuries that the Fed bought as part of its program, for example. There are also legal restraints on the European Central Bank that do not bind the Fed.

“If the E.C.B. could have bought bonds in a traditional Q.E. operation,” Carl B. Weinberg, the chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y., said in a note, “it would have done so already.”

Mr. Draghi said the bank’s governing council had received a “positive presentation” earlier on Thursday on the progress made by some of the countries hardest hit during the crisis. The briefing was by Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the finance minister of the Netherlands who is also serving as the head of the so-called Eurogroup of ministers from the countries that use the euro currency.

“Societies have changed, and the recovery has started,” said Mr. Draghi, who cited a drop in unemployment in Portugal last year. “Efforts which were so painful, and for such a long time, are producing now some positive outcomes.”

Euro zone countries lately have been moving ever closer to joint oversight of their economies and banking systems, hoping to prevent a rerun of the crisis that nearly sank the euro. But questions remain about how much further member states should go in a number of areas, including whether to create a permanent post to lead the Eurogroup, rather than the current part-time position.

Although Mr. Draghi declined to say whether he favored creating a full-time position at the head of the Eurogroup, he said that the progress on banking reform and economic growth showed that “the European way of decision-making that takes place in the Eurogroup is good.”

“Our crisis would not have been as severe as it has been if we had had more integration, not less integration,” he said, “and our future lies with more integration.”

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Banksters Market Rigging Manipulation Is 'Pedal To The Metal'

from marketoracle.co.uk

Stock-Markets / Market ManipulationMay 07, 2014 - 03:58 PM GMT

By: Andrew_McKillop

Financial Companies Will Do Almost Anything
Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the financial Southern District of New York City recently said: “Companies, especially financial institutions, will do almost anything to avoid tough enforcement action and....have a natural and powerful incentive to make prosecutors believe that death or dire consequences await”.

The US FERC-Federal Energy Regulatory Commission formally charged JPMorgan with massive criminal manipulation of US energy markets, especially in California and the Midwest, specifically to obtain tens of millions of dollars in over-payments from power grid operators in the period between September 2010 and June 2011.

Gaming electric power markets, like the oil markets, the precious metals markets, and the non-energy commodity markets – in fact all markets - is a high-stake prize for the Robber Barons of Crony Capitalism. The simple result for all consumers and users of these basic inputs to the economy is that if regulators side with the criminals, prices in specific domains and sectors of key interest for the crony capitalists will stay rigged. For electricity and oil, they will remain high or very high, for gold and other PMs (precious metals) they will remain low. For other commodities they may be either low or high, depending on the whims and strategems of the crony capitalists, but in all cases prices will be artificial until there is a “mega reset” of the entire finance system.

In other words until there is a massive market crash at least equal to 2008-2009. At these times, nearly all commodities like nearly all traded financial assets will experience a price crash, but with the possibility that gold and other PMs may soar in price. It depends how the Robber Barons feel.

Doing something about this is very difficult, and becomes more so after each market reset.

And siding with the Robber Barons in no way has to be through collusion and corruption. A former chairman of the US CFTC (commodities trading regulatory agency) noted to me in person at a Chicago financial conference in 2008 that at best in his time in office, at any one time he had only six fully appraised and capable regulators available to handle all major affairs in the entire 48-state continental USA. Necessarily, prosecutions move slowly or very slowly and the army of well-paid lawyers lined up by the Robber Barons usually win.

Known and Proven

As a direct inevitable result, proven also in Europe and Asian markets, the Robber Barons can do what they like. Starting with energy and commodity prices, they presently want high oil and electricity prices, and at all times eying the potential for organizing “breakouts” in other major basic commodities, especially food commodities.

In some key commodities, like US natural gas and world coal, their whims direct them towards “price collapses” which enable them, when it pleases, to set up a later “surprise recovery”. Their naked and intense determination to push down gold and other PM prices for at least the last 3 years has almost daily impacts on price trends in these markets. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, among others repeatedly say the gold price, by end-year 2014 “will be $1075 per ounce or less”, even much less. Currently gold is above $1300 per ounce, making this specific market a spectacle we can call the Battle of the Titans in real time, where the crony capitalists take on everybody else – ignoring trifling details like the actual physical supply and demand for gold.

In the US, as of now, “test cases” are seeping into the media. One test being played out in New England concerns Energy Capital Partners, a hedge fund using tax-avoiding offshore investment techniques with deep ties to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. ECP paid $650 million last year to acquire three generating plant complexes, including the second largest electric power producer in New England, Brayton Point Power in Massachusetts.

Within 40 days of buying Brayton Point Power, ECP closed down all operations of this generator. No industrial or power market logic supported this decision. The pretexts used by ECP included its claim that Brayton had “old, outdated and failure-prone generating plant”, despite the fact that ECP had purchased the company after its “due diligence”.

