Here Is Your Chance To Hit Them Where It Hurts, and Get A Better Deal At The Same Time.

Bank Transfer Day: Over 75,000 Respond to November 5 Event

By chrismontyon Nov-4-11

From:  blippitt.com

 

Americans are fed up with greed, capitalism, and especially big banks. Consumers are finally getting the message and learning to speak with their wallets.

As the Occupy movement gains momentum across the nation, another movement is quickly gaining traction…Bank Transfer Day, a Facebook movement urging people to move their money from large banks to local credit unions on November 5, 2011.

“If you don’t believe in a company’s practices or feel that a company’s practices are unethical, then, very simply, you should not have money with that company,” the 27-year-old creator of the event, Kristen Christian, told KTLA Live.

“I was tired of paying outrageous fees to banks for a severe lack of services. I was tired of having my money access determined by a corporation and the final straw because I was tired of banks targeting the impoverished and working class,” she said.

Both the banking and credit union industries are bracing for a busy tomorrow (Saturday), when many customer are expected to calmly and respectfully transfer their balances out of their existing banks and into local credit unions.

Kristen says she chose November 5th of its association with Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up the British House of Lords, but was captured on that date in 1605…hence the Anonymous-like logo above.

So far, over 75,000 people are “attending” the event, which was posted to Facebook here.
From the official event description:

Together we can ensure that these banking institutions will always remember the 5th of November. If we shift our funds from the for-profit banking institutions in favor of not-for-profit credit unions before this date, we will send a clear message that conscious consumers won’t support companies with unethical business practices. It’s time to invest in local community growth.

• Research your local credit union options
• Open an account with the one that best suits your needs
• Cancel all automatic withdrawals & deposits
• Transfer your funds to the new account
• Follow your bank’s procedures to close your account before 11/05

FIND A CREDIT UNION

USA: http://www.findacreditunion.com/

CANADA: http://locator.cucentral.com/

UK: http://www.findyourcreditunion.co.uk/

While the Bank Transfer Day movement acknowledges the enthusiasm from Anonymous and Occupy Wall Street, the Bank Transfer Day movement was neither inspired by, derived from nor organized by Anonymous or the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the Bank Transfer Day movement does not endorse any activities conducted by Anonymous or Occupy Wall Street.

The Credit Union National Association (CUNA) said the association’s web site aimed at informing customers about credit union services has seen traffic double. CUNA members reported an increase in account openings. According to Bill Cheney, CUNA’s president and chief executive officer, the current surge in account openings has been more sustained than similar surges in the past.
So what do you think? Will you be participating in Bank Transfer Day?

Get more info at the official Bank Transfer Day Facebook page here.

Robert Rubin, Economic Public Enemy Number1. And He Is One Of Obamas Favorit Advisors.

Too Big to Jail

Wednesday 2 November 2011

by: Robert Scheer

Robert Rubin. (Photo: Center for American Progress / Flickr)

Can we all agree that a $1 billion swindle represents a lot of money, and the fact that Citigroup agreed last week to pay a $285 million fine to settle SEC charges for “misleading investors” demonstrates a damning admission of culpability?

So why has Robert Rubin, the onetime treasury secretary who went on to become Citigroup chairman during the time of the corporation’s financial shenanigans, never been held accountable for this and other deep damage done to the U.S. economy on his watch?

Rubin’s tenure atop the world of high finance began when he was co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, before he became Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary and pushed through the reversal of the Glass-Steagall Act, an action that legalized the formation of Citigroup and other “too big to fail” banking conglomerates.

Rubin’s destructive impact on the economy in enabling these giant corporate banks to run amok was far greater than that of swindler Bernard Madoff, who sits in prison under a 150-year sentence while Rubin sits on the Harvard Board of Overseers, as chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and as a leader of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project.

Rubin was rewarded for his efforts on behalf of Citigroup with a top job as chairman of the bank’s executive committee and at least $126 million in compensation. That was “compensation” for steering the bank to the point of a bankruptcy avoided only by a $45 billion taxpayer bailout and a further guarantee of $300 billion of the bank’s toxic assets.

Those toxic assets and other collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps were exempted from government regulation by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Rubin helped design while he was treasury secretary and which was turned into law when Rubin protégé Lawrence Summers took over that Cabinet post.

In arguing that the derivatives market in housing mortgages and other debt obligations required no government oversight, Summers told Congress, “First, the parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies. ... Second, given the nature of the underlying assets—namely supplies of financial exchange and other financial instruments—there would seem to be little scope for market manipulation. ...”

