DU Jeopardy - ANSWER: Those who PROFIT from It.

[Octafish]

$500 Question:

What kind of people would ALLOW a recession to happen,
let alone ALLOW a recession to turn into a depression?



Paul Krugman: Fighting Off Depression

Hint: GOPigs!

Obama Faces a Delay for His Economic Recovery Plan

Gosh! Why would they want to delay Progress?

Republicans Fight Obama's Stimulus Plans, Fearing Its Success Will Mean Years of Political Oblivion

Well. They’re the ones who profit off other’s pain.

OFFSHORE BANKING: U.S.A.'S SECRET THREAT

How to get out of Double Jeopardy? Score big!



Nancy and Harry may find themselves wishing
they'd stood up to Smirko the Petrified Goat
and his flying monkey minions
sooner, rather than later.

Short-selling bed-wetting bastards!

From Wall Street to Washington: It's All One Big Lie

[leftchick]

1. I will take the BFEE for 500.00 Alex

great post!

k&r

:)

[Octafish]

2. Offshore Bank Havens Help Halliburton, Etc. Big-Time, Alex.

So. When did tax evasion stop being un-American?

Corporate Tax Evasion via Offshore Subsidiaries: A Primer

By Lucy Komisar
First published by Pacific News Service, April 9, 2004

Were you stunned by the revelation, days before your taxes are due, that nearly two-thirds of companies operating in America reported owing no taxes from 1996 through 2000? That over 90 percent of large corporations -- with at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts -- reported owing taxes of only under 5 percent?

The law requires firms to pay 35 percent tax on U.S. profits. Had big business complied, corporate income taxes in 2002 would have been $308 billion instead of only an estimated $136 billion. Do you wish you knew the corporate secret?

Is your town or state suffering from service cutbacks because tax revenues are down? Would you like to cut your tax bite from the current 15 to 35 percent to 5 percent or zero? How do corporations do it?

The General Accounting Office report, commissioned by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and released April 5, gave a clue to how. It's called "transfer pricing," or improperly shifting income to lower-tax countries.

Firms set up offshore "subsidiaries" which, on their books, perform functions that let them cut onshore taxes. They may sell their own "logo" to the subsidiary and then pay a high price to "rent" it back, deducting "rent" as expense. They may move money to the subsidiary and "borrow" it back, deducting interest payments. If several of their subsidiaries are involved in a deal, the firms may grossly inflate profits assigned to those in offshore tax havens, which levy no or minimal taxes on "profits" claimed there.

SNIP...

Why does Washington tolerate the offshore tax evasion system? Because powerful people benefit. With President Bush on its board, Harken Energy set up an offshore network that cut its taxes. White House spokesman Dan Bartlett defended Harken for seeking "tax competitiveness," the preferred euphemism. When Vice President Cheney ran Halliburton, it increased its offshore subsidiaries from 9 to at least 44.

CONTINUED...

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/corporate_tax_evasion_offshore.html

Lucy Komisar is tops! Like you, leftchick! Hey, have you gotten a copy of Russ Baker's "Family of Secrets" yet? Heh heh.

[Kaleko]

3. Arrgh, here it comes again...

that slow-boiling feeling of impotent outrage.

Thanks, Octafish.

[Octafish]

6. AIG's Offshore Strategies Hide a Scam

Don't We the People now OWN these guys?
We should, our Representatives gave AIG a $150 billion golden parachute...

FINANCE-US: AIG's Offshore Strategies Hide a Scam

By Lucy Komisar*

NEW YORK, Dec 19 (IPS) - The company getting the biggest U.S. bailout operated a scam to help clients cheat on U.S. taxes, regulators say. It is AIG, American International Group, the world's largest insurance conglomerate.

AIG was run by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg. He was ousted as CEO in 2005 by the board of directors after the New York Attorney General charged him with fraudulent business practices, securities fraud, and other violations.

These charges did not mention a captive insurance scam that Greenberg, famous as a hands-on manager, would have been involved in approving. AIG took inflated fees from customers, set up reinsurance companies for them in Bermuda, and bought reinsurance from them, effectively giving their clients tax-free cash in that offshore island.

