How much would you pay for a year of life? It seems Big Pharma has figured that number out and are charging over $100,000 a year for life saving Cancer drugs. Yes, surprise, surprise, the more dire the disease, the more the great for profit pharmaceutical industry is charging for the cure. In 2012 alone, of the 12 cancer drugs approved by the FDA, 11 cost over $100,000.
It's Official. CBS 60 Minutes has turned into a corporate propaganda show from the long-time original investigative reporting 60 Minutes used to be. Many point to the phony story on the NSA or Benghazi as the turning point for the long time news show but we think there are other stories just as outrageous.
Credit reports control way too much of an individual's life. A bad credit score can deny someone a job, never mind a credit card and a mortgage. The four billion dollar a year consumer credit rating industry has way too much power and almost no accountability.
CBS 60 Minutes profiled one town near Purgatory mountain, Asheboro, North Carolina to show what's really wrong with the U.S. economy. It's not taxes, small government or big government, or even the deficit. The real problem are jobs going offshore, companies treating workers as disposable and the never ending race to the bottom on wages, global labor arbitrage.
It might just be election time. We have Bank of America being sued for Countrywide's hustle, a program which pawned off bad mortgages onto Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2007 to 2009. The U.S. District Attorney, Office’s Civil Frauds Unit in New York filed a civil complaint against BoA, who acquired Countrywide, for $1 billion.
The Complaint seeks civil penalties under FIRREA, as well as treble damages and penalties under the False Claims Act, for over $1 billion in losses suffered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for defaulted loans fraudulently sold by COUNTRYWIDE and BANK OF AMERICA.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “For the sixth time in less than 18 months, this Office has been compelled to sue a major U.S. bank for reckless mortgage practices in the lead-up to the financial crisis. The fraudulent conduct alleged in today’s complaint was spectacularly brazen in scope. As alleged, through a program aptly named ‘the Hustle,’ Countrywide and Bank of America made disastrously bad loans and stuck taxpayers with the bill. As described, Countrywide and Bank of America systematically removed every check in favor of its own balance – they cast aside underwriters, eliminated quality controls, incentivized unqualified personnel to cut corners, and concealed the resulting defects. These toxic products were then sold to the government sponsored enterprises as good loans. This lawsuit should send another clear message that reckless lending practices will not be tolerated.”
Every month we show a graph of the counted long-term unemployed, currently at 5.2 million. Behind every data point on this line is a real live person, with ability, skills, promise, knowledge and capability who desperately needs someone to hire them.
This week 60 Minutes, revisited the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Much we already know, but the below segment gives us a refresher and sums it up nicely. There is no justice for you and me, regardless of how much evidence there is of civil and criminal wrongdoing.
You might recognize a pattern. There is systemic fraud inside a corporation. Someone tries to blow the whistle. Their reward? Fired, their income lost and reputation ruined. Such is the fate of those who tried to do anything regarding the massive subprime mortgage fraud, a major underlying cause of the financial crisis.
If you watch most media you'd never guess what's the real America. From television shows where minimum wage jobs pay rent on $2000 a month flats, to families who never seem to run out of money or get foreclosed on, to messages of if only you follow some green line you'll have enough money for retirement, a never ending weave of fiction is spun. Like prey in the spider's web of tall tales, we're stunned and hypnotized into no longer seeing the poverty and despair all around us.
It might just be election time. We have Bank of America being sued for Countrywide's
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