Trumpland: The Stark Differences Between President Obama (and Hillary) and President-Elect Trump

What are the most stark differences between the administration of President Obama and the incoming president Donald Trump?

Wall Street’s Citigroup runs the white house under Obama, and would likely have done so under Hillary Clinton. Under Trump, Citigroup is out and Goldman Sachs is in. What a difference! Wall Street elites are still going to be determining US economic policy, which primarily consists of plots to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent.

In other words, under Trump hope and change sound a lot like the same old failed policies Wall Street has been using to weaken the US economy by killing the middle class.

Wall Street powerhouse Citigroup played a powerful role in shaping Obama’s economic agenda, which meant pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would’ve lead to the exporting of millions of US jobs.

Michael Froman, now Obama’s U.S. trade representative, was an executive at Citigroup. On October 6 2008, he wrote an email to John Podesta, then co-chair of Obama’s transition team. The subject was “Lists.” Froman used a Citigroup email address. He attached three documents: a list of women for top administration jobs, a list of non-white candidates, and a sample outline of 31 cabinet-level positions and who would fill them. “The lists will continue to grow,” Froman wrote to Podesta, “but these are the names to date that seem to be coming up as recommended by various sources for senior level jobs.”

The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.

In other words, Wall Street was calling all the shots in the Obama administration.

President-elect Trump so far has tapped former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive Steven Mnuchin (a co-investor with hedge fund billionaire George Soros) to be his Treasury secretary and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross to lead the Commerce Department. Trump even met with Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn inside Trump Tower this week.

In the days following these announcements, shares of all the big Wall Street firms climbed, with Goldman Sachs rising more than 3 percent by noon in New York.

So it appears Goldman Sachs and billionaire investors other than Citigroup are going to be running the show in the White House. Now that’s not a whole lot of change.

Below is a Trump presidential advertisement that blamed Wall Street for wrecking havoc with the US economy, and now he has embraced everything they have stood for.

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US Marshals are Now Arresting Student Loan Defaulters

Last week, seven US marshals, in full combat gear, arrested Paul Acre at his home in Houston Texas over a 29-year-old unpaid $1500 student loan. Reports are coming in that other people have been arrested for the same thing, as well.

The Obama administration clearly has its priorities straight. Arrest student loan defaulters, who clearly cannot make significant campaign contributions, take them to the judge, and force them into a legally binding repayment contracts. That’s what happened to Acre.

On the other hand, the Obama justice department has been careful not to investigate or charge with any crime a single Wall Street banker, or any of their underlings. You know those people even if you don’t know their names. These are the folks at Citigroup, JP Morgan/Chase, Goldman Sachs, a variety of hedge funds, and others who can and do make significant campaign contributions. They get the cash to do so through illegal activities, such as laundering Mexican drug cartel drug money, committing fraud, ripping off billions from consumers and investors, tanking the economy with illegal actions, and corrupting the US government completely.

Wall Street investment corporations have been caught doing all of this illegal stuff, and more, and have been fined by the US government, but not a single person has been charged with a crime, or arrested.

We clearly have a duel system of justice; one for the rich and powerful, and one for the rest of us.

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Did Hillary Clinton Make a Flagrant Lie In the Debate on Feb 4th 2016 With Bernie Sanders?

You bet she did, according to US Senator Elizabeth Warren. In the debate with Senator Sanders, Hillary said,

“Senator Sanders has said he wants to run a positive campaign; I’ve tried to keep my disagreements over issues, as it should be. But time and time again, by innuendo, by insinuation, there is this attack that he is putting forth, which really comes down to: ‘Anybody who ever took donations or speaking fees from any interest group has to be bought.’ And I just absolutely reject that, senator. And I really don’t think these kinds of attacks by insinuation are worthy of you. Enough is enough. If you have something to say, say it directly,” Clinton continued, “but you will not find I ever changed a view or a vote because of any donation I ever received.”

Yes, she did change her mind on legislation when some of the biggest banks applied pressure on her as a US senator. They wanted her to vote for legislation making it more difficult for people to go bankrupt. As first lady, she had opposed the bill, and gotten her husband, President Bill Clinton, to veto it after he had supported it.

The big banks were behind this for a big reason. Like mortgage backed bonds, credit card debt is also securitized. Wall Street investment banks purchase credit card debt, bundle them in packages, and sell bonds backed by the debt. This is a sector of the banking industry that produces tens of billions upon billions of dollars of profits for banks like JP Morgan and Citigroup. When people go bankrupt, the bonds become valueless.

