J.P. Morgan Chase $13B Settlement To Be Announced Today, But Regulation Has Not Been Restored an No Deterent Is In Place To Prevent IThem From Doing It Again

Too Big To Fail Corporations Are Actually Bigger Than When They Caused The Biggest Financial Collapse Since The Great Depression

Remember What They Caused

On October 22, 2013 I posted an article on this site summarizing the chain of events that caused the 2008-2009 financial disastrous collapse Will the $13B Settlement Deter Others? After Bear Stearns was bailed out, and it was determined that Lehman Bros. would be allowed to fail, barring further government bailouts, Fed Chairman Tim Geithner and others had the other shoe drop, AIG. It was realized that through deregulation that had been in place since 1922 that AIG was Too Big To Fail, fearing total worldwide financial collapse. They, AIG, JP Morgan, and others had wiped out Americans net worth through there 401k’s and the housing debacle. The stock market went to 7900 (coincidentally the stock market went over 16,000 yesterday, doubling where it was after the collapse.) People not only lost their homes but with their 401k’s being severely reduced, found 65 year old people and many others without their retirement savings and having to look for work.

 What was done to Prevent This From Happening Again?

Well, on July 1, 2010 H.R. 4173 (111^th): Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed by President Obama. This was to restore the regulations set after the great depression. Here is  how well we’re doing on implementing that law according to http://www.davispolk.com Dodd-Frank Progress Reports Monthly 

November 1, 2013 REPORT

• In the past month, no rulemaking requirement deadlines passed, six rulemaking requirements were proposed and one rule was finalized to meet a rulemaking requirement.
• As of November 1, 2013, a total of 280 Dodd-Frank rulemaking requirement deadlines have passed. Of these 280 passed deadlines, 170 (60.7%) have been missed and 110 (39.3%) have been met with finalized rules.
• In addition, 162 (40.7%) of the 398 total required rulemakings have been finalized, while 115 (28.9%) rulemaking requirements have not yet been proposed  

The World’s 29 Too Big To Fail Banks, JPMorgan At The Top

 The updated list of the world’s too big to fail banks is out today and JPMorgan Chase  along with HSBC are at the top.The Financial Stability Board amends the list each year after examining banks to decide which ones pose a threat to the global economy if they were  to fail. Forbes List of Banks Too Big To Fail The list of Too Big To Fail banks has grown and so has the banks themselves. They are actually bigger then when the financial crisis occurred. Their profits are growing, their bonuses have been back for awhile and the stock market has doubled since 2009. Middle class income and salaries are not growing and income equality is increasing.

Corporations Have Too Much Influence On Politicians

Since the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court things have only gotten worse. Things will not get any better unless there is a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United. This is not a partisan issue, it is not a Right/Left issue, it is not a Conservative/Liberal issue. Polling has long indicated support for an amendment. A 2010/2011 Peter Hart Poll found that 79% of all Americans, including 68% of Republicans, 82% of Independents, and 87% of Democrats support a Constitutional Amendment. An Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) poll found that overall 69% of Americans agreed that “new rules that let corporations, unions, and people give unlimited money to Super PACS will lead to corruption. Three out of four Republicans (74%) agreed with this statement. 71% of Republicans also agreed that “if a company spent $100,000 to help elect a member of Congress, it could successfully pressure him or her to change a vote on proposed legislation. A March 2012 poll conducted by ABC News/Washington Post showed that not only did two-thirds of Americans feel that Super PACS should be illegal, but 69% (two-thirds) of Tea Party supporters felt that Super PACS should be outlawed.

Nearly nine out of ten Americans (88%) say that big companies have too much power in Washington D.C. Super PACS, which became funnels for outside spending after an appeals court applied Citizens United, collectively spent more than $609 million dollars during the 2012 elections. Overall outside spending topped  $1.29 billion according to the Center for Responsive Politics “Outside Spending” April 22, 2013 “Outside Spending” by Center for Responsive Politics

Financial Reform is not at all where it should be 5 years after the worst financial collapse since the great depression. The banks have not only not been dismantled, but they have grown, the number of banks that are too big to fail has grown. WE MUST TAKE BACK THE POWER FROM THE CORPORATIONS! or face another, probably much worse, situation at the hands of the greedy and guilty people that caused the last crisis.

PLEASE use the links below to contact your Congressmen/women, and Senators RIGHT NOW, and OFTEN, and tell them that WE MUST PASS A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO OVERTURN CITIZENS UNITED. Left in the hands of those who will NOT be going to jail but simply paying fines, is a bad place to be. I don’t care how much the fine is (it’s no where near what they stole from the people,) it will happen again rest assured. Perhaps the world economy will collapse next time. We can’t let that happen, it’s up to us to take action.

So, today they’ll announce a $13B settlement will be paid, no one will go to jail, and the too big to fail banks will keep getting even bigger. Call or E-mail your Congressmen/women and Senators NOW!

Here is a sample e-mail, if you wish, you can copy and paste it into your representatives e-mail comments;
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Dear (ENTER YOUR Congressman, Congresswomen, or Senators NAME HERE)

I am writing you to tell you that I support a Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling by the US Supreme Court. I believe, as does nearly nine out of ten Americans (88%) that big companies have too much power in Washington, D.C. With Super PACS spending $609 million during the 2012 election cycle and $1.29 billion from overall outside spending, I ask you to do whatever you need to do, to pass a Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision.

This is not a partisan issue, not a Republican/Democratic issue, nor a Conservative/Liberal issue. A 2010/2011 Peter Hart Poll found that 79% of all Americans including 68% of Republicans, 82% of Independents, and 87% of Democrats, support a Constitutional Amendment. An Opinion Research Corporation poll found that overall 69% of Americans agreed that “new rules that let corporations, unions, and people give unlimited money to Super PACS will lead to corruption. Three out of four Republicans (74%) agreed with this statement. 71% of Republicans also agreed that “if a company spent $100,000 to help elect a member of Congress, it could successfully pressure him or her to change a vote on proposed legislation. A March 2012 poll conducted by ABC News/Washington Post showed that not only did two-thirds of Americans feel that Super PACS should be illegal, but 69% (two-thirds) of Tea Party supporters felt that Super PACS should be outlawed.

I thank you for service and want you to know that I will track any legislation pertaining to this issue, and you, as my Representative, on GovTrack.us, Open Congress, Votesmart.org, or www.Senate.gov

Thanking you in advance for your anticipated cooperation, I am,

(YOUR NAME)
(YOUR ADDRESS)
(CITY, STATE, ZIP)
(E-MAIL, PHONE NUMBER)

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To find and/or contact YOUR Congressmen/women click here:
Click Here To Find and/or Contact YOUR Congressmen/women

To find and/or contact YOUR Congressmen/women click here:
Click Here To Find YOUR Senator

Medic3569’s What’s News for October 26, 2013? JP Morgan, Rep. Marsha Blackburn/Congressman Frank Pallone, HIPAA and Don Yeltin and Racism

 Medic3569’s What’s News

for October 26, 2013

Firmwide Litigation Reserves

Analysis: Stop freaking out over $13B JPMorgan settlement

USA article about Analyst Freaking out About $13B Fine 

Being as JP Morgan Chase will be giving out about $10B in annual bonuses, and they stole many Americans self-worth, and took people’s homes and 401k’s, I don’t think  the fine is excessive at all. Let’s remember that they pushed out mortgages to anyone willing to take them, (people were wrong too for taking mortgages they couldn’t afford,) bundled them up into mutual funds and sold them worldwide by creating ab useless product called a “Credit Swap.” This caused many Americans to lose their retirement savings. They sold mortgages at such a frenzied to make the fees, that on many cases they didn’t even have the proper work, like a “Transfer of Deed.” When they went to foreclose later they needed paperwork,, the “Transfer of Deed” so they actually hired many people to forge these documents at $8.00/hr. This was discovered by an actual investigator whom the bank tried to foreclose on. She noticed there was no Transfer of Deed and they gave her a hard time until they finally produced one. She investigated that on the internet because she was wondering where they came up with the document all of a sudden. She found that the signature of the Vice-President of the bank that signed the “Transfer of Deed” was evidently the same Vice-President for at least 7 other banks. Investigating further she saw that these forged documents were being produced in bankruptcy courts all over the country. Evidently the employees hired at $8.00/hr had to sign at least 300 documents in an 8-hour w3ork day or they would be fired. Portrayed on a 60 minute episode this still didn’t stop the crimes, hard to believe, isn’t it?

Lynn Syzmoniak sued and won an $18M case against JP Morgan Chase and others for fraudulent and robo-signed documents used to  foreclose on people’s homes. She blew the whistle, claiming that the country’s four largest mortgage services had defrauded the federal government by creating fake documents to replace lost or nonexistent ones in order to receive government-funded payments. The government joined Syzmoniak’s complaint, and it was announced this week that those banks — Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co, and Citigroup Inc. — settled the case for $95 million. Under law, the whistleblower is entitled to a share of the money recovered by the U.S. government, in this case $18 million.

Read More about Lynn Syzmoniak and the 60 Minutes report. 

NC GOPer Who Called Blacks ‘Lazy’ Uses N-Word To Defend Himself

Don Yeltin NC Republican Precinct Chairman and GOP Executive Committee Member photo by TPM

Republican Precinct Chairman in NC and GOP Executive Committee Member Don Yeltin has evidently been fired after an appearance on The Daily Show where he said “the voter ID law is not racist.” He also said “one of my best friends is black,” and when asked if he is racist he said “well, I have been called a bigot.”  Read More from TPM

The Monkey Court Is Now in Session

Monkey Court Now In Session!

Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone: I started out in my opening statements saying there was no legitimacy to this hearing, and the last line of questioning certainly confirms that. HIPAA only applies when there’s health information being provided. That’s not in play here today—no health information is required in the application process, and why is that? Because pre-existing conditions don’t matter! So once again, here we have my Republican colleagues trying to scare everybody—

Barton: Will the gentleman yield?

Pallone: No, I will not yield to this monkey court or whatever this thing is.

Barton: This is not a monkey court.

Pallone: Do whatever you want. I’m not yielding. I am trying to tell you—

Barton: Protecting American citizens is a legitimate concern of this committee.

Pallone: —the pre-existing conditions don’t matter. HIPAA doesn’t apply. There’s no health information in the process. You’re asked about your address, your date of birth, you’re not asked health information. So why are we going down this path? Because you are trying to scare people so they don’t apply!

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) Doesn’t Know What She’s Talking About on CNN Live, She doesn’t Even  Speak Correctly

Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) was put in place to protect “Identifiable Health Information.” Privacy Rule provides federal protections for individually identifiable health information held by covered entities and their business associates and gives patients an array of rights with respect to that information. At the same time, the Privacy Rule is balanced so that it permits the disclosure of health information needed for patient care and other important purposes.

 The latest TeaPublican/Republican Party attempt to stop/defund/block/convince people not to sign up for has been rolling out for the past two days. Yesterday on CNN Live Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said what they’ve all been saying for 2 days, “The Affordable Care Act violates HIPAA Laws! Simply put, in NO WAY does “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” aka “Obamacare,” violate the law.

 When HIPAA was introduced in 1996 I was included in the “roll-outs” done by the government because I was an Instructor Coordinator for the NYC Emergency Medical Services (NYC*EMS,) Suffolk County EMS (SCEMS,) , and the NorthshoreLIJ Healthcare System. It was made very clear that “Protected Health Information” (PHI) and Protected Medical Information (PMI) was not to be exposed/divulged except to someone “Directly involved in Patient Care” and a few other situations.

  Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on CNN LIVE was asked a very simple question; “What question, on the application are people asked that would cause the ACA to violate the HIPAA Law of 1996. She gave numerous non-answers like “it’s not the questions, it’s how they’re “transited”, she obviously meant “transmitted.” The correspondent said, “but the only question asked that is remotely medical information in nature is “Do you Smoke,” how is the law being violated. Rep. Blackburn kept saying stupid things and that it’s “how it’s transited.” Unbelievable stupidity, defiance, and rhetoric designed to attack the ACA and she didn’t know anything but the talking points, and didn’t even understand them. 

