there's no society, but I'll cash that cheque anyway

nothing like a society that, one day, you shit on and destroy,
and then when you're a doddering old twat, they'll give you
half a million over 5 years just for breathing in public.

Of course, I'm talking about Thatcher.
She is the one who said 'there is no society' as she went about
destroying it.

checkitout: bbc

Margaret Thatcher claims £535,000 for ex-PM duties
Margaret Thatcher was the longest serving prime minister of the 20th Century

* Thatcher attends Fox's 50th party [SHE'D HAVE TO GET PAID- COSTICK67]
* Thatcher bag makes 'only' £25,000 [HOW COULD CALL HER A BAG- COSTICK67]

Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has claimed £535,000 of taxpayers' money over the last five years, government records have shown.

Baroness Thatcher, 86, who makes rare public appearances and suffers poor health, was paid from the public duties cost allowance available to ex-PMs.

Others to benefit have been her successor John Major, paid £490,000 in the last five years, and Tony Blair.

In 2008-9, Mr Blair claimed £169,076 - more than his Downing Street salary.

Since leaving office, Mr Blair, who ran the country for a decade from 1997, has claimed just under £273,000.

The system was set up by John Major in 1991, after one year in office, to reward former prime ministers for work including answering letters and attending public events.

In the past five years, the three former number 10 incumbents have cost the taxpayer in total more than £1.7m in public duty allowances.

The figures were revealed by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude following a written Parliamentary question from Tory MP Philip Hollobone.

Mr Maude said: "The public duties cost allowance is kept under review."

In 2005, doctors advised Lady Thatcher, who served three consecutive terms in office, that she should not make public speeches in the wake of some minor strokes.

But she still attends some public functions, including an address by the Pope during his state visit to the UK last year.

In September, she attended a party to mark former Defence Secretary Liam Fox's 50th birthday at his London apartment.

St. Paul's is doing God's work, too

Innit, Mr. Blankfein?


Immaculate Deception

It turns out that the #Occupy London Stock Exchange is no longer
welcome in front of St. Paul's cathedral, in the Square Mile,
where it stands next to the LSX, itself.

They want the campers out even though the campers are doing
the chritable thing and risking arrest in order to fight
for the rights of the poor, in light of the bank-robbinggoing on.

Now, it turns out that two priests have quit because their bosses
want to kick out the good people of the OLSX camp.

There's more. Their own institute has just finished a report on
the greed of the bankers, and they're now trying to shove it
down the paper shredder, to avoid embarrassing the bankers
at this sensitive time.

Oh, how thoughtful of them.

checkitout: the INDEPENDENT
Exclusive: Cover-up at St Paul'sClerics suppress report on bankers' greed to save church embarrassment
Brian Brady, Jane Merrick
Sunday, 30 October 2011
A highly critical report into the moral standards of bankers has been suppressed by St Paul's Cathedral amid fears that it would inflame tensions over the Occupy London tent protest.
The report, based on a survey of 500 City workers who were asked whether they thought they were worth their lucrative salaries and bonuses, was due to be published last Thursday, the day that the Canon Chancellor of St Paul's, Giles Fraser, resigned in protest at the church's tough stance.
But publication of the report, by the St Paul's Institute, has been delayed in an apparent acknowledgement that it would leave the impression that the cathedral was on the side of the protesters.
The Independent on Sunday understands that the decision has upset a number of clergy, who hoped that the report would prove that the church was not detached from a financial crisis that had its heart yards from the cathedral itself. The decision will fuel the impression that the wider established church is attempting to stifle debate about the tent protest, as leading members of the Church of England, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, have failed to comment publicly about Occupy London.
A spokesman for St Paul's Cathedral said: "It has been decided to delay publishing this report until further notice as it wouldn't get the proper debate it deserves in light of the present circumstances."
The spokesman refused to comment what the report's findings were, but it is understood it raised profound concerns about the banking sector's willingness to accept responsibility for the financial crisis.
Such a critical analysis, coming from the institute which is described as part of St Paul's Cathedral's "wider mission", would be seen as highly inflammatory at a time when the church is going to the High Court to attempt to remove 200 tents from its land.
The report was the most ambitious in a series of assessments on the banking industry commissioned by the institute, which was set up to provide "an informed Christian response to the most urgent ethical and spiritual issues of our times".
Dr Fraser, who resigned on Thursday over St Paul's hardline position against the protesters, is the director of the institute. He was unavailable for comment. It is understood that the decision to delay publication was taken by the Cathedral Chapter, but it did not play a part in Dr Fraser's resignation.
A spokesman for the Bishop of London said the diocese was not aware of the report, and there is no suggestion that anyone beyond St Paul's has been involved in delaying its publication. Yet the apparent cover-up is the latest damaging revelation in the saga which has dented the Church of England's PR image. At a time when few senior church people are willing to come off the fence about the St Paul's protest, there is a danger with the withholding of this report that the church will be seen to be actively suppressing the sort of debate that many of its critics favour.
The St Paul's Institute survey was due to be published on 27 October to mark the 25th anniversary of the "Big Bang", when the financial markets were deregulated in 1986.
The Rev Andrew Studdert-Kennedy, the Rector of Marlborough, who produced a series of reports on the financial industry during a sabbatical at the institute in the summer, said he had been asked to write a piece accompanying the launch of the survey results. He said last night: "I can see why they chose not to publish the report last week. It was going to get swallowed up by the other things that were happening. I watched it all with absolute dismay. The thing that really bothers me is when people say the church should be engaging in these issues, because that is precisely what the institute was set up to do. It has done an enormous amount of work."
Mr Studdert-Kennedy, who refused to comment directly on the survey findings, said he had been "astonished" by the attitudes some City workers displayed towards the financial crisis. He said: "I did speak to many people about morality. I was amazed by how many banking crises there had been and how sanguine people were about them. A number of people said 'this is just what happens – it's the nature of banking, it's the nature of capitalism'.

Basel Faulty

The Swiss must be known for their silly walks, because they're taking the
world's banks over the edge.

The Basel III (three- it looks more regal in Latin) agreement means that
banks need to keep 9% of customers' deposits in liquid assets, like cash.
To me, that means that they can be 11 times overleveraged. However scary that
might be, most of them are over 30x overleveraged, on particularly sick
derivative trades that are likely worthless, but when they implode, the banks
will try to collect their insurance money from us.

So, what was the #Occupy Wall Street protest about? I don't know? @sarc

checkitout: from things that make you go HMMMMMMmmmmm
Such As Basel I...II...III... And Onward ... BASEL III attempts [X to force] encourage banks to hold larger percentages of government bonds on their balance sheets in order to shore up their capital bases and to provide a riskless safety net should they run into liquidity problems.
Thus far, holdings of Italian debt - with its 20% risk-weighting - have bankrupted MF Global in the space of a week (no 30-day cushion there, then) while the ECB SMP program has spent bil¬lions of euros accumulating [X20% risk-weighted assets rapidly-declining assets that everybody else wants to sell] high-grade Italian (and, latterly, Spanish) government bonds in a desper¬ate attempt to stop the very assets that banks have been pushed into holding from bringing down the whole edifice.
The absurdity of the situation is striking.
After 2008, the world’s major governments (in their infinite collective wisdom) transferred the most toxic assets, that threatened to bring down their countries’ banking systems to their own balance sheets rather than suffer the sharp pain of bankruptcies throughout the global financial sector and the inevitable pain that would follow. ... The old EU is finished. The 27-member bloc has never been as unpopular as it is today. Citizens have taken note that the massive bureaucracy in Brussels clearly lacks the power to master the crisis spreading
through the currency union. It has likewise become apparent that the national governments they have elected are in the process of dismantling the historic project of European unification. After all, it isn’t the European Council, the European Commission or the European Parliament that the world is relying on to pull Europe out of crisis. It is Angela Merkel.
...The German chancellor and French President Nicolas Sarkozy more or less singlehandedly implemented the bailout plan for Greece, brought down the government in Athens and placed ailing member state Italy under international supervision. The words “History is being made in Cannes” were emblazoned on posters in the city during the G-20 summit there in early November. But that’s new history. Old Europe, that construct of unity housed in imposing buildings in Brussels, that visionary collection of ideas about peace, freedom and prosperity, the Europe of big words and impenetrable treaties, the Babylonian monster that spits out tons of paper in 23 languages every day, meddles in everything and tries to spoon-feed its citizen. That Europe no longer exists.

