FEW HAVE SERVED THE CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS MORE THAN HILLARY CLINTON AND BARACK OBAMA!
Obama,
Clinton silent on Wells Fargo Crime of the Century
By Mark Wachtler
Sen. Elizabeth Warren
rips into Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf during a Senate hearing yesterday. Image
courtesy of Gazettenet.com.
rips into Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf during a Senate hearing yesterday. Image
courtesy of Gazettenet.com.
September 21, 2016. San
Francisco, CA (ONN) By all accounts, Wells Fargo has been perpetrating the
crime of the century. Some have called it the largest illegal scam in history.
Over the past five years, at least two million crimes were committed by 5,300 employees
of Wells Fargo bank. The Obama administration has retained its perfect record
of protecting bankers from criminal prosecution, settling like always for a
large cash payment to the same Executive Branch that refuses to prosecute.
Not a single conviction in 8
years
There’s a reason why most
bank executives, while being longtime Republicans, are supporting Democrat
Hillary Clinton for President. We’d be speculating if we revealed their
reasons. But this week’s bombshell that Wells Fargo bank perpetrated the
largest crime in American history and the Obama administration has continued
its longstanding policy of not bringing a single offender to justice, suggests
there’s more to the cozy relationship between criminal banks and Democratic
Party leaders like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
It took a Senate Committee
hearing yesterday in which Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was crucified by
Democrat and Republican Senators alike, for the American people to find out
just how big and widespread the five-year crime spree at Wells Fargo was. The
LA Times exposed the fraud three years ago with California prosecutors
conceding the crime was too large and too widespread for its limited
capabilities to prosecute, opting instead for a cash payment from the bank. But
the Obama Justice Dept is accused of refusing to investigate the largest crime
in history until only days ago.
The crime of the century
As revealed in the Senate
Committee hearing yesterday, the details of the Wells Fargo fraud perpetrated
on the American people are mind-blowing. As one US Senator put it, the number
of victims of this latest fraud is more than double the whole population of his
entire state.
5,300 Wells Fargo employees
were identified and fired for opening over 2 million bank accounts for their
customers without the customers’ knowledge. A separate US Senator said his
office was flooded with calls from outraged small, local bank executives in his
state who insisted that if they or their employees stole money from their
customers’ accounts, forged customers’ signatures to open new accounts, and
then stole even more money from the new accounts in the form of fees and fines
- they’d all be in jail.
But the Obama Justice
Department, as well as a host of Executive Branch regulatory agencies, has
continued its policy of protecting individual perpetrators from criminal
prosecution opting instead for cash payments from shareholders to the Obama
administration. In this case, Wells Fargo was ordered to pay a $185 million
fine to the government. That amount pales in comparison to the $5 billion in
profits the bank pockets every quarter.
Crime does pay
In grilling the Wells Fargo
CEO yesterday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) accused him of personally
pocketing millions of dollars from the scam. The bank executive who oversaw the
criminal activity – Carrie Tolstedt – has announced she is leaving the bank,
and she’s leaving with a cash payout of $124 million.
Outraged critics of the
Obama administration’s handling of recurring crimes perpetrated by giant Wall
Street banks point out that they also happen to be some of his and Hillary
Clinton’s largest financial contributors. They repeatedly point out that not a
single person has been brought to justice for any crime committed by any of the
big banks since Barack Obama took office.
They point to the economic
collapse of 2008-2009. They point to the robo-signing scam in which over 1
million American families and businesses had their homes and property stolen by
Bank of America and Wells Fargo, only to have the Obama Justice Dept settle for
a payment of a few thousand dollars to each victim instead of the return of
their homes. They point to illegal money laundering for Iran by Standard
Chartered and illegal money laundering for Mexican drug cartels by HSBC. JP
Morgan Chase has been convicted multiple times both criminally and civilly. But
in every case, not a single person ever went to jail.
Critics of the Democrat
administration also point out that under Republican administrations, hundreds
of criminal bankers were put in jail. They also point to the imprisonment of
Worldcom’s executives, and Enron’s executives, and a host of others. Under Democrats,
they argue, not a single banker has gone to prison. In fact, in 2008 after the
economic collapse banks were deemed “too big to fail, too big to jail”. But
under President Obama, they’ve gotten even bigger, and obviously still too big
to jail.
