Sorry, but this trader's banking confession was no prank

The Yes Men have been blamed for Alessio Rastani's comments on the financial crisis. But sometimes truth outdoes satire The Yes Men
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 September 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/29/alessio-rastani-no-prank

This week, an insignificant market trader and self-proclaimed financial self-help guru, Alessio Rastani, rocketed to stardom after speaking frankly on the BBC about the collapsing market and his plans to make money from it. We Yes Men heard about it right away, because soon after the broadcast, people started emailing from all over the world to congratulate us on another prank well done. They couldn't imagine that a real trader could possibly speak so candidly about the market, so they assumed Rastani was one of our posturings.

He wasn't. Rastani is small potatoes, but he's a real trader. And he said nothing that would suggest otherwise; he simply described what he does, more honestly than a true insider would, but quite accurately. "Every night I dream of another recession," Rastani said, and explained that it's possible to make huge money from a big crisis even when millions of others lose their life savings, and worse.

Well, duh. Don't we all know that Goldman Sachs bet against the same housing market they were such a big player in, and made $1bn in profit when the sub-prime crisis rendered millions of Americans homeless? John Paulson, the manager whose hedge fund was betting for Goldman, could have honestly said exactly what Rastani said, but of course he knew better – possibly because unlike Rastani, Paulson's firm had a major, immediate and provable impact, and there's no telling how his millions of victims might have reacted. Unlike Rastani, true industry insiders like Paulson, Geithner et al remain silent about the way their system works, couching it all in technical jargon and full-on deceit. They've been doing it for decades, and, since Ronald Reagan's day, with increasing consistency.

Lately, it hasn't been working so well. Something has been speaking in very plain language to millions of people. The crowds amassing in cities from New York to Athens to Paris are just the tip of the iceberg, just the most visible of all those who have long known, viscerally, that Rastani's point of view is actually mainstream. Those people also know that, armed with truth and awareness, anything is possible.

As Michael Moore pointed out to those occupying Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, in America it's just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together. And when the rest of us decide we really want to change the rules of the game, and take back this country for all the people, those 400 won't be able to do anything about it.

Illegal Foreclosure Epidemic

Robo-signing foreclosure paperwork is a federal crime, but no bank or banker has even been charged.
Jim Hightower
August 15, 2011
http://www.otherwords.org/articles/illegal_foreclosure_epidemic

Two-year-olds often go running around the house too wildly and crash into something. They get an "ouchie" and fall down crying, but they learn from it.

That's the virtue of the "ouchie" that Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and other big financiers got last year when they ran into the law after racing wildly through home foreclosure paperwork. They were caught falsifying thousands of documents and taking illegal shortcuts that were causing innocent families to lose their homes. They had to pay fines, make restitution, suspend foreclosures, and pledge to clean up their act. But at least they learned their lesson.

Oh, wait — these aren't two-year-olds. They are wily bankers, and the only lesson they ever seem to learn is that shortcuts can be profitable — as long as you don't get caught. But once again they've been caught rushing through foreclosures, using the same old scam called "robo-signing."

To foreclose on someone's home, an authorized bank employee must sign the foreclosure document, swearing that the facts in it are true. But that requires hiring people to review each case. To avoid that cost, they take an illegal shortcut by signing the name of someone who has not read the document and might not even exist.

In one Massachusetts county, for example, the signature of "Linda Green" has recently appeared on some 1,300 foreclosures. Curiously, her signature was written in many different styles, and she had many different titles. Also, there's no Linda Green presently working in the mortgage banking company involved. Meanwhile, state officials say that robo-signing is, once again, "an epidemic" all across the country.

It's a federal crime to do this, yet no bank or banker has even been charged. Until we put a CEO in jail, the banking barons will never learn their lesson.

Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He's also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown.