The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

[don]

22 January 2011

America Appears To Be Trapped in a Massive Coverup of Control Fraud and Corruption

The American government is acting as if it is involved in a massive coverup of a control fraud and corruption that could perhaps be the worst in its history. I think many people who are looking at this know in their hearts that all is not well, that there is something not quite right in the current situation. How else can we explain such massive and widespread financial fraud, with so few meaningful indictments, or even ongoing investigations with credible disclosures? And the worst perpetrators appear to be dictating the remedies and reforms to the system for this government sponsored recovery.

Hank, Tim, and Ben alluded to the consequences of the discovery and uncontrolled disclosure of this fraud, and it frightened the Congress so badly that they immediately gave up and signed over 700 billion dollars, and many billions more, to facilitate the coverup of this under the guise of recovery and stabilization. I would like to imagine that those in charge are attempting to prevent a panic while they put out the fires, but I see little serious remedies designed to save the public, much less than to perpetuate the firetrap. And so the corruption continues to fester, and debilitate the nation.

More than an American scandal, this fraud reaches deep into the halls of power in Europe, some of whose national governments are already failing. What had been the Keating Five is now the Global Finance 500.

People say they understand this, but they really do not understand the implications of it. They intellectualize and theorize around it, try to deal with it by smashing it down into something they can get their mind around and accept, and even turn to their short term personal advantage. But they are not dealing with it and certainly not facing up to it.

And there are many whose goal is to distract and to change the subject away from it, and a great deal of money to be made by serving their desires to turn people's attention away from the problem to find someone else to blame, some other problem to focus upon, and some new victim class to absorb the public's anger. It is an old story, often repeated in tragedy.

Thirteen Ways to Hide the Truth

But unfortunately, confronting the truth and fixing the situation is key to any sort of sustainable recovery. And this is the trap of crony capitalism and control fraud, when it has nearly exhausted its victims, and is having difficulty finding new ones to maintain its growth and facade.

Until that time there will be a procession of scapegoats, defaults, bailouts, and property seizures, both implicit and explicit, and a growing toll of innocent victims and systemic destruction, ending finally in the collapse of the US national currency and international trade.

If it had not been that the US is so large, and for the time being controls the bulk of the world's reserve currency, it is likely this would have already come to some conclusion before spreading so widely and pervasively. But the situation remains highly unstable and threatening, despite assurances to the contrary.

William K. Black is telling us something very important, as Harry Markopolos had been trying to tell some simple but important things to the investors in Bernie Madoff's investment scheme. The Madoff investors preferred to vilify and ignore him. It appears that the same thing is happening to William Black. And the final outcomes may be similar.

What can one person do besides to spread the word, and demand the truth in their own place and their own way, to support those who stand and tell the truth sometimes at great cost? Insulate and remove yourself from the fraud as best you can, and above all resist the disinformation, propaganda, and the madness, make it clear that you will be neither a willing victim nor a silent bystander to the intoxicant of blame and hatred, and the victimization of others designed to turn the people on one another, be they Gypsy, Muslim, Jew or Christian, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, disabled, old, poor, ill or weak, any other variety of outsider.

For once the madness starts, it can never be controlled, and will eventually come for all, and consume all.

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot...e-coverup.html

The Great American Bank Robbery
Video - Lecture
By William K. Black

1. Why do we have repeated, intensifying economic crises?
2. What can white collar criminology add to our understanding of what's going wrong?

[jtabeb]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

"What can one person do besides to spread the word, and demand the truth in their own place and their own way, to support those who stand and tell the truth sometimes at great cost? Insulate and remove yourself from the fraud as best you can, and above all resist the disinformation, propaganda, and the madness, make it clear that you will be neither a willing victim nor a silent bystander to the intoxicant of blame and hatred, and the victimization of others designed to turn the people on one another, be they Gypsy, Muslim, Jew or Christian, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, disabled, old, poor, ill or weak, any other variety of outsider.

For once the madness starts, it can never be controlled, and will eventually come for all, and consume all."



