Where the Looting of Main Street Met the ‘Baddest’ Banks who Should Fail or be Taken-Over as Eminent Domain, like any Rock in the Way to Progress and

Where the Looting of Main Street Met the ‘Baddest’ Banks who Should Fail or be Taken-Over as Eminent Domain, like any Rock in the Way to Progress and better Development

By Kevin Stoda, View from Europe

In recent weeks, I have been covering and discussing with my students the methodologies used by US banks and financial institutions over the past decade, like those outlined by Matt Taibbi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNcD5wDOuMo

Taibbi has simplified and published the techniques in his last month’s ROLLING STONE article, “Looting Main Street”

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=12541

Finally, one U.S. congressmen took on some of these bankers and financiers. The congressman was Senator Carl Levin yesterday in his grilling and crime narrative of Goldman Sachs. Levin noted, “Goldman Sachs proclaims ‘a responsibility to our clients, our shareholders and employees and our communities to support and fund ideas and facilitate growth.’ Yet, the evidence shows that Goldman repeatedly put its own interests and profits ahead of the interests of its clients and our communities. Its misuse of exotic and complex financial structures helps spread toxic mortgages throughout the financial system. And when the system finally collapsed under the weight of those toxic mortgages, Goldman profited from the collapse.”

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/28/goldman_execs_grilled_over_role_in

Why have the White House and man other (of our) congressmen in Washington, D.C. been sitting on their laurels for over three years?

Greg Gordan of McClatchy Newspapers said of Levin’s performance in front of the hearing with Goldman Sachs yesterday, “Carl Levin was like a jackhammer. He just went at Lloyd Blankfein again and again about the issue id whether Goldman sold short, whether it did a big short behind the veil of—–it was basically, it was secret bets that its clients did not know about while it was unloading all of these securities and packaging so-called synthetic securities which are basically exotic bets between two parties and often one party which was betting against the housing market was Goldman and the other party was its client, or clients. What we saw, I think, was more of a picture of what Goldman was doing. Goldman maintains that it barely made any money on this so-called big short, less than $500 million in 2007, which for a company its size is a tiny percentage of its revenues. But Senator Carl Levin drove home the point finally that Goldman was unloading tens of billions of dollars of these securities in late 2006 and 2007, before anybody else in the Wall Street community had awakened to what was happening, and Goldman made a clean exit. Yes, maybe the net result was less than $500 million in profit in 2007 on the secret ballots and a net loss over those years of $1.7 billion on the securities, but Goldman was in deep. It wasn’t the biggest player in the subprime market, but it had tens of billions of dollars invested in these risky mortgages backed by … risky mortgage securities backed loans to very shaky borrowers.”

PREDATORY STANDARD OF LARGEST BANKS/FINANCIERS

In recent years, I have written of my own experiences with large banks before in America. (One of them is considered a primer for those following the bank scandals and the federal governments hands-off-the-banks approach.)

http://the-teacher.blogspot.com/2007/10/citibank-us-credit-management-and-me.html

Now, there is the movie PLUNDER: THE CRIME OF OUR TIME out now explaining the overall predatory attacks, tactics, and strategies carried out on average Americans and American cities in the last decade.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/28/plunder_the_crime_of_our_time

The producer of the film PLUNDER is Danny Schechter, and he is the author of ‘the News Dissector.’

http://www.newsdissector.com/plunder/

According to Schechter, “PLUNDER shows how debt has restructured our economy and put Americans under a burden that many will never crawl out of. PLUNDER identifies some of the shameless profiteers and calls for an investigation and the prosecution of those behind this shrewdly engineered Sub Prime ponzi scheme. PLUNDER indicts the regulators who enabled the crisis and the media that missed it. PLUNDER advocates a debt-relief movement in America and argues that such a movement would resonate across the political spectrum.”

Since Goldman Sachs is seen as a main character in the collapse of the Greek economy this year —and as Greece’s good silent partner in intentionally keeping the weakness of the Greek economy secret from the rest of the EU EURO community of states. (Over 15 countries now use the Euro and the troubles in Greece are feared to affect them all.)

Europeans and I certainly hope that Obama and Congress finally get serious about banking reform and soon—America’s viruses affect the whole planet!