Nov 03 2011
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This is an Open Thread
Nov 03 2011
There are many elements of change.
This is a tough one for the Oligarchs. Really. I can’t imagine their contingency plans, and all their think tanks could have come up with this. They expected the riots of 66 and 68, or perhaps they envisioned a charismatic leader who they could discredit. Or assassinate.
Leaderless. Peaceful. Powerful. Old. Young. Right wing. Left wing. Centrists. Black. Latino. White. Asian. Straight. Gay. Military. Anti-war. Blue collar. White collar.
Most of all? Numerous. Really fucking numerous.
And this, my dears, is the tip of the iceburg.
Determined. Even as the sun sets, and whispers of the police donning their riot gear and approaching. Determined.
And as the wee hours approached, more tear gas, more brutality. Badges hidden by tape, the men abusing us wanting to be anonymous villains in the night.
Nov 03 2011
If you have any information regarding the identity of this man please contact your local Anonymous affiliate.
We would of said to contact the police, but seeing as they let him go after the incident and didn’t arrest him, we have no choice but to take a vigilante approach.
Nov 03 2011
“I don’t know how to fix this but I know it’s wrong.” ~ Unknown Author
Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.
On November 3rd, the People, the 99 percent, will hold A People’s Hearing of Goldman Sachs in Liberty Square Park and march on Goldman Sachs! The people will bring to justice perhaps the single most egregious perpetrator of economic fraud and corruption in the United States. The Hearing will include testimonials from individuals directly affected by Goldman’s fraudulent manipulation of financial markets, including victims of housing foreclosures, pension losses, public lay-offs and untenable student debt.
The proceedings will also include expert analysis from Ralph Nader, Cornel West and Chris Hedges. Following the 99-minute hearing the people will decide on a fair and deliverable verdict via our own process of consensus-based direct democracy – and we intend to deliver it ourselves – to the headquarters of Goldman Sachs at 200 West Street, eight blocks from Liberty Square. We will ask for something our judicial and legislative systems have so far failed to deliver – the return of billions of taxpayer dollars to the 99 percent and criminal sentences for those Goldman Sachs executives who carried out the fraud. The event will be broadcast live via the Occupy Wall Street Livestream, among other public media outlets.
Occupy marchers descend on city’s banks and close main thoroughfares and port
Thousands of people have attended a general strike organised by Occupy Oakland, closing streets, squares, banks and the port.
About 300 people gathered at Frank H Ogawa Plaza at 9am, the first of three rallies called by Occupy protesters during the day of action. Others soon joined, closing the main thoroughfares in central Oakland and marching on banks in the city.
Occupy Oakland protesters voted for the action on Wednesday, the day after police cleared Occupy campers from the plaza, seriously injuring former marine Scott Olsen in the process.
“Today is about saying no to the 1% and yes to the 99%,” said Cat Brooks, a long-time Oakland activist and campaigner against police violence. “This is a warning, a test, to the 1%. We don’t need them, they need us.”
A potentially powerful new element joins Occupy Wall Street as military veterans in uniform took to the streets in New York, marching from Vietnam Veterans Plaza to Zuccotti Park Wednesday, enlisting the campaign to spotlight issues of social and economic injustice.
Veterans have “a unique opportunity to continue serving here at home through our participation in this civic movement for change,” said Andrew Johnson, president of the New York City chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, which organized Wednesday’s march.
snip
Their grievances tend to be deep and personal as they face the challenges of coming home from war. The unemployment rate for veterans, at 12.4 percent, is due to climb as thousands of military personnel flood out of the ranks into an extremely competitive job market, with the Defense Department cutting back on manpower this year and in the years ahead.