By supporting the legislation, Hillary Clinton voted to enslave the 99 percent to rich investors and Wall Street investment banks with a steel chain of credit card and other debt. Most bankruptcies, by the way, are caused by medical bills paid off with credit cards.

You want proof that Hillary pulled another whooper on the audience? Check out the Bill Moyers interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren below. Then check out a few other issues Hillary was not quite honest on by clicking on the link below that.

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What is the Federal Reserve Really Doing When It Just Raised Interest Rates? It’s Redistributing Your Income to the 1 Percent. In other words, it’s welfare time once again–for the rich

Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen announced Wednesday, December 16 that the Fed will raise short term interest rates by .25 percent. That means interest rates are going to rise for the 99 percent; from 15 to 17 percent on credit cards, for example. Home mortgage rates, car loans, home equity credit lines, and student loans, among other loans, are going to rise. Home mortgage loans will rise from about 3 percent to roughly 5 percent.

Yet there are no signs of an inflationary spiral, which would in theory spur the Fed into raising rates, which is one of its falsely stated goals. Then there’s high (but not too high) employment, another cherished and false goal of the Fed. For the last six years the US economy has been creating less jobs every year (and with declining wages) than occurred under that alleged dreadful president, Jimmy Carter, whose four years as president also included rising real wages. Carter did this with an economy and population about half of today’s economy.

Preliminary indications are that the US is headed toward a recession deeper and longer than the last one, and we should arrive there somewhere between seven and seventeen months from now. The Fed’s actions exacerbate these indications by redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent, curtailing demand, and hurting the economy, such as a US durable goods sector that is clearly in recession. So what gives? What is the Fed up to?

Despite false statements to the contrary, the Fed actually has pretty much followed only two goals throughout its history, and its latest move is a classic example of this. One goal is to protect the profits and share prices of the big banks, and number two is to protect wealthy investors from their own bad investment decisions. Everybody else is expendable when the Fed undertakes its responsibilities. In other words, the 99 percent is expendable, and often the victims, of the Fed’s actions on behalf of its unstated goals, which is to financially protect the rich.

And so in this most recent Fed action, the Fed is doing its first duty; increasing the earnings and share prices of the big banks at the expense of the 99 percent, which makes it seem, quite accurately, that the relationship between the Fed/Big Banks and the 99 percent is akin to parasites unto their hosts.

Your higher credit payments are going toward greater bank profits, which will provide rising dividends to rich shareholders. Share prices might and should rise, at least in the short term. This is pure income redistribution, and the corporate propaganda network wants you to believe the Fed’s increase in interest rates is to stabilize the economy, or limit non-existent inflationary pressures, or who knows what. But the last thing the corporate press wants you to know is that more of your income is being redistributed by the US Federal Reserve Bank to the rich via higher bank profits, rising shares, and soaring dividends. The rich are going to get richer, and you are going to be more poor.

The ten biggest US banks have many things in common, and one of them is declining share prices since last summer. Clearly, the Fed’s action is intended to reverse the decline.

The ten biggest US banks are:

1 JP Morgan Chase
2. Bank of America
3. Citigroup
4. Wells Fargo
5. US Bancorp
6. Bank of New York Mellon Corporation
7. PNC Bank
8. Capital One
9. HSBC North America Holdings
10. TD Bank US Holding Company

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Big Wall Street Banks Leading Us Into Another and Even Worse Great Recession By Redistributing Massive Amounts of Income From the 99 to the 1 Percent Part 1

This story was written by Katie Rose Quandt and originally published on BillMoyers.com.

Front-line workers at our nation’s big banks — tellers, loan interviewers and customer service representatives — are required by their employers to exploit customers, according to a revealing report out today from the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD). Big banks have internal systems of penalties and rewards that entice employees to push subprime loans and credit cards on customers who would be better off without them.