Yep

[don]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

23 January 2011

Tavaokoli: No Need to Qualify - This IS a Massive Cover-up of a Control Fraud



Hard to top this for straight talk and right to the heart of the matter from someone who knows the financial markets, and especially derivatives, better than most.

From this afternoon's mailbag:
"Loved your commentary: 'The American government is acting as if it is involved in a massive cover-up of a control fraud and corruption that could perhaps be the worst in its history.'

There's no need to qualify. The government is involved in a massive cover-up of control fraud and corruption, and it is the worst in U.S. history.

We let the servants quietly steal from the wine cellar and larder (for more than a century), and after discovering that no one would check their behavior—in fact, we handed the keys to our consumables to all the servants and let them bribe the overseers—they have watered down all the wine, and they backed up the truck to the larder and replaced most of the food with jars of peanut butter.

The bad guys have won, it's almost too late to find our food and wine (5 year statute of limitations for securities fraud). As you rightly point out, those who speak up like William K. Black are marginalized.

Perhaps the most positive thing one can do at this point is try to stay on top of the anomalies created by this mess and try to preserve and increase wealth for the few that will listen."

Janet Tavakoli

[c1ue]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

Poor Bill.

He's doing great work illustrating the mess, but he still labors under the clearly incorrect perception that anyone in power actually cares.

What we have right now is good cop, bad cop representing whatever issue you can name including this one. The point is that both entities are cops. Only they're really criminals.

[Spartacus]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

What we have right now is good cop, bad cop representing whatever issue you can name including this one. The point is that both entities are cops. Only they're really criminals.

good cop: none (a University Prof ain't a cop)

bad cops on the corporate dole: all (all the regulators who could do something but won't: Geithner, G's staff, Bernanke, B's staff, State AGs, state AG staff who do nothing, FBI, auditors, controllers, comptrollers ...)
bad cops who will go to the law breaking corporations afterward: almost all
bad senators on the corporate dole: almost all
bad senators on the corporate dole who will go to work for the bloodsucking corps later: almost all
bad concresscritters: almost all
bad concresscritters who will go to work for the corps later: almost all
CEOs, division heads, VPs, GMs of bloodless corps who sleep hanging upside down by their pounces (or in a coffin with the dust of their ancestors): (you know)

[Thailandnotes]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

Poor Bill.

He's doing great work illustrating the mess, but he still labors under the clearly incorrect perception that anyone in power actually cares.

Need a Hail Mary from Wikileaks.
(Anyone heard an update on the BOA release?)
This link below is a refreshing interview on Democracy Now.
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/201...ent_disturbing

w/ Icelandic Parliament member...


BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: Well, when Iceland had like the third-biggest financial collapse in the history of the world because of an incredible sequence of de-legislation and criminal behavior within the banks and cheerleading from the government, and even the Icelandic president at the time, for the banksters—so when everything collapsed, people realized that everything we believed in, be it the media, the government, the politicians, the academia, had failed us. So there was a lot of reevaluation about in what sort of society we wanted to live in.

There was—I think it was in August 2009—there was a leak on WikiLeaks with the loan book of one of the banks, the corrupt banks, the third-largest one. And thus it gave the investigators that were looking into it an opportunity to see the facts, because there’s so much bank secrecy going on, not only in Iceland, but everywhere, something that—that’s why it is important to have places like WikiLeaks. What happened when the leak came on WikiLeaks, the state TV in Iceland did a story on it. However, as they were going to tell the story on the main news hour, they were handed over a gag order. And this is the first time in our history in Iceland that a gag order is put on a story. And that—instead of doing nothing, they decided to put the WikiLeaks web page on the screen and the URL to it, and they told that they had received a gag order, but people could go to the website and see the raw document themselves. And thus WikiLeaks became instantly known in Iceland, since it is a very small country with only 315,000 people and only sort of two news—television news stations.

So, and thus it became apparent [inaudible] everything collapsed, there were no whistleblowers, and nobody dared to blow the whistle on what was going on within the banks. So, what WikiLeaks has done, not only in Iceland, but globally, is to put the concept of whistleblowing back into the dialogue and awareness of the general public, which is very important.

