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Group Health Insurance California - 0 views

www.portalmarkets.com/...20934.html

group health health insurance insurance california

shared by ashkif as on 11 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • ashkif as on 11 Jan 19
     
    BIA Insurance Agency is one of California's premier insurance providers, founded in 2008 by Daniel Babajoni . BIA Insurance Agency guarantees the best insurance rates for both personal and commercial lines of insurance, as well as world-class customer service. Our prime focus is on Auto Insurance, Home Insurance, Business Insurance, Life insurance solutions, Health Insurance( Individual/Group ), Dental Insurance, Disability Insurance, Retirement Insurance, Earth Quake Insurance Plans, Commercial...
Gary Edwards

Revealed: Obama's Immense Shadow Army & Its Shocking Takeover Plan - 1 views

www.libertynews.com/...rmy-its-shocking-takeover-plan

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    Is the ObamaCare train wreck a wreck by design? Another notch in the Bankster belt marking another step in the bankrupting of America? Revealed: Obama's Immense Shadow Army & Its Shocking Takeover Plan October 26, 2013  //  By: Eric Odom  //   The ObamaCare train wreck - it's awful, possibly purposeful, certainly useful for team Obama and its growing army of community activists and organizers. In a previous report, we explored the question, "What if the ObamaCare debacle is really a diversion, using a military term a "feint" - a tactical distraction to draw our attention, our focus and our fire away from the real point of attack on liberty?" Remember that horrible train wreck in Spain not long ago, captured on video? As tragic as it was, watching the crash and its gruesome aftermath was almost irresistible, wasn't it? Well, what if the disastrous rollout of the President's signature legislative achievement - what if this spectacular slow motion ObamaCare train wreck has been and is being allowed to happen so that what's going on around the bend from the fiery crash site gets little attention, from the public, from the media or from Congressional investigators? Think about it, friends. How could Barack Obama and his celebrated team of incredibly proficient, plugged in techies - the team that twice got him elected - be behind the utterly disastrous launch of the ObamaCare online storefront, healthcare.gov - arguably the biggest website failure in history? How could so much money have been spent to produce such a problem-plagued site that apparently was doomed in its developmental confusion? And how to fix this monumental mess, well, there doesn't seem to be any clear plan…other than hope. And now we learn that many, if not most, of the people actually signing up for ObamaCare through the website are enrolling in Medicaid, not signing up for private insurance policies they pay for, but adding their names onto government roll
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    There is no doubt in my mind that corporations (and their Chamber of Commerce boot licking lackys) believe that employer provided healthcare benefits was a HUGE MISTAKE. The key feature of ObamaCare is that of ENDING the HMO-Employee Healthcare profit draining quagmire these corporations somehow stumbled into. (Hint: they traded healthcare benefits for wide open government assisted Globalization - the new world order Merchantilism). IMHO, the insurance companies know full well that the entire HMO-Employee Healthcare bandwagon is going to end. Not because of socialism; because of profit hungry out of control mercantilism. So they are trying to cut the best deal possible with the government. The merchantilist doesn't care that their employees are going to suffer. They only care that this cost and the blame for losing the benefit is moved from their books to the government. Nor does the merchantilist care about protecting our borders. They want cheap labor. Even if the social cost of that cheap labor lands on the government and destroys the nation. That's why the merchantilist and his Bankster financiers support Open Borders. The merchantilist could care less about the trade deficit and the massive transfer of American manufacturing jobs overseas. As long as they can sell their junk back into the USA market without a 33% import tax these bastardos are happy to destroy their country. I wonder whose army and navy will secure their investments when the USA no longer can? Are their private armies enough? Just wondering.
Paul Merrell

Bank of America Corp (BAC): Bank Of America Dumps $75 Trillion In Derivatives On U.S. T... - 0 views

seekingalpha.com/...axpayers-with-federal-approval

banksters toxic-derivatives BoA FDIC

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Bloomberg reports that Bank of America (BAC) has shifted about $22 trillion worth of derivative obligations from Merrill Lynch and the BAC holding company to the FDIC insured retail deposit division. Along with this information came the revelation that the FDIC insured unit was already stuffed with $53 trillion worth of these potentially toxic obligations, making a total of $75 trillion.Derivatives are highly volatile financial instruments that are occasionally used to hedge risk, but mostly used for speculation. They are bets upon the value of stocks, bonds, mortgages, other loans, currencies, commodities, volatility of financial indexes, and even weather changes. Many big banks, including Bank of America, issue derivatives because, if they are not triggered, they are highly profitable to the issuer, and result in big bonus payments to the executives who administer them. If they are triggered, of course, the obligations fall upon the corporate entity, not the executives involved. Ultimately, by allowing existing gambling bets to remain in insured retail banks, and endorsing the shift of additional bets into the insured retail division, the obligation falls upon the U.S. taxpayers and dollar-denominated savers.
  • Even if we net out the notional value of the derivatives involved, down to the net potential obligation, the amount is so large that the United States could not hope to pay it off without a major dollar devaluation, if a major contingency actually occurred and a large part of the derivatives were triggered. But, if such an event ever occurs, Bank of America's derivatives counter-parties will, as usual, be made whole, while the American people suffer. This all has the blessing of the Federal Reserve, which approved the transfer of derivatives from Merrill Lynch to the insured retail unit of BAC before it was done.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 13
     
    From 2011. $75 trillion in bankster bad derivatives bets transferred to FDIC insured commercial bank subsidiaries. Why FDIC insurance is no longer anything but a tax on depositors to insure nominal value of toxic derivatives for the investment banksters. And why all of the major commercial banks in the U.S. lack sufficient real assets to repay depositors when the collapse comes. RIP, FDIC. 
Gary Edwards