piece of cheese to get the rat out of his hole

[Guardian]
You may be aware that the Occupy Wall Street campaign has spread to
many other cities, including the Occupy London Stock Exchange #OLSX.

http://occupylsx.org/?p=221

What you may not know is that the City of London, though physically
within Britain and thus the EU, is still an 'offshore location'
with it's own jurisdiction, government and laws. If you're interested,
you should read Nick Shaxson's book Treasure Islands. London does
not have to follow the rules of the EU.

That would be significant if the EU powers ever decided to hem in
the banks, the chief cabal of which is found in the grand City. So
far, there's no rush, it seems.

Even though we have a toff as nominal Mayor of London, that being
Boris Johnson, he has no power over the actual Square Mile of the
City itself. So, he's the Mayor of Bourgeois Suburban London, and
Kensington and Chelsea (but, he's not recognised in the last two
places).
It's not him they reject, because he's of the same social class,
but they just refuse to be ruled, or pay taxes. Their quite feral.

Anyway, the City has a Lord Mayor, some guy with some bling around his
neck and horse and carriage, and accoutrements. He's elected by the
big banks that essentially run the City. That's what passes for
democracy, over there.
It's been this way since before the rule of William of Orange,
in 1066.
I know it's hard to believe, but it is the truth.
Now, it's this truth that I would like to see told to every last
possible person, because it's the biggest and most dangerous secret
in the UK.

The more people who know about it, the greater the pressure will be for
this stupid situation to stop. That would then be a big wound to the
banks that not only run the City, but most of the governments of the
'free' world, through their sponsorship.

I was stunned this year when one of the Rothschilds was seen on tv, but
nothing came of it (his family is big in the City). But, now that a bunch
or protestors have set up shop in the City, the Lord Mayor has come out
to get involved. You'd think he'd send in the army or something. I just
hope he gets blood on his hands, and then something might change.

checkitout:
Lord mayor of London wades into Occupy debate
Michael Bear says 'anti-this and anti- that'
banners are 'difficult to get a handle on' [when you're above the law- Costick67]

Richard Wachman
•guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 October 2011 23.31 BST

Michael Bear, the lord mayor of the City of London, has waded into the debate over the Occupy protests at St Paul's, saying: "If there was banner calling for jobs that would be different, but when it's 'anti-this' and 'anti- that', it's more difficult to get a handle on how to respond."

While claiming he was "a supporter of the democratic process", Bear added: "In a market economy, which is what we are, you need to have banks. The economy is an engine that needs oil, and the oil is finance, well-regulated finance.

"But it has to be connected to the real economy – I think people don't understand the connection and we haven't explained it very well."

Bear is backing efforts to persuade the chancellor to scrap the 50% tax rate, suggesting there are more effective ways to raise revenue. "I haven't heard an argument (about the higher tax band) that it will do anything other than punish," he said.

His remarks angered the Unite union, which represents financial workers, thousands of whom have lost their jobs in the wake of the banking crisis.

General secretary Len McCluskey said: "The Lord Mayor of London's views on the protests and the 50p tax shows he stands for the vested interests of the City elite.

"He is completely out-of-touch with ordinary Londoners, many of whom are paying the price for greed in the City. There is a great deal of sympathy and understanding for what the protestors are doing at St Paul's."

