Gary Null and Richard Gale - America’s Foreclosure Crisis Leading to Rising Poverty

Last July, approximately 1.5 million homes, 1 in 352 homes, were in a stage of foreclosure, and 14.9 million of all mortgages—31 percent—are underwater. The foreclosure rate right now is on course to overtake 2010’s high of 2.9 million foreclosures among 3.8 million filed. Combining these two figures, and estimating an average of 4 family members per home, we are looking at a future of 65.6 million new victims entering homelessness or on the verge of homelessness.

Economist Dean Baker, co-director at the Center for Economics and Policy Research, identifies only two policies in effect for underwater homeowners: foreclosure or mortgage modification. Both procedures, according Baker, are dismal failures on many scores and continue to fuel loss of homes and the degradation of home values. Mortgage modification, basically written by the banking and mortgage industries, was never meant to be universal. Only a small percentage of homeowners, after numerous hurdles, manage to qualify in the programs.

As a simple example, a home valued at $400K at the time of purchase may be as low as $200K-$300K after mortgage default. At auction, the property may go for $100K and often sold to a person affiliated with the bank. The new owner can either enter the home into the rental market or flip and resell it at $150 to a speculator. Everyone has made money through the transactions except the original owner.

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Chemistry Council trying to lobby Washington to cut off funding for research on carcinogens

Every two years, the National Toxicology Program (NTP), which operates under the banner of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), releases a congressionally-mandated report entitled the "Report on Carcinogens" (RoC) that identifies various agents, substances, mixtures, or exposures that are known to cause cancer. But the American Chemical Society (ACS), which represents many of the biggest names in the cancer-causing chemical industry, is currently trying to lobby Congress to stop the publishing of this important document.

Because the latest RoC lists formaldehyde, a chemical commonly used in both consumer and industrial products, as a definitive cause of cancer, and styrene, another common household chemical, as a suspected carcinogen, the chemical industry is up in arms about its potential profit losses. So in the spirit of Big Tobacco's approach to dealing with inconvenient science, the chemical industry is now desperately trying to muddle the scientific process by paying off Congress to not only withhold the truth about these and other deadly chemicals, but also to prevent the public from accessing this information by blocking funding for future publishings of the RoC.

"The way the free market is supposed to work is that you have information," Lynn Goldman, Dean of the School of Public Health at George Washington University (GWU), is quoted as saying by the New York Times (NYT) about the importance of the RoC report. "They're (thechemical companies) trying to squelch that information."

Similar stall tactics were used by the chemical industry back in the 1930s when the safety of asbestos was first called into question. Just like today, industry lobbyists at that time denied all the emerging science about the serious dangers of asbestos, insisting that it was all "ill-informed and exaggerated" bunk, according to the NYT. The chemical was eventually exposed and banned in the 1980s, of course, but by this point, millions of people had already been needlessly exposed to asbestos, with roughly 10,000 of them now die every year as a result of asbestos-related disease.

"The industrial chemical formaldehyde and a botanical known as aristolochic acids are listed as known human carcinogens," says a National Institutes of Health (NIH) announcement about the eight new substances added to the 2011 RoC, which the chemical industry is trying to keep under wraps. "Six other substances -- captafol, cobalt-tungsten carbide (in powder or hard metal form), certain inhalable glass wool fibers, o-nitrotoluene, riddelliine, and styrene -- are added as substances that are reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens." (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/newsroom/releases/2011/june10/)

You can read the full 2011 RoC here:
http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/?objectid=03C9AF75-E1BF-FF40-DBA9EC0928DF8B15

http://www.naturalnews.com/037724_Chemistry_Council_lobbying_carcinogens.html

Pat Garofalo - Citigroup CEO Walks Off With $260 Million After His Bank Loses 88 Percent Of Its Value

Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit abruptly resigned today, leaving the helm of the bank that he guided through the financial crisis of 2008. For his five years of leading Citi, Pandit will receive compensation in the neighborhood of $260 million:

If no alterations are made to Pandit’s compensation package, Citigroup will have paid him about $261 million in the five years since he became CEO, including his personal compensation and about $165 million for buying his Old Lane Partners LP hedge fund in 2007 in a deal that led to his becoming CEO. The bank shut Old Lane soon after Pandit took the post, causing a $202 million writedown.