ObamaCare suckers needed, inquire within | RedState - 0 views

www.redstate.com/...-suckers-needed-inquire-within

ObamaCare-TAX ObamaCare-Exchanges Healthcare

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The exchanges need roughly 2.7 million healthy 18-t0-35-year-olds to sign up to be solvent.
  • The majority of that group is nonwhite and male, according to Simas’ data, and a third are located in just three states: California, Texas and Florida.
  • If too few choose to enroll because they don’t know about the law, don’t like it, or feel they don’t need insurance, the exchanges will fail. And so will the law.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • In other words, ObamaCare needs an army of young dupes to pay through the nose, in order to make this ridiculous program appear solvent while it showers other people with benefits.  
  • It’s a wonder young folks are lining up around the block to pay those 50 to 150 percent increases in their health insurance premiums.
  • he latest Government Accountability Office report says ObamaCare implementation remains months behind schedule, even though the insurance exchanges are supposed to go live in just four months.
  • Under Obamacare, insurance companies can no longer turn away people with preexisting conditions.
  • And so a crucial aspect of implementation is getting enough young, healthy people to enroll to offset the cost of insuring older, less-healthy enrollees.
  • The Congressional Budget Office expects some 7 million people to sign up when the exchanges open on Oct. 1, eventually reaching 22 million.
  •  The embarrassing degeneration of ObamaCare into a wealth transfer program that feeds off healthy people is a perfect inversion of the insurance concept.
  • Normally, the young and hearty folks would pay a low fee for health insurance, because providers would make the reasonable actuarial gamble that most of those customers would not be filing expensive claims.
  • The notion of selling “insurance” to someone with an pre-existing condition, guaranteed to make big claims, would be absurd.  
  •  Older people with higher risks pay more.
  • Instead, we’ve got another corrupt, inefficient redistribution system powered by the liquefied assets of chumps.
  • It’s starting to visibly panic over not being able to pump enough chumps to fill its gas tank.
  • And I do mean corrupt, because it’s not as if most of this money is going to doctors or medical supplies.
  •  Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, describes the billion dollars flowing into the California health insurance exchange as tax money laundered into Democratic party-building funds:
  • The Obama administration granted a whopping $910 million to California to set up its insurance exchange. That money is not for bandages, surgery, nurses and doctors to care for the sick. Nor is it for insurance plans, though $910 million could buy generous coverage for at least 113,000 people!
  • Shockingly, the $910 million is slated for bureaucracy, including rich compensation packages for exchange employees ($360,000 a year for the executive director) and contracts for computer equipment, public relations and “outreach. “
  • Outreach is the largest expenditure and where the real monkey business occurs.
  • Amazingly, California legislators passed a law that the exchange could keep secret for a year who received the contracts and indefinitely how much they were paid. California’s open-records laws would otherwise prohibit such secrecy.
  • McCaughey describes six- and seven-figure grants to the California NAACP, the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO, and Community Health Councils, “a California organization with a long history of political activism against fracking, for-profit hospitals, state budget cuts and oil exploration.”
  • I can’t imagine why young people are reluctant to plow their money into a racket like this!
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 13
     
    Excellent summary of where ObamaCare sits today.  Obama has to convince millions of young, healthy "chumps" to pay massive amounts of their income into ObamaCare Exchanges if the greatest socialist redistribution plan ever conceived is to continue. "At the White House, health care implementation has become an obsession. Chief of Staff Denis McDonough spends two hours a day on Obamacare implementation, staffers said, and senior aides like Simas and Tara McGuinness, who joined the White House in April as a senior communications adviser, work on the issue nearly full-time. Hardly a week goes by without Obama finding some way to plug the effort as well. The reason: the law is increasingly unpopular. According to an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this month, 49% of Americans now believe the law is a bad idea, the highest percentage recorded, with only 37% saying it is a good thing. Many states have already opted out of key provisions to expand Medicaid. In Washington, Republicans continue to lay siege to the law; they have voted to repeal it 37 times in the U.S. House."
Paul Merrell

BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-derivatives-to-bank-unit.html

banksters toxic-derivatives BoA JPMorgan FDIC Dodd-Frank too-big-to-fail

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation. The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.
  • Three years after taxpayers rescued some of the biggest U.S. lenders, regulators are grappling with how to protect FDIC- insured bank accounts from risks generated by investment-banking operations. Bank of America, which got a $45 billion bailout during the financial crisis, had $1.04 trillion in deposits as of midyear, ranking it second among U.S. firms. “The concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured institution,” said William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator. “We should have fairly tight restrictions on that.”
  • Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Bank of America’s long-term credit ratings Sept. 21, cutting both the holding company and the retail bank two notches apiece. The holding company fell to Baa1, the third-lowest investment-grade rank, from A2, while the retail bank declined to A2 from Aa3.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The Moody’s downgrade spurred some of Merrill’s partners to ask that contracts be moved to the retail unit, which has a higher credit rating, according to people familiar with the transactions. Transferring derivatives also can help the parent company minimize the collateral it must post on contracts and the potential costs to terminate trades after Moody’s decision, said a person familiar with the matter. Bank of America estimated in an August regulatory filing that a two-level downgrade by all ratings companies would have required that it post $3.3 billion in additional collateral and termination payments, based on over-the-counter derivatives and other trading agreements as of June 30. The figure doesn’t include possible collateral payments due to “variable interest entities,” which the firm is evaluating, it said in the filing.
  • Derivatives are financial instruments used to hedge risks or for speculation. They’re derived from stocks, bonds, loans, currencies and commodities, or linked to specific events such as changes in the weather or interest rates. Dodd-Frank Rules Keeping such deals separate from FDIC-insured savings has been a cornerstone of U.S. regulation for decades, including last year’s Dodd-Frank overhaul of Wall Street regulation. The legislation gave the FDIC, which liquidates failing banks, expanded powers to dismantle large financial institutions in danger of failing. The agency can borrow from the Treasury Department to finance the biggest lenders’ operations to stem bank runs. It’s required to recoup taxpayer money used during the resolution process through fees on the largest firms.
  • Bank of America’s holding company -- the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit -- held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades. That compares with JPMorgan’s deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.
  • Moving derivatives contracts between units of a bank holding company is limited under Section 23A of the Federal Reserve Act, which is designed to prevent a lender’s affiliates from benefiting from its federal subsidy and to protect the bank from excessive risk originating at the non-bank affiliate, said Saule T. Omarova, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law. “Congress doesn’t want a bank’s FDIC insurance and access to the Fed discount window to somehow benefit an affiliate, so they created a firewall,” Omarova said. The discount window has been open to banks as the lender of last resort since 1914. As a general rule, as long as transactions involve high- quality assets and don’t exceed certain quantitative limitations, they should be allowed under the Federal Reserve Act, Omarova said.
  • In 2009, the Fed granted Section 23A exemptions to the banking arms of Ally Financial Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc, Fifth Third Bancorp, ING Groep NV, General Electric Co., Northern Trust Corp., CIT Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., among others, according to letters posted on the Fed’s website. The central bank terminated exemptions last year for retail-banking units of JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Plc and Deutsche Bank AG. The Fed also ended an exemption for Bank of America in March 2010 and in September of that year approved a new one. Section 23A “is among the most important tools that U.S. bank regulators have to protect the safety and soundness of U.S. banks,” Scott Alvarez, the Fed’s general counsel, told Congress in March 2008.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 13
     