Would Greenberg have known that his company was writing such a tax-evading policy for the likes of Victor Posner, a notorious crook who was banned from public companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1988? Very likely.

The scam was discovered by Terry Mills who worked for a large insurance company in Delaware and was tasked to investigate the insurance of Posner's NVF Corporation in 1993. Mills found that the premiums were double the going rate. He said, "We were able to find them coverage in the standard market."

However, the Delaware Insurance Department did not make the scam public or take any action against AIG, which was so powerful that it intimidated government regulators. (The Delaware regulator who talked to IPS said AIG sent a private investigator to harass him.)

CONTINUED...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45176

So. We the People got a golden something.



You are welcome, Kaleko.
Sorry about the indigestible salad.
It's too much for one plate to handle,
which means I very much appreciate your help.

[Kaleko]

7. The degree to which we have all been hoodwinked, exploited and enslaved,

especially among supposedly well-educated, liberty-loving Americans, is absolutely staggering.

And still the show goes on...

Lean on me, as I lean on you and others here on DU who consistently face the facts.

[hughee99]

4. So the logic is that one party is hoping for the worst,

if not actively working for it, because it will hurt them politically if the other party succeeds (from the "Republicans Fight Obama's Stimulus Plans, Fearing Its Success Will Mean Years of Political Oblivion" article). My brother was saying something exactly like this last week... except he's a freeper... and it started out "The Democrats are doing everything they can to prevent any sort of success in Iraq because it will hurt them politically"... and he's been saying it for 6 years now.

Leaving aside the fact that THAT ship has already sailed, the argument makes it sound like repukes only oppose these sort of policies because of the current political outlook. In reality, many repukes have been on record for quite some time opposing "New Deal" type policies. They didn't become stupid and heartless overnight because it was the politically expedient thing to do, they've been stupid and heartless for years.

[Octafish]

8. Why Big Finance Is Laughing All the Way to the Bank

My Friend, I couldn't agree more. When it comes to money, the greedheads have a standing tradition of evil.

Why Big Finance Is Laughing All the Way to the Bank

By Rob Larson, AlterNet
Posted on January 5, 2009

The country's financial markets have collapsed, as they tend to do when left without adult supervision, and they're taking our economy with them. With the large banks refusing to make loans after losing billions on worthless subprime derivatives, the government stepped in and agreed to October's financial bailout package.

The $700 billion legislation was meant to buy banks' "troubled assets" for cash, and thus improve banks' balance sheets to the point that they would lend again. This would mean credit for struggling businesses and households and could encourage expansion and hiring, thus pulling us out of recession.

But it turns out the banks haven't held up their end of the bargain. All they're holding up is a glass to a government that would rather shovel cash into the largest banks than take the edge off the recession.

The bailout was highly unpopular, despite a heavy push by the U.S. political leadership. Most citizens apparently couldn't figure why we should give money to the banks that caused this crisis by buying deeply into the housing bubble. Especially when foreclosures and bankruptcies among regular homeowners are out of control -- the Mortgage Bankers Association reports that "a record 1 in 10 American homeowners with a mortgage was either at least one month behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of September." But the plan has not been carried out as advertised -- rather than buying the subprime securities from the banks, the government has instead decided to "recapitalize" them. Meaning, invest money in the big banks for some equity, money which the banks could then loan to the staggering economy. Well, at least the part where we give them money went well.

The fact is that the banks are not making loans -- the "credit crunch" goes on, and the economy is the worse for it. After so many of Wall Street's great investment banks went bankrupt, or were bailed out by the government, or were bought by competitors, the banks want to "hoard cash" to avoid a similar fate. But besides shoring up their own finances, the banks are putting our public bailout money to another purpose -- buying up their smaller competitors.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/116859/

And if irony were an Olympic sport, the current crew would win gold. Thank you for caring, hughee99. The good hearted folk will win -- perhaps, if we're really lucky -- in the short-term, too.

[G_j]

5. you can use my 500

to help bailout a billionaire

citizenship is also about sacrifice, and they really need help.. :cry:

[Octafish]

10. America’s broken economy

Thanks, G_j! Helping them is the least We the little People can do.