 If there are any great legal minds out there that can tell me something I can do to STOP TeaPublicans and Republicans from making things up and then going onto media and spreading misinformation, false rhetoric, and outright lies, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE tell me what to do to help expose this rhetoric for what it is.

Will the JP Morgan $13B Settlement Deter Others? No! It’s Time Criminals That Destroy Lives and the Economy Go To Jail!

 

Bloomberg: Who Really Wins and Will it Deter Others on JP Morgan $13B fine, but who does it really hurt?

JP Morgan Chase had $28.9 billion of pretax income last year. It probably would be a stretch to give the Justice Department credit for the full $13 billion. The matters JPMorgan would be resolving include a 2011 lawsuit by the conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as a separate suit by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. It also isn’t clear how much of the $13 billion would be paid in cash.

Before continuing we need summarize what they, the entire financial industry, politicians, and the other greedy people behind the scenes, caused. 

The democrats passed a law intended to help people buy their own homes creating sub-prime loans. This allowed financial institutions, banks, investment firms, mortgage companies to borrow money at below prime rate, free money. The lenders pushed out mortgages to anyone that would take one, regardless whether they could pay the loan back. They would make money selling these mortgages. In fact, they set up mortgages that had very low monthly payments for the first few years so people thought they would be able to afford them. But just prior to the crash people’s monthly mortgage payments exploded, $600/mo went to $2800/mo and there was no way people could afford to keep their homes. People who took these mortgages are to blame too.

I had a student that worked for a mortgage company. One day she called a business to check on a mortgage applicants employment and salary history. The business that he put down as his place of employment never heard of him. When she told her boss what the company had said, he replied, “don’t worry about it, approve the mortgage.” This same scenario was playing out all over the country because they were making money selling the mortgages, the more they sold, the richer they got. 

Another part of the disaster is that President George W. Bush deregulated the financial industry removing all safeguards and allowed banks, investment firms, securities houses, all to be joined into companies that became “Too Big To Fail.” Think about this when you here the Republicans screaming about too many regulations! So the Bear Sterns, AIG (the biggest) and others were acquiring all these mortgages, making a great deal of money, but they knew that they were bad mortgages because in a few years people were going to realize that they couldn’t pay the monthly payments once they exploded. They had to figure a way to dump them.

This is when they decided to bunch these bad mortgages together and make them mutual funds. They were selling bad investments to their own customers, and they knew it! but they still had a problem. Their customers would realize that the funds were risky. So, here came the gem of an idea that went so far over the line that everyone involved from this point on should go right the F%^K to jail. 

The “Credit Swap” is born. If a company sells an insurance policy they have to show assets, capitol, to show that if the insurance policy has to be paid off, that they have the assets to pay it off.  That means that if an insurance company sold insurance policies worth $1 Billion on their face value, they actually had the $1 Billion to pay them off. Also, this is important, insurance is REGULATED. So, the “Credit Swap” was born. The potential buyers of the mutual funds, who would not buy such risky funds were told they could buy a “Credit Swap” “which would ACT as an insurance policy so that if the Mutual Fund didn’t pay off it’s projected amount that they could use the credit swap to get the face amount of the fund, like getting your insurance policy to pay the benefit in full. So they sold these horrible funds filled with bad mortgages all over the world, selling credit swaps to assure they would pay off.

Here’s the problem,  they were NOT insurance policies and were completely made up, NOT requiring the seller to have the assets to pay them off. When people starting getting the increases in their monthly mortgage payments and knew immediately they could never afford them they either gave their lender the keys back or were foreclosed on. This made the mutual funds worthless. The buyers of the mutual finds started to say they wanted their credit swaps to pay off what they were due. The problem with that is that the sellers of the credit didn’t have the money to pay them. Remember if an insurance company sold $1B worth of policies they had the assets. These financial giants sold, we still don’t know how much,  much more in credit swaps then they had assets to pay them off. In some cases a company that had $50B in assets sold more than $300B in credit swaps it is suggested. But, in actuality it is believed to be much worse. These companies, to this day, will not tell how much they sold in credit swaps, even though we, the taxpayers had to bail out the ones that were too big to fail.  