CPD’s report outlines several illegal predatory practices big banks have been caught employing, usually via their front-line workers:

Blatantly discriminatory lending:
In 2011 and 2012, Bank of America and Wells Fargo paid out settlements for charging higher rates and fees to tens of thousands of African American and Hispanic borrowers than to similarly qualified white customers. Minority customers were also more likely to be steered into (more expensive, riskier) subprime mortgages.
Manipulating payment processing to maximize overdraft charges:
When a savings account balance drops too low, the bank charges a hefty overdraft fee on each subsequent purchase. Both Bank of America and US Bank paid settlements for intentionally processing customers’ largest debit card payments first, regardless of chronological order, in order to hit $0 faster and maximize overdraft fees. US Bank was also accused of allowing debit card purchases on zero-balance accounts to go through (and incur overdraft fees), instead of denying the charges upfront.
Forcing sale of unneeded products:
Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup were accused of forcing customers to purchase overpriced property insurance.
Manipulative sales quotas:
Lawsuits show Wells Fargo and Bank of America created incentive programs for employees with the interests of the company — not the customer — in mind. Wells Fargo’s sales quotas encouraged bank workers to steer prime-eligible customers to subprime loans, while falsifying other clients’ income information without their knowledge. Bank of America’s “Hustle” program rewarded quantity over quality, encouraging workers to skip processes and checks intended to protect the borrower.

Instead of cutting back on the risky, unethical practices that led to the Great Recession, the CPD report asserts that big banks have not learned from their mistakes. Bank workers report higher levels of sales pressure in 2013 than in 2008, and most do not have the job security or seniority to simply refuse to hawk credit cards or steer customers into risky financial situations. While the financial sector is turning near-record profits, the average bank teller made just $12.25 an hour in 2013 (a real-dollar decrease from 2007), causing 31 percent of tellers’ families to rely on public assistance. What’s more, 85 percent of these underpaid front-line bank employees are women, and one-third are people of color. Most are in no position to risk losing their job or having their pay docked for stepping out of line.

Several anonymous big bank employees went into detail about how their employers incentivize sales:

An HSBC employee reported that when workers fell short of sales goals, the difference was taken out of their paychecks.
A teller at a major bank said she is expected to sell three new checking, savings, or debit card accounts every day. If she falls short, she gets written up.
Customer service representatives at one major bank’s call-center said everyone is expected to make at least 40 percent of the sales of the top seller. Credit card sales count for extra, encouraging callers to push credit cards on customers who would be better served with checking or savings accounts.
A call-center worker said she offers a credit card to every customer, regardless of whether it would be beneficial. She explained: “If you aren’t offering, you can get marked down — the managers and Quality Analysts listen to your call, and can tell if you aren’t offering.”

“We’re not servicing their needs,” said one front-line worker. “What they want, what they need, isn’t important to us. Selling them a product is … Some of our customers just have their savings, many are just retirees.”

As the report concludes, “Our nation’s big banks are committed to a model that jeopardizes our communities and prevents bank employees from having a voice in their workplace.”

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US Middle Class Senator Elizabeth Warren Issues a Blunt Statement at the Wall Street Banks That Threaten Her

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gave a blunt message to the big Wall Street banks that have threatened to withhold campaign donations to Senate Democrats as a means to get Democrats to convince Warren to shut up about the crimes of Wall Street.

“It will not work,” Warren said in a statement emailed to The Huffington Post.

Warren is not going to be bought off or frightened so easily. The CEO’s of the banks want to continue and extend their unpunished streak of criminal activities dating back more than two decades. Warren insists these banks should pay the price of their criminal activities which includes, fraud and money laundering, among many other crimes. And that’s how corrupt your government is. When you are rich, there is not a single criminal activity that will net you jail time nowadays.

According to the Huffington Post, “Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have discussed ways to soften Warren’s strong tone, Reuters reports, and representatives of some have raised the idea of cutting campaign donations to Democrats. Only Citigroup — a frequent target of Warren’s criticism — so far is publicly withholding money from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.”

Cutting donations, Warren said, won’t work against her. She said, “They want a showy way to tell Democrats across the country to be scared of speaking out, to be timid about standing up, and to stay away from fighting for what’s right,” Warren wrote. “… I’m not going to stop talking about the unprecedented grasp that Citigroup has on our government’s economic policymaking apparatus … And I’m not going to pretend the work of financial reform is done, when the so-called ‘too big to fail’ banks are even bigger now than they were in 2008.”

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Matti Taibbi: Dodd-Frank Budget Fight Proves Democratic Party are Controlled and Corrupted by Wall Street

Referring to the Democratic Party meltdown in allowing a provision sneakily put in the latest budget bill (by corrupt Wall Street Republican Congressman Kevin Yoder of Kansas) that allows Wall Street investment banks to gamble with taxpayer money and expect to be bailed out if their gamble fails, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine wrote on December 13;

“If the Democrats actually stood for anything other than sounding as progressive as possible without offending their financial backers, then they would do what Republicans always do in these situations: force a shutdown to save their legislation. How many times did Republicans hold the budget hostage to rescue the Bush tax cuts? But the Democrats won’t do that here, because they’re not a real (political) party. They’re a marketing phenomenon, a big chunk of oligarchical”…”single furiously-money-collecting/favor-churning oligarchical Beltway party…cleverly sold to voters as the more reasonable and less nakedly corrupt wing of a two-headed political establishment.”

