Creditor and Whistleblower evidence alleges securities fraud, income tax fraud and income tax evasion. Further investigation is necessary to protect millions of homeowners.
New York City, New York – U. S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York’s Judge Martin Glenn, presiding over the simultaneous Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings of 51 residential mortgage companies, received a whistleblower filing package today from one of the creditors in this case, a private American citizen, Greg Morse.
The Internal Revenue Service and Securities Exchange Commission received the same package today. Among its contents is Morse’s whistleblower submission of IRS Form 211—Application for Award for Original Information, and SEC Form TCR—SEC Tip, Complaint or Referral, accompanied by voluminous supporting documentation. These federal agencies are mandated to investigate allegations of corruption and fraud.
Morse, a commissioned officer was honorably discharged from the U. S. Air Force and the U. S. Navy as an F-4 Phantom fighter pilot. He was one of the initial people who uncovered and successfully prosecuted a federal fraud case regarding the savings and loan debacle in the late 1980’s.
Like millions of Americans, Morse, believed when he refinanced his home mortgage in 2008 that it was legitimate but found out otherwise when he discovered that his chain of title had been broken by Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS). His home in Texas was not and is not in foreclosure. He has never been late or missed a mortgage payment.
According to N.Y. bankruptcy court records, as of March, 2012, at stake are over 2.4 million mortgages and Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS) representing over 6.2 million Americans, according to U. S. census statistics.
The value of this bankruptcy case, as of today, is well over $400 billion—making it the largest bankruptcy in history.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is watching steps that U.S. banks have taken... Read More
The main U.S. derivatives regulator has begun monitoring the latest effort by Wall Street banks to avoid U.S. swap-trading restrictions by restructuring their overseas trading divisions, an official at the agency said.
In the national debate over what to do about public pension shortfalls, here's something you may not know: The texts of the agreements signed between those pension funds and financial firms are almost always secret. Yes, that's right. Although they are public pensions that taxpayers contribute to and that public officials oversee, the exact terms of the financial deals being engineered in the public's name and with public money are typically not available to you, the taxpayer. To understand why that should be cause for concern, ponder some possibilities as they relate to pension deals with hedge funds, private equity partnerships and other so-called "alternative investments." For example, it is possible that the secret terms of such agreements could allow other private individuals in the same investments to negotiate preferential terms for themselves, meaning public employees' pension money enriches those private investors. It is also possible that the secret terms of the agreements create the heads-Wall-Street-wins, tails-pensions-lose effect -- the one whereby retirees' money is subjected to huge risks, yet financial firms' profits are guaranteed regardless of returns. North Carolina exemplifies the latter problem. In a new report for the union representing that state's public employees, former Securities and Exchange Commission investigator Ted Siedle documents how secrecy is allowing financial firms to bilk the Teachers' and State Employees' Retirement System, which is the seventh largest public pension fund in America.
Home to Ben Franklin and the first and successful public bank in America. Home to the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Washington’s Crossing and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania has long been called the Keystone State, owing to its central role in the birth of the American democracy.To this day it is a “battleground” state in presidential elections.
Now, the Keystone State is stepping up to help make pubic banking and American history.Formed just after the Public Banking Institute, the Pennsylvania Project is leading the way.
Presidents and Bankers joined at the hip for a long, long time — Nomi Prins
Ellen’s guest this week is renowned banking wonk, writer and former investment insider Nomi Prins, whose blockbuster book All the President’s Bankers has just been released.
Nomi discloses the longstanding personal and political ties between
Washington and Wall Street that have enabled the concentration of global
wealth into the hands of a few. Ellen brings these historical facts
together with the current bank rap sheet of fraud, conspiracy and bailouts
that characterize the landscape of big bank business, and discusses new
reports and a definitive study showing that these inside-power connections, not the public interest, run America.
On this week’s Public Banking Report, co-host Walt McRee talks with Gwen Hallsmith, the new Executive Director of thePublic Banking Institute, about a just-launched series of classes called “The New Economy Academy.
Sixteen of the world's largest banks have been caught colluding to rig global interest rates. Why are we doing business with a corrupt global banking cartel?
California juries are not bashful - they have been known to render massive punitive damages awards that dwarf the award of compensatory (actual) damages. For example, in one securities fraud case jurors awarded $5.7 million in compensatory damages and $165 million in punitive damages. . . . And in a tobacco case with $5.5 million in compensatory damages, the jury awarded $3 billion in punitive damages . . . .
