Credit union sues Wall St. firms #occupy #ows
March 13, 2012, Tom Knox
Space Coast Credit Union filed a lawsuit against several investment banks and rating agencies alleging that fraudulent mortgage securities led to the collapse of a credit union it acquired in 2009.
Melbourne-based Space Coast has 10 branches in Volusia County, plus a new branch inside the New Smyrna Beach Walmart opening next week. It also has two branches in Flagler County.
The credit union is suing Wall Street investment banks including Barclays Capital, Merrill Lynch and the credit rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. The state court lawsuit accuses the defendants of causing more than $100 million in losses to Eastern Financial Florida Credit Union, leading partly to its collapse.
Space Coast acquired Miramar-based Eastern in July 2009.
The complaint accuses the defandants of conspiring to use fraudulent credit ratings, and the investment banks of dumping those inflated securities onto unsuspecting investors.
The losses were written off, Space Coast spokeswoman Meredith Gibson said, but the goal of the lawsuit is to recover some of those funds.
“This was an injustice that was done. Eastern is gone — that can’t come back,” she said. “But what we can do is attempt to get some justice for those members.”
#KMFDM Bitch-Slaps #Plutocracy With A Drug Against #WallStreet #ows
From Johan of HoodooEngine:
The whole #OccupyWallStreet thing is cool and all, but it’s not a real party until some heavyweights of radical music start throwing their weight behind it. Fans of industrial metal will be pleased to know that KMFDM has done just that, releasing a new version of their classic track (which the more angsty of us rocked in our angsty bedrooms over a decade ago), A Drug Against War, but have altered their own lyrics to spotlight the recent rebellion against evil psycho-clown corporations.
The vocals in the track are now all about defeating our shady bankster-GMO-Annunaki overlords with the new title A Drug Against Wall Street!
NY Police Restrict Press Access say News Orgs
Twelve news organizations joined the New York Times in criticizing the New York Police Department for its treatment of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street Movement and other newsworthy events.
In a joint letter Wednesday they write (PDF):
There have been other reports of police officers using a variety of tactics ranging from inappropriate orders directed at some journalists to physical interference with others, who were covering newsworthy sites and events. Indeed, as recently as this Monday it was reported (attached) that at another OWS demonstration, police “officers blocked the lens of a newspaper photographer attempting to document the arrests.” As a result, a number of press entities feel that more needs to be done if we are to resolve these issues in an amicable manner.
According to The Atlantic Wire:
The police’s interference with the press extends past Occupy protests, the organizations say. An inspector threatened New York Daily News photographer David Handschuh at last year’s Macy’s Day parade, the National Press Photographers Association writes, and another Daily News reporter had his press credentials pulled while covering a fire in December, Capital New York reported.In response, Deputy Commissioner Paul Brown told The Atlantic Wire that 1,600 new officers have received media training with an emphasis on 1st Amendment Protections.
Image: Co-signatures of a New York Times letter to the the NYPD. Via Capital New York (PDF).
(via vinegarwilliams)
Daily Kos: #WallStreet Fraternity Mocks #OWS and Laughs About Job Creation
By joanneleon | Tweeted by @Wildey2
It’s all a big joke to them — the obliterating of pensions, millions of families losing homes, crushing unemployment, lives destroyed. In 2009, just a few months after the devastating crash, they sang a parody song titled “We’ve All Lost Dough Together”. This year, the current “Grand Swipe”, Wilbur L. Ross Jr., who the New York Times called “a dean of vulture investing”, made this joke for the bankster crowd:
“We have members from every firm that has failed, as well as members from those that will fail in the future,” he said to loud laughter.
Keiser Report: Hollywood Cons Congress (E234)
In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss copyright and how Hollywood cons Congress by using Wall Street accounting. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Amir Taaki about hackers, piracy, technology and bitcoin.
(by RussiaToday)
Tim Pool LIVE STREAMING now at the newly re-opened Zuccotti Park #ows
Police have removed all barricades from the park!