Nov 03 2011
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
November 3 is the 307th day of the year (308th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 58 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1964, residents of the District of Columbia cast their ballots in a presidential election for the first time. The passage of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 gave citizens of the nation’s capital the right to vote for a commander in chief and vice president. They went on to help Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeat Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, the next presidential election.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. Article One of the United States Constitution provides for a federal district, distinct from the states, to serve as the permanent national capital. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the federal territory until an act of Congress in 1871 established a single, unified municipal government for the whole District. It is for this reason that the city, while legally named the District of Columbia, is known as Washington, D.C. Named in honor of George Washington, the city shares its name with the U.S. state of Washington located on the country’s Pacific coast.
On July 16, 1790, the Residence Act provided for a new permanent capital to be located on the Potomac River, the exact area to be selected by President Washington. As permitted by the U.S. Constitution, the initial shape of the federal district was a square, measuring 10 miles (16 km) on each side, totaling 100 square miles (260 km2). During 1791-92, Andrew Ellicott and several assistants, including Benjamin Banneker, surveyed the border of the District with both Maryland and Virginia, placing boundary stones at every mile point. Many of the stones are still standing. A new “federal city” was then constructed on the north bank of the Potomac, to the east of the established settlement at Georgetown. On September 9, 1791, the federal city was named in honor of George Washington, and the district was named the Territory of Columbia, Columbia being a poetic name for the United States in use at that time. Congress held its first session in Washington on November 17, 1800.
The Organic Act of 1801 officially organized the District of Columbia and placed the entire federal territory, including the cities of Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria, under the exclusive control of Congress. Further, the unincorporated territory within the District was organized into two counties: the County of Washington to the east of the Potomac and the County of Alexandria to the west. Following this Act, citizens located in the District were no longer considered residents of Maryland or Virginia, thus ending their representation in Congress.
The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1961, granting the District three votes in the Electoral College for the election of President and Vice President, but still no voting representation in Congress.
Nov 03 2011
 Muse in the Morning |
Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.
| Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.
–Epictetus |
 Vitality |
Nov 03 2011
Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
What you have to remember about them is that they’re not very good and they’re not very smart but they do have an overweening arrogance and sense of entitlement that makes them think that they’re better than you.
And they’re very, very afraid that some day some one will point out how stupid and wrong they are which is why they hate democracy so much.
Revenge of the Sovereign Nation
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph
November 1st, 2011
The Greek referendum – if it is not overtaken by a collapse of the government first – has left officials in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels speechless with rage. The ingratitude of them.
…
Every major claim by the inspectors at the outset of the Memorandum has turned out to be untrue. The facts are so far from the truth that it is hard to believe they ever thought it could work. The Greeks were made to suffer IMF austerity without the usual IMF cure. This was done for one purpose only, to buy time for banks and other Club Med states to beef up their defences.It was not an unreasonable strategy (though a BIG LIE), and might not have failed entirely if the global economy recovered briskly this year and if the ECB had behaved with an ounce of common sense. Instead the ECB choose to tighten.
When the history books are written, I think scholarship will be very harsh on the handful of men running EMU monetary policy over the last three to four years. They are not as bad as the Chicago Fed of 1930 to 1932, but not much better.
…
Certain architects of EMU calculated that the single currency would itself become the catalyst for a quantum leap in integration that could not be achieved otherwise.They were warned by the European Commission’s own economists and by the Bundesbank that the undertaking was unworkable without fiscal union, and probably catastrophic if extended to Southern Europe. Yet the ideological view was that any trauma would be a “beneficial crisis”, to be exploited to advance the Project.
This was the Monnet Method of fait accompli and facts on the ground. These great manipulators of Europe’s destiny may yet succeed, but so far the crisis is not been remotely beneficial.
…
And as my old friend Gideon Rachman at the FT writes this morning: the Greek vote is “a hammer blow aimed at the most sensitive spot of the whole European construction – its lacks of popular support and legitimacy.”
Austerity Faces Test as Greeks Question Their Ties to Euro
By STEVEN ERLANGER, The New York Times
Published: November 1, 2011
“This is clearly the return of politics,” said Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of Bruegel, an economic research institution in Brussels. “The management of all this by the Europeans has been fairly technocratic. But now we see the gamble of a politician, which creates uncertainty again, but in a different form. But it was bound to come at some point.”