Asked whether the Occupy movement had a point, Bear replied: "On one level, yes. I think we have probably failed to communicate what the City actually does. The City isn't only about banks, we have 16,000 small and medium sized businesses; the City deals with maritime, insurance and professional services such as accountancy; so you see it's not just a collection of very large, amorphous banks."

Interns rule the world

coming soon

this revolution will be youtube-ised

Public debate is needed to prevent losses and keep politicians in check.
Direct democracy.
nothing fancy.
Meet.
Talk.
YOUTUBE IT.

Gil Scott Heron was right. The revolution will not be televised.

Supersize my Depression

Finally, an academic has been found who wasn't paid by the banks,
and he told us (he's dead) how big societies tend to fail.
The most successful political entities are the small ones,
because you can't hide in a small principality. If you mistreat the people,
they know where to find you.

checkitout:

This economic collapse is a 'crisis of bigness'
Leopold Kohr warned 50 years ago that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded. We should have listened
Paul Kingsnorth guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 September 2011 21.00 BST Article history
Illustration by Andrzej Krauze
Living through a collapse is a curious experience. Perhaps the most curious part is that nobody wants to admit it's a collapse. The results of half a century of debt-fuelled "growth" are becoming impossible to convincingly deny, but even as economies and certainties crumble, our appointed leaders bravely hold the line. No one wants to be the first to say the dam is cracked beyond repair.
To listen to a political leader at this moment in history is like sitting through a sermon by a priest who has lost his faith but is desperately trying not to admit it, even to himself. Watch Nick Clegg, David Cameron or Ed Miliband mouthing tough-guy platitudes to the party faithful. Listen to Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy or George Papandreou pretending that all will be well in the eurozone. Study the expressions on the faces of Barack Obama or Ben Bernanke talking about "growth" as if it were a heathen god to be appeased by tipping another cauldron's worth of fictional money into the mouth of a volcano.
In times like these, people look elsewhere for answers. A time of crisis is also a time of opening-up, when thinking that was consigned to the fringes moves to centre stage. When things fall apart, the appetite for new ways of seeing is palpable, and there are always plenty of people willing to feed it by coming forward with their pet big ideas.
But here's a thought: what if big ideas are part of the problem? What if, in fact, the problem is bigness itself?
The crisis currently playing out on the world stage is a crisis of growth. Not, as we are regularly told, a crisis caused by too little growth, but by too much of it. Banks grew so big that their collapse would have brought down the entire global economy. To prevent this, they were bailed out with huge tranches of public money, which in turn is precipitating social crises on the streets of western nations. The European Union has grown so big, and so unaccountable, that it threatens to collapse in on itself. Corporations have grown so big that they are overwhelming democracies and building a global plutocracy to serve their own interests. The human economy as a whole has grown so big that it has been able to change the atmospheric composition of the planet and precipitate a mass extinction event.

One man who would not have been surprised by this crisis of bigness, had he lived to see it, was Leopold Kohr. Kohr has a good claim to be the most important political thinker that you have never heard of. Unlike Marx, he did not found a global movement or inspire revolutions. Unlike Hayek, he did not rewrite the economic rules of the modern world. Kohr was a modest, self-deprecating man, but this was not the reason his ideas have been ignored by movers and shakers in the half century since they were produced. They have been ignored because they do not flatter the egos of the power-hungry, be they revolutionaries or plutocrats. In fact, Kohr's message is a direct challenge to them. "Wherever something is wrong," he insisted, "something is too big."
Kohr was born in 1909 in the small Austrian town of Oberndorf. This smalltown childhood, together with his critical study of economics and political theory at the LSE, his experience of anarchist city states during the Spanish civil war, which he covered as a war reporter, and the fact that he was forced to flee Austria after the Nazi invasion (Kohr was Jewish), contributed to his growing suspicion of power and its abuses.
Settling in the US, Kohr began to write the book that would define his thinking. Published in 1957, The Breakdown of Nations laid out what at the time was a radical case: that small states, small nations and small economies are more peaceful, more prosperous and more creative than great powers or superstates. It was a claim that was as unfashionable as it was possible to make. This was the dawn of the space age – a time of high confidence in the progressive, gigantist, technology-fuelled destiny of humankind. Feted political thinkers were talking in all seriousness of creating a world government as the next step towards uniting humanity. Kohr was seriously at odds with the prevailing mood. He later commented, dryly, that his critics "dismissed my ideas by referring to me as a poet".