America’s broken economy

By Dustin Ensinger
Online Journal Guest Writer
Jan 6, 2009, 00:22

The age of American exceptionalism is over. The nation is indebted to the point of bankruptcy and is desperate for foreign investment to artificially prop up a broken economy that would completely collapse if not for the “generosity“ of nations like China, Japan and others. Unfortunately, that “generosity” comes with a price tag: American sovereignty, power and influence.

As Joel Hilliker of The Trumpet.com reports, the U.S. is now so reliant on foreign financing that, “the United States -- broke and utterly dependent on foreign creditors -- has little choice but to submit . As it does, more and more it is looking like a jilted and desperate lover.”

Unable to sustain itself without foreign cash, the U.S. is now more open for foreign investment than ever, and with that foreign investment comes the loss of our best wealth producing companies and more foreign influence over U.S. affairs.

That growing foreign influence is becoming more and more evident. At the most recent G-20 summit, European Union leaders chastised the U.S. for its economic failures and signaled its intention to displace the U.S. as the world’s economic superpower, or at least put itself on par with the U.S.

“The results of the G-20 economic summit amount to nothing less than the seamless integration of the United States into the European economy,” former presidential advisor Dick Morris said of the meeting.

China has recently surpassed Japan to become the biggest creditor to the U.S. “China’s new status -- it now owns nearly $1 out of every $10 in U.S. public debt -- means Washington will be increasingly forced to rely on Beijing as it seeks to raise money to cover the cost of a $700 billion bailout, the Washington Post reported. “The growing dependence on Chinese cash is granting Beijing extraordinary sway over the U.S. economy.”

CONTINUED w LINKS...

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4196.shtml

IMFO, the greed of America's richest people has done more to hurt this nation than all its foreign enemies combined. Thank you for caring and doing something about it, G_j.

[G_j]

12. KICK!

[burythehatchet]

9. Another great effort, thank you for all you do. I'm afraid Nancy and Harry

are solidly part of their team. We are where we are because of one party rule. Republicans, and Republicans who call themselves Democrats.

[Octafish]

11. The Octopus

“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen…. At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.”

- New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922


FDR and JFK talked about this too, but I can't access their quotes at the moment.

Thank you for understanding and doing something about it, burythehatchet. Who knows? We may yet get the country back.

[katty]

13. o yeah! laughing all the way to THEIR banks

[Octafish]

20. $2 Trillion Handed out by Paulson and Bernanke, But Who Got It, Nobody Knows

They are so busted, katty.

$2 Trillion Handed out by Paulson and Bernanke, But Who Got It, Nobody Knows

By Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation
Posted on November 17, 2008, Printed on November 17, 2008

With his latest policy switch to buying stock in banks and other companies, Henry Paulson has more zigs and zags to his credit than a fox trying to escape a pack of hounds.

The fox and the hounds, of course, have a clear idea of what they want to do and how they want to do it, which is more than you can say of Paulson. Sums of incalculable size are being spent or pledged by Paulson and his playmate, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and nobody outside their organizations, or maybe inside them either, knows who got what, how much they got, and under what conditions they got it.

In the past couple of months Bernanke has loaned out $2 trillion to unnamed companies under eleven different programs and all but three of them were slapped together in the past fifteen months of financial crisis.

To repeat, we do not know who got this money or what collateral was put up in return for the loans or what conditions were attached to them.

The sums involved are almost three times as large as Paulson's $700 billion muddled bailout efforts that Congress voted for last month. Bernanke does have the legal authority to pass out these trillions without Congressional authorization and without explanation, but secrecy breeds suspicion and loss of confidence.

These officials preface every speech by talking about "transparency," their favorite word, at the same time they are handing off $2 trillion and they won't say to whom, and leading Bloomberg News to file suit under the Freedom of Information Act.

Paulson has made off with $50 billion to give to AIG for the purpose of setting up a special entity by which the company's lousiest loans are to be kept off the books and the unknown debtors protected. When asked about this by the <i>New York Times<i>, Lynn E. Turner, who sits on the Treasury Department's Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession, complained that "We've had way too many things here that nobody knows anything about…. That's why no one has faith in the capital markets."

