LIBERTY ROAD MEDIA

ANALYST ON BANK OF AMERICA: “Cesspools like BAC need to be completely drained”

Posted on February 12, 2015 by eggsistense

Wow!

David Stockman pulls zero punches in this excellent rant (“Shoot Bank Of America Now—-The Case For Super Glass-Steagall Is Overwhelming,” Contra Corner, Feb. 11, 2015) on how a company like Bank of America in any legitimate legal context would be considered to be and treated as an insolvent, criminal institution. But in the “too big to fail” and “too big to jail” atmosphere that’s been created since 2008, everything they do is considered A-OK. Stockman says:

“In short, BAC’s six-year CEO, Brian Moynihan, is guilty of such chronic malfeasance and serial management failure that outside the cushy cocoon of TBTF he would have been fired long ago. Indeed, it is hard to believe that he would have survived very long even running a small chain of car washes in east Nebraska.

Since 2009, in fact, BAC has been the number one employer of criminal and regulatory defense attorneys in the USA and the armies of accountants, consultants, forensic specialists, etc. which support them. So vast is the dragnet of lawsuits and legal actions that have been brought against it that BAC’s defense team amounts to an entire industry that should have its very own SIC code at the Commerce Department’s data mills.”

Who doesn’t love some debt?

Stockman even touches on a theory that has been making the rounds lately–espoused by people like Paul Krugman—that what will fix everything is not less but more and more debt:

“Indeed, the only reason that—–six years after what is claimed to have been a near Armageddon event—–we are still plagued with TBTF, the regulatory monstrosity known as Dodd-Frank and the continuing tenure of the likes of BAC and Brian Moynihan is the whole misbegotten notion that America’s $17 trillion economy can’t do without cheap and easy debt; and that main street jobs and prosperity require more and more of it each and every quarter.

At the end of the day, it is the false belief in the debt elixir that undergirds the inexhaustible pettifoggery and cowardice displayed by Washington politicians and regulators alike when it comes to fixing the banks. The latter simply threaten a lenders’ strike, and any resolve to get to the root of the problem promptly dissolves.”

Indeed, here’s what Krugman said in his bizarre article, “Nobody Understands Debt” (New York Times, Feb. 9, 2015):

“Many economists, including Janet Yellen, view global economic troubles since 2008 largely as a story about “deleveraging” — a simultaneous attempt by debtors almost everywhere to reduce their liabilities. Why is deleveraging a problem? Because my spending is your income, and your spending is my income, so if everyone slashes spending at the same time, incomes go down around the world.

[SNIP]

Families who run up debts make themselves poorer, so isn’t that true when we look at overall national debt?

No, it isn’t. An indebted family owes money to other people; the world economy as a whole owes money to itself. And while it’s true that countries can borrow from other countries, America has actually been borrowing less from abroad since 2008 than it did before, and Europe is a net lender to the rest of the world.

Because debt is money we owe to ourselves, it does not directly make the economy poorer (and paying it off doesn’t make us richer). True, debt can pose a threat to financial stability — but the situation is not improved if efforts to reduce debt end up pushing the economy into deflation and depression.”

Krugman’s bank boot-licking has never been more obvious—in his calculation above, somehow an indebted family is somehow separate from the world economy. An indebted family owes money to others, but the world owes…itself? The implication is of course that the family has to “pay back” every last dime plus interest but that “the world”—which sane people would correctly say includes indebted families—would do well to never pay off debt and in fact, take on more and more. Oh brother.

This same idea about debt being a good thing can also be found in two other recent articles. Here’s one from Zero Hedge (“The Problem of Debt As We Reach Oil Limits”, by Gail Tverberg, Feb. 11, 2015):

“Many people ask why we can’t just cancel all debt, and start over again. To do so would probably mean canceling all bank accounts as well. Most of our current jobs would probably disappear. We would probably be without grid electricity and without oil for cars. It would be very difficult to start over from such a situation. We would truly have to start over from scratch.”

From my perspective, this article completely misreads Graeber, who argues that debt is a good thing in the sense that it gives everyone an excuse to maintain contact and keep society together, not in the sense that electricity or oil are available only because of financial debt. It’s as if the author had never heard of solar power. Or wind power. Or electric cars.

And then there’s the Salon interview with Mark Blyth (“’It’s complete horse sh*t!’: Watch an Ivy League professor dismantle GOP’s austerity lie,” Salon.com Feb. 9, 2015):

“[Comment from interviewer] It seems that politicians often frame their argument in the same way. Like, “We’re saddling our grandchildren with debt…” and so forth.

This is a classic canard as well; it’s complete horse shit! The sum total of public debt is equivalent to the assets of the private sector. Who do you think is buying these things? At the end of the day, the public’s debt is simply a transfer of income and interest from one side of the public to the other; you owe yourself the money. The argument that you have to cut it now so that you don’t leave your kids in debt is totally fallacious because if you cut now what you’ll leave them instead is a smaller economy by the time they become adults, which means that the same amount of debt will actually be bigger.”

So it’s okay with this guy that banks take people’s houses because they can’t pay their debts even though in reality “you owe yourself the money?” A bigger argument in favor of TBTF vs. the little guy I cannot imagine…which takes us back to Stockman.

Stockman’s last word on BoA/BANA/BAC

One last point on BAC’s malfeasance and the foolish wisdom of debt:

The fact is, BAC’s loan book today is smaller than it was on the eve of the crisis because US households and businesses have reached a condition of “peak debt”. Accordingly, in a free market the current central bank driven deformation of pricing would be unwound. Interest rates on savings would rise more than yields on borrowings because demand for market rate debt would fall sharply.

Stated differently, BAC is solvent only because its earnings have been indirectly manufactured by the monetary central planners in the Eccles Building. Indeed, its $11.4 billion of reported earnings for 2014 pale in comparison to the Fed’s $30 billion gift on its deposit cost. Yet however a free market in interest rates might ultimately shake out, this much is certain. There is not a chance that the $60 billion in dividends BAC has paid out over the last 10 years could have been earned in an honest free market.

Ouch.

Posted in Bank of America, Crap-italism, Debt, Everything Is Rigged, Federal Reserve, fiat currency, Redistribution, Rent-seeking, Reverse socialism, Securitization Fail, Too big to fail, Wealth transfer | Tagged austerity, BAC, BANA, Bank of America, BOA, Brian Moynihan, cesspool, David Stockman, debt, Gail Tverberg, Mark Blyth, Paul Krugman, peak debt, Salon.com, TBTF, Zero Hedge | Leave a comment

GOOD NEWS—MARY MCCULLEY RELEASED FROM PRISON, HEADED TO HALFWAY HOUSE

Posted on February 11, 2015 by eggsistense

According to sources on Facebook, Mary McCulley has been released from the high security federal prison USP Hazelton. She is being transported by a close friend to an undisclosed halfway house in southern Indiana, not far from her hometown in Kentucky. McCulley appealed her sentence and now has been granted oral argument by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, scheduled for April 6, 2015 at the William K. Nakamura Courthouse in Seattle.

More details as they become available.

For those who may be unfamiliar with Mary’s incredible story:

“If you follow the news of foreclosure fraud and bad banks, you have certainly heard that on February 7, 2014, a Gallatin County, Montana jury awarded Ms. Mary McCulley an incredible $6 million verdict against US Bank of Montana, with $5 million of that figure being awarded for punitive damages.

It’s the kind of victory that foreclosure fighters have long dreamed of, yet rarely (if ever) seen: a bank being found liable for actual fraud as well as constructive fraud. Indeed, the fact that banks have committed fraud related to foreclosures (among other things) is common knowledge to both the public and the government, but the banks usually get away with it because judges inexplicably let them off the hook in any number of lawsuits (usually performing extraordinary feats of legal gymnastics to do so), or there are undisclosed settlements with homeowners, or the regulators give them a slap on the wrist in the form of either fines (that are proportionally miniscule to the banks’ financial gain from their illegal behavior) or essentially toothless settlements (sometimes both).

So in that context, the jury’s verdict in Ms. McCulley’s case is remarkable to say the least and it provides hope that all is not lost, and that the tide is turning—or has turned—against the banks.”

For more information, please visit LRM’s Mary McCulley archive:

Posted in Foreclosure fraud, Mary McCulley, US Bank | Tagged appeal, Hazelton, Indiana, Kentucky, Mary McCulley, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, released, Seattle | 5 Comments

VACCINSANITY! Or, the needle and the damage done…

Posted on February 6, 2015 by eggsistense

Everybody run! It’s…it’s…MEASLES! Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!

The horror! An epidemic! Forcibly vaccinate these fools who are a danger to us all—walking timebombs of disease! This is biological terrorism!