Kohr's claim was that society's problems were not caused by particular forms of social or economic organisation, but by their size. Socialism, anarchism, capitalism, democracy, monarchy – all could work well on what he called "the human scale": a scale at which people could play a part in the systems that governed their lives. But once scaled up to the level of modern states, all systems became oppressors. Changing the system, or the ideology that it claimed inspiration from, would not prevent that oppression – as any number of revolutions have shown – because "the problem is not the thing that is big, but bigness itself".
Drawing from history, Kohr demonstrated that when people have too much power, under any system or none, they abuse it. The task, therefore, was to limit the amount of power that any individual, organisation or government could get its hands on. The solution to the world's problems was not more unity but more division. The world should be broken up into small states, roughly equivalent in size and power, which would be able to limit the growth and thus domination of any one unit. Small states and small economies were more flexible, more able to weather economic storms, less capable of waging serious wars, and more accountable to their people. Not only that, but they were more creative. On a whistlestop tour of medieval and early modern Europe, The Breakdown of Nations does a brilliant job of persuading the reader that many of the glories of western culture, from cathedrals to great art to scientific innovations, were the product of small states.
To understand the sparky, prophetic power of Kohr's vision, you need to read The Breakdown of Nations. Some if it will create shivers of recognition. Bigness, predicted Kohr, could only lead to more bigness, for "whatever outgrows certain limits begins to suffer from the irrepressible problem of unmanageable proportions". Beyond those limits it was forced to accumulate more power in order to manage the power it already had. Growth would become cancerous and unstoppable, until there was only one possible endpoint: collapse.
We have now reached the point that Kohr warned about over half a century ago: the point where "instead of growth serving life, life must now serve growth, perverting the very purpose of existence". Kohr's "crisis of bigness" is upon us and, true to form, we are scrabbling to tackle it with more of the same: closer fiscal unions, tighter global governance, geoengineering schemes, more economic growth. Big, it seems, is as beautiful as ever to those who have the unenviable task of keeping the growth machine going.
This shouldn't surprise us. It didn't surprise Kohr, who, unlike some of his utopian critics, never confused a desire for radical change with the likelihood of it actually happening. Instead, his downbeat but refreshingly honest conclusion was that, like a dying star, the gigantist global system would in the end fall in on itself, and the whole cycle of growth would begin all over again. But before it did so, "between the intellectual ice ages of great-power domination", the world would become "little and free once more".

IMF: how can we enslave your country if your minions refuse to work?

The Greek government is perhaps pretty dizzy from the stress,
but they are cutting staff at the Economics Ministry, as the
same time as they want the rest of the staff to put the
screws to the rest of the country.

Finally, the Greeks have snookered their own government. The
wildcat strikes mean the IMF won't get its data and
then won't decide on its next penalty for Greece.

The (empty) threat is that Greece won't receive its next meal
ticket, in the form of 8 billion Euros.

Nice try at blackmail. There isn't a single Greeks who doesn't
understand the game.

Greece goes bankrupt, all the banks go boom.
So, dear IMF, don't give Greece the money. Stop "helping" the Greeks.

this was brought to you by The Next Stage of the Orlovian Theory.