Mr. Papandreou’s decision to press for a popular referendum on the bailout was the inevitable result of Greece’s loss of sovereignty to Brussels and the International Monetary Fund, said Jean-Paul Fitoussi, professor of economics at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France were acting as if they were the real government of Greece, he said.
“It’s as if the Europeans – or Merkel and Sarkozy alone – believed that they were in control of the people of Greece,” Mr. Fitoussi said. “But this is a democracy. In Greece, and even in Italy, you cannot expect to rule without the support and consent of the people. And you can’t impose an austerity program for a decade on a country, and even choose for them the austerity measures that country must implement.”
…
Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy are clearly irritated with Greece, but so far they insist that the restructuring deal agreed upon Thursday in Brussels remains, as Mr. Sarkozy said Tuesday, “the only possible path to resolve the Greek debt problem.”But Greece’s turmoil has the makings of a turning point. Greek elections during a deep economic slump would be likely to usher in a government that would, at a minimum, to try to renegotiate the bailout deal with European and foreign lenders, a messy process that would force Germany and other European lenders to decide how strictly to stick to their austerity formula. The uncertainty would undermine confidence in other indebted countries like Italy at a time they can ill afford it.
There is also the possibility that an election or a popular referendum would pose the question more bluntly, with Greeks essentially deciding whether they want to stick with the euro or not – if they want to put sovereignty over their own affairs ahead of membership in the common currency. That could mean the fraying, or at least the shrinking, of the euro zone.
Mr. Fitoussi believes that Greeks had no choice but to ask themselves that question. “There are only two possibilities in a democracy: the government has to resign or consult the people,” he said. “Of course, I don’t know which is the worst for Europe.”
Crats, Maybe, But Not Much Techno
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
November 2, 2011, 11:15 am
Atrios complains, rightly, about the description of the policies being followed in Europe as technocratic. His point is that
we’ve conjured up images of very sensible highly educated wonky people doing the right thing, even as they destroy the world. But it’s more than that: these alleged technocrats have in fact systematically ignored both textbook macroeconomics and the lessons of history in favor of fantasies. The European Central Bank has placed its faith in the confidence fairy, while imagining that it can run policy in a way that has never worked in several centuries of central bank experience. Meanwhile, the European policy elite has simply wished away the clear evidence that the euro zone needs to make an adjustment that is virtually impossible unless inflation targets are raised.
The point is that I know technocrats, and these people aren’t – they’re faith healers who are making stuff up to suit their prejudices.
You can say something similar, although a bit less pointed, about the Obama administration. The line from people there, including the president, has been that it was too technocratic. But the real technocrats – people like Christy Romer and, well, me – were saying right from the beginning that the stimulus was too small, etc.; people like Geithner who opposed stronger action were basing their position on gut feelings about confidence, not number-crunching.
See also Progressive Realists.
Nov 03 2011
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
On of the biggest frauds that has been perpetrated in the housing collapse that has precipitated the foreclosure crisis has been robosigning especially done by MERS, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a privately held company that operates an electronic registry designed to track servicing rights and ownership of mortgage loans in the United States. The current negotiations by the state attorney generals in conjunction with the Obama Justice Department will in all likelihood exonerate the banks of any criminal liability and allow them to continue using the fraudulent MERS to foreclose on homes that the banks may not legally own. Gretchen Morgensen wrote in the New York Times that “The deal being discussed now may also release the big banks that are members of MERS, the electronic mortgage registry, from the threat of some future legal liability for actions involving that organization.” Matt Stoller and Mike Lux point to an even bigger issue, robosigning has not stopped:
What makes these discussions so utterly absurd, so ridiculous, and farcical, is that robo-signing, an abuse the banks have admitted to and clam they’ve ceased, is still going on. The AP reported this in July; mortgage servicers in Nevada have stopped foreclosing because of a law explicitly criminalizing robo-signing. Yes, the banks are asking for a release of claims on acts, or perhaps crimes, that are ongoing. And these abuses are extensive: lying to investors about the quality of the mortgages; violating their own contracts by failing to convey mortgages properly to securitization trusts; charging fees that are impermissible under Federal law and the contracts; making a mess of property records and engaging in deceptive consumer practices through the use of MERS; and engaging in document forgeries and fabrications in foreclosures. All these people trying to give the banks “a settlement” are in fact immunizing banks against acts they are committing and will commit going forward. Only in the future, when a voter complains to his or her state AG, that official will have to explain to that voter that his/her rights have been given away.
We’re talking about an ongoing case of criminal theft of private property by mortgage servicers charging illegal fees and then using fraudulent documents to foreclose. Now, a settlement implies that this practice is over, and that the banks are remediating past wrongs. It isn’t over, but the AGs and Federal regulators are treating it as if it is. Think about this incentive – why should a bank change its mortgage servicing once it has immunity for robo-signing, origination, pyramiding of fees, etc? The last consent decrees weren’t enforced, why would this one be enforced?
A dozen banks would contribute a grand total of $3.5 to 5 billion toward the settlement, pocket change for massive companies that apparently approved their foreclosure mill law firms likely committing over 1,000,000 counts of perjury in the robo-signing process. The rest of the money, about $20 billion, would come in the form of “credits” banks essentially give themselves if they agree to reduce a certain amount of the principal owed on mortgages. We don’t know the details yet, but given that all banks in the home lending industry write down some mortgages, unless the details are tough on the banks (a phrase not generally heard of among regulators in this era), this will be giving banks credit for mortgages they would be writing down anyway. And if they don’t end up writing down as much as they project, they probably won’t end up being penalized for it given the history of programs like HAMP […]
If the administration rams through this ultimate in Wall Street sweetheart deals – a laughably pocket change fine combined with “credit” for what they would have done anyway, at the expense for a get out of jail free card for 1 million counts of perjury and a wide range of other potential fraud – they will have zero credibility to run as the tough on Wall Street candidate. ZERO.
This makes no sense. For example, for the Obama administration to be leaning so hard on California Attorney General Kamala Harris to sign off on this is truly politically suicidal, both for them and for her after she so strongly announced she was pulling out a couple of weeks ago. Yet they continue to push her. Why are they pushing so hard for this? It all boils down to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. It is apparent that Geithner believes the only thing that matters in terms of fixing the economy is to keep the big banks in good financial shape, which is ironic given that in public he claims that everything is fine with the banking sector now.
Yves Smith at naked capitalism suggests we make some phone calls:
It’s important to keep the pressure up, particularly on state AGs who might walk from a too bank friendly deal. States whose AGs might decamp include Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Colorado. It’s also key to let the AGs in states who have left the talks and are under pressure to return that voters are watching and will be unhappy if they reverse themselves. Those states are New York, Delaware, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Nevada, Minnesota, and of course, California. You can find their phone numbers here.
The Obama administration, congress and the state attorney generals who refuse to hold the banks to the letter of the law hold this country’s economic future. If this passes it will destroy the housing market and this economy for decades.
Nov 03 2011
Cross Posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
The Obama administration is about to screw Main St. one more time by letting the banks get away with mortgage and foreclosure fraud with a pittance of a fine and indemnifying the banks from state-level prosecution for a series of crimes at practically all stages of the mortgage process. It has been pointed out that by not enforcing the law, which includes investigating and prosecuting fraud, Barack Obama is in violation of his oath of office. Remember? The one he took on front of a rapt nation on the steps of the Capitol where he swore to up hold the Constitution and Law. I don’t recall any part of that oath including letting the banks get away with bringing the US economy to its knees through fraudulent practices.
Cutting to the chase: if you thought this was the deal that would hold banks accountable for filing phony documents in courts, foreclosing without showing they had the legal right to do so and generally running roughshod over anyone who opposed them, you are likely to be disappointed.
