A Fond Du Lac band member and the last of his family to seek the "Good Path," of his ancestors, a modern Anishinaabek tries to find his way though the Euro-American Techno world at the dawn of the 21st century. I remain... Anishinaabe nindaaw.
Apocalypse now: WARNING Graphic Pictures of the mind: PAPER ON IT'S WAY OUT! THOSE OF US WHO HAVE PAPER BOOKS SHOULD KEEP THEM OR ALL KNOWLEDGE WILL BE LOST. We are an EM explosion away from ignorance. (A librarians Opinion) Local bookstores fall to 'e-book revolution' | StarTribune.com SEE POST BELOW.
PAPER on it's way out! Local bookstores fall to 'e-book revolution' | StarTribune.com http://t.co/7zh12yw Tweeting and Posting, I'm under the same name on Twitter.
THE NOOK KILLS THE BOOK,
I'm terrified, said the Librarian, but I could see the handwriting on the wall when I realized we were targeted for removal. I saw the first vestages in the 70's when people wanted to look at people without clothes rather than imagine... them, half dressed and suggestive. It was then I realized we were on a slippery slope. Soon there would be no more books... no more me.
We we have become a gross society, un used to the subliminal and the subjective of we no longer process information for ourselves. We indulge ourselves in being force fed the obvious, the gross and the mundane. This never was about the disappearance of paper books, this was always about the disappearance of our ability to see that which lies just beneath the surface. It is the reason the major networks now control our thoughts, our politics and our way of perceiving the world. George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and the other great minds have warned us over and over again protect your way of thinking. Unfortunately the younger generations cannot even perceive a world where there is no access to instantaneous electronic technology that gives them the ability to communicate only specific messages that their world allows. There was a time when people could write what they needed to and not look over their shoulder.
Two years ago during the Republican National Committee Convention here in St. Paul, Minnesota, something different happened, antiwar protesters were arrested for their comments and affiliations with people, we knew nothing about. For two years their lives were mysteriously hidden from us. In the end we found out they were communicating with people in Europe... but we don't know who. We are supposed to believe these were evil people... but we don't know at all what this really was about. We know what we were told, but the Patriot act makes the disappearance of people so quiet and hiddent that we don't know what was really going on. This singular act actually sent a chill throughout many of the intellectual community of the Midwest and those belonging to the Democratic Farmer Labor Party in Minnesota began to be very careful about what they wrote in any form of electronic media, which has greatly hampered their ability to communicate on any topic that they sense the US government would oppose. Whether that fear is real or subjective does not matter, a major inhibition has been placed before the democratically elected thinkers of the Minnesota Democratic Party. They are afraid to speak about the topic of the war because they sense the topic is now forbidden. For right or wrong the deed is done.
The problem with electronic media is that it is easily pliable, it can be quickly and easily changed once it is on the network. "The Times article, "Some e–books are more equal than others." This article shows that early on this was experimented with and indeed it worked as slick as you can imagine, in about a day they wiped out, George Orwell's, 1984's. On July 17 of 2009 the Times published an article explaining that the orwell books were unauthorized and Amazon removed them from their Kindle. That morning hundreds of kindle owners woke to find their copy missing from their reader. Of course Amazon credited their accounts, but that deed too was done. Amazon claimed the event was rare, but already it shows us how quickly what we have electronically can disappear. Just try to do that with a paper book, Amazon. Don't get me wrong. I love my e-reader, my nook, and Mike Kindle and my e-pub and my iBooks all serve keep me reading, vigorously. But I still rely very heavily on paper books because they include a way of seeing the world that does not exist outside of their boundaries and the thought that Amazon could slip into my Kindle overnight and take everything that is precious to me in their writings terrifies me or even worse what if they simply changed what is written. Now that is mind control. I saw this coming last month when I realized the book companies have finally come to terms with the process of e-publishing and sales. In November e-books outsold paper books for the first time.
The pliability of the E publishing does not mean that we could just have our books changed or altered in any way, but that they could disappear entirely electronic media is extremely unstable unlike the printed format, and it would take nothing more than a virus or glitch or a prank or hacker or electromagnetic explosion to wipe out great sums of knowledge. I went through this once before the card catalog we looked over the edge and we were terrified what would happen if it all disappeared and I still don't know if there is an answer to my questions of viability after we have been entirely integrated into an electronic megasystem based on the Library of Congress. I still am wondering what would happen if all my data suddenly went away. I suppose that would make me worth a lot more because at least I have memory of where the books are catalogued and how to find them, but if this were to happen in electronic format that all the un-catalogued books that are left over the world would be a much more difficult thing to find than simply going up to your librarian and asking them for little help. Where will they be, Unemployed? Where will their books be? Discarded? Sent to Africa? These events could change the entire worlds economy.