Paulson appears to have given away, invested, loaned or lost about $300 billion of the first $700 billion Congress gave him. But he has lost more than money: Nobody believes him or Bernanke anymore.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/107340/

And we are sooo glad.



Perhaps we'll also see the ringleaders in The Hague,
their cronies in Leavenworth.
Heh heh heh.

[robertpaulsen]

14. ANSWER: Wealth Transfer.

$1000 Question:

What do the Rockefellers, Morgans, DuPonts and the rest of the richest 1% call a depression?


The Greatest Wealth Transfer in the History of Mankind Starts Now!
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article7880.html

[Octafish]

21. Hope that's the Daily Double: Bailout payout tops $8 trillion.

What is their take on the middle class, Alex?

The warmongers are in for a rude awakening.



We the People.

Who is on to their gangster asses, Alex?

Bailout payout tops $8 trillion

Jeanne Cummings
Politico
Tue Dec 16, 4:41 am ET

As the holiday season commences, it’s worth taking stock of the last gift that President George W. Bush and the 110th Congress have left for U.S. taxpayers.

It’s a package of about $8.7 trillion dollars’ worth of potential taxpayer commitments for loans, guarantees and other bailout goodies for businesses and distressed homeowners.

Amid the tissue paper:

• More than $1.5 trillion in Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. loan guarantees, including a $139 billion assist to the lending arm of General Electric Corp.

• $1.8 trillion in cash, tax breaks and loan guarantees doled out from the Treasury Department to taxpayers, financial institutions and credit companies.

• $300 billion for homeowners from the Federal Housing Authority.

• $25 billion in assistance for auto companies from a program overseen by the Energy Department, which is separate from the bailout proposal that tanked last week in the Senate.

• And $5 trillion worth of new money, loan guarantees and loosened lending requirements from the Federal Reserve Bank.

According to Bianco Research President James Bianco, who crunched these numbers, that amounts to more government aid and assistance than nine other historic bailouts and big government outlays combined.

The New Deal, for instance, cost an estimated $32 billion in its day, which would be about $500 billion in today’s dollars. The Marshall Plan cost about $12.7 billion, which is the equivalent of a paltry $115.3 billion. The Louisiana Purchase? The French got $15 million, which would be worth about $217 billion today.

CONTINUED...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/16620

It really hurts.



What is the truth?

[Kaleko]

15. Kick for exposure

[Octafish]

22. A bigger moneymaker than oil.

What is war?



Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

Edit: Please remember. You must reply to your answer with a question.

[malaise]

16. Wicked post

Great work. :hi:

[Octafish]

23. 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers

What is the tip of the iceberg?



25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers

Thanks, malaise! Really appreciate that you're in the fight to beat these warmongers into prison, where they belong.

[Bobbie Jo]

17. K&R

:kick:

[Octafish]

24. They make DiFi break out in shingles when mentioned in public.

What are Perini Corporation and URS Corporation?

9. Perini

Perini (controlled by financier Richard Blum) is one of the more controversial companies to have scored big-time Iraq war money. That’s because Blum’s wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein, appears to have used her seat on the Military Construction Appropriations subcomittee to steer the $650 million environmental cleanup deal in his favor. This has lead to outrage and cries for conflict of interest investigations among those in the media, as well as Feinstein’s peers in Congress. Feinstein has also neglected to comment on this potential conflict of interest. This has lead to what Metroactive.com calls an “omission has called her ethical standards into question.”


10. URS Corporation

Another widely disparaged, Blum-controlled company that has profited from Iraq is URS Corporation. Long known as one of the nation’s major defense contractors, San Francisco-based URS has collected $792 million in environmental cleanup fees in Iraq war zones. As with Perini, both Blum and Feinstein have come under intense scrutiny to answer questions about the apparent conflict of interest inherent in Feinstein helping to secure such an exorbitant government contract for her investment banker husband. Both Blum and Feinstein have refused to produce copies of the ethics commitee’s rulings on Perini and URS, leading to considerable suspicion.

SOURCE: http://www.businesspundit.com/the-25-most-vicious-iraq-war-profiteers/2/

We the People don't want war.



They the Corporations make money off war.

Just sayin'.