Read More:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/16/1021701/pandit-260-million/?mobile=nc

Ben and Jerry’s Co-founder: Time to Occupy Dollar Bills

Yahoo! News reports that Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, is teaming up with Move to Amend to “distribute rubber stamps with anti-corporate election spending messages so that the politically-minded can mark their dollar bills.”

Cohen plans to put a giant stamping machine on a national tour in August to encourage "thousands of people to buy rubber stamps and stamp any currency that comes into their possession."

Slogans like “Corporations are not people,” “Money is not speech” and “Not to be used for bribing politicians,” will now adorn currency in an Occupy cash campaign.

The goal of Move to Amend is to secure a constitutional amendment that says “corporations do not enjoy the same protected rights as individuals and that money is not a form of speech.”

Cohen’s attorney says that as long as the bills are still legible, it is legal to put the stamps on them.

Yahoo! News' Lookout reports:

Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and one of the deep pockets behind the Occupy movement, says he is helping launch a campaign this summer to highlight the influence of corporate money in American politics.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/06/04-3

Marshall Auerback - Another One Bites the Dust: The Euro Bank Run

It might seem strange to invoke Freddie Mercury and Queen in the context of the eurozone, but it’s the first thought that springs to mind, as Brussels and the increasingly hapless ECB, continue to mismanage their way to financial and economic catastrophe. Yesterday, there were sigs that the Spanish plan to recapitalise Bankia (which came with the implied backing of the ECB’s balance sheet) introduced a potential way out of the eurozone’s metastisizing banking crisis. Sadly, it’s another idea which will never get off the bulletin board, as the ECB bluntly rejected any proposal to use its balance sheet to indirectly fund Bankia, the troubled Spanish lender

So we’re back to floundering and the markets are reacting accordingly. What most investors, experts, and policy makers fail to realize is that this bank run is not simply a Greek problem, which will cease if and when Greece is thrown out of the euro zone. If one looks at the Target 2 balances, the ELA, and the ECB’s lender of last resort facilities, it’s clear that this has extended into all of the periphery countries, including Spain and Italy. It may well end with Germany’s banks effectively serving as the deposit base for all of Europe. See this chart, courtesy of Gavyn Davies.

Read More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/01/another-one-bites-the-dust/

Jeff Cox - Time Bomb? Banks Pressured to Buy Government Debt

US and European regulators are essentially forcing banks to buy up their own government's debt—a move that could end up making the debt crisis even worse, a Citigroup analysis says.

Regulators are allowing banks to escape counting their country's debt against capital requirements and loosening other rules to create a steady market for government bonds, the study says.

While that helps governments issue more and more debt, the strategy could ultimately explode if the governments are unable to make the bond payments, leaving the banks with billions of toxic debt, says Citigroup strategist Hans Lorenzen.

"Captive bank demand can buy time and can help keep domestic yields low," Lorenzen wrote in an analysis for clients. "However, the distortions that build up over time can sow the seeds of an even bigger crisis, if the time bought isn't used very prudently."

"Specifically," Lorenzen adds, "having banks loaded up with domestic sovereign debt will only increase the domestic fallout if the sovereign ultimately reneges on its obligations."

Read More:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47633576

Robert Reich - How to Avoid the Austerity Trap But Still Deal With the Budget Deficit

We now know austerity economics is bad for weak economies facing large budget deficits. Much of Europe is in recession because of budget cuts demanded by Germany. And as Europe’s economies shrink, their debts become proportionally larger, making a bad situation worse.

The way to avoid this austerity trap is to get growth and jobs back first, and only then tackle budget deficits. 

The U.S. hasn’t yet fallen into the trap, but it could soon. Last week the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warned we’ll be in recession early next year if the Bush tax cuts end as scheduled on January 1, and if more than $100 billion is automatically cut from federal spending, as required by Congress’s failure last August to reach a budget deal. 

Predictably, Capitol Hill is deadlocked. Democrats refuse to extend the Bush tax cuts for high earners and Republicans refuse to delay the budget cuts. 