Not Orwell, Orlov. the Stages of Social Decay
Greeks have lost faith in their government.
coming soon


checkitout: from London's F(^&*ckedup) Times
Strikes hamper Greek rescue effort
by Kerin Hope, Michael Mackenzie and Robin Wigglesworth – FT
Wildcat strikes in Greece have prevented the country’s bureaucrats from finalising next year’s vital budget figures, potentially holding up this month’s release of sorely needed fiscal aid and capping an ignominious quarter for global markets.
Despite a tentative improvement in sentiment over the past week, mounting fears over a potential Greek default and the tepid pace of the global economic recovery led to one of the worst three months on record for financial markets.
The S&P 500 was on Friday set for a drop of 5.7 per cent in September and a decline of 12.9 per cent over the third quarter, its worst performance since the final three months of 2008.
The FTSE All World index was also set for its worst decline since the three months following Lehman Brothers’ collapse in September 2008. It entered official bear market territory in September, shedding more than a fifth from its high in May. The FTSE 100 fell 13.7 per cent in the third quarter in its worst three-month performance since 2002.
Striking civil servants have blocked access to Greece’s statistical agency building in Athens since Tuesday, undermining efforts by Elstat, the statistics agency, to bring Greek figures in line with EU standards after years of fudging .
The so-called troika – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF – are in Athens to inspect the budget figures before deciding whether to release the next €8bn ($10.9bn) tranche of its current bail-out loan."We will miss [Friday’s] deadline for sending final debt and deficit figures for 2010 to Eurostat, the Commission and the troika, because I and my team can’t get into the building," Andreas Georgiou, chairman of the Elstat statistics agency, told the Financial Times. "These detailed figures are urgently needed for the troika to recalibrate the draft budget, if required, before it goes to parliament on Monday."
Mr Georgiou, a former IMF official, was hired by the government last year with a brief to set up an independent statistical agency. He said members of the agency’s board have tried to undermine EU-mandated work practices. One former board member faces a criminal investigation for allegedly hacking into Mr Georgiou’s work computer.
Striking civil servants blockaded government ministries on Friday, including the headquarters of the finance, transport and health ministries, in order to prevent troika officials from collecting data needed for the current review.

banks being californicated

I hate to see Joe Weisenthal suffer, but

"LOOK AT WHAT CALI JUST DID!"

California will NOT sign the deal to exonerate the banks for
the mortgage crisis (the cause of the Financial Crisis) for pennies on the dollar.
Their opinion is, like mine:
It's either us, or the banks. Every move in this game is a decisive, deadly move.
Besides, they committed fraud, and the Feds want to exonerate them and give them a fine, which will be considered the cost of doing (crooked) business.

checkitout: business insider

At The Worst Time, California Just Dropped Another Huge Bomb On The Banks
Joe Weisenthal Oct. 1, 2011, 8:31 AM 11,066 110
Image: kamalaharris.org
Banks (and their stocks) are reeling, and this news isn't going to help: On Friday, California, the nation's number-one state for foreclosures, has pulled out of 50-state negotiations to reach a settlement over robosigning and other foreclosure related issues.
From WSJ:
In a letter sent Friday to Associate U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perrelli and Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who have been leading the negotiations, [California AG Kamala D] Harris said her decision to break off from the group was driven in part by those two key concerns. "It became clear to me that California was being asked for a broader release of claims than we can accept and to excuse conduct that has not been adequately investigated," she said.
She added that "the relief contemplated would allow too few California homeowners to stay in their homes." Ms. Harris also cited a recent "troubling surge in foreclosures," which had plummeted in the wake of the robo-signing scandal.
Progressive political groups are thrilled at the development, which probably is a good sign that the banks are going to be furious.
Via Daily Kos, here's what the Courage Campaign sent to members:
If you're disgusted with the big banks, this is the best email you will read in a long time.
Breaking news! Kamala Harris, California's Attorney General, has rejected the bogus 50 state settlement pushed by the big banks. Without California, the entire effort to lure the 50 Attorneys General into signing a "get out of jail FREE" card is crumbling.
For the first time, we've got the banks on the run. They're terrified. We can finally extract justice on them for bankrupting our country!
How did this happen? We showed Kamala Harris that we would support her if she did the right thing. Nearly 10,000 Courage Campaign members signed our petition, and the momentum is on our side.
California has 10% of the nation's population and was devastated by the foreclosure crisis. These fat cat bankers are not going to get off scot-free if we don't let them...

they lost your pension, now they want your savings

Of course, if you have your money in a major bank:
1 you're an idiot
2 you will lose a lot of your money
3 inflation is eating up the rest.