Indeed I think that libraries will cease to exist as we know them and it is very possible that accessibility to such great volumes of knowledge on our e-readers may make our life substantially better if we are indeed able to access grande volumes of knowledge like we currently believe.
Many people have paid very little attention to the net neutrality laws and how a few companies are weaving a web to control and constrict the flow of the information in and out of their portals so that those coroporate entities who don't care a wit for the United States of America, would become owners and Masters of the Ways and Means of facilitating information in a sense new librarians who will kick you out of the library at their hearts desire. Sen. Al Franken has fought these people tooth and nail for a modicum of net neutrality that would give you and I the freedom and accessibility to the information we will need to be information managers of our own lives throughout the 21st century, frankly the public's lack of concern over this issue and they're voting for powerful business interest in wanton ignorance of the Republican Party's servitude to those entities is setting them up to be minions of large conglomerates who will treat them as any child born in India. A life in a serfdom we have not experienced since the Middle Ages. America is confused about their relationship to big business and they don't understand that the owners of these companies are about to own them, mind, body and soul and for some, they already do it through Fox news and other so-called conservative media outlets. In the coming days they will do it to their children's minds through their textbooks and their constant revisions, without the public even knowing that the books have changed. Gone will be the committees that make a final choice on a textbook, the books will be constantly changing like online encyclopedias like World Book and Britannica are now. The world is changing and not all of those changes are to the benefit of the American People and their way of life.
"Come now let us see what fools these humans be," William Shakespeare said, through Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream, but perhaps our children will never know that phrase... as it will simply be edited on-the-fly and removed from the history of their lives.
Apocalypse now: WARNING Graphic Pictures of the mind: PAPER ON IT'S WAY OUT! THOSE OF US WHO HAVE PAPER BOOKS SHOULD KEEP THEM OR ALL KNOWLEDGE WILL BE LOST. We are an EM explosion away from ignorance. (A librarians Opinion) Local bookstores fall to 'e-book revolution' | StarTribune.com SEE POST BELOW.
Several recent weather events, including wildfires in Russia,
floods in Pakistan and an ice sheet breaking off Greenland, have renewed
a sense of urgency among environmental groups and progressive lawmakers
such as House Global Warming Chairman Edward Markey that climate change
is occurring -- and at a faster rate than previously assumed. They
argue that the connection between climate change and a pattern of
extreme weather is stronger than ever, but some scientists and skeptics
of climate change say that connection cannot be made -- at least not
with the data currently available.
Chairman, House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming
The headlines from the hottest year-to-date on record
paint a dangerous climate picture, consistent with the overwhelming
scientific evidence.
Based on the National Journal’s question, I think it’s important to
distinguish between scientific skepticism and flat-out denial in the
face of the facts.
Scientists, skeptical by both nature and training, always urge a dose of
caution when looking at any one event as evidence of climate change.
They look at the totality of events and discover patterns that help
determine how our climate is changing.
Deniers, on the other hand, are eager opportunists, who will use single
points of data, or single events (remember Snowmaggedon?) to claim that
the patterns do not exist. Theirs is a world of scientific dishonesty
and misinformation.
And it is the high level of professional skepticism--not the useless
back-and-forth encouraged by deniers—that makes the overwhelming
scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused...
Based on the National Journal’s question, I think it’s important to
distinguish between scientific skepticism and flat-out denial in the
face of the facts.
Scientists, skeptical by both nature and training, always urge a dose
of caution when looking at any one event as evidence of climate change.
They look at the totality of events and discover patterns that help
determine how our climate is changing. Click the below link to read the rest of the article http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2010/08/is-climate-change-causing-wild.php#1623153
"Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ' YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING,] BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE;
FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES, OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES, HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.'
Matt 13:13-15
The Greeks were right, Pride cometh, before the fall.
My own ancestors prophesied of this time in the the Prophesy of the 7 fires.
The Seventh Prophet that came to the people long ago was said to be different from the other prophets. This prophet was described as "young and had a strange light in his eyes" and said:
“ In the time of the Seventh Fire New People will emerge. They will retrace their steps to find what was left by the trail. Their steps will take them to the Elders who they will ask to guide them on their journey. But many of the Elders will have fallen asleep. They will awaken to this new time with nothing to offer. Some of the Elders will be silent because no one will ask anything of them.
The New People will have to be careful in how they approach the Elders. The task of the New People will not be easy.
If the New People will remain strong in their quest the Water Drum of the Midewiwin Lodge will again sound its voice. There will be a rebirth of the Anishinabe Nation and a rekindling of old flames. The Sacred Fire will again be lit.
It is this time that the light skinned race will be given a choice between two roads. If they choose the right road, then the Seventh Fire will light the Eighth and final Fire, an eternal fire of peace, love brotherhood and sisterhood. If the light skinned race makes the wrong choice of the roads, then the destruction which they brought with them in coming to this country will come back at them and cause much suffering and death to all the Earth's people.[1]
-----------------------------------------
My fellow Wildcats.