If recent history is any guide, a deal will be struck at the last moment – during a lame-duck Congress, some time in late December. And it will only be to remove the January 1 trigger. Keep everything as it is, the Bush tax cuts as well as current spending, and kick the can down the road into 2013 and beyond. 

Which means no plan for reducing the budget deficit. 

Read More:

http://robertreich.org/post/23939473049

Alexander Higgins - Exclusive – Wall Street Banks Are Secretly Building A Mega Private Army

Wall Street banks have secretly taken over US firearms and ammunition manufacturers and the world’s largest mercenary firms in a stealth build up private military force.

A Daily KOs article reveals that Wall Street banks have used private equity firms to acquire and launch a massive stealth takeover of private security firms, US ammo and gun manufacturers, uniforms, silencers and an army of mercenaries to build what amounts to the world’s largest private army.

At the same time the private mercenary companies they now control, which include the likes of  Dynacorp and the notorious name changing Blackwater/Xe Services/Academi,  have been authorized under Department of Defense DIRECTIVE NUMBER 3025.18 to actually conduct policing operations inside the United States.

The article reveals Citi Bank, Bank of America, Barclays, and Deutsche Bank have provide huge amounts of funding to two private Wall Street equity firms, Cerebus and Veritas Equity, which in turn have used umbrella companies such as Freedom Corp., to engage in stealth takeovers and weapons stockpiling which has consumed the likes of  several gun manufacturers and ammunition manufacturers including Remington, Cobbs, H&R, Marlin, Dakota, and Bushmaker.

Read More:

http://thetruthisnow.com/archives/political/exclusive-wall-street-banks-are-secretly-building-a-mega-private-army/

Alex Newman - U.S. & U.K. Taxpayers Funding Forced Sterilization in India

U.S. and British taxpayers are funding brutal forced sterilizations and a growing network of appalling “camps” in India through foreign-aid programs and even the World Bank, according to human rights activists and news reports. But as the scandal surrounding the controversial population-control campaign grows with an Indian Supreme Court investigation into the matter, governments are publicly distancing themselves from the program.  

Citing dubious United Nations theories about “climate change,” population-reduction fanatics — especially in the West — have been working fiendishly around the world for decades to scale back the number of humans. Their methods include everything from promoting abortion and contraception to developing sterilization programs targeting poor women in particular. And the barbarity is largely being bankrolled by taxpayers and elite donors in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.  

According to recent reports, the foreign-aid “family planning” money is being used by Indian authorities to forcibly sterilize Indians using outright deception or even coercion. In some cases, authorities coerce families into consent by threatening to withhold food or other essentials. Sometimes the victims are bribed using Western tax money without being told what the procedures really accomplish — let alone the risks.  

Read More:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/11372-us-uk-taxpayers-funding-forced-sterilization-in-india

Matt Stoller - Over 99% of Federal Reserve Bank Enforcement Actions Are Resolved Without Admission of Guilt

In a hearing last week titled “Examining the Settlement Practices of U.S. Financial Regulators”, various regulators tried to justify their practice of settling with financial firms and not requiring them to admit wrongdoing. In that hearing, Federal Reserve General Counsel Scott Alvarez, stated that only seven of the roughly one thousand enforcement actions taken in the last decade were resolved without consent.

The vast majority of the Federa Reserve’s formal enforcement actions are resolved upon consent, which is fully consistent with the goal of resolving supervisory concerns with bank management quickly and firmly. In crafting enforcement actions that are entered by consent, the Federal Reserve typically sets out summary recitations of the relevant facts in “Whereas” clause provisions; however, like our fellow banking regulators, it has not been our practice to require formal admissions to the misconduct addressed in our enforcement orders given the remedial nature of our enforcement program. Requiring admission of fact and legal conclusions as a condition of entering into a consent action is likely to have a deleterious effect on our supervisory efforts by causing more institutions and individuals to challenge the requested relief in contested administrative proceedings, which typically takes years to reach final resolution, and which could delay implemenattion of necessary corrective action.

In other words, the Federal Reserve will only punish banks who break the rules if those banks consent to punishment.  This attitude is pervasive among all regulators.  Here’s the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates among other banks JP Morgan Chase.

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/over-99-of-enforcement-actions-by-federal-reserve-are-resolved-without-admission-of-guilt.html