[Russ Winter]

“The dogs may bark but the caravan moves on” -Turkish proverb

I now refuse to listen to words out of Presidente Zero’s hole. It looks like the mute button will be busy, but I do have Twitter (russwinter1) set up from certain sources for reactions to perceived policy intitatives from the Presidente.  When Matt Taibbi (who I greatly respect) sounded hopeful and seemed to buy in on Presidente Zero’s more populist rhetoric about going more aggressively after mortgage banksters I decided to check further. Then Dylan Ratigan another observer I respect picked up on crony capitalist Mitt Romney rhetoric on banks coming clean with mark-to-market losses. Suddenly I started to wonder if these political players (and I do mean players) finally realize they need to throw some bones to the anti-crony capitalists OWS and Tea Party/Ron Paul movement to win in a close election? I prefer that those two movements join together in some kumbaya moment and throw the kleptocrats out,  but that is quite unlikely now.







Obviously if anything comes from this, it will mark a major shift away from the prevailing concept of socializing bankster losses.  In Presidente Zero’s case perhaps this marks an awakening from his shameful Sixty Minutes interview when he declared, “I can tell you, just from 40,000 feet, that some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn’t illegal.”   Any time this topic come up, Jamie Dimon has a tizzie fit, so I can only imagine what the policy makers hear. I will preface it by saying all of the electorate who cares about this are going to want to see action, not tawdry political rhetoric. If Prez Zero can’t deliver this year on this, I think the rhetoric will backfire.

But Zero has a way of fooling people around false actions and then finding some slick way of blaming it on Republicans. The announcement of another HARP like program is case in point.  He could turn loose his judicial branch to get the money, but instead he proposes a (reduced from prior rhetoric) bank tax he knows Republicans will oppose.   In a must read Bill Black calls Zero out, accusing him of only being about politics, propaganda and sleaze. Unfortunately as Black points out when Republicans have a chance to attack serious corruption, they fail to act unless it is some industry (like green) or group (government workers) outside of their own crony network.



What to look for.  First, here is rundown of the key players pursuing mortgage banksters. With the exception of  the SEC guy Khuzami, who is a sycophant, there seems to be some rare enforcement types with larger testicles there.  According to the Huffington Post story, the big banks would not receive immunity in the following areas. #4 is huge and involves $200 billion in damages sought.

1. Criminal liability.
2. Tax liability
3. Fair lending, fair housing, or any other civil rights claim.
4. Federal Housing Finance Agency or the GSEs [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]
5. CFPB claims for the period after they came into existence in July 2011
6. SEC claims
7. National Credit Union Association Claims
8. FDIC claims
9. Federal Reserve Board claims
10. MERS claims

The criminal investigations was also talked about although before the last elections when the Justice Dept was talking about hundreds of indictments which never came. Is  this the model.  A Reuters story suggests this is superfluous.  Beau Biden, son of Joe Biden and Delaware Attorney General here sounds skeptical, and asks what the resources are coming from the administration. If on the other hand this is all settled for $25 billion with a couple arrests down the Mafia hierarchy, the citizenry will have been had once more.One boondoggle Obama  may try to employ is expanded his HARP program paid for by taxpayers rather than banksters. Bruce Krasting writes that Obama has opposition to this and as such taxpayers may survive this misguided attempt. The head of FHFA, DeMarco has political protection from key Republicans. No HARP without full and real bankster funding.Separately after Barney Frank leaves Congress, his place as top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee likely will be taken by” loose cannon” Maxine Waters.  She has advocated banning all credit default swaps and taxing “gangsta banks” out of business.  The powers to be may have to Spitzerize this one. Waters is under ethics investigation.

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