[ColbertWatcher]

18. All I can give is my kick and rec. Brilliant post! n/t

[Octafish]

26. Kafka's Banker

Thanks, ColbertWatcher.



Doesn't it all seem surreal?, my Friend.

Kafka’s Banker

News: Bob Maxwell’s nightmarish slide from banker to bartender began with a simple question: Are you willing to do work for the CIA?

By Robert Dreyfuss
March/April 1994 Issue

This is a spy story about a banker named Bob Maxwell.

Eleven years ago, Maxwell entered a frightening world of spooks, arms dealers, and money launderers when he unwittingly became involved with the Central Intelligence Agency. That chance encounter cost him his career and his health, and has propelled him into a legal battle that has gone all the way to the Supreme Court.

The CIA does business with many banks, not to mention law firms, airlines, computer companies, and corporations of all kinds. Some know they are dealing with the CIA, some don’t. Most of us believe that if we found ourselves caught in the underworld of national espionage, the police or the courts would rescue us.

That’s what Bob Maxwell used to think, too. But like a character in an eerie Kafka novel, Maxwell awoke one morning so entangled with secret agents that he could not extricate himself. Justice has eluded him. He has been threatened, followed, photographed, and finally gagged by a U.S. court order at the CIA’s request. “I feel that I’m fighting the entire federal government,” he says.

Maxwell’s story is a parable about the 1980s. Under Reagan, the CIA threw itself into covert operations from Angola to the Middle East. Some were run dutifully, with White House approval and congressional oversight; others were freelanced “off the books.” Maxwell’s story provides a small window into U.S. intelligence operations in the 1980s.

Perhaps that is what worries the CIA.

Maxwell is a most unlikely candidate to battle the CIA. When his world fell apart, he was a conservative Republican banker who lived in rural Pennsylvania and commuted to Baltimore to work at the First National Bank. He is a soft-spoken man who uses gestures sparingly.

Nonetheless, Maxwell has reluctantly come to see himself as a whistle-blower. He realizes that he can never get back the years he has lost. And it is unlikely his life will ever return to normal. But Maxwell is driven by an inner sense of justice that says: They can’t get away with that!


“BY ORDER OF A CLIENT”

Maxwell’s saga began in October 1983. After more than a decade in banking, Maxwell landed a job as a senior executive at the First National Bank of Maryland. During his first week, Maxwell was approached by his supervisor, Ronald Teather.

“It was after work, about 5:15,” Maxwell recalls. “We were just talking off-the-cuff, and he said, ‘Would you be willing to do work for the CIA?’“

Teather explained that a First National client, Associated Traders Corporation, was actually a CIA front. Teather handled the ATC account personally. Assuming that even the CIA needed bank accounts, Maxwell told Teather that he would be willing to handle ATC’s letters of credit as long as they were properly documented and fell within his area of responsibility.

Teather asked him to fill out an unmarked biographical data sheet. The document, Maxwell believes, went to the CIA. At no time did Maxwell ask for or receive security clearance, nor did he agree, verbally or in writing, to a secrecy accord.

Almost immediately, Maxwell became worried about ATC’s dealings. Letters of credit to finance weapons shipments lacked documentation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Maxwell was specifically asked not to copy bills of lading and commercial invoices. This meant that the bank could not verify what goods had been shipped.

Bank documents show that in December 1983, “60,000 Enfield rifles” were shipped from India. Britain and Portugal were listed as destinations, but there is no way to know where they ended up. Although Teather told him not to copy invoices or bills of lading, Maxwell did and quietly filed them away.

A year later, the bank’s vice president for international operations, John Bond, asked Maxwell to route $5.3 million from ATC’s account through Panama to a Swiss bank--without specifying ATC as the sender. A month later, the transfer went through “by order of a client”--who remained nameless.

Why in the world would anyone want to bounce millions of dollars around the world without specifying who it was from? Then it hit Maxwell: The CIA was laundering money, and he was helping them do it.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1994/03/dreyfuss.html

I'd like to know how Mr. Maxwell is doing. He sounds like the kind of citizen our nation needs -- a man of integrity.

[leftstreet]

19. K&R

[Octafish]

29. Profiles in Panic

From Vanity Fair:

Profiles in Panic

With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs and assets, even many of the wealthiest players are retrenching. Others, like the Lehman Brothers bankers who borrowed against their millions in stock, have lost everything. Hedge-fund managers try to sell their luxury homes, while trophy wives are hocking their jewelry. The pain is being felt on St. Barth’s and at Sotheby’s, on benefit-gala committees and at the East Hampton Airport, as the world of the Big Rich collapses, its culture in shock and its values in question.

by Michael Shnayerson January 2009
Illustrations by Barry Blitt.

CONTINUED...

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/wall_street200901

History will not be kind to the greedheads. That is, provided we do have a history.

[DrDebug]

25. QUESTION: Why does AIG get preferential treatment by the BFEE?

GM, Ford, and Chryslar did not get the support when they asked for a very minor loan compared to the $150,000,000,000.00 already poured into the bottomless pit called AIG

Reprint from July 2006:

AIG cartel

AIG is at the heart of the cartel of businesses which used to be run the Greenberg family until the Spitzer investigation and is always one of the biggest stockholder in the other groups.

Who is who before the Spitzer investigation:

American International Group = Maurice "Hank" Greenberg
Marsh & McLennan (See: 9/11) = Jeffrey Greenberg
Ace = Evan Greenberg
Bear Stearns (RIP) = Alan Greenberg
Kroll always had AIG as shareholder and is currently part of Marsh.

AIG and CIA

The American International Group at its origins was linked to the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) the forerunner of the CIA. It grew from the Asia Life/C. V. Starr companies founded by Cornelius Starr who started his insurance empire in Shanghai in 1919, the first westerner to market insurance in China.

Starr served with the OSS during World War II, and the Starr Corporation, located in the same building as the OSS in New York, provided intelligence on shipping, manufacturing and industrial bombing targets in Asia and Germany. The companies' biggest shareholder was Starr International Company (SICO), a private holding company incorporated in offshore Panama and with principal executive offices in offshore Bermuda, to avoid U.S. regulation and taxes. Starr left Greenberg a large block of Starr International stock.

More: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11657

AIG, Enron and the oil and gas pipeline in Afghanistan

In December 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy in New York City, not in Houston, where its headquarters was located. The New York bankruptcy court appointed Steven Cooper of Zolfo-Cooper LLC to run Enron.

The deal involving Cooper's assumption of control of Enron raised eyebrows among regulators, chiefly because Cooper's Catalyst Equity Partner's Fund included Citicorp and J.P. Morgan Chase, two of Enron's major creditors. Financial investigators report that the Enron notes to Citicorp and Chase and sold to AIG and MacArthur were unusual. A former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor referred to such financial instruments as "feints" designed to mask illegal transactions by keeping them off the books and away from the eyes of U.S. government regulators.

In September 2002, Kroll Inc., a shadowy firm with ties to the U.S. intelligence community, acquired Zolfo-Cooper and Cooper was named managing director of Kroll Zolfo Cooper. In May 2004, Marsh & McLennan acquired Kroll and Zolfo Cooper. Jeffrey Greenberg, the son of AIG's Hank Greenberg, had earlier left AIG to run Marsh & McLennan. The revolving doors and musical chairs involving Enron, Kroll, Zolfo-Cooper, Marsh & McLennan, and AIG became the subject of Spitzer's probes. Another insurance firm investigated by Spitzer for price fixing of property casualty insurance coverage and conspiracy was ACE, headed by Hank Greenberg's other son, Evan. In October 2004, Jeffrey Greenberg quickly stepped down from Marsh & McLennan amid Spitzer's investigation.

Hank Greenberg has had a long time relationship with Henry Kissinger, the partner of Richard Perle in Trireme Partners, the firm that, according to Seymour Hersh, attempted to negotiate deals with Saudi Arabia using Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi as an intermediary. Greenberg and Khashoggi, according to CIA sources, have long had an interest in exploiting the oil and natural gas reserves of Uzbekistan and the construction of pipelines across the Uralskaya region of Russia. Uzbekistan has also featured prominently in oil and natural gas plans of Enron and UNOCAL.