Yeah, except–not so much, when you really look at it. As usual, the conventional wisdom that is so condescendingly purveyed by those who trust “the experts” is deeply flawed at best, and outright wrong at worst. Here’s a sampling of some thought-provoking commentary on the vaccinsanity…

First, regarding those “experts,” who deliver only 14-karat gold TRUTH in oh so respectable peer-reviewed journals…

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” —Marcia Angell, MD (“Drug Companies and Doctors: A story of Corruption.” NY Review of Books, Jan. 15, 2009.)

The article where I found this quote—by Jon Rappoport–explains what is going on quite well (“Mind-control media: Brian Williams, fake science, and the reality egg,” No More Fake News):

Objectivity. What more could you want? What could be more objective than science? What could be less open to dispute? Who could be more authoritative than a scientist? What could influence public opinion more thoroughly than a whole group of scientists, an establishment of scientists, backed by the government?

Notice that when a news anchor takes an unimpeachable statement from a scientist, they both sound like scientists. The double whammy.

It impresses the rubes and yokels and even the well-educated viewers.

This is no accident.

It’s a system of persuasion.

But as this article (“How vaccine hysteria could spark totalitarian nightmare,”)World Net Daily, February 4, 2015) by Dr. Lee Hieb points out, “science” is always evolving, always taking in new and better information while rejecting the old, so that at any given point in time, “the science” is only the best guess at that time, not forever and ever:

Science is never “concluded.” Mr. Obama and other ideologues may think the truth is finalized (“The science is indisputable”), but the reality is our understanding of disease and treatment are constantly being updated. Just like Newton’s mechanical paradigm of the universe was supplanted by Einsteinian physics, and physicists today modify that view, medical “truth” is not the truth for long. In an attempt to quantify change in medicine, years ago a cardiology journal discussed “The Half-life of Truth.” cardiologists looked back in their journal at 20-year-old articles to see how much of what was believed then was still believed to be true. The answer? 50 percent.

So why have so many concluded that vaccines are the ultimate answer and that anyone who refuses them is not only a wrongheaded twit but also a careless, cold criminal? They fell for it—they were browbeaten again and again with Rappoport’s “system of persuasion.” It’s extremely hard not to fall for it. The persuasion system is useful to the establishment because its inoculations apparently give “herd immunity” against independent, critical thinking. Because critical thinking might make one wonder whether or not the vaccines really work, a question on which Dr. Hieb provides some statistics:

In 2006 an epidemic of mumps broke out in my state of Iowa. Ultimately, 11 states reported 2,597 cases of mumps. The majority of mumps cases (1,487) were reported from Iowa. As reported in “Mumps Epidemic – Iowa, 2006,” “Despite control efforts and a highly vaccinated population, this epidemic has spread across Iowa and potentially to neighboring states.” According to the CDC, “During the prevaccine era, nearly everyone in the United States experienced mumps, and 90 percent of cases occurred among children, although 97 percent of children entering school in Iowa had received two doses of MMR vaccine. ” Of note, this outbreak mostly occurred in young adults of college age who had received the vaccine. Only 6 percent of those affected were known to be unvaccinated, 12 percent received one dose of MMR vaccine, 51 percent had two doses of MMR vaccine, and 31 percent (mostly adults) were not sure of their immunization history.

In 2008-2009, Australia had epidemics of whooping cough and measles. Health authorities there must reveal the vaccination status of children in epidemics. Eighty-four percent of Australian children who got whooping cough were fully vaccinated, and 78 percent who got measles had record of measles vaccination.

In the 2010 outbreak of whooping cough in California, well over half the victims were fully vaccinated.

And while we’re looking at data from places that aren’t America, consider the fact that in 2012 and 2014, Italian courts ruled that vaccines do in fact cause autism, as detailed in an article entitled “U.S. Media Blackout: Italian Courts Rule Vaccines Cause Autism” (Health Impact News, Feb. 6, 2015):

On September 23, 2014, an Italian court in Milan award compensation to a boy for vaccine-induced autism. (See the Italian document here.) A childhood vaccine against six childhood diseases caused the boy’s permanent autism and brain damage.

While the Italian press has devoted considerable attention to this decision and its public health implications, the U.S. press has been silent.

[SNIP]

Two years earlier, on May 23, 2012, Judge Lucio Ardigo of an Italian court in Rimini presided over a similar judgment, finding that a different vaccine, the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine (MMR), had caused a child’s autism. As in the Milan case, the Ministry of Health’s compensation program had denied compensation to the family, yet after a presentation of medical evidence, a court granted compensation. There, too, the Italian press covered the story; the U.S. press did not.

In that case, a 15-month old boy received his MMR vaccine on March 26, 2004. He then immediately developed bowel and eating problems and received an autism diagnosis with cognitive delay within a year. The court found that the boy had “been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (with trivalent MMR).” The decision flew in the face of the conventional mainstream medical wisdom that an MMR-autism link has been “debunked.”

So let’s review—we have a doctor who edited a prestigious, peer-reviewed medical journal for years who says you can’t trust findings published in medical journals, another doctor who says vaccines do not have the efficacy they are touted to have, and two different court decisions finding that vaccines caused autism. Does that give anyone pause? If not, why not? At some point, one has to ask whether or not one’s conditioning is contrary to the truth.

And lastly, again regarding the vaccine-autism link, we can’t forget about the testimony of the CDC’s William Thompson, who in 2014 revealed that he had been a coauthor of a study that was published in the peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics and that he and his coauthors had omitted pertinent data regarding increased risk of autism from the MMR vaccine. Here is the pertinent part of his press release:

I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.

How did his “peers” not catch this omission? Were they even trying to catch it? How often does this sort of thing happen? Does anyone still think that “peer-reviewed” necessarily confers the imprimatur of the pinnacle of knowledge? Anyone still convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that vaccines don’t cause autism? Thompson himself is not convinced, as he states further along in his press release:

Reasonable scientists can and do differ in their interpretation of information. I will do everything I can to assist any unbiased and objective scientists inside or outside the CDC to analyze data collected by the CDC or other public organizations for the purpose of understanding whether vaccines are associated with an increased risk of autism. There are still more questions than answers, and I appreciate that so many families are looking for answers from the scientific community.

More questions than answers regarding a vaccine-autism link? A CDC scientist thinks so. So why not the needle-pushers?

Posted in Big Pharma, California, Conspiracy, Everything Is Rigged, Health issues, Measles, Vaccines, Vaccinsanity | Tagged African American males, Australia, california, CDC, Dr. Lee Hieb, Dr. Marcia Angell, epidemic, Health Impact News, Italian court, Italy, Jon Rappoport, measles, media blackout, MMR, mumps, New England Journal of Medicine, peer-reviewed, persuasion system, research, science, scientist, unvaccinated, vaccine, whooping cough, William Thompson | Leave a comment

“Substantial Evidence” of “Forged” Endorsements: Wells Fargo Loses One

Posted on January 30, 2015 by eggsistense

The money quote (pun very much intended) from Judge Robert Drain’s Memorandum of Decision, filed yesterday in a New York bankruptcy case regarding a Texas property in which attorney Linda Tirelli is representing the homeowner:

I conclude that the foregoing evidence cumulatively shifts the burden to Wells Fargo under Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §§ 3.308(a) and 1‐206(a) to show the authenticity of the blank ABN Amro indorsement to establish its status as a holder of the Note under Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §§ 3.301(i) and 3.201(a). It constitutes substantial evidence that Wells Fargo’s administrative group responsible for the documentary aspects of enforcing defaulted loan documents created new mortgage assignments and forged indorsements when it was determined by outside counsel that they were required to enforce loans. Given that evidence, Wells Fargo should have the burden to establish the bona fides of the blank ABN Amro indorsement that did not appear on the Note attached to Claim No. 1‐1 but did appear on the Note attached to Claim No. 1‐2. (p. 20)

It bears repeating that this is a finding of a court, not a pleading or a statement from a homeowner, pro se litigant, or attorney. It’s also significant that the judge was able to come to this conclusion even without additional discovery relating to the now-notorious Wells Fargo document-fixing manual. The judge had apparently allowed discovery in the case to be re-opened after the manual came to light, but would only allow discovery relating to “the loan and Note at issue” (p. 9) presumably meaning that if Tirelli could provide information that the dictates of the manual were used in this particular case, it would be allowed. However, neither Wells Fargo nor Tirelli ended up submitting any such information.

