Once again our daily barrage of economic injustice news is overwhelming. From lobbyist lies to interest rate swap rigging to killing workers by the hundreds to our best and brightest working jobs flipping burgers, here are some quick economic news shorts that you don't want to miss.
While the Dow hit 14,000 and Wall Street cheered, economic indicators cast a broadening dark shadow. Wall street is partying like it is March 2000. Yet Q4 GDP showed economic contraction.
Will America finally get justice for crimes on Wall Street? We think not. Today, President Barack Obama named Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. The White House and most of the press are touting her credentials as a former New York Southern District prosecutor. From the White House press briefing:
We hear all sorts of reasons why the little guy won't buy stocks these days but the below graph, courtesy of a Chicago Fed study, might explain a lot of it.
Ah, we all know the claim offshore outsourcing is good for America. Seems offshore outsourcing is great for drug dealers and money launders too. Did you know offshore outsourcing enabled money laundering, flash crashes and failed projects?
The DFS probe found that SCB had assured the New York state in May 2010 that it would take immediate steps to comply with the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions. However, another regulatory examination in 2011 found continuing and significant Anti Money Laundering failures.
Among these, the bank was outsourcing its "entire OFAC compliance process for the New York branch to Chennai, India, with no evidence of any oversight or communication between the Chennai and the New York offices."
Barclays was busted for manipulating the LIBOR. The London Interbank Offered Rate is the interest rate banks charge to lend to each other. This key interest rate sets most banking transactions, including retail. Manipulating the Libor is like being a casino with crooked roulette wheels and loaded dice.
Barclays has been fined £290m ($450m) for trying to manipulate a key bank interest rate which influences the cost of loans and mortgages.
Marcus Agius will step down from Barclays as soon as Monday, amid fallout from the bank's $453 million settlement of probe into Libor manipulation.
On Wednesday the U.K's Financial Services Authority announced to the world Barclays manipulated the Libor and was fined. Below is some of the FSA's press release:
The FSA has today announced that it has found serious failings in the sale of interest rate hedging products to some small and medium sized businesses (SMEs). We believe that this has resulted in a severe impact on a large number of these businesses. In order to provide as swift a solution to this problem as possible we have today confirmed that we have reached agreement with Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS to provide appropriate redress where mis-selling has occurred.
You seriously expected to make money on the Facebook IPO? Sucker! Why any regular investor would be believe yet another IPO hype machine after the dot con era is beyond me, but suckered in they were. Now the lawsuits are flying and we have yet another SEC non-action action that they would look into this. Just the other day, the SEC let Lehman Brothers completely off the hook. The general lawsuit is described below:
The motto of most police departments is to serve and protect. They might tack onto the end of that phrase banks, Wall Street and powerful people. The below photo, by Randy L. Rasmussen, The Oregonian, captures people getting attacked with pepper spray when protesting in front of JPMorgan Chase Bank.
Ah, we all know the claim offshore outsourcing is 
Barclays was busted for 
Recent comments