I am one of the NEW PEOPLE. this prophesy speaks of... We are called, Oshkibimadizeeg and we are returning by the thousands across the land. This is something like a migration if you will, this is a large natural occurrence. The POWWOW's are filled with us. We are rekindling the old flames and the Water Drum is once again heard among the Anishinaabeg. My whole tribe, from Alberta to Montana, to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan and Illinois, from Main to Newfoundland to Hudson bay knows that the end of this age is close... We have read the signs around us for 5000 years and measured them to the closeness of this time. There is a change coming to this planet... We were told in advance so we could prepare.
The White race came here and waged war against everything that was natural... even Nature herself and all her children...
It is a harsh thing to go without food, shelter, water... It is a hard thing to watch children die of starvation and plague.
Be wise my friends and know the times that were promised, not only from my cultures prophesies, but yours as well. Measure the moment.
The Sea
O' I have fought for this woman night and day
against those of my own, their evil to stay.
Then I turn to mount her borders and look her in the eye.
She calls to me shaking her jagged rocks
I am no fool, thousands in you have found some way to cry.
O' The sea is a hard mistress, I'll not cross her any day.
The sea is the breast of life, I'll not stand in a mothers way.
The sea is an ancient witch, I'll not harbor her words that befuddle the mind
The sea is a deep mystery, I'll not hesitate to learn of her in kind.
I have struggled at your breast when I was a child
I slipped between the roll of your many legs, you were so wild
O' woman of my soul, thou are so vast and I am so small,
be kind to me, least once again I fall.
I scuba dived for four years when I was a teenager, in the Mediterranean. I can't tell you how many times she almost laid me in her darkness, But I was a young boy playing with a wild cat and didn't realize she was a tiger.
BP Oil Spill much bigger than BP has let on. They are actively covering up the numbers... turns out it is 40,000 * 42 = 1,680 ,000 gallons per day. 1.68 Million Gallons a day. They had previously reported 20,000 gallons. According to Anderson Cooper 360 5/14/10
There is a way of seeing this world, an old way, one that not everyone
can see or understand, but to even share it with them is almost wrong
because they do not respect that which is sacred.
Tonight I am who I am, tonight I am thinking like one of the people, I am Anishinaabek. Tonight I see. I will not forget.
Among the Anishinaabek, before we take a tree, we ask it's permission,
we reach up and touch it's spirit and if it pushes back we know it is
not our right to take the tree. When the Europeans came and after they
had wiped out so many animals, there was no food and there was much
starvation among the people. Many of my ancestors were forced to do the
bidding of the Europeans to cut down the trees and they stopped asking
because it was so painful, the trees did not understand why their
friends had turned on them and many of the Anishinaabek began to drink
to avoid thinking about what they were doing.Then during this period and
before during the slaughter of the animals at the Europeans bidding,
the Creator judged the Anishinaabek with small pox and typhus and many
other spirits who killed 90% of our people. 90% was a price very similar
to what the Anishinaabek had taken from their brothers the Animals who
had saved them many times and their friends the trees. I almost weep to
tell this tragedy. But now I watch British Petroleum poison the waters
down south and I think "We won't get fooled again." and I think, the
Europeans have not changed and I fear their corporations and pray that
Gitchi Manidoo would stop their evil even though he doesn't like to
intervene, believing in the goodness of our hearts and requiring that we
say "No!" ourselves. 90% I think, 90%.
PBS Video: Bill
Black with Bill Moyers -- April 23, 2010
On Thursday, April 22, President Barack Obama made the case for
increased regulation of the financial industry in a televised speech at
Cooper Union in New York City. It was widely billed as President
Obama's chance to harness the momentum behind reforming Wall Street and
move forward the bills being considered in the House and Senate. Those
measures face stiff opposition from most of the Republican Party and an army of lobbyists from Wall Street who
have the ear of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
William K. Black thinks President Obama didn't acknowledge a key
component in the financial crisis that the bills before Congress won't
address — fraud. A former regulator who helped crack down on massive
fraud during the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, Black tells Bill
Moyers on THE JOURNAL that, despite evidence of fraud at the top banks,
prosecutions seem far away.
"If you go back to the savings and loan debacle, we got more than a
thousand felony convictions of the elite. These are not, you know,
tellers or something. We today have zero convictions, zero
indictments, zero arrests of any of the elite, non-prime lenders that,
through their fraud, drove this crisis."
---
April 23, 2010
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL. We'll get to
two big battles in Washington in just a moment -- financial reform and
the future of the internet. But first, I want to thank those of you who
wrote after you heard me say last week that the JOURNAL will come to an
end with next Friday's broadcast. It's true, and all of us here were
touched by your messages of regret.
I will miss the virtual
community of kindred spirits that has grown up around this broadcast --
viewers like you, as we say, whose unseen but felt presence reminds me
of why I have kept at this work so long. But it has been a long time,
and that's why I can assure you that my departure is entirely voluntary.