In the memorandum, Drain framed the big question at stake herein in these terms:

In accordance with the foregoing sections of Texas’ U.C.C., therefore, if the blank ABN Amro indorsement is bona fide, Wells Fargo is the holder of the Note, entitled to enforce it. Trimm v. U.S. Bank, N.A., 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 7880, at *13; Das v.Deutsche Bank Nat’l Trust Co., 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 2541, at *6 (“An instrument containing a blank
endorsement is payable to the bearer and may be negotiated by transfer of possession alone.”). On the other hand, if the indorsement is forged, it is not valid, and – the only other indorsement on the Note being a specific indorsement to ABN Amro – Wells Fargo could not rely on the foregoing statutory provisions to establish that it is the holder of the Note. p. 12

For all intents and purposes, the note to which the court is referring (on p. 12) is the original—the actual original, i.e., the one put in front of Tirelli’s client at closing lo these many years ago. I’m not sure I buy that, but the court indicates that for its purposes, the piece of paper it saw was the original note. Indeed, we must recall that in a certified transcript of a 2007 meeting of the Texas “Task Force on Judicial Foreclosure Rules,” Michael Barrett, who identified himself as the “chairman” of Barrett Burke Wilson Castle Daffin & Frappier, stated the following on p. 8 of the PDF found here:

“So finding a document that says, “I am the owner and holder, and I hereby grant to the servicer the right to foreclose in my name” is an impossibility in 90 percent of the cases.”

Despite this, as noted above, there was no objection from the homeowner regarding whether or not the note was the original or not.

This is obviously a victory even though it doesn’t–as Drain took pains to point out on page 30—give the homeowner the much-maligned “free house.” The victory is that a judge was actually able to see through the endorsement fraud and even:

Because Wells Fargo does not rely on the Assignment of Mortgage to prove its claim, the foregoing evidence is helpful to the Debtor only indirectly, insofar as it goes to show that the blank indorsement, upon which Wells Fargo is relying, was forged. Nevertheless it does show a general willingness and practice on Wells Fargo’s part to create documentary evidence, after‐the‐fact, when enforcing its claims, WHICH IS EXTRAORDINARY. pp. 17-18

The caps-lock in the above quote is actually in the original. Unfortunately, a “general willingness” of a bank “to create documentary evidence after the fact when enforcing its claims” is in fact quite ordinary. For a good cataloging of such ordinary behavior, see the following article:

JPMORGAN CHASE DEPOSITION: VOIDING ENDORSEMENTS, CREATING ALLONGES AND ENDORSEMENTS, THE “SWIRL”

Read the whole thing for yourself here:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/254148120/109-Court-Memorandum-Show-temp-15012ccflt

POSTSCRIPT

There is much more of great interest in this order, particularly about the dubious role of MERS and the dubious laxity with which Texas (and the 5th Circuit Appeal Court) deals with MERS. Two footnotes illustrate this:

Footnote 19 As discussed in note 7 above, within the last few years several Texas courts have accepted the general proposition that MERS had the power to transfer interests in mortgages and deeds of trust, at least where, as was not the case here, the original deed of trust named MERS and specifically conferred on it the power to sell the collateral and transfer interests therein in the name not only of its nominee but also to its own successors in interest. What these courts do not address, perhaps because the issue was not raised, is that the authorized signing “officers” of MERS, if Mr. Kennerty is a typical example, never actually worked for that company, never had an agreement with that company, never received a paycheck from that company and were, in reality, really officers and employees of the lenders who were MERS members, Dep. Tr. at 99‐102, and, therefore, that MERS could readily be used as a vehicle for self‐dealing and fraud. That is, under the guise of being a MERS officer, an employee of Bank X could purport to transfer a mortgage held by MERS as nominee for Bank Y without Bank Y knowing about it or authorizing it with the exception of the fact that MERS had conferred signing authority on employees of its members, including employees of Bank X. See Culhane v. Aurora Loan Servs. of Nebraska, 826 F. Supp. 2d 352, 374 (D. Mass. 2011), decision reached on appeal, 708 F.3d 282 (1st Cir. 2013) (“Equally troubling is the conflict of interest posed by these certifying officers wearing ‘two hats’ simultaneously: that of assignor (as agent for MERS) and assignee (as employee of the note holder or its servicing agent).”). p.18

And here’s footnote 9, noting the problematic tendency of Texas to give PETE (“person entitled to enforce”) status to holders of security instruments as well as to holders of notes:

9 Since this Court’s March 1, 2012 bench ruling on the Debtor’s summary judgment motion, many courts applying Texas law have held not only that the holder of a note can enforce it in a foreclosure proceeding notwithstanding that the noteholder does not hold the deed of trust or mortgage (the so‐called “mortgage follows the note” rule that applies in most jurisdictions and traces back at least to Carpenter v. Longan, 83 U.S. 271, 274 (1872)), see Kiggundu v. Mortg. Elec. Registration Sys., 469 Fed. Appx. at 332, but also that the secured party to a deed of trust may enforce it against the collateral even if it does not hold the note secured thereby. See Morlock, L.L.C. v. Bank of N.Y., 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 9135, at *5‐9 (Tex. App. Houston 1st Dist. Aug. 19, 2014), reh’g den., 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 13907 (Tex. App. Houston 1st Dist. Dec. 30, 2014); Morlock, L.L.C. v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 17968, at *4‐5 (5th Cir. Sept. 19, 2014); Thomas v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 113220, at *14‐15 (N.D. Tex. July 16, 2013); Calvino v. Conseco Fin. Servicing Corp., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124343, at *18‐20 (W.D. Tex. Aug. 29, 2013), and the cases cited therein. Not all jurisdictions follow the latter rule, see, e.g., Eaton v. Fannie Mae, 969 N.E.2d 1118, 1131‐33 (Mass. 2012); Bank of N.Y. v. Silverberg, 926 N.Y.S.2d 532, 539 (N.Y. App.
Div. 2d Dep’t 2011); Foreclosures and Failures, 46 Conn. L. Rev. at 526. During the same period courts applying Texas law have held that a borrower lacks standing to contest the fraudulent (as opposed to forged) assignment of a deed of trust in certain circumstances, although the extent of the rule is not free from doubt. Morlock, L.L.C. v. Bank of N.Y., 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 13907, at *2‐5; Reinagel v. Deutsche Bank Nat’l Trust Co., 735 F.3d 220, 224‐25 (5th Cir. 2013); Brinson v. Universal Mortg. Co., 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 121685, at *10‐13 (S.D. Tex. Sept. 2, 2014); Venegas v. U.S. Bank, Nat’l Ass’n, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 66000, at *13‐16 (W.D. Tex. May 9, 2013). As noted above, however, Wells Fargo has relied solely on being a holder of the Note to sustain Claim No. 1‐2 and has not raised the foregoing arguments.

Indeed, the circumstances in which the note and deed of trust at issue here ever came to be involved with MERS are very questionable: ABN Amro tries to make the note follow the mortgage by “assigning” the DOT to MERS in its supposed capacity as “nominee” for WAMU (which would soon, in 2008, be one of the biggest bank failures in history and then be acquired by Chase)—together with the note, supposedly—back in 2002. The purpose of this assignment was obvious—this transaction had to be fed into the opaque machinery of the “MER-LPS Racketeering Enterprise.”

Then MERS purports to do an “Assignment of Mortgage”—even though the document was not in fact a mortgage but rather was a deed of trust in the non-judicial foreclosure state of Texas—to Wells Fargo in 2010. The language of this bizarre document said that the assignment was being done by MERS, still supposedly as the “nominee” of WAMU, a bank which had ceased to exist 2 years earlier.

And the deposition testimony of one John Kennerty is not to be missed—it starts on p. 18.

Posted in Conspiracy, Crap-italism, Everything Is Rigged, Financial Terrorism, Foreclosure, Foreclosure fraud, Living Lies, MERS, Paper terrorism, Securitization Fail, Wells Fargo | Tagged assignment, bankruptcy, Carpenter v. Longan, deed of trust, deposition, foreclosure, foreclosure fraud, foreclosure manual, forged endorsements, indorsements, John Kennerty, Linda Tirelli, MERS, MERS-LPS Racketeering Enterprise, mortgage, mortgage follows the note, New York, note, person entitled to enforce, PETE, Robert Drain, Task Force on Judicial Foreclosure Rules, Texas, Wells Fargo | 7 Comments

THE “MERS-LPS RACKETEERING ENTERPRISE”: HARKEY V. US BANK ET AL.

