Spain, Italy and can Secessionist Movements hit the US?

Catalonia is getting a lot of international press lately because of its secessionist movement that is seriously contemplating secession from Spain. Catalonia is Spain's most prosperous region and includes 16% of Spain's population as well as a fifth of Spain's economy.  Like the rest of Spain, Catalonia is experiencing profound economic problems and Catalonians are sick and tired of sending their tax dollars to the central government in Madrid. Much has been written about the situation in Catalonia.

Catalan Leader Boldly Grasps a Separatist Lever New York Times

Spain risks break-up as Mariano Rajoy stirs Catalan fury The Telegraph

Secession crisis heaps pain on Spain Financial Times

The situation in Catalonia isn't the only secessionist movement brewing in Europe.  In Italy the Venetians are in a secessionist mood.

Venetian Protesters Demand Independence From Rome; Polls Show 70% Favor Independence

Its not just regions in Spain that are sick of centralized government. Take a look at Italy where Venetian protesters demand independence from Rome.

The rally, which was organized by the separatist Indipendenza Veneta party, drew large numbers of energetic protesters.

“The situation here is almost explosive, so today we have thousands of people who have gathered in front of the regional government and we’re going to present to them a resolution signed by thousands of participants to have a referendum for independence,” Chairman of the separatist Indipendenza Veneta Party, Lodovico Pizzati, told RT.

“The main reason is economic. We are in a situation worse than a colony because the tax rate in Italy is the highest the world and our services are extremely poor. We have 20 billion euros missing from our regional resources each year and that’s unbearable,” Pizzati said.

And while some question the region’s ability to stand alone, Pizzati says the goal is completely attainable.

In Italy, the Venetians aren't the only Italians considering secession; Sicily and Sardinia also have secessionist movements brewing because folks are sick of sending their tax  dollars to Rome. Then there's the Scotish secessionist movement.

Scotland's 'explosive' push to secede from the U.K.

Basically, these various secessionist movements are the result of crushing economic misery amid mountains of unsustainable debt.  It's a three-part drama that is unfolding:  1.  the collapse of the European cradle to the grave socialist entitlement model 2. failed statist Keynesian policies and 3.. forcing the people to endure austerity to bailout the banksters.  Even The Ecomonist was quite upfront in correctly labeling Spain's bailout as a bailout of Spanish banks.

The Spanish bail-out  Going to extra time, The €100 billion pledged to help Spain was meant to rescue the banks and calm the euro zone. Instead it has added to the drama

It's true that the banks who made bad loans are being bailed out and it's also true that transferring the cost of the bankster bailouts to the people is grossly unfair and unjust.  Nowhere was a European styled bankster bailout more hideously thieving than in the case of Ireland.  Ireland was an economically flourishing nation with low taxes and low debt, an unusual situation for a European nation.  But Ireland suffered a severe bout of Banksters Gone Wild and the Irish people were left paying for the hugely expensive mess.

The Withering Shamrock: How the Irish People Got Stiffed by the Irish Government

In Greece, the financial disaster is attributable to unsustainable borrowing to maintain an unsustainable socialist cradle to the grave entitlement state. The Greeks couldn’t live on the money of other Europeans forever and their day of reckoning arrived. In Iceland, a tiny nation of 300,000 fishermen and farmers magically churned themselves into high finance gurus who traded on money borrowed from Iceland’s banks that borrowed the money from foreign banks. The Icelanders did the only thing they could do; they allowed their banks to go bankrupt and started over by going back to fishing and farming....

But Ireland? Ireland is a real tragedy because the Irish people are paying for the financial sins of its corrupt government, banksters and bankrupt real estate developers. The Irish banks borrowed from foreign banks who lent mountains of money to Irish real estate developers. Irelands was praised by the media and financial pundits as an economic miracle – living proof that borrowed fiat money creates wealth and prosperity until one day it all ended. The great Celtic Tiger ceased to roar and lay mortally wounded in September, 2008.....

Aside from the fact that the Irish people are idiots for supporting a government that bails out the rich at their expense, the story of how it actually happened is even more horrifying. The gory story is succinctly laid out by Michael Lewis in his outstanding book Boomerang.