Many of you wrote to say you were alarmed at the possibility that we
are being pushed off the air -- that higher ups or dark powers pointed
to the door and said, "Go."
You can relax; it didn't happen.
I'm leaving for one reason and one reason alone: it's time. Believe me,
it wasn't an easy decision: I like what I do, cherish my colleagues and
enjoy your company. But I'll be 76 in a few weeks, and there are some
things I want to do that the deadlines and demands of a weekly broadcast
make impossible. So for me, it's now or never. I informed public
television of my decision more than a year ago, intending to leave back
in December. But my colleagues at PBS asked me to extend the series four
more months to give them time to prepare a new public affairs series.
More on that next week.
Now to the big rumble of this week --
and I'm not talking about that volcano in Iceland. I'm talking about the
fight to reform our financial system.
PRESIDENT BARACK
OBAMA: There is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall
Street.
BILL MOYERS: You probably heard the President
speaking in New York yesterday, stumping for more regulation of Wall
Street:
You've also probably heard about the government's
charge that Goldman Sachs committed a highly sophisticated fraud. The
claim is that this kingpin of Wall Street made a bundle by packaging
mortgage debt as exotic investments some in the firm knew would fail.
That word "fraud" pops up more and more as we dig deeper into Wall
Street's outrageous behavior during the run up to the great collapse of
2008. We heard it right here on the Journal, one year ago.
WILLIAM
K. BLACK Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I
create trust in you, and then I betray that trust, and get you to give
me something of value." And as a result, there's no more effective acid
against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's
what we have.
BILL MOYERS: That was Bill Black, who's no stranger
to bank investigations. He was a senior regulator for the Federal Home
Loan Board who cracked down on banking during the Savings & Loan
crisis of the 1980s.
Just this week, he was on Capitol Hill
testifying about another failed financial firm, Lehman Brothers.
WILLIAM
K. BLACK Lehman's failure is a story in large part of fraud.
And it is fraud that begins at the absolute latest in 2001.
BILL MOYERS: Bill Black is with me now. One of the
country's leading experts on crimes in high places he teaches economics
and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and wrote this book,
THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE.
Welcome back to the
JOURNAL.
WILLIAM K. BLACK Thank you.
BILL MOYERS: What did you think of the President's
speech late this week?
WILLIAM K. BLACK It's
a good speech. He's a very good spokesman for his causes. I don't think
substantively the measures are going to prevent a future crisis. And I
was disappointed that he wasn't willing to be blunt. He used a number of
euphemisms, but he was unwilling to use the F word.
BILL MOYERS: The F word?
WILLIAM
K. BLACK The F word's fraud in this. And it's the word that
explains why we have these recurrent, intensifying crisis.
BILL MOYERS: How is that? What do you mean when you
say fraud is at the center of it?
WILLIAM K. BLACK
Well, first, when you deregulate or never regulate, mortgage bankers
were never regulated, you effectively have decriminalized that industry,
because only the regulators can serve as the sherpas, that the FBI and
the prosecutors need to be able to understand and prosecute these kind
of complex frauds. They can do one or two or maybe three on their own,
but when an entire industry is beset by wide scale fraud, you have to
have the regulators. And the regulators were the problem. They became a
self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, because they, President Bush
appointed people who hated regulation. I call them the anti-regulators.
And that's what they were.
BILL MOYERS: This hearing that, where you testified
this week, looking into the bankruptcy at Lehman Brothers, had something
on this.
TIMOTHY GEITHNER: And tragically,
when we saw firms manage themselves to the edge of failure, the
government had exceptionally limited authority to step in and to protect
the economy from those failures.
BEN BERNANKE:
In September 2008, no government agency had sufficient authority to
compel Lehman to operate in a safe and sound manner and in a way that
did not pose dangers to the broader financial system.
ANTON
VALUKAS: What is clear is that the regulators were not fully
engaged and did not direct Lehman to alter the conduct which we now know
in retrospect led to Lehman's ruin.
BILL MOYERS:The regulators were not fully engaged. I
mean, this is an old story. We all know about regulatory capture where
the regulated take control of the regulators.
WILLIAM K.
BLACK Yeah, but this one is far worse. That's not very candid
testimony on anybody's part there. The Fed had unique authority. And it
had it since 1994 to regulate every single mortgage lender in America.
And you might think the Fed would use that authority.
And you
might especially think that, if you knew that Gramlich, one of the Fed
members, went personally to Alan Greenspan and said, there's a housing
bubble. And there's a terrible crisis in non-prime. We need to send the
examiners in. We need to use our regulatory authority. And Greenspan
refused. Lehman was brought down primarily by selling liar's loans. It
was the biggest seller of liar's loans in the world.
