Rothschild arrested while taking a picture

Why I Got Arrested in Madison

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, November 2, 2011

Because I’ve had enough of Scott Walker’s reactionary rule.

Because it’s ludicrous that you can carry a concealed weapon into the Wisconsin State Assembly gallery but you can’t take pictures with your cell phone or hold a sign. Because it’s insane that Republicans in the State Assembly are more afraid of free speech and accountability than they are of a bullet.

Because I believe in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Because I believe in Article 1, Section 3 and Article 1, Section 4 of
the Wisconsin state constitution, which guarantee us free speech and
assembly and the right to petition the government.

Because I believe in nonviolent civil disobedience to challenge unjust laws and policies.

Because I admire the nonviolent civil disobedience that many other Wisconsinites have been engaging in over the past nine months.

Because if we don’t stand up to Walker and the Fitzgeralds, there is no telling how far down the slope we’re all going to slide.

What Walker and these Republicans are doing to this state is astonishingly brazen. They are like a pack of Cheneys. They do not respect democracy. The people are a nuisance to them. So are the laws. All they care about is power, and grabbing everything they can—for themselves, and their corporate cronies—while they still have it.

Every day that it’s in session, the Republican-dominated legislature has been pushing through one retrograde bill after another.

This, on top of the vicious assault on workers’ rights that we saw this spring, and the illegal way they did it, without proper notice, and the sham of a state supreme court ruling that validated the bill, and the illegal shutting down of the capitol to the public, and the attack on public education, Medicaid, racial justice, and the environment, to name just a few.

There have been plenty of straws to break the back of many a badger. The one that broke my back was seeing people, over the past few weeks, being dragged away for merely holding a sign or taking a picture in the State Assembly gallery.

So Tuesday, some activists had called for “Concealed Camera Day,” and I went with a couple of my friends to participate—not as a journalist, but as a citizen. I printed out the words of the First Amendment, and Article 1, Sections 3 and 4, of the Wisconsin Constitution, and I taped them to my shirt.

About 60 of us gathered around 5:00 p.m. and waited until the gallery opened around 6:00, with proceedings beginning shortly after 6:30.

A young, well-dressed woman warned us that we couldn’t hold signs or take pictures and to put away our cameras and our phones.

Before I got arrested, I saw a man named Bart Munger get taken out of the gallery for silently holding a sign that said, “I Love Wisconsin.”

I saw a sixty-nine-year-old woman named Glenna Benjamin taken away for silently holding a sign that said, “Soon the Poor Will Have Nothing to Eat but the Rich.”

I saw other people being arrested for simply taking pictures. So I took pictures of them getting arrested for taking pictures, and for that I was arrested.

In all, 18 of us were booked.

Karen Tuerk was arrested for holding a sign that said “ALEC” and for waving five $1 bills in front of it. (ALEC stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a rightwing, corporate-financed group that drafts “model” bills for conservatives to ram through statehouses like ours.) Tuerk told me that a legislator had pointed her out from the floor of the Assembly and demanded that she be taken away.

I was not handcuffed. Many of the others were. I was arrested not by a state police officer or a capital police officer but by a warden from the DNR (Department of Natural Resources).

His name was Mackenzie Hannon, and he was as pleasant as could be.

I asked him whether he wouldn’t rather be at Devil’s Lake, one of our beautiful state parks, and he kind of shrugged.

I was charged with “Other Conduct Prohibited—Obstructing,” and I was let go after about a half hour.

I have a court date on November 18, where I will contest this charge as a violation of my rights under the Wisconsin and U.S. Constitutions.

If you liked this story by Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, check out his story "Poll Shows Americans Want to Redistribute the Wealth!"

Follow Matthew Rothschild @mattrothschild on Twitter

MF Global: : Where was the CFTC?

Wall Street Journal: Where was the CFTC?

From The Wall Street Journal
Thursday, November 3, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020439480457701222082986529...

How are the regulators going to explain this one?