But what the Irish government did next was unthinkable. It voted to guarantee the debts of Irish banks which then became the debt of the Irish people. The Irish government told the public that it must save the Irish banks. Lewis makes a most astute observation and discloses that the bailout of the Irish banks was nothing more than a bailout of bondholders:

"....These private bondholders didn’t have any right to be made whole by the Irish government. The bondholders didn’t even expect to be made whole by the Irish government. Not long ago I spoke with a former senior Merrill Lynch bond trader who, on September 29, 2008, owned a pile of bonds in one of the Irish banks. He’d already tried to sell them back to the banks for 50 cents on the dollar-that is, he’d offered to take a huge loss, just to get out of them. On the morning of September 30 he awaked to find his bonds worth 100 cents on the dollars. The Irish government had guaranteed them! He couldn’t believe his luck.

But it gets worse as Lewis states:

"A political investigative blog called Guido Fawkes somehow obtained a list of the foreign bondholders: German banks, French banks, German investment funds, Goldman Sachs. (Yes, even the Irish did their bit for Goldman.)" Michael Lewis in Boomerang.

 And it gets worse as Credit Writedowns reported on 3/3/12 that Irish taxpayers are now even paying unsecured bank creditors."

Folks are certainly catching on to the stone cold reality that while austerity is forcibly being imposed on the poor, the pensioners and the middle class, there is zero austerity for the criminal bankster class who continue to have a license to plunder no matter where they are.

As the economic situation continues to worsen in the US, and it will, one has to ponder how many US states will start clamoring for a divorce from Fedzilla, the Bridezilla that consumed an entire nation.  It certainly isn't beyond the realm of possibility. Failed government at all levels creates a lot of desperate people who will resort to desperate measures for their own survival.  Most assuredly, trust in government won't be a component of their survival plans.

The Bankster Meltdown Really Happened in 2004 and Was Covered Up by Bush and Gang

The generally accepted theory of the 2008 financial meltdown is that it just happened suddenly, although financial troubles were indeed expected to be significant from the fallout of the the mortgage debacle and the real estate crash. Moreover, it is also generally accepted that the Bush Administration reacted as if the sudden financial calamity was indeed something that just happened out of the blue. 

There is overwhelming evidence that the Banksters were crashing in 2004, an election year, and that the Bush Administration merely covered it up. In the way of background information that built the foundation for the financial collapse, it all goes back to a 1999 piece of legislation signed by Bill Clinton and supported by Republicans and Democrats called the Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA). The gory details of the FSMA were astutely laid out in a Global Research 11/12/08 piece by Michel Chossudovsky titled “Who are the Architects of the Economic Collapse” who names the big names and summarizes the bill:

Under the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, effective control over the entire US financial services industry (including insurance companies, pension funds, securities companies, etc.) had been transferred to a handful of financial conglomerates and their associated hedge funds….

Summers, Geithner, Corzine, Volker, Fischer, Phil Gramm, Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Rubin, not to mention Alan Greenspan, al al. are buddies; they play golf together; they have links to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg; they act concurrently in accordance with the interests of Wall Street; they meet behind closed doors; they are on the same wave length; they are Democrats and Republicans.

While they may disagree on some issues, they are firmly committed to the Washington-Wall Street Consensus. They are utterly ruthless in their management of economic and financial processes.

There is no question that the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act definitely set the stage for 'Banksters Gone Wild'.  By 2004 there was ample evidence that something was radically wrong although nobody noticed at the time.  Post 2008 financial collapse, every financial journalist was scrambling to figure precisely what happened, why it happened and how it happened.  After all, America is a nation that is supposedly swimming in mountains of legislation fictitiously dubbed 'consumer protection bills' and/or just updating laws to comport with modern financial trends and technology.

In a stunning October, 2008 disclosure, New York Times reporter Stephen Labaton laid out a startling account of a secretive meeting in 2004 that explains all we need to know in a piece titled:

Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt

The piece starts with:

“We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms at the moment.” — Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, March 11, 2008.