If 5% of the customers of any bank came and withdrew their savings in one day,
the bank in question would be out of business.
They have leveraged your savings and loans into toxic derivatives.

However, life is so tough now that they are actually taking money away from people.
what little money they have, through fees. Bank of America and Citibank

This could force the hand of savers in the US who could take their money to credit unions,
which would force the banks to go knocking on the Fed's door.
Don't they play chess? Have they no guile?

One screwup to to lose it all. It's gonna end with Morrrrrdorrrrrr.

checkitout:
Citi Follows Bank Of America In Instituting Debit Card Fee, $1.9 Trillion In Deposits At Risk
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/01/2011 - 16:41
When we reported that Bank of America will be the first bank to institute debit card fees we made the following less than insightful observation: "The problem is that the bulk of depositor clients will simply walk away from Bank of America (which had $1,038 billion in deposits as of June 30), and any other institutions that piggy back on this, and from a game theory perspective, everyone has to do it, or nobody will do it." Well, Citigroup, which had no other choice, has just decided to follow in BofA's footsteps, which i) proves there is indeed a collusive move of desperation by the bank cartel, which in a normal country would see at least a statement from Eric Rip Van Holder, and ii) our thesis about America's impatience with petty theft - they are more than ok with grand scale larson such as that by the Fed via shadow inflation and currency devaluation, but when it comes to paying up an additional $5/month, well, just look at Netflix, which instituted a $6/month price hike two months ago... and is now fighting for survival. As for the exemption requirements, they will likely be the same as Bank of Countrywide Lynch's: either have a mortgage with the TBTF behemoth, or have $20k in a deposit account - both which will likely not be much of a help to 90%+ of the bank clients. The biggest problem is that suddenly at risk are $1.9 trillion in deposits - $1 trillion at BofA, $866 billion at Citi. While the financial crisis did little to dent the banks' deposit buffer, it will be highly ironic if it is an act of the banks themselves that begins the great bank run that resets it all...



notice how similar the above scene is to the banking crisis.
A world is about to end and everybody's standing around, pulling on their peters, or somebody else's.

Alessio, say it isn't so

I'll comment later. This guy's chat has gone viral, so I want to contribute.
watch and enjoy.
truthing is the opposite of the secrecy that banks operate under


Κυνική ομολογία στο BBC για την οικονομική κρίση by Matsomenos

there are truthtellers who still can't see clearly

Mish Shedlock, whatever his shortcomings, finds some key arguments
and data that reveal the cleptocracy that runs the world right now.
However, he hates workers and governments equally as much as corrupt
bankers.
So, when the EU decided to put forward a tax on the (fake and cancerous)
banking, Mish reveals himself to be a bank sucker.
He says it will cause economic problems to banks. He doesn't seem to recognise
that it's either us or them. Either tax the banks or face more starvation outside
your front door.