The budget battle of December 2014 proved a particularly gruesome point; both political parties have been totally corrupted by big money unleashed by the Reagan tax cuts, as well as other tax cuts, and the politicians of the US government are absolutely corrupt, with few exceptions, such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Alan Grayson, and perhaps David Vitter. That’s why the political and economic game is totally rigged against the 99 percent.

For the rest of Matt Taibbi’s story, click the link below.

Dodd-Frank Budget Fight Proves Democrats Are a Bunch of Stuffed Suits Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/dodd-frank-budget-fight-proves-democrats-are-a-bunch-of-stuffed-suits–Rolling Stone Magazine

True story. The US government has caught major US banks laundering drug money time and time again and not a soul has gone to jail.

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Video: US Senator Elizabeth Warren Is Sounding Like the Next Great President, and the First Great President Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as She Rips Into Citigroup For Sneaking Wall Street Giveaways Into Republican House Spending Bill: Demands Ripping Apart Citigroup So That It Is Not Too Big To Fail, and It’s About Time!

(Originally published in 2014)

Friday, on the floor of the US senate, US Senator Elizabeth Warren sounded like the one and only person who should be the next United States president. She sounded like the person who is truly giving us “hope and change” in fact rather than as a political slogan, and she sounded like the person Barack Obama should have been.

Everyday she’s sounding like the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt, sounding like the next great president, and the first great president since Harry Truman, or perhaps Roosevelt himself.

In the speech above, Warren excoriated President Obama, Republicans and Democrats for a House bill that will keep funding the government, but a provision within it will force the taxpayers to increase their bailouts of bad derivative investments by wealthy investors, including all of the big investment banks, and especially Citigroup. This provision allows Citigroup and other big banks to gamble with taxpayer money without any repercussions for their investment decisions.

President Obama, some Democrats, and most of the Republican Party are completely corrupt, which is why they support this giveaway for the rich and powerful. This provision is nothing more than a massive redistribution of income from the 99 to the 1 percent. That’s precisely why the president got on the telephone on Thursday and strong-armed some House Democrats into voting for this bill. The bill passed through the house and must now go through the senate.

The provision was written by Citigroup lobbyists, which nowadays is a bank that has the power to direct the majority of the Republican Party to demand maintaining the provision in the spending bill or shutting the government down by refusing to pass it.

During the final debate over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010, before Warren was a senator, she was asked about an attempt to weaken the unborn agency. “My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor,” she said at the time. These comments were unsuccessfully used against her in her subsequent senate campaign.

This week, she fought to keep a major Wall Street giveaway out of a must-pass spending bill and by Friday night it was clear the fight in the House of Representatives was lost. So Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, took the Senate floor and unleashed a powerful punch on Wall Street giant Citigroup that will leave a mark for an awfully long time, especially on the grass roots, perhaps both grassroots Democrats and Republicans. Hopefully, we are all cheering her on, while Democrats such as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden meekly stand by (and he will side with Wall Street since he always does) and do nothing since he is a Wall Street stooge pretending to be a senator that represents the people of Oregon.

Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana has voiced opposition to the provision. We’ll see if he puts his vote where his mouth is, or whether he’s simply pretending to oppose Wall Street.

In the speech above, after listing the top Citigroup executives who have gone on to work in the Obama administration, Warren addressed Citibank executives directly, noting that she agreed that Wall Street reform wasn’t perfect. “I agree with you. Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect. It should have broken you into pieces,” she said.

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Video: US Senator Elizabeth Warren Fights the Wall Street Republican Party Which Will Shut the Government Down If the Biggest Wall Street Investment Banks Aren’t Allowed to Screw the American People Again

The Republican led House of Representatives want to allow derivative traders, including the biggest investment banks on Wall Street, to be able to gamble on derivative trading with taxpayer money. And they’re threatening to shut the government down again if they aren’t allowed to screw the American people, like last time, and the time before that. The Republicans want to duplicate the same situation that led to the recession of 2007-09, which was the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, and both of those economic disasters were created by Republican economic policies designed to enrich the most affluent at the expense of everybody else. US Senator Elizabeth Warren is fighting back. This demonstrates how corrupted by big money the Republican Party is, and why it can only attract far right wackos to serve as congressmen and women.