Clinton and Obama silent
One Senator summed up the
unified outrage by all Americans yesterday when he said Wells Fargo had managed
to do something that has never happened in his entire political career –
uniting Senators from both parties in their outrage at the fraud committed, and
the Obama administration’s refusal to prosecute it.
And while big named
Democrats from this year’s Presidential campaign like Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have publicly condemned the fraud,
other Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have remained ominously
silent.
“You squeezed your employees
to the breaking point so they would cheat customers and you could drive up the
value of your stock and put hundreds of millions of dollars in your own
pocket,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren told the Wells Fargo CEO yesterday, “You should
resign. You should give back the money you took while the scam was going on.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders was also
outspoken in his condemnation. “Let’s be clear, the business model of Wall
Street is fraud,” he said yesterday, “There is no better example than the
recently-exposed illegal behavior at Wells Fargo.”
For her part, Hillary
Clinton also made a public statement in the form of an open letter to Wells
Fargo customers. But instead of condemning the activity as unpunished crime
like all of her counterparts have, Clinton excused the fraud as accidental
mismanagement due to the enormous size of the nation’s largest bank. “We need
to make sure that no financial institution is too big to manage,” Clinton told
Wells Fargo customers, “And if any bank can’t be managed effectively, it should
be broken up.”
Senate hearings on the Wells
Fargo fraud will continue, with Senators turning their attention to federal
regulators who turned a blind eye, bank auditors and risk managers who had to
know about the scam, and the independent accounting firm that signed-off on the
criminal activity.
AMERICA’S ECONOMIC ARMAGEDDON
Hillary Clinton aligns with Wall Street for 2016
By Mark Wachtler
January 2, 2014. Manhattan. (ONN) When Goldman Sachs invites you to a party, you go, especially if you have your sights set on a Presidential run in 2016. And that’s exactly what Hillary Clinton did two weeks ago. Speaking to the exclusive crowd of millionaires and billionaires, the former Secretary of State let them know in no uncertain terms that another Clinton White House would once again be on Wall Street’s side in America’s culture war.
Hillary Clinton is positioning to be Wall Street's preferred candidate in 2016. Image courtesy of Flickr.
Most people assume that the notorious 1%-ers, those elite billionaire barons of Wall Street, are all Republicans. But the truth is, in 2008 America’s super-rich abandoned the GOP and its candidate John McCain and overwhelmingly supported Democrat Barack Obama. Campaign donations from the five largest Wall Street banks exponentially favored the Democrat. That changed in 2012 when they switched back to the Republican Party and one of their own – Mitt Romney. But both times they were burned. Now, they long for the good old days of the Clinton and Bush administrations where they were given free reign to do almost anything they wanted.
Goldman’s get-together
Two weeks ago at the luxurious Conrad Hotel in lower Manhattan, some of the world’s richest and most powerful people got together for what seemed at times like a political rally. Prospective 2016 Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton even reportedly took home no less than $200,000 as her minimum speaking fee. By her side giving his own six-figure keynote speech to the gathered Wall Street elite was her husband and former President Bill Clinton.
After being introduced by Goldman Sachs executive Tim O’Neill, Hillary Clinton went on to reassure the crowd of bankers and wealthy investors that a Clinton administration wouldn’t hold Wall Street responsible for the nation’s economic ills the way the current Obama administration has. Illustrating the two hypocritical faces of the Obama White House, the bankers love his policy of giving them trillions in free money. But they don’t like being called “fat cats” by the President at the same time.
According to a report from Politico which interviewed guests at the high profile event, Hillary Clinton insisted that all Americans were to blame for the country’s ever-growing economic failings over the past three decades, not just Wall Street as many from both of America’s two establishment parties contend. Bank-bashing, she told them, was counter-productive and needed to stop.