These institutions, except for a few, like Lehman Bothers are back on their feet, thanks to the tax payers, enjoying hugh bonuses and profits again. They are using part of their gigantic profits today to lobby and fight the regulations in the Dodd-Frank bill that passed from becoming reality. The Dodd-Frank bill was passed to restore the regulations that were removed and allowed companies to become too big to fail. These companies are supposed to be broken up into smaller companies so that this could never happen again. Well, big money has been able to block these regulations from being put back into place and these firms are actually BIGGER than they were when they caused the atrocities that they caused in 2008. 

When the customers of the funds and the credit started demanding payment on the credit swap, because the funds became worthless the crash came. When the stock market dropped it wiped out peoples retirement funds, 401k’s. People who worked 40+ years and had contributed to their retirement were now now without their life’s savings. People had to either forfeit their homes or be foreclosed on.  Here’s a real kicker, how can this not be illegal? 60 Minutes did a piece where someone who was a regulator got a foreclosure notice. She checked and found that the bank didn’t have a “Transfer of Deed.” A document the bank would absolutely need to foreclose. After a lot of wrangling she was given one. After doing some searching on the internet she seen that the Vice President of the bank that signed her transfer of deed, was apparently the Vice-President of many banks. The mortgage lenders were in such a frenzy to sell mortgages that tens of thousands of the mortgages didn’t even have the proper paperwork when they sold them. No problem, they actually created a company, hired hundreds of workers, at $8/hr to forge documents, I’m not kidding! I believe the employees had to sign a minimum of 300 documents per day or they were let go.

Back to the Bloomberg article; 
About $4 billion would be earmarked for consumer relief, details of which are fuzzy. For all we know this could take the form of coupons, discounts or other soft benefits, which might not cost JPMorgan anywhere near $4 billion in the end. This month the Association of Mortgage Investors sent U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder a letter to complain that some of the government’s settlements with large banks “have resulted in the responsible party shifting a portion of the settlement costs” to investors in residential mortgage-backed securities. If the government lets JPMorgan finance breaks for homeowners with other people’s money rather than its own, that isn’t much punishment.

Another $4 billion would go toward resolving the lawsuit related to Fannie and Freddie. For the Justice Department to include this accord in its total settlement figure would be akin to the rooster taking credit for the dawn. The suit isn’t a law-enforcement matter. It’s a business dispute.
Back in 2011 the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which is the conservator for Fannie and Freddie, hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP to litigate the two companies’ mortgage-bond claims against JPMorgan and other large banks. The agency’s lawsuit covers $33 billion of residential mortgage-backed securities issued from 2005 to 2007 that Fannie and Freddie brought from JPMorgan and other companies it later acquired, including Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns.

In court papers, Quinn Emanuel attorneys have said Fannie and Freddie lost billions of dollars on those bonds, without specifying more precisely. Perhaps $4 billion (before attorneys’ fees) is a good deal for Fannie and Freddie. Or maybe it’s an even better bargain for JPMorgan, at about 12 percent of the bonds’ face value. It’s hard to say.

The settlement wouldn’t end the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of JPMorgan. The bank was told it won’t receive a waiver from prosecution, and would have to cooperate with the Justice Department’s probes of individuals still under investigation.

Bloomberg Article on “Who Really Wins”

What Do We Do?

The problem going forward is that there is no deterrent from them doing the same thing or worse. These firms are doing better than ever, and using part of their profits to block regulation. What they did, on so many levels, is in fact criminal. They have even admitted fraud. We need to start putting CEO’s CFO’s and the others responsible for ruining so many people’s lives in jail, and not some country club. Let’s not forget that they caused us to go into a recession and a financial crisis of the magnitude that we have not seen since the depression. The entire world economy was in danger, and was damaged. We need to regulate the industry and cause a deterrent by putting these criminals in a real jail.