Posted on January 23, 2015 by eggsistense

A complaint filed on January 20, 2015 in U.S. District Court for Nevada—Michael Harkey v. U.S. Bank et al. (Case No. 2:14-cv-00177-RFB-GWF)–really breaks down exactly what the scam of MERS is, and it does so with a level of clarity and certainty the likes of which I have rarely seen. The document even gives the foreclosure fraud a more accurate name: “The MERS-LPS Racketeering Enterprise.” While reading it, I thought, “This is too good not to share,” so here are a few selections, just from the section labeled “THE PARTIES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO EACH OTHER AND TO THE SUBJECT MATTER”, which begins on p. 3 and can be downloaded and viewed here (to save you a trip to PACER): Harkey v. US Bank

This section of the complaint begins with a recitation of the history of the different iterations of and relationships between “MERS”, “MERSCORP”, and “Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.” and concludes the following:

“l. The name Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. which appears in over 62 Million Mortgages and Deeds of Trust throughout this nation actually the former name of MERSCORP and it is MERSCORP which has the “members,” owns operates the electronic tracking system registered as MERS® (purporting to be an alternative to the public records system), enters into contracts with its “members,” and establishes the Rules under which the MERS® System operations.

m. When MERSCORP created MERS III at the behest of the ratings agencies who were rating the mortgage backed securities sold by MERSCORP’s “members” and the other participants in what has been identified as the MERS®-LPS Racketeering Enterprise, MERSCORP pretended that MERS III would function in the same capacities as MERSCORP had previously functioned under the name of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., which was as a “common agent” for MERCORP’s “members.”

n. MERS III, as a “bankruptcy remote,” shell corporation with no employees and, therefore, no human intelligence, and having no “members,” is legally incapable of acting as an agent or a “common agent” for members of MERSCORP.” pp. 10-11

For my money (pun intended), this is the kicker—the fact that the mortgages and deeds of trust that purport to make “MERS” the “mortgagee” or “beneficiary” would have had to have the name “MERSCORP” on them instead of “Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.” in order for their little scheme to have even begun to have any legitimacy:

o. In order for the vaunted “common agency” to be effective, MERSCORP would have to be the named agent appearing in the Mortgages and Deeds of Trust and all “trades” would have to be conducted between “members” of MERSCORP.” p. 11

This complaint points out, as we have here at LRM, that MERS is the “invisibility cloak” of the banksters and it is this purposeful opacity that has allowed the banks and servicers (often one and the same) to collect multiple times on the alleged “default” of homeowners, via the mechanisms of the bailout, QE, credit default swaps, etc.:

“p. As will be demonstrated herein, the unregistered and unregulated securities deals and trades conducted behind the veil of MERSCORP, masquerading as Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. in its third iteration, as MERS III, are not even supervised by MERSCORP for compliance with its own “Rules” purporting to create the common agency, by which millions of homes have been liquidated upon claimed defaults which did not actually occur.

q. The claimed “defaults” were almost always covered by mortgage insurance, credit default swaps and funds made available by Congress through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds, along with the Quantitative Easing (QE) programs (QE I, QE 2 and QE 3) operated by the Federal Reserve System, and were paid multiple times upon purported defaults engineered by CREDIT SUISSE and other members of the US Dollar LIBOR Panel in order to collect on multiple secondary payment systems established at the time of the unregistered securities offerings.

r. The proceeds of the ultimate foreclosure liquidations of United States homes under the MERS®-LPS RACKETEERING ENTERPRISE, in excess of the payments obtained from private mortgage insurance, unsubrogated credit default swaps, TARP funds, and QE payments are paid to the “servicers” who initiated the foreclosure process to obtain the bonus payment for liquidating this nation’s homes for defaults already cured by multiple payments.” p.11

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg of what the complaint gets into regarding MERS. Check it out for yourself at the link above or here: Harkey v. US Bank

Posted in Crap-italism, Everything Is Rigged, Federal Reserve, fiat currency, Financial Terrorism, Financialization, Foreclosure, Foreclosure fraud, MERS, Paper terrorism, Redistribution, Rentier, Securitization Fail, US Bank | Tagged bankruptcy remote, common agent, credit default swaps, Credit Suisse, Harkey v. US Bank et al., invisibility cloak, LIBOR, LPS, MERS, MERS III, MERSCORP, Michael Harkey, Nevada, QE, racketeering, TARP | 5 Comments

JPMORGAN CHASE DEPOSITION: VOIDING ENDORSEMENTS, CREATING ALLONGES AND ENDORSEMENTS, THE “SWIRL”

Posted on January 22, 2015 by eggsistense

Let’s jump in the wayback machine regarding some of the big banks and their robosigning/alteration/forgery/paper terrorism/document-manufacturing for a second before we get into the deposition testimony from a “senior operation specialist” with JPMorgan Chase promised in the headline.

Remember Linda Tirelli’s uncovering of the Wells Fargo document-fixing manual? LRM covered that here:

CONSPIRACY FACT, NOT THEORY: WELLS FARGO’S MANUAL

From that article:

“In a filing in New York’s Southern District in White Plains for a local homeowner in bankruptcy, attorney Linda Tirelli described a 150-page Wells Fargo Foreclosure Attorney Procedures Manual created November 9, 2011 and updated February 24, 2012. According to court papers, the Manual details ‘a procedure for processing [mortgage] notes without endorsements and obtaining endorsements and allonges.’”

And remember how Linda DeMartini of Countrywide/Bank of America testified in Kemp v. Countrywide that she had never seen a note with an endorsement on the bottom (despite the fact that she had worked there 10 years and worked in the litigation department) and that Countrywide routinely manufactured allonges solely for litigation purposes (as opposed to doing so for supposedly legitimate negotiation/“securitization” purposes)? LRM covered that here:

BANK OF AMERICA’S MAGIC WAND

From that article:

a) DeMartini Testimony Transcript

In the case of Kemp v. Countrywide (BK case from New Jersey, 2010) a Bank of America/Countrywide employee named Linda DeMartini testified to two important points: 1) she had “never seen an actual note that has an endorsement on the bottom,” and 2) to her knowledge, the only time endorsements were prepared was when they were needed for litigation purposes (this was fleshed out under questioning from the judge). By the time of her testimony in Kemp, DeMartini had worked for Bank of America/Countrywide for 10 years and at the time of her testimony, she worked in the litigation department at Bank of America as an operational team leader (according to her testimony, she had been in that position for approximately a year). So DeMartini was clearly competent to testify to the matters to which she testified, and even Bank of America must have thought so as they flew her from California to New Jersey to testify in the Kemp case.

Remember also that Linda Tirelli suggested that it’s not just Wells Fargo that manufactures or “fixes” documents—all the big banks do it:

“IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE DOCUMENTS, PERHAPS YOU JUST DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO FORECLOSE.”

She said on Fox News:

“This is business as usual for all the big banks,” Tirelli said, referring to the manufacture of mortgage documents out of whole cloth in order to establish legal standing to foreclose on homes.

And let’s not forget the tale of Lorraine Brown of DocX, convicted of participating in the manufacture/falsification of more than 1 million mortgage documents, which LRM covered here:

SHUTTING THE DOOR ON DUE PROCESS: HOWARD GRABER AND REASONABLE DOUBT

From that article:

According to the New York Times, Brown “admitted to participating in the falsification of more than a million documents.” Yes, you read that right–she participated in the falsification of more than one million documents. And these documents were produced at the behest of banks that hired Brown and her company to produce admittedly false documents that were then filed in county land records all over the country and used as evidence in court cases.

Let’s also not forget about Elizabeth Warren’s questioning of the OCC’s Daniel Stipano, in which he admitted (or at least didn’t deny and didn’t make any attempt to correct Warren’s assertion) that the OCC knew of illegal activity by banks related to foreclosures:

“Sen. Warren: All right, so let me ask it from the other point of view. You now have evidence in your files of illegal activity, I take it, for some of these banks. I get that from the evidence you’ve released about the charts, who’s going to get paid what, so if someone believes that they have been illegally foreclosed against, will they still have a right under this settlement to bring a lawsuit against the bank?

Mr. Stipano, OCC: Yes.

And lastly, let’s not forget the wording of the consent orders between the OCC and the banks, in which at least Bank of America was found by the OCC to have had problems with endorsements, among other things:

“…[Bank of America] litigated foreclosure proceedings and initiated non-judicial foreclosure proceedings without always ensuring that either the promissory note or the mortgage document were properly endorsed or assigned and, if necessary, in the possession of the appropriate party at the appropriate time.”

Just setting the stage here–checking out the ghosts of Christmas past, as it were. When you read the info from this deposition, the connection will be obvious.

QUOTES FROM THE DEPOSITION

OK, we can get out of the wayback machine now and have a look at deposition testimony of one Vermyrtis Jones, a 23 year-old “senior operation specialist” employed by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. On April 30, 2014, Jones was deposed in the Wisconsin case of Deutsche Bank National Trust Company vs. Donna B Ray et al Dane County Case Number 2012CV002466. The deposition took place in the offices of Duke Copeland Court Reporters in Monroe, Louisiana.

And what do we discover in this testimony? Well, that Linda Tirelli was right—this is “business as usual for all the big banks”—at least as far as creating allonges, voiding existing endorsements, and/or creating new endorsements to take the place of existing ones (or to create endorsements that should have existed but didn’t). Thanks to Jones’ sworn testimony, apparently we can now add JPMorgan Chase to the list of banks that appear to do this type of thing.

Read these quotes from the 93-page Jones deposition while keeping in mind the above information regarding Wells Fargo, Countrywide/BoA, et. al above. Think of the quotes from this deposition in that context. The “Q” in these quotes is questioner Reed Peterson, attorney for Defendant Donna B. Ray and “A” is the deponent, Vermyrtis Jones.