And when
we look at these liar's loans, we find 90 percent fraud. 90 percent. And
we find that most of the frauds are not induced by the borrower, but
they're overwhelmingly done by the loan brokers.
BILL MOYERS: And liar's loans are?
WILLIAM
K. BLACK A liar's loan is we don't get any verified
information from you about your income, your employment, your job
history or your assets.
BILL MOYERS: You give me a loan, no questions asked?
WILLIAM K. BLACK No real questions asked.
Certainly no answers checked. In fact, we just had hearings last week
about WaMu, which is also a huge player--
BILL MOYERS: Washington Mutual--
WILLIAM
K. BLACK --in these frauds. Washington Mutual, which used to
make, run all those ads making fun of bankers who, because they were
stuffy and looked at loan quality before they made a loan. Well, WaMu
didn't do any of that stuff. And of course, WaMu had just massive
failures. And who got in trouble at WaMu? Who got in trouble at Lehman?
You got in trouble if you told the truth. They fired the people who
found the problems. They promoted the people that caused the problem,
and they gave them massive bonuses.
BILL MOYERS: I watched the testimony where you were
present the other day in the Lehman hearings. And there was a very
moving moment with a former vice-president of Lehman Brothers who had
gone and tried to blow the whistle, who tried to get people to pay
attention to what was going on. Take a look.
MATTHEW
LEE: I hand-delivered my letter to the four addressees and
I'll give a quick timeline of what happened, May 16th was a Friday, on
the Monday I sat down with the chief risk officer and discussed the
letter, on the Wednesday I sat down with the general counsel and the
head of internal audit, discussed the letter. On the Thursday I was on a
conference call to Brazil. Somebody came into my office, pulled me out,
and fired me on the spot with out any notification. I stayed, sorry.
BILL MOYERS: Matthew Lee, vice-president of Lehman
Brothers, fired because he tried to blow the whistle. What does that
say to you?
WILLIAM K. BLACK Well, it tells me
that they were covering up the frauds, that they knew about the frauds
and that they were desperate to prevent other people from learning.
BILL MOYERS: Matthew Lee told the accounting firm
Ernst & Young what was going on. Isn't the accounting firm supposed
to report this, once they learn from somebody like him that there's
fraud going on?
WILLIAM K. BLACK Yes, they're
supposed to be the most important gatekeeper. They're supposed to be
independent. They're supposed to be ultra-professional. But they have an
enormous problem, and it's compensation. And that is, the way you rise
to power within one of these big four accounting firms is by being a
rainmaker, bringing in the big clients.
And so, every single
one of these major frauds we call control frauds in the financial sphere
has been-- their weapon of choice has been accounting. And every single
one, for many years, was able to get what we call clean opinions from
one of the most prestigious audit firms in the world, while they were
massively fraudulent and deeply insolvent.
BILL MOYERS: I read an essay last night where you
describe what you call a criminogenic environment. What is a
criminogenic environment?
WILLIAM K. BLACK A
criminogenic environment is a steal from pathology, a pathogenic
environment, an environment that spreads disease. In this case, it's an
environment that spreads fraud. And there are two key elements. One we
talked about. If you don't regulate, you create a criminogenic
environment because you can get away with the frauds. The second is
compensation. And that has two elements. One is the executive
compensation that people have talked about that creates the perverse
incentives. But the second is for these professionals. And for the lower
level employees, to give the bonuses. And it creates what we call a
Gresham's dynamic. And that just means cheaters prosper. And when
cheaters prosper, markets become perverse and they drive honesty out of
the market.
BILL MOYERS:You also wrote that the New York Federal
Reserve knew about this so-called three-card monte routine. But that,
the man who led it, at the time, Timothy Geithner, now the treasury
secretary, testified that there was nothing he could do.
TIMOTHY
GEITHNER: In our system the Federal Reserve was a fire
station, a fire station with important, if limited, tools to put foam on
the runway, to provide liquidity to markets in extremis. However, the
Federal Reserve, under the laws of this land was not given any legal
authority to set or enforce limits on risk-taking by large financial
institutions like the independent investment banks, insurance companies
like AIG, Fannie and Freddie, or the hundreds of non-bank financial
firms that operated outside the constraints of the banking system.
BILL MOYERS:Now, what I hear is the gentleman who
was then chairman of the New York Fed, saying, I, we had this job to do,
but we didn't have the authority to do it.
WILLIAM K.
BLACK Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: We were the fire truck, but we didn't
have any water in our hose.
WILLIAM K. BLACK
Yeah, this was pretty disingenuous, because other portions of his
testimony, he explained why there was this gap. And he said it was
because we repealed Glass-Steagall. Well, the Fed pushed for the repeal
of Glass-Steagall.
BILL MOYERS: Glass-Steagall was the act that was
repealed in the late nineties that separated regular banks from
investment banks, right?
