New Economic perspectives has the article The DOJ and the SEC Spurn their Ace in the Hole: Richard Bowen. This is the second part of a three part series by William K. Black. I posted about the first part in The Lessons Richard Bowen’s FCIC Testimony Should Have Taught the Nation.

To give you a sense of the dereliction of duty of Obama’s Department of Justice, I give you the following excerpt from the latest Black article:

Competent and vigorous government financial regulators are typically superior witnesses compared to whistleblowers.  They are rarely subject to similar damaging psychological pressures.  They have nice titles and expertise in their fields.  They have no personal axe to grind.

In the savings and loan debacle (less than one-hundredth the size of the current crisis) our agency, the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) made over 30,000 criminal referrals.  The referrals produced over 1,000 felony convictions in cases designated as “major” by DOJ.  The cases that were prosecuted were hyper-prioritized through the “Top 100” process.  We worked closely with the FBI to prioritize the worst 100 fraud schemes.  That represented slightly over 300 S&Ls and 600 individuals.  They were nearly all prosecuted and despite having the best criminal defense lawyers in the world we achieved a 90% conviction rate.  The ability of the regulators to take the lead in successfully prioritizing cases for prosecution is one of the collateral advantages of superb regulatory criminal referrals.

Compare this record to the zero, yes I said zero, criminal referrals in the aftermath of the latest crisis.

See also the another post on my blog Whistleblower from Citi Bank asking WHY DOJ is not acting on his evidence!

If you are as incensed as I am about the failure to prosecute, then I don’t know how you could possibly vote for Hillary Clinton for dog catcher, let alone President.  These crooks are Hillary’s pals.  She has never called for their prosecution.  If a similar crisis occurred during her Presidency, you can bet she would act with as much venality as the Obama administration has acted.

Bloomberg News has the video Was There Wrongdoing Done in the Financial Crisis?

Former Citigroup Chief Underwriter for Consumer Lending Richard Bowen discusses Wall Street whistle blowing and the financial crisis. He speaks on “Market Makers.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Richard Bowen was the subject of my previous post The Lessons Richard Bowen’s FCIC Testimony Should Have Taught the Nation.

I received an email about this news story because of a petition I signed, “DOJ: File criminal charges of fraud against bank officers named in evidence, before the statute of limitations expires this year.”.

Our goal is to reach 1,000 signatures and we need more support. You can read more and sign the petition here

I think this is a very important issue that only the grass roots can make happen. Sign the petition. Forward information about the petition. Post it on Facebook. Tweet about it. Pester your politicians about it.

You can refer back to a comment on this blog where the petitioner asked for signatures.

Bernie Sanders has this post about the deficit on his Facebook page.

Stop, please stop talking about contributing to deficit reduction. We need to tax these millionaires and billionaires so that they won’t keep using their money to create the next financial bubble and collapse. We tax them so that we can spend the money usefully on infrastructure and investment in the country’s future without reducing the deficit one bit. Your concentration on the deficit is starting to get annoying, since I know, and Stephanie Kelton knows that you know better.

Even the Republicans who are willing to increase the deficit to no end in order to fight the next war know better than this.

Senator Ed Markey has posted the article Sen. Markey & Rep. Blumenauer Introduce Bicameral Legislation to Cut $100 Billion from Wasteful Nuclear Weapons Budget on his Senate web site.

He has posted the following comments and summary on Facebook.

We are robbing America’s future to pay for unneeded weapons of the past. As we debate the budget & Republicans rally around devastating cuts to Medicare, Head Start and investments in research and science, it makes no sense to fund a bloated nuclear arsenal that does nothing to keep our nation safe in the 21st century. We should cure disease, not create new instruments of death. We should fund education, not annihilation. Read more about my new bill to cut $100 Billion from wasteful nuclear weapons budget

Liking his Facebook post, and adding supportive comments will let Senator Markey know that you appreciate his efforts in Congress, and you appreciate his new found activism on social media. I think using 21^st century technology to communicate with us voters is a brilliant strategy for overcoming the media control by the oligarchs.

Markey’s comment that “We are robbing America’s future” in no way contradicts my statements that in a country that is sovereign in its own fiat currency, the government will never run out of money. What it can use up is resources and workers. We ought not to waste those things on useless weapons, or anything useless.

The Hill has the article Sanders offers infrastructure amendment to budget.

