Bank lobbyists are not leaving it to lawmakers to draft
legislation that softens financial regulations. Instead, the
lobbyists are helping to write it themselves.
One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services
Committee this month — over the objections of the Treasury
Department — was essentially Citigroup’s, according to
e-mails reviewed by The New York Times. The bill would
exempt broad swathes of trades from new regulation.
In a sign of Wall Street’s resurgent influence in Washington,
Citigroup’s recommendations were reflected in more than 70
lines of the House committee’s 85-line bill. Two crucial
paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other
Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word.
(Lawmakers changed two words to make them plural.)"
As we previously reported, on May 7th, nine deregulatory bills sailed through the House Financial Services Committee. We wrote about one of them, HR 992, and this particular bill garnered only SIX "nay" votes, out of SIXTY-ONE total representatives on the Committee.
This egregious bill, which is named "Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act", but it should be called, "If Banks Get Bailed Out, We'll Get Sold Out. Again," was written in large part by Citigroup. As the NTYimes reports:
"Citigroup and other major banks used a similar approach on
another derivatives bill. Under Dodd-Frank, banks must
push some derivatives trading into separate units that are
not backed by the government’s insurance fund. The goal was
to isolate this risky trading.
The provision exempted many derivatives from the
requirement, but some Republicans proposed striking the
so-called push out provision altogether. After objections
were raised about the Republican plan, Citigroup lobbyists
sent around the bank’s own compromise proposal that
simply exempted a wider array of derivatives. That
recommendation, put forth in late 2011, was largely part of
the bill approved by the House committee on May 7 and is
now pending before both the Senate and the House."
Citigroup was responsible for the death of Glass-Steagall, which led to the free-wheeling and casino-lifestyle that caused the 2008 Financial crisis. Citigroup mismanaged their firm and loaded up to the hilt with toxic mortgage products, requiring a massive taxpayer bailout. And if that weren't enough, they also received a total of $99.5 Billion in secret loans from the Federal Reserve after the crisis to avert their own ruin. And now, they're writing our laws to tear down even the paltry protections put in place post-crisis.
Join the March Against Monsanto to shut down the one corporation that controls every morsel of food from our cradles to our graves.
At the moment over two million people have planned over 400 global marches in 52 countries, 200 cities, and simultaneously in 47 states in the United States.
What can we do? What can you do? Organize! Insist that GMO foods are labeled. Repeal the "Monsanto Protection Act" inform your friends and take to the streets!!!
First of all: there seems to be some kind of misconception among some people, of what capitalism actually is. There are some who believe that where there is a market economy, money and competition, then that’s automatically capitalism. That’s not true. In capitalism there is of course a market economy, but that can exist in other systems as well.
What characterizes capitalism is that there is private ownership of the means of production. That’s when you know you’re dealing with a capitalist system. If this feature is absent, if it’s not the case that some individuals privately own the means of production others are using, then it’s no longer capitalism. If it instead was a system in which, let’s say, the workers themselves controlled and managed the means of production democratically at the place where they worked, and that these institutions were operating in a market system, then that would be some kind of market socialism etc, not capitalism.
A system that allows a few individuals to have undemocratic control and power, not only at the workplace, but in society in general, is unacceptable; a system that allows some individuals to exploit and profit on other people’s misery is unacceptable; a system that allows more and more cash to be shuffled into the pockets of the owners and the wealthy, is unacceptable.
Millions of underwater homeowners have paid the price for Wall Street's crimes. From mortgage fraud to predatory lending, it's time to put bankers in jail.
Join Occupy Homes, dozens of underwater homeowners, and hundreds of allies from across the country as we take action and risk arrest at the Department of Justice.
Bring Justice to Justice Rally:
May 20th @ 1pm
Gather: Freedom Plaza, 14th Street and Pennsylvania Ave NW – March to Department of Justice @ 1:30pm
Five years after Wall Street crashed the economy, not one banker has been prosecuted for the reckless and fraudulent practices that cost millions of Americans their jobs, threw our cities and schools into crisis, and left families and communities ravaged by a foreclosure crisis and epidemic of underwater mortgages.
Record profits are back at the bailed-out banks. Meanwhile:
Homeowners and communities have lost billions to Wall Street’s foreclosure crisis;
Millions more families face foreclosure in the coming months;
The time is now for Congress and the Obama administration to make Wall Street pay us back:
Prosecute Wall Street bankers for stealing our homes, savings and livelihoods;
End the foreclosure crisis;
Reset mortgages to their current value (“principal reduction”);
Restore and rebuild wealth stolen from communities of color hardest hit.
Since the crisis began, Americans from all walks of life have banded together to help each other. Working through community organizations, civil rights groups, the Occupy movement, and community and faith leaders, we have shared our stories, lobbied, petitioned, and even faced arrest for occupying our own homes and demanding justice.
During the Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23, families on the front line of the foreclosure crisis will travel from around the country to Washington, D.C., to make their voices heard. The week will include community organizing, home-defense training, and non-violence and civil-disobedience training.
On Monday, May 20, at 1:00pm, home defenders, as well as faith and community leaders will rally to Bring Justice to Justice – demanding an end to the “too big to jail” policy, and relief for families and communities devastated by the financial crisis and foreclosure epidemic.
When people from two different countries hate you, that means you are a public enemy. Last week, the richest man in the entire world, Carlos Slim, attempted to use a philanthropic gift to cover up the fact that his monopolistic practices have impoverished all of Latin America, with headway being made to raid the coffers of the United States with over $451.7 million taken in from subsides from the government of the United States every year.
Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.
the only solution is WorldRevolution
Click here for a list of actions, meetings, assemblies in New York.
Monsanto is the corporation behind the chemically created 
First of all: there seems to be some kind of misconception among some people, of what 