WILLIAM K. BLACK
Correct. So this is a deliberately created regulatory black hole,
created by the Fed. And then the Fed comes into the hearing, eight years
later, and said, we were helpless. Helpless to do anything, because of a
black hole we designed.
BILL MOYERS: Well, it doesn't stop there, because as
I listened the other day, I heard that the Securities and Exchange
Commission knew that Lehman was repeatedly ignoring its own risks, but
it did nothing. Here's what the new chairman of the SEC, Mary Schapiro,
had to say the other day, about why the commission fell down on the job.
Take a look.
MARY SCHAPIRO: The SEC didn't
have the staff, the resources, or quite honestly, in some ways, the
mindset to be a prudential regulator of the largest financial
institutions in the world. It was such a deviation from our historic
disclosure-based and rules-based approach to regulation to come in and
be a prudential supervisor. The staff was never given the resources.
This program peaked at 24 people for the entire universe of the five
largest investment banking firms in the world.
WILLIAM
K. BLACK Well, this is another example, the self-fulfilling
failure. This wasn't done under Mary Shapiro's watch.
BILL MOYERS: Right--
WILLIAM K.
BLACK This was Chris Cox, who was Bush's appointment. And he's
the one who decided, we're only going to send 24 people to deal with all
of the largest investment banks in the world. Now that's a farce. And
everybody knows it's a farce. He didn't want effective regulation. We
both spent time, considerable time, in Texas. And you know, the joke,
one riot, one ranger, right?
BILL MOYERS: Texas ranger, right.
WILLIAM
K. BLACK Treasury Secretary Geithner testified that in the
circumstances they were dealing with at Lehman, "We were on the brink of
the destruction of the entire global financial system." And then
Chairman Bernanke testified how many people the Fed sent to Lehman to
prevent us on the brink of global collapse.
BILL MOYERS: And how many?
WILLIAM
K. BLACK Two. They have a staff of thousands. This is criminal
negligence except, because he's a federal employee, we can't charge him
with a crime.
BILL MOYERS:Let's talk a moment about the
government's allegations against Goldman Sachs. I mean, I get dizzy just
reading about it. But the Wall Street Journal reporters did a terrific
job this week of trying to sort it out. And they say, "It centers on a
deal Goldman Sachs crafted, so that the hedge fund king, John Paulson,
could bet on a collapse in housing prices." Is that your reading of it?
WILLIAM
K. BLACK Yes, I mean, the complaint actually focuses on lying
to investors. So it's a very traditional securities fraud complaint.
BILL MOYERS: Not about Paulson, by the way. He's
not mentioned in the complaint.
WILLIAM K. BLACK
No, but that's really interesting. And as to whether he will be
mentioned eventually in this complaint, because Paulson has lots of
potential liability on this one. John Paulson was allowed by Goldman,
indeed encouraged by Goldman, to create a "Most Likely to Fail" list. So
he took, within a particular category, the absolute worst stuff,
because he wanted to bet that the stuff would fall in value. And they
were certain to fall in value in terms of the economics.
BILL MOYERS: Wasn't he betting that people wouldn't
be able to pay their mortgages?
WILLIAM K. BLACK
Not even necessarily that, because most of these are liar's loans,
again. And they will not pay, right? It's not an issue of liar's loans,
will it work or will it not work. It's only when will it blow up. A
liar's loan will blow up. If housing prices keep going up for three
years hugely, then they will blow up in the fourth year.
But
they will blow up. So he was betting against something that he knew was
going to blow up. He didn't necessarily know the timing, but he proved
to be right about the timing, because we know from the SEC complaint
that he was in a rush to get this. He knew that the housing collapse was
imminent. And he had to get this deal done right away. And Goldman
Sachs felt the same thing. So they went and they got themselves a dupe,
ACA. And they told the -- ACA is a group that puts together and
supposedly checks the quality of mortgages. Not very well, as it turned
out, of course. An investor would obviously want to know that this
portfolio was picked to fail. Instead, they were told, according to the
SEC complaint, "No, no, no, no. There's no John Paulson out there.
There's only ACA, and it's in your corner. And it's picking a portfolio
most likely to succeed." Now if John Paulson knew that Goldman was
making those representations, then John Paulson knew those
representations were false. And that could make him an aider and
abettor.
BILL MOYERS: So tell me where the fraud might be in
there, if the government proves its case.
WILLIAM K.
BLACK Well, the fraud is, I'm representing to you, the
potential investor, that a competent professional independent firm, ACA,
looking after your interests, has picked this portfolio because they
believe it's most likely to succeed. When in fact, the portfolio was
selected overwhelmingly by Paulson and was selected because it was
deliberately chosen to fail.
BILL MOYERS: The complaint names only one person,
Fabrice Tourre, if I get the name correct.
WILLIAM K.
BLACK That is correct.
BILL MOYERS: Who was 27 at the time. Would he have
been acting without supervision on a deal of that enormity?