    So according to Bloomberg, JPMorgan's commercial bank was the recipient of 99 percent of JPMorgan's $79 trillion (face value of derivatives) in bad bets. So adding JPMorgan's $78 trillion or so to the $75 trillion in bad bets Bank of America unloaded on its FDIC insured subsidiary, we arrive at $153 trillion in bad bets moved by two investment banks alone under the FDIC umbrella. Meanwhile, FDIC has authority under Dodd-Frank to liquidate these insolvent banks but doesn't, despite several successful lawsuits to recover the value of toxic derivatives that they sold to smaller banks that failed (which implies that FDIC could tell JPMorgan and BoA's investment banksters that they've got to pay off the toxic assets they transferred to their commercial banks, rather than diluting the insurance for normal depositors. Problem: the two big investment banks don't have sufficient assets to absorb those losses, so the too-politically-connected-to-fail factor kicks in. Note that I have not done any legal research in regard to these issues and am basing these observations on what has been stated about legal requirements in various media articles.
Gary Edwards

911: Lloyds of London Insurance brokers have sued Citigroup-AMEC et al. in respect of t... - 1 views

www.godlikeproductions.com/...pg1

9_11 911-Conspiracy-facts Lloyd's-of-London 911-Insurance-Fraud

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • We allege the Citigroup-AMEC partners sabotaged the diesel generators to feed fires lit by arsonists on the 11th, 12th or 13th floors of WTC7 where the Securities & Exchange Commission lost between 3,000 to 4,000 files. The SEC files contained evidence of insider trading by Citigroup-AMEC investment bank partners in the shares of initial public offerings during the high-tech boom. The House Financial Services Committee was seeking information about the treatment Citigroup's Salmon Smith Barney investing banking division may have given WorldCom executives. Salomon had offices in 7 World Trade Center and Citigroup says back-up tapes of corporate emails from September 1998 through December 2000 were stored at the building and destroyed in 9/11. Citigroup subsequently paid $2.65 billion to the settlement class which purchased WorldCom securities during the period from April 1999 through June 2002. www.thestreet.com/markets...36925.html www.citigroup.com/citigro...40510a.htm
  • At 5:20 p.m. on 9/11, 7 World Trade Center collapsed in its own footprint at a speed slightly slower than free fall under gravity in a manner consistent with a controlled demolition. Molten steel and partially evaporated steel members were found in the debris pile of WTC #1, 2 and 7. The thermal signature of 32 hot spots, 5 days and 10 days after the collapse, is consistent with all the buildings being rigged for demolition with an incendiary such as thermite.
  • We allege that the Citigroup-AMEC partnership now conspired to remove and destroy evidence of arson before filing bogus property insurance claims in an arrangement with Larry Silverstein and Silverstein Properties, including a claim for a double payment for the destruction of the Twin Towers. "Griffin quotes court documents to the effect that Silverstein had only $14 million invested in the insurance deal for the Twin Towers (compared to 50 times as much by his [off-book] lenders) through limited liability investment vehicles."
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Sep 11
     
    Incredible.  In 2006 Lloyd's of London sued a group comprised of Citigroup, AMEC and GMAC for a "concealed demolition" conspiracy resulting in insurance fraud.  This is complicated, but the key assertion is that World Trade Center building #1, #2, and #7 were rigged for demolition prior to the 9/11/01 attack.  The claim also alleges the involvement of Larry Silverstein, who had purchased these buildings a few months prior to the 9/11 attack, and made the subsequent and fraudulent insurance claim. Based on the Lloyd's of London report: "9/11 - A Citigroup-AMEC insurance fraud on Lloyd's of London?" .. by David Hawkins, Foundation Scholar, Cambridge University, Founder of the Citizen's Association of Forensic Economists at Hawks' CAFE .
Paul Merrell

It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors | WEB OF D... - 0 views

webofdebt.wordpress.com/...anned-for-us-and-uk-depositors

financial-collapse Cyprus banksters U.S. confiscation

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds.  
  • Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay. (See here and here.) But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.”  The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills.
  • No exception is indicated for “insured deposits” in the U.S., meaning those under $250,000, the deposits we thought were protected by FDIC insurance. This can hardly be an oversight, since it is the FDIC that is issuing the directive. The FDIC is an insurance company funded by premiums paid by private banks.  The directive is called a “resolution process,” defined elsewhere as a plan that “would be triggered in the event of the failure of an insurer . . . .”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The 15-page FDIC-BOE document is called “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.”  It begins by explaining that the 2008 banking crisis has made it clear that some other way besides taxpayer bailouts is needed to maintain “financial stability.” Evidently anticipating that the next financial collapse will be on a grander scale than either the taxpayers or Congress is willing to underwrite, the authors state: An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors of the failed company [meaning the depositors] into equity [or stock]. In the U.S., the new equity would become capital in one or more newly formed operating entities. In the U.K., the same approach could be used, or the equity could be used to recapitalize the failing financial company itself—thus, the highest layer of surviving bailed-in creditors would become the owners of the resolved firm. In either country, the new equity holders would take on the corresponding risk of being shareholders in a financial institution.
  • If our IOUs are converted to bank stock, they will no longer be subject to insurance protection but will be “at risk” and vulnerable to being wiped out, just as the Lehman Brothers shareholders were in 2008.  That this dire scenario could actually materialize was underscored by Yves Smith in a March 19th post titled When You Weren’t Looking, Democrat Bank Stooges Launch Bills to Permit Bailouts, Deregulate Derivatives.  She writes: In the US, depositors have actually been put in a worse position than Cyprus deposit-holders, at least if they are at the big banks that play in the derivatives casino. The regulators have turned a blind eye as banks use their depositaries to fund derivatives exposures. And as bad as that is, the depositors, unlike their Cypriot confreres, aren’t even senior creditors. Remember Lehman? When the investment bank failed, unsecured creditors (and remember, depositors are unsecured creditors) got eight cents on the dollar. One big reason was that derivatives counterparties require collateral for any exposures, meaning they are secured creditors. The 2005 bankruptcy reforms made derivatives counterparties senior to unsecured lenders.
  • Smith writes: Lehman had only two itty bitty banking subsidiaries, and to my knowledge, was not gathering retail deposits. But as readers may recall, Bank of America moved most of its derivatives from its Merrill Lynch operation [to] its depositary in late 2011. Its “depositary” is the arm of the bank that takes deposits; and at B of A, that means lots and lots of deposits. The deposits are now subject to being wiped out by a major derivatives loss. How bad could that be? Smith quotes Bloomberg: . . . Bank of America’s holding company . . . held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June . . . . That compares with JPMorgan’s deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.
  • $75 trillion and $79 trillion in derivatives! These two mega-banks alone hold more in notional derivatives each than the entire global GDP (at $70 trillion).
  • Smith goes on: . . . Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs. . . . Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral. But it’s even worse than that. During the savings & loan crisis, the FDIC did not have enough in deposit insurance receipts to pay for the Resolution Trust Corporation wind-down vehicle. It had to get more funding from Congress. This move paves the way for another TARP-style shakedown of taxpayers, this time to save depositors. Perhaps, but Congress has already been burned and is liable to balk a second time. Section 716 of the Dodd-Frank Act specifically prohibits public support for speculative derivatives activities.
  • An FDIC confiscation of deposits to recapitalize the banks is far different from a simple tax on taxpayers to pay government expenses. The government’s debt is at least arguably the people’s debt, since the government is there to provide services for the people. But when the banks get into trouble with their derivative schemes, they are not serving depositors, who are not getting a cut of the profits. Taking depositor funds is simply theft. What should be done is to raise FDIC insurance premiums and make the banks pay to keep their depositors whole, but premiums are already high; and the FDIC, like other government regulatory agencies, is subject to regulatory capture.  Deposit insurance has failed, and so has the private banking system that has depended on it for the trust that makes banking work.
  • The Cyprus haircut on depositors was called a “wealth tax” and was written off by commentators as “deserved,” because much of the money in Cypriot accounts belongs to foreign oligarchs, tax dodgers and money launderers. But if that template is applied in the US, it will be a tax on the poor and middle class. Wealthy Americans don’t keep most of their money in bank accounts.  They keep it in the stock market, in real estate, in over-the-counter derivatives, in gold and silver, and so forth. Are you safe, then, if your money is in gold and silver? Apparently not – if it’s stored in a safety deposit box in the bank.  Homeland Security has reportedly told banks that it has authority to seize the contents of safety deposit boxes without a warrant when it’s a matter of “national security,” which a major bank crisis no doubt will be.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Apr 13
     
    Time to get your money out of the bank and into gold or silver, kept somewhere other than in a bank safety deposit box. 
Gary Edwards

My Doctor Is Now the IRS : Dr. IIeana Johnson Paugh - 0 views

www.canadafreepress.com/...47942

Dr-Paugh ObamaCare-TAX IRS-care

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 12
     
    Dr. Paugh provides us with the best summary yet of what the monstrous Obamacare Tax will do to destroy the world's best healthcare system. excerpt: The Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, "A Brief Overview of the Law, Implementation, and Legal Challenges," gives a new definition to Nancy Pelosi's statement that we had "to pass Obamacare to find out what's in it." Not only did Congressmen not read the 2,700-page law before they voted and passed it by twisting arms and briberies, but they now have to be informed of the disaster they have created. (C. Stephen Redhead, Hinda Chaikind, Bernadette Fernandez, Jennifer Staman, July 3, 2012) The unfortunately named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010, passed by 111th Congress, touted the following: .... increased access to health insurance coverage (not necessarily access to health care) ..... expansion of federal private health insurance market requirements ..... creation of health insurance exchanges to provide individuals and small employers with access to insurance ..... expansion of Medicaid coverage
Gary Edwards

The American Spectator : What Didn't Get Said at the Obammunism Health Care Summit - 0 views

spectator.org/...what-didnt-get-said-at-the-sum

obammunism health-care health-benefits

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Feb 10
     
    Excellent discussion about the difference between Health Care and Health Benefits, and who is covered by which. excerpt:  Except of course, for the fundamental difference, which remains the same -- Republicans want to reform and improve health care without destroying its free-enterprise base, while Democrats would be very happy to see the entire thing absorbed into a government-controlled system, as half of it has been already through the extension of Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs. What became most outstanding is that President Obama and his teammates still do not have any real understanding of how the current system works..... Only 6 percent of the population actually buys their own insurance. (And for this, we are painting the insurance companies as the villains of this melodrama?) Fourteen percent of the population is on Medicare, 14 percent on Medicaid. The other 66 percent do not have insurance but health benefits¸, which is not the same thing. Nine percent gets its benefits from government employment, 4 percent from the military and the remaining 43 percent get their benefits from private employment. The last 15 percent (there is some overlap) has no coverage at all. President Obama kept talking about how it is these "large pools" in big companies that make insurance cheap, but that is not true. Large pools are only part of the equation. Equally important is that these employees are getting their benefits tax-free. This is a huge advantage not available to the uninsured population. Because the government is not getting its cut, employers are also eager to convey benefits to their employees instead of wage increases because they have more value. This is why, for many people, health benefits constitute the major reason for employment. Wages transfer easily from job to job but benefits do not. Yet another advantage of company-run health benefits programs is that they are exempt from state regulations. ....... 
Paul Merrell