This may not qualify as a shock. Accountability has been mostly A.W.O.L. in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. A handful of state attorneys general became so troubled by the direction this deal was taking that they dropped out of the talks. Officials from Delaware, New York, Massachusetts and Nevada feared that the settlement would preclude further investigations, and would wind up being a gift to the banks.
It looks as if they were right to worry. As things stand, the settlement, said to total about $25 billion, would cost banks very little in actual cash – $3.5 billion to $5 billion. A dozen or so financial companies would contribute that money.
The rest – an estimated $20 billion – would consist of credits to banks that agree to reduce a predetermined dollar amount of principal owed on mortgages that they own or service for private investors. How many credits would accrue to a bank is unclear, but the amount would be based on a formula agreed to by the negotiators. A bank that writes down a second lien, for example, would receive a different amount from one that writes down a first lien.
Sure, $5 billion in cash isn’t nada. But government officials have held out this deal as the penalty for years of what they saw as unlawful foreclosure practices. A few billion spread among a dozen or so institutions wouldn’t seem a heavy burden, especially when considering the harm that was done. {..}
The deal being discussed now may also release the big banks that are members of MERS, the electronic mortgage registry, from the threat of some future legal liability for actions involving that organization. MERS, which wreaked havoc with land records across the country, was sued last week by Beau Biden, Delaware’s attorney general, on accusations of deceptive trade practices.
The MERS registry was also subpoenaed last week by Eric Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, as part of his investigation into the fun-while-it-lasted mortgage securitization fest. If he were to sign on to the settlement, his investigation into MERS could not move forward.
Angry yet?
Morgenson highlights another feature of the plan:
One of the oddest terms is that the banks would give $1,500 to any borrower who lost his or her home to foreclosure since September 2008. For people whose foreclosures were done properly, this would be a windfall. For those wrongfully evicted, it would be pathetic. Roughly $1.5 billion in cash is expected to go into this pot.
“Pathetic” isn’t strong enough. Let’s look at the damages sought by Nevada attorney general Catherine Masto in her second amended complaint against Bank of America: civil penalties of $5000 per violation, or $12,000 for elderly or disabled borrowers. An individual loan can, and likely does, have multiple violations. The suit also seeks restitution, costs for wrongful foreclosures, plus the cost of damage to municipalities and homeowners from unnecessary vacancies. Note that an AG victory on the issue of wrongful foreclosure would pave the way for private lawsuits, and here the damages would be massive, particularly if state law or precedent allows for penalties (as we’ve noted, Alabama has statutory tripe damages for wrongful foreclosure, and recent rulings have had applied penalties in excess of nine times).
And what did Masto get from a different servicer, Morgan Stanley’s Saxon? The settlement is estimated to average somewhere between $30,000 and $57,000 per borrower. And the basis of action wasn’t erroneous or fraudulent foreclosures, but deceptive practices in mortgage lending and securitization.
Look at the MERS compplaint filed by Delaware AG Beau Biden. He’s suing MERS over deceptive practices, at $10,000 per violation. It’s quite possible that he may find more than one violation per mortgage. And I would imagine that success against MERS would pave the way for actions against servicers who relied on MERS in the face of knowledge of its deficiencies.In other words, the suits filed by two AGs alone make a mockery of these negotiations.
So, how much are the banks contributing to the president and the attorney generals who are going to try to let them off the hook?
Nov 03 2011
Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River. It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.
Hackett had several churches, both in town and outside of town. I can think of three in town, a Southern Baptist, and Assembly of God, and my little church, the Hackett Methodist Church. I do not know when it was formed, but the old building had extremely high ceilings, frosted whitish windows, handsome hanging light fixtures, and a belfry.
There were four rooms: the main sanctuary and three smaller rooms for children’s Sunday School, divided by age into preschool, grade school, and high school. The adults used the main sanctuary for their Sunday School.
I can not remember exactly how many pews the old building held, but I would guess that it would seat around 200 people, hardly ever seen except for Christmas, Easter, and some weddings. Normally around 40 or so people, including children would attend on any given Sunday.