WILLIAM
K. BLACK Oh, not even close. And this was-- this was part of a
package of about 18 deals as well. So as big as this package was, and
it was huge, the overall package was absolutely the type of thing that
received personal attention of the leaders, the absolute top leaders at
Goldman Sachs. So it's very curious to me that the SEC has failed to
name the higher-ups.
BILL MOYERS: Why did it take so long for the
Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, to kick into gear on this? I
mean, have they kicked into gear?
WILLIAM K. BLACK
Well, they haven't kicked into gear fully, or they'd be naming
Blankfein and other senior leaders of Goldman. And they've, as you just
mentioned, they've only gone after a junior person. And there would be,
if they were really in gear, there would be criminal charges here. And
if they were really in gear, there'd be a broad investigation, not just
of Goldman, but of all of these major entities.
In the last
three weeks, we have finally done a half-baked investigation, mind you.
Not -- nothing like we did in the Savings & Loan days -- of
Washington Mutual (WaMu), Citicorp, Lehman, and Goldman. And we have
found strong evidence of fraud at all four places.
And we have
looked previously at Fannie and Freddie and found the same thing. So the
only six places we've looked, at really elite institutions, we've found
strong evidence of fraud. So where are the other investigations? Why
are there no arrests? Why are there no convictions?
BILL MOYERS: Well, Bill, where are the other
investigations? Why have there been no arrests? Why have there been no
convictions?
WILLIAM K. BLACK Because we
have still Bush's wrecking crew in charge of the key regulatory
agencies. Why are they still in place? They have abysmal records as
major causes of this crisis.
BILL MOYERS: You talk about the Bush appointees
still being there, but Goldman's former lobbyist, his treasury
secretary, Timothy Geithner's chief of staff, the head of the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler, who may soon have new power
over derivatives, worked for Goldman.
So did the deputy
director of the White House National Economic Council, the under
Secretary of State is a former Goldman employee. Goldman's hired Barack
Obama's recent chief counsel from the White House on his defense team. I
mean--
WILLIAM K. BLACK Don't forget Rubin.
BILL MOYERS: Robert Rubin, whose influence is all
over the place, who used to be--
WILLIAM K. BLACK
It's his protégés that are in charge of economic policy, under Obama.
BILL MOYERS: So is this administration, which still
has some Bush holdovers in it, and now has a lot of Goldman people in
it, is this administration going to be able to pass judgment on Goldman
Sachs?
WILLIAM K. BLACK Well, so far, they
haven't been able to do it. They can't even get themselves to use the
word fraud.
There's a huge part that is economic ideology.
And neoclassical economists don't believe that fraud can exist. I mean,
they just flat out -- the leading textbook in corporate law from law and
economics perspective by Easterbrook and Fischel, says -- I'll get
pretty close to exact quotation. "A rule against fraud is neither
necessary nor particularly important." Right?
Notice how
extreme that statement is. We don't need laws. We don't need an FBI. We
don't need a justice department. We don't even need rules like the SEC.
The markets cleanse themselves automatically and prevent all frauds.
This is a spectacularly naïve thing. There is enormous ideological
content. And it fits with class. And it fits with political
contributions.
Do you want to look at these seemingly
respectable huge financial institutions, which are your leading
political contributors as crooks?
BILL MOYERS: TheHill.com website says Goldman Sachs
is uniquely positioned to fight this case, that it spent $18 million
over the last decade lobbying members of Congress, and put millions more
in their campaigns. I mean, you've said elsewhere. That's smart
business, right, to invest in the politicians who are going to be
investigating you?
WILLIAM K. BLACK I would
tell you, the Savings & Loan crisis, our phrase was, "The highest
return on assets is always a political contribution."
BILL MOYERS: Well, all right. You're a member of
Congress. The Supreme Court has said, "Goldman Sachs can spend all it
wants in November to defeat you." Are you going to take them on?
WILLIAM
K. BLACK Absolutely, but I would never be elected to Congress
because of that. So let me -- in terms of that Supreme Court decision,
if corporations are going to be just like people, let me tell you my
criminologist hat. Then let's use the three strike laws against them.
Three strike laws, you go to prison for life, if you have three
felonies. How many of these major corporations would still be allowed to
exist, if we were to use the three strike laws, given what they've been
convicted of in the past?
And in most states, they remove your
civil rights when you're convicted of a felony. Well, let's take away
their right to make political contributions that they're found guilty of
a violation.
BILL MOYERS: Bill, are you describing a political
culture, that is criminogenic?
WILLIAM K. BLACK
It's deeply criminogenic. And this ideology that both parties are
dominated by that says, "No, big corporations wouldn't cheat. Fraud
can't happen. Market's automatically excluded," is insane. We now have
the entitlement generation as CEOs. They just plain feel entitled to
being wealthy as Croesus with no responsibility, no accountability. They
have become literal sociopaths. So one of the things is, you clean up
business schools, which right now are fraud factories at the senior
levels, right?