Wells Fargo Fake Accounts Scandal Spreads To Life Insurance Business - 0 views

shadowproof.com/...preads-life-insurance-business

banksters Wells-Fargo life-insurance fraud

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Today, Prudential Financial announced it would suspend the distribution of a low-cost life insurance policy through Wells Fargo. The low-cost life insurance policy, called MyTerm, had been promoted by Wells Fargo since 2014 throughout its large number of retail banking outlets. The suspension comes shortly after a wrongful termination lawsuit was filed by three former Prudential employees, which alleged that Wells Fargo employees signed up customers for MyTerm life insurance policies without the customer’s knowledge to hit sales goals. The plaintiffs, who worked at Prudential’s corporate investigations division, claim their reports of the fraud led to their termination because Prudential management did not want to take any action that could damage its business with Wells Fargo. If true, those allegations would fit an already established pattern of Wells Fargo employees creating fake customer checking, saving, and credit card accounts. The resulting scandal from those revelations led to Wells Fargo being fined $185 million and the resignation of the CEO, John Stumpf. Wells Fargo is already facing a new investigation by the SEC concerning whether the bank made proper disclosures to investors. It’s not clear if the company disclosed the nature of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigation and others that led to $185 million in fines, or whether the company knowingly transmitted false sales numbers based on the gains from fake accounts.
  • Though it is hard to quantify, Wells Fargo’s name, reputation, and brand have been undeniably damaged. After the publicity of the congressional hearings, it is likely that many potential customers will not use the bank’s services. Customers whose names were used to open fake accounts will probably never bank with Wells Fargo again. In fact, some of them are suing. That’s all before whatever further damage is done by the more recent accusations about the fake life insurance accounts from Prudential. Hopefully not lost in all this is that the initial plan by Wells Fargo executives was to scapegoat low-level employees for this entire scandal. Despite creating the “cross-selling” program, which forced employees to aggressively try to open new accounts and even firing those that did not or complained about it, Wells Fargo upper management initially took no responsibility for the fake account scandal. In all, over 5,000 low-level employees have been terminated and are likely never going to work in banking again, while the CEO and the executive responsible for managing the program, Carrie Tolstedt, will walk away with millions upon millions of dollars.
Gary Edwards

ACTA Open Must Read Analysis: Why Markets Are Still Falling . . . The Shadow Financial ... - 0 views

www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/...analysis_why_ma.php

acta foremski cds credit-default-swaps finacial-crisis politics economy

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Nov 08 - Cached
  • evidence suggests more credit default swaps are traded in London than in the United States according to the US Federal Reserve, so US action alone cannot address perceived problems.
  • As corporations, home owners and credit card holders go into default -- stop making payments -- many financial institutions are being hit twice on their balance sheet -- once by the bad loan and then by the associated CDS default or obligation.
  • CDS trading has expanded 100-fold since 2001 as financial institutions including insurance companies and hedge funds as well as investors have used the contracts to protect against bond losses and speculate on companies' ability to repay debt.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Chicago Mercantile Exchange
  • Lawmakers are also considering the introduction of new regulations to curb CDS abuse as engines of speculation, but many financial experts are also encouraging the creation of public exchanges for these shadow markets. An exchange would establish an arms length price. As that price was transparent and moved, the market would see that a credit was deteriorating. A centralised clearing market would help shine a clear light on these transactions and since every trade would be backed up by the members of the clearing house, chances of default would greatly be reduced.
  • Unlike most financial markets, credit default swaps are unregulated and at USD 54.6 trillion, they are one of the largest unregulated markets in the world.
  • In response to the coming derivatives and deleveraging Tsunami, which has already begun, the world GDP may have to shrink drastically -- some estimates suggest between 30% and 50% -- over the coming years of The Great Unwind. This is the severe recession the markets fear as they go into free fall.
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Nov 08
     
    Why are Markets still Falling? The Tsunami caused by Derivatives and Deleveraging The invisible elephant in the room causing continuous falls in global financial markets is the link to the privately traded Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and the financial uncertainty they have created whilst synchronised deleveraging takes place across the world. ... Credit default swaps are unregulated financial derivatives which act as debt insurance on risky assets like mortgages, corporate and government bonds. But unlike a normal insurance policy, financial institutions that sell credit default swaps are not required to have enough funds in reserve should those risky loans turn bad. Since the US Congress in 2000 declined to regulate these contracts as it does insurance, the companies that guarantee the assets are not required by law to keep enough capital on hand to pay them off in the event of a default.
Gary Edwards

Rich Dad's Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money | Silver Monthly - The Silv... - 0 views

www.silvermonthly.com/...-rich-the-8-new-rules-of-money

silvermonthly robert-kiyosaki federal-reserve inflation-conspiracy banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 May 10 - Cached
  • he makes it very clear that the rules of money changed dramatically when the U.S. went off the gold standard in 1971.  For up until that time, “technically, prior to 1971, the U.S. dollar was a derivative of gold.  After 1971, the U.S. dollar became a derivative of debt.”
  • The Invisible Bank Robbery
  • He says “since money is invisible, a derivative of debt, bank robberies by bankers have become invisible.” 
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Two ways these invisible robberies occur are:  fractional reserve banking, which is nothing more than banks lending money they don’t have; and deposit insurance, which “protects the bankers – not savers.” 
  • “why should an insurance company like AIG receive bailout money in the first place?  Isn’t bailout money reserved for banks?”
  • “because it owed the biggest banks in the world a lot of money and didn’t have the cash to pay up.”
  • five new rules
  • money is knowledge; learn how to use debt;
  • learn to control cash flow;
  • prepare for bad times and you will only know good times;
  • and the need for speed. 
  • The name of the game, according to Kiyosaki, is “cash flow.”
  • The focus has to be on cash flow, not on capital gains.
  • Businesses that provide passive cash flow. Income-producing real estate. Paper assets – stocks, bonds, savings, annuities, insurance and mutual funds. Commodities – gold, silver, oil, platinum, etc.
  • invest in four basic areas:
  • By selling more than you buy, you can eventually become rich.
  • in Kiyosaki’s opinion, the ultimate definition of “sell” is building a business and then taking it public.
  • “knowledge is the new money.”
  • Gary Edwards on 13 May 10
     
    As Kiyosaki writes in his book:  "So has there been a conspiracy?  I believe so, in a way."  He goes on to explain why he believes so, citing the lack of financial education in the school systems, the Federal Reserve Act, and Nixon's 1971 dismissal of the gold standard.  And most interestingly, Kiyosaki believes that 401(k) retirement vehicles placed the retirement money of average people in the hands of Wall Street. The first chapter of the book is entitled 'Can Obama Save the World?'  Kiyosaki's answer is no.  And apparently, Obama doesn't want to even if he could.  For he appointed Summers and Geithner, both of who played a part in repealing the Glass Steagall Act.  In other words, it's the same old same old.  Nothing has changed.  Which means that the average person needs to understand how taxes, debt, inflation, and retirement affect them.  Kiyosaki sums up the chapter by stating that once one understands the new rules of money, then one can "opt out of the conspiracy of the rich." From there, Kiyosaki moves on to explain how we got where we are.  He points the finger at the Federal Reserve Bank, which inflates the money supply, which destroys the value of savings and retirement plans.  And he makes it very clear that the rules of money changed dramatically when the U.S. went off the gold standard in 1971.  For up until that time, "technically, prior to 1971, the U.S. dollar was a derivative of gold.  After 1971, the U.S. dollar became a derivative of debt." Kiyosaki proceeds to discuss what he calls 'The Invisible Bank Robbery.'  He says "since money is invisible, a derivative of debt, bank robberies by bankers have become invisible."  Two ways these invisible robberies occur are:  fractional reserve banking, which is nothing more than banks lending money they don't have; and deposit insurance, which "protects the bankers - not savers."  Then he asks a very pertinent question:  "why should an ins
Paul Merrell