In an attempt to make this easier to navigate, blue-highlighted and numbered short summaries regarding what each of the quotes are referring to appear above each quote. Number 7 was particularly intriguing.

1. REGARDING A COMPUTER SYSTEM CALLED “OPUS” AND CREATING NEEDED DOCUMENTS:

“A It’s a system that we use to create allonges, lost note affidavits, voids and extras. So basically, that’s just our main system that we use, and we go into there to verify what needs to be created. And during that particular time when I was working for asset sales, I was working all LNAs exceptions.” p. 15

“A No. I went from asset sales to chain of title, and that’s where I’m working at now, but our procedures was to create an allonge and also go over to custody to clear exceptions, which is voids and extras. Voids and extras is meaning you may have an endorsement on the allonge or–I mean–excuse me–on the note, or you may have an allonge already in the file that custody’s asking for, and if you see that already in the file, there’s no need to create an allonge or stamp the note from like Chase Bank USA, N.A. to blank.” pp. 16-17

2. IGNORANCE OF BASIC ASSIGNMENT OF MORTGAGE TERMINOLOGY AND CONVEYOR-BELT, FILL-IN-THE-BLANK NATURE OF LOST-NOTE AFFIDAVITS:

“Q Explain the procedure for researching a lost note affidavit as far as exactly what blanks you’re looking to fill in the affidavit and where you looked to fill in those blanks.

A We look to see if it’s the deed of trust or the mortgage. They’re going to ask you that because there’s a blank spot there. You’re looking for the principal amount, the interest rate, the buyer’s name, the county, the book page, the instrument number, and that’s it.

Q Okay. What is the book page?

A I don’t know.

Q All right.

A Yeah.

Q And when you say you don’t know, what you know is that there was a place that you would have to go into JPMorgan’s computer system to look for a specific bit of information, and then that information you would enter into the lost note affidavit. Is that correct?

A Yes.

Q But as far as what it was, you have no idea, or what it meant, you have no idea?

A Correct.

Q Okay. You had mentioned another piece of information that you look for that I didn’t–and maybe you can help me out after the–whatever we were just talking about. I can’t remember–

A The instrument number?

Q The instrument number. What is that?

A I don’t know.

Q Okay. Same thing, you go into the system, find a bit of information, and transpose that into the lost note affidavit. Correct?

A Yes.

Q Was that information on recorded mortgages?

A Yes.” pp. 23-24

3. JONES SAYS SHE HAS SIGNING AUTHORITY FOR MULTIPLE ENTITIES:

“Q You mentioned, I think, four or five entities that you have signing authority for when we first started this deposition. Do you have signing authority for more entities than the ones you initially named?

A Yes.

Q Do you have any idea how many entities you have signing authority for?

A No.

Q Let me try to narrow that a little bit.

A Okay.

Q Okay. More than ten?

A Yes.

Q More than a hundred?

A No.

Q More than fifty?

A I don’t know.

Q More than twenty-five?

A I don’t know.

Q Are there certain entities that you normally sign

for?

A Yes.

Q Which are those?

A Chase Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Chase Home Finance, Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corporation, EMC, Wells Fargo.

Q Any others?

A State Street.

Q So in your work, there are certain entities that you know you have signing authority for, and you don’t need to go into POTS to check to make sure you have signing authority. Is that fair to say?

MR. RIPLEY: Object to form. You can answer.

A Well, I’m not going to say that. I always go and check my work, check my systems to make sure if I can sign for that particular lender.

Q But if you had an allonge you had to sign and you were signing for Chase Bank USA, N.A., would you go into POTS to make sure that you had authority to sign for Chase Bank USA, N.A. on that particular day?

A Yes.

Q Every time?

A Every time.” pp. 37-39

4. JONES PRINTS OUT AND SIGNS ALLONGES WITH A PEN IN BLACK INK:

“Q Well, let me take a step back because we just talked about allonges where signatures are placed on there–on the allonge electronically. Correct?

A Yes.

MR. RIPLEY: Object to form.

Q That allonge is created using an electronic image of your signature. Correct?

MR. RIPLEY: Object to the form.

A No. I guess the misunderstanding was electronic signature. I actually sign the allonge with the pen myself. There’s no electronic. If the image is imaged in iVault, I see my signature out there, but there’s no passing–like no other step as far as the image being signed with my signature. I sign the allonge with my own signature with the pen. No electronic signature for me. Like a system that has a system out there for my signature, no, I do it myself. I print out the allonge that I created, I get a pen, and I sign it myself.

Q So every allonge that bears your signature and is the original allonge is going to have a signature created by you using a pen. Is that correct?

A Yes.

Q JPMorgan then does not create allonges by placing a scanned image of your signature into the allonge. Is that correct?

A Yes.

Q Are you aware of a process used by JPMorgan to create allonges by inserting a scanned image of a signature into the allonge?

A No.

Q Are you aware of documents called signature tables?

A No.

Q Are you aware of any process to manage scans of JPMorgan’s employees’ signatures?

A No.” pp. 42-43

[later in the proceedings, Peterson asks what color ink Jones signs with]

“Q And I don’t have the original allonge here, but if I had the original allonge, it would have your original signature on it. Correct?

A Yes.

Q Would the original signature be signed in a particular ink color?

A Yes.

Q What color?

A Black.

Q Do you sign all allonges in black?

A Yes.

Q Is that part of JPMorgan’s policies and procedures?

A Yes.” pp. 80-81

5. JONES DISCUSSES CREATING ENDORSEMENTS AS WELL AS ALLONGES, EXPLANATION OF “VOIDS AND EXTRAS”:

“Q No. Let me ask that a different way. Every exception that comes to you is a request to determine whether an endorsement or an allonge is needed. Correct?

A Yes.

Q And that’s sent by custody. Correct?

A Yes.

Q Custody has custody of the collateral file. Correct?

A Yes.

Q Do you go to custody for every exception that you receive?

A No.

Q So why would you go to custody to see if the documents had an endorsement or an allonge already in the physical file when custody is telling you that that’s needed?

A Well, we have a procedure that we do as far as endorsements or allonges that we create–it’s called voids and extras, and it’s meaning that it’s an endorsement out there or there’s an allonge already out there. I’m not saying that every exception that we do we go over there to custody to verify that, but it’s just a procedure that custody opened up, and we rely on custody to see if there’s an endorsement or allonge already out there. And if it is, who to say somebody might go over there and void it out. Then that’s when we take upon ourself to go ahead and create the allonge because if it’s voided, it’s no good. Now they need a current allonge or endorsement that needs to be placed in a file.

Q This sounds really confusing. Is it confusing on your end?

MR. RIPLEY: Object to the form.

A No.” pp. 46-47

6. 25-50 “VOIDS AND EXTRAS” PROCESSED EVERY DAY:

“Q How many voids and extras would you receive on average in a given day?

A Twenty-five to fifty.

Q Twenty-five to fifty.

A Right.

Q So in a given day, on average, you would receive approximately fifty allonge exceptions and twenty-five to fifty void and extras exceptions. Is that correct?

A Yes.

Q On average, when you went to custody, how many files were you pulling?

A I wasn’t pulling–pulling the files. Custody would already have the files pulled for me, and they would place those files on a gondola.

Q Okay. So they’d be prepped and ready for you to look at when you got there?

A Correct.

Q You said you went to custody on average every other day. When you say you went there every other day, on average, was your work assignment to go there every other day?

A Yes.

Q So it really wasn’t on average? I mean, that was your routine was every other day you would go to custody?

A Yes. Myself and another employee.

Q How long would you spend at custody on that day you went?

A It just depends on how many files I have. Just say if I have twenty-files that’s pulled for me, about an hour and a half a day.

Q Okay. Would twenty-five files be normal?

A Yes.

Q So of the voids and extras that you would receive in a two-day period, anywhere from fifty–twenty-five to fifty percent would require you to go to custody to review the files. Is that about right?

A Yes.” pp, 48-50

7. JONES DISCUSSES “VOIDING” EXISTING ENDORSEMENTS TO REPLACE THEM WITH NEW ONES:

“Q Okay. So we’ve talked about two instances where nothing really needs to be done, the file–the collateral file is correct. Right?

A Yes.

Q But the collateral file is not always correct. Right?

A Yes.

MR. RIPLEY: Object to the form.

Q Which is why you have to go to custody and do the extra research. Right?

A Yes.

Q So what happens if the endorsement on the note is not correct? What do you do?

A If the endorsement’s not correct, sometimes we may void that endorsement and create an allonge to take place of that endorsement, if we have signing authority for it.

Q For the allonge?

A For the endorsement, the original lender or whoever gave it to that particular company.” p. 58

8. INTERESTING—A “SWIRL” ON A NOTE PURPORTEDLY MARKS IT AS THE ORIGINAL:

“Q Near the top right corner of “Exhibit 1” there is what appears to be a snail. Do you see that?

A Yes.

Q Are you familiar with that?