According the New York Times, “The fight has centered on elements of Dodd-Frank that address the culprits of the financial crisis, including the sort of derivatives trading that helped push the insurance giant American International Group to the brink of collapse in 2008. One bill would amend the so-called Volcker Rule, a centerpiece of Dodd-Frank. Another bill that lawmakers plan to include in the government funding plan was essentially written by lobbyists for Citigroup.

If included in the final spending bill, the proposals would represent the greatest threat yet to Dodd-Frank, the most comprehensive regulatory overhaul since the Depression and one of the Obama administration’s signature legislative achievements. Other than a tweak here or a delay there, Dodd-Frank has largely survived a surge of Wall Street lobbying.

The legislative changes are only one front in Wall Street’s attack on Dodd-Frank. Wall Street has also lobbied the regulators who are putting Dodd-Frank into effect, with varying degrees of success.”

Check out the link below for more on the New York Times report.

Wall Street Seeks to Tuck Dodd-Frank Changes in Budget Bill–New York Times

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Ten Corporate Tax Dodgers You Show Know About

When corporations pay no taxes, the result is a redistribution of income from the 99 to the 1 percent. When corporations do not pay taxes, the money from those taxes that should have gone to schools, roads, infrastructure maintenance, fire, police and more, are instead diverted to the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, surging share prices and dividends.

Furthermore, most of these major corporations have engaged in scams to overcharge the 99 percent, such as Bank of America and Citigroup in the LIBOR scandal conspiring with other banks to overcharge consumers on interest rates for loans, such as credit cards and auto. The money from that scandal went into the pockets of the 1 percent and came out of the pockets of the 99 percent.

While some corporations do not pay any taxes, many others wind up receiving tax rebates on taxes they never paid (such as Verizon), another redistribution of income from the tax revenues of the 99 percent to the pockets of the 1 percent.

Many of these corporations are stealing record profits, holding down the pay of their 99 percent employees, and shipping jobs overseas. That’s precisely why the economy is legislatively rigged in favor of the one percent, and that shows how corrupt to the core the US government has become over the last thirty years.

So here’s a list of 10 tax-dodging corporations excerpted from the Americans for Tax Fairness report.

	Bank of America runs its business through more than 300 offshore tax-haven subsidiaries. It reported $17.2 billion in accumulated offshore profits in 2012. It would owe $4.3 billion in US taxes if these funds were brought back to the US.
	Citigroup had $42.6 billion in foreign profits parked offshore in 2012 on which it paid no US taxes. It reported that it would owe $11.5 billion if it brings these funds back to the US. A significant chunk is being held in tax-haven countries.
	ExxonMobil had a three-year federal income tax rate of just 15 percent. This gave the company a tax subsidy worth $6.2 billion from 2010-2012. It had $43 billion in offshore profits at the end of 2012, on which it paid no US taxes.
	FedEx made $6 billion over the last three years and didn’t pay a dime in federal income taxes, in part because the tax code subsidized its purchase of new planes. This gave FedEx a huge tax subsidy worth $2.1 billion.
	General Electric received a tax subsidy of nearly $29 billion over the last 11 years. While dodging paying its fair share of federal income taxes, GE pocketed $21.8 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts from Uncle Sam between 2006 and 2012.
	Honeywell had profits of $5 billion from 2009 to 2012. Yet it paid only $50 million in federal income taxes for the period. Its tax rate was just 1 percent over the last four years. This gave it a huge tax subsidy worth $1.7 billion.
	Merck had profits of $13.6 billion and paid $2.5 billion in federal income taxes from 2009 to 2012. While dodging its fair share of federal income taxes, it pocketed $8.7 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts from Uncle Sam between 2006 and 2012.
	Microsoft saved $4.5 billion in federal income taxes from 2009 to 2011 by transferring profits to a subsidiary in the tax haven of Puerto Rico. It had $60.8 billion in profits stashed offshore in 2012 on which it paid no US taxes.
	Pfizer paid no US income taxes from 2010 to 2012 while earning $43 billion worldwide. It did this in part by performing accounting acrobatics to shift its US profits offshore. It received $2.2 billion in federal tax refunds.
	Verizon made $19.3 billion in US pretax profits from 2008 to 2012, yet didn’t pay any federal income taxes during the period. Instead, it got $535 million in tax rebates. Verizon’s effective federal income tax rate was negative 2.8 percent from 2008 to 2012.

rate Tax Dodgers You Should Know About

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