Drained of most of its cash three days later, Bear Stearns was forced into a hastily arranged marriage with JPMorgan Chase — backed by a $29 billion taxpayer dowry.

Within six months, other lions of Wall Street would also either disappear or transform themselves to survive the financial maelstrom — Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley converted to commercial banks.

How could Mr. Cox have been so wrong?

Although Latham burns a lot of ink attempting to spin the disaster into some type of a regulatory failure while focusing on the SEC's refusal to adequately police the Banksters, his story unwinds with remarkable facts and clarity, as if Latham himself didn't even want to believe his own story or the horror that were unfolding before his eyes.

...decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control. The agency’s failure to follow through on those decisions also explains why Washington regulators did not see what was coming.

On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks.

They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments. Those funds could then flow up to the parent company, enabling it to invest in the fast-growing but opaque world of mortgage-backed securities; credit derivatives, a form of insurance for bond holders; and other exotic instruments.

The five investment banks led the charge, including Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry M. Paulson Jr. Two years later, he left to become Treasury secretary.

At this juncture, it's important to understand precisely what the Banksters were demanding at the secret meeting in the basement of the SEC.  Furthermore, it's impossible that Bush and his Administration were not aware of the meeting, who attended the meeting and what the meeting was all about.  Bush and Gang undoubtedly didn't want anybody to know about the meeting.  Congress was not informed.

The Banksters were demanding that they be given a green light to borrow more money and increase leverage so they could gamble on more wild ass investment schemes.

In the post 2008 disaster analysis, Alan Blinder,a former Federal Reserve Vice-Chairman, blamed the SEC for allowing the Banksters to increase their leverage and further stated “Before then, leverage of 12 to 1 was typical; afterward, it shot up to more like 33 to 1. What were the SEC and the heads of the firms thinking?”, here.

That's precisely what happened at the secret 2004 meeting - capital requirements were lowered and Wall Street Banksters were allowed to increase leverage from 12:1 to 33:1 (and even higher).

This is the equivalent of a gambler being up to his eyeballs in casino debt and asking the casino to increase his credit so he can continue gambling in the hope that he might win and wipe out his bankrupting losses.

After the dirty deal was struck to appease the gambling Banksters, SEC Commissioner Roel C. Campos, a former federal prosecutor, said “And I keep my fingers crossed for the future.”

Everybody at that meeting precisely understood the situation. They kept their fingers crossed and the Banksters imploded anyway, along with the global economy.

Latham continues:

With that, the five big independent investment firms were unleashed....

Over the following months and years, each of the firms would take advantage of the looser rules. At Bear Stearns, the leverage ratio — a measurement of how much the firm was borrowing compared to its total assets — rose sharply, to 33 to 1. In other words, for every dollar in equity, it had $33 of debt....

The commission’s decision effectively to outsource its oversight to the firms themselves fit squarely in the broader Washington culture of the last eight years under President Bush.

That's what happens in the District of Crime (DC).  Agencies and Congress Critters routinely outsource power to the very folks an agency is responsible for regulating, which, of course, is why the concept of regulation is a joke.  It's more like a license to steal, concentrate power and legalize monopolies.  Had Wall Street turmoil, fraud, deceit and gambling addiction been allowed to blow up in 2004 when it rightfully should have, we'd still be in a mess but a mess not nearly as big and economically devastating as the mess we are currently enduring.

One thing is clear.  Bush and Gang are clearly responsible for allowing this to happen.  Unquestionably, Bush put the entire nation at grave risk on a gamble he lost.  I'm sure that Bush did the exact same thing the SEC commissioners did - crossed his fingers.

On a more disturbing note, why should any federal agency have the kind of raw and absolute power that allows the SEC to allow the Banksters to bring down an entire nation and the global financial system?

In the District of Crime, Congress Critters and the President are nothing but wholly owned subsidiaries of the Banksters.  Now the suffering taxpayers who are themselves struggling in a Bankster created economic horror are still bailing out the thieving Banksters and their gambling losses.

It's the American way - a nation where crime really does pay.