The European Central Bank could embark on a broad-based asset buying plan if the euro zone inflation outlook worsens, ECB President Mario Draghi said, adding that a rise in the euro could also trigger policy action.
While stressing that the ECB sees inflation remaining low for a prolonged period before rising again, Draghi set out three "contingencies" for the ECB to act. He also said a rise in the euro could - all else being equal - prompt the ECB to act.
Thank you for your question. I think G.E Griffin will help you understand more on how money is made.
The only thing that wrong/evil needs to flourish is for good people to say or do nothing. So please pass this information on to others so they too can see the uncontroversial truth that the American people are being duped and stolen from with a tax they don’t owe.
Russia's parliament has agreed to write off about $10 billion of North Korea's Soviet-era debt, in a deal expected to facilitate the building of a gas pipeline to South Korea across the reclusive state.
North Korea's economy is 2 per cent of South Korea's. (Credit: Reuters)
Russia's parliament has agreed to write off about $10 billion of North Korea's Soviet-era debt, in a deal expected to facilitate the building of a gas pipeline to South Korea across the reclusive state.
The State Duma lower house in Moscow on Friday ratified a 2012 agreement to excuse the bulk of North Korea's debt.
It said the total debt stood at $10.96 billion as of September 17, 2012.
The rest of the debt - $1.09 billion - would be redeemed during the next 20 years, to be paid in equal instalments every six months.
Lord Adair Turner, who was the chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority from 2008-2013, gave a brief but hard-hitting speech last week, where he claimed that university textbooks were teaching a ‘mythological’ story about what banks do. Speaking on a panel at the INET “Human After All” conference in Toronto, he made a number of strong points:
The much activity in the financial sector is not useful to the economy, and that we should discard the pre-crisis belief, held by most economists, that a bigger financial system is always beneficial for the economy
That the idea that banks take money from savers and lend it to borrowers is wrong. In fact, banks create new money when they lend.
That the idea that the function of modern banks is to invest in businesses is ‘mythological’. In reality, lending to businesses is often below 15% of the loans that banks make. Instead, most of the money they create (by lending) goes into property bubbles and financial markets.
The speech is well worth watching in full, but if you’re short of time, you can get the highlights by reading the bits in bold below.
Full Transcript:
“Good evening.
It’s a striking fact that over the last 50 years, finance got much bigger over most advanced economies. The broad figures for the US set out in Robin Greenwood and David Fairstein’s paper, was that in 1950 the US financial system accounted for about 2.5% of GDP. By the mid-1970s about 4.5% and on the eve of the crisis about 8% of GDP. And as Paul [Martin, former Canadian prime minister] on some other measures such as gross operating surplus or equity value, much higher percentages than that. Andy Haldane’s figures illustrate the same figures for the UK.
In addition, the financial system has drawn to itself high talented people but paid them an enormous amount of money – even more than you can explain by the amount of talent. So the analysis by Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef shows an extraordinary excess over what you would expect to get for the skills level of the people in that industry; an excess which has varied over time. It was about 70% above other sectors of the economy in the 1920s; it then fell to about 0% in the 1950s and 60s, but by the eve of the crisis it was back at 70%.
So we have a large and growing sector of the economy, paying its producers – its participants – a large amount of money. And we have, as Joseph [Stiglitz] said, to ask questions about that. We can’t simply accept that this is ok in the same way that we would if say, the restaurant industry grew. If the restaurant industry grew from 2% to 8% of the economy, we would say, well that’s because people like buying restaurant meals. But nobody gets up in the morning and says, “Ooh, what shall I do today? I think I’ll go and consume some financial services”. Well, there may be some people in this room who do that, but most normal people don’t do that. It’s good if it performing good functions vis-a-vis the economy. It’s not if it is not.
So we have to ask searching questions about why finance got so big, what it is doing, and whether that is valuable. Now again Greenwood and Fairstein have done a very valuable exercise in breaking down the growth of the US financial system into what constitutes it. And it’s useful to divide this down into two elements: 1) a change in what the financial system does vis-a-vis the rest of the economy, i.e. actual services to the rest of the economy, and 2) what it actually do itself.