Controversies - Insurance Industry Adjusts to Earthquake Risk Caused by Fracking - AllG... - 0 views

www.allgov.com/...risk-caused-by-fracking-150127

environment insurance fracking earthquakes

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • In another sign that fracking is increasingly being acknowledged as a cause of earthquakes, the insurance industry has announced that it is now linking the controversial drilling procedure with seismic activity in establishing its rates. Before insurance companies set their rates for an upcoming year, they turn to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for information on quake activity. Specifically, insurers look at the USGS’s National Seismic Hazard Map, which “predicts where future earthquakes will occur, how often they will occur and how strongly they will shake the ground,” according to the Dallas Morning News. But this map will now take into account earthquakes that occur within the vicinity of fracking wells, the USGS has decided. That means insurance rates may go up in some areas considered more at risk of seismic events because of fracking operations. Between the years 2010 and 2013, central and eastern United States had an average of five times as many quakes per year as between 1970 and 2000. Human activity, including fracking, has been cited by scientists as the cause, according to Dallas Morning News.
  • Last year, USGS connected a 5.7-magnitude quake in Oklahoma to that state’s robust fracking industry. “The observation that a human-induced earthquake can trigger a cascade of earthquakes, including a larger one, has important implications for reducing the seismic risk from wastewater injection,” USGS seismologist and coauthor of the study Elizabeth Cochran said at the time. More than 120 quakes have hit the Dallas area in the past six years, and scientists have cited the work performed at nearby fracking sites as the reason, according to Homeland Security News Wire. Even the Texas Oil & Gas Association agreed that some research into the nexus of fracking and quakes is called for. “The oil and natural gas industry agrees that recent seismic activity warrants robust investigation to determine the precise location, impact and cause or causes of seismic events,” Todd Staples, the association’s president, said in a statement. A study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America says fracking near Ohio’s Poland Township triggered a previously undiscovered fault. The result was more than 70 earthquakes ranging in magnitude of 2.1 to 3.0, the latter of which was described as “rare” by the experts.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 15
     
    Yet another factor to contribute to the piercing of the shale oil bubble in the U.S. economy.The shale oil and gas industry in the U.S. is collapsing because its production costs can not result in profits when the price of oil is so low. Banksters have ended the flow of new well development funding. Shale oil development companies are going bankrupt by the dozens  and tens of thousands of shale oil workers have been laid off.  
Paul Merrell

Survey: One in four US adults burdened by medical debt - World Socialist Web Site - 0 views

www.wsws.org/...kais-j08.html

economics stats U.S. medical-debt income inequality socialized-medicine

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • A new survey shows that 26 percent of US adults ages 18-64 say they or someone in their household had problems paying their medical bills in the past 12 months. The Kaiser Family Foundation/New York Times Medical Bills Survey shows that those from all walks of life are saddled with medical debt, with the uninsured and low-income households carrying the heaviest burden.
  • Being uninsured has a strong correlation with medical bill difficulties, with 53 percent of the uninsured reporting problems paying household medical bills in the past year. However, as the survey’s findings point out, “insurance is not a panacea against these problems.” About one in five of those with insurance—either through an employer, Medicaid or purchased on their own—also report problems paying medical bills. Among those with private insurance, the prevalence of high-deductible health coverage significantly impacts the financial burden on households, with 26 percent of those with high-deductible coverage reporting difficulties paying their medical bills. Although the survey does not indicate which of those interviewed purchased their coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it is clear that the high deductible plans dominating the ACA marketplace are becoming increasingly common among plans sold by private insurance companies.
  • Not surprisingly, households with lower or moderate incomes are more likely to report problems paying their medical bills. Nearly four in 10 (37 percent) of those with household incomes below $50,000 report these problems, compared with 26 percent of those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000, and 14 percent of those with household incomes greater than $100,000. Women are slightly more likely than men to experience problems paying medical bills (29 percent versus 23 percent), as are adults under age 30 compared with those ages 30-64 (31 percent versus 24 percent). Residents in the South reported the highest share of medical bill problems (32 percent), while those in the Northeast reported the lowest (18 percent). At 24 percent, whites reported slightly less difficulty pay their bills than blacks (31 percent) and Hispanics (32 percent). People with the greatest medical needs are also more likely to face problems paying their medical bills. Of those who say they have a disability that prevents them from participating fully in daily activities, 47 percent report medical bill problems. Among those who rate their own heath as fair or poor, 45 percent report these problems, while 34 percent of those who say they receive regular treatment for a chronic condition report problems.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The medical bills burdening households are for a wide variety of medical services, both one-time events and chronic conditions. Of those surveyed, bills incurred included those for doctor visits (65 percent), diagnostic tests (65 percent), lab fees (64 percent) and emergency room visits (61 percent). About half say they had problems paying for prescription drugs, hospitalizations or dental care. Those surveyed were asked to briefly describe the illness or injury that led to their medical bills. Respondents describe the nightmare scenario in which they face the double impact of serious medical conditions and the inability to pay the bills incurred to treat them.
  • When asked to describe their financial situation, 43 percent of those who have experienced problems paying medical bills say they just scrape by covering their basic household expenses, while 18 percent say they don’t have the financial resources to cover them. The survey also shows that compared to those without medical debt, those with medical bill problems are less likely to have a credit card or a retirement savings account. Of those with difficulties paying bills, the total amount owed ranged from 10 percent owing $500 or less, to 24 percent owing $2,500 to less than $5,000, to 13 percent owing in excess of $10,000. For an individual or family living paycheck to paycheck, or facing unemployment, even a $500 unpaid medical bill—accompanied by calls from health providers’ offices or their bill collectors—can become an overwhelming burden. In a further cruel twist, those facing medical bill problems also often face the complicating factor of income loss due to an illness. Three in 10 respondents say someone in their household had to take a cut in pay or hours as a result of the illness that led to the medical bills, either due to the illness itself or in order to care for the person who was sick.
  • The ACA is contributing to and compounding these devastating financial conditions for millions of Americans. The program, popularly known as Obamacare, forces uninsured individuals to purchase coverage from for-profit insurers under threat of penalty, offering only modest subsidies to those who qualify. The most affordable of these plans come with deductibles in excess of $5,000 and other high out-of-pocket costs and there are no meaningful restraints on the premiums insurance companies can charge. These Obamacare plans are serving as a model for employer-sponsored coverage, where high-deductible plans are becoming more and more the norm. Architects of the ACA further predict that employer-sponsored coverage will largely be done away with by 2025.
  • The solution to the financial crisis ordinary Americans face paying their medical bills—along with the other scourges of the US for-profit medical system—lies in putting an end to the privately owned insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and giant health care chains and establishing socialized medicine.
Gary Edwards