According to Enron insiders, on Saturday, September 7, 1996, 42 representatives of Enron and UNOCAL met in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, with Khashoggi, Taliban representatives, and Uzbek government officials. The subject was the CentGas pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan, a project that involved UNOCAL, Enron, and Saudi support. Current Afghan President Hamid Karzai was a consultant on the pipeline for UNOCAL. Prior to the Tashkent oil summit, on June 23, 1996, a $10 billion wire transfer was made from Cyprus, via Barclays Bank in London, to Enron in Houston. Cyprus is a major banking center for illicit activity. The Tashkent meeting was followed by a spring 1997 meeting between Enron, UNOCAL, and Taliban representatives at the posh Houstonian Hotel in Houston.

More: http://www.american-buddha.com/911.bishbinladalqaemoneylaundwayne.htm (reg. req.)

Greenberg and Bush family are partners in fraud
Partners in Fraud: The Bush and Greenberg Families by Al Martin

They are partners in fraud. The Bush family which runs the USA and the Greenberg Family which runs the insurance cartel composed of AIG, Marsh McLennan and Ace Insurance have a lot more in common than mainstream media will ever tell you, writes government whistleblower Al Martin, author of "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider."

More: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002259.htm

Example fraud: Tri-Lateral Investment Group

Excerpt from Al Martin's book about Bush's Harken Energy Fraud

(...) The Tri-Lateral Investment Group, Ltd. is also one of the deals (one of the very few deals, perhaps only a few dozen deals in that era by this group of guys) that you could connect Jeb, Neil, George, Jr., Prescott, and Wally Bush.

All five you can put in the Tri-Lateral Investment Group, Ltd. You can put Neil in it vis-a-vis Tri-Lateral's dealings with Neil's Gulf Stream Realty.

Then you back up a step and put Neil Bush into Tri-Lateral Investment Group's dealings with the Winn Financial Group of Denver run by the infamous former Ambassador to Switzerland, Phillip Winn. You can put George, Jr. in the deal vis-a-vis the Tri-Lateral Group Ltd.'s fraudulent relationship with American International Group (AIG), of which George, Jr. was a part through the same series of fraudulent fidelity guarantee instruments issued on behalf of Harken Energy from American International Group.

Tri-Lateral Investment Group then sold bogus oil and gas leases to AIG. This is a direct fraud that George, Jr. profited to the extent of (not a lot) $1.6 or $1.7 million. But it was a clear out-and-out fraud.

More: http://web.archive.org/web/20041009144309/http://almartinraw.com/harken.html

[Octafish]

30. ANSWER: Capitalism's Invisible Army -- The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men

Well. Certain capitalists, anyway -- the Connected kind.

The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men

By Mark Fritz
Los Angeles Times
September 22, 2000 in print edition A-1
Archive for Friday, September 22, 2000

They knew which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up, which cargo ships could be sunk in good conscience. They had pothole counts for roads used for invasion and head counts for city blocks marked for incineration.

They weren’t just secret agents. They were secret insurance agents. These undercover underwriters gave their World War II spymasters access to a global industry that both bankrolled and, ultimately, helped bring down Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

Newly declassified U.S. intelligence files tell the remarkable story of the ultra-secret Insurance Intelligence Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, and its elite counterintelligence branch X-2.

Though rarely numbering more than a half dozen agents, the unit gathered intelligence on the enemy’s insurance industry, Nazi insurance titans and suspected collaborators in the insurance business. But, more significantly, the unit mined standard insurance records for blueprints of bomb plants, timetables of tide changes and thousands of other details about targets, from a brewery in Bangkok to a candy company in Bergedorf.

“They used insurance information as a weapon of war,” said Greg Bradsher, a historian and National Archives expert on the declassified records.

That insurance information was critical to Allied strategists, who were seeking to cripple the enemy’s industrial base and batter morale by burning cities.

“Within a few days, a conference on the burning possibilities of some important cities will be held,” unit chief Robert “Lucky Luke” Rushin wrote a colleague in February 1944, when he was sending data to an Allied bombing-target committee. “I have reproductions of approximately 150 plans covering Jap plants about ready to ride.”

The files, at the National Archives office in College Park, are among the latest U.S. intelligence documents ordered declassified by President Clinton last year to speed the identification of Nazi assets.