[vinoveri]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

good cop: none (a University Prof ain't a cop)

bad cops on the corporate dole: all (all the regulators who could do something but won't: Geithner, G's staff, Bernanke, B's staff, State AGs, state AG staff who do nothing, FBI, auditors, controllers, comptrollers ...)
bad cops who will go to the law breaking corporations afterward: almost all
bad senators on the corporate dole: almost all
bad senators on the corporate dole who will go to work for the bloodsucking corps later: almost all
bad concresscritters: almost all
bad concresscritters who will go to work for the corps later: almost all
CEOs, division heads, VPs, GMs of bloodless corps who sleep hanging upside down by their pounces (or in a coffin with the dust of their ancestors): (you know)

[flintlock]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

Ha, "They Live". Love the concept of that movie. I feel like Roddy Piper sometimes, able to "see" evil aliens others can't see. Only my skill is spotting BS artists.

[c1ue]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

So, and thus it became apparent [inaudible] everything collapsed, there were no whistleblowers, and nobody dared to blow the whistle on what was going on within the banks. So, what WikiLeaks has done, not only in Iceland, but globally, is to put the concept of whistleblowing back into the dialogue and awareness of the general public, which is very important.

Sorry, but Wikileaks had NO role whatsoever in Iceland's situation.

And if they claim they do, it is just another example of grandstanding.

[Chomsky]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

Sorry, but Wikileaks had NO role whatsoever in Iceland's situation.

And if they claim they do, it is just another example of grandstanding.

from wikipedia:

In September, internal documents from Kaupthing Bank were leaked, from shortly before the collapse of Iceland's banking sector, which led to the 2008–2010 Icelandic financial crisis. The document shows that suspiciously large sums of money were loaned to various owners of the bank, and large debts written off.

and:

In August 2009, Kaupthing Bank succeeded in obtaining a court order gagging Iceland’s national broadcaster, RÚV, from broadcasting a risk analysis report showing the bank's substantial exposure to debt default risk. This information had been leaked by a whistleblower to WikiLeaks and remained available on the WikiLeaks site; faced with an injunction minutes before broadcast the channel ran with a screen grab of the WikiLeaks site instead of the scheduled piece on the bank. Citizens of Iceland felt outraged that RÚV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance.^[211] Therefore, WikiLeaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland's 2007 Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) ranking as first in the world for free speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for sources, journalists, and publishers.^[212][213] Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former volunteer for WikiLeaks and member of the Icelandic parliament, is the chief sponsor of the proposal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks

[c1ue]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

from wikipedia:

In September, internal documents from Kaupthing Bank were leaked, from shortly before the collapse of Iceland's banking sector, which led to the 2008–2010 Icelandic financial crisis. The document shows that suspiciously large sums of money were loaned to various owners of the bank, and large debts written off.

and:

In August 2009, Kaupthing Bank succeeded in obtaining a court order gagging Iceland’s national broadcaster, RÚV, from broadcasting a risk analysis report showing the bank's substantial exposure to debt default risk. This information had been leaked by a whistleblower to WikiLeaks and remained available on the WikiLeaks site; faced with an injunction minutes before broadcast the channel ran with a screen grab of the WikiLeaks site instead of the scheduled piece on the bank. Citizens of Iceland felt outraged that RÚV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance.^[211] Therefore, WikiLeaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland's 2007 Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) ranking as first in the world for free speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for sources, journalists, and publishers.^[212][213] Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former volunteer for WikiLeaks and member of the Icelandic parliament, is the chief sponsor of the proposal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks

Except one little problem: Kaupthing collapsed in 2008 - the Wikileaks was in 2009.

Again Wikipedia shows its unreliability.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

Sorry, but Wikileaks had NO role whatsoever in Iceland's situation.

And if they claim they do, it is just another example of grandstanding.

I'm open to a thoughtful reassessment of what changes Wikileaks has brought about. Finding such an essay in the bloggy-smoggy web world is a tough quest. Soros controls Assange. Elvis Lives.