Sanders, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, said the costs of his proposal would be offset by closing “huge” corporate tax loopholes.

When will progressives admit what even Republicans know?  Increased government spending in one area does not need to be offset by decreases elsewhere.  While closing tax loopholes is a commendable idea, it has nothing to do with offsetting other spending.

A country that is sovereign in its own fiat currency will never run out of money.  When the Republicans want to go to war without “paying” for it, that is a tacit admission that they agree with my analysis of fiat currency.

It is way past time to stop making amendments that mix two unrelated topics.  The side topic only detracts from the main topic.  It gives the opposition another avenue of attack that we do not need to provide.  On top of which this talk of offsetting spending only gives credence to a total myth that the Republicans and their oligarchic patrons want us little people to believe.

Furthermore, it gives credence to the idea that we need to increase taxes on the ultra-rich as a way of paying for government spending, when the real reason for increasing taxes is to prevent the ultra-rich from creating financial bubbles.  We are the ones that will drown when the bubble breaks.  Taking this money out of the hands of the ultra-rich by raising taxes on them is a way of protecting ourselves from the harm that this excess wealth will cause the country (and is causing the country).  The ultra-rich could avoid high taxes if they used their wealth for good purposes like raising income levels for the wage earners.  When they insist on using it to create financial havoc, then drastic actions need to be taken.

By the way, thanks to Mo Bracken for posting this on Facebook.

You can find this discussed in bits and pieces in a number of places, but it is all on Ed Markey’s senatorial web site in the article Markey: GOP Budget Is the Real March Madness. He has also posted this on Facebook.

In the Republican budget, special interests score big on tax breaks, Wall Street blocks regulation, billionaires take a bigger share of the winnings, and Big Oil remains undefeated. Meanwhile, seniors pay more for health care, working families pay more for energy, students pay more for college and clean energy companies cut more workers

Here is the video he posted on YouTube.

I am so glad to see our other Senator from Massachusetts get so visibly into the fight against the Republican strategy to give all the money in the world to the super rich oligarchs.

Makes me much prefer to stay in Massachusetts rather than move to Florida, despite the winter weather here.

While I made an offer on a house in Florida during our recent vacation there, it took us only a day to rescind that offer when we thought more about the kind of thing discussed in my previous post In Senate testimony, top Scott adviser won’t say ‘climate change’.

The Miami Herald has the article In Senate testimony, top Scott adviser won’t say ‘climate change’.

However, rather than read about the conversation, it is much better to watch the video as provided by Crooks & Liars in their article In Senate Testimony, Top Rick Scott Adviser Won’t Say ‘Climate Change’.

I first heard about this story from another source which made it impossible to embed the video like the one above, so that source will remain unnamed.

Talking Points Memo had the article Dem Rep. Blasts ‘Talmudic Scholar’ King’s Comments On Jewish Dems (VIDEO).

“I really do not need lessons from people like Steve King on what is to be Jewish or a Democrat,” Israel said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Steve King, who said that America is a Christian nation, should not be lecturing Jews about how we should be Jewish. You know, Steve King doesn’t know what chutzpah is, but Steve King defining Jews and talking about how we can’t be Democrats and Jews at the same time? That’s chutzpah.”

Although I do not agree with Rep. Israel on the topic of the country of Israel, and I don’t agree with him on other topics, I still liked some of his remarks here. I especially liked his disdain for Rep. King, the Christian Talmudic Scholar. Christian Talmudic Scholar is not an oxymoron except in the case of Rep. King.

In case you didn’t get the word chutzpah, here is the pronunciation from reference.com and definition below.

unmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall.

Robert Reich has posted this on Facebook

I commented:

Are you starting to finally realize that Hillary Clinton, your friend, is not the right Democratic candidate? Never mind, Elizabeth Warren, how about Bernie Sanders? And will you please stop talking about the silly idea that raising taxes on the 1% is for the purpose of paying for some government programs? Raising the taxes on the ultra-rich is for the purpose of removing from their control the resources they are using to create the next financial bubble.

Just think, if people like Robert Reich started to talk about the real reason to raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy, it would legitimize such talk for people like Bernie Sanders. Having hired Stephanie Kelton as his chief economic adviser, I am sure that Bernie Sanders wants to talk about the idea, but he probably thinks Americans are not ready, yet.

It doesn’t seem like my comment will see the light of day anywhere else but here.

Well, I have to take that back. My comment did make it onto Facebook.