The main goal was simple: create an artificial shortage of power in New England and gouge electricity prices. At times of peak demand like hot summer evenings and cold winter days, prices were able to be racked to extremes. The non-profit association Public Citizen and the financial journalists covering this “naked call on power prices” in New England, citing evidence lodged to the US FERC, estimate the market rigging cost consumers an additional $2.6 billion per year, but this estimate may be conservative.

The now very well known LIBOR-rigging scandal of manipulating interest rates and financial derivatives linked to interest rates, presently featuring the bank Barclays, has in fact spread its tentacles across the private bank sector of the Western world. For example, through UK-based RBS, its Japanese subsidiary RBS Securities Japan Ltd. in April pleaded guilty to wire fraud and accepted to pay around $50 million in fines as part of a settlement of more than $600 million, to date, with US and UK regulators over LIBOR rigging. US District Judge Michael Shea in New Haven in early May sentenced the Tokyo-based unit of RBS to pay the $50 million fine.

In total and to date, financial market regulators in different countries have sentenced banks including Barclays, RBS, UBS AG of Switzerland, Deutsche Bank and Holland's Rabobank Groep to a record total of 1.7 billion euros ($2.3 billion) for directly rigging interest rates linked to LIBOR. Related fines concern market rigging of Yen-Libor and Euribor rates, euro rates, and derivatives market-rigging related to this long-running market manipulation, which market specialists trace back to the early 1990s.

The Game Roars On

Global fines for LIBOR rate-rigging, plus the rigging of derivatives linked to LIBOR have reached $6 billion in the period June 2012 to end-April 2014. Regulators face the problem of finding out the extent of collusion of traders employed by the banks, with their criminal partners operating for leading brokers and other major market operators, such as the firm ICAP.

Due to interest rate and linked-derivatives rigging being very longstanding, and massive, at least $800 trillion in nominal value “financial assets” is either directly or indirectly affected. Overall, and again to date, the LIBOR-rigging industry rather than “scandal” is the largest-ever known, or more accurately partly-known scam in world financial history. Due to this specific case of market rigging revealing the key elements of huge spread across the entire financial sector, and well over 20 years of operation, the seemingly-impressive fines paid by identified wrongdoers are in fact “small change”. This is crony capitalism. For the banksters, it is like paying parking fines.

Collusion with the fraudsters and thieves who operate these scams on a permanent basis can be split into active and passive forms. Governments of course claim they are “alert to the problem”, but in the above example of the LIBOR scam have only acted seriously since 2009-2010. The financial industry operates on the basis that in specific domains and sectors – for example commodity and PM markets – these are de facto rigged and will stay that way.

Claims by some experts that we have to prosecute fraud and theft or else the economy will never really stabilize face the simple and basic problem of doing something about it.

As we know, since 2008 the “bankster clique” has claimed, whenever it suits, to be “on its deathbed” and subject to massive adverse trading conditions, loss of capital, under-capitalization, and so on. It therefore needs State bailouts and needs “government largesse” and support at a critical time. This “largesse” takes the quaint form of the big banks, when they successfully prosecuted, being able to settle prosecutions with no formal admission of guilt. They “agree to pay” the fines.

Gold and Oil – The Game Roars On

Gold market rigging can be demonstrated for at least the past 20 years.

In his book “The Gold Cartel,” analyst Dimitri Speck combines minute-by-minute data for the period Aug 1993 to Dec 2012 to show how gold prices moved on an average day. What happens is that New York morning fixings (about 10am EST) are frequently reset at a low price by the riggers, allowing the price to then be bumped up on overnight markets – when this is required by the riggers. Their basic goal is to ensure that “small players” are always wrongfooted, and always lose money, to push them out of the game. Currently, as we know, for reasons extending far outside the “simple” pleasure and profit of rigging gold prices, Goldman Sachs in particular has engaged a wall of financial propaganda, called “market forecasts”, for pushing gold prices as low as possible. Therefore abrupt and suspicious gold market price changes are certain and sure.

Oil market rigging – pushing the price upwards – also has a long track record. Probably the best-known and documented example of this, which of course needs a “?” added because no formal charges ever arose from the affair, was heavily researched by journalists working for 'Forbes' magazine. The key article is: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0413/096-sachs-semgroup-goldman-goose-oil.html

From this article, the key chart is reproduced, below. Nymex oil market rigging, with an instant spillover to all other major oil markets (ICE, Tocom, etc) appears most intense in the period of March-July 2008. After this, oil prices were heavily pushed downwards.