A Yes.

Q Okay. Internally, you call that a snail, don’t

you?

A Well, they change it. Back in the day it was a swirl or something like that, so–

Q Swirl?

A Yeah.

Q Now what’s it called?

A I’m not for sure.

Q Okay.

A Yeah.

Q Is there any meaning to the swirl that you know of?

A Yes.

Q What meaning is assigned to that swirl?

A That this is the original note.

Q What company places that swirl on the note?

A I know the department is custody.

Q Okay. And that’s custody at JPMorgan. Correct?

A Yes.

Q So this is a marking specific to JPMorgan.

Correct?

A Yes.

Q That swirl is JPMorgan’s way of indicating a document is an original. Correct?

A Yes.

Q Do you know who is authorized to place that swirl on notes?

A No.

Q When you review the collateral files as part of your work process at custody, do all the original notes that you look at have that swirl on them?

A No.

Q Have you ever placed a swirl on a note?

A No.

Q Have you ever observed a swirl being placed on a note?

A No.

Q Are the swirls placed on notes only for specific lenders?

A I don’t know.

Q So it sounds as if a swirl is placed on what is believed to be the original note and sometimes it’s not. Is that correct?

A Yes.

Q As far as whether an employee of JPMorgan attended the closing for a loan in which the named lender is Chase Bank USA, N.A., you have no knowledge whether that happened, do you?

A No.

Q So do you know if the swirl is always on the first page?

A Yes. For the ones I reviewed and seen, it’s always on the first page.” pp. 73-75

There are many other interesting exchanges in this deposition, but these are some highlights. You can downloaded the deposition here: Jones, Vermyrtis 04-30-14-JPMC

Posted in Bank of America, Chase, Endorsement, Foreclosure, Foreclosure fraud, Paper terrorism, Wells Fargo | Tagged allonge, black ink, Chase, deposition, endorsement, foreclosure, foreclosure fraud, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase, LNA, lost note affidavits, OPUS, pen, Vermyrtis Jones, voids and extras | 12 Comments

BANKS’ FREE LUNCH=RECORD PROFITS, KIDS’ FREE LUNCH=RECORD LOSS

Posted on January 20, 2015 by eggsistense

So the latest indicator that not only has there not been a financial/economic recovery for the average person in the U.S. but also things have gotten worse? Over half of all public school students in the U.S. are now eligible for free or reduced lunch:

In a report released Friday by the Southern Education Foundation, researchers found that 51 percent of children in public schools qualified for the lunches in 2013, which means that most of them come from low-income families. By comparison, 38 percent of public school students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches in 2000.

Of course, it’s only fair that the government now gives more little kids a free—or reduced (because there really is no such thing as a free lunch, right?)—lunch. After all, the government has been giving a free lunch to the banks for years now, in the form of bailouts, QE, ZIRP, foreclosure settlements, non-prosecution agreements, and so on.

Oh, but wait…it hasn’t been exactly a “free lunch” for the banks. I mean, it’s free for them, of course. But some sucker has to pay for it, right? That would unfortunately be me and you, because as billionaire former hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller described it, we are witnessing “the biggest redistribution of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the rich ever” (from the LRM article “Socialism for the Rich Working Like a Charm”). Indeed, since 2008 it has been a free lunch special for the banks. Well, we should say especially since 2008, because banks have always gotten the free lunch of being able to print money out of thin air.

But what we have now, post-2008 is this–the bank not only wants you to provide it with a free lunch—via bailouts and the rest of it mentioned above–but they also want you to give them your lunch (quite literally, in a number of cases) in the form of foreclosure on your house or sucking up all your savings or repaying crushing student loan debt.

They. Want. It. All.

Unfortunately, our “representatives” are more than happy to let the banks have it all. And what do they give you and me? One crappy meal 5 days a week, 9 months a year for our kids. Does that strike anyone as sufficient recompense for the financial and economic ruin the banks have loosed upon the world?

Meanwhile, let’s not forget that just a few short months ago, back in August 2014, banks in the U.S. were raking in profits that came close to breaking the record profits of the first quarter of 2013. Here’s how the Wall Street Journal describes this in an article posted August 11, 2014:

U.S. banks posted $40.24 billion in net income during the second quarter, the industry’s second-highest profit total in at least 23 years, according to data from research firm SNL Financial. The latest profits are just below the record $40.36 billion recorded in the first quarter of 2013.

And seeing as we’re talking about the dire effects of the continuing non-recovery on kids and families as opposed to the quite positive effects of the same on corporate America, we certainly can’t forget that just two months ago it turned out that stocks hit a near all-time high (nominally, anyway) while the number of homeless kids in the U.S. also hit an all-time high:

“Something is dreadfully wrong with this picture.

In a report just released today by the National Center on Family Homelessness, a team of academics has demonstrated that the number of homeless children in the Land of the Free now stands at 2.5 million.

This is far and away an all-time high and constitutes roughly one out of every 30 children in America.

The report goes on to explain that among the major causes of this problem are the continuing impacts of the Great Recession that began in 2008.

Funny thing, someone ought to tell these homeless kids that the economy is doing great. Of course, we know this to be true because the stock market is near its all-time high.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average now stands at 17,633, just off its all-time high.

Also near its all-time highs is the bond market, and coincidentally, the US debt—which is now within spitting distance of $18 trillion.”

What we are seeing is the true cost of rescuing the banks at the expense of the people. We were told that we had to rescue the banks or the country would fall into ruin. Remember that? The idea was that somehow, if we gave the banks a shit-ton of money–and kept doing it–while simultaneously allowing, nay mandating the dubious foreclosure of somewhere in the neighborhood (pun intended) of 5-7 million homes since 2004, then you and I would be spared disaster and be financially okay.

It would be the understatement of this young century to point out that this supposed good-faith disaster-and-ruin-aversion plan, um, didn’t work. At all. I mean, for the banks, it worked pretty great—record profits and all. But for you and me and 51% of American schoolchildren, it’s been a record loss.

Quelle surprise.

Posted in Crap-italism, Everything Is Rigged, Financial Terrorism, Foreclosure, Foreclosure fraud, homeless, Redistribution, Reverse socialism, stock market, Too big to fail, Wealth transfer | Tagged bailout, foreclosure, free and reduced lunch, free lunch, homeless, homelessness, public schools, QE, record profit, Stanley Druckenmiller, stocks, ZIRP | Leave a comment

Master Narrative Rewrite: Herman Shorts and C.H. Smith

Posted on January 15, 2015 by eggsistense

Where do most people get their ideas about “the way things ought to be?” How is it that people can enthusiastically and vehemently support entities and policies that act in ways that are objectively contrary ways to the interests of those very people? For crying out loud, who thought it was a good idea to eat bacon at breakfast?

Well, on that last point, here’s how Cracked describes the well-known story of Edward Bernays and the Great Bacon Fakin’:

…Bernays approached a doctor with a simple question: Was a hearty breakfast better for a person than a smaller, shittier one?

Once he had the obvious answer, he then asked whether bacon and eggs could be considered a hearty breakfast. Again the doctor agreed. That was all he needed; Bernays repeated this process with 5,000 doctors, using this roundabout method to get them to actually say that strips of fried pig fat was a healthy way to start your day. Newspapers across the country treated this bullshit publicity stunt as a scientific study and ran story after story about how if you weren’t starting the day with a big plate full of bacon and eggs, you were signing your own death warrant. Beech-Nut’s sales soared.

And obviously, that’s kinda how it works with the first two points as well. Except they’re not just telling us what to have for breakfast, they’re telling us “the way things ought to be.” And they’ve sold us quite a bill of goods, which is now quite dramatically unraveling.

National Nervous Breakdown

Charles Hugh Smith of the Of Two Minds blog very handily describes this dramatic unraveling:

Last week I used the phrase National Nervous Breakdown without clarifying its meaning. (The War on Our Intuition That Something Is Fundamentally Amiss)

By National Nervous Breakdown I do not mean the breakdown of civil order or the economy; I mean the breakdown of the officially sanctioned narratives that underpin the Status Quo. These Master Narratives legitimize the current arrangement; once they erode or break down, the legitimacy of the Status Quo is lost.

The shell remains in place, but nobody believes the system is a fair, just meritocracy.

What does Smith mean by “the Status Quo” (you can be sure he’s not referring to the English band known for, among other things, the song “Pictures of Matchstick Men”)? Well, he means some or all of the following: bailouts, QE, biggest wealth gap on record, too big too fail, ZIRP, stagnating wages, record consumer and world debt, forever war, and so on. None of these things benefits the average person, of course, yet they continue and are in fact defended by those who have the least to gain from this state of affairs, what Smith calls “the current arrangement.” Here is one such actual online defense of the Status Quo from a person for whom the Status Quo, to put it kindly, has done no favors (first appeared at LRM here):

“Screw you whinny liberal bitches who want to punish the rich folk in this country. Yeah, they are the people who make your life so friggin miserable. YOU have NOTHING to do with it right? It’s the corporations who fucked your life up, they don’t pay taxes, or their fair share. (they do, more than enough). Yet when asked of you what is fair, you look about as dumb as Barney Fifthe of Mayberry RFD. Daily all you do is complain, complain, complain and yet you have no answers to your whiny issues. You take NO responsibility or actions by example for your problems, you just yell them from the highiest mountain top and get pissed because NOBODY gives a shit!