MF Global, the failed firm whose chairman and CEO is Jon Corzine, has already destroyed the wealth of its investors and roiled the banking world. But now we are learning that it may have lost customer funds as well.

A major Wall Street broker in derivatives markets with $41 billion in assets, MF Global filed for bankruptcy on Monday after Mr. Corzine made disastrous bets on bonds issued by European governments. It initially appeared he was (only) gambling with his firm's own capital, but a federal official tells the Journal that MF Global has admitted diverting money out of customer accounts, which may be a violation of federal law.

This follows a report from futures exchange operator CME that MF Global was not complying with federal rules on segregating client funds. In bankruptcy court yesterday an MF lawyer said, "To the best knowledge of management, there is no shortfall" in customer accounts. But the Journal reported late yesterday that the FBI is investigating the matter.

If reports of missing funds are true, it's a significant embarrassment for the firm's regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler has been leading the Beltway chorus for years in reciting the (false) story that the absence of regulation allowed AIG and its credit-default swaps to wreak havoc in 2008.

Never mind that the Treasury Department's Office of Thrift Supervision did regulate AIG, and that an OTS official testified before Congress that the agency signed off on the swaps because it didn't expect Armageddon in the housing market. Mr. Gensler nonetheless succeeded in gaining for himself and his agency broad new powers over the derivatives market as part of Dodd-Frank in 2010.

The MF Global case involves business that was unambiguously regulated by the CFTC long before Mr. Gensler built his new regulatory empire. In fact, the alleged MF Global failure goes to the basic regulatory blocking and tackling that the CFTC is supposed to perform, which includes ensuring that companies aren't raiding customer funds for their own trading.

It is also no small irony that MF Global was among the cheerleaders for Mr. Gensler's plans for new clearing arrangements under Dodd-Frank. Maybe if the regulators hadn't been so busy writing new rules, they would have checked if MF Global was following the old ones.

It was always fanciful to believe that the regulators who failed to prevent the last financial meltdown would somehow prevent the next one. The surprise is that this mirage of regulatory competence has been exposed so quickly.

SOROS TRADER INVOLVED IN BANKRUPT FIRM TIED TO OBAMA

GEORGE SOROS TRADER INVOLVED IN BANKRUPT FIRM TIED TO OBAMA
By Cliff Kincaid
November 3, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

A major figure in liberal Democrat Jon Corzine’s bankrupt firm, MF Global, used to work for hedge fund operator and Democratic Party financial patron George Soros. MF Global Holdings Ltd., now under FBI investigation, had hired Munir Javeri as Global Head of Trading.

“He is no longer with the company,” a spokesman for the firm informed Accuracy in Media. The spokesman added that he had no contact information for Munir Javeri and couldn’t say when he left the firm. He had been Vice-President of Soros Fund Management from 2003-2004 and was given an “inducement award” in the form of stock options after being hired by MF Global.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are reportedly now missing from the firm’s customer accounts. The firm is said to have experienced major losses because of questionable investments in European bonds.

MF Global was not a hedge fund, although it accepted money from hedge funds such as Cadian Capital Management LLC.

The bankruptcy of MF Global is being described as the eighth-largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. Steve Schaefer of Forbes says it is “the largest bankruptcy (by assets) of a public company this year, and by a huge margin.”

Meantime, Corzine, MF Global chairman and CEO, has been aggressively raising funds for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. “Obama has had a lot to say about Occupy Wall Street but probably won’t say anything about Jon Corzine,” the Republican National Committee said in a statement.

News reports suggest that Corzine, a former head of Goldman Sachs, simply misjudged the European crisis and that his firm went bankrupt as a result. But Soros, by contrast, has been forecasting the disintegration of Europe for months and suggesting that the only solution is a European treasury that could provide a common source of funds to rescue bankrupt economies.

Liberal Democrats in the U.S. today formally proposed a financial transactions tax to provide more federal revenue. On Thursday, National Nurses United, joined by the AFL-CIO and assorted “community activists,” are holding a demonstration in Washington, D.C. to press for a global version of the financial transactions tax.