ObamaCare Turns Three: 10 Disturbing Facts Americans Have Learned - Investors.com - 0 views

news.investors.com/ng-facts-about-health-law.aspx

ObamaCare-TAX

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Mar 13
     
    Nice list of the top ten friction points certain to have Americans up in arms over ObamaCare as the socialization of the American Healthcare System kicks in.  I can't help but think that the real reason the Republican Party continues in their determination to fully FUND and implement ObamaCare is they know it will be the end of the Democrat Socialist Political Party.  What i'm not so sure about is if the Repubicans can avoid the anger of America for their  having funded ObamaCare, broken the treasury, destroyed the currency, and wrecked the country - all for the purpose, right or wrong, of getting rid of their socialist political enemies. excerpts: "... as ObamaCare's third anniversary approaches - President Obama signed it into law on March 23, 2010 - the country is starting to find out what the sweeping health care overhaul will actually do. ObamaCare backers typically tout popular features that went into effect almost immediately. The law expanded Medicare's drug coverage, for example, and let children stay on their parents' plans until they turned 26. But the bulk of ObamaCare doesn't take effect until next year. That's when the so-called insurance exchanges are supposed to be up and running, when the mandate on individuals and businesses kicks in, and when the avalanche of regulations on the insurance industry hits. As this start date draws near, evidence is piling up that ObamaCare will: ..... " ..... Boost Insurance Costs ................. ..... Push Millions Off Employer Coverage ............ ..... Cause Premiums to Skyrocket ............ ..... Cost Millions of People Their Jobs .............. .....  Tax The Middle Class Hard ............ .....  Add To The Growing Deficit .... $1.5 Trillion per year and counting........... .....  Cost Far More Than Promised ............. .....  Become a Bureaucratic Nightmare .... .....  Exacerbate Doctor Shortages ............ .....  Keave Millions of Americans Uninsured ....... 
Paul Merrell

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act

banksters law deregulation U.S.

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 13 - Cached
  • The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLB), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, (Pub.L. 106–102, 113 Stat. 1338, enacted November 12, 1999) is an act of the 106th United States Congress (1999–2001). It repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, removing barriers in the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies that prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. With the passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies were allowed to consolidate. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
  • Contents  [hide]  1 Legislative history 2 Changes caused by the Act 3 Remaining restrictions 4 Privacy 5 Financial Privacy Rule 5.1 Financial institutions 5.2 Consumer vs. customer defined 5.3 Consumer/client privacy rights 6 Safeguards Rule 7 Pretexting protection 8 Effect on usury law 9 Controversy 9.1 Criticisms 9.2 Defense 10 Amendments 10.1 Proposed 11 See also 12 Notes 13 References 14 Sources 15 External links 15.1 Compliance information 15.2 Consumer/client rights information 15.3 History of the GLB 15.4 Congressional voting records on Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act
Joseph Skues

Single-Payer Health Insurance - 0 views

www.exponentialimprovement.com/...singlepayer.shtml

health payer single POWELL finacial-crisis obama-socialism

shared by Joseph Skues on 16 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Yes, it is. And here's why.
  • Justice
  • common defence
  • ...38 more annotations...
  • Welfare,
  • Tranquility,
  • Posterity
  • Blessings of Liberty
  • general Welfare
  • common Defence
  • "health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being" of "We the People".
  • 45,000 deaths annually
  • necessary to prevent system failure
  • are capitalized to emphasize their importance
  • defense" was not capitalized.
  • which would take the profit motive that insurance corporations have to deny coverage & claims out of the system
  • defines our political system, which is a different thing entirely
  • they have never believed in democracy as noted at The Conservative Mind
  • With only 4 decades of testing America simply cannot afford to join this dangerous experiment
  • In comments they show their obvious ignorance
  • Welfare
  • 40 percent higher death risk than privately insured counterparts
  • up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993. ...
  • David Frum, a "conservative", refused to acknowledge the Harvard University
  • Don't like a result? Ignore it.
  • not implementing single-payer health insurance
  • mass murder.
  • makes our economy less competitive
  • discourages U.S. innovation,
  • twice as much per capita
  • obscene
  • bankrupts
  • leads to the deaths of 100,000 persons/year
  • because the U.S. system isn't as good as that of France.
  • A "public option"
  • doesn't go far enoug
  • The only workable approach is a single-payer health insurance system ... a "Medicare for All" system.
  • scrap a privatized health insurance system that does not work
  • It's pragmatic. See Health Care Dynamics.
  • The California Nurses Association understands
  • t's a useless industry
  • US Healthcare History: Our Very Own Killing Fields
Gary Edwards

The Real Reason We Keep Bailing Out AIG : John Crney of Clusterstock/business-insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/at-makes-aig-so-special-2009-3

financial-crisis cds aig goldman-sachs banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Mar 09
     
    How could one company be worth bailing out for $180 billion? That's how much the US has contributed to AIG so far. So what is it about an insurance company that makes AIG so central to the financial system that they can't be allowed to fail at any cost? Great comments on this issue. Basically, AIG credit default swaps were being used as gambling chips. Originally intended as a means of providing banks with "regulation arbitrage", the CDS artificially lowered risk by insuring sub-prime securities, which were themselves thought to be tax-payer guaranteed, coutesy of Fannie and Freddie. The CDS however were also offered to those who did not hold bonds or securitized notes! Non holders could purchase CDS as a means of gambling on the rise or fall of real estate values in the USA. This leveraging lead to near $500 Trillion in insured CDS, many of which were held by China and European banks.
Gary Edwards

