One State Switches from War to Peace

RootsAction members in Connecticut asked their Governor  to sign a bill creating a commission to plan for conversion from military  industries to civilian and environmentally sustainable manufacturing. The Connecticut Governor signed it. Click here to ask your own state legislature to follow this example. http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=8370 While military spending produces jobs, it produces fewer of them than civilian spending, or even than tax cuts for working people.[1] It's a drain on the economy, in addition to its other significant drawbacks. Connecticut's plan is supported by both labor unions and company managers, as well as by environmental and peace advocates, all of which groups are represented on the commission. Washington is controlled by war profiteers whose  influence comes in the form of campaign "contributions" and the threat of  removing jobs. *A path to both a peaceful world and a stronger economy  lies through localities and states.* Please take a moment to join with thousands of others in alerting your state legislators to the option of economic conversion, underway already in Connecticut. http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=8370 Please forward this email widely to like-minded friends. -- The RootsAction.org team Share this action on Facebook [ https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F143eIpq ] Share this action on Twitter [ http://bit.ly/13euJhz ] P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, and many others.

Seymour Hersh: Osama Killing is a Big Lie

Seymour Hersh: Story About Killing Osama Bin Laden is One Big Lie

Plus, 90% of lamestream editors should be fired.

 

Photo Credit: justasc/Shutterstock.com

September 27, 2013  |  

 

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh,  the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".
He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" – or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an "independent" Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. "The Pakistanis put out a report, don't get me going on it. Let's put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It's a bullshit report," he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.

"It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]," he declares in an interview with the Guardian.

"It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the President and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn't happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the President. 

He isn't even sure if the recent revelations about the depth and breadth of surveillance by the National Security Agency will have a lasting effect.

Snowden changed the debate on surveillance

He is certain that NSA whistleblower  Edward Snowden "changed the whole nature of the debate" about surveillance. Hersh says he and other journalists had written about surveillance, but Snowden was significant because he provided documentary evidence – although he is sceptical about whether the revelations will change the US government's policy.

"Duncan Campbell [the British investigative journalist who broke the Zircon cover-up story], James Bamford [US journalist] and Julian Assange and me and the New Yorker, we've all written the notion there's constant surveillance, but he [Snowden] produced a document and that changed the whole nature of the debate, it's real now," Hersh says.

"Editors love documents. Chicken-shit editors who wouldn't touch stories like that, they love documents, so he changed the whole ball game," he adds, before qualifying his remarks.

"But I don't know if it's going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America – the President can still say to voters 'al-Qaida, al-Qaida' and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance, which is so idiotic," he says. 

Woman Behind Snowden & Wikileaks

The Unsung Hero of the NSA Revelations

By Nozomi Hayase, www.dissidentvoice.org
September 28th, 2013

Let’s Not Forget WikiLeaks’ Sarah Harrison

How many people can look back on their lives and say they have done something significant for the betterment of society? Oftentimes selfless and noble actions of individuals go unrecognized. There are always those who act quietly behind the scenes at crucial turning points in history. Such a person



is Sarah Harrison.
After Edward Snowden came forward as the source behind the release of the NSA classified documents and the Obama Administration’s aggressive international manhunt began, Harrison, a 31 year old British native emerged on the world stage as the mysterious woman who accompanied this high profile whistleblower in his quest for asylum.

On June 23, WikiLeaks published her profile on its website. It described Harrison as a journalist and legal researcher who worked as section editor for WikiLeaks and as an investigative researcher for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Centre for Investigative Journalism. In July 2012, while Assange was unavailable, Harrison stepped forward to announce the release of the Syria Files at the Frontline Club in London.

She played a crucial role in enabling Snowden to leave Hong Kong and accompanied him on the fateful journey to Russia. As the United States revoked the passport of the former NSA contractor and attempted to extradite him, WikiLeaks, through Harrison provided means for his safe passage to Moscow and she stayed with him, assisting with his asylum applications to various countries.












Washington Post ran a story on Harrison on July 5, recounting her path into the world of journalism; from an unpaid internship to becoming one of Assange’s close advisers. In the Post story, those who knew Harrison were cited including Gavin MacFadyen, director of the Center for Investigative Journalism and Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, who offered Assange residence at his English estate while he was under house arrest. MacFadyen, who welcomed Harrison with no prior experience to his crew of investigative journalists described how “she’s smart, determined and fully believes in the moral principle of shedding light.” Vaughan Smith said, “It’s not as if she’s getting anything out of this other than doing something that she believes is right; helping a whistleblower.” He also noted how Harrison is driven by her own conviction. It is clear that her commitment to justice led her to step forward and help Snowden.





As the media focused on Snowden’s saga, she remained in the background. She was there beside him when he held the Press conference at the Sheremetyevo airport with local human rights groups, handling the situation professionally as the inflamed rhetoric regarding Snowden’s precarious situation grew. She was there as Snowden holed up in the transit zone for almost six weeks, providing protection and a steady presence. She was last seen on August 1, leaving the airport with Snowden when he was granted temporary asylum in Russia. Reports are now circulating about Snowden’s life in Russia, yet Harrison’s situation and whereabouts seem to have slipped under the radar. Yet, in the same way that Snowden’s life has changed forever because of his choice, it would be naïve to think that Harrison could ever go back to her pre-Snowden life back in the UK.

On August 18, WikiLeaks tweeted “How can WikiLeaks journalist and UK citizen Sarah Harrison feel safe to return home? ….” On the following day, once again WikiLeaks stated that Harrison was
 
now in self-exile.

This action is not based on an unfounded fear. The partner of the Guardianjournalist Glenn Greenwald, David Miranda was held at London’s Heathrow Airport under Section 7 of the British Terrorism Act for the maximum time he could be detained. After the incident, The Guardianrevealed the British government’s media intimidation. The Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger spoke of how the British government threatened the newspaper with possible legal action unless they either destroyed Snowden’s documents or handed them to British authorities. Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher, journalist, and advocate for the Tor Project, outlined the extreme measures being used to intimidate journalists. He said that the US is increasingly becoming a place that is not safe for those that tell truth to power. Describing this as forcing “the birth of a generation of dissidents”, Appelbaum noted the trend of journalists exiling themselves because of likely government reprisal as a result of their work. Glenn Greenwald is in Brazil. Both award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, who filmed the Guardianinterview of Snowden and also Appelbaum now live in Berlin. Appelbaum has spoken of how he feels he cannot practice journalism in his home country.

Considering the US government’s draconian reactions to whistleblowing site WikiLeaks and others who expose government crimes and illegality, Harrison’s involvement with this organization already raises concern for her safety. Harrison is one of the few publicly known and acknowledged associates of Julian Assange beside Kristinn Hrafnsson and Joseph Farrell. WikiLeaks is under investigation by the US Justice Department, which has invoked a secret grand jury seeking information on Assange and staffers that are tied to the organization.



Recently, after the NSA scandal revealed that the agency has spied on the Brazilian government, their citizens and even the private communication of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Rousseff canceled a state visit to the US. In an email sent to the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo, Assange is reported to have acknowledged this act of the president as symbolically important and he then urged Brazil to grant Harrison asylum.

We live in an age of secrecy where elected leaders hide their true actions behind a facade of democracy. The acts of whistleblowers who bring transparency, revealing the vile nature of what is concealed are heroic. From Chelsea Manning to Snowden, what marks them as extraordinary is their courage and commitment to what they believe is right.

In an interview with Israeli news organization Haaretz, Greenwald spoke of how meeting Edward Snowden changed his life. He then stressed that the risk Snowden took was without any personal gain and done simply for the public good and stated that this fits the “definition of a hero: someone who is prepared to take upon himself a fate that would terrify most people in the name of a noble goal.”

The degree of risk might be different, but this is also what Harrison did and she was truly brave. After Snowden made the one way trip to Hong Kong, he soon felt the imperial hands of the US government reaching for him, which he had expected. The drumbeat from Washington was getting louder with the rhetoric of traitor as they aggressively attempted extradition, even charging him with Espionage on June 21. When no other organization stepped forward to offer Snowden help, WikiLeaks effectively intervened on his behalf. With the organization’s commitment to source protection, Harrison carried the mission to secure the safety of the world’s most wanted whistleblower.

When Sarah Harrison decided to accompany Edward Snowden, she aligned herself with his courageous act. She stepped up to unite her fate with this historic deed of conscience. She had a choice, and she chose to risk her own security. Such an act was also heroic. Harrison’s brave deed is an example of the significant, yet often missed links that help shape history. It brought the world one step closer to a just society where conscionable acts of whistleblowers are protected and rewarded and abuses of power are revealed and punished. This kind of courage needs recognition and heroes such as these need support and protection.

Nozomi Hayase is a contributing writer to Culture Unplugged and a global citizen blogger at Journaling Between Worlds. She brings out deeper dimensions of socio-cultural events at the intersection between politics and psyche with fiction and reality to share insight on future social evolution.   She can be reached at: nozomimagination@gmail.com.Read other articles by Nozomi.
 

 

CWA Phone Union Protests TPP Fast Track

No TPP, No Fast Track

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CWA Research Economist Ken Peres (left) speaks at the rally.

When lead negotiators gathered in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative last Friday to discuss the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, they were met by a loud crowd of activists. "No TPP and no fast track!" they chanted.
CWA joined a number of organizations – including Citizens Trade Campaign, Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, Earth First, Flush the TPP and more – to protest the massive trade deal that could undermine U.S. jobs, workers' rights, environmental regulations and consumer protections. Activists let the negotiators know that they will be holding them accountable and pushing Congress to vote down "fast track," which would limit Congress's consideration of this dangerous trade agreement to an up-or-down vote without amendments.

"Remember, they want to put our workers in competition with countries like Vietnam, who have a minimum wage of $2.23, that's not an hour...for a full day's work," said CWA research economist Kenneth Peres, speaking at the rally.
Read Roll Call's story about the rally here.

And check out AlterNet's photos and video of the activists unfurling banners over the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative reading, "Corporate Coup Against the People and Planet," "Democracy, Not Corporatocracy" and "Transparency: Release the Text."

CWA President Larry Cohen also recently appeared on The Ed Show on MSNBC to talk about the TPP. He said:

We need to say to Congress no fast track. To date, no citizen groups have been involved to any extent in this Trans-Pacific Partnership. It's a race to the bottom. We need a race to the top. And that's where we stand.

Watch the full segment here.

Tea Party - Progressive Alliance

NSA reform bill to trim back US surveillance unveiled in Congress

Ron Wyden says Snowden disclosures have 'caused a sea change' and announces most comprehensive package so far

 

 

 

Rand Paul (third right) speaks at the unveiling of the NSA reform package on Capitol Hill. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Four senators at the vanguard of bipartisan efforts to rein in US government spying programs announced the most comprehensive package of surveillance reforms so far presented on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

The draft bill represented the first sign that key Republican and Democratic figures in the Senate are beginning to coalesce around a raft of proposals to roll back the powers of the National Security Agency in the wake of top-secret disclosures made by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"The disclosures over the last 100 days have caused a sea change in the way the public views the surveillance system," said Democratic senator Ron Wyden, unveiling the bill at a press conference alongside Republican Rand Paul.

"We are introducing legislation that is the most comprehensive bipartisan intelligence reform proposal since the disclosures of last June," he said.

Wyden said the bill would set a high bar for "not cosmetic" intelligence reform, on the eve of a series of congressional hearings into the NSA's surveillance powers that will begin on Thursday.
The two other senators supporting the bill were Democrats Mark Udall, a long-time ally of Wyden, and Richard Blumenthal, who has been at the forefront of efforts to reform the secretive court process that grants surveillance warrants.

Their bill, the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act, merges competing legislative proposals announced by the senators before the summer recess, and cherry-picks from ideas contained in about twelve other draft bills.

It would prohibit the NSA's bulk collection phone records of Americans under section 215 of the Patriot Act, the most controversial aspect of US surveillance revealed by documents supplied by Snowden to the Guardian.

The bill would also prevent a similar data trawl of internet communication records, which was stopped in 2011, and definitively close a so-called "backdoor" that potentially enables the NSA to intercept the internet communications of Americans swept up in a program protected by Section 702 of the of the Fisa Amendments Act.
There is limited, if any, support in Congress for limiting the NSA's ability of monitor or gather evidence on foreigners.

The bill fuses with a proposal originally made by senator Blumenthal, which aims to reform the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court, making the quasi-judicial process more transparent and accountable.

If made law, the act would require a "constitutional advocate" to be introduced into the opaque court process, so that the government could be challenged on privacy grounds in significant or precedent-setting cases. It would insert an adversarial dimension to a court process that is currently one-sided in favour of the government.

It also incorporates aspects of more than a dozen legislative efforts that surfaced in the wake of disclosures by Snowden, such as allowing technology companies to disclose how many court orders they receive for their users' data, and the strengthening a privacy watchdog.
President Obama pledged last month to work with Congress to "pursue appropriate reforms" to the government's surveillance programs. However, analysts are predicting the White House to pursue superficial reforms that might bring more transparency to the NSA and the Fisa court, but would stop short of clipping the wings of the intelligence community.

On Tuesday, the influential Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy, who is bringing a similar bill to the one unveiled by Wyden, said the administration had failed to make the case that collection of phone records was "an effective counter-terrorism tool, especially in light of the intrusion on Americans' privacy right". Leahy said he was also considering reforms to the Fisa court.  On Thursday, Feinstein's committee will hold a major congressional hearing into the various reforms under consideration. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, and General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, are expected to argue hard against any diminution in their powers of surveillance.    Earlier on Wednesday, Alexander criticised what he said was "sensationalised hype" and "media leaks" based on disclosures by Snowden, who has received temporary asylum in Russia. Alexander gave a specific defense of the mass collection of phone records, which looks most under threat in Congress, saying it enables the NSA to "join the dots" in major terrorist cases.

The appetite in Washington for reform of surveillance programs was made apparent in July, when a House of Representatives proposal to effectively end the NSA's bulk collection of phone records of millions of Americans was defeated by just 12 votes.
The amendment, brought by Republican Justin Amash and Democrat John Conyers, was strongly opposed by leaders of the two parties, the White House, and the intelligence establishment.

The fact it was only narrowly defeated revealed the depth of anger in some quarters of Capitol Hill over the perceived excesses of the NSA – and provided a glimpse of the potential strength of a House alliance between libertarian Republicans and left-leaning Democrats.

Wednesday's press conference – featuring leftwingers Wyden, Udall and Blumenthal alongside Paul, one of the most prominent libertarians in the Republican party – suggested those dynamics could be repeated in the Senate.
Wyden said the House vote in July was "a huge wake-up call", revealing the depth of opposition to government surveillance programs in the wake of Snowden's disclosures. Blumenthal said their bill represented a "coming together of a very diverse ideological elements of our respective parties".

Obama's Buddies with Chase and Goldman CEOs

Obama’s Friends in Low Places

Posted on Sep 24, 2013

AP/Evan Vucci

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, left, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein leave the White House in 2009 after a meeting between chief executives and President Obama.

By Robert Scheer
That Barack Obama is such a kidder. No matter how awkward the moment, he’s got just the right quip to purchase some wiggle room. Remember when his old Chicago banking buddy Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, first ran into that bit of trouble over his bank’s “London Whale” derivative scam? That scheme has already lost $6 billion with close to $1 billion more piled on by the SEC in fines last week after JPMorgan admitted it broke the law.
Well of course, being Obama, when the scandal first broke last year, the president picked a women’s daytime talk show, ABC’s “The View,” to deal with the scams of his leading Wall Street backer.

“JPMorgan is one of the best-managed banks there is,” he told the “View” audience. “Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got, and they still lost $2 billion and counting.” 

Yes, counting; that $2 billion is now likely to end up around $16 billion given the future legal fees and possible payouts allotted to countering the myriad lawsuits connected with this admission of illegal activity. That’s aside from the mortgage fraud, Libor rate rigging and energy manipulation cases still confronting the beleaguered bank. Thursday, on the same day that Dimon’s bank got slapped with the SEC fine, federal regulators revealed that JPMorgan had agreed to pay $389 million in penalties and refunds to compensate for a credit card identity theft protection scam after $309 million already paid out in that case.

It should be remembered that this same Dimon, who appeared before a Senate committee wearing Presidential cufflinks, once worked with Sanford Weill in engineering the reversal of the Glass-Steagall law to make Citigroup, a previously illegal merger of investment and commercial banks, possible. But despite his record as a leader in the radical deregulation of banking that caused all of the trouble, Obama turned to Dimon for direction on fixing the economy.

If you still require to be disabused of Obama’s pretend populism, consider his decision to select William M. Daley, JPMorgan’s representative in Washington, to be his White House chief of staff. It gave Dimon the key White House connection to accompany the passkey he already had at Treasury with his pal Timothy Geithner as Secretary (of the Treasury).

 

It was a real cozy arrangement; Dimon was still a governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, where he had served during Geithner’s presidency overseeing the banking meltdown. Geithner had been instrumental in arranging Fed financing for JPMorgan’s acquisition of troubled Bear Stearns through a $55 billion loan and later an additional $25 billion in TARP funds.

Once appointed Treasury secretary, Geithner made himself very accessible to Dimon. As an Associated Press investigation reported, Dimon had numerous personal meetings and phone calls with Geithner while the White House was calibrating its response to the Wall Street crisis. 
Why are we not surprised that Obama has done nothing to break up the too-big-to-fail banks, the biggest now being Dimon’s? Don’t be fooled by the occasional fines; the banks have used the interest-free money to grow ever larger and more unaccountable in their behavior. 

Even the recent SEC settlement, while mentioning the despicable behavior of JPMorgan’s chief executive, fails to utter Dimon’s name, and as Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who did much to unravel this scam, noted, “the whole issue of misinforming investors and the public is conspicuously absent from the SEC findings and settlement.”

After the SEC condemnation of JPMorgan’s “egregious breakdowns in controls” and conclusion that “senior management broke a cardinal rule of corporate management” to honestly inform the board of directors, top senior manager Dimon made all the right noises. JPMorgan announced that $4 billion and a staff of 5,000 employees would be devoted to compliance with the law.

This was just the sort of commitment Dimon made in 2006 when he hired Stephen M. Cutler, who had been head of the SEC Division of Enforcement, to be JPMorgan’s general counsel. Once a committed regulator who urged corporations “to create a culture of compliance,” Cutler clearly drank the Kool-Aid at JPMorgan, for he was in charge of legal and compliance activities worldwide at the time of the London Whale fiasco. So much for trusting corporate compliance.

As Donald Langevoort, an expert on compliance issues at Georgetown University School of Law, told The New York Times on Friday, “JPMorgan is by no means unique. None of these big banks really want compliance people causing traders and investment bankers to second-guess themselves too much because that gets in the way of making money. No one will say this, but it’s more effective to run the risk of noncompliance and pay a few fines, which is just a cost of doing business.”

Exactly the reason that too-big-to-fail banks can’t be trusted to do the right thing and why Obama shouldn’t have been guided by Dimon in the first place. 

Biggest Banks Continue Criminal Conduct

5 Years After the Financial Crisis, The Big Banks Are Still Committing Massive Crimes

Submitted by George Washington on 09/20/2013 12:12 -0400

 

Preface: Not all banks are criminal enterprises. The wrongdoing of a particular bank cannot be attributed to other banks without proof. But – as documented below – many of the biggest banks have engaged in unimaginably bad behavior.

You Won’t Believe What They’ve Done …

Here are just some of the improprieties by big banks over the last century (you’ll see that many shenanigans are continuing today):

• Laundering money for terrorists (the HSBC employee who blew the whistle on the banks’ money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels says that the giant bank is still laundering money, saying:  “The public needs to know that money is still being funneled through HSBC to directly buy guns and bullets to kill our soldiers …. Banks financing … terrorists affects every single American.” He also said: “It is disgusting that our banks are STILL financing terror on 9/11 2013“.  And see this)

• Funding the Nazis

• Financing illegal arms deals, and funding the manufacture of cluster bombs (and see this and this) and other arms which are banned in most of the world

• Launching a coup against the President of the United States

• Handling money for rogue military operations

• Laundering money for drug cartels. See this, this, this, this and this (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis).   A whistleblower said: “America is losing the drug war because our banks are [still] financing the cartels“, and “Banks financing drug cartels … affects every single American“.  And see this.)

• Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this

• Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

• Manipulating aluminum and copper prices

• Manipulating gold prices … on a daily basis

• Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion … without even buying or storing any gold . And raiding allocated gold accounts

• Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them (and see this)

• Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this, this, this, this and this. This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car

• Cheating homeowners by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure

• Committing massive fraud in an $800 trillion dollar market which effects everything from mortgages, student loans, small business loans and city financing

• Manipulating the hundred trillion dollar derivatives market

• Engaging in insider trading of the most important financial information

• Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this, this and this

• Engaging in unlawful “frontrunning” to manipulate markets. See this, this, this, this, this and this

• Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this, this and this

• Manipulating corporate bonds through derivatives schemes

• Otherwise manipulating markets. And see this

• Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See this, this and this

• Charging veterans unlawful mortgage fees

• Helping the richest to illegally hide assets

• Cooking their books (and see this)

• Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

• Violently cracking down on peaceful protesters

The executives of the big banks invariably pretend that the hanky-panky was only committed by a couple of low-level rogue employees. But studies show that most of the fraud is committed by management.
Indeed, one of the world’s top fraud experts – professor of law and economics, and former senior S&L regulator Bill Black – says that most financial fraud is “control fraud”, where the people who own the banks are the ones who implement systemic fraud. See this, this and this.
Even the bank with the reputation as being the “best managed bank” in the U.S., JP Morgan, has engaged in massive fraud. For example, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report today quoting an examiner at the Office of Comptroller of the Currency – JPMorgan’s regulator – saying he felt the bank had “lied to” and “deceived” the agency over the question of whether the bank had mismarked its books to hide the extent of losses. And Joshua Rosner – noted bond analyst, and Managing Director at independent research consultancy Graham Fisher & Co – notes that JP Morgan had many similar anti money laundering laws violations as HSBC, failed to segregate accounts a la MF Global, and paid almost 12% of its 2009-12 net income on regulatory and legal settlements.
But at least the big banks do good things for society, like loaning money to Main Street, right?
Actually:

• The big banks no longer do very much traditional banking. Most of their business is from financial speculation. For example, less than 10% of Bank of America’s assets come from traditional banking deposits. Instead, they are mainly engaged in financial speculation and derivatives. (and see this)

• The big banks have slashed lending since they were bailed out by taxpayers … while smaller banks have increased lending. See this, this and this

• A huge portion of the banks’ profits comes from taxpayer bailouts. For example, 77% of JP Morgan’s net income comes from taxpayer subsidies

• The big banks are looting, killing the economy … and waging war on the people of the world

• And our democracy and republican form of government as well

Indeed, top experts say that fraud caused the Great Depression and the 2008 crisis, and that failing to rein in fraud is dooming our economy.
We can almost understand why Thomas Jefferson warned:

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies ….

John Adams said:

 

Banks have done more injury to religion, morality, tranquillity, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they have done or ever will do good.

And Lord Acton argued:

 

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.

No wonder a stunning list of prominent economists, financial experts and bankers say we need to break up the big banks.

E.G.  U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.