What's new? Most of what the "corporatocracy" feeds the public is nothing but bullshit!!!

Was it greed? Who would have thought? It took three years to figure this one out.

I thought this was an article from the Onion when I read the common dreams headline. Did we need a report to figure out that corporations are greedy?

The McClatchy spin, quoting ...ummmm.. someone,: "..they have all developed a kind of Stockholm syndrome... ."

here is another quote from a different someone: "..they have all developed a kind of Chamber of Commerce syndrome... ."

haha

whocares;)

For the record, many of the people connected with Wall Street, perhaps even most, are indeed greedy. However, it is wrong to say that ALL those connected are greedy. There are still many decent people within the American business structure.

Plenty of blame to go around....

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/11/congressional-members-personal-weal.html

Look at who owned what stock....May 15th is the next reporting period.

READ:
The Real Housewives of Wall Street
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/
news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-
street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-
the-bailout-20110411

The FED has two sets of books!
Audit the FED!

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you, to find that there's gambling going on in this establishment!

As has been clear for a long time, these so-called "rating agencys" like S&P - exactly like the so-called "accounting" firms like Anderson & Assoc - were in on the "fix" all along. Their behavior is clearly fraudulent. The "Law" is useless against these white-collar criminal bastards. Why would anyone even consider listening to what they say - it's all bullshit.
Oh, what a web we weave, when we practice to deceive. Off with their heads!

Well, gosh! Who knew?

Maybe now they can make a three-year study to determine whether war causes death and destruction for anyone. Or if cancer is a bad thing. I thought Oliver Stone already showed that greed is the only real glue holding Wall Street together. Without unbridled greed it couldn't exist. But it's so reassuring to know that Congress needs a 639 page report to confirm the obvious. The Department of Redundancy Department. And of course this will really shake things up! The banksters must be trembling in their thousand dollar shoes.

Well Duuhh!

and the bear's a catholic.

Indeed, this is old news for anyone who's been paying the slightest attention.

The real question is: who on Wall Street is going pay for the demonstrated collusion and corruption? Whether through fines or time in jail or, ideally, both?

The answer, tragically, is "no one". Which essentially guarantees we are going to see this happen again. Duh.

Talk about a toothless government and insanely useless policies.

Gaza And the Warsaw Ghetto

same place

different times

while the world stands by

genocide

live*

*slow motion in Gaza

I worked as an editorial manager, helping to put reports and books out on corporate ratings. I soon got into trouble when I refused to attend a meeting with an "analyst" who--I knew--wanted to make pigheaded and wrong changes to the manuscript. I felt that something was up: either he was being arrogant or was under the influence of others above him. Of course, in the miltaristic operation that S&P was in the 1990s, my refusing to meet with that analyst did not bode well for me. What editorial officers and financial officers wanted was "Yes, sir!" "No, sir," "Anything you want, sir!" My editorial bosses Paul Stanwyck and Don Schultz and Bill Lewis applied the pressure to me, by taking me off that assignment and giving me grunt work to do. As is the way of corporate pigs, they shunned me, making my life one of isolation as they hoped I would quit. If a change to the editorial product was requested by analysts such as Sol Solomon and others, it was made--immediately. Once again, editorial was just a puppy on a leash for the financial officers trying to increase S&P's profits even if it mean sacrificing someone else's money, retirement fund, nest egg, and so on. Stanwyck, Shultz, Lewis, and Solomon, to name just a few that I can remember truly had a bond with their captors. Who wants to sacrifice expensive lunches paid for by corporations looking for high ratings, and the secret under-the-table bonuses, and the regular bonuses, and the cushy 9-5 job on swanky Wall Street where you feel you are a master of the universe. No one makes those sacrifices for the sake of nameless buyers of those bonds with inflated, fraudulent ratings who will go into retirement living in a nursing home smelling of urine and having no call buttons or who will have to cancel their son's chance to get out their one-horse town. This is NOT an "Empathic Civilization" as Jeremy Rifkin would have us believe. People like Stanwyck, Shultz, Lewis and Solomon were no better than Sean Hanna, the owner of Investment Wires, who is a Libertarian. Who else are Libertarians? The Koch brothers, who really run the country. That philosophy says: I deserve everything I can get via my skills whether they be in mathematics or maneuvering people or ratings. And no one takes it away. Anyone without those skills deserves to be culled from the herd. That would help make more room on Earth for us "deserved elite."

I'm sick of hearing the word "greed" and letting it go at that. How about the word "criminal"? Where will all this go?? Will some prosecutor somewhere take up the violations and actually file criminal charges? Is there a basis for a class action suit or some other civil action? Or are they just going to chaulk it up to "greed" and say that "boys will be boys" and move on to the next abomination? I suspect the later.

It appears to me that the rating agency's are now performing the opposite trick. Downgrading good investments (i.e. sovereign debts) to force draconian budgets on the public, to help pay back the inflated expectations of bond holders.

I wonder how much it costs to-day to convince a rating agency to downgrade a bond issuance.

You mean to say that there still are people who pay attention to Moody's and S&P??? If they do, then they deserve what they get: screwed.