Then you say if we don’t agree with you, we are dumb, ignorant, or “just don’t get it”. Ya ever look in the mirror? Maybe it’s YOU who has the problem and fail to see the forest through the trees. You complain every single day, looking for what’s wrong and never spend one friggin minute looking for what’s right! Every things a conspiracy designed to keep you down and disenfranchised, as if! You’re your own worst enemy and you prey on the weak and ignorant. People who don’t know any better, ANYONE who will buy your lame ass theories that you get off the internet. WAKE UP ASSHOLES! Start looking inward and STOP blaming people who are “well to do” for your problems. They didn’t get there by being stupid or blaming others like you do. And it sure wasn’t handed down to them, and if it was, it’s a daily challenge to keep it. THE WORLD OWES YOU NOTHING… Learn that and the rest will fall into place…Libtards sicken me and now they all deny they were or are! ASHAMED? I should say so…YOU ALL SHOULD BE!

Oh and FUCK Minimum wage! Stop being a minimum human!”

A dead-on description of the “Master Narrative” to which Smith is referring was laid out in a recent story entitled “How I Got Rejected From a Job At The Container Store”:

“For years we Americans have been fed the convenient lie: study hard, work hard in your chosen field, work hard at your marriage, save money, organize your flour, salt, and sugar into labeled bins, and you will be in control of your life and your destiny.

And that simple story is how so many have been convinced to “go along to get along.” That story that goes: “If things aren’t working out for you right at the moment, don’t worry—it’s just you, not the system. OK, maybe a few of your friends are in the same boat. Oh, and maybe some of your friends’ friends. But rest assured, that’s as far as the problem goes.” But as Smith points out, this story—the Master Narrative—is quickly being revealed for the fraud that it is:

When the master narratives have broken down, legitimacy is lost. What’s left is authority without accountability or recourse and abuse of power without limits.

When the citizenry cease to believe the lies, the nation suffers a nervous breakdown.

Power without limits=criminal cartel

And that brings us to a Master Narrative-busting list from my Facebook friend Herman Shorts. When I read it, I knew I had to share it. As Smith concluded, what we now have is “authority without accountability or recourse and abuse of power without limits.” In other words, criminality—lawlessness. As I wrote last year, debunking one part of the Master Narrative, “America Is A Nation of Men, Not of Laws.” That article quoted Paul Craig Roberts on this subject of lawlessness:

…justice is no longer the purpose of US law and it is no longer thought necessary for the US government to be accountable to law. To insouciant Americans these might seem like extreme statements, but the conclusion is unavoidable.

In the United States there is no longer law. There is only retribution.

In my mind, Shorts’ list about criminals being in control piggybacks perfectly on Smith’s parting words and Roberts’ words above. Here is Shorts’ list:

The implications of the list are quite clear: we have to change the way we have been operating. We have to stop “going along to get along.” We have to stop complying. Stop playing their game. We have to rewrite the Master Narrative. And we have to do it now.

Posted in civil rights, Conspiracy, Everything Is Rigged, freedom, Police State, QE unlimited, Redistribution, Rent-seeking, Reverse socialism, Too big to fail, Wage slavery, Wealth transfer, ZIRP | Tagged bacon, Charles Hugh Smith, Cracked, Edward Bernays, Herman Shorts, Master Narrative, narrative, Of Two Minds, Paul Craig Roberts, status quo | Leave a comment

IS THE SECURITY STATE A COMPLETE HOAX?–PARIS EDITION

Posted on January 9, 2015 by eggsistense

A headline to an article at Prison Planet says it very well: “Global NSA Surveillance Did Nothing to Prevent Paris Shooting.”

Exactly.

We are told by our overlords that, for our own safety, we must all be watched and monitored by the state at all times. Like 1984. Except they don’t say the part about “like 1984.” No, they tell us that if we’re not doing anything wrong, we shouldn’t have a problem with being watched. So we all have to be watched, but notice that it never stops any attacks, like the bombing at the Boston Marathon. Or the hostage situation in Sydney. Or the shooting in Paris.

Indeed, terrorism is never stopped by the surveillance state (and I would argue, is probably staged or allowed to happen by the owners of the surveillance state), and each terror event that occurs despite the surveillance state is met with hand-wringing from the overlords and their media mouthpieces about the fact that it’s unfortunate that the terror attack happened and to prevent such events in the future, what we really need to do is get rid of this impediment or that impediment to the surveillance state and then all will be well. And of course, the “impediments” they’re talking about are our freedoms: of speech, privacy, thought, etc.

None dare call it terrorism

And of course, the actual terrorists—i.e., banksters and their fellow mafiosi in the military-industrial complex—are certainly never brought to justice through the use of the massive surveillance state, even though presumably their phone calls, emails, Internet activity, bank records, travel patterns, and other assorted data are known to the surveillance community. Surely the NSA has enough on Jamie Dimon and his ilk to put them away for a very long time, and it’s not as though Dimon and others are not engaged in wrongdoing and/or extreme malfeasance of one kind or another, as noted in this listicle: “7 CEOS WHO SHOULD BE IN JAIL INSTEAD OF MARY MCCULLEY.” Yet no Wall Street bigwigs have seen or will see the inside of a jail cell despite the supposedly all-seeing surveillance state.

Bad timing

The surveillance state seems to always have such bad timing, doesn’t it? In Paris, we are told, the police showed up 5 minutes after the gunmen had left—oh snap! So close! This tardiness was despite the fact that the now-famous footage of the gunmen shooting at the already-downed officer at point-blank range was apparently being filmed on a cell phone, which is supposedly easily accessed in real-time by the security state, as discussed in this article, titled “Cellphone data spying: It’s not just the NSA”:

The National Security Agency isn’t the only government entity secretly collecting data from people’s cellphones. Local police are increasingly scooping it up, too.

[SNIP]

Police maintain that cellphone data can help solve crimes, track fugitives or abducted children or even foil a terror attack.

Yeah, theoretically they ought to be able to “foil a terror attack,” they just…never do. Hmmm…now why is that?

Granted, the story above is about American police, but as the Prison Planet article mentioned at the beginning of this article states, we’re dealing with a global surveillance state and apparently the NSA is able to record, and has recorded, phone calls even in France:

The National Security Agency monitored the phone calls made in France, Le Monde reported Monday, citing documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

“Telephone communications of French citizens are intercepted on a massive scale,” Le Monde said in its online English edition.

The intercepts took place from December 10, 2012, to January 8, 2013, the article reported. An NSA graph shows an average of 3 million data intercepts a day.

According to Le Monde, this is how the system worked: “When a telephone number is used in France, it activates a signal which automatically triggers the recording of the call. Apparently this surveillance system also picks up SMS (text) messages and their content using key words. Finally, the NSA apparently stores the history of the connections of each target — or the meta-data.”

Even with this, the gendarmes were still five minutes behind the gunmen. Does that not strike anyone else as odd?

Why isn’t all “terrorism” and crime nipped in the bud? Why have wars?

If these incredible surveillance capabilities really do exist, why is there any crime or terrorism? Why couldn’t it all be nipped in the bud? Any criminals plotting over any modern communication device—be they bankers, al Qaeda/ISIS, or common street thugs—could be found out in essentially real-time. And this capability, as the article above mentions, should “foil terror attack[s].” But again, it never does.

And this incredible surveillance capability should really cut down on wars, too, wouldn’t you think? Especially the “war on terror,” which is supposedly really a war against some stateless individuals—remember the entire excuse (or one of the biggest excuses) for invading Afghanistan, a country which had no involvement in 9/11, was because one guy, i.e. Osama bin Laden was there. So if all we’re trying to get is a handful of guys—the bin Ladens of the world, the Zawahiris of the world, etc., and we have this incredible, all-seeing surveillance and drones and smart weapons, why would we invade another country ever again? Doesn’t make sense to send out armies if you can easily find the guy you want and send in a couple of RoboBees to take care of him, now does it?

But terrorism and war are their bread and butter

Well, it does make sense if you understand that the military-industrial complex doesn’t get to keep milking us taxpayers if we don’t have “terrorism” and unwinnable “wars on terrorism.” So it seems to me that there are two possibilities here: 1) the surveillance state is way over-hyped and has nowhere near the capabilities we are told it has, hence the fact that “terror attacks,” crime, and war go on unabated, or 2) the surveillance state does have all the capabilities we’re told it has but the terrorism, crime, and war are allowed to continue so that the military-industrial complex is not made obsolete. So which is it? I’ll leave that one up to you.

Posted in Domestic Spying, Drones, Edward Snowden, Everything Is Rigged, Terrorism | Tagged 9/11, Afghanistan, Boston Marathon, cellphone, France, Jamie Dimon, Le Monde, NSA, NSA spying, Osama bin Laden, Paris, Prison Planet, RoboBees, security state, spying, Sydney, Zawahiri | 1 Comment

“AL QAEDA”: FROM 9/11 TO…KILLING INK JOCKEYS?

Posted on January 7, 2015 by eggsistense

I admit it.

I am one of those who hears of a “terror attack” and instantly thinks—“Gotta be fake.” Or at least, “Some or most aspects of this have to be fake.” By “fake,” I don’t mean that innocent people didn’t die, I generally mean that the perpetrators are not who we are told they are or perhaps the motives of the perpetrators are not what we are told they are, or both. I just tend to disbelieve official stories, mostly because I used to believe official stories without question, like 9/11. I bought it. I never supported the Iraq War (in ‘91 or ‘03), and the way we were railroaded and lied into that war definitely opened my eyes about the nature of official stories. And then a friend gave me a copy of “Loose Change 2nd Edition”—never again will I not question an official story. I think everyone should question official stories—if they’re real, they will stand up to scrutiny, and if they’re fake, they—y’know, won’t.

And it is through this lens that I view the story of the killings at the Charlie Hebdo office today in Paris. A summary, on the very slim off-chance you haven’t heard about it:

“PARIS — Twelve people were killed Wednesday when masked gunmen armed with AK-47s attacked the offices of a French satirical news magazine which has published cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

France raised its terror threat level following the attack at the central Paris building housing weekly Charlie Hebdo and stepped up security for media organizations, large stores and places of worship.

At least two suspects remained at large hours after the attack, which occurred at 11:30 a.m. local time (5:30 a.m. ET).

“We will find the people who did this,” French President Francois Hollande said. “France is today shocked by this terrorist attack.” ”

Apparently, four of the cartoonists responsible for the drawings of Muhammad were killed, among others.

What strikes me: Number one

First, consider this: if I’m “ISIS” or “Al Qaeda in Yemen” or whoever, my big “terrorizing” move is to kill some cartoonists? It’s obviously a horrible and tragic situation, but something like this seems a little bit small-time for and uncharacteristic of “Al Qaeda.” I mean, this is a far cry from a 9/11 or a 7/7, is basically what I’m getting at. Killing a few cartoonists doesn’t exactly equate to toppling two giant buildings in one of the world’s greatest cities (which I should point out that I don’t believe was done by “al Qaeda”, but that is of course the official story). Seems like “al Qaeda” has kinda taken a nosedive with the quality of “their” terror attacks.

Supposedly the two gunmen told onlookers to tell the media that this was being done by “Al Qaeda in Yemen”:

Two terrorists shouted that they were from al Qaeda in the Yemen before they launched the brutal attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
Cédric Le Béchec, a 33-year-old estate agent who witnessed
the attack on the satirical magazine, said the men told
bystanders to inform the media that they were from the terror group.
He said that the men arrived in a black car, stopping in the middle of the
street. One of them was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade. They were
dressed in black military-style clothing.
Mr Le Béchec said that before launching the assault, the attackers approached another man in the street saying, “Tell the media that this is al-Qaeda in the Yemen.”

That doesn’t sound suspicious at all–these two military types pause to inform some people standing there what these onlookers should say to the media? They’re about to shoot up a business in broad daylight and yet don’t mind taking a moment out of their busy murdering schedule to tell some random people what to say to the press?

And then the cops show up right after it all goes down, natch:

“The police arrived five minutes later after they left, following the assault on the magazine’s offices.”

That nugget about the police’s arrival is from the same Telegraph article above. I mean, c’mon: “Monsieur Gendarmes–you just missed them!” Unbelievable. Literally. Kinda like on 9/11—“Aw man, we just couldn’t get planes scrambled fast enough,” a situation described here:

No plausible explanation has been provided for failing to scramble interceptors in a timely fashion from bases within easy range to protect the September 11th targets. Fighters that were dispatched were scrambled from distant bases. Early in the attack, when Flight 11 had turned directly south toward New York City, it was obvious that New York City and the World Trade Center, and Washington D.C. would be likely targets. Yet fighters were not scrambled from the bases near the targets. They were only scrambled from distant bases. Moreover there were no redundant or backup scrambles.

What strikes me: Number two

The second point that occurs to me is not so much about the Charlie Hebdo attack itself, as much as the supposed justification for it. That is to say, when you think about images offensive to Muslims, consider this: given that images of Muhammad are forbidden, then no one—Muslim or not–knows what Muhammad looked like. Therefore, no one can really draw a picture of him and any drawing purporting to be of Muhammad cannot actually be a picture of Muhammad because…no one knows what he looked like. Even if I dearly wanted to draw an offensive caricature of Muhammad (I don’t), I couldn’t–no one could–because no one knows what he looked like.

Or do they? Apparently there is no explicit ban in the Koran on portraiture of the prophet, but some hadiths do explicitly ban representations of Muhammad, as discussed here by the BBC:

“There is no specific, or explicit ban in the Koran on images of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad – be they carved, painted or drawn.

However, chapter 42, verse 11 of the Koran does say: “[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth… [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him.”

This is taken by Muslims to mean that Allah cannot be captured in an image by human hand, such is his beauty and grandeur. To attempt such a thing is seen as an insult to Allah.

The same is believed to apply to Muhammad.

[SNIP]

Islamic tradition or Hadith, the stories of the words and actions of Muhammad and his Companions, explicitly prohibits images of Allah, Muhammad and all the major prophets of the Christian and Jewish traditions.

More widely, Islamic tradition has discouraged the figurative depiction of living creatures, especially human beings. Islamic art has therefore tended to be abstract or decorative. “

However, depictions of Muhammad by Muslims do of course exist, as the article also notes:

Shia Islamic tradition is far less strict on this ban. Reproductions of images of the Prophet, mainly produced in the 7th Century in Persian, can be found.

A collection of many different types of images of Muhammad–entitled “Face of Mohammed”–can be found here, and begs the question of why weren’t the painters and artists represented on the “Faces of Mohammed” page killed, because we all know Muslims are crazy and will fly into a murderous frenzy if you draw a face with a turban and say it’s Muhammad, right? Well, no. That’s absurd. It doesn’t happen—unless someone tries to whip them into a frenzy, as happened in the the so-called “Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy” as it’s called at Wikipedia, wherein we learn the following:

In December, after failing to make any progress with the Danish government or the newspaper, the “Committee for Prophet Honouring” decided to gain support and leverage outside of Denmark by meeting directly with religious and political leaders in the Middle East. They created a 43-page dossier (commonly known as the Akkari-Laban dossier, after two leading imams (Arabic: ملف عكّاري لبن‎)) containing the cartoons and supporting materials for their meetings.^[36]…

Delegations of imams circulated the dossier on visits to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon in early December 2005, presenting their case to many influential religious and political leaders and asking for support.^[36] The group was given high level access on these trips through their contacts in the Egyptian and Lebanese embassies.^[48] The dossier was distributed informally on 7–8 December 2005 at a summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Mecca, with many heads of state in attendance. The OIC issued a condemnation of the cartoons: “[We express our] concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Mohamed.” The communique also attacked the practice of “using the freedom of expression as a pretext for defaming religions.”^[49] Eventually an official communiqué was issued requesting that the United Nations adopt a binding resolution banning contempt of religious beliefs and providing for sanctions to be imposed on contravening countries or institutions.^[50] The attention of the OIC is said to have led to media coverage which brought the issue to public attention in many Muslim countries.^[49]”

See how that works? They really ginned it up, made a big issue about it. And then, predictably, there were violent protests:

Protests against the cartoons were held around the world in late January and February 2006.[51][52] Many of these turned violent, resulting in at least 200 deaths globally, according to the New York Times.[53]

And then the dumbed-down, false, demonizing narrative is established, which is: “Muslims go ape-shit over the simplest, stupidest things, like a simple cartoon”. And in that false context, we have a very suspicious event like the one in Paris today, furthering the anti-Islamic narrative and the false “Muslims are dirty savages with no self control who don’t understand free speech (so we have to curtail free speech)” narrative and for what purpose?

As a justification for continuing and intensifying our Forever War of Terror, of course.

Posted in False Flag, Free Speech, Terrorism | Tagged 7/7, 9/11, al Qaeda, caricature, cartoon, Charlie Hebdo, false flag, Free speech, gendarmes, hadith, Iraq, ISIS, Islam, Jyllands-Posten, Koran, Loose Change, Muhammad, Muslims, Paris, War OF Terror, Yemen | Leave a comment

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