Oil market analysts recapping the period of 2005-2008 call it “a wild ride”, and many agree that in 2008 prices were at least $25 per barrel above any realistic demand-supply price. Taking world traded oil volumes as around 51 million barrels/day in 2008 (non-traded oil accounts for the rest), a “rigging surcharge” of $25/bbl represents a hit on all consumers and users of this traded oil of about $1.3 billion per day. For the 150 days of March-July 2008, we can calculate the total approximate value, to price manipulators, of their rigging.

No Guilt – No Shame

Ritual avoidance of guilt is a hallmark of crony capitalism, showing it always gets at least backdoor support from crony government for reasons that likely extend far beyond “simple” collusion and corruption of politicians, by the crony capitalists. As the banking and insurance crisis of 2008-2009 amply demonstrated, major private banks and insurers in several G7 countries made public threats of “closing down their business” unless governments provided them bailouts. Governments complied.

International action by the crony capitalists, using rigged FX-foreign exchange markets, has a long track record as a weapon used to weaken and destabilize selected enemy countries. This FX rigging activity, in these cases, is more than simple collusion of governments with the crony capitalists but the active use, by governments, of the market rigging “skills” of the crony capitalists to attack specific and selected enemy countries.

Making a check on how the Russian Ruble or RUB is performing against Western currencies since March 2014 will show this rather clearly.

The constant and massive manipulation of USD/JPY exchange rates is not “political” but what we can purely “market criminal”, designed to enable predictable and known-in-advance daily or weekly changes of share prices, and other asset prices, on world financial markets. The tipping point from government-approved “political” manipulation of currencies, to “market criminal” rigging, is however a fuzzy-edged domain. In the Japanese case, specifically, heavy manipulation of the Yen is already producing major blowback throughout the Japanese economy, setting a rising challenge to the political future of Shinzo Abe.

Blowback will also, and can also harm the crony capitalists themselves – not necessarily in the form of photoset prosecutions followed by an “agreed fine without guilt” set by crony government. A case in point featuring FX market rigging concerns the US dollar. At this time, in the “Western standoff with Russia” over the Ukraine, the dollar should be bolstered – but it is not. Longterm market rigging strategy by the banksters requires a constant decline in the dollar's world value. Blowback, in this case may result in the total abandonment of the “petrodollar system”, to the major disadvantage of the US.

The Bankster Strategy

Market rigging is so widespread, covering so many market domains, that investigative writers ask if there is some, of course secret, Master Strategy. Conjecture on this strategy can only be theoretical but key domestic-market rigging notably in home loans and mortgages, and their financial derivatives, is now a clear pernicious threat to the economy and society.

Transforming, that is mutating the whole real estate sector into a giant Ponzi scheme has more than only “blowback potential”. It is a threat to society, shown in a negative sense by governments being totally unwilling – they say “unable” - to control and defuze this threat. National or sovereign debt, which is another lever used by the crony capitalists to exercise unyielding and constant pressure on governments, through exchange and bond rate rigging, has plainly got out of hand since 2008.

In other words the banksters are the new masters. Clearly proven and documented since 2008, several major banks including Anglo-Chinese HSBC actively “launder” funds for world terrorist entities and organizations. The interconnection between the banksters and supposed “security providers” such as the US CIA and FBI is stronger than ever. For example, BoA-Bank of America funneled massive amounts of money to the later-collapsed BCCI, which in turn supplied funds to Osama bin Laden and others, according to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Terrorism.

The banksters are therefore provenly able to finance, influence and possibly operate known terrorist organizations, providing them the capability of more than simply “blackmailing” their home governments with the threat of shutting down operations if they not given massive bailouts. Their constant financing of drugs and illegal weapons trades, worldwide, is also well documented.

Also since 2008, it is now abundantly clear that the banksters select and reward upper management – not “rogue individual traders” - on the basis of their ability to execute longterm strategies which require permanent rigging of financial and commodity markets. This strategy includes a clear retreat from so-called “high street banking” or retail banking. At the same time, for key members of the bakster fraternity, like JPMorgan in the US, RBS in the UK, Deutsche Bank in Germany, Soc Gen in France, the role of taxpayer subsidies in total revenues and profits has soared. Analyst estimates for JPMorgan suggest at least 75% of its 2013 net income was from this source.

Returning to the comment of Preet Bharara at the top of this article, the claim by banksters that they are “on their deathbed”, need legal largesse, and huge taxpayer fund inflows at the snap of their fingers, is an insane distortion of the true picture. The banksters are a threat to society.

By Andrew McKillop

Contact: xtran9@gmail.com

Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission. Andrew McKillop Biographic Highlights

Co-author 'The Doomsday Machine', Palgrave Macmillan USA, 2012

Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.

© 2014 Copyright Andrew McKillop - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisor.

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