Corzine, in addition to being a senator from New Jersey, served as governor, only to be defeated for re-election in 2009 by Republican Chris Christie.

Although Corzine is getting plenty of publicity for the demise of his financial firm, the role of the former Soros money manager has gotten short shrift. The New York Times simply mentioned that Corzine had “replaced old-line traders and brokers with more aggressive hires from Goldman Sachs, UBS and Soros Fund Management.”

The Soros connection raises questions, in view of the hedge fund operator’s controversial sources of cash, avoidance of Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, and announced political designs upon the U.S. and the world. Soros is number seven on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans and his fortune now totals $22 billion, up almost $8 billion from last year.

At the time of Javeri’s hiring by MF Global, news organizations trumpeted the development with such headlines as, “Jon Corzine Has Hired An Ex-Soros Trader To Make MF Global Surge.” The media coverage reflected the media awe for Soros and his hedge fund managers.

“In this newly created role,” MF Global said in a press release about the hiring of the former Soros money man, “Mr. Javeri will work with the firm’s various product lines to manage and enhance the firm’s trading capabilities across asset classes and geographic regions. Additionally, he will oversee the firm’s Principal Strategies Group, a newly initiated proprietary trading operation. The group engages in opportunistic trading across a variety of asset classes. Mr. Javeri has extensive trading and asset management experience. Most recently, he was a partner and portfolio manager at Gandhara Advisors, a multi-billion dollar equity hedge fund. Prior to that, he was a global macro investor at Soros Fund Management.”

Despite the hype, MF Global is now in ruins.

To make matters worse, MF Global had close financial ties to the Federal Reserve. The firm was designated a primary dealer by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which means that it participated directly in Treasury auctions and provided analysis and market intelligence to trading desks at the New York Federal Reserve.

At his news conference today, however, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke insisted the Fed was not the supervisor of MF Global and had never given the firm a “seal of approval.”

But a “seal of approval” for Corzine had come from Obama.

The New York Times reports that President Obama’s first major re-election fund-raiser in New York was held at Corzine’s Manhattan home, with tickets going for $35,800 each.

Adding some detail, the news website northnewjersey.com reported that the private 60-person event reportedly raised $2 million for Obama and that Corzine and MF Global associates Bradley Abelow and Joseph Patt then gave separate contributions of $35,800 each to Obama Victory Fund 2012. Corzine “was one of the president’s most elite bundlers, supporters who tap friends and business associates to bring in checks,” The New York Times reported. The article said that he personally had helped Obama raise more than $500,000 this year.

It added that “When White House officials sought to broker a meeting between disgruntled Wall Street executives and Mr. Obama’s new chief of staff this year, they turned to Mr. Corzine, who organized a sit-down at the Four Seasons. Mr. Corzine was on the list. There had even been talk of his being named the next Treasury secretary.”

In addition to the $38,500 to the Obama Victory Fund 2012, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show Corzine made personal contributions of $5,000 to Obama for America on May 19 and $25,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on September 28 of this year.

For his part, Soros gave $75,000 this year to the House Majority PAC, a so-called “Super PAC” designed to help win back the House majority for Democrats in 2012. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker and now Democratic Minority Leader, supports the financial transactions tax, as does Soros.


Cliff Kincaid, a veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff concentrated in journalism and communications at the University of Toledo, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Cliff has written or co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign policy issues. One of Cliff's books, "Global Bondage: The UN Plan to Rule the World" is still awailable.
Cliff has appeared on Hannity & Colmes, The O’Reilly Factor, Crossfire and has been published in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events and Insight.


Web Site: www.AIM.orghttp://www.newswithviews.com/Kincaid/cliff563.htm

Goldman Sachs To Be Tried By People's Court

Goldman Sachs To Be Tried By People's Court in Zuccotti Park

Goldman Sachs will be tried this Thursday, November 3, for crimes against the American public. Cornel West, noted civil rights activist, and Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winner, will be among those presiding, and testimony for the prosecution will include individuals who have been directly affected and harmed by the actions of Goldman Sachs. The trial is open to the public, and if you can't make it? Tune in to WBAI (99.5 FM in New York) or online at www.wbai.org this Thursday, from 10 AM to 12 noon, where it will be broadcast live.  If the government won't do it? We'll take it into our own hands.

Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at November 1, 2011, 10:05 am

UK NEWS

GREECE SET TO REJECT EU BAIL-OUT IN REFERENDUM

Tuesday November 1,2011

By Daily Express reporter

 Have your say(11)

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has called for a referendum on the EU bailout

GREECE plunged Europe further into crisis last night by announcing a referendum on the debt reduction deal...just days after it was hammered out.

The surprise pledge by premier George Papandreou stunned fellow leaders.


While key details on the  referendum have yet to be agreed, jittery markets are calling for certainty that the  eurozone will
get its house in order.


Polls suggest that 60 per cent of Greeks do not back the rescue plan – suggesting a defeat for beleaguered prime minister George Papandreou.


If the deal is rejected there will be greater pressure for the country to default on its debts and quit the single currency – another disaster for the euro. 

60 per cent of Greeks do not back the rescue plan put forward by the EU summit

Back home, UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: “The British people will be looking at Greece thinking if they can have a referendum why can’t we?” 

The announcement was just another wave in a tsunami of bad news yesterday. Stock exchanges fell and traders were spooked by reports China may not now invest as much in the bail-out fund as hoped. 

The OECD warned of a slowdown in the zone next year, saying G20 leaders due to meet this week had to take bold decisions to stave off recession.

GOLDMAN SUX? Giant Squid Strikes Again

GOLDMAN SUX?
Giant Squid Strikes Again
at Occupy Wall Street's Credit UnionGoldman Sachs Intensifies Threat on Credit Union

Monday, October 31, 2011
By Greg Palast
Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, out on November 14.


Art by Molly Crabapple 



What have I done?  There's one angry squid out there.

Last week, Democracy Now! and The Guardian ran our story about Goldman Sachs yanking financial support from a community credit union for honoring one of its largest customers.  The customer:  Occupy Wall Street.
Our report so enraged Goldman that, within days, it doubled down on its attack on the little community bank.
Goldman had already demanded the return of its $5,000 payment to the Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union.  Now, sources say, the trillion-dollar Wall Street mega-bank sent the following message to the not-for-profit community bank:  "You will never get a dime from any bank ever again."
About those "dimes" Goldman is taking away: They come from you and me, the taxpayers who put up billions into the Troubled Asset Recovery Plan (TARP), usually known as the Bank Bail-Out Fund.
For Goldman to suck its $10 billion from the TARP trough, Goldman had to change from investment bank to commercial bank. This change makes Goldman subject to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and requires it by law to pay back a notable portion in funds for low-income communities, abandoned by the big banks.

Memo from Tim Geithner to Larry Summers
(click to enlarge)

In other words, Goldman is beating up Lower East Side Peoples (which operates in Harlem and the Latino New York neighborhood known as Loisaida).
I would note that Goldman's nasty threat to cut off funding for Peoples, the credit union that is officially chartered as the bank for low income New Yorkers, came with a complaint about this reporter.
Goldman claims that Greg Palast called only one time to get Goldman's side of the story.  (I called many times, as did my associate, and we left the same repeated message: I want your side of the story. Please call me and tell me if you're punishing the poor peoples' bank because they are supporting the demands of Occupy Wall Street?)
There are tens of billions of dollars at stake in the Community Reinvestment funds due from the big banks.  As other banks are making noises of heeding Goldman's call to whip the uppity little credit union, an answer from Goldman becomes urgent.
So, Goldman, I'm still waiting for an answer.  You've got my numbers, so just pick up a tentacle and call.
********
Chapter 12 of Vultures' Picnic, "The Generalissimo of Globalization," includes the Palast team investigation of confidential documents of meetings over years between Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and the CEOs of Goldman, Bank of America and JP Morgan.
The investigation takes the Palast crew from a dictator's shopping spree in Geneva to the Andes to Africa and back to Palast's years within the circle of a troll-like character named Milton Friedman.
Pre-order Vultures’ Picnic now or donate for a signed copy.
***
Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, which will be released on November 14 by Penguin USA.
Pre-order it now!
For more information about Palast's brand new book and his book-signing events in your city, go to www.VulturesPicnic.org

