Summers – Financial Treason & Crime

Michael Collins, 12 January 2021

The U.S. Treasury Department has finally determined that China is a currency manipulator, putting currency manipulation and trade deficits back in the news. Trade deficits, currency manipulation and the strong dollar are complicated economic forces that directly affect the future of American manufacturing. Let’s look at how they affect manufacturing and why we must face the truth and do something around these issues, regardless of the politics.

Trade Deficits: Let me begin by saying that, yes, trade deficits have and will continue to hurt American manufacturing, although many politicians, economists, and industry associations disagree.

Michael Froman, former trade representative: “Every legitimate economist said that measuring trade policy by the size of the goods deficit is probably not a passing grade in a basic economics class,”

Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard economist: “The trade deficit is a terrible metric for judging economic policy.” Continue reading “Article: The Truth about Trade Deficits and Currency Manipulation”

05/24/202003/18/2021

Web: Our Financial Oligarchy; Emperors of a Brave New World

Web

Our Financial Oligarchy; Emperors of a Brave New World

They own the regulators; they own the brokerage houses; they own the clearing houses; they own all of your investments; and it’s even been shown that they can exert complete control over the government.

To understand how these banks exert complete control over our financial system, one must first understand the securities clearance system.

In the United States of America, there is only one central clearinghouse: The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, and for almost 50 years they have maintained a virtual monopoly over this essential service.

It is a private corporation that is owned by these mega-banks and brokers.

Read full free book online with many illustrations

PDF (470 Pages): Our Financial Oligarchy Back-Up

10/10/201305/17/2020

Article: Looting the Pension Funds All across America, Wall Street is grabbing money meant for public workers

Article - Media

Looting the Pension Funds

All across America, Wall Street is grabbing money meant for public workers

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 10 October 2013

Raimondo’s strategy for saving money involved handing more than $1 billion – 14 percent of the state fund – to hedge funds, including a trio of well-known New York-based funds: Dan Loeb’s Third Point Capital was given $66 million, Ken Garschina’s Mason Capital got $64 million and $70 million went to Paul Singer’s Elliott Management.

The state’s workers, in other words, were being forced to subsidize their own political disenfranchisement, coughing up at least $200 million to members of a group that had supported anti-labor laws.

This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era.

Baker reported that, had public pension funds not been invested in the stock market and exposed to mortgage-backed securities, there would be no shortfall at all.

It’s a scam of almost unmatchable balls and cruelty, accomplished with the aid of some singularly spineless politicians. And it hasn’t happened overnight. This has been in the works for decades, and the fighting has been dirty all the way.

Union leaders all over the country have started to figure out the perils of hiring a bunch of overpriced Wall Street wizards to manage the public’s money.

Read full article.

01/04/201305/20/2020

Article: Secrets and Lies of the Bailout

Article - Media

Secrets and Lies of the Bailout

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 4 January 2013

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you’d think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we’ve been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

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07/31/200905/17/2020

Paper: Regulation of Naked Short Selling by Congressional Research Service

Paper

Regulation of Naked Short Selling

Name Redacted

Congressional Research Service, 31 July 2009

Until the current financial crisis, the SEC did not view short selling of large, blue-chip stocks as a problem. In July 2008, however, the SEC temporarily banned naked short sales of the stock of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and 17 other large financial institutions. On September 18, 2008, the SEC banned all short selling of the shares of more than 700 financial companies in an emergency action that expired on October 8, 2008. On October 1, 2008, the SEC adopted an interim rule requiring short sellers’ brokers to actually borrow shares to deliver to buyers, within one day after the expiration the normal three-day settlement time frame. The rule was made permanent on July 27, 2009, and it applies to all stocks. This report will be updated as events warrant.

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PDF (10 Pages): Paper CRS Regulation on Naked Short Selling