Oops. One wonders if Summers, who went on to be president of Harvard after playing such a disastrous role in the federal government, ever asked his mentor Rubin what went wrong. After all, it was Rubin who was a honcho at the “sophisticated financial institution” of Citigroup when, as the Securities and Exchange Commission filing against the bank explains, Citigroup structured and marketed a $1 billion toxic asset to investors without disclosing that it was simultaneously betting against that asset.

Read More: Here

Apperantly The Vikings Of Iceland Know How To Deal With Banksters

The Icelandic Model of Handling Debt Crises

 

Thursday 3 November 2011

by: Michael Scott-Moore, Miller-McCune | News Analysis

Iceland did something right in the credit crisis, perhaps offering lessons both for Greece and Occupy Wall Street protesters

The latest euro rescue plan lurched into crisis this week after the Greek prime minister decided to put the package to a popular vote. This unexpected gesture of independence “sent tremors through Europe’s financial markets,” according to The New York Times, and “hammered” U.S. markets, “showing once again how the domestic politics of even the smallest members of the European Union can create troubles” beyond all proportion.

The panic over Greece, of course, is panic over the euro. Another European country, Iceland, took a far more radical path than did Greece, yet it went largely unnoticed. Iceland, in 2009, did what Greece would like to do now: it let its banks fail, and told their creditors to take a hike.

Two years on, Iceland’s economy is recovering, while Greece and Ireland and other euro-zone members struggle with huge taxpayer-funded bank bailouts and austerity measures that will probably fail to create jobs. “Iceland did the right thing by making sure its payment systems continued to function while creditors, not the taxpayers, shouldered the losses of banks,” Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, told Bloomberg. “Ireland’s done all the wrong things, on the other hand. That’s probably the worst model.”

Read More: Here

Talk Back to Banksters

Here is a nice way to communicate with the "To Big To Fail Banks" and let them know how you feel about their fraud and destruction of our economy. And it costs you nothing, and that's a good thing.

LGMC

Christian Groups Make Plans To Protect #OccupyLSX Protesters At St. Paul's Cathedral

 

By Susie Madrak

I've seen lots of online Christian bloggers express their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. I wonder if they're ever going to get involved like these British Christian groups? It would be a great thing:
Christian groups have drawn up plans to protect protesters by forming a ring of prayer around the camp outside St Paul's Cathedral, should an attempt be made to forcibly remove them.

As the storm of controversy over the handling of the Occupy London Stock Exchange demonstration deepened on Saturday, Christian activists said it was their duty to stand up for peaceful protest in the absence of support from St Paul's. One Christian protester, Tanya Paton, said: "We represent peace, unity and love. A ring of prayer is a wonderful symbol."

With senior officials at St Paul's apparently intent on seeking an injunction to break up the protest, the director of the influential religious thinktank Ekklesia, Jonathan Bartley, said the cathedral's handling of the protest had been a "car crash" and predicted more high-profile resignations from the Church of England.

Pelosi Shows She Cares More for The 1% than the 99%, and Supports Cuts To Social Security

The 1%er "Democrats" in congress are getting ready to help the republicans transfer your money to their brethren in the form of corporate tax cuts paid for by cuts to Social Security and Medicare

Nancy Pelosi has signaled to the uber rich "dinos"(democrat in name only) on the super committee that she will support a plan that cuts Social Security and Medicare.

Nancy Pelosi is a very wealthy San Franciscan and she has made a career in politics pretending to be on the side of the 99% of Americans that she is not part of. But as the end game approaches she will side with her wealthy friends and sell out the other 99%.

‘StudentsFirst’ Spending $70,000 To Support MI GOP Rep. Who Backed Huge Education Cuts

"Michelle Rhee, WE SEE YOU, SHAME SHAME, SHAME."  LGMC

By Zaid Jilani

Is StudentsFirst really living up to its name by supporting a right-wing Republican?

Earlier this week, Michigan’s Flint Journal reported that Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst has been supporting Michigan GOP Rep. Paul Scott against a potential recall election. Altogether, StudentsFirst has spent and owed $70,000 of political spending on behalf of Scott.

This came as a shock to many, who viewed Rhee’s StudentsFirst as primarily a nonpartisan group dedicated to education reform. By spending tens of thousands of dollars defending Scott, StudentsFirst is drawing a decidedly political line. What’s more, Scott has been a vocal defender of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) economic and education policies, which have lead to significant reductions in the state’s K-12 school aid.

Included among the budget that Snyder signed earlier this year was a whopping $300 million aid reduction to schools statewide. Additionally, there was a $100 million cut to aid to cities, which also serves to negatively impact schools.

It seems odd that an organization that says its goal is to “build a national movement to defend the interests of children in public education and pursue transformative reform, so that America has the best education system in the world” would spend so much money to defend a right-wing Republican who loyally helped his right-wing Republican governor take an axe to the statewide school budet.