If we focus on what it does vis-a-vis the rest of the economy, you find some things which have grown, but no more than you might expect, like insurance – insurance services have grown because we’ve got more things to insure. But actually the growth of finance vis-a-vis the rest of the economy is dominated by two things.
One is credit. The financial system makes money out of the net interest margin on credit and the fees related to the credit origination, because we borrow more money. In the US in 1950, private credit to GDP was 50%. It rises relentlessly to 170% of GDP by the eve of the crisis. Because we borrow more money, the financial system makes more money out of us.
The other thing, which is of course linked to this – indeed it’s almost just the flipside of this on the other side of the balance sheet – the industry makes much more money out of asset management in all its many characters: mutual fund fees, private equity fees, hedge fund fees and brokerage commissions and various forms of trading. And of course if there’s more credit there’s also something more on the assets side which has to be managed.
So there are more services to the real economy. But the other striking feature of the growth of the size of the financial system is that it’s doing an enormous amount of things that it’s doing with itself. If you look at a bank balance sheet from 1950, you can understand what’s going on. You will find that there are loans to the corporate sector, or deposits from; there are loans to the household sector; there’ll be some liquid assets held in the form of government bonds, but the bit which relates to the real economy will be the majority of the balance sheet. You can understand it. If you look at a major trading bank now – the Goldman Sachs or the Lehman Brothers (as it was) or the JP Morgans or the Barclays – the vast majority of the balance sheet has to do with trading vis-a-vis the rest of the financial system. It has to do with prime-brokerage relationships; it has to do with enormous amounts of interbank placements.
Explosive new emails released today show that former IRS official Lois Lerner communicated with the Department of Justice, setting up a meeting with the DOJ to discuss criminal prosecution of conservative groups that were looking for tax-exempt status and may have lied about their political activity.
Princeton Concludes What Kind of Government America Really Has, and It's Not a Democracy
The news: A new scientific study from Princeton researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page has finally put some science behind the recently popular argument that the United States isn't a democracy any more. And they've found that in fact, America is basically an oligarchy.
An oligarchy is a system where power is effectively wielded by a small number of individuals defined by their status called oligarchs. Members of the oligarchy are the rich, the well connected and the politically powerful, as well as particularly well placed individuals in institutions like banking and finance or the military.
For their study, Gilens and Page compiled data from roughly 1,800 different policy initiatives in the years between 1981 and 2002. They then compared those policy changes with the expressed opinion of the United State public. Comparing the preferences of the average American at the 50th percentile of income to what those Americans at the 90th percentile preferred, as well as the opinions of major lobbying or business groups, the researchers found out that the government followed the directives set forth by the latter two much more often.
It's beyond alarming. As Gilens and Page write, "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." In other words, their statistics say your opinion literally does not matter.
Former managing director of Goldman Sachs – and head of the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London (Nomi Prins) - notes:
Image: HSBC (Wiki Commons).
Throughout the century that I examined, which began with the Panic of 1907 … what I found by accessing the archives of each president is that through many events and periods, particular bankers were in constant communication [with the White House] — not just about financial and economic policy, and by extension trade policy, but also about aspects of World War I, or World War II, or the Cold War, in terms of the expansion that America was undergoing as a superpower in the world, politically, buoyed by the financial expansion of the banking community.
Although stimulating for the economy, wars aren’t getting very good press these days. Since our partners in the arms industry also have a right to earn an honest wage, wars are often provoked in poorer countries, but the truth is that civilized countries and armed conflicts just don’t go together any longer. The overvalued Human Rights Declaration and other naïve ideas have managed to make most people view wars as something as obsolete as VHS videos. The digital age requires more efficient and refined tools in order to win the fierce competitive struggle.
"We're confiscating property now. That's socialism. It's written into the Communist Manifesto. Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him." - T. Coleman Andrews, Commissioner of the IRS for 33 months under the Eisenhower Administration before he resigned. May 25, 1956, U.S. News & World Report
"This issue is NOT about "paying your fair" share on April 15th. This is a legal issue that involves more lies by "our" government.
"When I first began my journey so long ago, it began quite by accident. In 1991, I was at a book signing for my first published book; the big publisher's shindig in LA. My publisher handed me a book which, really, just opened to the chapter on the "Federal" Reserve. It literally changed my life.