Most of the research attention there has focused on what U.S. intelligence knew about the Holocaust, the whereabouts of Nazi loot, the migration of Nazi war criminals and how much important information never made it to the Oval Office.

But the documents suggest that insurance played an important, if less-noticed, role in the war.

The OSS insurance unit was launched in early 1943, long after it had become alarmingly clear that the Nazis were using their insurance industry not only to help finance the war but also to gather strategic data.

American insurance companies had been competing furiously for overseas business even after the United States entered the war, and the OSS files suggest that details about U.S. factories and cities were falling into enemy hands because of the interlocking international relationships among insurance companies.

Germany had 45% of the worldwide wholesale insurance industry before the war began and managed to actually expand its business as it conquered continental Europe. As wholesalers, or “reinsurers,” these companies covered other insurers against a catastrophic loss that could wipe out a single company. In the process, the wholesaler learned everything about the lives and property they were reinsuring.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/22/news/mn-25118

Wall Street is for Big Shots.

Detroit is so middle class.



"Fuhgedaboudid."

People of integrity, however, believe there is a difference.

And that's why I am honored to know you, DrDebug.
You care -- about it, about us, about the nation, about the planet and about our future,
among other multiverses.

[deaniac21]

27. I can tell you that I have been profiting from IT for years!

[Octafish]

31. Are the rich the problem?

IT's great.

Maybe the Rich Are the Problem

by Linda McQuaig
Published on Tuesday, October 21, 2008 by The Toronto Star

John McCain clearly thought he'd found a winning issue last week when Barack Obama was caught on tape defending his plan to tax the rich and "spread the wealth around."

Gotcha! For days, the faltering Republican nominee relentlessly harangued Obama for saying such a thing, championing "Joe the Plumber," whose confrontation with Obama had provoked the remark.

Of course, many were surprised when Joe the Plumber turned out to be neither a real plumber nor a guy named Joe.

More surprising was the fact that - like the famous bridge in Alaska - McCain's attempt to vilify Obama for wanting to "spread the wealth around" ended up going nowhere.

For decades, conservatives have disparaged the notion of "spreading the wealth," relegating such economic populism to the margins of public debate. The vast pools of wealth at the top have been off-limits as a political issue - in the United States and Canada.

But a seismic shift could be underway. With the financial crisis exposing Wall Street's greedy and reckless behaviour, the public may be becoming less deferential to the super-rich. Last weekend, CNN ran a special on Wall Street called Fall of the Fat Cats - a damning take on the nation's financial elite that would have been inconceivable only a few months ago.

So far, the focus has been mostly on the misbehaviour of "fat cats," and the need, therefore, for tighter market regulations. But a more profound question lurks beneath the surface: Is extreme inequality itself part of the problem?

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/21-7

Crooks, like Reagan and his supporters in voodoo, moved it.

What happened to all the loot?

[bridgit]

28. I think the executive & legislative branches of what used to be America have adicated...

even what was left of their pretense-to-responsibility to civil governance & deliberation; they have frittered it away in the likes of Brownback with his frozen felt pen embryo's for one.

I think the fact that there are such creatures as left-wing & right-wing judges is a clear indication that the judicial branch has abdicated it's relationship to any reason itself as to why it ever studied law to begin with.

In Petronius Arbiter's, The Satyricon, he mentions a profession in the law as being one that the torments of hell would not be able to tear from an individual so inclined & studied...well,

We know quite well the circumstance' surrounding the fall of ancient Rome at the hands of one (fill in the blank face) man; and a great gaggle of flapping "et tu?" legislators hell-bent on property & station instead. What we're too willing to sit idly by and do nothing as regards; are the intrigues of a wall street shark made walking/smack-talking flesh in the final prick of a man forever known to be scribbling into the margins of his ledger with glances askew over *his* shoulder wondering just whom may be watching him and poof!

There comes she, America, waving hairs of amber grain; the embroidered, filigreed bag lady semblance of freedom & liberty, burned out husk of a smoldering Bastille a sunken Merrimack under rockets red glare and like the powder on a Whig she were all gone too ho hum

[hootinholler]

32. Error: you can only recommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours

Dang, how did I miss this one?

-Hoot