They create the new monsters that take control
and destroy massive enterprises and cause global economic crises, cause
the great recession. And very, very close to causing the second Great
Depression. We just barely missed that. And there's no assurance that
we've missed it five years out.
BILL MOYERS:This brings us back to what the
president said this week. He said the crisis was born of a failure of
responsibility from Wall Street to Washington. You've just described
that. That brought down many of the world's largest financial firms and
nearly dragged our economy into a second Great Depression. But he didn't
name names. He doesn't say who specifically was responsible. You have.
But the president doesn't name names.
WILLIAM K. BLACK
No, and one of the most important things a president has is the bully
pulpit. We have not heard speeches by the president demanding that the
frauds go to prison. We have not heard speeches from the attorney
general of the United States of America, Eric Holder. Indeed, we haven't
heard anything. It's like Sherlock Holmes, the dog that didn't bark.
And that's the dog that is supposed to be our guard dog. It must bark.
And it must have teeth, not just bark.
BILL MOYERS: Bill Black, thank you for being back on
the Journal.
What was the shout of the Republican Convention. "Drill, baby, drill. Drill, baby, drill." Well now we all see the results of "Drill, baby, drill." COCODRIE, La. — "With oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico unabated and officials giving no indication that the flow can be contained soon, towns along the Gulf Coast braced..." the New York Times "Drill, baby, drill. Drill, baby, drill." screamed the Republicans...
"Mine baby mine, mine baby mine, " they shouted. How about "Safety baby safety. Safety, baby safety. But that was not to be heard, until President Obama called for accountablility.
Speaking in the Rose Garden on Thursday, President Obama was critical of both Massey Energy and our system of mine safety oversight. Mr. Obama said the Upper Big Branch Mine accident was “A failure first and foremost of management, but also a failure of oversight and a failure of laws so riddled with loopholes that they allowed unsafe conditions to continue.”
Mr. Obama also said that “Owners should be held accountable for preventive measures they failed to take but that this is not an issue of a single accident at a single mine. Rather, Obama stressed, it is an issue of mine safety in general. (Firedoglake) http://ecopolitology.org/2010/04/16/obama-calls-out-massey-on-upper-big-branch-coal-mine-accident-video/
The wetlands in the Mississippi Delta have been shrinking at a rate of about one football field an hour for decades, it is possible, she said, that the wetlands' "tolerance for oil has been compromised." If so, she said, that could be "the straw that broke the camel's back." The state has lost an area the size of Delaware since 1932 and is still losing about 24 square miles a year."
By Leslie Kaufman and Campbell Robertson
New York Times
We don't have the Technology to stop the leakage, it could take months or years to finally stop the oil from leaking into the Gulf.
BP now says the well is spewing more than 200000 gallons per day.
"Drill, baby drill. Drill baby, drill." The Republicans chant... hangs floating lifelessly across the Gulf of Mexico. "Drill, baby drill. Drill, baby, drill. Drill, baby drill. Drill, baby, drill."
In light of Arizona's new law to discriminate, I thought this parody was in order.
To Native Americans, most people who have taken our land in this country are illegal aliens, yet when we could have excluded you from our land, we did not oust you, rather, we fed you and carried your people through the harsh winter that would have ended your ancestors lives. Mat 18:23-35
I am sure the Governor of Arizona is a bright woman and now feels boxed in by agreeing to go along with this foolish law. The people of Arizona are not evil, their law and it's administration is ill-advised.
Let the Parody begin:
=============================================================================
Greetings from the movement in Arizona.
The Governor's office has just released a picture they are using to help their police not stereotype what an illegal alien is.
After going to their Base, they felt confident they could identify without stereotyping an Illegal Alien.
And Since only 49% of the Tea Party (only those with the guns) got this wrong when we
asked them to go to this site and Identify which of these 3 individuals
was an Illegal Alien, the Governor claimed she felt confident in their ability to avoid stereotyping.
.
Of course, 23% of them Identified the guy in the middle.
...and the Governor of Arizona identified it as the guy that looks like
Diane Keaton... OK??? We're looking..... still looking....
???
.
This same picture is being faxed to every Trooper in the state, with one
of these people circled...
Can we look at that picture again?
I wonder which one they circled?
Remember you can get your own (If the Arizona Governor doesn't see you) at http://www.monstergalaxy.com and I hear they have other monsters who "Ain't from around dees parts eater!" available as well.
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In recent history I remember one other Governor who ended up making some poor decisions and he eventually overcame them, but this song lives on beyond him and is a reminder of what our legacy carries with it in spite of any good we do. I don't believe the Governor of Arizona is this character, but if she doesn't take control of the situation and rescue her state from this foolishness, people may remember her this way.
Dangerous Climate Picture Emerging
By Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
Chairman, House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming