“The system is broken”

The Federal government may be turning a blind eye to Mortgage Industry jankiness, but at least local officials aren’t.
Last week, San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting released a report documenting that 85% of the nearly 400 foreclosures that his office has audited have “serious problems or were outright illegal".

"We really wanted to take a look at what the documents would tell us and whether or not it was something systemic," Ting said. "We had a lot of anecdotal information but never knew if the problems represented 5 percent or 20 percent or 80 percent of the cases. What we have for the first time is hard data about the level of systematic problems going on in the mortgage industry."
-Huffington Post

Ting joins a small handful of other local officials who have, over the past year, gone public with similar findings.
Earlier this month, after federal officials conducted more than 10,000 hours of research and poured through more than 2 million documents, the Obama Administration and 49 state attorneys general announced a $25 billion settlement with five of the nation's largest banks that had gotten caught committing document fraud and wrongful foreclosures on homeowners.
None of the findings from that research have been released to the public.
As hard as it may be to fathom, it is very likely that systemwide fraud may just be the tip of the iceberg...

We face a "Worldwide Banking Meltdown"

IMF advisor Robert Shapiro warns of a meltdown worse than 2008.
So what’s a country to do when faced with sovereign default?
Well in the birthplace of democracy, as the Greek government circles ever-increasingly down the toilet of fiscal insolvency, it apparently has found enough money to purchase 400 M1A1 Abrams tanks from the United States.
Well, I guess if they can’t afford to provide the Greek people with good governance, I guess they will NEED 400 tanks to keep the Greek people in line.

To the west, Spain tops that by offering Uncle Sam a navy base.

Under the agreement, four U.S. Aegis ships will be based at the Rota naval base near Cadiz in Spain. The agreement is part of U.S. President Barack Obama's phased adaptive approach to missile defense, under which ship-based, anti-ballistic missiles are being deployed in the eastern Mediterranean followed by ground-based systems in Romania and Poland.
The agreement "reflects a commitment of both countries to the alliance" and marks "an important step forward to protect NATO territories against missile threats," Rasmussen said. "It is smart defense at its best," he said, describing it as "countries working together and sharing together to provide something that benefits us all."
-Defense News

Come to think of it, considering that 169,000 Americans lost their job in September, Uncle Sam might need some more tanks and missile boats too.

People are pissed

Good ol Paul Farrell.

Occupy Wall Street is a virus spreading rapidly as Occupy Everything, a reform movement that will overshadow the GOP/Tea Party as the voice of the people, leading to an Occupy America.
-MarketWatch

And Jesse La Greca explains it another way:

"I dream of another moment like this."

Goldman Sachs rules the world, and they know the market is toast. Lol.
A trader was on the BBC, speaking the truth, and apparently it was news to the talking heads and the people who aren't plastic-looking-enough-to-be-talking-heads.

Speaking of news vs. the not news, I remember seeing a video from the occupation of Wall Street, and reading some commenter who said that the women were over-reacting to simply being corralled. I thought to myself, they're reacting as if they just got maced. Well, apparently they got peppersprayed, and some dude has posted this great slo-mo breakdown of the incident.

World Revolution Update

Iraq reconstruction theft may actually be $18 billion

So about that $6.6 billion "largest theft in US history," apparently it was actually more like $18.7 billion. That's almost ALL of the shrinkwrapped bricks of greenbacks that the Bush administration sent over to Iraq to reconstruct a compliant puppet regime in that country. A 2004 agreement established that the US would be responsible for safeguarding the $20 billion in cash that was allegedly sent over. Not surprisingly, almost all of it has disappeared without a trace. US officials have allegedly audited the money 3 times, but still have no clue where it is.

The cash came from an account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and was allegedly a combination of Iraqi oil revenue, surplus from the UN's oil for food programme, and sales of Iraqi assets.

The New York Fed is refusing to tell investigators how many billions of dollars it shipped to Iraq during the early days of the US invasion there, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction told CNBC Tuesday.
The Fed's lack of disclosure is making it difficult for the inspector general to follow the paper trail of billions of dollars that went missing in the chaotic rush to finance the Iraq occupation, and to determine how much of that money was stolen.
-CNBC

The Fed is claiming that the money belonged to the Iraqi people, and therefore, they aren't allowed to let anyone else know how much money actually went over to Iraq for reconstruction. However, since the Iraqi people never got the money, and they're wondering where the hell it went, it's a little hard to believe that the Fed can't get authorization from them to disclose how much of their money it allegedly shipped to them.
Clearly, the Fed just doesn't want anyone to know how much money was sent over, because then we'd know how much of it was stolen.

Banksta math versus correct math

"This is what a true sustainable economy should be."

Largest Protest in Greece Yet

After 12 consecutive days of protests celebrating the 12 consecutive months since Greece first went begging to the bankstas for a bailout, the biggest gathering in Athens' Syntagma square happened today.
80,000 people (that's what the government is admitting) from many walks of life crowded into the central Athens square to protest government corruption and economic mismanagement. Many many more were stuck unsuccessfully trying to get into the square.
Last year, Greece was granted a bailout of 110 billion euros ($161 billion) and launched a severe austerity plan.
A year later, more of the same:

(Greek Premier George) Papandreou agreed to 78 billion euros in additional austerity measures and asset sales through 2015 to secure the 12 billion-euro bailout payment in July and meet conditions for receiving an additional rescue package. He agreed to make “significant” cuts in public-sector employment and establish an agency to manage accelerated asset sales, according to a statement released in Athens on June 3.
-Bloomberg

By “significant,” he meant about 6.4 billion euros, which would be generated through cuts and increased taxes.
Paying more for less.
So, in the birthplace of democracy, a fairly broad coalition of protestors has been doing the democratic thing by taking to the streets to call attention to the fraud.

I spoke with a retired military officer two days ago, who is now working at a private corporation, even his job is in doubt. He too spoke of revolution. As someone who has written a book on Marx’s Politics and long been interested in revolution, now nonviolent revolution, I was amazed to have powerful conversations with two middle class people (out of three I talked with; the third is also for fundamental change) who had straightforwardly expressed the vision and expectation of violent revolution….
-GlobalResearch.ca

Outside of Greece, not many are optimistic in the present course.
Last week, Moody’s warned that there was a 50 percent chance that the country would default or restructure its debts within the next five years.

“I don’t see how Greece can eventually avoid some kind of default,” said Martin N. Baily, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who served as chairman of Council of Economic Advisers under the Clinton administration. “It’s hard to see how you can avoid the need to finance this over the next five to 10 years.”
His sentiment was echoed widely among economists, politicians and analysts gathered here over the weekend for a conference held by the Council for the United States and Italy.
-New York Times

All of Europe has reason to be concerned about contagion.
Oh Greece, you never should have been in the family in the first place.
You had to lie to kick it.
You truly are the eurozone’s Davey Scatino.