Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren pledged to lead the Democratic effort on filibuster reform in the “first week in January” and suggested a new filibuster should look more like the traditional motion: A lawmaker should be required to defend his or her opposition to a bill on the Senate floor.
“On the first day of the new session in January, the senators will have a unique opportunity to change the filibuster rule with a majority vote, rather than the normal two-thirds vote. The change can be modest: If someone objects to a bill or a nomination in the United States Senate, they should have to stand on the floor of the chamber and defend their opposition,” she writes in a blog post published on the Huffington Post.
Send her your Support
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
Wall Street is just a collection of dickhead tools.
Sociopathic dickhead tools.
by Bill Moyers & Michael Winship
They spread money like manure on the campaign trails of key members of Congress. They unleash hordes of lobbyists on Capitol Hill, cozy up to columnists and editorial writers, spend millions on lawyers who relentlessly pick at the law, trying to rewrite or water down the regulations required for enforcement. Before you know it, what once was an attempt at genuine reform creeps back toward business as usual.
It’s happening right now with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act — passed two years ago in the wake of our disastrous financial meltdown. Just last week, for example, both parties in the House overwhelmingly approved two bills that already would change Dodd-Frank’s rules on derivatives — those convoluted trading deals recently described by the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as “the largest dark pool in our financial markets.”
Especially vulnerable is a key provision of Dodd-Frank known as the Volcker Rule, so named by President Obama after the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. It’s an attempt to keep the banks in which you deposit your money from gambling your savings on the bank’s own, sometime risky investments. […]A thick wallet helps, of course — lobbyists for the financial sector spent nearly half a billion dollars last year. And the congressional newspaper The Hill reports, “Members of Congress pressuring regulators to go easy on the ‘Volcker Rule’ received roughly four times as much on average in contributions from the financial industry than lawmakers pushing for a stronger rule since the 2010 election cycle, according to Public Citizen, a left-leaning group advocating for strict implementation.
“When it is all added up, opponents of a tough Volcker Rule received over 35 times as much from the financial industry — $66.7 million — than advocates for a strong stance, who received $1.9 million.” […]All of which demonstrates, as per Bloomberg News, “that four years after Wall Street helped cause the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and prompted a $700 billion taxpayer bailout, its lobby is regaining its power to blunt or deflect efforts to rein in the banks.”
(via silas216)
Brian T. Moynihan, chief executive of Bank of America, earned $8.1 million in 2011, a sharp increase from the $1.9 million payout he received in 2010.
$8.1 million for a single year. But it gets worse….
Mr. Moynihan was not the highest paid executive cited in a proxy filing from the bank on Wednesday. Tom Montag, co-chief operating officer of the company and the head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, earned more than $14 million. Bruce Thompson, the chief financial officer and a close ally of Mr. Moynihan’s, made more than $11 million.
Make sure you check out fthebanks.org to read the whole article Matt Taibbi handed out at yesterday’s Occupy Wall Street day of action. This is just a teaser:
There are two things every American needs to know about Bank of America.
The first is that it’s corrupt. This bank has systematically defrauded almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, homeowners, shareholders, depositors, and the state. It is a giant, raging hurricane of theft and fraud, spinning its way through America and leaving a massive trail of wiped-out retirees and foreclosed-upon families in its wake.
The second is that all of us, as taxpayers, are keeping that hurricane raging. Bank of America is not just a private company that systematically steals from American citizens: it’s a de facto ward of the state that depends heavily upon public support to stay in business. In fact, without the continued generosity of us taxpayers, and the extraordinary indulgence of our regulators and elected officials, this company long ago would have been swallowed up by scandal, mismanagement, prosecution and litigation, and gone out of business. It would have been liquidated and its component parts sold off, perhaps into a series of smaller regional businesses that would have more respect for the law, and be more responsive to their customers.
#MoveYourMoney to a #CreditUnion #ows
told to call to reset.
call.
told i cant use relay service because its a 3rd party non secure line.
fine.
go into bank, in person.
told i must CALL.
?!?!?!
explain. im deaf i cant hear on the phone.
told over and over again. i MUST be the one to call….
(via sinshine)
11% of the 5.6 million cited the Occupy Movement’s Bank Transfer Day as why they moved accounts from a large to small institution.
(via silas216)
#OWS #99 #p2 #p21 #bankster
We’re talking about how to save democracy from the plutocratic rule of elite financiers. It’s time to think big.
by Les Leopold | AlterNet
Capitalist Values Vanish from Wall Street
This week we are reminded again that the ideals of capitalism are a joke on Wall Street, as the heads of the largest Wall Street banks earn enormous incomes while the values of their banks plummet. “According to data from Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove, the heads of major banking groups including JPMorganChase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Bank of America (BAC) are out-earning their employees and shareholders even as shares of bank stocks as a group lost about 26 percent [in 2011].” (Ron Haruni, “Big Bank CEOs Walk Away with Big Bucks in 2011”)
The big boys are raking it in again even while the economy suffers through the highest sustained level of unemployment since the Great Depression. More to the point, these very bank executives were complicit up to their eyeballs in helping to crash the economy in the first place! Chase CEO Jamie Dimon hauled in $41.9 million in 2011 while its bank stock lost roughly 23 percent of its value. Lloyd “I’m doing God’s work” Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, walked off with $22 million while his bank lost more than 46 percent of its value.
But, at this point, why should we be surprised? Before the crash, the heads of too-big-to-fail banks made billions in packaging, selling and then betting against toxic mortgage-backed securities that directly puffed up the housing bubble. When they couldn’t escape the crash they helped to foster, they went down on their knees begging for government help. At the same time they publicly claimed all was well, while privately taking in more than $7 trillion in secret government loans. And then after sucking up all these enormous bailouts, they used these nearly interest-free government loans to buy up other banks and lobby to prevent rules that might constrain their gambling activities. Meanwhile, they paid not a dime in personal restitution for killing 8 million jobs in a matter of months, most of which have not returned.
1. Banks should only be allowed to lend directly to borrowers and then service and keep those loans on their own balance sheets. There is no further public purpose served by selling loans or other financial assets to third parties, but there are substantial real costs to government regarding the regulation and supervision of those activities. Goodbye CDOs, synthetic CDOs and the slew of profitable but dangerous financial casino games banks so love.
2. Banks should not be allowed to have subsidiaries of any kind. No public purpose is served by allowing bank to hold any assets “off balance sheet.” A bank should be a bank and not a hodgepodge of hidden accounts designed to fool investors, build up leverage and gamble away with impunity.
3. Banks should not be allowed to accept financial assets as collateral for loans. No public purpose is served by financial leverage. This should put an end to highly leveraged, Ponzi-like financing schemes that have become commonplace within the banking community
4. Banks should not be allowed to lend off shore. No public purpose is served by allowing any banks to lend for foreign purposes. The Cayman Islands should be a resort for people, not bank slush funds.
5. Banks should not be allowed to buy (or sell) credit default insurance. Credit default swaps are financial insurance on bonds that might go bust – think Greece. Auerback wants to eliminate banks from this highly profitable game. Banks that rely on government insurance to protect depositors have no business playing in the markets that buy and sell risk.
6. Banks should not be allowed to engage in proprietary trading or any profit-making ventures beyond basic lending. Unfortunately, the big banks are addicted to proprietary trading. That’s because the big money comes from trading for their own accounts – which is the plushest of all their casinos. MF Global, under Jon Corzine’s reckless leadership, was so addicted to proprietary trading that it seems to have used its clients’ money as a piggy bank to cover its losses. More regulation will never end these games. But what would work is Auerback’s call for simply banning any and all proprietary trading by banks.
(Hot off the wire: Reuters reports that in the last days before MF Global went under, it sold hundreds of millions in assets to Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that Corzine once headed. But apparently, MF Global did not receive payment from Goldman Sachs, when the transaction was cleared through JPMorgan Chase. We don’t know as yet which bank pocketed that money. But this transaction might help explain what happened to the missing client money.)
7. Abandon “too-big-to-fail” and “systemically important” doctrine in favor of a “too-big-to-save” and “systemically dangerous” approach. They should be broken up, so that they are not “too big to fail.” Guarantee the deposits and punish the shareholders. Break the power of finance once and for all. Amen!
Even if you don’t agree with every point, you’ve got to admit that Auerback pushes us to think really big, and rightfully so. After all we’re talking about how to save democracy from the plutocratic rule of elite financiers.
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial business has agreed to pay a record fine of $335m (£214m, 257m euros) to settle discrimination charges. The US justice department said around 200,000 qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers were charged with higher rates “solely because of their race or national origin”.
BBC News - Bank of America fined $335m for minority discrimination
As we protest corrupt systems and institutions like BofA, it is extremely important to remember that race still plays a major role in the oppression of the people.
Financially, culturally, and politically, racism is not over.
(via anonmedics)
(via 99anon)
This may not look like much, but it’s actually a pretty significant little piece of paper: this is the LAST transaction I will EVER make with Bank of America.
A couple of months ago I opened a new checking & savings account with a smaller bank and have been transitioning all of my bills, etc. from my old B of A account. Unfortunately, I miscalculated on a couple of them — to the tune of two $35 overdraft fees. I called the bank and asked them to turn off overdraft protection and block my debit card from making any new recurring charges. So they did. When an insurance payment tried to auto-charge my card, Bank of America rejected the transaction… and gave me a $35 “returned item fee.”
They gave me a “courtesy” refund of one of the overdraft fees, but my account was still overdrawn by a couple hundred bucks and another $70 in fees. Despite the fact that it’s the holidays and I haven’t been paid by my main job in almost 2 months and I had to buy all of my gifts on credit cards, I scraped together the money I needed to pay back Bank of America and close the account.
Then they charged me the $12 monthly fee, which overdrew it again.
So here you have it. My final deposit - eight dollars, sixty-five cents - to Bank of America. Then I closed my account. Bank of America isn’t having the greatest week, and they just lost one more customer.
-Jess
PS
I am aware that I am desperately in need of a manicure. I’d get one if I could afford it!
This is what needs to be on the media
YES, FOR FUCK’S SAKE! #p2 #p21 #OWS
HSBC made 11.2 billion dollars in profit in 2010, but yet today HSBC announced that they will be letting go about 500 workers in the UK because of the “very challenging environment.”
Imagine what 11.2 billion dollars could actually do for people…
@spooney35 #OWS
An idea whose time is now. I’ve been wondering why this hasn’t been happening for the past few years already.
Source: http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/
#INFP - so true. Who knew? #NoH8 #ProChoice #fem2 #ChildAbuse #AnimalAbuse
Contrarian by nature; Democrat by choice. #p2 #p21 #CTL #Obama2012
Together we MUST take back the power wrongfully seized by banks, corporations, and the corrupt politicians they fund. #OWS #99
#Justice4Trayvon is the other tumblr I branched from this one so I could track the developments in the #Trayvon Martin case.