Welcome to Truth Attack, a coalition of Freedom Movement organizations and patriots dedicated to the restoration of the limited and distant federal republic guaranteed us by our Constitution. Truth Attack is unfolding a coordinated plan of action that will put the government back in its box—one tentacle at a time!
The first tentacle is the IRS's fraudulent, unlawful and economically, morally and socially destructive application of the income tax to Americans living and working here at home. America must wake up to the Truth!
There is no law making working Americans liable for the income tax (more)
There is no lawful basis for treating personal earnings as 100% profit (more)
Our right to earn a living is as exempt from taxation as our freedom of speech (more)
If you think this issue is about money, then think again
IS THIS ABOUT MONEY?
If you think this is about money, think again! This is about your freedom and your right to govern your own life and your own state, county and community, but most of all: this is about your sole ownership of your labor and the fruits of that labor!!
You are not a slave, not in whole, not in part, not in any bracket of slavery!!
HOW IS THIS ABOUT FREEDOM?
While there are a lot of reasons that fighting for the truth and the rule of law is more about freedom than money, three reasons stand out above the rest.
First, by applying the income tax to those who are not liable for the tax and by taking earnings that are not taxed by the law and could not be Constitutionally taxed if they were included, the IRS is bypassing the rule of law and invading your Constitutionally protected fundamental right to earn a living, violating direct Constitutional prohibitions against taxing your property—your labor.
Your freedom, your rights, your Constitution and the law of the land are all being violated, and when the rule of man or agency is allowed to override the rule of laws to which you, through your elected representatives, have consented, you are no longer being ruled by consent. You are being ruled by fear, intimidation and force, not law. YOU ARE NOT FREE!
Second, the money stolen through the misapplied and abused income tax has not only enabled the federal government to expand its rule into areas reserved to you, the people, and your states, the federal government uses that stolen money to “bribe” your state legislators into ignoring your will, enacting state laws dictated by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., instead. Again, you are being subjected to rule and regulation to which you have not consented.
In short, the federal government, not you and not your representatives, rule your state government, as well. Your state has been reduced, once again, to a colony of a distant and indifferent government, and YOU ARE NOT FREE!
Finally, third, and perhaps even more importantly, the power to tax is the power to destroy. If the federal government can take part of our labor it can take all of it. If the federal government can tax one of our freedoms, it can tax all of our freedoms. If we permit them to tax our labor, our rights, our freedom, which are our most precious and fragile assets, then all we have is kept only by the consent of the government—we are at its mercy—WE ARE NOT FREE!!
WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?
Acting alone, there is not much any of us can do about it, but acting together every one of us can make a difference. You can join the thousands of Truth Troopers who are spreading the TRUTH across this great land, letting the people know what they know, that the IRS is stealing their earnings, taking money from families and households without any law permitting it to do so and robbing you and your family of the standard of living you have earned and deserve.
YOU CAN learn the TRUTH about the income tax law, starting by saving and reading The Memorandum.
YOU CAN imagine that if only half of what the federal government is stealing from you stayed in your household how much better your family would live and how your community’s and state’s economy would prosper if you and your neighbors had only half of that stolen money to spend in your community and state.
YOU CAN imagine what kind of streets, roads, schools and government services your state and community could provide if the other half of what the federal government is stealing from you went to your state and local governments, who would answer only to you for it.
YOU CAN make that image of living in freedom a REALITY by joining Truth Attack and fighting for your freedom today, tomorrow and every day after until the federal government is again your servant, not your master, and until your state government once again represents the will of its people. (Please! Enlist Now while you still have enough freedom left to fight back!)
NOW YOU KNOW THE TRUTH!
Now, YOU can answer these questions:
DOES ANY STATUTE MAKE YOU LIABLE FOR THE INCOME TAX?
ARE YOUR PERSONAL EARNINGS “INCOME”? OR ARE THEY GROSS RECEIPTS THAT INCLUDE NO SEVERABLE INCOME?
IS YOUR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO EARN A LIVING “TAXABLE”? OR IS IT EXEMPT?
THE INCOME TAX IS IMPOSED ON “TAXABLE” “INCOME”—DO YOU HAVE EITHER?
And only YOU can answer the BIG question:
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
JOIN US IN GIVING THE IRS A TRUTH ATTACK! RECLAIM YOUR FREEDOM!