#Occupy Wall Street's Livestream Operators Arrested #ows
Adam Martin |Jan 3, 2012
Occupy Wall Street is in the middle of one of its day-long marches in New York Tuesday, protesting the National Defense Authorization Act, but for those following along on the Global Revolution livestream, the real action is happening in the broadcast studio itself. That’s because police have apparently just raided the Brooklyn studio of Globalrevolution.tv and taken some of the project’s key volunteers into custody.
The raid Tuesday follows a notice to vacate that police delivered to the Bushwick studio on Monday night. Victoria Sobel, a Global Revolution volunteer, said Vlad Teichberg and a guy named Spike, both of whom maintain the live feed aggregator, had been taken into custody by police, along with four or five others.
Update: The six arrested in Tuesday’s raid lived at the Global Revolution space. See our latest here.
In Manhattan, about 100 Occupy protesters (according to Animal New York’s Twitter) marched to the offices of New York senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, where they told stories and made impassioned cases for the wrongness of the NDAA. They plan a final rally at Grand Central station at 5 p.m., which should make for some fun interactions with hurried commuters. Lots of people were watching the proceedings on live feeds operated by Globalrevolution.tv, but now that site has stopped broadcasting the New York protest and is showing footage of Occupy Maui.
[…]
7 of the Nastiest Scams, Rip-Offs and Tricks From Wall Street Crooks #ows
By Dave Johnson (via @TurboKitty)
December 26, 2011 | How many high-level Wall Street players have been put in jail for the crimes that led to the financial crisis? Not. Even. One.
Last week several executives from the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, known as “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,”were sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for civil fraud. They were charged with misleading investors about the quality of the loans they were buying. But this is a civil suit, not a criminal prosecution, so they face no possibility of jail time. And the SEC is notoriously ready to settle these cases, accepting fines without admission of guilt. Meanwhile, last month Bloomberg News revealed that the Federal Reserve secretly loaned $1.2 trillion to banks on Dec. 5, 2008, their neediest day, even as some of their CEOs were assuring investors their banks were healthy. Are these CEOs facing prosecution or even civil fraud suits for doing the very same thing? Not so much.
These stories barely even reveal the tip of the iceberg of financial malfeasance. We have been hearing for years now about the scams, frauds, rackets, schemes, tricks and various other ways that people on Wall Street made gazillions while crashing the economy. The one thing we haven’t heard anything about is anyone at the top being held criminally accountable … for anything!
Given these recent developments, the end of a bad year seems like a good time to take a look back at just a few examples of what was, and in too many cases, still is going on. So here is a little holiday-season nudge to all the attorneys general who may be hesitant to take them on — if not with jail time, then at least The banksters still have faced no accountability.
They got bailed out … will We, the People continue to get sold out?
9 page article on AlterNet covering:
- Fraudclosure/Robosigning
- Pushing Subprime Loans
- Betting Against Designed-to-Fail Bonds
- An “Epidemic” Of Mortgage Fraud
- Ratings Agencies Gave AAA to CDOs
- Banksters Who Made Out Like … Bandits
- Insiders Profiting From Being … Insiders
Impunity?
There are so, so many other outrages. And these are only the things that have hit the news. Are some or all of these not just outrages, but actual crimes? After the “S&L Crisis” there were 1,100 prosecutions and more than 800 bank officials went to jail. This time – even with the appearance of widespread criminality in the financial industry – not so much. In fact, not any.
Were crimes committed by people high up in the financial industry? It looks that way, but we really have no way of knowing if our government again and again offers “settlements” that block the comprehensive investigations that come with prosecutions.
Why won’t our legal system prosecute anyone on Wall Street for anything? We see outrage after outrage, and they put poor people in jail for life for stealing a hot dog when they are hungry. Meanwhile Wall Street is funding an effort to blame government for the financial collapse, to block regulation and defund the regulatory agencies. This is an effort to subvert government and turn people against democracy so that plutocracy – government of by and for the 1% – can reign.
We should all be demanding that the legal system do its job to sort this out instead of actively blocking prosecutions by approving “settlements.” People lose faith in government when it looks like the 1% can get away with any outrage. And now we know that when We, the People gather to demand something be done about this we are met with pepper spray and batons.