TARP's Neil Barofsky, Who Estimated the Bankster Bailout Could Reach 24 Trillion, is Out With a Tell All Book

In July, 2009, Neol Barofsky, TARP's Inspector General, said “The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion” according to the New York Times, here.

Barofsky also said “Our goal is to bring transparency, to put things in context.”.   Barofsky was the chief administrator of the bankster bailout program. Fast forward 3 years and Barofksy has left government and is out with a book, Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, that is highly critical of the bailout.  Barofsky's book apparently unloads on a lot of troubling issues, including the total lack of transparency throughout the entire bailout fiasco. MSNBC reports:

Barofsky’s complaint: Neil Barofsky, who served as the special inspector general of TARP, is out with a Bloomberg op-ed previewing his new book, and this op-ed is highly critical of the U.S. Treasury Department on a number of levels. It’s critical of Dodd-Frank but it’s also critical of the big banks. It provides fodder to both the Tea Party right and the Elizabeth Warren left. Bottom line: It’s a harsh assessment of Washington and Wall Street -- and one that is under the radar right now but gives fuel to the criticism that nothing has really changed. Barofsky, in his op-ed, seems to both be disappointed in Dodd-Frank and simultaneously worried that some of the potential teeth in Dodd-Frank won’t ever come to fruition.

Dodd Frank was a crafty and destructive piece of legislation that actually expanded bankster and Federal Reserve powers under the guise of consumer protection.   That's the standard game plan of the politicos who are bribed with campaign contributions to pass legislation to concentrate wealth and power all in the name of protecting the people.  What a freaking joke!

While Barofsky is disappointed and expected the government to do more for the people, his statist liberal views do in fact disclose some interesting and relevant facts that are documented in his Bloomberg, op-ed piece titled Bungled Bank Bailout Leaves Behind Righteous Anger.

In the year since I stepped down as the special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the sadly predictable consequences of the government’s disparate treatment of Wall Street and Main Street have only become worse. As the banks amass size and power, Main Street continues to get pummeled....

In June 2011, Treasury appeared to take a tentative step toward holding the mortgage servicers accountable for the widespread misconduct in the program by pledging to withhold the incentive payments to three of the largest banks -- Wells Fargo (WFC) & Co., Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) -- until they came into compliance with HAMP’s rules....

Treasury couldn’t even keep this modest commitment.

In return for what was touted as a $25 billion payout, the banks received broad immunity from future civil cases arising out of their widespread use of forged, fraudulent or completely fabricated documents to foreclose on homeowners....

As a result, the settlement will actually involve money flowing, once again, from taxpayers to the banks.

Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times and always humorously enlightening and delightful because she does suffer from numerous bouts of incredible lucidity for an NYT journalist, wrote her 'buzz saw' piece on Barofsky's book.

Into the Bailout Buzz Saw

His story is illuminating, if deeply depressing. We tag along with Mr. Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor, as he walks into a political buzz saw as the special inspector general for TARP. Government officials, he says, eagerly served Wall Street interests at the public’s expense, and regulators were captured by the very industry they were supposed to be regulating. He says he was warned about being too aggressive in his work, lest he jeopardize his future career.

And so Mr. Barofsky, who formerly prosecuted Colombian drug lords as an assistant United States attorney in New York City, is schooled in the ways of Washington. One telling vignette comes early on in his book, when he is advised by inspectors general in other agencies about how to do his job....

Thus the collision course was set between Mr. Barofsky and a crew of complacent, bank-friendly Treasury officials.

Barofsky learned what sane folks already knew:  the Banksters rule America and the government takes its orders from the Banksters.

We really don't know the true cost of the Bankster bailout, probably because it's a well guarded government secret, in addition to being an ongoing 'rape of the taxpayers' process.  But here's what we have learned from a one time disclosure of the Federal Reserve, not to be confused with Audit the Fed, a bill that never ever gets passed in Congress because Congress Critters also understand who their bosses are.

Have You Heard About The 16 Trillion Dollar Bailout The Federal Reserve Handed To The Too Big To Fail Banks?

I suspect that by the time this whole sinister bankster bailout mess is finished and disclosed that Barofsky's $23.7 trillion bailout estimate will actually be an understatement.