checkitout:
Europe Plans to Tax Stock and Bond Transactions .1%, Derivatives .01% Despite US Objections; Expect More Crashes Should it Pass
Europe plans to raise as much as 50 billion Euros annually with a financial transaction tax. If they are looking to increase volatility, remove liquidity, and increase the odds of a crash, then such a tax may "help".
Please consider Brussels to release financial tax plan despite US objections
The European Commission approved in principle the tax proposal on Tuesday, and the head of the EU executive Jose Manuel Barroso may outline the plan on Wednesday in a "state of the union" address to the European parliament in Strasbourg.
On the commission's drawing-board for more than a year, the idea was given fresh impetus last month when given the nod by Europe's power couple, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"The idea is to force a contribution from the financial sector, which enjoys fiscal privileges thanks to a sales tax exemption, meaning it saves 18 billion euros a year in Europe," an EU source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
If adopted -- not before 2014 -- the tax could ring in between 30 billion and 50 billion euros a year -- possibly half for the European Union budget, the remainder for national governments.
The rate suggested would be minimal with member states free to hike the tax.
The financial transactions tax is slated to target a wide field, with the latest known proposals aiming to slap 0.1 percent on shares and bonds and 0.01 percent on derivatives.
While Merkel and Sarkozy offered no details on the tax in August, their support helped send shares into an immediate tailspin with financial sector players warning the measure would push business away from Europe.
Britain, at the heart of the financial industry, reiterated demands for any such tax to be applied globally. "Otherwise the transaction covered would simply relocate," a Treasury spokesperson said.
But a source close to experts drafting the proposals said the research on the issue was "reassuring", with negative impact deemed "negligeable" when compared with Europe's overall attraction to financial transactions.
The tax, the source added, would include a principle of territorial location to avoid relocation.
"A non-European bank registered in Europe for certain transactions could be considered to be established in Europe. The tax would not be based on where transactions take place but on the parties involved."
Reduced Liquidity Increases Chance of Crashes
Short term traders add liquidity. Would .1% drive them away? Yes, it might. Think of it this way, 10 quick flips is 1%. 100 trades is 10%. In the short-term trading world 100 trades is not a big number.
What about computerized trading? I fail to see how that is any different.
Reduced liquidity increases the chances of crashes. Thus, the financial transaction tax will not help anyone, and that includes long-term hold types.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock

take your cuts today, and fight another day

Just about everybody is sick of the wimpy oligarchs who have cancelled capitalism
so that they, and only they can get rich.
Real men (and chicks too) know that learning from your mistakes will make you and
society better.
So, bankers, stand up and take that kick to the head,
because if the polity gets their hands on you, there won't be much of a head left.

checkitout:

Take The Loss
By Barry Ritholtz - September 28th, 2011, 7:21AM Here is something that you may not think about often enough: Taking losses.
Its something that every rookie trader must learn to do — and all of the TBTF banks refuse to do. Even sovereign nations seem unwilling to accept this simple fact of financial life.
There will be losses. How you handle them determines your fortune, your fate and your future.
Seeing how people handle losses is revealing of their character and integrity. Hiding losses is what rogue traders do. It’s also what rogue banks do, and apparently, rogue nations.
$2.3 Billion in losses hidden from UBS sights by a rogue trader is chicken feed. But ponder how many 100s of billions of dollars in mortgage losses are hidden from view? The real rogues are America’s largest banks, and their enablers in Congress. .
When the TBTF banks (via their purchased Congressman) forced the Financial Accounting Standards Board to pass a rule allowing them to hide their mortgage losses — FASB 157 — it showed the dishonest nature of these entities. It was revealing of the lack of integrity of all of the institutions involved — from Congress to the banks to FASB.
When Bear Stearns first began to wobble in 2007, the initial error in this era of bailouts was in rescuing their bondholders. Instead, in 2008, they should have been forced to take the loss.
It’s the same for creditors of Citi, Bank of America et. al. — instead of rescue packages, their creditors should have had to take the loss.
Mortgage delinquencies growing? More and more defaults in the pipeline? We can extend & pretend, or we can take the loss.
Note that via the FDIC, some bank lenders did take the loss. Washington Mutual’s collapse led it to being bought by JPM. Wells Fargo picked up Wachovia. Other examples abound. In each case where losses were forced to be realized, we ended up with a healthier few banks, and no moral hazard.
Zombie banks get created when they do not take the loss.
Now we have the European crisis, wherein all of the parties involved refuse to (say it with me) take the loss.
Greek debt piling up? You can restructure, renegotiate, reneg, or you can take the loss. Portugal’s balance sheet a problem? Well, the ECB can kick the can down the road, or they can force lenders to take the loss.
The model for not taking the loss has to be Japan. Look at their stock market since 1989 and you will see the net result of not taking the loss. The Japanese have suffered through lost decades as a result of their refusal to take any write-downs, propping up their Keiretsu.