Speculators, Politicians, and Financial Disasters : A history of Banking and Socialism - 0 views

www.commentarymagazine.com/...the-madness-of-crowds-13180

politics banking socialism fannie-freddie

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 08 - Cached
  • As the sorry tale of the S&L crisis suggests, the road to financial hell is sometimes paved with good intentions. There was nothing malign in attempting to keep these institutions solvent and profitable; they were of long standing, and it seemed a noble exercise to preserve them. Perhaps even more noble, and with consequences that have already proved much more threatening, was the philosophy that would eventually lead the United States into its latest financial crisis—a crisis that begins, and ends, with mortgages. A mortgage used to stay on the books of the issuing bank until it was paid off, often twenty or thirty years later. This greatly limited the number of mortgages a bank could initiate. In 1938, as part of the New Deal, the federal government established the Federal National Mortgage Association, nicknamed Fannie Mae, to help provide liquidity to the mortgage market.
  • it was, ironically, the New Deal that institutionalized discrimination against blacks seeking mortgages. In 1935 the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), established in 1934 to insure home mortgages, asked the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation—another New Deal agency, this one created to help prevent foreclosures—to draw up maps of residential areas according to the risk of lending in them. Affluent suburbs were outlined in blue, less desirable areas in yellow, and the least desirable in red. The FHA used the maps to decide whether or not to insure a mortgage, which in turn caused banks to avoid the redlined neighborhoods. These tended to be in the inner city and to comprise largely black populations. As most blacks at this time were unable to buy in white neighborhoods, the effect of redlining was largely to exclude even affluent blacks from the mortgage market.
  • In 1977, responding to political pressure to abolish the practice, Congress finally passed the Community Reinvestment Act, requiring banks to offer credit throughout their marketing areas and rating them on their compliance. This effectively outlawed redlining.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • in 1995, regulations adopted by the Clinton administration took the Community Reinvestment Act to a new level. Instead of forbidding banks to discriminate against blacks and black neighborhoods, the new regulations positively forced banks to seek out such customers and areas. Without saying so, the revised law established quotas for loans to specific neighborhoods, specific income classes, and specific races. It also encouraged community groups to monitor compliance and allowed them to receive fees for marketing loans to target groups.
  • the Clinton changes in 1995. As part of them, Fannie and Freddie were now permitted to invest up to 40 times their capital in mortgages; banks, by contrast, were limited to only ten times their capital. Put briefly, in order to increase the number of mortgages Fannie and Freddie could underwrite, the federal government allowed them to become grossly undercapitalized—that is, grossly to reduce their one source of insurance against failure. The risk of a mammoth failure was then greatly augmented by the sheer number of mortgages given out in the country.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 08
       
      wow, there's that "40 to 1" lending to asset ratio that took down the big five investment banks in October of 2008!
  • Since banks knew they could offload these sub-prime mortgages to Fannie and Freddie, they had no reason to be careful about issuing them. As for the firms that bought the mortgage-based securities issued by Fannie and Freddie, they thought they could rely on the government’s implicit guarantee. AIG, the world’s largest insurance firm, was happy to insure vast quantities of these securities against default; it must have seemed like insuring against the sun rising in the West.
  • remaining at the heart of the financial beast now abroad in the world are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the mortgages they bought and turned into securities. Protected by their political patrons, they were allowed to pile up colossal debt on an inadequate capital base and to escape much of the regulatory oversight and rules to which other financial institutions are subject. Had they been treated as the potential risks to financial stability they were from the beginning, the housing bubble could not have grown so large and the pain that is now accompanying its end would not have hurt so much.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 08
     
    Fueled by easy credit, the real-estate market had been rising swiftly for some years. Members of Congress were determined to assure the continuation of that easy credit. Suddenly, the party came to a devastating halt. Defaults multiplied, banks began to fail. Soon the economic troubles spread beyond real estate. Depression stalked the land. The year was 1836.
Gary Edwards

So Why Hasn't the Credit Default Swaps Casino Been Shut Down? « naked capita... - 0 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...aps-casino-been-shut-down.html

obammunism financial-crisis CDS credit-default-swaps naked-capitalism banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Mar 10 - Cached
  • And if anyone had any doubts that the CDS market is officially backstopped, look no further than the Bear Stearns and AIG rescues. To put not too find a point on it, the industry understands full well who is the ultimate bagholder: United States commercial banks, those with insured deposits, held $13 trillion in notional value of credit derivatives at the end of the third quarter last year, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The biggest players in this world are JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. All of those firms fall squarely into the category of institutions that are too politically connected to fail. Because of the implicit taxpayer backing that accompanies such lofty status, derivatives become exceedingly dangerous, said Robert Arvanitis, chief executive of Risk Finance Advisors, a corporate advisory firm specializing in insurance. “If companies were not implicitly backed by the taxpayers, then managements would get very reluctant to go out after that next billion of notional on swaps,” he said. “They’d look over their shoulder and say, ‘This is getting dangerous.’” Morgenson is positively tame compared to Munchau. I’m quoting him more liberally, because the tone of his remarks are remarkably pointed for him and the FT generally. Notice that he explicitly, and repeatedly, says the use of naked credit default swaps looks an awful lot like a crime:
  • held $13 trillion in notional value of credit derivatives at the end of the third quarter last year,
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Mar 10
     
    And if anyone had any doubts that the CDS market is officially backstopped, look no further than the Bear Stearns and AIG rescues. To put not too find a point on it, the industry understands full well who is the ultimate bagholder: United States commercial banks, those with insured deposits, held $13 trillion in notional value of credit derivatives at the end of the third quarter last year, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The biggest players in this world are JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. All of those firms fall squarely into the category of institutions that are too politically connected to fail. Because of the implicit taxpayer backing that accompanies such lofty status, derivatives become exceedingly dangerous, said Robert Arvanitis, chief executive of Risk Finance Advisors, a corporate advisory firm specializing in insurance. "If companies were not implicitly backed by the taxpayers, then managements would get very reluctant to go out after that next billion of notional on swaps," he said. "They'd look over their shoulder and say, 'This is getting dangerous.'" Morgenson is positively tame compared to Munchau. I'm quoting him more liberally, because the tone of his remarks are remarkably pointed for him and the FT generally. Notice that he explicitly, and repeatedly, says the use of naked credit default swaps looks an awful lot like a crime:
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