Impressions from the event
After speaking to a number of attendees, the report goes on to quote or paraphrase their reactions to Clinton’s speech. One pleasantly surprised Wall Street insider told the publication, “It was like, here’s someone who doesn’t want to vilify us but wants to get business back in the game. Like, maybe here’s someone who can lead us out of the wilderness.”
Hillary Clinton is no stranger to Wall Street’s richest and most powerful insiders. As first lady, a US Senator, Presidential candidate, and then Secretary of State, she has literally spent decades courting them for political contributions and watching many of them grow up from their first years out of college to their positions at the helms of the wealthiest corporations on Earth. And she’s been a vocal and loyal supporter of Wall Street the entire time.
The Bill Clinton administration was so pro-Wall Street that it was accused by many of being responsible for the global economic collapse of 2007-2008. Clinton removed the barrier between investment banks and commercial banks, allowing all of them to take citizen deposits and then gamble them in the casino-like financial markets. He also incentivized them to increase home loans, even to those who didn’t qualify, in an attempt to put as many Americans as possible into their own home.
With rank and file Tea Party Republicans shunning Wall Street and the bottom half of the Democratic Party rallying around corruption-busters like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), one attendee at the Goldman Sachs event who is also a major Republican donor told Politico, “The ground is shifting beneath their feet.” He was speaking of the political clout Wall Street has lost to movements like Occupy and individual power-players such as billionaire Sheldon Adelson who single-handedly used his own vast fortune to affect the Republican nominating process.
Ironically, as the American people feel increasingly betrayed by both Democrats and Republicans in favor of Wall Street, leaders on Wall Street feel betrayed by the same two parties who feel Washington has sided with the American people at their expense. As one attendee put it, “Like the rest of America, Wall Street is looking at Washington and saying whether we agree or disagree, they’re looking at both parties with complete revulsion.”
Obama double-cross
One repeating theme at the Goldman Sachs Manhattan event with the Clintons was the impression by Wall Street power-brokers that they were betrayed by President Obama. They describe how they went out on a limb to get him elected President, both publicly and financially, and he betrayed them. Most describe how the animosity dates all the way back to the opening days of the first Obama administration in 2009.
At the time, credit had disappeared, Lehman Brothers was forced out of business by the government, unemployment skyrocketed, and panic had spread across most of America and the world. Wall Street’s first demand from the new President was that his Democratic administration continue the Bush/Republican policy of bailing out irresponsible and criminal banks with trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. Obama was happy to oblige.
At the same time it was bailing out Wall Street, the Obama administration was making other small changes that rubbed the global banking community the wrong way. The first slight to them was the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff. Emanuel had made millions working on Wall Street over the previous three years through his political connections, but knew next to nothing about how banking worked. His well-reported promise to ‘not let a crisis go to waste’ was seen as the first shot against the banks.
“I knew right at that moment, standing in Rahm’s office, that they did not really have any interest in understanding Wall Street or working with us in any significant way,” one CEO told the publication. Federal Reserve and Treasury veteran Timothy Geithner seemed to be the only pro-Wall Street person in the Obama administration. Their impression was confirmed when the President named his White House liaison to Wall Street. Unlike Bill Clinton who picked former Goldman Sachs CEO Robert Rubin, Clinton chose longtime neighborhood friend Valerie Jarrett.
Wall Street executives interviewed by Politico for their report describe how Jarrett knew next to nothing about finance and only cared about dictating Obama’s agenda. One pro-Obama banking executive active in Democratic Party circles was blunt when describing Valerie Jarrett and her work at the White House. “Valerie immediately designated herself as business liaison in the White House, and there is no one I know who respects her as a businessperson or thinks she knows anything about business.” And that’s from one of their own Wall Street supporters.
While the leaders of both the Republicans and Democrats are in Wall Street’s pockets, and as President Obama continues to play both sides against each other, America’s Main St. citizens continue to mobilize against the country’s financial oligarchy. Whether it’s the Tea Party on the right or Senator Elizabeth Warren and her army of corruption-busters on the left, Wall Street is feeling the heat. And depending on who the GOP nominates for President in 2016, Hillary Clinton is looking more and more like Wall Street’s candidate.
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