NY fed suspends MF Global

http://www.pretorianews.co.za

October 31 2011 at 04:55pm 

Reuters

A woman leaves the office complex where MF Global Holdings Ltd have an office on 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan October 29, 2011.

The New York Fed suspended MF Global from conducting new business with the central bank on Monday and its shares were suspended, as the troubled brokerage nears a deal on its future.

As per a tentative plan, MF Global's holding company would file for bankruptcy protection and derivatives trader Interactive Brokers would buy the assets, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times reported.

“The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has informed MF Global Inc. that it has been suspended from conducting new business with the New York Fed,” the Fed said.

“This suspension will continue until MF Global establishes, to the satisfaction of the New York Fed, that MF Global is fully capable of discharging the responsibilities set out in the New York Fed's policy.”

MF Global, run by former Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Jon Corzine, has been struggling over the past week in which it posted a quarterly loss, its shares fell by two-thirds and its credit ratings were cut to junk.

Its shares were suspended before trading opened in New York, pending a statement.

Interactive Brokers would likely make an initial bid of about $1 billion during a court supervised auction for the U.S. futures brokerage, the WSJ said.

MF Global clients in London said the company wasn't taking on new business and they were closing out positions.

“It was quite difficult to get our money out on Friday, because they had a lot of redemption calls,” a trader, whose firm used MF Global as a brokerage said.

“The company is not initiating any new position. They are trying to close down positions that they already have with clients that are open,” the trader said.

The company is suffering because of low interest rates and bets it made on European sovereign debt, making it possibly the most prominent U.S. casualty yet from the eurozone debt crisis.

MF Global was in talks on Sunday with possible buyers, aiming “squarely” to do a deal, though all options remained on the table as the firm hired restructuring and bankruptcy advisers, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.

The New York Times reported in its electronic edition that by Sunday evening, the talks had narrowed to one bidder, Interactive Brokers.

Sullivan & Cromwell's restructuring and mergers teams have joined the long roster of those advising MF Global, one source familiar with the situation said.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges was also hired to prepare potential restructuring options, a second source familiar with the situation said. The sources could not be identified by name because the talks were not public.

Weil would focus on MF Global's UK subsidiary if it needed to pursue a formal restructuring overseas, the Journal reported in its electronic edition.

The securities company also has hired firms Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the newspaper said.

MF Global and Interactive Brokers declined to comment. The law firms could not be reached immediately for comment.

A number of interested parties were considering several possible deals, including buying all or parts of MF Global, said the source, who requested anonymity.

“The goal is squarely for some sort of M&A transaction,” the source said, adding the situation was “fluid.”

QUARTERLY LOSS

Corzine, who became CEO in March last year after a term as New Jersey's governor, has been trying to transform MF Global from a brokerage that mainly places customers' trades on exchanges into an investment bank that bets with its own capital.

The plunge last week in MF Global's corporate bonds to distressed levels, and in its shares to below $1 at one point on Friday, makes it all the more urgent for the company to come up with some sort of solution before markets open on Monday.

MF Global has given potential buyers limited information about its financials and has not set up a data room for bidders to conduct due diligence, a buy side source earlier said.

The source, who is looking into deals both for the whole company and for its parts, said he was skeptical about the possibility of MF Global striking a deal over this weekend.

The company's positions are big and hard to value, especially the firm's sovereign risk exposure, the source said.

“How do you put a price on that? How do you get a deal done when the right side of the balance sheet keeps moving so dramatically?” the source said.

The company hired boutique investment bank Evercore Partners Inc to help find a buyer, separate sources said this past week. - Reuters