Michael Hudson giving Wikileaks credit back in 2009

http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson08182009.html

“The flames were fanned further on July 31 when Wikileaks published a Kaupthing report from September 25, 2008, detailing the loans to insiders that had helped drive the bank into insolvency. Major stockholders had borrowed against their bank stock to bid it up in price and give the appearance of prosperity and solvency. (Evidently deciding that the time had come to take the money and run, the bank owners emptied out the coffers by making loans to themselves. This signaled the death knell for any further fantasies about “efficient markets” in today’s neoliberalized jungle of financial deregulation.

“Despite the fact that Kaupthing had been nationalized by Iceland’s government, it sued to block Iceland’s national TV network from broadcasting the details. This backfired, being the equivalent of getting a book banned in Boston – every publisher’s publicity dream! The imbroglio got the entire nation fascinated, prompting so many Icelanders to go on-line to read the document that the gag order was lifted on August 4. The response was a shocked fury at the crooked behavior whose backwash threatened to engulf the nation in a bad foreign debt deal.”

What Does Wikileaks Have on Bank of America?

by Mary Bottari

http://www.commondreams.org/print/64402

“WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is promising to unleash a cache of secret documents from the hard drive of a U.S. megabank executive. In 2009, he told Computer World that the bank was Bank of America (BofA). In 2010 he told Forbes that the information was significant enough to "take down a bank or two," but that he needed time to lay out the information in a more user-friendly format.

“Recent new reports suggest that BofA is now moving into high gear on damage control, creating a "war room" and buying up hundreds of derogatory Internet domain names including BankofAmericaSucks.com...”

[c1ue]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

I'm open to a thoughtful reassessment of what changes Wikileaks has brought about. Finding such an essay in the bloggy-smoggy web world is a tough quest. Soros controls Assange. Elvis Lives.

For me, I am still undecided on just what Wikileaks represents. It is not clear that Assange acts in an altruistic manner - for one thing the secrecy of the organization as well as Wikileaks' editing of material is quite suspicious.

In the specific matter of Iceland, however, Wikileaks had a minor role, if any.

By the time the Wikileaks 'insider' documents came out, the government of Iceland had already intervened in failed Icelandic banks. This was more than a year before the Wikileaks incident.

Secondly the Dutch/UK reaction - the infamous 'Iceland classified as a terrorist state' in order to seize Icelandic assets in the UK - was also before the Wikileaks incident - almost a year before also:

http://current.com/entertainment/wtf...rist-state.htm

The Iceland issue thus existed long before the intervention of Wikileaks, as did the UK/Dutch actions against Iceland.

It is arguable even that Wikileaks did that much to stoke public resentment; the people of Iceland were already looking at the spectre of bailing out other nation's citizens savings with their own government's money. The documents in question furthermore could as easily have seen the light of day in the numerous legal actions afterwards - such as the recent raids on the Central Bank of Iceland and what not.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

When I was in my 20's I made extra money on the weekends helping an expert carpenter install safes, secret closets, etc. Unbeknown to me at the time, most of the work was for the guys running the worst S&L scam around D.C. When I moved to Bangkok in 90 and subscribed to the Herald Trib, they ran almost no adds except Rolex. About a month after I got there, they ran a quarter page Interpol wanted poster for the guy I had done most of the work for. The secretaries were hookers, cocaine was everywhere, and the guy rotating the potted plants was making 100,000 dollars a year.

Even if too-little-too-late, if Wikileaks played some small role in waking Icelanders, some credit is due. The American middle class is the frog slowly being boiled alive. It will take leaks, not documents eventually seeing the light of day in a court system, or Bill Black, or Inside Job to change things.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Great American Bank Robbery: William K. Black

Ron Paul, today on The daily Bell says much the same as Bill Black.

"For America to once again become the standard for a free society, our love of liberty and desire for peace must far surpass any public display of fidelity to the Constitution. We must first look to strong moral character, respect for the rule of law, and an understanding of the proper role of government in a free society."

http://www.thedailybell.com/1709/Ron...stitution.html